Little Black Dress Ch. 01

"Okay, okay, I'm listening!" Every word she spoke scared him more somehow.

"I need you to come to the Baglioni Hotel, on The Strand."

"The Bag... What the hell are you doing there?"

"Just listen! I need you to go to my flat. You've got the key, right? And fetch the - the -" She could hardly get the words out. "The dress, you know, the black one."

"Do what?"

"Get the black dress and my black high heels and bring them here." She read his intake of breath. "Don't ask why. I need you to do this, okay? Okay?"

"Yes, yes, okay!" There was exasperation and bewilderment mixed in with his worry.

"I'm coming, I'll get there as fast as I can. High heels? Okay, right, I'll be there! ASAP."

Aaron's mind was a turmoil of conflicting explanations as he rushed the distance to Carly's flat. He babbled an explanation to his girlfriend's roommate and rifled through Carly's closet, stuffing the precious dress and heels into the sports bag he had brought with him. The nature of the dire circumstances were beyond his powers of guesswork, but it had something to do with Miranda, of that he had no doubt. With everything so rosy in Carly's world, what trouble could she have got herself into? He could only fret on the Tube journey with no phone reception. Even above ground, his calls went straight to her voicemail. All he could do was complete his trek to the Baglioni as quickly as possible to alleviate confusion.

A hum of conversation arose from the customers in the hotel bar, but when he squinted through the dim lighting Carly was not to be seen. He grabbed once more for his phone, but a hand clutched hold of his jacket and arrested the motion. Startled he looked down at the brunette woman solo at her table and recognised his girlfriend's boss.

"Miranda! Where the hell's Carly?"

"Aaron. Lovely to see you again. Won't you sit down?" She spoke with ineffable cool.

"Where the hell is she? What's going on?"

"She's fine, Aaron, but we both thought it best if I explained the situation. Now please take a seat." There was something politely commanding in her tone, suggesting that whatever the situation, she controlled it. Even in his dishevelled state of mind he was stricken by her appearance - the luxuriant tumble of her hair around her shoulders, those mesmerising dark eyes, that imperiously high bosom, enshrined so tightly in red satin. All enhanced by an uncanny poise and self-possession. Begrudgingly and with no little apprehension, he dropped into the chair opposite. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Hardly," Aaron snapped impatiently. "Look, tell me what's going on."

"Of course." After a sip of mineral water she commenced. "It appears your girlfriend hasn't been entirely straight with either of us. I've done everything for that girl, Aaron, helped her in the company once my own promotion came through, provided the benefit of my experience at every turn..." She paused, wounded. "And then it transpires she isn't the paragon of honesty and industry she'd led us to believe she was."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking, assuming that you've followed instructions, about the contents of that bag." Miranda dragged the sports bag across the floor to herself, unzipped it and tugged the black dress into view. "Vanguard Summer collection 2012. You know what this dress retails at? Over five hundred pounds. How much do you think your girlfriend paid for it?"

Aaron could manage nothing more than an empty stare.

"Slightly less than one hundred. Now even taking into account staff discounts that's taking the piss, don't you think?"

"There's obviously been some mistake." His tone was as flat as his refusal to believe what he was hearing.

"Oh no mistake," Miranda said blithely. "She's a crafty thing, your other half. You see she was in charge of attaching price tags when the first consignment of summer items came in several weeks ago and it appears she did some artful swapping of tags with a substantially cheaper dress. It's a cheeky move and it happens all too often in retail I'm afraid. After that she checked out this garment under the nose of one of the dimmer Saturday girls. I'd probably never have known except another branch called up to enquire about the price of the cheaper dress and when I checked the tag I knew something was wrong. So, I quizzed Nicola, the intellectually challenged part-timer who sold Carly the dress, and she realised what must have happened. In fact," and she paused for emphasis, "she'll swear to it."

Miranda proffered the offending item to Aaron as he sat stunned. "Has she tried it on for you yet? You'd remember. It's not a run-of-the-mill piece of couture and I imagine she'd wear it rather well."

"But - But - she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't steal."

"Your faith in her is as touching as it's misplaced. The girl's admitted to it." Miranda's frankness seemed tinged with sympathy. A pause extended between them as he absorbed the revelation. "So now I, Aaron, have to decide what to do about the situation."

All Aaron's bluster was diffused by his own sense of having been deceived. "You haven't...?"

"Acted on it? Not yet."

Aaron was confused. "So - So what do you want with me? And where's Carly? What are we doing here?"

