Victoria's Secrets

Each and every day started this same way.

Most women would have hammered this into a three-minute routine by now. Out of the shower, a quick stop at the bathroom counter to apply deodorant, and then a short walk across the bedroom to her dresser to slip on underwear before getting dressed, drying her hair, applying a smattering of makeup, and then heading out the door.

Her live-in boyfriend had certainly mastered this morning routine. Minus the makeup and hair drying part. He kept his hair so short that it dried before he finished rinsing out the conditioner.

But she steadfastly clung to her habit of spending five to ten minutes in front of her open underwear drawer, staring into the piles of silk, lace, cotton and lycra underthings. Completely naked, skin still slightly wet from the steam of the shower and the rivulets of water streaming from the hair she had yet to dry, she predicted the course of her day and her mood by the soft mounds of black, white, navy, purple, pink and orange before her.

She could most certainly predict the course of each day based on her collection of Secrets.

The day's events flowed from the decisions she carefully made each morning. Days meant for average accomplishments - a busy day at work with little collegial interaction, followed up by a dinner of leftovers, for example - called for a nude bra and comfortable cotton underwear that would quietly match the muted bra. A thong if she planned to wear anything but jeans.

More average days, with a meeting or two at work, followed by a trip to the grocery store, a quiet dinner and an evening curled up with her boyfriend watching a made-for-TV movie called for something sensible but not so astoundingly boring. A black string thong and a black lycra and cotton bra. On the average days she hoped the day would end in nakedness next to him, perhaps the black would switch to red or blue, but her underthings would retain the conservative sexiness that she favored on most days.

Some outfits or days called for white - her boyfriend always seemed to enjoy watching her undress on those days. He said the white bra and matching satin thong made her look angelically naughty. Not something she really understood, truth be told, but she knew the white always seemed to turn him on. White days usually were not so bad.

Of course, the occasional days when she awoke feeling peculiarly aroused posed the biggest problem. The sensible underwear days, and even moderately sexy underwear days, usually offered little additional pondering to the five to ten minutes she spent gauging her expectations for the day. However, on those other days, figuring out how sexy she wanted to look to anyone happening to have eyes on the inside of her clothes taxed her mind and body.

Typically, she had much to choose from, and more often than not, the sexy underwear she wanted to wear would not work well with her clothes. The shock red satin G-string with the rhinestone circle joining the straps in the back often stuck to skirts when she walked, causing a funky bunching above her butt. The ocean blue mesh thong worked well with just about anything, but the matching push-up bra sometimes made her feel more chesty than she felt appropriate for the day's events. And some of the underwear sets she owned made her feel so sexy and turned on that she could hardly concentrate on anything those days, like the light purple polka-dot set she bought recently that caused his eyes to nearly jump out of his sockets when he had first seen her in it.

(She smirked with fondness at the thought of the previous Tuesday morning - he had gone out of town the previous weekend and would come home that night. She had spent the weekend feeling unusually aroused and desperate for him. That morning she had slipped into her favorite pair of black underwear - a slinky little black thong with a small rhinestone embellishment on the strap just to the left above the little triangle of satin that covered her closely trimmed hairs. She loved the way the string straps hugged the tops of her hips before dipping back down in the back to a second small triangle of black satin, punctured by a tiny eyelet, that sat just between the tight swells of her butt. As she slipped it on, she fast-forwarded in her mind to when she hoped he would remove it with his deft touch, and just as she finished slipping it on, she could feel the sexual tension in her muscles return in full force. Her left hand moved to the dresser top to steady herself, and, after a moment's hesitation, her eyes closed and her right hand slipped downward and underneath the rhinestones that hardly sparkled in the low light. She arrived to work 45 minutes late that morning.)

In the shower earlier, she had thought that today would be a nude bra day. But the recent memory of the past Tuesday made her slowly rethink the day.

Something in the air suddenly made today different.

Still naked, she padded across the room to her nightstand, where an ornate red phone sat. Her sister had given her the phone a few months earlier as a birthday present. It seemed a strange gift at the time, but it fit perfectly into the room, and she often came to her bedroom now to make phone calls, knowing that more than anything, she simply wanted to use her red phone.

Picking up the receiver, she dialed the number for her office. No one had yet arrived this morning, so she left a voicemail in the community mailbox stating that she did not feel very well and would probably feel well enough to come in that afternoon.

Walking back over to her drawer, she wondered what had changed in the 10 minutes since she had gotten out of the shower. Certainly she did not feel sexually starved after yesterday, when she had worn the polka dots with full awareness of how the day would conclude.

Looking again into her drawer, she spotted the other birthday present that had seemed a little unusual at the time. Another underwear set, a gift from her boyfriend, but this one all in black. A black lace push-up bra that gave her breasts an amazing fullness, the most ridiculously little black lace thong she had ever seen, and, the coup de grace, a black lace garter belt, complete with dark black thigh high stockings. He had told her he fantasized about her walking up to him wearing such a get-up and taking full control of the situation. She had never put the full thing on, though she had worn the bra and thong a few times.

She suddenly felt a rush of desire to feel desired.

She returned to the nightstand, and, picking up the phone, dialed the number to her boyfriend's cell phone. He had left for work a half-hour earlier, and probably was half way to his office by now. He answered on the third ring.

"I can't talk right now," she told him, "but I need you to turn around and come home. Right now." She hung up without giving him an opportunity to ask questions.

She walked back over to her dresser, and two minutes later, was snapping the last of the garters into place.