Growing into the Job, Post 538: Retail Therapy, p12

Hera’s Department Store was warm and quiet, like the inside of a woman’s throat.

Wait haha did I just say that? Haha! Lakshmi Vallurupalli, what has gotten into you?? Some times you surprise your self. 

Soft lighting, soft carpet. Velvet chairs shaped like petals. The faint scent of amber and honey drifting from ceiling vents disguised as blooming orchids. A gentle voice cooed from an overhead speaker - something about a flash sale on maternity wrap skirts. Another laugh floated in from somewhere nearby,  the low, rich kind women make when they do not need to be polite. It was, though, a space designed to make your voice drop, your posture soften - like the hush in a church, but a church for goddesses. Were the goddesses us? At the time, still full of excitement and energy from what had just happened with Dr J in the changing room, we maybe felt like we were. That had been the third time today the three of us - Aubrey, Josie and myself - had brought him to orgasm, and each time was more invigorating and blissful than the last. We were riding high on a wave of sisterly power. We felt like we could do anything. 

In the meantime, though, we had gone shopping. 

We found ourselves in the lingerie department. Josie was holding up a bra that could only be described as weaponized. Blush-colored mesh, scalloped with embroidered gold thread that formed a crown motif along the cups. It was beautiful, but it was also absurdly large. But no - for women such as us? Not absurd - accurate.

“Okay,” she said, grinning, “this is insane, right? Like…this might actually fit, right?” She held it to her chest with a theatrical gasp, letting the cups rise like ceremonial offerings. She shifted her weight to one hip, her glossy hair bouncing as she struck a cartoonish pose like a lingerie model. The bra’s straps dangled down her sides like decorative reins, and her bust easily filled the bra’s large cups. “I swear I swell up two sizes just being around him.” 

Aubrey giggled, her hand brushing against a silk slip on the adjacent rack, checking the tag for size. “That’s you now,” she said softly. “You should, y’know…own it.”

“I am owning it,” Josie said, playing with the built-in supports of the bra’s significant cups, looking at the tag - 36GG. “I’m owning it so hard I need reinforced wiring.”

I did not laugh. I smiled - quietly, inwardly - and let my fingertips drift across a rack of deep plum balconettes, their satiny weight hanging like ripened fruit. Hera’s was known as a place that catered to women of all sizes, even ones of our new proportions. These bras were all so pretty, but I was going to be looking for a swimsuit. Normally I did not love shopping the way girls like Josie or Melissa might. Today, though, felt different. I was really enjoying myself. 

There seemed to be a sound to everything, like a vibration in the floor or a shimmer in the walls. Or maybe it was just in me. My skin still tingled from where I had held him - the soft notch of his hips in my palms, the warmth of his little chest under my arm, the slow thrum of his pulse against my ribs when I had steadied him in the mirror. That could have felt clinical. I was a medical assistant. I had dressed older men before. Tended to them. Protected their dignity. But that is not what we had done. 

Josie turned toward me now, still clutching the golden bra like a trophy. “Be honest,” she said. “You felt it too. When we were dressing him. You felt it.”

“I did,” I said. I looked at her directly, surprised she knew my thoughts so well. “I still do.”

My voice was calm, but inside, my heart was...different. Lighter and heavier at the same time. I felt the weight in my thighs as I shifted my stance, the slight ache in my knees from how low I had bent, how far I had leaned, how fully I had given myself to the task of touching him, guiding him. I could also still feel the heat of him, the way his chest had fluttered like a bird under my hand. His scent - faintly antiseptic, faintly sweet - lingered on my fingertips.

Josie dropped the bra into our shopping tote and exhaled with a little shiver. “It was like... I don’t know. Like doing that to him made me high. Like we grew from it.”

Aubrey was quiet. She reached for a pair of pale lilac granny briefs and turned them in her fingers - not looking at us. “You did,” she finally said, gently. “Grow. We all did. Just a little.” She looked up now. Her cheeks were still flushed - not from embarrassment, but from something more intimate. A kind of reverence. “We get the Bliss when Melissa makes him, um…”

“Come, when Melissa makes him come,” Josie said, finishing the sentence for the more demure Aubrey. 

