Out of Her Comfort Zone (3 page)

Soon enough it was their turn. Elliot signaled Emily should wait until their driver opened the door for her. She opened Elliot’s door first, so he could scoot around and was ready to hand Emily out of the car like a gentleman from some long dead era. She stepped clear, no problems, but before she could straighten her wrap, the flashbulbs arrived, with the
Daily’s
hungry young social secretary, Mariah Karan, on their heels. The elfin creature gave her the usual ice-stare, and Emily stalled her step forward, giving Elliot space for the photo. But he’d caught the look too, and reached back to take Emily’s hand. Like some Renaissance troubadour he lifted it high, as if drawing her into a dance step, and as she drew near, dropped it to his lips. Eyes on hers, he gave her knuckles the lightest, most promising kiss. She couldn’t help her delighted chirp of laughter.

Flash, flash, flash, and her smile started to fade. He dropped his hand to her hip and drew her up beside him, turning his gaze, and his grin, to Mariah.

Who looked less than pleased, even as her photographer was nodding his approval. “So, it’s true, then? Another millionaire is off the market?”

“So she is,” Elliot said. “And I’m glad of it.”

Mariah looked at Emily as if to say, why her? Emily didn’t know either, and so didn’t say anything. Mariah’s mobile features formed into feigned surprise, as if she’d had a thought. “What does this mean for the storied stag party?” Her gaze flicked to Emily and her mouth twitched. Elliot just squeezed her waist tighter.

“What’s a party when you’ve found the love of your life?”

“Very pretty,” Mariah looked at her photographer, who nodded he was set. “Have fun at the show.”

“Always, Mariah.”

As they made their way across the carpet and into the foyer, done up in a vague 1920s theme, silver and black, Elliot’s hand slid from the middle of her back to the top of her ass. “Commando?”

“Didn’t want the panty line.”

“How Midwest of you.” He leaned close to breathe in her ear. “And so… provocative.” Her skin goose-bumped, and a shiver of pleasure shot across her mind. But before she could sass him back, his mother caught up to them.

Head of the Opera Angels committee, Mona West had once been a prima ballerina in New York. She retained the regal carriage, but had dropped the bun-head in favor of a classic chignon and her new husband’s diamonds.

“Dearest, and his Emily. Congratulations. How does it look?” She looked down, and Emily realized she wanted to see the ring. As she lifted her hand, she saw Elliot’s lion of a stepfather coming near, carrying the usual two bourbons.

“Lovely,” Mona cooed. “You went with the simpler setting, as I recommended. My mother-in-law had the stone reset three times, can you imagine?” Emily had the feeling that Mona did not allow her jewelry out of her sight long enough to reset it.
No, that’s just nerves talking
. Elliot’s mother was not a menace, just a little formal. And a lot controlling.

Mr. West handed a drink to his wife, and used his free hand to pound Elliot on the back. “El, my man, well done.”

“Glad you’re glad, Tee.” The older man was also named Elliot, but with an extra consonant. As a child, Elliot had called his stepdad Tee, and had received his own nickname in return, El. Emily expected that was the source of his nickname for her, too – Em.

“You must try the mushroom heads. To die for.” His mother waved away the server with platter of steak tartare. “How is our dear Mariah taking it?”

“Like a man, I’m sure.”

“I doubt it. She’s been truly kind to us in the press, and all we give her is access and the hope of something more. Now that hope is gone. Don’t take a step wrong for a while there. And when is the big day, anyway?”

Her husband gave her a squeeze, which she accepted with an eye-roll. “You mean you didn’t plan that, already, my dear?”

Elliot took two of the flutes of champagne from a server’s tray, handing one to Emily. “Still in negotiations. We might have a small wedding, and a big party after.”

“Small, as in a hundred people?”

“More like six, or four. You know Emily doesn’t like crowds, and who really wants to sit through another wedding? It’s the party everyone comes for.”

“Of course, dear. We’ll take that into consideration in the planning.”

Emily’s smile froze. What could she mean? Elliot squeezed her hand reassuringly. He was hers no, no matter what Mona could do. Another new couple arrived, and Mona’s attention was drawn to them. As soon as Mona disengaged from them Elliot scooted Emily away, and into a quiet corner. A curtain separated them from the noise of the sidewalk; a column from the rest of the foyer.

