Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [8]
Brain-bolted indeed.
‘But…’ you ask, being the romantic that you are, ‘…isn’t it possible, by some miracle not yet known to modern science, that she might actually want you too?’ HA! You obviously know nothing about me.
Beyond that, there is a reason the number of company lawsuits far, far exceeds the number of successful model/boss relationships at Wopplesdown Struts (the actual number of the latter being zero.) Take a moment to refer back to my job description. I’ll wait.
Back? Good.
While you were gone, Mrs. Abrososa went, at my request, to check on whatever trauma I may or may not have induced in Ms. Nuckeby, while I attempted to dry my pants with the iron I keep around the office for just such occasions. It might have been more effective, and less painful, had I removed the pants beforehand. But I was trying to hurry the process and avoid being caught—literally— with my trousers down. Fortunately for my future generations, Mrs. Abrososa returned and saved me before I singed off something important.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, snatching away the iron. Then, gesturing disgustedly toward my Natazzi’s. “Give me those.”
“What? You mean take them off?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Here?” I said, horrified. “Now?”
“What? You think I’m going to see something I didn’t see back there with Ms. Nuckeby?”
I grimaced at the thought.
“Did you find her?” I asked. “Was she upset?”
“From what I hear,” she said. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”
“She’d already left?”
“If she did, she wasn’t wearin’ nothing but the company undies. Her clothes were still in the dressing room.”
The thought of Ms. Nuckeby running through the city wearing the bottoms of Satin-Lace-Babydoll # 43—in slow motion—once again caused the little soldier to pop up out of his foxhole.
“My God, boy,” Mrs. Abrososa said, apparently quite amazed. “You’re like a party balloon how you inflate. Lord, have mercy.” She held out a hand. “Now, gimme those pants.”
I withdrew from her. “Mrs. Abrososa, really…”
“I got twelve kids…”
“Twelve?”
“…most of ‘em boys—and twenty-seven grandchildren. You ain’t got nothin’ I never seen before.”
“But . . . we aren’t even on a first name basis.”
“Agrapanthila. Hand ‘em over.”
“Agrapanthila?”
She raised the iron and gave me a menacing look. “You want kids of your own?”
I still hesitated. “Wouldn’t this constitute harassment?”
“I got an iron!”
I stripped off the slacks without further hesitation.
Once I’d handed them to her, she stood there folding them over her arm and continuing to stare at my crotch. I moved my hands to block the view, and she looked up at me with disgust.
“I ain’t admirin’. I’m waitin’.”
“What? These, too?”
“They wet?”
I considered. “Damp.”
“Gimme.”
I paused, perhaps a beat too long, and she reached for them. I recoiled and my voice rose to a chirpy soprano.
“I can do it,” I said petulantly.
Trying my best to keep everything as tucked away as I could under the circumstances, I removed the silken boxers and handed them over.
Mrs. Abrososa—Agrapanthila—looked at them with revulsion.
“Haines?”
I shrugged, humiliated. “They’re softer than ours.”
She grumbled and headed for the door carrying my shame, stopping briefly in the open entryway to turn back to me.
“It’s sort of sad, really,” she said, glancing down. Not the sort of thing one wants to hear as a woman studies your privates. “She seemed kind of impressed with it, before you went and molested her.” “Impressed?”
“Oh, yeah. You two might have made a real cute couple.”
I felt suddenly flush with the thought of Ms. Nuckeby asking me to bare my boyhood for her—smiling and reaching for it.
“Right up until she sued you for everything you got,” my evil secretary concluded.
My fantasy degraded as Ms. Nuckeby stopped reaching and just pointed, laughing riotously at my shriveling crotch while rolling around naked in my inheritance. Somehow