Too late to reconsider

"Several... thousand?" She murmured to herself.

Realistically speaking, the return policy on sex toys, even unopened ones, was probably quite dire. And, even though they had all been purchased on the same night, the disparate packaging and brand names told her that returning even a quarter of them was going to be a pain. A quick browse of just the most recent ones on her laptop reaffirmed this notion.

"Lara, old girl, there's a saying about what one should do with a bed one has made."

Denial, even once recognized as the last **** heave of dying pride, was hard to overcome. She sorted the boxes idly, trying to stack them and move them in a way that made her surroundings navigable. Unfortunately, even with the best work she could give, given the circumstances, the boxes themselves and not the contents were prohibitively large. Though some of the contents probably were as well. Just adding to the reality of not returning the vast majority of them was the fact that, unless opened, she wasn't getting her room back. However, even if each box contained an... implement... only a quarter of the size of the box, she was going to run out of sorting room. She found her phone and messaged Winston.

"Does my room have any secret compartments?"

It took a moment for him to respond.

"Only if one behaves discourteously to the walls, mum."

"I need to find a room for all of this" Oh god, what was the word for it? "stuff."

"If I may suggest, the missus has so few dress outfits and goes to these events so rarely, she may find it more prudent to keep the "stuff" in the room closet and move the previous contents to a side room."

"Not sure I need all of this stuff in my personal closet."

"What you do with your stuff is your own business, I merely suspect that it would be less exhausting to move your dress clothes than the entirety of the boxes."

Winston, as was his job, was completely correct when it came to keeping a house organized. Having the... objects... out of reach was arguably the far more productive choice, but moving the multiple hundreds of pounds of boxes was a day-long exercise on a good day. Today, from what she had seen so far, was not a good day.

Tucked behind a sparse row of evening cocktail dresses dusty from underuse was a small dresser largely empty aside from a substantial collection of unworn shoes purchased in another moment of retail therapy. She took the dresses down and folded them on top of the dresser top neatly, then set them down in an empty laundry basket. Then, she pulled out one of the dresser drawers and dumped it out on top of them. When the dresser was half empty and the basket full, she waddled her way out of the room carrying it and took it to a spare room down the hall. Setting it down in the closet. She caught Winston in the hall as she stepped back out.

"Shall I note that you've taken my advice, mum?"

"Yes, Winston, could you have somebody sort the shoes into the closet? And have the dresses at the bottom washed, they've grown rather dusty."

"Absolutely, do you desire some help sorting the contents of the packages?"

She turned and started down the hall, "No, thank you, Winston."

Unfortunately, he followed close behind. "If the lady is so inclined, perhaps she would be willing to share what it is that she purchased this time?"

Luckily, Lara kept herself ahead of him so he couldn't see her flushing. "It's quite boring, I assure you."

"My lady, I assure you that nobody on this earth will be satisfied with such an answer. Especially not the staff who carried all of them up here."

She stopped, she had definitely seen whispers being passed around. "I suppose you're right."

"Of course, it's none of our businesses, but even a half-answer is inclined to keep any rats from intruding unwantedly." He said with an air of warning.

"I'm afraid the contents are... private. However, I suppose that only increases curiosity."

"If you so desired, I could help you to come up with a good cover story. It would help to know what it actually is... of course."

Lara squinted at him, the kindly old face was hiding an extremely obvious lie. Not that he wouldn't help her. If Lara needed a body hidden, Winston could have been trusted to eat it if he thought it might help the process. Loyalty was not the issue, curiosity was. Knowing what was in the boxes would have no bearing on his ability to come up with a cover, the kindly half-closed old eyes just wanted their own itch scratched. He knew that she knew the lie, he also knew that she wasn't going to attack him on it. It was a human reaction, and she needed his help in handling this with discretion more than any other person's.

She leaned in, whispering. "They're uh... let's call them... toys."

His brow narrowed, "I hardly see the need for secrecy over some hobby horses and toy trains."

