Chapter 18: The Shopping Trip
The scent of cheap disinfectant and frying oil clung to the air, a synthetic blanket over the food court’s chaotic din. Nat watched a glob of ketchup tremble on the edge of her cardboard tray, her body still humming with a deep, residual soreness. Every slight shift on the hard plastic seat sent a reminder through her thighs, a memory of being pivoted, used, and covered.
Across the table, Erna laughed, a sharp, performative sound that cut through the murmur of families and teenagers. She was leaning towards Chris, who was propped against the railing of the descending escalator, watching their table with the detached interest of a biologist observing a tank.
“So then I said, if you’re not going to fucking commit, Michel, then don’t bother calling me at two a.m.,” Erna said, her voice carrying. She was talking about Micha, but she was performing for Chris. Nat felt Micha stiffen beside her. He was staring at his untouched slice of pizza, his face pale.
Chris pushed off the railing and sauntered over. He didn’t sit. He never made himself part of the crowd; he always stood above it. “This is boring,” he announced, his eyes scanning their group—Nat, Micha, Erna, Lucia, and Conzi, who was stirring her salad with a fierce, frustrated intensity. Bambi was off getting ice cream.
Lucia grinned. “So make it interesting.”
Chris’s gaze landed on Nat. “You. Up. We’re going to that lingerie store. The expensive one on the upper level.”
Nat’s heart gave a hard, single thump. She wiped her hands on a napkin. “Why?”
“Because I want to see what my things look like on display,” he said, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. He flicked his eyes to Micha. “You. Carry the bags. And for fuck’s sake, stand up straight. You look like a kicked puppy.”
Micha stood, his movements robotic. As he rose, a faint, metallic clink sounded from beneath his loose jeans. Nat saw a faint flush creep up his neck. The chastity cage. He was still wearing it. Chris had never told him to take it off.
The group moved as a unit, following Chris’s casual lead through the throng of shoppers. Conzi fell into step beside Nat, her glasses glinting under the mall’s fluorescent lights.
“This is grotesque,” Conzi muttered under her breath, but her eyes were fixed on the back of Chris’s broad shoulders. “The performative masculinity. The reduction of women to objects. It’s textbook patriarchal theatrics.”
“You’re here,” Nat said simply.
Conzi’s jaw tightened. “Sociological observation.”
The lingerie store was a temple of soft lighting and velvet hangers. A saleswoman, whose smile was as practiced as her manicure, approached. Chris spoke before she could.
“She’s trying on a selection,” he said, nodding at Nat. “The more revealing, the better. And she’ll need a fitting.”
The woman’s eyes flitted over the unusual group—the smirking man, the mortified boy holding what looked like gym bags, the cluster of intense women. Her professionalism won. “Of course. Right this way.”
Chris didn’t follow the saleswoman. He grabbed a handful of items from nearby racks—a lace bodysuit with strategic cut-outs, a bra so sheer it was merely a suggestion, a set of leather straps that seemed designed to highlight rather than conceal. He thrust them at Nat. “Go. Model them. For us.”
In the fitting room, a plush, mirrored cubicle, Nat’s hands trembled as she undressed. She could hear them outside. Lucia’s low laugh. Chris’s calm, directive voice. The awful, silent presence of Micha.
She put on the first set: the sheer bra and a matching thong that vanished between her cheeks. She looked at herself. Her skin was still marked here and there with faint bruises, souvenirs. She took a breath, pushed the curtain aside, and stepped out.
They were all there, a semi-circle of judgment and hunger. The saleswoman had discreetly vanished.
“Turn,” Chris commanded.
Nat turned, showing the obscene perfection of the thong cutting into the roundness of her ass. Micha made a small, choked sound.
“Pathetic,” Chris said, though it wasn’t clear if he meant the lingerie or Micha’s reaction. “Next.”
Back in the cubicle, she shimmied into the lace bodysuit. It was a complex web of straps and open spaces, her nipples and pussy fully exposed through the patterns. As she struggled with a clasp, the curtain was swept aside.
Chris stood there, filling the doorway. He stepped in and let the curtain fall closed, enclosing them in the soft, intimate light.
“They can hear everything,” he whispered, his voice a rough scrape against her ear. His hand cupped her breast, his thumb scraping over her nipple. “But they can’t see. That’s for me.”
His other hand slid down the front of the bodysuit, his fingers finding her immediately wet. She gasped, leaning back against the mirror, its cold surface a shock against her shoulders.
“You’re still so sore, aren’t you?” he whispered, pressing two fingers inside her. The stretch was immediate, a burn that tipped into pleasure. “Good. You should always feel used. It’s your state of being now.”
He worked his fingers in and out, his pace brutal and efficient. Nat bit her lip to keep from crying out, her glasses fogging. Outside, she could hear Lucia saying something about the quality of the lace, a desperate attempt at normal conversation.
Chris leaned down, his mouth on her neck, sucking a dark mark onto her skin as his fingers pistoned into her. “Come for me, quietly. Show me you can be a good slut even in the fucking mall.”
The pressure built, coiling tight in her gut. It wasn’t gentle or loving; it was a command her body obeyed. A sharp, silent orgasm ripped through her, her cunt clenching rhythmically around his driving fingers. She sagged against him, a muffled whimper escaping her throat.