Aubrey blushed a bit. “Yeah…” she continued, still playing with the panties in her hands, “and now I think it works for us, too. When we do it. Like we’re…somehow part of Melissa.”

“Yeah I think you’re kinda right,” Josie marveled. She may not have been aware of it, but two tendrils of her hair had come to life and were playing together in a slow dance down her back, undulating like sleepy sea creatures coiled together in a lazy spiral down her spine, as if amused by her joy. “It feels so good.”

“I do not know how to explain it,” I said, reaching out to tame the mischievous locks for her - we should not be seen expressing our powers in public, right? At least not yet. “It felt...hormonal. But not just hormonal. My blood sugar spiked. My dopamine. My striated muscle fibers feel stronger. I can feel my long bones...stretching.”

“Same,” Aubrey breathed. She looked down at her chest, then up again with a kind of giddy terror. “And, girls - we did this.”

Josie practically bounced on her toes, breasts bouncing with her. “Holy crap, I love science.”

“I am not sure if this is all science,” I said. I smiled again, and felt my eyes sparkle, despite myself. I was not used to this giddiness. Not used to letting it show. But something inside me had shifted - not just in the dressing room, but over the past several months, since meeting Melissa. And now, here, among these silks and laces and smiling women, I felt it acutely.

Aubrey smoothed down her dress, the soft buttercream cotton clinging lovingly to her widened hips and the swells of her large breasts. She turned slightly in place, half-frowning in thought as she looked down at the floor, then tilted her head toward us. “Is this,” she said quietly, “what becoming a mother feels like?”

The words landed gently, but firmly.

Josie blinked, caught off guard for once. She stared at Aubrey for a long moment - then slowly lowered a lace-trimmed bralette she had been holding up like a prize.

I felt something shift behind my sternum. “Yes,” I said. “I think it might be.”

A moment of silence, warm and oddly reverent, settled around us like perfume. 

Josie was the first to break it. “But like... different, right? Like, yeah, I wanted to take care of him. I wanted to cuddle him and carry him and make sure he was warm and fed and safe. But also-”

“You wanted to fuck his brains out,” Aubrey said plainly. 

Both Josie and my eyes went wide. Josie snorted. 

“Aubrey!” she laughed. Neither of us had heard that kind of language out of the typically reserved girl. And I had known her a long time - two years, maybe longer. 

“But it’s not just that,” Aubrey continued, nonplussed, “there’s something…else.” 

“You want to possess him,” I finished, softly.

Josie’s eyes widened slightly. Then she nodded.

Aubrey smiled, small and faraway. “It‘s like...I don’t want to just, uh, sex him - though I want to do that for sure,” she said, blushing again, “so much as, like...keep him. Like a little man-shaped treasure. Safe. Mine. Or, more like…ours.”

“Is this the same thing Melissa feels?” Josie asked.

“I sort of think so,” I replied. I felt my heart thump again - not out of fear, not out of anxiety, but in deep, thrilling resonance. “What are we becoming?” I asked my two friends, feeling something swelling inside myself. 

“I think someone’s said it before,” Josie answered, hanging the too-small bralette back on its rack, “we’re becoming a hive.” She stepped closer as we spoke, her arm brushing mine, our bodies aligning like satellites in a shared orbit. Aubrey had drifted behind us, her hands full of pastel silk, eyes faraway but attentive.

“A hive?” Aubrey asked, cocking her head in thought, “That would make Melissa the Queen, and we’re..?”

“Her worker bees, or soldiers,” I said. I’d given this some thought in the past. “And he’s our one drone. Our one male. They key to making our hive, and ourselves, bigger.”

“So we have to protect him, keep him safe?” Aubrey reasoned. 

“And the best way to do that…” Josie began. 

“…is to make him our little baby,” I finished with a finality, a frankness that surprised even myself. 

The two girls groaned. I think I did too. 

“Okay then, let’s do that,” Josie said, with conviction, “Right now.”

