As agreed, Vic and Marcia met after school and headed out of Dampgate together. Liz managed to not make an appearance at their lockers at all, which prompted Vic to ask Marcia, “So you and Liz, are you going to be okay?”

“Oh, it’s just Liz being Liz,” Marcia said, “I thought you were already introduced to her tempter?”

“Yeah, I just I guess don’t expect someone like her to have a temper.”

“It’s always the small and quiet ones,” Marcia said, trailing off as they entered the road between the trees. “So, I told you that Devi was pretty.”

“I never denied that she was!”

“Well good, because I was beginning to suspect you were actually blind and I’m going to need your eyes where we’re going.”

“Where are you taking me, anyway? I don’t think you ever told me.”

“You’ll see.”

He did eventually see. It was a place he had been intimately familiar with since its window displays had made him rubberneck so many times before on his trips to Aphrodite’s Landing.

“Are you serious?” Vic asked, standing outside the door and again ogling the display.

“Oh, I’m dead serious,” Marcia said and walked inside, leaving him no choice but to follow.

And so it was that for the first time Vic entered Boutique Eros, the premier destination in Aphrodite’s Landing for all things lingerie, which always had provocatively-clad mannequins outside in the window display, and seemed to change that display constantly giving Vic absolutely no ability to be desensitized to it and thus making him walk by, mouth slightly open, trying not to be obvious about it (but probably failing) every time.

Inside the store it was even more overwhelming and he was assaulted by bright pinks and reds and blacks in all sorts of shapes and with varying amounts of material used – in all cases not that much at all.

“So … are you going to tell me why I’m here?” Vic said, slowly shuffling behind Marcia who was turning her head in every which way.

“Well, embarrassing as it is, seeing Kit and Laine in their outfits last night made me think about how my own wardrobe is really bare when it comes to this stuff.”

“And my role is?” Vic prompted uncertainly.

“I told you, I need a boy’s opinion. So you can tell me what I look good in.” Vic wasn’t sure what to say to that and in that silence Marcia asked, “You being weird again?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, looking around the shelves they were walking by and grabbing the first thing that truly caught his eye. “How about this?” he asked, lifting the garment up.

“Crotchless panties? Marcia asked dubiously. “Ugh, this is what boys buy girls in these stores, not what girls buy.”

“Well you did want a boy’s opinion.”

“Well don’t make me think it was a mistake, okay?”

For the next half hour Marcia and Vic roamed the store, with Marcia ‘hmm’ing and ‘I don’t know’ing as she picked up items from the racks and the shelves shoving whatever she may have been interested in into Vic’s arms so that he was walking around with a heap by the end of it.

“Okay, I’m going to go try these on,” Marcia said heading for the fitting rooms.

“Okay, I’ll just wait for you here?” Vic asked.

“What? What good is that going to do, follow me.” Obediently, Vic followed Marcia into the hallway of fitting rooms, where she picked the one towards the end and motioned him to sit down in a chair across from the little curtain, which at this point seemed to be mostly for show.

“Okay wait here,” Marcia said as she grabbed something off the top of the heap that was now piled next to the chair, and disappeared behind the curtain. “As she changed, Vic tried to move his head in a way where he could spy between the curtain and the doorway, but couldn’t get a good view. So all he had to settle for was the view underneath the curtain, where first he could watch Marcia lose her shoes and then her long white socks, followed by her skirt dropping around her ankles and then finally her panties. He wasn’t sure if it was getting hot in that hallway or if he was sweating for a completely different reason.

Eventually Marcia was done, the curtain was drawn open with a flourish and there she was, standing in an outfit not too different from the one Kit wore the night before – black bra underneath a sheer shirt, black panties, and black garters holding up black sheer stocking that covered her legs and feet.

No, no, the heat was definitely coming entirely from Vic.