Chapter 2

I was dangling there blinking, feeling the burn in my eyes, the tears stinging. The light was so bright but I just had to see her eyes. Her smile, her lips, her skin; they were all perfect - but her eyes, they were a treasure I had to have. I completely understood those men who years ago sold all they had to sift for gold in frozen rivers in the middle of nowhere. There was simply no other choice.

I held my eyes closed for a full five seconds, all I could stand, and opened them once more in order to gaze for an extended time. This time, instead of finding her glorious gaze washing over me along with the glow of the sun lamps, I saw only normalcy - bland, normal, everyday women and men, crossing and passing each other on the sidewalk.

I wasn't standing anymore; I wasn't bound and I wasn't with her. I was, in fact, seated in a rather comfortable chair, gazing out the window of my corner Starbucks. My coffee was on the low table, inches from my left hand, with steam escaping from the opening in the dome lid. My newspaper, opened to the weekend lifestyle section, was spread before me.

I was hit, nearly overwhelmed with two sensations at once. First was disbelief - could it all have been a dream? I was just where I had started and nothing seemed to have changed around me. Paranoid glances over my shoulders didn't reveal anyone looking at me in any strange way, or at all. My face and my skin seemed warm, but I couldn't discern if it was the affect of the lamps, or embarrassment after waking from an erotic dream in a public place. I certainly had the hard-on that went along with those dreams.

Secondly, and nearly overwhelming, was a sense of deep loss and depression. Her eyes had been taken from me. I didn't matter if they were never real - they were gone.

I stumbled home in a haze, not really seeing or hearing anything, but just trying to hold on to the memory of the sight of her. It felt like it was dissolving in my mind, out of my grasp like sand falling through my fingertips.

Home at last, I tore off my clothes and stood before the mirror in my brightly lit bathroom. Visible as clear as the sun were tan lines on my skin. The outline of a bra on my chest and back - even the lines of the garter belts were clear. Where it hadn't been covered, my skin was dark and richly tanned. It had been real! She was out there, somewhere, to be found again. I could see those eyes once more.

She had left me a keepsake as well. The pink panties, so embarrassingly pretty with their lace trim, were still stretched over me, outlining my rigid cock. There too, confirmed when I slid them off, were clear and crisp tan lines. I stepped into the shower, realizing that I was still covered in sparkling glitter. I had been too dazed to notice if that had caused any stares on my way home.

I spent all of Sunday in the Starbucks, getting so wired on coffee that by the end of the day that it took hours to finally get to sleep. I was in no condition to go to work, so I called in sick on Monday. I was back in the shop all day. Despite those many hours and many dollars spent, she didn't reappear.

When I dared leave, I scoured the neighbourhood, trying to find that studio, that storefront. I wondered each time a pair of eyes met mine, if I was recognizable. Were they saying to themselves, "there goes the freak I saw in panties and fake tits, stretched out in a store window"?

But I never found recognition, and I never found that window.

Months later, with my tan lines all but gone, all I had left was that pair of panties tucked away in the back corner of my dresser drawer to convince me that I wasn't insane - those pretty panties and the enduring feeling of emptiness. My social life atrophied due to my own disinterest and my work became a grind. It was nothing but a different location to be in while I ached for something more.

It was a Tuesday and I was going through the motions in my office, making myself prepare for an afternoon meeting of some importance. I'd let myself be set up on a blind date the previous weekend, so I also pushed myself to reply to her emails. She had been lovely, poured into a dress with intention, and it had been an enjoyable evening - probably the first time in a long time I'd been able to go more than a few minutes without seeing those eyes each time I closed mine. I was wondering to myself as I caught myself smiling if this was actually "moving on."

And then, at 11:30 in the morning, in the doorway of my 10th floor office, without so much as a warning from my assistant, there She stood.

"Hello, my Edward," she smiled and her eyes glistened. Here eyes. I felt my breathing slow down and I felt the need to be in those eyes. My eyes never left hers, but somehow I saw the way her dark hair glistened red with highlights as it framed her porcelain face. I became aware of the leather corset forming and holding her hourglass body beneath a fitted jacket and knee-length body-hugging skirt.

"I found your card when I was looking through your wallet while you were tanning, so I thought I'd just stop by. I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not,..." I hesitated, realizing I didn't know her name.

"You may call me 'Miss' for now, my Edward," she smiled, and I sighed, loving the way every that small change of expression modified the shape of her eyes.

She stepped in and closed the door behind her and stood before it, standing about eight feet from me.

"Please put these on, my Edward," she said as she tossed a fluff of lace onto my desk. Lifting it in my hands, I found that it was a white satin thong trimmed in pink ruffled lace.

I had a hard time believing she was asking this, or that she would think I would go along with it. The first time I had met her, I had been entranced by her beauty, I guess, and I certainly didn't know that going along with the wishes of a beautiful woman would leave me trussed up in women's lingerie and on display for the whole world to see.

My mind was racing, trying to form some rational thought in the midst of it all. I knew there was work, spread out on the desk, where her gift had just been. There was that lovely girl, though I couldn't recall her name at the moment. There was the door, unlocked behind her.

Despite all of it, I couldn't think of anything but her eyes. I couldn't escape them, and didn't really want to. I stood, unbuckled my belt and opened my suit pants, letting them fall to the floor. I stepped out of my boxers, and placed them in her outstretched hand. The panties, so tiny as I pulled them on, barely covered me, especially in my physical condition that moment. Making them fit over my erection only pulled the t-back tighter between my ass cheeks.

"Very pretty," she graced me. As her teeth became visible in her wide smile I was oblivious of the floor to ceiling window behind him since I had been transported to heaven. "We can provide the finishing touches after lunch. Come along."

She turned, opened the door, and left. I followed her, without a word, as the will to do anything different simply wasn't present within me. I could feel the ruffles of lace tight in my ass, as real as I felt the burning gaze of my young assistant not only on me and my clearly visible bulge, but also on her, my Miss, with the look of hatred women reserve for each other.