What Happened Between Us in the Fitting Room

That Saturday afternoon started like any other shopping trip with Ariana: coffee first, stores after, and me following her through the racks while trying not to spend money I didn’t have. There were clouds but no rain, the city had that gray air that makes you want to stay indoors, and we’d already been walking around downtown for almost three hours when we went into that boutique.

We’d been together for almost two years and I still wasn’t used to the way she looked at me. Not the look she gave dresses or shop windows, but the other one, the one she reserved for me when no one else was paying attention: a little appraising, a little possessive, always with that trace of anticipation that made me nervous in the best possible way. Over time I’d learned to recognize the variations, to tell when she was looking with curiosity and when she was looking with intent.

That afternoon she’d been looking with intent ever since we left the café.

Ariana had that way of moving through stores that always put me in a state of soft alert: choosing calmly, touching the fabrics with the tips of her fingers, never rushing. There was something about her confidence that I found magnetic, that feeling that she knew exactly what she wanted before she found it. And when that confidence was aimed at me, I already knew how it ended: with her fingers inside my cunt somewhere they had no business being.

The store was one of those little downtown boutiques, with music too loud for the size of the place and clothes hung up in no particular order. I was busy checking a stack of folded T-shirts when I saw her several yards away, holding something up. From where I stood I could see the color: dark green, with the dull sheen of good fabric.

I walked over without her saying a word.

It was a bottle-green dress, with a V-neck that dipped lower than I would have chosen on my own, fitted long sleeves, and a flared skirt. Pretty, without a doubt. Elegant, even. Only the neckline was too much.

—I like the color —I told her—. And the sleeves. And the skirt.

She turned her head toward me with that smile she saved for certain moments.

—But?

—Too much cleavage.

Ariana held the dress against my body without touching it, assessing it as if she already knew the result before she started.

—Try it on —she said.

It wasn’t a suggestion. It never was when she used that tone.

***

I didn’t look at the price. She’d asked me not to, and I’d long since learned that certain arguments weren’t worth starting. I took the dress off the rack and walked toward the back of the store, toward the fitting rooms, with Ariana two steps behind me as if it had always been the plan.

The fitting room was small: a full-length mirror fixed to the back wall, a metal hook on the side, a narrow bench upholstered in beige. When the two of us went in and she locked the latch with that dry click, the space shrank by half and the air immediately turned warmer. I could hear other customers talking in the adjacent cubicles, the rustle of clothing sliding over bodies, the footsteps of a saleswoman passing by in the aisle.

Ariana took the dress from my hand without waiting for me to offer it and hung it carefully on the hook. Then she stood behind me and I watched her in the mirror as she began unbuttoning my blouse from the collar down, methodical, one by one. She slipped it off my shoulders and folded it over the bench. Then the bra: she unclasped it with one hand, as she always did, with that ease that showed plenty of practice, and set it on top of the blouse.

I felt the store air on the bare skin of my back, and I also felt how her hands, instead of pulling away, slid up my sides to cup my tits from the front. She squeezed them slowly, feeling the weight, then pinched both nipples at once between her thumb and forefinger until they hardened against her fingers. She kept rolling them there for a while, unhurried, watching me in the mirror while I tried not to make a sound.

—No bra —she said. An instruction, not a question.

She lowered one hand over my stomach to the button on my pants. She opened it, pulled down the zipper, and shoved the fabric over my hips until it fell at my feet. Then she hooked her thumbs in the elastic of my panties and pulled them down slowly, bending behind me to guide them all the way to my ankles. I felt her tongue pass just under one cheek when they were down there, a short, hot lick that made me clamp my thighs together.

—This too —she said, and took the panties off me completely. Instead of leaving them on the bench, she tucked them into her coat pocket, staring straight at me in the mirror as she did it.

She took the dress down and slipped it over my head. The fabric was soft, one of those materials with just the right weight. When my arms fell to my sides, Ariana was already closing the zipper in back with two slow fingers, unhurried.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

The green was exactly the shade that had suited me ever since I dyed my hair reddish brown, almost a year earlier. The combination worked in a way that still felt new to me. The skirt fell beautifully, with that flare that responded to every shift in posture. And the neckline was exactly what I’d imagined when I saw it on the rack: too open, too generous, and without a bra underneath, the outline of my nipples showed faintly through the fabric, still hard from the attention Ariana had just given them.

