“I will have time to do any adjustments if needed, but now?” The older man’s hands were clasped in front of him. “Show me what you have learned, apprentice. Let’s see if you are ready to surpass the master.”
“OK,so the changing rooms in here are diabolical,” Fabian told me, directing me into what looked like an impromptu little room with a sagging curtain that could be pulled across the doorway for privacy. “I’d love to say it’ll be better backstage, but it won’t be. It’s madness, pure and simple.”
“You’re not reassuring me at all.”
“Me either, babes. Me either. Now, are you going to be OK with me coming in here as you get into it? The dress is a little fiddly in design. I’ll show your alpha how to help you into it the day of the show, because you do not want to be getting dressed backstage. Tits and bits flying everywhere. Something for everyone, really, except everyone’s too busy silently screaming inside to enjoy it.”
“Fabian.” I put a hand on his arm, and he blinked, feeling the curious sensation of talking someone else down off a ledge, when I had just about made myself a permanent home there. “It’s going to be OK.”
One sharp nod, that was all I got.
“More than OK,” he promised. “You’re going to love this dress, Sage.”
Damn him,I did.
An old-fashioned full-length mirror on a stand had been set up in the change room, so I was able to see all of the work he’d done clearly. Being busty was difficult for designers. They were curves they had to adjust for in a design, which was why most high fashion models were relatively flat chested. How could they tailor a garment for each individual set of breasts? For those that sat high and those that hung lower? For those that swelled and swelled like mine, dammit, or much more modest busts? Plus, not every plus-sized woman had big tits either, which made things difficult, but Fabian? He’d structured the plunging bodice like he’d spent his life holding my tits, getting to know their exact placement and size. The fabric was pleated, gathered in tight at the shoulders, but somehow not bulky with that, then it stretched across each breast, the push of them through the fabric revealing more of the different layers of green. Then he’d nipped it in again, just under the bustline, a subtly beaded band drawing attention to the narrowest point on my torso. Fabian moved behind me, fussing a little about the way it was sitting on me before picking up what I thought was a long ribbon detail on the back.
“This is where you see the magic happen,” he said.
He pulled on the strings, and I felt the fabric on the back and at the waist cinch in, but not painfully so. The front bodice remained unchanged, the graceful pleats intact, but the strings? I felt like I’d lost inches as he pulled, fitting the bodice exactly to my body.
“Henri’s gonna shit when he sees this,” Fabian said with a slightly worried look. “It’s not what he believes in. He wants to tailor each garment to each person, and his work is fucking amazing as a result, but I…”
He let out a sigh, then met my eyes in the mirror.
“How did you feel when he was finishing off those fittings? What did you think when you saw the dress in the mirror?”
“I…”
Why did I feel so reticent in saying it? Fabian wanted to know, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked. He’d also spent all this time making the most beautiful dress in the damn world, so why couldn’t I just say it? Because I heard my mother and her damn voice in my head, squashing me down and stopping me up, preventing me from just letting it out.
Except I was a whole grown arse woman and I wasn’t Mummy’s little girl anymore, if I ever was.
“I felt beautiful.” I nodded, testing the words in my head and feeling that this was true. “Or that I had the potential to be with the right makeup and accessories.”
“That’s what I want.” Fabian’s face lit up, making him look even more ethereally beautiful. “I get what Henri is doing and I feel like I’m shitting all over his traditions, but…I want everyone to have that experience. To pull on clothes, right when they are usually feeling low-key traumatised, and have the same damn experience you had—feeling beautiful, perhaps for the first time.”
He waved his hand then, as if to dismiss everything he’d just said.
“I’m not going to get amazing marks for my collection. It’s not edgy, it’s not deconstructing the idea of fashion. Instead, I focussed on all the ways technology, fabric, cut, and construction can be used to make a garment fit an individual, any individual, better. Something with mass-market potential, because damn, this bitch needs money.”
Something he didn’t realise he was about to get.
I felt like a dick waddling through the fashion building and back to Fabian’s workspace, and that only intensified when we returned to find we had quite the audience.
“What the bloody hell are they doing here?” Fabian hissed, but I think that was just to himself. There, perusing the wall of his sketches, was a group of four men in very sharp suits.
Alphas.
I looked up at Fabian, catching a brief moment of longing and need flash across his face before he schooled it smooth, but whatever questions I might have were quickly smothered by Beau’s response.
“Jesus, Sage…”
He made it sound like looking at him hurt me, and there seemed to be some pain in his expression as he stepped closer but not too close. The dress fanned out in an extravagant skirt, and he couldn’t sully those delicate layers with his foot, but he wanted to. He sucked in a breath, his eyes bleeding silver as his hands formed fists, anything to stop him from reaching out and grabbing me.
“Hm…I think this dress is alpha approved,” Fabian said with a smile.
“Ach…” Henri stepped forward, and when he did, the alphas turned around. His eyes were on me, but theirs? They seemed to look at Fabian like they were starving wolves and he was a juicy marrow bone. Henri skirted the dress expertly while taking in each of the details, lifting my arms with a gentle touch and then circling around the back. “And what is this?” I felt fingers tug at the ties that had winched me in at the back.