41 – This Dressing Room is Fancy, so It’s OK

“Is it morning?” Leilani asked her mate. He was already up and moving around the room. That was one thing she thought would be the hardest for her to get used to. Not knowing if it was day or night by the way it looked.

“It’s mid-day. I’m taking you out.”

She smiled. “Where are we going?”

“I’m buying you a new wardrobe, and then I’m taking you on a date.”

“A date,” she said, intrigued, but also… nervous? “What kind of a date?” And what about her eyes? She wanted to ask but didn’t. She held on tight to the pillow under her head, wondering when she would get used to that feeling of being snuck up on by her own inability to see. It was unnerving.

“Come here, sweetness,” he said, patting the side of the bed. She scooted over. He pressed a stack of clothes into her hand. “Put these on, then I’ll brush your hair if you’ll let me.” His tone was as soft as she’d ever heard it.

When she was dressed, he put something else in her hand. “Sunglasses,” he whispered. “You better put them on now. You’re going to have to wear them anytime we leave the house.” His voice was so quiet, she could barely hear him.

She took the glasses quietly, turning them over in her hands. They weren’t ordinary sunglasses. They were the wraparound kind, the ones worn by the blind. She slipped them on, trying not to let her most silver thoughts spin out of control.

Jaggar was quiet, also, too quiet. He took her hand and took her to a chair. He brushed her hair silently, then he pulled her out of the chair without saying a word. Down the steps they went. Out the back door. She had the sunglasses on, and so no one would know that she was… different. They would only know she was blind.

Jaggar helped her into the truck, through the driver’s side door, so she never had to let go of him. He started the keys with his wrong hand, letting her cling to him.

“Music?” he asked, his voice gentle.

“No, thank you,” she said. She wanted to think.

Jaggar started the truck and maneuvered it onto the farm road alongside the farmhouse. Leilani rolled down her window, letting the familiar smells of the Midwest calm her and ground her. Maybe she couldn’t see anymore, but the world was still the same, wasn’t it? She knew her way around this world, she’d learned already, and what she didn’t know, Jaggar would help her with. She would be ok. She would. Deep down inside, she knew she would.

So she let it go. Blind. So what? No, not so what… now what. Jaggar had mentioned human eye-disease specialists to her and she’d agreed to try it, but mostly for him. No-one could pry that clock out of her mind. It was part of her. So, if she was permanently blind, she had to ask again. Now what?

Now her mate was taking her to buy clothes and then on some fancy date. She smiled at the wind on her face, then raised Jaggar’s hand to her lips and kissed the back of it, the promise of the day, the promise of the rest of her life, coming clear for the first time.

Except for that one thing… She let his hand drop back to the seat, her fingers still entwined with his. He refused to claim her.

Jaggar turned left. A patch of sun came through her open window, falling almost directly on her face, warming it, some of the light even penetrating through the sunglasses and the silver. The warmth of the sunlight brought clarity.

She couldn’t push him. He might never claim her, and she had to be ok with that. She wouldn’t miss what she’d never known, right? She let her thoughts drift back to all the sex they’d enjoyed together. He was so gentle with her. She loved every second of it. She might like… not-gentle, too, but that didn’t mean she needed to be claimed in order to be happy. She was happy.

And in love?

Leilani turned her face into the sun and considered.

***

Leilani couldn’t hurry. They’d had lunch. At a restaurant. Like normal people. She’d eaten everything on her plate and sampled everything on Jaggar’s. He’d fed her like a baby, rewarding her with kisses every time she tried another dessert. She was officially stuffed and should never have to eat again in her life. And now she was supposed to try on dresses?

Jaggar was leading her into a store. People were around them, cars, normalcy. “You won’t attack anyone?” she whispered to him, seating her thick sunglasses back on her nose. They kept sliding down.

He patted her hands. “I won’t attack humans.”

Huh. That wasn’t quite the same thing as he wouldn’t attack anyone, was it? She heard men’s voices, a deep laugh from the parking lot behind her, but her mate was relaxed next to her. She relaxed, too. It was going to be ok.