“We cannot do that,” I said, carefully, though my voice was quieter now. “Not here. Not in public.”

“Of course not,” Josie said, too quickly. She was trying to be rational. But it was hard. “Obviously not.”

“But...” Aubrey added, slowly, “could we, maybe...do a little, in public? Like a…I dunno. A little?”

We all looked at each other - a flicker of complicity passed between us, bright and sparkling like a match struck in a velvet dark.

“Like what?” I asked, pretending not to smile. My heart was thrum-thrumming. I could feel the buzz I was feeling increasing - that dizzy, hormonal bloom behind my eyes, the pulse between my thighs.

Aubrey giggled and covered her mouth, her eyes alight. “We should…get him a soft blankie. Like the kind toddlers carry around until they’re six.”

Josie’s face lit up. “We can make it smell like us,” she added, “and, honestly, I saw a stuffed bear in a window earlier and almost ran in to buy it for him. He just seems like he’d need one.”

“Does he have a hat?” I found myself proposing, “He needs a little hat. Something soft. Something…snug, for when it gets cold.”

“He smells different today, doesn’t he?” Josie asked, “Has anyone else noticed that? I feel like my instincts are going crazy.”

“His skin is so soft…” Aubrey mused.

“Seriously,” Joise continued, “I want to swaddle him.”

“Swaddling?” I laughed, picturing his little face peeking out from a blanket wrapped tautly around his little body. It was silly, too much, but-

“Yes nnnnngh!” Josie laughed back, “And I can’t stop using my daycare voice when I talk to him. I used to work at one, and it’s like how I talked to the toddlers. I don’t even mean to. It just comes out.”

“I want to feed him,” I heard myself say, “In public. I want to spoon food into his mouth.”

“YES,” Josie nearly shouted. “Like one of those sample cups at the food court. With the little tiny spoon!”

Aubrey gasped, delighted. “We could take turns. We each feed him a bite...”

“And wipe his mouth after,” Josie added. “With, like, one of those purse tissues.”

Aubrey was laughing along, but was biting her lip. It looked like she was in thought.

“What is it, Aubrey?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she answered, “I was just thinking. What happens if he gets, like, fussy?”

“If he does not like what we are doing for him?” I asked, feeling my pulse quicken, “I do not know. A time out? A scolding?”

“Oh jeez,” Josie moaned, visibly shivering, “I think he’d cry if we raised our voice at him.”

“Sometimes I do want to yell at him,” Aubrey indulged, hesitantly, red in the cheeks, “I know it’s weird but…just to see his face.”

Again my thighs tingled, and I felt a surge of something dark and thrilling inside me. My head was spinning. My body felt electric again - not aroused exactly, but activated. Like some dormant instinct was now fully online. But I knew what we were talking about was too much. “This is inappropriate,” I said, but my voice did not sound convincing. “We are professionals. He is a doctor.”

Josie snorted. “He is four feet tall and just came in my mouth, Kiki,” she scoffed, “He’s our precious baby angel doctor.”

“And we do have to protect him,” Aubrey said, “I think we honestly should get him one of those little bracelets that tracks his vitals, and so we can locate him. Like a baby monitor. Just to check in when he’s out of sight. Speaking of…”

“And maybe-” I began, but I stopped.

Something was wrong.

Aubrey had already felt it. Now I was feeling it too. There was a break in the field. A quietness behind us where warmth had just been. I turned slowly. Josie did too.

Aubrey’s face fell first.

He was just right there.

“Wait…Where is he?” She paused, scanned the aisles. “Dr. J?” she called lightly, almost playfully. No answer. Her smile faltered just slightly as her head turned again. He wasn’t here.

Josie stopped mid-spin. I felt my throat tighten.

We all looked around.

The racks were gentle, winding. The store was quiet but vast. Other women moved gracefully between them - tall, well-dressed, at ease. There were attendants in pink, guiding others with warm voices and soft hands.

But not our doctor. Not our man. Not our baby.

And suddenly, the air felt sharper in my nose.

We have lost him.

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