Chapter One
The smell of fresh paint immediately hit Logan’s nostrils as he walked into Lolita’s. Gabriella was at it again. What was she painting now? Couldn’t she learn to leave well enough alone? He followed the scent like a dog, to the back room of her store and found her on her knees, wearing shorts that were too short for work, with her paintbrush in hand, painting yet another oak chair. He walked over to her iPhone and turned down the music.
“Cinderella, how many chairs are you going to keep painting?”
“I needed another chair. Those pink garters I bought a week ago have all sold out already and people are asking for them non-stop.”
“So, what does that have to do with another chair?”
“Logan! Duh! The chair they were displayed on clearly wasn’t enough so when my shipment comes in today, I can lay those garters on that chair and once this baby dries, I am going to lay the new matching stockings and panties on this chair.”
Logan ran his hand through his chestnut hair that got lighter every time he was out in the sun. He leaned up against one of her worktables and absent-mindedly began caressing the tiniest pair of panties he’d ever seen that were lying next to him.
They were red. His favorite color. They were made out of mesh lining making the entire front of the panties see-through.
Also, his favorite.
No panties at all would be his preference but for whatever reason, ladies seemed to love wearing them, so see-through panties would be the next best thing. Every time he came in here and helped Gabriella, he was astonished by how much money people, mostly women, were willing to pay for this crap. The red panties he was currently fingering cost…twenty-eight dollars! They were made of the flimsiest material; he could literally rip them off in one fell swoop.
“Quit touching my panties.”
Logan tensed at her command. They were technically ‘her’ panties, but they weren’t her panties.
At least he didn’t think.
He supposed she could be wearing these exact same panties underneath those short shorts of hers. He rubbed his hand over his eyes. Why had he even begun to wonder what little Cinderella was wearing underneath her clothes? They had been friends since second grade and he never once considered—present time excluded—what she might wear down there.
Well, there was that one time when they had just graduated high school and he was helping her out of her gown, and underneath she had worn this yellow sundress and somehow the zipper had managed to get stuck on the gown…or the gown got stuck in the zipper? Either way, to this day, he still never understood how that could happen. But he was the only one inside her house and he was designated with the task of helping her get the gown unstuck.
He had been nervous. He could feel some kind of tension in the room, which was crazy because it was just Gabriella—his nearest and dearest friend since grade school. He managed to unzip her dress and the zipper had gone down low enough that he could see the dimples in her lower back as well as the pale-yellow thong she had been wearing.
In a whisper she had threatened him. “Don’t look at my panties.”
But the way it had sounded hadn’t sounded like a real threat. Her voice was really breathy and quiet. He had managed to get the gown out of the zipper’s teeth and zip her dress back up before he had stormed out of her bedroom. That had been the only time he had ever considered doing anything to Gabriella that had gone far beyond friendship.
“I’m kidding. You know that, right? Don’t look so serious, Logan.”
He was brought out of his trance by Gabriella’s soft laugh.
“I was just thinking about something else,” he told her truthfully.
“Do you like those panties?” She nodded to the red ones in his hands. “That’s just a sample. Then I can decide if I will order more or not.”
Without thinking, he asked, “Who samples them?”
She tilted her head and looked at him like he was an idiot, her eyes wide. “Who do you think?”
Visions of Gabriella prancing around in these skimpy panties came to mind. Her curves. Her tits. He forcefully set them back down on the table and shook his head.
“So, do you need any help, then?” He cleared his throat. “With any painting or anything?”
Gabriella laughed. “Come hold this for me, please? What has gotten into you lately? Ever since the