"I think you know what I mean." She hissed.

He looked confused for a second, then, "Like a steely dan?"

"In so many words."

He cleared his throat and brushed himself off, "I suppose I am impressed the missus found enough different kinds of entertainment to rack up the bill that she did."

"The internet is a very dangerous place to the drunk and wealthy, old bean."

"You know, Lord Richard used to give his wallet to your mother before a night on the lash."

"I suppose that was quite smart of him, considering how I hear he used to drink."

"Not so, your mother was worse." He chuckled to himself, gesturing to a truly horrific rug that had cost a small fortune.

She grimaced, she remembered played on that rug as a child. After getting it messy, her father had laughed while her mother had been furious. It looked like sunk cost fallacy might have run in the family.

"So, what should we tell the staff?" Lara asked nervously, starting again to her room.

Winston fell in behind her again, "You have a problem with them knowing the nature of the items?"

"I rather dislike the notion of it getting out that the heiress of the Croft fortune risks being buried under vibrating molded silicone." She muttered, "Loose lips and all."

"Well ma'am, if I may inquire, what possessed you to buy so many items of that nature? Even if you used one of those per day, it seems as if you could go a full decade without repeating the use of one."

Lara wanted to bury her face in her hands, "Winston, I was absolutely pissed."

"Should I understand that you're not a sentimental drinker, then?"

It was almost teasing, she was shocked at just how insolent it was. If it was anyone else, most of them would be looking for other work right now. But Winston would be allowed to have his fun turning her cherry-red.

"I say, are you interested at all in helping me create a cover story, or did you just come to continue kicking my already wheelchair-bound pride?"

He tutted, "Sorry mum, it has been rather dull as of late."

"And I suppose this is terribly funny."

"I think if you can't see the humor in it, your pride is far worse than wheelchair-bound."

She took a deep breath, "Yes, I suppose it is one of the more embarrassing things I could have spent a small fortune on. Hence, my embarrassment."

He sighed, clearly she had taken some of the fun out of it. "Come on now, it could be worse. It's not as if you had donated all of that dosh to the Torries. There are far worse uses of one's money than things which bring you some joy."

"That's the sticky of it, I'm not particularly... like that."

He scoffed, "Oh come now! Drunk words are sober thoughts."

She closed the door to her room behind him, "You seem quite determined to test the notion of your being irreplaceable today. If anybody else said half the things to me that you have..."

He laughed, "Now you're speaking like your mother!"

She ducked into the closet and emptied the rest of the drawers of shoes into another waiting laundry basket. She could hear Winston puttering about in the room behind her, chuckling to himself. She shoved the basket out into the room, then piled some of the most obstructively-placed boxes onto the dresser and into the now-empty drawers. The proper opening and sorting would have to wait, but she could at least make her own room less of a fire hazard in the meantime. She was starting to work up a sweat, it was too hot and the Manor too made of last century's insulation for work like this, but once she was done with this initial part, the lighter stuff would be all that remained.

"I say," Winston poked his head in, brandishing the plug she had opened earlier and unwisely left sitting on her dresser. "Do I want to know who daddy or his little monster are?"

She lurched to her feet and snatched it from his hands. "Alright, Winston!"

She shoved the basket of shoes into his arms then pushed him out the door a little more forcefully than usual, then shut it behind her to escape the sound of his chuckling. Only when his footsteps disappeared down the carpet of the hall did she realize they had never discussed a cover story. For all of his teasing, she quietly trusted him to come up with one.

She slid the embarrassing little plug into the pocket of her bathrobe, then went back to moving the boxes to make a clear path in and out of the closet. When she was done, she straightened her stiff back and wiped the sweat that had built on her forehead. She could move around the room normally at this point, even shut the closet door if she so desired, but opening and sorting all of the boxes was still going to take multiple hours, even at a brisk pace. She needed a break, to focus, to re-center. She slipped back into the bathroom, almost tripping and slamming her face into the marble floor as she caught on another stack of boxes. The bathroom door wasn't going to close, but a path from the door to the shower and tub was mostly navigable. She groaned, setting all of the boxes on the floor up onto shelves and over things she wasn't going to use. She closed the door and stamped over to the shower. The color and shape of boxes was all but triggering a fight or flight reflex at this point.