I wasn’t going to buy this dress.

I thought about taking the dress off, handing it back to Ariana, and going back to look for something more modest among the racks. That was the sensible thing to do. But Ariana was still there behind me, looking at me in a way that made sensible seem like a very boring option.

***

Ariana was looking at me from the mirror with that other expression. Not the analytical one, not the one with her opinion about the clothes: the one I’d learned to recognize as the beginning of something.

I felt the back of her hand slide slowly along the inside of my thigh over the skirt. Just a brief touch, almost casual, that was anything but casual. Then the same hand moved up again, this time under the skirt, and she stroked my bare cunt with her open palm, already feeling how wet I was.

—Look at you —she murmured very softly, showing me her glistening fingers in the reflection—. I haven’t even started and you’re already dripping.

—Ariana —I whispered—, not here.

—Here, yes. Spread your feet a little.

I obeyed.

—More. Wide open.

I spread my feet until the skirt pulled tight between my knees.

—Put your hands here. —She guided my palms to the flat surface on either side of the mirror, at shoulder height.

My body changed position at once: torso leaning forward, neckline opening until my tits were fully visible every time I breathed, the skirt falling back and leaving my ass bare underneath. In the mirror I could see the expression on my face, and I didn’t like how much it gave away.

—Don’t look at me —Ariana said—. Look at yourself.

It was the hardest thing she asked of me. Not because I was ashamed of my own reflection, but because when she did what she was about to do, every muscle in my face showed it with a transparency I couldn’t control. Closing my eyes was my way of hiding. Ariana had known that for a long time.

Her hand slid under the skirt from behind, moving up my thigh unhurriedly. Her fingers opened my pussy lips from the back with calm pressure, palming me all over, sliding up and down my soaked slit. She ran her middle finger over my clit and left it there, pressed hard, not moving it, just so I could feel how it throbbed against her fingertip.

—You’re swollen as hell —she whispered—. I can feel everything sticking out.

I pressed my lips together.

—Look at yourself —she insisted.

I lifted my eyes to the mirror and held them there. I saw my arms stretched out, my knuckles white against the wall. I saw the green neckline of the dress. I saw my face: eyes open but with that specific expression that only appeared at certain moments and that I knew too well.

—Aren’t you gorgeous like this? —she murmured near my ear, just as one finger slid in slowly.

It went all the way in at once, with no resistance, because I was so wet it slipped in on its own. She pulled it almost all the way out, pushed it back in, bent it inside looking for that spot. Then she added the second finger. The two fingers started fucking me slowly, with a long, deep rhythm that made a wet sound every time they slid out and back in.

There were footsteps outside the fitting room. Saleswomen talking. The rhythmic click of hangers on metal. The store music covered some of it, but not all, and I knew it, and that made me have to concentrate twice as hard not to give myself away. The sound of her fingers going in and out of my soaked cunt sounded like a scandal to me, even though no one outside probably could hear it over the speakers.

I bit my lip hard.

Ariana didn’t slow down. She found that exact spot that showed how long she’d known me, that spongy place inside that the curved fingertip knew exactly how to touch. With her other hand she gripped my hip so I wouldn’t shift backward, digging her fingers into my skin.

—Open wider —she ordered very softly—. Drop your ass. Show it to me properly.

I lowered my hips. The position opened me even more, forced me to offer her my cunt pushed back, and her fingers entered from a different angle then, drawing a gasp from me that I had to swallow halfway. I felt her thumb searching for my clit from the front while the other two stayed inside, and when she found the rhythm of both at once —fingers inside moving deep, thumb outside circling tightly— my legs really started to shake.

—That’s it —she whispered—. Shut up and look at yourself.

I felt her lips at my nape, and then her teeth. She bit me slowly, marking the edge of my neck right where the dress didn’t cover. Her fingers inside me didn’t stop. She added the third and the stretch made me close my eyes for a second.

—Open them —she whispered against my ear.

I opened them. In the mirror I saw myself with my mouth open, breathing through my nose so I wouldn’t make a sound, with the dress neckline fallen just enough to let one nipple peek over the edge. Ariana saw it too. With the hand on my hip she slipped her fingers under the neckline and pulled my nipple all the way out, pinching it, stretching it, never stopping fucking me from behind.

—Look at yourself —she repeated—. Beautiful. With my hand buried all the way in you, in a fitting room, with people right next door.