“You survived the gantlet.” He’d noticed.

“And you helped.”

“So, dare you muss your lipstick now?”

She did. His lips took possession of hers and his grip tightened on her hip. Her hands stole under his unbuttoned jacket and around the solid muscle of his waist, sneaking under the belt. She didn’t forget she was nearly in public, but somehow the idea made her wanting even stronger. She liked this. She might like more. And despite Emily’s vaunted shyness, it was Elliot who pulled away first.

“You’re spilling champagne down my back.”

“Sorry.”

“Far be it for me to complain when my fiancée forgets herself in company.” His traced her lower lip with a finger. “Something happened to your lipstick. Here, let me fix it.”

She closed her eyes, drinking in the sensation. A thought popped out.

“Why not?”

His hand stilled. “Why not what?”

She opened her eyes and drew his gaze in. “I’ll do it.”

“The party? Next week?”

Her brows drew down. “But I don’t know where to go, how – ”

He stopped her with a finger across her lips. “I know the best place. And the best teacher.”

****

“What sort of look are you going for?”

Emily scanned the racks of splash and shine. When Elliot recommended the place, he’d told her Madame Z’s was at Folsom and Eighth, but somehow she hadn’t realized that meant everything in the store would be bondage and brass. Not a boa anywhere, and where were all the other customers? “Something that will make me fit in?”

“With that attitude, you’ll do the opposite.” The big Madame laughed, but not unkindly, her kohl-trimmed eyes crinkling. “Every other girl in the room will be trying to stand out. You fit in by doing the same: Big color, big eyes, big arms. Work it.”

She pulled an emerald green corset from the rack and held it against Emily’s chest. “You’re yellower than I thought. And such a tall, willowy thing. Let’s try red.” That didn’t seem to work, either, but a black satin passed muster. “This one, and a fire-engine red wig. And a wide hip-swinging strut. No one would know you then.”

But the corset was latex. Within seconds of Emily’s wriggling into it, a rash started under and over her arms, and her breasts began to swell.

In the open space in the circle of black-and-silver-studded dressing rooms, Madame Z unzipped her quickly. “Well, that’s one way to a bigger bust line. Let’s try something else.” But Emily’s skin reacted to all the plastics, and latexes, and even one of the coatings on the leathers. After multiple tries, she was starting to suspect her skin had hit its limit and would reject even terry cloth.

“What do you do for condoms, sweetie?” the exasperated matron asked.

“We have to order them special.”

“Of course you do. But we don’t have time for that, do we? Let me just check upstairs.” Leaving Emily in her panties staring at multitudes of her ruddy, goose-bumped self in the banks of mirrors, the Madame climbed up a rolling ladder to the loft behind. A garbage bag flew from that direction, landing with a thud by the stairs, but the lady took the stairs back down. Emily pulled open the loosely knotted bag, and a dozen torso-shaped pieces tumbled out.

“Silk, from our previous iteration,” the Madame said.

“Silk? But why are they so stiff?”

“Stays. The real antiques use whale bone but I think these are wood or ivory. Hopefully not rubber. Here’s a likely one.”

Emily slipped it on, and thank the heavens, her skin did not disapprove. In fact, it felt damn good. She slid her hands from under her now-perkier breasts and across her belly. Smooth as butter. So this was what it felt like.

“Now don’t go having too good a time there. We have to practice our strut next.”

On “strut,” the Madame’s voice took an odd dip. Emily suddenly realized that Madame Z was not a woman. Something in Emily’s face must have shown it, because the good Madame knew immediately.

“It’s the Adam’s apple, wasn’t it?”

“The voice. But I made excuses.”

“It’s what you expect, so you give me the benefit of the doubt. That’s how you’ll make it work. Your clientele will do the same for you.”

Her – his – kindness made Emily brave. “You must pad your bra. I want to, too.”

“Honey, you don’t need any padding, with that perfect little B-cup. Where you need it is in the behind. You a runner?”

“Swimmer.”

“Well, some shark must have bitten you down to the bone down there. Almost completely un-slapworthy.”

“Slapworthy?”

“Self-evident.” With pursed lips, Madame Z gazed a good twenty seconds at Emily’s derriere, and then gave a great sigh. “Gonna have to do it with the shoes.”

“Stilettos?” Emily’s voice squeaked the question.