She unfastened her bathrobe and went to set in on the hook, hearing it thunk against the wall. She reached into the pocket confused, then groaned again when she found the horrific plug again.

"You, in particular, are a pain in my ass."

The plug did not respond, though it occurred to Lara that the response might have been "That's what I'm here for."

She turned it over in her hands, despite the horror of the caption, it was inoffensive if tacky. It was extremely small for a "plug", leading Lara to believe that, whoever Daddy's Little Monster was, she was probably inexperienced with buggery. Even Lara, who had never tried experimenting with her back door, considered it to look small enough to not pose much challenge.

"Easy for you to say, you don't even know what I would feel like when inside." The plug seemed to respond tauntingly.

"Your cunning tricks won't work on me." She responded in her mind.

"Then why are you considering it?"

The little hunk of metal had a point. There was a certain... excitement to the notion of trying something new. This one especially was completely unreturnable.

"If you leave me out in the open, anybody could find me."

"A fair point, where would be the best place to hide something like you?"

"In your arse!" It cackled.

She imagined the plug as having a sort of thick cockney accent. Like a Dickensian chimney sweep. She also realized as she thought about this that she was personifying a sex toy.

"Right," She said aloud as she set the plug back in her bathrobe pocket. "That's enough out of you."

The plug continued to be unable to speak.

She pulled a towel from underneath a stack of boxes. A second later, she jumped as the sound of a box hitting the ground split the silence. She turned to find the culprit. It was a little black box with a company logo on it, clearly from a source with less respect for customer privacy. It was also dented now, so that was another one she couldn't return. She picked it up and poked the tape open with some tweezers, then ripped the lid with a pop. Inside was a loosely packed thin plastic sub-package. It was a set of black silicon rings, the picture on the packaging showed them wrapped at various points around a cock.

"Well, I don't have a cock..."

She would have to make a separate category in her closet for "toys that she lacked the gear to use". It could either be given away discretely or saved for an adventurous partner. She tossed the plastic container into the bowl of one of her sinks, then shook the box, feeling a weight concealed under some of the packaging. She lifted one of the pieces of foam to find a small bottle, not more than 4oz, of water-based lubricant.

"How nice of them to make it a bundle."

She quietly turned the little tube over in her hands, reading the back without paying attention to any of the words. There were two prevailing schools of thought in her mind, each with an unfolding web of mental progression in the wake. The first quietly acknowledged that most of the packages probably came with something like this. All in all, she would probably have enough lube to fill a small swimming pool by the time all was said and done. The second thought was, of course, that it felt like the universe was conspiring against her and trying to tell her something. She could hear the muffled voice of the plug taunting her from the bathrobe. She walked over to her robe and pulled it back out.

"Look, I'll take you both into the shower with me. I'm not promising anything, but we'll see where the afternoon takes us."

The plug remained silent, but she imagined it looking at her knowingly.

She turned the water on and slid under the spray. As she understood it, plugs were for more "long term" wearing than most other things. If she were to keep it in while sorting boxes, that would probably make the process a little more interesting. Of course, if anybody came in...

"They won't see me, mum!"

Well, yes, but she would know it was in there.

"You'll forget I'm even here, mum! Fella as small as I am, you'll get bored of me before anything else!"

She picked the plug up, "I told you that was enough out of you!"

"What're you gonna do about it? Shove me up your arse?"

"I could throw you in a drawer in some back room and forget all about you!"

"Me? Sure. But then where are you gonna put all my mates?"

"I... I can still return most of them!"

"Miss Croft, are you on the phone with somebody?"

Winston's voice from outside of her bathroom door made her jump.