***

There’s a sensation I know well. A pressure that starts deep, almost abstract, and builds slowly, like something filling up from the inside. It doesn’t always come. It depends on a lot of things: the moment, the tension of the day, the way she touches me. There are afternoons when nothing happens. And there are afternoons like that one.

That afternoon everything added up: the hours walking together, the pressure of her hand in mine crossing the streets, the store’s too-loud music, the soft fabric of the dress feeling different against skin without underwear underneath, the mirror giving me back an image of myself I didn’t fully recognize, and Ariana’s three fingers going in and out of my cunt with a rhythm that no longer let up.

My legs were shaking.

I put more weight on my palms against the wall to keep myself up. I kept looking at myself in the mirror because Ariana had asked me to and because I couldn’t do anything else now: it was as if the reflection and what I was feeling were connected, as if keeping my eyes open kept me inside what was happening instead of letting me escape. I could see her too, her face concentrated, her eyes fixed on mine through the glass, her whole arm moving behind me at an angle that made it very clear how far inside me she was reaching.

—You’re going to come all over the dress —she whispered—. And you’re going to thank me for it.

—Ariana…

—Quiet. Don’t you dare close your eyes.

I didn’t close them.

The thumb pressed the clit harder, in quick, firm circles, while the three fingers fucked me hard inside, curving against that spongy wall again and again. I felt everything gathering below, that ball-like sensation growing and growing until there was no room left. My arms started to give out. A short, sharp moan slipped out of me, and Ariana stopped it immediately by covering my mouth with her free hand, squeezing hard.

—Shh. Come quietly.

I saw myself at the exact moment: my face changing in a way I couldn’t control above her hand over my mouth, eyes bright and open as she’d asked, shoulders drawing forward, my whole body tightening and then releasing in a chain that lasted several seconds and felt much longer. I clamped down around her fingers inside with hard, repeated pulses, and felt a warm gush run down the inside of my thighs and soak the fabric of the skirt from within. Ariana didn’t pull her hand away until I stopped shaking, and until I stopped shaking her fingers kept moving very slowly, drawing out the ending until I couldn’t take it anymore and shuddered all over.

My legs were trembling, my arms were trembling. The hand over my mouth loosened but didn’t fully withdraw. She pulled her fingers out of my cunt with the same calm she’d used to put them in, dragging them out dripping wet, and then she ran them over my lips from the inside, marking my mouth with what they were leaking.

—Open —she said. I opened. She shoved the three fingers into my mouth all the way and made me suck them clean one by one, watching me in the mirror as she did—. Like that. All of it.

The skirt fabric was stained. There was no way around it: a dark, wet, round stain, right inside the flare, in the spot where everything had gathered when I came.

***

It took me a moment to get my breath back. My hands trembled slightly when I took them off the wall. Ariana was standing beside me, calm as ever, wiping her hand on a cloth handkerchief she’d taken from her bag, as if she’d just helped me zip something difficult and nothing more.

—I’m buying this dress for you —she said, looking at the reflection in the mirror.

I looked at her without answering.

—Even stained and all —she added—. For the reason you already know.

She bent down, ran her tongue once along the inside of my thigh, going up, cleaning off what had leaked farther down beneath the dress. Then she straightened, fixed her hair in the mirror, and gave me a short kiss on the mouth, still tasting like me.

She unlocked the latch and went out first with the dress over her arm, leaving me inside just long enough to pull myself together. I stood there a moment looking at myself in the mirror: hair slightly mussed, face still holding that sheen that took a while to fade, one nipple still showing against the blouse I’d put back on. I smoothed the skirt of the dress and took a deep breath. No panties, because my panties were still in the pocket of her coat.

I walked out of the fitting room like nothing had happened.

***

We left the store ten minutes later. Ariana carried the bag, I wore my jacket buttoned up and my legs were still a little unsteady, though I made sure it didn’t show. A saleswoman said goodbye to us with a smile from the counter that revealed absolutely nothing.

The afternoon kept its normal pace outside: people in the street, traffic noise, the five o’clock sun beginning to tilt west. Ariana put on her sunglasses as soon as we stepped onto the sidewalk. They suited her, just like everything did.

—Coffee shop? —I suggested.

—Coffee shop —she confirmed—. And at the table you sit with your legs nice and wide, so I feel what I did to you every time you move.

And holding hands, as always, we kept walking.