Chapter 9: Retail Therapy
The crack in the apartment floor became a permanent feature, a jagged scar beneath a strategically placed rug. It was a daily reminder. So was Kindra.
She didn’t shrink back. Not fully. The morning after, she’d receded to a willowy six-foot-two, but that was her new baseline—a full foot taller than Chad. Her clothes were stretched tight, her proportions permanently, subtly shifted. The world had recalibrated. Door frames required a slight duck. The showerhead was now comically low. Chad found himself looking up, perpetually, into her dark, amused eyes.
“You’re staring,” she said on the third morning, pouring coffee into a mug that looked doll-sized in her hand.
“You’re a skyscraper,” he replied, grinning. “It’s a zoning violation. I’m captivated by the architectural marvel.”
She flicked a drop of coffee at him. “My knees are in the cabinet. It’s not glamorous.”
But it was. To him, every clumsy adjustment, every time she bumped her head on a hanging light, was poetry. Her size was no longer an occasional event.It was her. And he was hopelessly, deeply in love with it.
Going back to work at Tech Haven was a delicate operation. Leo had just finished paying off the dental supply company’s “structural damage” claim. The look he gave them as they walked in together—Kindra ducking through the employee entrance—was a masterpiece of exhausted skepticism.
“No leaks,” Leo stated, holding up a finger. “No seismic activity. No unexplained expansions of company property. You are both on probation for being… weird. Capital W. You break it, you bought it. And by ‘it,’ I mean everything.”
They nodded, a united front of faux-contriteness.
The store felt different. Smaller. The towering server racks seemed to press in. Kindra moved through the aisles with a new, careful consciousness, a giant in a china shop of graphics cards and motherboards. Customers did double-takes. She mostly worked the back inventory now, away from prying eyes.
Chad was on the floor, trying to sell an elderly man a printer cable that was, evidently, a theological conundrum. “But why does it need to be so specific?” the man kept asking, holding the USB-C end like it was a relic.
Chad’s eyes kept drifting to the back corner. Kindra was doing stock check, her form silhouetted against the blinking LEDs of the server racks. She reached for a box on a high shelf, her body stretching. The hem of her Tech Haven polo rode up, revealing a sliver of skin on her lower back. He lost track of the conversation.“Son? The connector?”
“Right. Destiny,” Chad blurted. “It’s, uh, destiny. The machine demands it.” He rang up the sale just to end it.
As the man left, Chad wandered back. The corner was their unofficial territory, dim and quiet, smelling of dust and ozone.
“Destiny?” Kindra murmured without turning, placing the box on a cart. Her voice was a low hum that resonated in his ribs.
“He was questioning the cosmic purpose of USB-C. I gave him an answer.”
She turned, leaning against the cracked countertop. At her full height now, she dominated the space. The flickering bulb above cast shifting shadows across her face. “You’re a terrible salesman.”
“I’m an excellent distraction,” he said, stepping closer. He had to tilt his head back. “A necessary counterbalance to all this…” He waved a hand at her. “…over-achievement.”
She smirked, looking down at him. The dynamic was electric. Her size was a constant, playful pressure between them. She extended a foot, clad in a simple black canvas sneaker, and tapped his shin. “I’m just doing inventory. You’re the one lurking.”
“I’m admiring the inventory.”
He reached out, his fingers brushing the back of her hand where it rested on the counter. Her skin was warm. He saw her breath catch, just a slight hitch in her chest. A ripple of awareness passed through her. It was a visible thing, a subtle tightening, a shift in her stance. She grew maybe half an inch. Her shoulder brushed a shelf of networking cables, making them rustle.
They both froze, listening. The store was quiet apart from the hum of fans.
“See?” he whispered. “Lurking has merits.”
She pulled her hand back, but the smile stayed. A challenge glinted in her eyes. She turned back to the cart, her movements deliberately slow. She picked up a heavy box of thermal paste tubes. Then, with a graceful pivot, she pretended to lose her balance.
It was beautifully staged. The box slipped from her hands, not toward the floor, but sideways. It smacked into a tall, freestanding display of RGB light strips. The display, a flimsy tower of cardboard and plastic, wobbled with a sound like rattling bones.
“Whoops,” she said, her voice flat.
The display teetered. Chad lunged, but it was pointless. It fell in a slow, glittering cascade of plastic packages and muted cardboard thumps. The noise was tremendous in the quiet store.
Silence followed, thick and waiting.
Leo’s voice echoed from the front. “Everything okay back there?”
“Just a little gravitational realignment!” Chad called back, his eyes locked on Kindra’s. “We’re on it!”
She looked at the wreckage, then at him, one eyebrow arched. Her expression was pure, innocent mischief. “Oh dear. What a mess. You’d better clean that up.”
He dropped to his knees, starting to gather the scattered packages. The space under the toppled display was a cramped cave of shadows and discarded marketing.
Then her foot entered his field of vision.
She’d toed off her sneaker. Her sock, sheer and black, followed, rolled down with a lazy hook of her thumb. She placed her bare foot squarely in the midst of the debris, just inches from his hands. Her black-polished toes, perfect and gleaming, wiggled once.