"No! Yes! No!" She could feel her heart pounding, how much of that had been out loud and how long had he been out there? "Just... talking to myself. Do you need something?"

"It's not urgent mum, it's just that there have been more boxes."

Lara blinked a few times in confusion. "Did you say... more boxes?"

"You heard me right, it's nowhere near the deluge this morning but the mail truck has just left another small fleet of packages."

"But... but I haven't ordered anything else!"

"Perhaps not everything you ordered had such immediate shipping?"

She swallowed, cursing herself. He was right, of course. The only question was what percent had arrived immediately and what percent would spend the next few weeks trickling through her door?

"I suppose you should have them brought up to the closet with the rest. I'll be a little while longer in the shower. Once all of them are up, have my door locked. If I don't respond to a knock, leave whatever it is outside or have them text me."

"Very well then, am I to assume you'll be opening the packages?"

"I'll be seeing which of them I can return, then finding a place for the ones I can't."

"Understood, as you were mum."

She waited a moment, the sound of the shower drowning her usual habit of listening for his leaving footsteps. When a few seconds longer than she normally would have waited passed, she grabbed the plug.

"This is why I told you to shut it!"

"You know how to shut me up, ya slag!"

She grabbed the bottle of lubricant and popped the cap. "I'm not doing this because it's what I want, it's because it'll shut you up!"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

She drizzled the clear jelly onto the reflective surface, watching it cloud up and listening to the voice growing muffled with satisfaction. She pulled one of her cheeks aside and slowly brought the slick metal heart to her backdoor. When it brushed slimily against her rear entrance, her heart fluttered slightly and she felt an excited nervousness churning her stomach. She brushed it back and forth over the sensitive hole, teasing with prods but never trying to place it in. She took slow deep breaths, letting the excitement build in her body as she teased back and forth. Her heart was starting to pound again, pussy aching slightly as she worked herself up. Even with nobody around to see her, she could feel her face and ears flushing hot red. She pressed a little more firmly instead of stroking, feeling the shockingly immense pressure but also the slight breaking release of her pucker giving way to the slick intruder. She kept it at the threshold, savoring how it made her heart pound in her ears over the spraying water.

Winston's voice was right outside the shower door, "Pardon me, mum?"

She felt a bolt of lightning shoot panic painfully into her hot ears and down all the way to her toes. She jumped, body tensing.

"CHRIST! Winston!"

"Sorry!" She could hear him wringing his hands nervously. "It's just that all the boxes are up but you've had a call from one of the manufacturers, something about a delay at the canal."

She felt like her heart was going to explode, her knees wobbled but she did her best to keep still. "Is that all?"

The shower door opened very slightly, a pair of old hands offered a clipboard and pen through them. "I'm afraid you do need to sign for some of them."

She froze, this was not something she could do with one hand. Without any grace or circumstance, she pushed the plug in, exhaling a shaky long-held breath. She grabbed the clipboard and pen and left a slightly watery signature.

"You know, if I'd have been armed, you'd have been shot." She muttered as she handed the clipboard back out, then turned and shut off the water.

When she turned back, the old hands were holding a towel through the same hole in the door. "A weapon in the shower, mum?"

"You've clearly never bathed in the jungle before." She took the towel.

"That may be true, but you seem on edge for somebody not in the jungle."

"You merely scared me, that's all."

"As you will, mum."

This time, she could listen to his footsteps leaving her room, then the sound of her door closing and locking behind him. Even with him gone, she waited a few moments for her heart to climb down out of her throat. Brushing her towel over her pussy or ass made her stomach twist in excitement.

