Chapter 1

Market research is not ordinarily a life-changing endeavor.

Nevertheless, given what happened after, Marnie sometimes lay in bed at night wondering whether it was the biggest mistake of her adult life or the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Then she would reach a sizzling, terrifyingly intense orgasm on the other woman's face and decide on the latter.

It had all started with Management's bright idea to pull all the product ordering information from the database, and to sift through it in various different statistical cuts. Arkady took care of the database portion, and it was left to Marnie to conjure up the ghosts of sophomore stats class and actually turn piles of meaningless financial trivia about skimpy wisps of silk and satin into information. In pursuit of the almighty dollar, of course. LingerieGlance was an up-and-coming web shrine specializing in distributing the fancier sort of ladies' undergarments, and Tyler Rhaspid was its high priest. Or owner, if you insisted; Marnie supposed that made her an acolyte or an altar girl as well as an employee. Marnie was a buyer whose primary supplier had just gone out of business, so she was in between assignments right now, and her supervisor had decided she had the time for this kind of activity.

Of course it made sense to concentrate on your repeat business, if only to determine what you did right so you could apply it to your not-so-repeat business. So that's how Marnie found ClassyLady.

ClassyLady was a "loner" enterprise: a single product was all they sold through LG. That product, however, happened to be the most-reordered item on the site and Marnie wondered what the hell was so special about their Special Blend Full-Fashioned Stockings.

The summary numbers were encouraging, but a look at the raw data was truly illustrative: every single item sold had generated a repeat sale of the same item. Typically seven or eight pairs at a time. She looked deeper.

Only thirteen returns, all unopened, for "size"-- and once exchanged for the proper fit, never another peep of complaint. Just more orders. In some cases LG had sent the wrong size by mistake to a long-standing customer, and the customer hadn't even bothered to return it and had just ordered more.

Marnie shook her head. Anomalous numbers like this needed a further look. She contacted Charlotte in customer service and requested feedback from customers who'd ordered ClassyLady. Charlotte had laughed aloud over the phone, and when Marnie'd asked what was so funny, had replied knowingly with, "You'll see." Then the email attachment with the collected ramblings of over a thousand customers showed up, and Marnie did see. Not so much in the "rate our products/services 1 to 5" results, but in the comments section:

And more of the same, sometimes with an explicit tone she didn't exactly welcome in customer feedback. ClassyLady hosiery evidently looked sexy and felt even better, to the point where women were switching to it pretty much exclusively. Only one negative comment existed, and it was thoroughly bizarre:

Filthy whores!

You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you and your filthy underwear. My wife ordered your stuff and she spent all her time with herself in that bedroom with her fingers doing horrible things and if that wasn't enough she does stuff with her best girl friend now, too. I should sue you. Expect to hear from my lawyer.

Ahem. The contrast with the overwhelmingly positive comments elsewhere made her think it was a prank, but Marnie checked the ID against the customer list, and Mr. Francis Tennyson of Dayton, Ohio, a long-term customer of four years and about $600, stopped purchasing after that message. Further, a cross-check of the name revealed that a Ms. Eloise Tennyson, also of Dayton, began purchasing a week later, and was up to $1,900 already though her last name had since shifted to "Rafalski". All ClassyLady Special Blend. In two different sizes, now.

On a whim, she checked with Legal, and apparently no lawsuit had ever materialized, so at least that part wasn't true. Or possibly Mr. Tennyson had a hard time convincing a lawyer that an online lingerie distributor contributed to the lesbianism of his wife and the ensuing divorce. Given what she knew of lawyers, that itself was hard to believe.

At any rate, she mentally labeled that feedback "statistical outlier" and went back to her explorations. Sylvia, the buyer in charge of the account, was on vacation, so Marnie looked on the web for other ClassyLady distributors to see if she could find out whether they had similar experience with this or other product lines ... and couldn't find a damned one. Every commercial search for ClassyLady landed her right back in LG's webspace, and other searches just gave her press releases for the company's opening in 2003 by Darlene Feinstein and Felicia Major. In ... ah, that was it. The company was local, so they were probably not big enough to go with larger distributors. Interesting.

