Women, Wine and Heels Read online

  What caught Mark’s attention, however, and caused him to suck in a gulp of air, was her shiny, smoky-black stockings, and white pumps that had to have been at least five inches. There was a double anklet chain on her left ankle. Her overall appearance bespoke a strange mix of seasoned class and promiscuity. She smiled confidently at him as she sat down in the chair of honor.

  Mark tried not to stare too hard at her legs, but it was a losing battle, especially as she crossed, then uncrossed and re-crossed them, in an exaggerated attempt to get comfortable. He caught a glimpse of a dark band atop her left stocking. A bead of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Oddly, the audience got quiet, as if they were watching something special occur and didn’t want to distract from the performance. Mark dared a quick glance and saw their attention divided between the stage and one or the other TV screen. There was a sense of anticipation permeating the air.

  He inhaled deeply as Janice’s right fingernail, painted blood red, began tracing down her left leg, pausing at the ankle, then tinkered with the gold chain dangling there. He was transfixed. He always loved anklets on women, and the way she called attention to hers made his mouth go dry.

  Momentarily, her left hand came up her dress, and she used her middle finger to draw a line up and down the fabric over her ample breasts. Mark’s eyes followed, and were rewarded with a knowing look as Janice arched her eyebrows and sucked in her cheeks.

  It was an expression designed to strike at his soul, part amusement, part condescension, as if to say “I have all the power here.” He liked older women to begin with, and this one had enough self-awareness to see she could control him with a smirk. He didn’t see it, but his penis twitched, apparent through the thin fabric and, as a result, to the audience looking at the TV screens. Muttering and some guffaws penetrated his consciousness.

  Janice went on seductively moving one finger, then another, over her body, pausing at her stocking top, the back of her knee, and the top of her foot. She once again re-crossed her legs, and Mark noticed a back seam running up her stocking. He involuntarily sighed, causing Janice to smile once again with self-satisfaction.

  A large tent rose in his gossamer shorts, to his complete mortification. His cheeks felt warm as they turned red. At least I’ve still got control and haven’t leaked, he thought. The money for his Belize trip was still well within his reach. I can get through this, he told himself.

  “Time!” called Crystal. Mark felt relief at the reprieve, however short it might be. He used the break to collect himself, wipe the sweat off his forehead. He didn’t dare put his hand anywhere near his crotch, for fear of drawing even more attention to his raging erection.

  Janice traipsed off the stage, affording Mark a nice view of her seams.

  “Please welcome Melanie, everyone!”

  Mark caught his breath as a raven haired goddess climbed the stairs and sat down in front of him. She looked to be in her late 20s, with brown, inquisitive eyes and glossy raspberry lips. Her fit build was encased in a velvety green minidress with three-quarter length sleeves, and sheer black hose. She wore fashionable green velvet shoes with wide heels about four-inches in height, and sporting gold-colored studs down the sides and lacy bows on the toe sections.

  As she settled in, Melanie puckered her lips to deliver a flirty air kiss. She had a fun-loving demeanor, Mark observed, but he felt confident he could mount a resistance to her charms. For one thing, while her shoes were quite pretty, thick heels weren’t his thing. Those legs though…

  “Five minutes beginning now!” Crystal said.

  With a breathtakingly high arch, Melanie raised her left leg over her right, and in the same motion popped the heel off her left foot with the help of a prettily French-manicured finger. She started to dangle the shoe, while staring at Mark’s face matter of factly.

  For his part, Mark couldn’t help glancing downward, and noticed red toenail polish on her pinky toe, just peeking out from the toe cup of the shoe. He caught a groan in his throat before it could be heard. As with the prior women, he tried to keep a cool façade, however much his manhood betrayed him. He kept his breathing steady, and did his best not to let his jaw drop like an enraptured fool, even though each of these women had turned him into just that.

