Act of Exposure (2 page)

They had come,
and so had he.

Relief spread
over his body as his semen spewed forth from the head of his member
and lay in a milky pool on the floor. He sighed. It was over - at
least for him. After tucking himself away, he zipped up his
flies.

Something on
the screen caught his eye and made him wonder anew. Nigel, a slim,
graceful man of forty or so, was standing up now. So was Carol.
They were gazing spellbound at one another as they ran their hands
in sweeping caresses over each other's bodies. There was real
affection in those looks, real emotion.

Lance undid
his shirt and ran his hands over his own chest. He frowned. No
matter how well he copied their movements, he could not feel so
moved that his expression reflected theirs. For the very first
time, he wondered how it would truly feel to run his hands over a
woman's body and to have her touch him that way. To his own great
surprise, he had a tremendous urge to escape his celibate state and
once, just once, taste the fruits his mother warned him against and
his newspaper decried.

His mind was
made up. He would find someone to suit him. Someone aloof from the
seduction of others; a cool, confident woman. Not an actress. Not a
television personality. Someone professional, intelligent and as
engrossed in her work as he was in his.

Leaning
forward, the light from the screen accentuated the hollows above
his deep set eyes, the grooves on either side of his nose and
mouth. He screwed up his eyes and studied the dark-haired,
dark-eyed woman.

No
, he decided,
he didn't want a woman like her
. For
some reason, the fact that she was dark and the fact that he had
watched her seemed to go hand in hand.
No.
Not a dark woman
. He would go for a fair
one, the fairer the better. And she would have to have blue
eyes.

Now, where
, he asked himself,
would he find her?
Prerequisites raced through his head. Not a prostitute, he
told himself, not someone who had to be paid for it. The woman he
would give himself to had to be beautiful, but she also had to be
willing to have sex because she wanted to, and not because she was
paid to have it.

On the other
hand, he had to be aroused by her. So far, no woman had had that
effect on him. True, he took these secret videos of women having
sex with willing partners, but, in all honesty, he was not exactly
turned on by the women themselves - not in the flesh anyway. He
took his pleasure from them purely through the video screen, at a
distance, so to speak.

Yes. He had to
find someone who aroused him, who appeared impervious to the
approaches of others - almost as if she were waiting purely for
him.

Besides the
white wig and black gown of a Queen's Counsel, all the dancer wore
was a pair of thigh-high black boots, and a mask that covered her
face. The mask was made of something pale mauve and had a faint
sparkle. The boots were suede, the gown - naturally - was of
silk.

She carried a
black rod that was about two inches in diameter, and four feet
long. At first, she passed the rod behind her back, and hooked her
arms over it so that her naked breasts pouted forward like two
round and ripe grapefruit. The crowd roared their approval. Then
she wriggled her hips as though she were getting out of some item
of clothing that was loath to leave her flesh. The audience fell to
an instant hush. A few groaned or mewed as if they too would like
to shed their clothes.

Satisfied she
now had their full attention, the dancer turned her back on the
glistening faces, slid the rod up under her gown and pushed the
black silk up towards her shoulder-blades. Then she bent over so
that those watching could appreciate the firm curve of her behind
and the sultry shadow that peeped so provocatively from between her
legs.

Judging that
they had seen enough of her rear, she turned to face them. To a
roar of approval, she slid the knob of the rod over the lips of her
sex, then clasped it between her legs. Folding her arms behind her
back, she held the black gown away from her body.

As she exposed
the extraordinary perfection of her high breasts, her narrow waist,
and her flat belly, she swayed her hips from side to side;
backwards, forwards, slowly, then more quickly. As she moved, so
did the rod, and as the rod moved, she ran her tongue over her
lips, and moaned deeply, throatily into the microphone.

The effect was
electrifying, and she knew it. She knew also that mentally, each
man there was making love to her, embedding his own rod in her as
she writhed beneath him. He wouldn't be asking whether she liked
what he was doing to her, or what her personal preference was:
missionary, rear approach, oral or anal. He wouldn't even be asking
her if she liked her nipples being rubbed. Selfishly, he would
notch her up as just another hot pussy he had screwed who had
gyrated like crazy on the hardness of his giant - no - to him,
unique erection.

Because of the
mask, she was only a body. Each individual could indulge in his
personal desire to his heart's content. The wig and the gown added
an extra dimension; a belief, even, that the law itself was not
above the delights of the flesh.

To the woman
who danced beneath the discerning gleam of a dozen spotlights, the
mask was something else. Behind its anonymity, she took in the
florid faces, the fish-bowl eyes, and the slack, open mouths of her
spellbound audience.

They see my body, and that is all they see. But I see them
clearly. I see them at their most lustful, their most foolish, and
their most vulnerable. I see them for what they are, but they never
truly see me
.

Eventually, to
tumultuous applause, her dance was over, the lights went out. Like
something that was not quite real, a fanciful apparition existing
only in over-ripe imaginations, she melted into the shadows, just
as dreams vanish at dawn.

She stripped
and refreshed herself in the privacy of her room, warm streams of
soapy water taking her sweat and her dance from her body. After
showering and dressing, patting her coal black hair, and reapplying
her make-up, especially her bright red lipstick, she slid back the
bolt on her dressing-room door.

Immaculate in
pale blue suit, paler shirt, and white satin tie, Archie Ringer,
who owned the Red Devil Club, walked straight in. His mouth smiled.
His eyes were the same colour as his suit, but less solid, less
appealing. His voice was slow, monotonous - like a car engine on
tick-over.

'Carmel,
darling, I do not know why you bother to lock the door. You know I
am not interested in your body, and the boys will stop anyone more
vulnerable to your charms from barging in.'