It was definitely bigger than it looked once it was inside. The narrow neck of it between the abhorrent bejeweled label and the thick bud that actually plugged rested comfortably and kept her from the feeling of intense spreading that the application had given, but the thick bud inside of her applied such low, constant, and stimulating pressure that it felt less like an active sexual experience and more like a perpetual state of arousal not strong enough to be truly distracting but not minor enough to be truly ignored. Any time she wasn't in the process of doing something, if she was left alone with her thoughts, it seemed to buzz in her ear like an incessant and unkillable mosquito. If you weren't under the stress of other people being around you, it was a pleasant low high to ride indefinitely. It was teasing, toying, not pleasing or irritating. If she brushed anything against her pussy, it became a dominant thought.

She stepped gingerly out of the shower, if she wasn't careful, her thighs would rub together and send little burning bolts through her pussy to her stomach. That combined with the constant displacement in her ass made her adopt a sort of waddle. As she slipped her robe on and stepped out into her room, she slowly worked out a walking motion that looked more or less normal.

She stepped into the closet, finding a new set of boxes to throw off normal movement. She sighed.

"The sooner we start, the sooner it ends."

She stepped over to her laptop on the table, grabbing a notepad. Scrolling back in her history, it took a.. concerning amount of time to find the end point in the adult toy browsing. When she got there, she started opening her history a few tabs at a time, ready to make notes on which websites had a stated return policy. Considering how much redundancy there had been and how many were purchased from some of the same sources, it allowed her to rule out several tabs without having to open them. In about an hour, she had the definitive list of what she could return and what she couldn't.

The results were... not good.

There were three or four manufacturers who would accept returns if the package was unopened, of those, only one had non-discreet packaging, everything else had to be opened to see what was inside. Other than that, the policy of no refunds period was... ubiquitous.

She stepped over to the closet and hung up her piece of paper above the light switch, in big block capitals it listed the name of the one package company she could send returns to. The colorful boxes stood out pretty easily... all two or maybe three of them.

"Lara, old girl, there's a saying about what one should do with a bed one has made."

Whoever made that rule could go fuck themselves. What if you were drunk when you made it? What if, even made, it was a shitty bed?

One of the boxes tumbled in the background. She could sulk, but the problem wasn't going anywhere.

She took a mental stock of the dresser and drawers she would be using, stopping just short of physically labeling them. One for toys she had no use for, like the ring set currently sitting in the bowl of one of her bathroom sinks. She wasn't sure how many of those there would be, the hour she had taken to list all of the sources would be extended to four or five if she sought out every order, but realistically those would be the fewest. They would get one of the two small drawers on the top row, in the drawer next to them, all of the little buzzy things. Likely expansive in number but space-efficient. In the four drawers below, a drawer for anal toys, then small inserters, then large inserters, then large and buzzies at the bottom. Anything else... she'd find a place for.

She picked a small box off the top of the dresser as her inaugural first step, tearing it open, she immediately lacked a place for it.

Inside was a small set of metal clamps with soft rubber tips, made to look like jumper cables, for anybody who was into MI6 **** play, apparently?

"I didn't set a drawer aside for... clampy ones..."

"Maybe I'm the only clampy one?" The gold chain hanging between them seemed to whisper, "Put me on and it's like I was never here."

"That's not a very long-term solution." She grumbled back under her breath.

"Who cares? You love it when your nipples get pinched."

Lara quietly bit her lip and opened her bathrobe slightly, sliding one of the pinchers over her nipple and shutting it. She pulled in a quick little breath. The clamps were almost painfully tight... almost. She put the other one on her other nipple and shut her robe again. Like it was never there. The chain dangled silently against her skin as her stiff nipples begged for mercy.

She made a mental note that the little buzzy drawer was for all of the little things, not just the buzzies. When she took these clamps off, they would go in there. She grabbed another little box off of the top, inside was a case of milky white lube.

She didn't have a lube drawer. She stepped out of the closet and opened the drawer of her bedside desk, it was mostly empty aside from office supplies. If she was lucky, she wasn't going to need more room.

She stepped back to the closet and opened another small box. Rope. She had room for rope! Though the soft red fabric would look very out of place next to her coarse tan climbing gear. Another box, lingerie and fuzzy handcuffs.

She needed more drawers.