“I hope so.”
“I know, I know, you’re freaking. But it’s even better than your wildest dreams.”
Molly led her through two oak-panel doors into what looked like a high-end boutique in the richest part of town.
“We don’t have as much time as you deserve, but you’d be beautiful in anything,” Molly said, grabbing a black cocktail dress off a rack and thrusting it at Lilah. “Shoe size?”
Lilah bit her lip. “You won’t have my size. I have huge feet. I have to order all my shoes on the Internet.”
With a wave of her hand, Molly laughed and turned away. “I love a challenge. Put that dress on and meet me over by the sofa. I’ll grab a few pairs for you to try on.”
Lilah found the dressing rooms at the back—it really was just like a store—and took off her business casual outfit. Just as she was worrying about how her bra and panties were going to look under the slinky dress, Molly hung a crimson-red corset over the door.
A corset?
“Don’t worry, it’s actually really comfortable,” Molly called out. “Just try it. If you hate it, I’ll find something else.”
Lilah ran her hands over her generous curves and looked at herself in the mirror. Every inch was going to jiggle visibly under that skimpy dress, and her underwear would leave serious panty lines. She was not a skinny girl. The other waitresses were probably model-thin, or at least average-sized, and this was Molly’s polite way of helping her fit in.
She took the corset off the hanger and squirmed into it.
Oh my. She licked her lips, suddenly flushed. It was seriously sexy. Her waist was nipped in just enough to emphasize her large breasts, the flare of her hips.
If only he could see me in this instead of those old pajamas.
She gaped at herself.
Him?
Heat flared between her legs. Her nipples puckered. It was as if he were in the dressing room with her, watching her tighten the laces under her breast, caress the dampening cloth between her thighs...
I’m losing my mind.
Molly’s voice snapped her out of it. “How does it feel?”
“It’s... nice,” Lilah managed to say.
“Great. I hate to hurry you, but they’re expecting you upstairs in five minutes. Could you...”
“I’m coming.” Lilah pulled the wrap dress on and tied the sash at her waist. With the corset, her hourglass figure and long legs were wildly exaggerated. She’d never looked so glamorous in her life.
“Just leave your stuff in the room. It’ll be there at the end of your shift when you go home.” Her voice was fading away. “I’ve got your shoes over here, all right? And I’ll do just a little bit with your hair and makeup.”
Lilah opened the door and walked barefoot over to the sofa, where Molly was taking out a pair of crimson-red heels the same color as the corset out of a silk drawstring bag.
“Listen, shoes like that never fit me,” Lilah said. “Seriously.”
“Just try them on,” Molly replied. “Seriously.”
With a sigh, Lilah sat down and held out her foot. “Eleven wide. Pretty shoes never come in eleven wide.”
Molly shook her head, her lips curved in a lopsided smile, and slid the first shoe onto Lilah’s foot, then the second. “We’ve only got three minutes for your makeup. Your hair is fabulous as it is, so I’m not going to do a thing.”
Speechless, Lilah stood up in the crimson heels and took a tentative step. They fit. More than fit—they molded to her feet perfectly. And weren’t even uncomfortable.
Unbelievable.
Molly was beaming at her. “I knew you’d be gorgeous. How do you feel?”
Lilah couldn’t help but smile back at her. “Great.”
“I love my job. OK, makeup. Just a little, mostly around the eyes. You’ve got incredible eyes. And a nice red for your lips, and you’re good to go.” Molly turned on a lamp, pulled out a case, and got to work. Extremely quick and efficient, she applied the creams and liners and colors, brushed out Lilah’s hair, and led her to a side door.
“You’re going to do great,” Molly said, guiding her out into a dim hallway with a service elevator and punching the call button. “This is the staff entrance to the club.”
The door creaked open. Lilah got inside.
“Break a leg,” Molly said, grinning. “That’s theater talk for good luck, which would be bad luck to say, so I don’t say it.”
“Thanks.” Lilah was smiling at her when the door closed and Molly disappeared.
She looked at the rows of black elevator buttons and realized she didn’t know which floor she was supposed to go to.
And then it occurred to her that she wasn’t alone in the elevator.
Gavin despised these public cocktail parties, but he loved having venture capitalists fawn over LupiNex. While he was long past the point of needing early-capital investors, once his company went public, the stock prices would soar if there was enough buzz.
He needed more business buzz and less of the other buzz. The one in his pants. The one that had started the second he set foot in the building that held both his work and his refuge.
Tonight he would go to the main club, the enormous, private facility that easily hosted events for a thousand people. This was the outer dressing, the cover story for the inner sanctum where Gavin and his fellow shifters convened.
The world knew only about the main club. It was the least-well-kept secret in Boston.
No one could know about the club within a club unless they, too, were a shifter.
While hundreds of business men and women vied for a single, coveted membership that opened up for the main club this year, downstairs, eight stories below ground, only blood could qualify you for membership.
A very special kind of blood.
He marched through the wide, glass doors to the lobby, the open-air foyer extending up twenty stories, giving the building the feel of an action-adventure movie, as if one would expect a famous movie star to come rappelling down from hundreds of feet above. The offices in the building ranged from old-money banks to new-money tech firms and to every corporation in between. With rental rates that made Donald Trump pause, this was the place to be for a fast-rising biotech firm on its way to world domination.
Gavin would have it no other way.
And, conveniently, the elite club was sandwiched between these prestigious, lucrative organizations in the middle floors. So the top players had a quick, discrete escape.
“Excuse me! Mr. Stanton!” He turned toward the sound of hurried footsteps to see an older woman with short gray hair rushing toward him. Her shoes made a muffled sound on the polished marble floor, and she walked with a tall stride. Slim, Asian, with a motherly feel to her. A woman of grace. A dim flicker of recognition blinked in the back of his mind. With 1,500 employees in the Boston unit alone, he couldn’t remember everyone, but this woman...
“Yes?”
“Mr. Stanton, I’m so glad to run into you. I’m Brenda Ng. Yesterday you helped to arrange paid family leave for me so I can help my husband through his cancer treatments.”
He remembered the appeal. Human Resources had advised against it, worried that the story of corporate kindness would have a negative ripple effect with employees, leading to a flood of similar requests. He’d told HR to stuff it.