Miranda held him with an enigmatic gaze. "You, sweetheart, are going to help me and Carly come to some sort of resolution in all this. In the discreet and pleasant surroundings of this hotel."

"Sorry?"

"Look, I can see you're disappointed in her, it's understandable. But I'm sure you wouldn't want to see your girl get into trouble, whatever her mistake." She folded the dress back inside the bag as he struggled for comprehension. "So I'm going to take this up to the Sinclair Suite on Floor Eight and you can join me there in twenty minutes." She rose to leave, pressing a key card into his hand.

Aaron stood up in response, his heart rate once more on the rise. "That's where she is? What the fuck's going on here, Miranda? Take me to her now."

"You do as I say or I report her theft like that." A snap of her fingers and a new steely tone that shut down Aaron's protest. "You're in this now with your thieving little sweetheart, either that or you can abandon her. If it's the former, wait here." She called to a nearby waiter who had been alerted by the raised voices. "Double Scotch for the gentleman. On my tab." She gave Aaron a strangely amused glance. "My advice - drink it. See you in twenty."

Aaron stared as her svelte, power-dressed form turned about and departed with brisk stiletto-clicks for the elevator, bag slung over her shoulder, carrying her own large leather handbag on the other side. The drink, he accepted - sat down with it and knocked back the single malt in a couple of gulps as he brooded.

What had possessed Carly? Was he dating a habitual larcenist? What the fuck was Miranda trying to negotiate? She was attempting to twist the situation to some devious purpose of her own, it was clear, and seemed convinced that she could win whatever game she was playing. The blood pulsed fast through Aaron's veins, as cloudy imaginings of Miranda's purpose drifted across his mind.

His thoughts were an adrenalized blank twenty minutes later as he ascended to Floor Eight and followed the signs to the Sinclair Suite. All he felt was a broad sense that everything had changed. That whatever he was walking into was beyond his control. But he couldn't let that be the case. Whatever Carly had done, he had to take the initiative away from Miranda on behalf of them both. Standing before the door, key card clenched in his hand, his heartbeat amplified like a personalised horror soundtrack. Dreading his life's next moments, he slotted the card, watched the light click to green and entered the room.

A passageway opened onto the moderately sized suite. The blinds had been shut, everything washed in a roseate glow by two red-shaded lamps on either side of the room's centerpiece - a four-poster bed framed in lacquered ebony. Its muslin drapes had been pulled aside for access to the mattress.

And bound tightly to the nearest end-post was Carly.

Her back was tight against the square-edged vertical, arms stretched behind her, clearly tethered. She was teetering in the strapped high heel shoes and clad in the black dress. Aaron instantly guessed she was wearing nothing else; the clothes in which she had left his apartment, brassiere and panties included, were slung over a plush armchair. Her make-up had been touched up, the frightened stare of those pretty eyes accentuated by mascara and her lips shaded the same scarlet as Miranda's. That was before they had been stretched around the ball-gag which had been inserted into her mouth. The ball was black to match the dress.

Five hundred pounds' worth of haute couture - the article which had brought about this mess. Had he not been so distracted by his bizarre situation, Aaron might have appreciated how well it draped his petite punk-haired girlfriend. The skirt of the dress ran to mid-thigh, stretching elastically from her waist around the curves of her slender thighs. The top was a raggedy artwork of randomly crossed strips, plunging from the shoulder and stretching across the bodice, taut against her breasts. Her smooth arms were bare and triangles of honey-toned flesh - shoulder-blade and cleavage - were visible through the garment's bandaging. She looked an exquisite fetishized doll. Miranda was nowhere to be seen, her jacket and bag deposited on the bed.

All this Aaron absorbed in a split-second.

In the same instant Carly stared into his appalled eyes, anticipating his reaction. Here was her rescuer, who despite what Miranda might have told him by now, would storm in all noble intentions. And in attempting an act of salvage, he would mire Carly, and himself come to that, in an even deeper world of shit.

She no longer bothered struggling against the leather thongs which bound her wrists. Already she had crumpled in acceptance of her fate. That all her professions of womanly strength had been undermined was galling, but in the face of her boss's malice what choice had there been?

There she had stood before the hotel's receptionist, a forced smile on her lips as she played the role of Miranda's willing partner. She rode the elevator like a sacrificial lamb, stripped naked as her persecutor looked on gloating, wriggled into her beloved dress - the one she had never truly owned. For the first time, the moment transformed to one of pure mortification. She allowed Miranda to empty neat tequila down her throat to 'loosen her up'; the bottle remained close by on a bedside tables. And there was that other moment, the exquisitely mortifying one of which Aaron had still to be made aware, which had humiliated her more than putting on the dress. Its consequence made her blush and wriggle with discomfort.

