becoming quite the Mata Hari!
In contrast to baby-faced Rupert, Paul had a gaunt look, almost lupine, with prominent cheekbones and large wild eyes. His lips, though not as generous or raspberry red as Rupert’s, were just as alluring. His dark spiky hair looked as if he’d just got out of bed – a look that he most likely spent an hour achieving each morning.
Paul went down on one knee to fit shoes to his customer’s feet. When he pushed a shoe on, he did so by pressing up on the tip of its heel with the palm of his hand. Perhaps the girl he was serving didn’t interpret that idiosyncrasy, but Amanda did. Now she knew exactly how she was going to enslave him.
When the girl left and Paul turned to Amanda, she told him, ‘I want to try on the highest-heeled pump you have.’
He looked at her feet and raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a very small foot, madam. Our highest heels are six inches tall. You’d be balancing on the tips of your toes in them. Are you sure …?’
‘Try me.’
He measured her foot with the delicate touch of a spider. ‘One moment, madam.’
The shoe he brought to her was a plain classic pump in metallic bronze, with six-inch steel-tipped heels that were as slender and vicious as nails. He knelt and used his palm to push up on the blunted spike to press the shoe’s heel on to Amanda’s foot. Amanda bore down, forcing his right hand lower and lower, until its back was flat on the floor, and trapped. Then she put just a little weight on it, indenting the flesh of his palm.
Paul looked up at her face with both pain and lust in his eyes.
‘Now the other shoe,’ she said.
‘I …’
‘You’ll manage.’
‘Yes, madam.’ Awkwardly, he worked her foot into the second shoe, one-handed, until a third of her heel was in it. He set his palm beneath its spike and looked up again, his deep-brown eyes silently pleading.
Amanda knew exactly what he wanted. She forced his left hand down and trapped it beside its mate.
‘Madam?’
‘Paul Carter, right?’
‘Er – yes. That’s me.’
‘You left your research behind at Forsythe Footwear.’
Puzzled, he said, ‘They wouldn’t let me back in to collect it.’
‘I have it. I’ll return it to you tonight.’ She dug into her purse. ‘Here’s my business card. My home address is written on the back. Be there, tonight, eight o’clock, for dinner.’ She slipped her card into the breast pocket of his pink shirt and pressed her heels down harder, for emphasis.
‘Yes, madam.’
‘You may call me Ms Amanda.’
‘Yes, Ms Amanda.’
‘Don’t be late. Oh – and I’ll take these shoes.’
On her way home, Amanda remembered that she had nothing to go with bronze, so she made a detour to Coquette. There she found an ankle-length stretch liquid-metal gown in bronze with a halter top. The salesgirl warned Amanda that it would be impossible to wear anything under it – which suited her purposes just fine.
8
AMANDA’S NEW DRESS , or, rather, the body it clung to, seemed to render Paul speechless. It lived up to the name of its fabric – liquid metal. She looked as if she’d been dipped into molten bronze. It peaked where her nipples jutted, dimpled into her navel and flowed faithfully across the subtle swell of her mound. If she had pubic hair, it would have shown through.
She’d planned everything. Her dress was stunningly sexy and chic enough to intimidate a callow youth. The menu would appeal to a young man’s taste buds but was still more sophisticated than she imagined he’d be used to. Everything she thought she might need at any point in the evening was in place.
Paul had arrived in a charcoal-grey two-piece suit, smelling of a decent cologne and bearing pink roses. Obviously, he was hoping to ‘get lucky’ but uncertain that he would. After the little scene at Spikes, he had to be horny but nervous. He was on Amanda’s hook, ready to be reeled in.
She served cream of carrot soup with coriander. At her prompting,
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