Giggling, Angel pushed her way into the apartment, a plastic bag swinging from her arm. She was followed by Leigh, Sharon, and Maria.

“I brought reinforcements,” Lexie said impishly as she let Ellie go.

“I see that,” Ellie said uncertainly.

It wasn’t that she was upset with all the company, she was just kind of surprised by it. All of them looked excited as they looked at her with anticipation, which started to make her feel all warm and gooey inside. Yeah, she definitely wasn’t upset.

“Sorry to just invite ourselves over,” Leigh said, almost managing to sound apologetic. “But when you texted Lexie, she texted Angel about getting a corset from her, and we were all hanging out together....”

“And we figured we might as well come along for the ride,” Sharon said, her dark eyes sparkling.

Maria snorted and shook her head, her trademark messy bun wobbling but ultimately staying in place. “By which she means a stampede of horses couldn’t have kept her away.”

“Oh yeah, cuz you were so reluctant,” Sharon shot back, grinning.

“Well... thank you all for coming,” Ellie said, nervously rubbing her hands on the yoga pants she was wearing and hoping she didn’t sound as awkward as she felt. It was really nice of them to show up, but Ellie just... wasn’t used to this.

“We come bearing gifts and many opinions,” Angel said, holding up the bag she’d been carrying. “I brought a couple of corsets I think will look fabulous on you.”

Like Ellie, Angel worked from home for the most part, but her work was very different from Ellie’s. Angel had her own Etsy shop where she sold a lot of handmade pieces, although currently her business was really booming from the number of custom pieces subs and Dommes at Stronghold were commissioning from her. Ellie had actually designed the business cards Angel handed out there.

She was doing just fine with her graphic design freelancing, but she didn’t really have enough extra budget for the kind of corsets Angel made. Ellie got most of hers through clearance sales on big websites - three corsets for $100, that kind of thing. As far as she knew, Angel didn’t sell a single corset for under $100.

“Ummm...” Ellie tried to find the right words to say ‘that’s really sweet but there’s no way’.

Correctly interpreting the look on her face, Angel shook her head. “Oh no, no payment necessary. You’re finally scening with Mike, and that’s payment enough for me.”

Ellie knew Michael and Angel were good friends, but she didn’t really understand why Angel would consider that payment. Fortunately, Maria asked the question for her.

“How do you benefit from Michael scening with Ellie?” Maria asked, sounding amused. Even though they were all around the same age, Maria often seemed like the big sister of the group to Ellie.