He withdrew his glistening fingers and wiped them on the lace over her stomach. “Good girl.” He adjusted himself in his jeans, a prominent bulge straining the fabric. “Now the leather.”
He left the cubicle. Nat, legs shaky, changed into the final set: just a harness of black leather straps that circled her breasts and waist, meeting in a perfect ‘V’ that framed her bare pussy. It was less clothing than a diagram.
When she emerged this time, Chris was no longer just watching. He had Erna by the arm.
“You’ve been desperate for attention all afternoon,” he said to Erna, his voice loud enough for the nearby racks of silken robes to hear. “So show me. See that guy over there? The one with the stroller? Get his attention. Show him your tits.”
Erna’s eyes widened, but with excitement, not shame. Without hesitation, she walked a few steps toward the store entrance, caught the eye of the exhausted-looking young father, and with a sly smile, pulled down the front of her top, flashing her small, perfect breasts. The man froze, his face flushing crimson, before quickly turning the stroller around.
Chris laughed. “Not bad. Conzi. Your turn. Feminist critique of the male gaze, right? Let’s see you weaponize it. That cluster of teenage boys by the escalator.”
Conzi stood still, her body rigid. “That’s… that’s sexual harassment.”
“It’s a game,” Chris said, his eyes cold. “And you want to play. I see it every time you look at me. That tight, pissed-off expression. It’s just frustration. Show the boys your tits, Conzi. Prove you’re not just a theorist.”
A fierce battle raged on Conzi’s face. Her principles, a wall of articulate essays and heated debates, crumbled against the raw, desperate want she’d been nursing for weeks. With a shuddering breath, she marched to the storefront, pulled her modest sweater and bra up to her chin, and bared her full, tattooed breasts to the gawking teenagers. Their hoots of laughter and shock echoed back into the store. Conzi dropped her shirt, her face flaming, but when she turned back, her eyes were shining with a perverse victory.
Chris applauded softly. “See? Everyone has a price. Usually, it’s just my cock.” He turned to the saleswoman, who had reappeared, looking horrified. “We’ll take the leather set. She’s wearing it out.”
Nat’s breath caught. “Wearing it out? Under my clothes?”
“What clothes?” Chris said, grinning. He tossed her the oversized hoodie she’d worn into the mall. It would cover her to mid-thigh. “That’s all you get. You’ll feel the leather against you, and you’ll feel the air. And you’ll know.”
Micha paid, his fingers fumbling with his card, the metallic clink-clink from his jeans a constant, quiet percussion of his humiliation. He gathered the bags, his head bowed.
As they left the store, Nat was achingly aware of the cool mall air drifting up the hoodie, kissing her exposed skin. The leather straps bit into her flesh with every step, a constant, provocative reminder. Lucia and Bambi, who had rejoined them, walked close on either side of her.
“You look fucking insane,” Lucia whispered, her voice full of admiration. “I can see the top strap peeking out from the collar. It’s so hot.”
Bambi giggled, tracing a finger along Nat’s spine through the thick fabric. “I wish I was brave enough to do that.”
Chris led them to the central atrium, a wide, open space overlooking the food court. He leaned on the railing, the king surveying his disgraced court. Micha stood behind them, holding the bags like a porter.
“Today was a lesson in permeability,” Chris said, addressing them all calmly. “The boundaries between public and private are imaginary. Decency is a costume. You,” he nodded to Erna and Conzi, “proved you’ll cross a public line for a moment of my approval. You,” his eyes burned into Nat, “carry my mark on your skin and my order in your posture. And you…” He finally looked at Micha, who flinched. “You carry the bags. You carry the cage. You are the infrastructure. The unnoticed, worthless foundation we all stand on.”
The drive home was silent. Nat sat in the backseat, the leather straps searing into her. Every pothole, every turn, made her aware of the raw, open vulnerability. Next to her, Conzi stared out the window, her body thrumming with a silent, furious energy.
When they arrived at the apartment, Chris went straight to his room without a word. The spell, for the moment, was broken. The group dissipated like smoke—Erna fleeing to her own place, Conzi shutting her door with a firm click, Lucia and Bambi vanishing into the kitchen.
Nat walked to her room, Micha trailing silently behind her. Once inside, she locked the door. She shucked off the hoodie and stood in front of her own full-length mirror, examining the intricate captivity of the leather harness. She looked owned. She felt owned.
Micha stared at her, his eyes pools of helpless misery. “Nat… please… we need to talk about this. We need to get away from him.”
She turned to look at him, truly look at him, for the first time since the food court. He was just a shape in the room, a familiar object that had lost all its function.
“Talk?” she said, her voice quiet and cold. She reached for the sweatpants on her bed and pulled them on over the harness, covering the evidence but not the sensation. “What is there to talk about, Micha? You’re the one carrying the bags.”
She saw the words land, saw him physically shrink. He had no rebuttal. There was no argument to make. He was the foundation. Unnoticed. Worthless.
He turned and left her room, a ghost in his own home.
Nat lay on her bed, the leather pressing into her skin. She closed her eyes and replayed the feeling of Chris’s fingers inside her in the fluorescent-lit cubicle, the risk of discovery, the absolute certainty of his control. A slow, warm throb began to pulse between her legs, cutting through the soreness.
The humiliation hadn’t broken her. It had, perversely, made her feel real. And she wanted more.