His mouth went dry.
“You missed a spot,” she said, her voice a soft, teasing murmur from above.
She slid her foot forward. The arch brushed against a packet of light strips, pushing it toward him. The scent of her skin—lavender and clean sweat—cut through the dust. He was on his knees, and her foot was right there, a prize in the wreckage.
He didn’t think. He reached out, his fingers wrapping gently around her ankle. The bone was solid, a pivot point for her immense, quiet power. He heard her sharp inhale.
He leaned down and pressed his lips to the crest of her instep.
Above him, she sighed. It was a contented, flowing sound. Her foot flexed under his mouth.
Encouraged, he began to clean.But not the floor. He cleaned her. With slow, worshipful attention, he brushed invisible dust from her skin with his thumbs. He traced the lines of her foot, his touch firm and reverent. He picked up a fallen plastic cable tie, pretending it had been near her little toe, his knuckles grazing her sole.
She let him. Her weight settled onto her other leg, a sign of relaxation that was also a surrender.
His jeans were suddenly, painfully tight. The rough fabric chafed as he shifted on his knees. The pressure was a blunt, urgent throb. A low groan escaped him, muffled against her skin.
Her foot stilled. Then, with deliberate slowness, she moved it again. Not away. Toward him. The ball of her foot came to rest lightly against the front of his jeans, right over the strained zipper.
He froze, his breath hitching.
She applied the faintest pressure. A feather-light touch, more suggestion than act. Then she began to move her foot in a tiny, circular pattern. The friction through the denim was maddening, a teasing, impossible promise. Her toes curled, the polished tips pressing into him.
Another groan, deeper this time, was torn from his throat. He dropped his forehead against her shin, his hands tightening on her ankle. He was trapped—by the display, by his own need, by her.
“Kindra,” he rasped, a plea and a prayer.
“Shhh,” she whispered from above. “You’re cleaning. Focus.”
Her foot continued its slow, torturous rotation. The pleasure was acute, lightning-shot with frustration. He pushed his hips forward, seeking more, but she kept the pressure tantalizingly light, a maddening simulation. Her control was absolute. She was playing him, and he was a willing instrument.
His muffled sounds, grunts and gasps swallowed by her skin, seemed to affect her directly. Her foot twitched. Not a conscious movement, but a swift, involuntary jerk of her toes against him.
The second it happened, she went rigid above him.
The twitch was familiar. It was the precursor, the tiny seismic tremor before the earthquake. It was the foot-jerk that had heralded the breakroom explosion.
The playful tension snapped, replaced by a spike of raw, shared panic.
Her foot went still. The teasing pressure vanished.
Chad lifted his head. Her face, peering down through the metal skeleton of the fallen display, was no longer playful. It was stark with alarm. Her lips were parted, her eyes wide. She was listening—to her own body, to the store, to the potential disaster humming in her veins.
The gentle, persistent arousal he’d stoked was still there, a banked fire. But the sudden, sharp spike from her reflexive kick had threatened to fan it into a blaze.
They held the pose, a frozen tableau of worship and warning. His face was flushed, his breathing ragged. Her foot remained poised against him, a weapon and a vulnerability.
From the front of the store, the electronic door chime buzzed. Leo’s voice, cheerful and customer-ready, cut through the silence.“Hey there! Looking for anything specific today?”
The spell shattered. Kindra pulled her foot back as if burned. Chad slumped back onto his heels, the cold reality of the linoleum floor seeping through his jeans.
She hastily pulled her sock and sneaker back on, her movements fumbling. Chad scrambled to pile the light strip packages into a haphazard stack, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The close call hung in the air, thicker than the dust they’d stirred up. The game had been fun, electric, until the monster under the bed had rattled its chains. They’d danced right up to the edge of the cliff and felt the ground crumble.
She finished with her shoe and stood to her full, impossible height, looking down at the messy pile of products he’d assembled. The humor was gone from her eyes, replaced by a weary fear.
“We can’t do this here,” she whispered, the words barely audible.
He nodded, pushing himself to his feet. He wanted to say it was worth it. He wanted to say he’d risk it all again for another minute under that display. But the memory of cracking ceiling tiles and Leo’s stunned face was too fresh.
“I know,” he said. He reached out and took her hand, dwarfed by hers now. He squeezed it. “But damn, it’s a good game.”
A tiny, reluctant smile touched her lips. She squeezed back, her grip strong enough to crush his, controlled to a perfect, safe pressure.
Leo’s footsteps approached. “You two gonna rebuild the Tower of Pisa back here, or what?”
“Just about done, boss!” Chad called, his voice remarkably steady. He released Kindra’s hand and bent to right the display, the mundane task feeling surreal. His body still thrummed with unmet need, a live wire sparked by a touch.
Kindra turned away, busying herself with the clipboard. But her posture was tense, a bowstring pulled taut. The store’ hum seemed louder now, the fluorescent lights harsher. They were back in the cage of normalcy, but the beast they’d poked was wide awake, and pacing.