Page 1 of Regal Feather
ONE
ev
“Hello, Everest? We’ve set all the clothes you ordered in the first dressing room to your right, and you’re welcome to check out anything else we have in the store.” A woman with a tag that said her name was Emilia waved me, Sergio, Jaime, and Danny in with the brightest customer service smile. “Should I bring you a drink? Coffee, tea, champagne?”
“We’re good, thanks.”
Translation: my nerves were already frazzled enough. I didn’t need stimulants or alcohol thrown into the mix.
“Perfect, I’ll be by the desk if you need anything.”
I nodded, and Emilia made herself scarce.
Sergio bounced on his feet. “I didn’t know you could close down a store in like, real life.”
I grimaced. “You can with the high-end ones.”
It had cost quite a bit, and I didn’t usually throw around my name or my family’s money like this, but every now and then, I convinced myself that it was okay to take advantage of some of the privilege I’d been born into.
“Cool.”
I cleared my throat, fidgeting now that there wasn’t a stranger to keep up appearances for. “Thanks for coming with me, all three of you.”
Sergio was usually game for any plan that meant being around people and getting out of the house, but Jaime and Danny usually needed more cajoling. The latter, especially. He’d joked a few times that the main reason he came to do stuff with us was to keep León, his Dom, happy. I was pretty sure it wasn’t fully true, but shopping was definitely not his idea of a good time. The three of them were still the guys I’d grown the closest with from the local BDSM club I’d been a member of for years now, though, and I wouldn’t have been able to set this up if they hadn’t confirmed they’d come with me.
“There’s a lot of lingerie here,” Jaime noted. They cocked their head to the side. “Anything you want to tell us, Ev?”
I grunted.
To be fair, I should’ve told them more than “will you pretty please come clothes shopping with me?”
“I’m trying something out.” Without my saying so, my voice went much softer, almost a murmur of its normal volume. I hated it. Licking my lips, I gulped down the nerves as I squared up my shoulders. “I have tried it before? At home. But it wasn’t anything like a potential full wardrobe change.”
Not that I had bought enough clothes for that, but maybe there were enough for this season, and if it all worked out and nothing imploded, we could make a thing out of this and come back when the fall/winter season was out.
“Sure, okay.”
Danny just shrugged. Sergio looked distracted, checking out and touching everything because he was that kind of person. Jaime was the only one who kept their focus on me. I tried to ignore it—they were the most observant of the bunch, and the one I was the most intimidated by. It had started out when Imet them at the club, and they got me all flustered, teasing me for saying I was technically cis when I hadn’t even figured out if there was a name, a label, or anything else for the way I itched to present a certain way.
Maybe I was still intimidated because I hadn’t found all the answers yet, but I wanted to think I’d have more of them after today, so… Yeah.
Trying on new clothes, it was.
New clothes that were mostly skirts, dresses, and tops that were made for women. And lingerie. Lots of lingerie. I didn’t unveil the curtain to show them that, though. They’d see it when I wore it at the club, but it felt too violent to do it here, and it didn’t escape my notice that Emilia must be listening in, at least every now and then.
New clothes that had my heart racing, climbing up all the way to my throat, every time I opened the curtains that separated the spacious dressing room from the more narrow hallway they were waiting on.
It didn’t matter that they were being nice. Supportive. The first time I came out wearing a dress that cut off above the knee and had off-the-shoulder sleeves, Sergio asked if he could touch it. He’d pouted because he thought the fabric would be softer. That had been the most dissent I’d gotten.
It was the third two-piece set I showed them—because I was terrible at coordinating outfits, so sticking to two-piece and matching sets had seemed like a safer option—when Jaime went back to cocking their head to the side.
“So, question.”
I gulped. It was instinctive at this point when they were around, as much as I liked them. “Yeah?”
“Is this a gender thing, a kink, a…”
“It’s…” I cleared my throat. I’d planned to talk about it more when we were back at my place—after I revealed the secondreason for the outing today, but if I’d learned anything about Jaime these past few years, it was that not only were they a pup within the club, they were like one with a bone outside of it when they wanted answers to something. “Kink, but I like presenting fem. It feels right, like I’m shedding off a skin that isn’t mine. Not that I want to take it any further than that, but…”
