Footbound (Chapter 10) (Patreon)

Despite feeling even less rested than he had the previous day, Mitch was wired this morning at his desk, taking calls the instant his board lit up and following the script to a tee. The assurance of knowing now that he would vividly dream of “her” again tonight, no matter how kooky it should’ve seemed that his fetishistic nighttime visions could take on such a life of their own, was enough to keep his eyes open and a goofy smile on his face regardless of the pure exhaustion weighing him down.

It really was getting to be an annoyance, almost like his body had been drained of all gusto the moment he opened his lids again after eight hours of solid sack time. He may as well not have slept a wink in two straight days, a kind of fatigue Mitch hadn’t known since college. Still, deciding to take this in stride as a side effect of his desperate eagerness to be invaded in his bed again by the most welcome intruder he could imagine, the man tanked up on espressos to stay conscious and readied himself for another long haul. The call center was no less appealing as a place to waste one’s waking hours today, but at this point, it was just another shift he had to bypass before getting to hop in bed and await his next sole-based vision quest and accompanying orgasmic rush. He hadn’t been so excited to sleep since he was a child expecting presents on Christmas, though in this case, he didn’t even have to wait for the sun to come up before receiving the most satisfying gifts.

“What’s her name?”

For the second day in a row, Lilina’s honeyed voice and abrupt proximity struck Mitch like a bolt of lightning in his seat. There she was, towering regally on high with arms crossed and full lips curved to a similarly reclusive smirk as Mitch’s own. He knew his body was really on the fritz when, two days running, he could be approached by this nonchalant vixen beauty with the most perfect feet outside of his dreams, and not even notice her coming until she was already standing above him.

“P-Pardon?” he whimpered. Artificially awake though he was, he was still woefully ill-equipped in his sleep-deprived state to even speak to Lilina without becoming a stammering buffoon.

“The woman you’re smiling about,” she taunted. “Who is she?”

Mitch sighed with relief, again glad that he hadn’t been caught in the act of bald-facedly checking out her peach-creased stockinged assets – which, in truth, he hadn’t even ogled as much as usual today, while so preoccupied trying to recover the photographic memories of the night caller’s arch landscape details, which had again somehow evaded him as egregiously as sleep. Predictably, though, Lilina had seen right through him when it came to his day-dreamy countenance. He should’ve known a woman as obviously perceptive as her would be able to take one look at his no-doubt dopey expression and know he was smitten with someone, or at least someone’s feet. Was it possible, he wondered, to fall madly in love with someone when he’d only had his face and cock pressed up against her naked moonlit soles until he ejaculated?

“Oh, uh… no one,” he chuckled unconvincingly.

“Don’t go believing now that I haven’t heard that lie before, in that exact tone,” Lilina said with a wag of her finger, again reading him like a book. Nonetheless, there was no judgment in her voice, only dry taunting. She pursed her lips and combed her thumb through silken red-obsidian tresses as though carving it like marble, despite its softness. “But I won’t push you. It’s not like you have any reason to share your life’s most intimate details with your work neighbor.”

“Huh? No, no, it’s not that,” Mitch politely scoffed, not wanting to burn whatever unlikely bridge still might remain that could bring him closer to Lilina. His slumbering visits from the footjob maestro herself would be cherished forever, but as incredible and authentic as that sultry apparition seemed, the woman standing before him was actual flesh and blood, seducing him to pieces without even trying. And Mitch certainly didn’t have the ego to guess she was trying, even though she’d now asked him twice, rather pointedly, about his love life.

“Maybe it’s my fault for not trying harder to make friends first,” she continued.

“F-Friends?”

“Yes. I think it’s only right that people working in such close space should get to like one another. After all, we spend a third of our lives in this place. That makes us a part of each other’s lives, whether we meant it or not. Don’t you agree?”

“Oh!” Mitch’s eyes widened. Again he was glad that most of the desks around them were vacated for lunch breaks, or he otherwise would’ve felt even more self-conscious about his embarrassing blubbery stumble through this whole conversation with this stark-raving beauty. “S-Sure! Of course. I… I’d like that.”

“Maybe it would’ve been more proper of me to ask you for your friendship before I had you crawling around in the dust bunnies yesterday to fix my computer,” she said, resting her cheek on an upturned palm. “Could you forgive me for that kind of indiscretion?”

Considering the kinds of indiscretions Mitch had racked up, watching Lilina’s nylon-swishing soles dance with velvet light and scrumptious wrinkles eight hours straight per day for two months, he was pretty sure she could’ve kicked him hard in the balls for no reason, and he’d still be the guiltier party between them. It still baffled him how she could say things just a shade too peculiar to believe, things that might come off as flirtatious when spoken by anyone else with a voice as alluring as hers. Yet when Lilina addressed him, he knew it was only in total sincerity for precisely what she’d requested. She wanted friendship; maybe this was his way in.

“All his forgiven,” he joked back in a British accent, immediately hating himself for it.

“Fantastic,” Lilina responded with a chirp of low laughter, her gaze unbroken. “You did offer to help any time, as I recall. Maybe now I won’t feel too guilty to take you up on that. Anyhow, I suppose I should get back to the adoring public. Those wares won’t sell themselves.”

Mitch nodded like a bobblehead, too aroused and stupid-tired to come up with anything worth saying in farewell. So he just watched her marching gracefully away, her backless crimson heels dangling from each foot in midair for a gymnastic instant before slapping the leather strip back to her mesh-encased sole and stabbing the ratty carpet for the next strut. Out of necessity, Mitch had scooted all the way up to the desk to conceal his almost-omnipresent pants tent, which today was mostly due to the vague memory fragments of the bed visitor’s amorous voice and angel-kissed sole textures. But the more tangible presence of Lilina had lit a fire in that already-unbearable need, and now he found himself right back in the usual rhythm of sole-watching whenever he had a breather from the phones.

Rubbing his tired eyes, he guzzled another mug of coffee and pined after those exquisite underside-arch slopes. In a moment like this, separated by the tragically wide gulf of the aisle between their desks, Mitch found himself wishing bitterly for that same impossible power which allowed him to scrutinize “her” foot either from afar or when it was smothered up to his face in the dark, yet still spying thousands of details in every pore and flesh-furrow that together made up an underfoot tapestry of crotch-stiffening splendor.