  Thwap-thwap-thwap went the shoe against her stockinged heel, and it focused his attention. That shoe was rather cute, he thought, especially as it rocked back and forth rhythmically. Its owner looked as though she had no place to go, nor a care in the world. She perched her chin on her right fist almost as if she were bored, and to Mark that was about as arousing as the dangle.

  She continued staring at his face, occasionally pursing her lips and raising an eyebrow in mild – amusement? contempt? Mark couldn’t be sure. He was sweating again and his penis again swelled. He was resigned to the fact that nature would soon take its course, and there was little he could do about it. He dared a quick look down at his crotch, but happily the material remained dry. He was still in the game. Belize here I come!

  “Time!” Crystal announced. “We have quite the competition going here, ladies and gentlemen. Now join me in welcoming Penny.”

  Mark felt growing confidence as he watched his next tormenter take the stage and position herself in front of him. She appeared to be rather old school, but looked like a woman used to being in control. A bit on the heavy side, she was about 52 years old, with red hair that fell in a bang in front, and green eyes, highlighted by naturally high, arching eyebrows. Well made up but not overly so. She wore a rather conservative navy blue dress with small polka dots, nude pantyhose over thick legs, and black suede closed-toe pumps with three-inch heels. She smelled of money.

  Mark smelled his money too. He wouldn’t say she was unattractive, but compared to what he withstood before, he thought he could get through five minutes of her and then skate through whomever was last, dry as a Mexican mesa. Interestingly, Penny held a cell phone to her ear, engaged in some seemingly important conversation.

  Crystal announced the start of the five minutes, but Penny barely noticed. She continued her phone call, mostly listening and saying “uh-huh,” as Mark took in the scene. Her legs had a subtle sheen that caught his eye as she crossed the right over the left. The fingers of her left hand – she wore no nail polish – began mindlessly drawing circles over her left thigh, then stroking short strokes toward her knee and back. Mark thought it was quite fetching.

  Suddenly, she lifted her right leg and brought it down again over her knee, and repeated the motion a couple of times, like she was using her right calf to scratch an itch on her left leg. Mark watched fascinated, and felt a rise in his shorts. Then her left hand began to trace a line further up her left thigh. It looked milky white under the hosiery as she slid the hem of her dress up an inch or two. Mark’s eyes now locked on the area, wondering if the dress would go any higher. He gulped.

  “Wow,” came a voice from the audience. “Look at that.” All eyes turned to the monitors and several women covered their mouths to stifle laughter. The blood was again rushing into Mark’s cock, and he felt slightly lightheaded from that along with a new round of embarrassment. Penny, meanwhile, continued her conversation, but now her right foot was rocking up and down too.

  She began scratching her left thigh with her fingernails, then slid her right leg down and crossed her left leg over it, an audible hiss of nylon against nylon. The thigh scratching continued, and she slid the hem of her dress up even higher. Unthinkingly, she paused from scratching long enough to reach down and pop off the heel of her shoe, then began dangling the shoe. Her left hand returned to making gentle circles on her upper leg.

  Mark groaned, audibly this time. He didn’t know where to look – her lovely nylon encased foot with the shoe flipping up and down from the hidden toes, or that wide expanse of her meaty left thigh. That quasi-nauseous feeling returned to his lower stomach.

  All the while she continued chatting into the phone, barely even looking at him. There w
as something so incredibly erotic about the tableau, like she was unaware, or simply unconcerned with Mark’s presence, let alone the now-dramatic rise in his shorts. That rise began to twitch, and Penny chose that precise moment to hike up the bottom of her dress to the very top of her left thigh.

  Mark heard a squeal from the audience, and his peripheral vision again caught hands going up toward the monitors. His embarrassment as a thin line of liquid seeped through his “manties” was difficult to bear.

  He watched, bleary eyed, as the middle and ring fingers of her left hand moved up and down that luscious thigh. In a quick, confident motion, she again crossed her right leg over her left, popping the heel of that shoe off in the process. He glanced up momentarily to see a small smile cross her lips – a smile of victory, a smile tinged with smugness. Her naturally arched right eyebrow arched higher, and Mark was beside himself with lust.