She'd been at this awhile, and needed some relief, so she kicked back her chair and strolled over to the warehouse. Might as well find out what all the hubbub was about.

It was six-thirty by the time she'd braved traffic and gotten back to her apartment, and seven by the time dinner had been microwaved and consumed. She hadn't always lived alone, and had once actively sought a roommate to help pay the rent, but the town was small and outside of the summertime months nearly deserted. There were plenty of vacationing fly-by-nights who would have been happy to room with her, but the first couple of attempts didn't go well and Marnie didn't suffer too much from the rent. She grumbled a lot about the place she worked, but really LingerieGlance did pay a decent salary.

After sampling her answering machine messages (her mother, her brother, and a hang-up she felt certain was probably her immature ex-boyfriend, Abram), she fumbled through her purse and found the hosiery from work. With a smirk she headed to her bedroom and its closet.

The company did encourage employees to sample the wares, and backed this policy up with 75% off the sticker price. Marnie knew the Old Man was still making money off his wage-slaves even at those rates, but it was hard to argue with the economy of it all. She had more lacy and satiny things now as a single gal than she'd ever had when she was dating someone simply due to the fact that even the most extravagant undies were now too cheap to pass up. This, and not any inherent preference, was why she now had four garter belts to choose from when trying on the ClassyLady offering. She fastened the white one around her waist because it was heretofore unworn and because she thought it would make her feel pretty.

She sat down on the bed and opened the wrapper. The packaging was plain and uninteresting, containing a cardboard slide around which the coffee-tone hose were wrapped. Removal and unwinding revealed that the fabric was gossamer-thin. Ten denier yarn, she estimated, though it might be as low as seven. The seam was real, an extension of the heel taper, indicating they'd used one of the old-style shaping frames and hadn't gone cheap and fake with a sewn-in seam. It went all the way up to the full-fashioned loop at the top. A classic look, if a bit old-fashioned and probably too fancy for her tastes. She held the garment in her palm, surprised and impressed at how light and soft it felt. Surprised, too, at the way it seemed to stimulate her skin when she touched it ... Nice.

Marnie bunched the stocking up around her fingers and slid it over her foot and ankle before she realized that the tingles weren't illusory. Simply electric, she quoted from memory. The fabric felt like it was possessed by the ambient electrical aura you got off a blanket in the winter time before you'd actually touched it. On the verge of static electricity, but with none of the prickle. Just an enveloping, soothing sensation up and down her calves, knees, and eventually, as she pulled the garments taut with garter clasps, her upper thighs. Especially the thighs; the darker welt seemed to caress her there in exciting ways. Naughty ways. She thought she remembered reading somewhere that a woman's inner thighs alone contained more nerve endings than the rest of the leg combined, and she could believe it, now. The stockings were longer than the typical fare, and she had to shorten the garter straps to keep the fabric from wrinkling.

She'd started the evening on the verge of a bubble bath and straight to bed, but as she looked at herself in the mirror she decided that the night might have other things to offer. The fact that each time she touched any part of the stocking the feeling seemed intensified did not dissuade her, of course: an accidental flick of her nail across the hosed thigh felt like a pleasurable pulse of her muscles, and a stroke of the back of her knees with her fingertips to straighten the seam felt like being caressed by a playful masseur. She started to warm up between her legs from the sensory stimulation, and soon enough one hand crept into her panties while the other continued its pursuit of new and exciting places and methods of touching her encased legs.

Her nipples tightened nicely as her heat dripped out onto her fingers, and though she'd just masturbated fairly vigorously the night before, for some reason right now she was as randy as if she'd been without release for months. It was the intense feeling of the nylon against her flesh that kept tingling her legs, driving her to caress their silky smoothness with her hands and pause to take fervent occupation of her pussy with a finger or two every so often. She was so overstimulated that she barely had to touch her clitoris throughout the rubdown, but when she felt the end approaching she plunged both hands between her thighs, pressing hard against her palm with the tiny bit of flesh, and scissoring her legs together with an audible zzzzzip. That last sensation drove her wild and she hit multiple tiny climaxes for a minute or so before "coming down" again.

