"It looks perfect on you," the girl said, smiling. Sarah knew she was trying to make a sale but could also detect honesty in the girl's voice. Honesty and just a tinge of envy. Sarah took a deep breath, straightened the dress over her hips and belly, turned to regard her left side once again in the mirror. She nodded at herself and then at the girl.
"I'll take it."
"You won't regret it," the girl said as she helped Sarah unzip the emerald dress. Sarah sensed the girl's slight pause as her fingertips brushed over the skin of Sarah's back, saw her eyes widen just a little. It was the usual reaction, one Sarah grew more than accustomed to. It still made her want to chuckle every time.
"Could you please gift wrap it?" Sarah asked as she closed the door of the changing booth. She noticed the girl once again regard her body for a fraction of a second longer than another woman would probably be comfortable with, then snap back to reality and with a smile say, "Absolutely, miss." The girl was far from drooling over her but Sarah knew she'd be on her mind for the next few days.
As the door closed behind her Sarah had to bite her lip so as not to brust out laughing. She turned towards the mirror inside the booth, glared at her reflection disapprovingly. "Very bad girl, Sarah. Ian would not approve."
She shrugged. "He'd probably be too busy trying not to overtly stare at my legs to notice anything."
She put her business suit back on, checked herself in the mirror.
"Self-control, girl. Self-control," her reflection told her. She turned and exited the booth.
The girl was at the register, waiting. As Sarah passed through the store, she felt the other customer's eyes drift towards her. All were women and all of them did it unintentionally and would dismiss her from their minds the moment she left the store. Well, almost all, Sarah checked herself as she noticed one middle aged but still very attractive woman, as the modern parlance would put it checking her out. Down, girl, Sarah thought, to herself as much to the woman.
The dress was in a glossy black cardboard box, wrapped in white and green ribbons. Sarah gave the salesgirl her credit card and had to fight the urge to let the glamour slip a little more. Then she left the store, pulling up the glamour before she stepped into the busy street.

Everyone she passed wouldn't give her a second look, if they even bothered to notice her properly at all. To all people on the street she was just another of those upscale, snobbish women who paid more attention to their hair and clothes than anything else and probably had an open tab at the best plastic surgeon. The glamour was good, working perfectly even after almost a century. So perfectly actually that most of those who did pay some attention to her would find her, precisely because of that 'living the Sex and the city life in overdrive' impression she gave, obnoxious, uninteresting, perhaps even repulsive. She didn't activate the glamour fully, ever since the last time she did so and it backfired, making people abusive towards her and force her to dodge a few thrown bottles and cans.

Moderation was the key, as with most things in life. To her great misfortune.

Sarah wasn't made for moderation. She had been born with a wild spirit into a society that was more than a little repressed, to use an understatement and just as she was finally dealing with the painfully drab life her parents wished for her an...event transpired. More than a century later, she still could not remember the details of that day. Perhaps precisely because of the passage of time. All that she knew for certain was that she came down with a fever and that everyone and especially her believed she was to die soon. It was not a fever. An - entity was still the only word that she used to describe it - entered her mind, threatened to devour her soul, mind and spirit.
She fought it with her willpower alone and she won, cast it out. But it had damaged her nonetheless. It changed her irreversibly. It took a while until she discovered what she now viewed as the spoils of her victory. She was resilient to injury as well as disease and was able to train her body beyond human peek ability. Her mind was sharper and clearer, once the Craving was finally leashed.
And the minds, how they suddenly became open books to her, if she put an effort of will into it. And if she put a little more, her playthings. But no more, she stopped with that a long time ago, grew sick with her own casual disregard for the free will of others.
Then of course, there was the way her body changed. Reflecting the hunger on the inside it became desireable on the outside; it was still her body but her hair was now a lusher, deeper red, her skin the pale of alabaster, her eyes the blue of the sky, her curves more supple. She enjoyed it at first. Then she grew to despise it, after the Craving began to take its toll upon her spirit.
It was not amusing and Sarah would feel her teeth grit just a little every time people (those few that she told the truth about her condition) heard about her nature for the first time and then give that amused little smile, their minds racing at the thought of a human being giving herself entirely to the pursuit of pleasure.
She would tell them then of the Craving, of a behemoth that would not be stopped, a horrifying complete absence of control. The Craving. There was no other word more fitting for it than that. Craving with a capital C. A burning, screaming, howling desire to have it all here and now, more, more MORE!
She would tell them about the hunger that could not be sated, so irrepressible she would stuff herself with anything edible just to fool her stomach while at the same time her taste buds screamed for something new, something strong, something interesting. She downed a cup of ink once in utter desperation, just to quiet the demands of her taste buds, just so that she may have a moment of peace and then just moments later lay curled in a ball in her own sick as her tongue reveled in the acrid taste of her vomit mixed with the salt of her tears as she wept and screamed for it all to stop.
She would tell them about the myriad sounds that had flooded her world once the fever passed and the complete inability to shut them out. Try as she might, she could not concentrate just on one and any attempt to drown out sounds with a single noise only brought on the unbearable desire for more. She would hear it all, all the time; the horrible, agonizing awareness of the cacophony the world played soleley to torture her, even relishing her own screams. She would have made herself deaf had she not feared that the sounds would not stop even then.
She would tell them about her eyes, how they desired the colors and the lights of the waking world, of the almost physical pain which darkness caused her.
And the touch, the ecstasy of each touch, each caress, each scratch, each bruise, each tear, each kick and each kiss.
She would tell them how on the first day after the fever she descened to the dining room for dinner with her family and how just three days later she lay in an alley behind a whorehouse, her skin raw and bloody from the beating she begged a drunken sailor for, every part of her body screaming in agony, every sense wailing, hungry. It was as if her senses were a bottomless pit and her only purpose in life was to fill them.
But she learned how to control it, after a long time, possibly going mad in the process. She could not stop being what she was, but she could control it. Be moderate. She trained herself, slowly and excruciatingly painfully, to relish the world without giving in to blind hunger of the Craving. Relish every new sight, sound, taste, touch but not give in to the ravenousness.
Ever since she met Ian, she learned also that it helped if you focused on just one person.