The boys were
Trev and George who were in their late thirties, wore satin shirts,
split to the waist, and had bodies that were far more to Archie's
liking than hers was. The fact that their predilections were not
heterosexual suited the sort of establishment this was. They were
effective because, with their sexual preferences, they could stand
apart from the more general clientele. Added to this, they gave
impeccable service, and paid outstanding attention to detail.

'I like my
privacy, Archie.' She didn't look at him as she spoke. Instead, she
surveyed herself in the mirror, then patted into perfection her
glossy black hair, which was cut in a neat page-boy style that
swept her shoulders. With her small finger, she neatly scraped a
smudge of red lipstick away from the corner of her mouth, then
pursed her lips as if she were kissing the mirror, or the
reflection of herself.

Archie
shrugged, his shoulder pads bunching as if they had minds of their
own and were nothing to do with the narrow shoulders beneath them.
'Please yourself, darling. I take it you will be coming into the
bar before you go?'

She smiled.
Not at him, but at herself - the one reflected in the mirror. 'Once
Jezebel Justice has left the stage, I always come into the bar
before I go.'

She didn't
need to do that. Archie's place was no sordid hole where the exotic
dancers were also expected to sell their bodies. That particular
choice was their own. It was a club of rich fabrics, immaculate
service, and richer clients. The woman Archie knew as Carmel
enjoyed that part of her night almost as much as she did her
dancing.

From her
favourite spot, she could watch those who were wealthy enough to be
admitted, watch them as, sometimes nervously, they enjoyed their
drinks, the floor show, or the company of people with similar
minds, and similar bank accounts. These were the people who came in
through the front door which was down a narrow set of steps below
black-painted railings and a crumpled pavement. Building, railings
and pavement had all been there since the eighteenth century.

Upstairs was
another part of the club, a place reserved for the more favoured
and famous members of the Red Devil Club. It was a place only
whispered of. Entrance was granted only to a few select people. So
far, the graceful young woman with the black hair and bright red
lips had not been invited up there, though she wasn't really sure
she wanted to be.

Upstairs
remained something she only knew of, and from all that she had
heard, she felt for the moment satisfied enough to gaze at the
crowd on the lower level.

Some faces
were familiar. Some too familiar. These she kept away from,
although, like her, they would not want their two lives mixing -
their professional life and their life of pleasure. She knew who
they were, but they did not know her; such is the benefit of a
double disguise. She was the dancer, Jezebel, who was also Carmel.
But she was also someone else, someone she wished to keep hidden
from those at the Red Devil Club.

Because she
had worn a mask during her act, no one could be sure of who she was
- that Jezebel Justice was Carmel. Someone extremely beautiful, but
remote. But they did look, they did admire. The more heroic
ventured to ask her if she wanted a drink, company, or a late
supper in one of the rooms upstairs - and perhaps to join the
'special' club up there.

'I never go
upstairs,' she told them, and they retreated before the crispness
of her voice, the hard look from her coal-black eyes.

But still they
stared. Still they came and asked the same questions. But then, how
could they resist?

To match her
hair, she wore a small black dress that barely covered her breasts
and only skimmed the cheeks of her behind. Black suspenders crossed
her creamy flesh and bit into the tops of her sheer, black
stockings. They showed and were meant to show from beneath the hem
of her dress. Her legs seemed to go on forever. The whole effect
could have been cheap, blowsy, but instead there was a girlish,
almost innocent quality about it.

As she raised
her glass to her bright, red lips the girl known as Carmel to
Archie Ringer, and Jezebel Justice when she was behind her
crystal-bright mask, eyed the men - and the women - who jostled for
drinks, conversed, laughed, and looked her over. And all the time,
she looked for a face, a physique that would make her evening
perfect.

Carmel was
Abigail by day, but although Abigail was successful in her chosen
profession, there was a side of her that needed release, needed
adventure of the more sordid kind. But then, the Red Devil Club
catered for people like her. All the same, she never came here as
herself. Most people trusted the club's reputation for discretion.
That's why the rich and famous went there. Being a barrister by day
- and by inclination - made her more wary, more apprehensive of the
turn such a climate could take. Not content with changing disguise
once, she was Jezebel behind the mask, and then Carmel of the black
hair, black eyes and crimson lips when she sat at the bar. By day,
as Abigail Corrigan, herself, she was fair-skinned, her hair
silvery blonde, her eyes very blue, and her lips, cleaned of any
trace of lipstick, were a pale, enticing pink and of a shape that
had no need for outline or colour.

Within the
Inns of Court, she was regarded as single-minded, highly
professional, aloof and cold. It was said, and she knew it, that
she had nothing to do with men because she was frigid. Such
knowledge amused her. Their attempts to seduce her were
perfunctory. Not for her the candlelit dinners at some bijou
restaurant, a weekend away at some Torquay hotel, a sweating, noisy
copulation with a soft-fleshed colleague. Sex, to her, had to be
laced with excitement, even danger. And she liked powerful men with
hard bodies and a yen for variety of venue and partner. But
experience had taught her to be careful.

Slowly she
cast her gaze over those assembled. What would her friends and
colleagues think, she wondered, if they knew that for one night a
month she was Jezebel, the woman behind the mask, and Carmel, the
dark beauty who radiated sexuality?

Because she
was so single-minded in her work, her natural sexuality was stored
up. It bubbled inside her as it got hotter until it reached boiling
point and she half expected steam to start shooting out of her
ears, her nostrils, her mouth, but most of all, out of her sex
organs, so hot, so demanding it was.

The dance
excited her. She left the power of law and the precision of court
address and the politics of chambers behind her the minute she
stepped up onto that stage. From then on, she was as much at the
mercy of her dancing as her audience was. This was a world and an
occupation in which she needed to release her own emotions, exploit
her own weaknesses.