  “And we have our winner! Looks like Mark will have to find another way to pay for Belize, hee hee,” said Crystal, though her words sounded muffled to Mark.

  The audience was atwitter with laughter and disbelief. The victor was in front of them, her success as clear on 55-inch monitors as if she were standing with one foot on the back of her quarry and flexing her bicep. The women present, and even the smattering of men, wholeheartedly approved of her technique, and some of the ladies even seemed impressed that it wasn’t a size 10 vixen in fuck-me pumps who evoked a stream of pre-cum from this hapless male, but a 50-something woman by and large just like many of them.

  The lust Mark had felt was now being replaced with gut-curdling humiliation, as hundreds of eyes looked at him with amusement, maybe even pity. The wretched feeling wasn’t mitigated one iota by his ginger tormentress, who was again sliding her right calf up and down over her left leg, and who’s hand now moved rapidly up and down the glorious length of her left thigh, the cell phone still perched in her right hand.

  This visual stimulation on top of his continuing debasement caused his body to shudder. He suddenly became aware of just how scintillating the nylon felt as it trapped his straining penis. Now moist from his juice, the slight rubbing of flesh against fabric felt even more exasperating.

  Penny, aware despite her ongoing call that she’d won, now let the shoe fall off her right foot, looked Mark right in the eyes with an expression that said “whoops!” and rapidly wiggled long-trapped stockinged toes.

  Unable to tear his eyes away from the slightly dirty ball of Penny’s foot, inhaling the slight odor wafting up from it, hearing the mutters and chuckles coming from the well-heeled female audience, and completely unable to summon a bit of dignity to salvage this awful experience, Mark felt a loss of control of his own body. Penny’s wiggling toes goaded him on as he grunted and ejaculated through the sheer fabric, a release amplified 50 times on the two monitors in the corners of the banquet room. He vaguely heard gasps and a few squeals from below the stage as the “drool” spread across the entire front of his shorts.

  “Hey, I’ve got to go, I just won,” Penny said into the phone. She stood up and high-fived Crystal.

  Mark’s head hung backward, his eyes half open. He just lay there limp, unable to summon the resolve to stand up, which would involve seeing the faces of Crystal, Penny, and all the ladies looking on.

  “Wait! I didn’t get my turn!”

  Crystal looked to the side of the stage. “Elizabeth?” She was addressing a woman in her mid-40s clad in a black zipper-front minidress, taupe hose and two-tone silver and gold Dolce & Gabbana pumps. “Don’t worry…we saved something special for you.”

  Crystal handed the woman an empty wine glass emblazoned with the logo for the event, then leaned over the sweating figure in the folding chair and looked straight at his face as she said, “You’ll get to make Mark clean up his mess.”

  Mark could only groan amid more laughter. At least, he thought, it was all for a good cause.

  Overwhelmed

  “Mr. Carroll, are you listening?”

  The rebuke jolted Eddie Carroll out of his mild revelry, as he soaked in the various full-color posters on the wall of the TV studio, depicting the leggy, femme fatale newscasters hosting their various talk shows on the conservative news network. One such program was his reason for being here.

  “Yes, Ms. Sheldon,” Eddie replied, covering up well. “I’ve heard everything you’ve been saying. It sounds like a great opportunity for me.”

  “That’s good, but we need to be sure it’s a great fit for our anchors…and the audience too. We need to ensure a certain decorum on our shows, being the top-rated news channel in the country,” Bonnie Sheldon noted, looking down her slightly upturned nose at the fit, bespectacled 44-year-old job applicant before her. “‘Overwhelmed’ has posed some…umm…unique challenges for some of our hosts.”

  I’ll bet, Eddie thought, again glancing at the waxed and in some cases nylon-encased legs so brilliantly on display on the posters. “Overwhelmed” had become one of the top talk shows on the top news network, no doubt because of its four comely hosts, who each day wore the shortest of skirts and the highest of heels as they traded analyses with a pundit-du-jour drawn from the worlds of politics, Hollywood, the courtroom and academia. The guest male – who was the one “overwhelmed” by the beauty around him, presumably – varied, while the women mostly stayed constant, although different hosts subbed for those on vacation or on assignment.