She’d forgotten the name of the store, and she didn’t want to ask. He led her inside, where soft music played and it smelled faintly of perfume.

A saleswoman spoke a few words with Jaggar and then said, “Follow me, please” and, within a few moments, they were sitting down.

“I’ll be right back,” the woman said. Her skirt swished as she walked, and so Leilani could track her progress out.

“We’re in a sitting room,” Jaggar told her, after the woman had left. “She’s going to get dresses.”

“Formal dresses?” she asked. He’d already bought her pants, shirts, skirts, and everything else she needed on a daily basis. “What for?”

“For tonight,” he told her, his voice low and deep, his body curving toward hers, coming onto her chair a bit, crowding her in the best way. “First I’m going to romance you, and then I’m going to take you home, and then I’m going to make you cum until you cry.”

Leilani sucked in a deep breath. She liked the sound of that. “Shh,” she told him, laughing softly, joy spreading through her. She imagined this was a totally normal thing for a normal couple to do; whisper about sex in public.

“No one can hear us,” he rumbled into her ear, pushing her hair off her shoulders. Then he kissed her once on the cheek and pulled back onto his own chair. “Shh.”

Leilani smiled uncontrollably. The woman was back. Leilani heard the clatter of hangers and the whisper of fabrics.

“What’s your favorite color, Lele?” Jaggar asked her.

“Anything but silver,” she said too quickly.

Jaggar didn’t miss a beat. “That wine colored one, and that black one.”

“Good choices, would you like me to wait?”

Jaggar must have shaken his head ‘no,’ because the woman left.

“Come on,” Jaggar said, standing. She followed him into another space. He maneuvered her through a door. A dressing room. He locked the door and positioned her somewhere in the center of the room. He leaned in close to her ear. “I’m going to undress you,” he told her, his voice indecent. She nodded and swallowed hard, her heart pounding too quickly. The area was quiet, silent really, the only noise coming from out in the store itself.

Jaggar traced her shoulders to her elbows, barely grazing her breasts with his thumbs, then his hands slid to her belly. He tugged up, then pulled her shirt off slowly, reverently. The cool air in the dressing room made Leilani’s nipples peak instantly. Jaggar made a snarly noise, and he bent his head and kissed one nipple, then the other. Leilani gasped at the sensation and covered her mouth.

A woman entered the area they were in, the dressing room hallway, humming. Leilani heard a door close and open and heard the woman drop her packages, and then the whisper of fabric as the woman took off a shirt or skirt, Leilani didn’t know.

Jaggar ignored the woman and leaned in close to Leilani, barely breathing a few words into her ear. “I couldn’t resist. Now to see these dresses on you.”

He hooked his thumbs in her pants, drawing down all her clothing, panties and all. She stood before him naked and vulnerable, trusting him completely.

He pulled a dress over her head and she raised her arms and shimmied into it. As soon as it dropped over her head, the… noise started. She didn’t want to call it a purr, but it could have been a purr in another world, where all the cats had saw blades in their throats.

The woman in the other dressing room stopped moving, stopped humming. “Is there a cat in here?” she said out loud, in that questioning way people have when they don’t know if anyone is listening to them or not.

The noise cut off. Jaggar whispered into her ear again, his voice so soft only she could hear. “I’ve got my eyes shut, Lele. But that dress makes me want to… do things to you.”

Leilani swallowed hard. She cleared her throat and spoke to the woman. “No cat, it’s just my phone.” Then she whispered to Jaggar, “What kind of things?”

The broken blade purring started again and Leilani tried to cover his mouth with her hands. “Shh,” she said as quietly as possible, trying desperately not to laugh.

The woman was still quiet. “Hm,” she sniffed, and then Leilani heard the sound of her dressing room door opening and the woman leaving. Thank goodness.

Jaggar took her by the waist and sat her down on a soft bench, bunching the front of the dress at her belly. He leaned her back against the wall and encouraged her to open to him. She did, breathing hard.

“Something like this,” he murmured, and then his mouth was on her.

“Oh,” she breathed, then crammed her own hand against her mouth to keep from crying out.

She’d never known anything could feel quite so good.