Act of Exposure (4 page)

His lips
touched hers as he murmured his answer. 'Only my body. What about
you?'

She did not
hesitate.

'The same,'
she lied.

The editor had
told Lance not to spend any more time spying on the Red Devil Club,
but Lance did not always do what his editor told him. Earlier he
had seen the two women come out, had thought of how beautifully one
of them moved - so seductively that he gave scant attention to the
other.

He would have
followed them if he'd been off duty, but to his mind, he was on
duty, and that duty was in making notes about who went up and down
the stairs that were lined with black painted railings and led to
the dark red door at the bottom.

His editor
might have ordered him away, but he knew his prey well, knew their
habits, knew where to find them. Until his editor or the man above
him gave explicit instructions as to whom he was to expose, he
would do his own thing, and at this moment in time that meant
hanging around the entrance to the Red Devil Club, searching out
sinners.

The man who was dressed as a woman parked his car in a place
he told her would be safe from radio bandits and joyriding drogues.
Abigail looked around her. Empty streets, a few brick buildings, a
railway arch that looked as if someone had scooped it out of the
embankment with a soup spoon. Sodium street lights garnished the
pock-marked road and pavements with hints of tangerine.
This
, she thought,
is an odd place to leave something sleek and
shiny, but it's his car, his problem
. All
the same, she couldn't help but comment. 'There's no one around
here.'

'Correct. It's
empty of people.'

He's right
, she thought as she slammed
the car door and cast her gaze over their immediate surroundings.
There were no buildings; no pubs, clubs, houses, or blocks of
concrete flats. The road was lined with fences of corrugated tin,
spiteful wire, and crumbling stone walls. Behind such dubious
compounds, wrecked cars were piled in rusting ziggurats, and around
their base, guard dogs barked and howled.

'I know a
place,' he told her. His fingers were warm and firm on her hand,
and she trembled. It was as if the warmth and the firmness were
heralds of his masculinity, and that masculinity was diffusing into
her flesh. A host of familiar feelings gathered between her legs
and hung there like molten lead. Later, that heaviness would
disappear, that thrill of illicit fear would turn to sensual
excitement. Later - when they got to where he was taking her.

She stumbled,
so he let her hand go and slipped his arm around her waist. He led
her over wet cobbles. Their footsteps, even their breathing,
sounded hollow, echoing in the emptiness. Long and black, their
shadows fell across the streets, the tin and the yards. Behind
their makeshift barricades, the dogs in the scrap yards barked more
excitedly.

Excitement was
also in Abigail's mind. Who was this man to assume she was his for
the taking in some dingy, dark hotel room?

Sidelong looks
at his face, his height, revealed nothing. Good looking, dark
haired. Was it blue eyes? Sodium street lights were notorious for
mutating natural colours. She thought they'd been brown in the car.
But then, he thought hers were black. She smiled to herself. A
mask. Another mask.

None of it
mattered. He looked good, he smelt good, and her body was on fire.
She wanted him, this man who had been dressed as a woman. Another
mask.

Thinking about
that and wondering at his reasons for being in disguise, she
glanced down at the silk trousers that skimmed her companion's
feet. Instead of high heels, he now wore a pair of white trainers.
They looked new. All the same, they did nothing to enhance the rest
of his outfit.

He seemed
suddenly aware that she was studying him. His gaze met hers. Yes,
his eyes were brown. Her thoughts went back to the white trainers.
She laughed.

'What are you
laughing at?'

'I hope they
don't object to your dress in the place we're going.' She glanced
pointedly at the offending articles sticking out beneath the
swirling silk of his trousers.

He took her
point and laughed too. His eyes sparkled as they passed beneath a
streetlight that leaned at an odd angle. She liked the way he
laughed, liked his eyes and the way his hair left his forehead. He
squeezed her waist, his hand moist and warm. Then he kissed her as
one friend would another. 'I doubt it. Clothes might maketh the man
in the Red Devil Club, but round here, it's money alone that opens
doors - and no questions asked.' His voice was as warm as the palm
of his hand, its moistness diffusing through the fabric of her
dress.

The neon sign
that creaked above the door said Railway Hotel. The sign was ugly
in design, and garish in colour; the transparent pink of plastic
sandals.

A round man
with a bald head took the money and slid them the key. He did not
look up from the paper he was reading.

By craning her
neck slightly, the woman who was Jezebel, Carmel, and Abigail,
could see it was open at a picture of a busty blonde. Below it the
caption read "Tracy Figures Big".

A mathematician?
she wondered,
or has she just passed her maths A level?
Neither
, she decided with a wry grin. She
just happened to have big tits and was probably screwing the
editor, an editor who purported to be the upholder of public morals
if his front page headlines were anything to go by.

The room was
clean, but basic; a bed, a table lamp, dressing table, one chair.
The bathroom door was slightly ajar.

As the net
curtain billowed before the open window, a goods train rattled by,
its wheels squealing as it inched slowly along the huge loop that
happened at that particular place in the rails. The noise it made
drowned out any other sound. Neither spoke. It was pointless to
try.

The train
passed. The man bent and switched on the table lamp.

'Turn it off.' Abby said the words softly, but hinted at
passion.
This is Carmel's
voice
, she said to herself.
This is the voice of Jezebel Justice, a woman with
black hair and black eyes who only comes out at
night
.

The room would
have been completely dark, completely mean, except for the amber
glow of a sodium streetlight just outside the window. Just the hint
of its golden light lifted the decor of the room and made it look a
little richer than it really was.

But her
surroundings were of no real consequence. It was this man who
intrigued her. Who was he, what was he?

Not that he
had been the first she had accompanied to a seedy hotel room.
Indeed, wasn't that the attraction of this side of her life, this
escape to the unknown, the improbable, the dangerous?