Whew! Amazing. She'd heard her girl friends describe "firecracker" orgasms before, but had never experienced the phenomenon ... or any orgasms closer together than five minutes or so, for that matter. But the touch of her legs together, the hosiery rubbing against itself ... she shuddered again, a light sheen of sweat now making itself obvious all over her body. She could understand why these stockings were top sellers; the yummy sensual signals they added to simple acts of friction was simply incredible. Her body seemed to have calmed down, now, and the stockings were no longer so insanely wondrous, so she slowly peeled them off her legs and let the perspiration evaporate. She was almost sad to see them go.

She'd certainly try that again, and soon! And perhaps buy more, before the other ladies in the office figured anything out. Many of the girls were about her size, and the last thing she needed was to have to catfight them all to get a pair.

She grinned, washed up, and got ready for some couchside Biography Channel goodness (Patrick Duffy!) and then bed.

"Did the delivery truck come yet?"

"Nope. I told you, I'll call you."

"Okay. Wasn't sure. Thought you might have gone on break or something."

Paulo hung up on her. Objectively, she knew she couldn't blame him; she knew she must seem annoying as hell to the guys in Receiving. But she just couldn't help it. Her sole remaining pair of ClassyLady Special Blend were on their last legs (so to speak) and had so many runs up and down them that they didn't swish together properly anymore, and their "tingle" level was way down.

And God did she miss it! Masturbation was still effective, and it helped to watch herself in the mirror while wearing the tattered hosiery, but it was not the same as the ecstasy of slowly drawing a fresh new pair up her legs. Admiring what the fabric did to her curves, sensing the nylon tightening like a second skin as she attached the garters ... the tickle which grew to a roar as she smoothed out the wrinkles and aligned the seams between her heels and her ass. She shuddered at just the thought and anticipated a trip to the privacy of the restroom for some self-prescribed, naughty relief.

When she finally had a spare moment, she stood up to get started-- and at that moment the phone rang. It was Receiving.

"Yeah?"

"Marnie? The delivery truck came through."

"I'll be right down."

She tried not to run, but she knew she looked like she was in a hurry. Fuck appearances, she thought, as long as I get my stockings. She passed Charlotte on the way, and barely acknowledged the other woman's broad smile, but she couldn't help but notice that Char had hosiery of some sort peeking out from underneath her dress. At a quick glance it looked seamed, but Marnie barreled on down the stairs, just hoping she'd be joining that club again soon.

"Paulo!"

"Hey, Marnie," the heavyset guy replied, smiling a little at her rush. "What can I do for you today?"

"You said the delivery truck was here?"

"Yep. Are you looking for something ... special?" he leered.

"I'm just checking ... for a customer. A very eager customer." My pussy.

"Well, let me know what you're looking for."

She pondered searching herself, but it would be faster to just ask. "ClassyLady Special Blend."

"Ah, the stockings." He was not subtle in looking her up and down at this response, as if he was imagining whether she was wearing some right now. I wish. "Let's check the manifest."

He hummed and buzzed over the pages for a couple of minutes before shrugging. "Huh. Sorry to disappoint you, Marn, but there's nothing here from ClassyLady today."

"What?!? Let me see that!"

"Okay, okay. Here!" He grinned at the frantic way she grasped at the papers. "Looks like your customer's going to have to be disappointed."

She scanned the page, and there was no sign of anything resembling a shipment from ClassyLady. Dammit. She was not in tears, but the "customer" between her thighs wept quite a bit in frustration. She tossed the stapled sheets back to Paulo and shot an insincere thanks back at him as she turned around and headed back to her desk.

Or maybe to a slightly different destination, she thought as she recalled who she'd passed on the way to the dock.

"Hi, Marnie. This is a pleasure. What brings you here, today?"

"Hey, Charlotte." She tried to sound casual, but she was slightly out of breath. She doubted Char was fooled. "Just stopping by to see how you were."