There had been that single brief flash of career-be-damned resistance when Miranda returned with the dress: "Alright, this stops here. You can report the theft, I'll confess to it, but there's no way you can make us both do whatever this is. We'll stitch you up if you take it any further."

"I don't think so, pretty darling." Miranda's smile was acid as she seized Carly by the tousled strands of her hair. "You see I have friends who already suspect we're quite the hot couple, you and me. No surprise if I'd invited you for a weekend liaison in a posh hotel. And your jealous boyfriend had suspected and followed you here to confront us. You remember Jennifer Maxwell, from my party? The one where you lost your inhibitions so completely? She's an excellent lawyer, very creative mind. With those photographs she'd make you look like the devious minx at the heart of a very sexy scandal. Your friends and family would be quite astounded. Now strip."

And so had fizzled her defiance. She submitted, even if it meant her precious boy being drawn into Miranda's web. The guilt was unbearable.

Now he was rushing up in outrage at her predicament. He did not even register her resistance as he scrabbled at the fastenings of her ball-gag. "It's okay," he was saying. "I'll get you out of here. Whatever she's got planned, she's not getting away with it." He succeeded in unbuckling the gag and eased out the mouth-stuffing ball, casting the horrid item onto the bed. "There. Now..."

"Aaron, Aaron don't. Leave me be. Please. If we don't do what she wants she'll go to the police. She'll tell them all about the dress. I'll be sacked, I'll have a police record..."

Aaron was already checking to see how she was tied, struggling to unfasten her bonds. "If she does, we'll shout assault, kidnapping, attempted blackmail, whatever... Where the hell's she got to, anyway?"

"No, sweetheart, no, please! She'll lie, she'll twist it, she's got friends who'll say all sorts about me. She'll make it look like... Babe, she'll humiliate me!"

He continued to fumble with the leather ties and her desperation grew.

"No she won't. She's overplayed her hand. There's no way she'll follow through if we stand up to her. Now you're coming with me if I have to..."

"Aaron, let go of me, you fucking idiot!"

Aaron released her instantly, stung by her words and the fury in her eyes, the like of which he had never seen before. The moment passed and her anger crumpled into anguished remorse. Not, however, before he had felt his own surge of anger toward the beguiling thief who had shot down his attempt to rescue her.

"I'm sorry babe," she pleaded tearfully. "I'm so sorry, I've worked so hard... It was a mistake, a stupid thing, it was only once. I can't risk her telling. Please, please help me babe!" Tears from both eyes raced for her chin. When Miranda emerged from the en suite bathroom she found him staring at Carly, midway between pity and resentment.

"If I may interrupt the tete-a-tete..." Aaron let Miranda speak, but his eyes lingered darkly on his sorrowful girlfriend. "I'm perfectly willing to let Carly's misdemeanour slide. She can go on managing the Strand branch of Vanguard and this dress will be our secret forever. I'll even cover the difference and she can pay me back at her leisure."

Miranda glided over to where Carly was tied. She had dispensed with the jacket, displaying her shoulders and the milky expanse of her upper bosom. Her fingers she trailed through the blond tufts of the younger girl's hair. Carly was rigid against the bedpost, her face pained and helpless. "All I ask is that you both join me in an afternoon interlude." She traced Carly's cheekbone with a red-painted talon. "Now your girlfriend here has already submitted herself of her own volition. All that remains is to see how willing you are to help her out. You do still love her, don't you?"

He took in Miranda's mocking smile, watched her stroke his girl's collar bone through a gap in the exquisitely tailored dress. The sight created an uncomfortable charge in his loins.

"Surely you're not going to let her down," Miranda taunted.

Carly's cry was scared, her gaze soulful. "Help me babe. Do what she says, please!"

He stared back, baffled by his girlfriend's weakness. He was baffled too by Miranda's reckless demands, and pissed off - by both her manipulation and Carly's deceit. His cherished illusions of his girlfriend had been shattered, it seemed, yet he could not abandon the scared girl who had made love to him so passionately and sweetly that morning. And along with all those boiling emotions he was undeniably, disconcertingly turned on.

Checking that the door was properly shut, he stared back at Miranda with a terse resignation. His heart was thumping again and his cock, however much he fought the reaction, was thickening steadily. "All right. What do you want?"

Miranda's smile welcomed Aaron to the game. "Take your clothes off. All of them. Now."

TO BE CONTINUED