Memories of
other such occasions came to her mind and aroused her body. She had
opened her legs in the back seat of a car, felt the coldness of a
glass window against her backside as a hot tongue had licked her to
distraction in some dark shop doorway. They were memories to
cherish in the other side of her life, the side that was far
straighter and far narrower than the one she lived as Carmel.

Her eyes
locked with the man who had been dressed as a woman. There was
passion in them, a dancing excitement.

At that point
she could have asked his name, but she did not. Like her, he had
another life, another world that he would not wish to divulge in a
shabby room at the Railway Hotel. They were here for sex, and the
night was fading fast.

'So,' she said
in a low, husky voice. 'Let's see if you really are a man. Expose
yourself, whoever you are. Take off your clothes.'

The words
seemed to hang in the amber darkness of the room, then were drowned
as another train rattled by. Sounds were not needed anyway. Vision
was enough. One by one, item by item, his clothes dropped to the
floor. No matter that the remains of make-up still clung to his
face. As his earthy, masculine smell reached into her senses, she
shivered. Even without that smell, his body and his rigid erection
proclaimed what he truly was.

Everything was
exactly as she wanted it. The night had been right, this room was
right, and this man, she decided, was worth having.

A faint hint
of diesel drifted through the open window, but was drowned in his
scent, the chemical eruption that was drawing the female body to
the male. It was as if small, invisible hooks were piercing her
flesh, pulling her closer to him. But those hooks did not hurt.
They only tingled, only tantalized.

Slowly, as if
she were peeling the skin of a fig away from its sweet, soft flesh,
she eased the black dress from her body, let it fall to her ankles,
then kicked it to one side. As the last rattle sounded from the
passing train, her other clothes lay with it.

Strange
, she thought to
herself,
that only his eyes are exploring
me, and yet, I feel pinpricks of sensation running over my skin. My
nipples are hardening, and a warm juiciness is pouring from my
vagina like melting jam, toffee, or honey - anything that melts
when it gets warm
.

With eyes
shining, and her breath racing in short, sharp, impatient gasps,
she stared at his penis. Made golden by the orange light that
sliced through the window, it reared, like a magic wand from a bed
of dark, tangled hair. Large, thick, virile. A pleasure to hold. A
pleasure to have.

She gulped,
swallowed, tingled from breast to knee bone. She did not want to
rush this.

Slowly. Slowly. Savour each moment
,
she told herself.
Memorize each detail;
sight, smell, and touch
.

Her fingers
followed the curve of his muscles, the soft scattering of body
hair, the dark indent that ran from his chest to his penis.

'You have very
dark pubic hair,' she said, her voice hushed, her gaze resting on
his springy, tangled curls.

His look
mirrored hers.

'And yours is
very fair. Strange, when the hair on your head is so dark.'

His comment
jarred; sounded a warning note. Normally she shaved her pubic hair
off completely. But of late she had been busy. Under pressure to
perform, and perform well, she had let it grow. After all, her
legal career came first. Her erotic dancing was purely a
sideline.

Wary of what
he might be thinking, she was immediately alert to the question in
his eyes, the slight frown denting his eyebrows. She must not allow
him to dwell on that feature. It could so easily give her away.
Much against her inclination, she had to speed things up.

The gap
between them narrowed until the tips of her nipples brushed the
hardness of his chest. As his lips met hers, she ran her hands from
the thickness of his neck down along his shoulders. How good they
felt, how hard as the blood of his desire rushed through his veins.
Belly met belly as the warm firmness of his palms swept down her
back until he held her behind in his hands. His fingers curved and
dug into her buttocks at the point where they met the tops of her
legs. Breath mingled with breath as tongues danced in a parody of
courtship. She clasped her hands at the nape of his neck as he
lifted her by her buttocks and carried her to the bed.

His closeness,
his smell, sent a shockwave through her system. She nuzzled her
nose against his armpit and drew in the scent of maleness. She had
a need to drink it, drink him, eat him, even. She also had a
feeling of wanting to drown in his warmth, of wanting him to fill
her, to crawl into her, penis first, and make love to every organ
in her body.

On the bed,
his mouth left hers. Not to stray. Not to speak, but to explore her
body with his lips and his tongue.

There was no
sound except for hushed murmurs of pleasure from him and from her;
the whisper of his hands and body passing over hers, the sound of
the net curtains rasping in the breeze.

He sucked her
nipples, tickled their sensitive nubs with his tongue, traced
circles around their halos of pale, pink flesh. She mewed with
regret when his mouth left them, showed her regret as she covered
them with her own hands. His tongue licked long and pleasurably
over her belly; tantalized her navel, then swept in slow but
enticing circles down towards her open legs.

He paused, his
thumbs caressing her clutch of silvery hair. She sensed he was
looking at it, wondering again at the stark contrast between that
and the hair on her head. He must not wonder too long, must not be
allowed to guess.

Tensing, she
wriggled her hips, moaned, and heaved her buttocks up from the bed
so that her scent would rise and veil his face. The strategy
worked. As his tongue divided her most hidden flesh, she arched her
back, closed her eyes, and truly became Carmel, the woman with
coal-black eyes, black hair, and an appetite for sex on the wild
side of the city.

Her mind, as
well as her body, wallowed in the sheer sexuality of it all, the
sordid surrender to whatever this man wanted to do to her, because
whatever he wanted, she wanted too.

'No,' he said
at last, and pushed her hands away from her breasts. 'Let me do it
to you. You need do nothing to me. Nothing at all. Tonight, you are
my toy. By receiving pleasure, you will give me pleasure.'

She did not
argue. Somehow, the words fell deep inside her and interlocked with
her basic nature. Shivers of excitement ran through her body. She
was vulnerable, but willing.