  Eddie had seen the show on several occasions, and like most of their primarily male viewers, was compelled to keep watching by the display of flesh on the screen. How can the male host even concentrate on what he was talking about, he sometimes wondered, surrounded by such a distracting tableau? Nonetheless, as a tenured political science professor at George Washington University, he had the chops to discuss the political issues of the day with the best of them, and his teaching schedule allowed for outside pursuits such as television appearances. Indeed, the department encouraged them, along with the academic obligation to publish regularly.

  He thought he detected a bit of an audible smirk from the blond producer as she said “unique challenges.” Attractive and dressed professionally in a well-tailored pants suit, classic green pumps peeking out from under the mint-green hems, Ms. Sheldon had the unmistakable air of a den mother, seemingly protective of “her” show and “her” hosts. Though women were increasingly afforded opportunities to crack the higher ranks of news broadcasting, they still had to be fiercely competitive and competent to reach their positions, so there were few shrinking violets among them in the industry. Eddie could tell Ms. Sheldon was as commanding and in control as any man in power he’d encountered in academia…and he couldn’t help but be enamored by that. Her piercing green eyes, slender, manicured eyebrows, full lips, and blond ringlets that fell just above her shoulders only made him crave her approval that much more.

  “So here’s what we’ll do,” she continued. “I’ll have our hosts come in and we’ll do a short, mock program. They’ve all had a long day, and may be a little punchy, but they’re professionals and will make it as easy on you as possible. We’ll see if you can demonstrate the comportment needed to go toe-to-toe with them for an hour-long program.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Eddie replied, the phrase “toe-to-toe” catching in his brain.

  Moments later, the ladies shuffled back into the studio they considered a second home. Eddie sucked in his breath, confronted in person by the lovely women he’d long admired on television – for both their brains and their beauty. There was Melissa Kotsaros, a petite, dark-haired woman of Greek descent whose giddiness and fetching smile made her seem about 10 years too young to be co-hosting a national news show. Kotsaros, Eddie knew, favored the bare leg look, and true to form today was wearing a cream-colored minidress with black-and-cream three-inch heels. Her well-toned legs weren’t just bare…they shined under the studio lights.

  Next he took in Davina Harris, a gorgeous, light-skinned black woman who tended to wear bright tones, matc
hed four-inch heels, and hose that lightened her legs. There was just something about a black woman in nylons that drove Eddie crazy, since the hue often set her stems apart more than a similar color hosiery on a Caucasian woman. Harris had a short, pageboy hair style, brown, almost Asian eyes and lips that a man could easily lose himself in. From the times he’d seen the show, he noticed that Harris crossed and uncrossed her legs behind the glass coffee table more than the others.

  The third woman was Dierdre Shepherd, the daughter of a former senator and the most classically beautiful of the group, with strawberry blond, shoulder-length hair that fell straight, blue eyes that looked like they were forever searching for something to entertain her, a small, elegant nose, and lips that always appeared freshly frosted. In her early 30s, she favored pastel dresses, and almost always accented her incredibly sexy legs with taupe pantyhose. Today, she looked stunning in a peach number, with three-inch beige pumps.

  The last woman to glide in was Cassidy, who went by one name and hosted her own show later in the afternoon. With short, jet-black hair set against an alabaster Irish or Western European skin tone, along with a bright red lipstick and horn-rimmed glasses, Cassidy presented the look of an emo girl, albeit a highly intelligent one. Also somewhere in her 30s, she had luscious legs which were today bare and set atop black peep-toe pumps, contrasting with her solid white minidress. Eddie noticed her toenail polish precisely matched her lips, and could finally make out the tattoo high on her left foot which he’d never been able to fully discern watching on TV: “Where You Belong.”