or Crocs to be found. He guided her to sit in a Queen Anne chair upholstered in pale-blue chintz.
‘Are you all right?’ He knelt in front of her and sat the shoes down next to the chair.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. Then she offered a nervous laugh ‘Other than my feet.’
He sat back on his heels. ‘When women come in here alone at this hour, they’ve usually come over from Juno or the office after an argument with their bloke. Of course there are a fair few who’ve simply had enough dancing the night away in ill-fitting shoes.’ He offered her a smile that made her feel warm down low in her belly. ‘There’s a reason I keep my shop open after hours on weekends.’ He nodded down at her aching feet.
‘It was a girls’ night out,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m alone, I mean. We got separated.’ He didn’t need to know that her friend was getting shagged and she wasn’t. ‘These aren’t even my shoes. I borrowed them from my friend Vivie.’ She nodded down to the little red feet-killers. ‘Well, she insisted, actually. And the skirt too.’ She felt stupid for telling him that. Could she make it any more obvious that she was clueless when it came to fashion and dressing to impress the opposite sex?
He glanced fleetingly at the skirt, and she was suddenly aware of just how short it was, and just how much he could see from his position if he really tried. ‘The skirt I like,’ he said. ‘However, wearing another person’s shoes is not a safe thing to do.’ The lines of his face hardened. His lips were suddenly set tight as though he were warning her about a serial killer on the loose. When he smiled up at her, his eyes reminded her of the sea that lapped at the cliffs around Tintagel: neither blue nor grey nor green, none of those colours, yet all of those colours.
The clerk lifted her right foot. She tried to squirm away but he held her firmly, flashing her a concerned glance from under a drawn brow. ‘You could have seriously injured your feet walking around Shoreditch at night in someone else’s shoes.’
The skirt she wore was a denim mini, and the way he sat between her legs made her feel exposed, vulnerable and something a lot more yummy. As he ran his thumbs up her instep and over the pad of her foot, she shifted in the chair, sliding down to accommodate his inspection.
‘Shoes are so important. They protect our feet, our soles, the only part of us that regularly contacts the earth. They allow us that intimate connection with our planet while at the same time keeping us safe from it.’ He continued his inspection of her feet, hands moving gently over her arch to the ball then to her toes as he cupped her heel in a warm hand. ‘No two people’s soles contact the earth in the same way.’
Her pulse thudded at the enthusiasm of his little speech, which, along with his gentle inspection of her feet, felt shockingly intimate, even more so than if he had actually peeked up her skirt. His actions were having a cumulative effect low between her hip bones. ‘Maybe you could sell me something a little more suited to me.’ Her words rushed out breathless and unsteady.
He placed both hands on his thighs and looked up at her. ‘Did you have a pair in mind?’
She gave a quick glance around the store, and her eyes lit on a pair of mauve boots that came up just over the ankle, low on the calf. They sported delicate kitten heels and were threaded with sage-green laces that looked more like ribbons. ‘How about those?’ she said. Then she blushed fiercely. They were lovely, elegant and, any idiot could see, totally not suited for someone like her. ‘Or maybe something a little more practical.’ She avoided his gaze. ‘A little less flashy.’
Ignoring her second thoughts, he stood and walked to the rack. She couldn’t help noticing how nicely his butt filled out his jeans. She could imagine that arse had sold more than a few pairs of shoes to women who liked a good view. It was then she realised he had taken the boots straight off the display. ‘I’m hard to fit,’ she said as he knelt in front of her and unlaced one boot.
‘Trust me –’ he smiled up at her, opened the boot and offered it to her like Cinderella’s Prince Charming ‘– I can fit you just fine.’
Everything in her went warm and liquid. Her breath caught at the feel of the leather as he guided the boot up over her heel. ‘I’ve never felt anything so soft,’ she said. ‘And they’re so pretty.’
‘Shoes should be a sensual experience,’ he said, moving his large hands up to cup her calf while he eased the boot into place. Then his agile fingers began to work the laces, plucking at them, caressing them, stroking them almost as though he were making music on them, like they were some exotic stringed instrument of leather and lace. And though she couldn’t quite hear the melody, she felt the reverberation of his plucking and threading beneath the hem of the short skirt and all the way up into her warming panties.
‘Nice, huh?’
It took her a second to realise he was responding to her response. God, was she actually moaning? And please, surely she wasn’t grinding her bottom against the chintz. The blush flashed hot across her chest but then, instead of spreading to her face, it headed south, settling against her clit with a heated, unexpected nip. And her moan became a yelp, just a tiny one, but a yelp nonetheless. She would have apologised, she would have died of embarrassment and fallen completely through the chair, but he was already working on the other boot, strategically sitting between her legs, breath slightly accelerated, and … Surely she was mistaken. But as he shifted to cup her calf and smooth the second boot against her leg, there was no disguising the erection growing inside the front of his jeans.
Everything below her waist clenched in appreciation and she felt the heavy tingle of excitement up high between her thighs. The urge to rip aside the scrap of denim that was her skirt and the bit of satin that was her knickers, the urge to focus his attention somewhere far removed from her feet, nearly took her breath away. ‘You like your work,’ she managed, not actually looking at his crotch, but not actually looking away from it either.
‘Very much,’ he said, working the laces through his nimble fingers, making no attempt to hide his boner.
Was it her imagination or could she actually smell him now? It was not deodorant, not soap that she smelled but maleness. It was like baked bread and desert heat with some moist thick bass note that she felt at the back of her throat rather than smelled. It made her hold her mouth slightly open to take in the fullness of his scent, like a cat taking in the scent of a rival or a possible mate.
Was it her imagination, or could she actually feel his breath against the place where her thighs rested on the chair, teasing just at the edge of her skirt? The growing warmth she now felt in her knickers was definitely not in her imagination.
For a moment she closed her eyes, shutting out the precision movements of his fingers and the view of his body hunched almost protectively between her legs. Then she allowed herself to take in the picture of him that her other senses were painting so exquisitely. She heard the catch and slide of his breath, felt the velvet flutter of it raising goose flesh on the soft skin of her inner thighs. She inhaled the complex olfactory portrait of him, the scent emanating from his armpits, his pulse points and the place where his cock strained in its tight confinement. She could feel his skin on hers as his fingers brushed her calf. It all created a picture of him almost as vivid as the one she had seen.
She opened her eyes just in time to watch him carefully, precisely, rhythmically tie the bow in the lace of the second boot. And as he tugged the looped ends snug against the knot, she felt a ripple up both legs that accelerated and intensified as it raced up between her thighs. It continued along her spine, flashing red hot behind her eyes, leaving a plum-coloured after-image of the clerk’s engrossed face.
She