“Too short. Spikes.”

Emily swallowed, hard. “I do think we’ll need to practice that.”

“Elliot paid for the whole afternoon, sweetie. Just you and me and the catwalk.”

Forty-five minutes, thirty painful trips up and down the runway, really a strip of carpet across the back of the store, and Emily was ready. The heels jammed her legs into her spine at such an angle it looked as if she really did have a perfect peach of a bottom. Shoulder blades kissing in back, chin up, she thought she could see a decent cleavage, as well.

Madame Z nodded in approval. “You’ll do fine. Ice down tonight and warm tomorrow, then practice again for a half-hour. Rinse, repeat until the big day.”

Emily bent at her hips and used her hands to lever herself off the shoes and onto the carpet. “Thank you so much. I actually think I might be able to do this.”

Madame Z’s eyes narrowed to nearly black slits. “Why do you even want to? Just because your Elliot thinks it would be ah-dohr-ah-bull?”

Emily frowned.
Was that all it was?
“Not only. I’m curious. I have to hide – well, I’m always playing down my looks, and, you know.” She shrugged. “I need the men in my field to respect me. And the women.”

“So, you fake it as a man. Well don’t we all, toots.”

Emily couldn’t help laughing. “You are so much the better woman than I am the man.” She shrugged. “It’s easier that way. But sometimes I wonder, what would it be like? What do those women feel like inside? Would I like it? Just for one night?”

“What if you do like it? Would you participate every year? Keep the parties going?”

“No.”

Madame Z’s lips turned down. “Elliot has been a good customer. I never worry about my girls at his events, and they like doing them.”

For a moment, Emily felt washed with shame. She was taking money out of these women’s mouths. Then she straightened her spine, feeling the soreness already starting between her shoulder blades. “It’s time for the next generation to throw the parties. Most of Elliott’s colleagues are family men now, more interested in sleep than sex.”

“Every man is interested in sex, sweetie. Even the cross-dressing ones.” Madame Z gave a sigh worthy of the stage. “I had such hopes for your Elliot, but he does persist in falling for the ladies. And you’re such a pretty beanpole. What’s the difference? But I never got even a whiff of curiosity. Odd in such a perceptive man.”

Emily had to smile. “Wouldn’t do to consort with the clients, would it?”

“Baby, that’s what I do best.”

****

Friday night, and Emily was almost ready to go on. Or to run.

In the ready room, the home office on non-party days, she watched the ladies from Madame Z’s Fabulous Friends escort service put on their personas. They spent a lot of time on their eyes, which seem to pop from their faces. She borrowed a blue stick from a gorgeous blonde one who was singing a lullaby into her phone. Clicking off, she looked at Emily and shook her blond mane of hair. “Gotta build up your eyes, with you so pale. The mask darkens everything.”

Now a redhead, and with eyes rimmed in shimmer blue, Emily looked nothing like her everyday self. She’d reminded herself again that the bustier did not allow bending from the waist, knocking herself breathless while trying to tighten a strap on one of the Grecian-laced spikes.

The hard back-beat and bass pounded through the walls. Elliot’s sound system was powerful, of course, and even at this volume not distorted. But the echo seemed to distort Emily’s thoughts. One moment, raw fear. The next, a shock of excitement.

Can I really do this?

What if people recognize her, despite the hot rack and new hair and towering height? What if they said something and she answered and they recognize her voice? She pressed her lips together.

What if Elliot didn’t like how she looked?

What if he did?

“Now or never,” Madame Z announced with a wave of an arm. “Let’s go make some men happy.”

Taking her cue from the ladies ahead of her, Emily sauntered, carefully, into the room, swaying her hips as wide as she dared. All twenty-five women had reached the center of Elliot’s bamboo-paneled Great Room, open now with all the sofas and seats pushed to the walls, before she dared lift her gaze from the asses and shoes ahead of her.

Oh.

All the men, shouting and grinning, were wearing half-masks. She didn’t know they would be masked as well, and her wobbly smile grew a little wider. True anonymity. There looked to be four or five dozen men here, two-thirds the number Elliot said he had invited. They come and go during the night, so to speak, he’d said.

The women formed into a tight circle. At the leader’s signal, faced out and struck a pose. A couple catcalls, a couple of whistles, while most of the men grinned and soaked them in. And then went back to their drinks.