Dressed to Impress - Elizabeth Coldwell

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them a routine they had learned over the past month. Not having a significant other, Amy performed her lap dance to an empty chair.

      Both Howard and Amy had resolved that this would be the year they found love, but at the six-month mark, things were not looking so good. Amy had been on one failed blind date after another and Howard had not fared much better. Neither, though, had considered an office romance. Sure, they had shared a brief kiss under the mistletoe at last year’s Christmas party, but the punch had been heavily spiked, and it was a kiss executed with more enthusiasm than skill, the clunky frames of Howard’s glasses colliding with Amy’s own in a graceless plastic pas de deux.

      When Howard sees Amy in the photo and framing store the evening after the salsa dance ball, he hides behind a display case. It’s not that he dislikes her – quite the opposite, in fact. He still remembers their kiss with fondness (and bewilderment at his uncharacteristic boldness). But, after his demoralising evening, the last thing he wants to do is put himself out there. And Amy – who isn’t in the mood for company either – is concentrating intently on which photos to print at the self-service kiosk. She stares at the screen in indecision, and casts furtive glances over her shoulder before finally confirming her selection. When a shop assistant stops to ask if she needs any help, she blocks his view of the screen with her body. Howard watches in fascination as a pinkish blush creeps up her milky-white neck. When she hurriedly gathers up the photos and stuffs them into her bag, he can’t help but wonder what she has to hide. He won’t be wondering long.

      In her haste, Amy hasn’t finalised her session properly. The machine has begun to print a duplicate set of photos and shows no signs of stopping. Howard knows it will charge Amy’s credit card with each frame it prints, and as there are no staff nearby he steps in, cancels the operation himself and collects the extra prints. Most of Amy’s photos are happy snaps, innocuous enough. But not all of them. The last three are experiments for Amy’s erotic self-portraiture class (another of Celine’s bright ideas).

      The first of this triptych is a picture of Amy dressed as a harem girl, in a costume that to most people wouldn’t be terribly risqué. But it is to Howard, accustomed as he is to seeing Amy in her regulation business shirt-and-skirt combo. He examines the image in detail, trying to determine if Amy has underwear on beneath her filmy blue trousers, and, if so, what colour.

      In the second picture, Amy wears a lacy black skirt and a tight beige sweater that plunges into a deep vee between her ample breasts. She’s lying atop a heavy oak desk and her shapely legs are stretched up into the air at a right angle to her body. Howard’s gaze travels along the long line of her pins, past her lacy stocking-tops and over her neatly crossed ankles. When he sees her shiny black Mary Janes with their stiletto heels, his cock jumps in his trousers. It jumps even higher when he sees the way Amy’s back is arched, her head hanging just a little over the edge of the desk, her brown eyes staring directly at him through her spectacles, the epitome of the naughty librarian, every bibliophile’s pin-up girl. There’s a sign on the desk saying ‘Shhh’, and Amy has a finger pressed up to her crimson-painted mouth.

      The last photo is the most revealing. It shows Amy facing the camera, legs spread wide as she sits astride a wooden chair. All she’s wearing is a satiny red bra, a black underbust corset and frilly red panties. Her tiny waist is whittled down to practically nothing by the bones of the corset, her already generous breasts and hips and ass now the obscenely exaggerated curves of fertility statues. Her feet are bare, which Howard finds hopelessly erotic. He wants to drop to his knees and suck on her pretty pink toes.

      He finds himself now in a rather awkward position. For one thing, he has an erection. And he doesn’t know what to do with the photos. He can’t leave them there for some stranger to find, but he can’t give them to Amy at the office either, for reasons that are obvious. So he carries the photos with him when he goes to the framing counter to pick up his Still Life achievement certificate, then heads back to his empty apartment.

      The next day Howard brings the photos with him to work. To leave them at home would be an admission that he intends to keep them, and he knows that would be wrong. He puts the innocent photos into his filing cabinet, but dares not leave the others there. Those he carries on his person at all times. He promises himself he’ll return the whole set to Amy today. All he has to do is wait until he knows she’ll be away from her desk, and leave them in her drawer. She gets the photos back, he gets to remain anonymous. Simple. Except that the pictures are so bewitching he can’t bear to part with them, even though they’re burning in a hole in the pocket of his jacket and the longer he keeps them the guiltier he feels.

      But guilty isn’t all Howard feels. Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees Amy. He can’t concentrate on his work; he sends the wrong reports to his clients; he is afraid to stand up because he is hard, again. To his growing consternation, Howard realises there is only one way to deal with this sort of problem.

      Carrying a file in front of him for cover, he heads down the long hallway to the supply room at the end of his floor. Checking carefully to make sure no one sees him, he unlocks the door with his master key and flicks on the light. An anaemic glow illuminates the steel shelves lining the walls. There is a single chair in the room, used by the clerks when they do stocktaking, but other than that the room is bare. It’s perfect for Howard’s purposes. He shuts and locks the door behind him, then takes the photos of Amy out of his pocket and lines them up, reverentially, on one of the shelves closest to the light. His belt makes a clanking sound when his trousers hit the floor.

      Howard likes to draw out his pleasure, so he strokes himself through his white Y-fronts to start off with, tracing the outline of his cock under the fabric. The cotton feels good against his skin, and he uses the material to increase the friction on his shaft. Only when he feels ready to burst does he free his cock. A clear drop of pre-come rests on the tip: Howard rubs the pad of his index finger over it. He licks his palm to make it wet, wraps it around his shaft and jerks off gently, staring all the while at Amy’s photographs. Would she like watching this? he wonders. Would she like the way he’s now gripping his shaft with both hands? The way he’s leaning back and pumping his hips up and down, thrusting his cock up into the ever-tightening grip of his own two fists?

      His gaze flits between the three photos. He can’t say which one he prefers, but the one where Amy’s finger rests against her red red lips captivates him right now. He snatches it off the shelf, holding it up close to his face.

      ‘Amy,’ he moans, imagining that sweet mouth on him, her long strawberry blonde hair brushing over his thighs, ‘oh, Amy, yeah, suck me.’

      Howard is about to come – his balls are drawn up tight to his body, his thighs clenching rhythmically. He takes his hand off his cock for a moment to pull up his singlet. He hadn’t thought to bring tissues with him and he’s too focused on the impending explosion of his orgasm to remember that the reason it’s called a supply room is because it stores supplies. Like tissues.

      It is at this moment that a key sounds in the lock and the door swings open to reveal the object of his fantasies, in the flesh. But Howard is too far gone to stop.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasps, as he ejaculates over his rippling stomach, ‘so, so sorry.’

      Amy is dumbstruck. There is a lot for her to take in. First, that Howard has those pictures of her, which she never thought to show to anyone. Second, that everything she thought she knew about him was wrong. And third, that even if she can’t see all of him because of the shadow she’s casting, Howard is hot. Amy doesn’t know how she never saw that before, never saw beyond the spreadsheets and the sandals.

      Cheeks burning with shame, Howard pulls up his trousers and stumbles past her without a word. Amy knows she should feel outraged, but all she feels is aroused. Oh, and flattered. She has never considered herself beautiful, with her too-big nose and her slightly lopsided smile. When she picks up her photos and looks at them again, really looks at them, she sees how wrong she is. She may not be perfect, but that doesn’t mean she’s not beautiful. For the rest of the day Amy walks around as if she’s high.

      Howard is not in the next day, though, or the day after that, or for the rest of the week. Amy begins to worry that

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