I opened my ancient vinegar-brown till and plucked out a note and a couple of coins. ‘Here you go.’ I passed him the money and for a second our hands connected. The briefest of moments when heat from his flesh seeped into mine and created a sizzle of sensation up my arm. It had been a long time since I’d touched a handsome man and every erogenous zone in my body went on full alert.
But the connection was over in an instant and he turned, weaved past a table of odds-and-sods and a selection of old TVs and disappeared out onto the street.
I sat with a bump and fanned my face with my puzzle book. Phew, he was a hottie. If I was ten years younger, he’d have been just my cup of tea for getting naked, sweaty and down and dirty with.
After nipping into the backroom for a glass of water, I set about sorting the DVDs. They were all pornographic with a variety of either lewd or suggestive covers. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d watched something explicit, and as I set them out on a high shelf behind the till I wondered if I might borrow one, take it home and remind myself of what a good fuck looked like.
Full of Tristan didn’t appeal, though The Gardener’s Best Tool was a possibility. I sifted through the other titles, Spanked, The Blushing Bride’s Darkest Desire, His Best Performance. Which one to choose?
The male on the cover of His Best Performance caught my eye. Tall, dark hair, sensual mouth with an indentation in his bottom lip.
No way.
Bloody hell, was it him? My hot customer!
It couldn’t be.
I studied the cover more closely. It absolutely, definitely was him. Those eyes, high cheekbones, broad shoulders. OK, I’d seen him fully clothed and on the cover of His Best Performance he wore only a pair of swimming trunks – tiny, tight, yellow – but I recognised him beyond doubt. I swallowed a lump in my throat. What was beneath his clothes was nothing short of beautiful. Golden chest, defined abs and a tantalising trail of hair from his naval to the waistband of those itsy-bitsy trunks.
Behind him a woman reclined on a sun-lounger, her arms tossed above her head and a towel carefully placed on her naked body to cover the juncture of her thighs, though her full breasts jutted towards the sun. She was the picture of bliss with her eyes shut, back arched and parted mouth upturned in a smile. He’d obviously used the cock I could just decipher the outline of, to give her exactly what she wanted and then some.
My heart thudded. I could hear my pulse whooshing through my ears. I glanced at the door half expecting to see him watching me through the glass.
He wasn’t.
Without another moment’s hesitation, I slipped the DVD into my handbag between my purse and a paperback. There was no competition as to which porn film I would be taking home tonight. It could only be His Best Performance. I just hoped it lived up to my expectations.
I glanced at a grandfather clock I’d been trying to sell for three years. Good, it was nearly time to shut up. A heat was flooding my pelvis and my nipples were tingling. For once I was looking forward to something other than EastEnders on the TV tonight.
* * *
I re-checked there wasn’t a crack in my curtains and hit play on the remote. My darkened living room flooded with light. The movie prelude was a bright sun rising from a black horizon. I skipped forward a few frames. The movie began and I was deafened by a piano tune that accompanied crashing waves.
After turning down the volume, I took a sip of my drink. The gin was sharp on my tongue, a delicious bitter assault on my tastebuds. I was all about my senses tonight. I was hoping Jared – I knew his name now, it was written in bold letters across the top of the box: ‘starring Jared Letterman’– would give me a little bit of the experience that naked pool lady had enjoyed.
The movie started, a set-up about a rich but bored woman with a movie-executive husband. Jared – in the movie he’s known as Dirk – turned up for an audition at her lavish Hollywood home only to find the husband out at work.
Within minutes the action was getting steamy. I gulped at my drink and shrugged out of my cardigan as Jared stepped out of his jeans. Seeing his naked body did funny things to my insides; they were tumbling and heating, swelling with a hunger for something I’d lived without for too many years.
Before long, the glamorous wife and Jared were shagging. At first in the pool, then the hot tub, and finally they performed oral sex on each other on the lounger which led to her riding him like a world rodeo champion.
I stared at his face, his cock, the rippling muscles on his back and buttocks as he threw himself into his tasks. He was perfection, every single inch of him exactly how a man should be. As the film came to an end – Jared being offered the starring role in the next big blockbuster by her unwitting husband – I found I’d slipped my fingers beneath the waistband of my skirt.
A need had grown, a desire for pressure and stimulation. My breaths were coming quick and as I pressed on my clit my knees flopped open and my butt-cheeks tensed. Quickly I rewound to the sun-lounger scene, Jared licking the woman’s pussy, making her squirm and squeal and clutch at his hair. Staring, unblinking, I imagined it was me that he was fucking with his tongue, just like that.
Rotating my fingers, I canted my hips upwards. I wasn’t gentle; this was about satisfaction and letting my imagination fly me away on a wonderful fantasy. To have a man as insanely beautiful and talented as Jared sucking on my clit, thrusting his fingers into my pussy, was an image that had given me wings.
Soon I was coming, just as the woman on TV shouted that she was in her loud American voice. I upped the speed and gripped my left breast with my free hand, the way Jared was doing to her.
I spiralled into bliss, my clit throbbing and pulsing. I wanted to shut my eyes, close in on myself, but I didn’t. Instead, I kept them wide open, staring straight at Jared as he slowed his ministrations and wiped his forearm over his shiny mouth.
‘Oh, oh,’ I panted, slipping down the armchair a little. My spine like dust, my thighs trembling.
But only one thing was going through my mind.
Had he meant to leave that DVD in my shop?
* * *
The next morning business was quiet. An elderly gentleman enquired about the grandfather clock but grunted when I told him the price. A woman who visited regularly with fine pieces of jewellery accepted thirty pounds for a gold bracelet with a butterfly clasp. She gripped the notes, her eyes moist and her lips a tight line. I decided to put the bracelet to the back of the cabinet so only the most observant of punters would spot it, then gave the little girl standing quietly at her side a mint from my jar.
I was just about to switch the sign at the front of the shop to CLOSED and retreat to my back room for a cheese sandwich and a Cup-a-Soup when the door opened.
‘I’m shut for an hour,’ I called, my head still dipped over the glass-topped drawer.
‘So do you want me to flip this sign for you?’
A flush swarmed over my chest and up my neck. I would recognise that voice anywhere. Especially after listening to him on my TV last night.
I shut the drawer and straightened, trying to look unflustered. Then watched Jared flip the cardboard sign hanging on a piece of putty so it read OPEN to the inside of the shop.
‘What do you want?’ I asked, heat travelling over my scalp and flaming onto my cheeks.
He sauntered up to the desk, removing his shades and poking them into the ‘v’ neckline of his black T-shirt. ‘I need to buy one of my DVDs back. It shouldn’t have been in the pile.’
‘Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to come back later. I’m closed now, for lunch.’
‘But it won’t take a minute. It’s the one called His Best Performance.’