‘Sid?’ Sarah queried.
‘Bloke I told you about,’ Bowle answered her. ‘Photographer.’
‘I don’t remember, I’m afraid,’ she said as she left the office.
‘You know,’ he explained. ‘You said you might like to pose for Boobie Babes, and I said I’d introduce you.’
‘I did?’ Sarah responded, very sure that she hadn’t.
She cast an imploring look at Giles as they entered the lift, but he merely shrugged.
‘I – I’m not really sure I’d have the confidence for that sort of thing,’ she said, not wanting a confrontation.
Bowle didn’t answer immediately, but pressed the button to hold the door as a pair of young women made a dash for the open lift. Both were exactly the type who made Sarah feel most self-conscious: slim, smart, with tastefully applied make-up and dyed blonde hair, so alike they might have been sisters. They squeezed into the lift, thanking Bowle and giving Giles appraising looks that brought Sarah jealousy, but more pride, until Bowle began to speak again.
‘You don’t need confidence, darling, you need boobs, big boobs.’
He smacked his lips as he spoke, his eyes fixed on her chest. Sarah found herself going scarlet as one of the girls giggled, to which Bowle responded immediately.
‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at, darling. I’ve seen bigger fried eggs than what you’ve got.’
‘Cheek!’ the girl answered, and smacked his arm.
Bowle laughed, and Sarah forced a smile, trying to be part of what was obviously no more than bawdy good humour. Giles put his arm around her shoulder, at which Bowle did a rapid double take, speaking again as they left the lift.
‘What’s all this then? You two an item?’
‘Yes we are,’ Sarah confirmed.
‘Good for you,’ he responded. ‘You’re a jammy bastard, Giles.’
He finished with a laugh and slapped Giles on the back as they left the building. Sarah wondered if he would say something about Rebecca, but a male voice called out from behind them and Bowle stopped. Sarah turned to find a man coming towards them, stocky and white-haired, with a mild disarming smile and kindly eyes – kindly eyes aimed directly at her chest, perhaps, but she would have been surprised if they hadn’t been.
‘Sid, there you are, you old bastard,’ Bowle said, greeting the newcomer. ‘You’ve met Giles doublebarrel, and this is the girl I was talking to you about, Sarah, ace artist and A1 boobie babe. Sarah, this is Sid, who’s been taking dirty pictures since before you were born, maybe since before your mum was born.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Sid extended a hand towards her.
Sarah took it, smiling, but wishing she could stop herself blushing, and wishing too that they wouldn’t be so casual about her body. Determined to say something, she was still trying to find the right words when Sid spoke again.
‘Hugh didn’t do you justice, Sarah. You’re perfect.’
‘Thank you,’ Sarah answered, ‘but you know I’m not.’
Sid shook his head.
‘Uh, uh. Here’s the thing, see. Show a guy some girl who looks like she’s been picked up down King’s Cross with her tits out and unless he’s got a freak for that sort of thing he’s going to reckon: so what? She looks like she spends half her time with her tits out, so it’s no big deal. Show the same guy a girl who looks like she works in an office, or she’s his best mate’s bird, and she’s got her tits out, and he’ll love it. Now you, you look right, you’ve got it all there, but you look far too brainy to be showing them off in a jazz mag, so it’s a real treat. I’m going to need to do at least two sets here, a big one for Boobie Babes and another for Hotties at Home.’
‘I haven’t actually agreed to have any pictures taken,’ Sarah pointed out.
‘Come on, Sarah doll, don’t make me look a prat,’ Bowle put in as Sid gave her a puzzled look.
‘Um …,’ Sarah began. ‘Giles, could you help me out, please?’
‘If she doesn’t want to do it, she doesn’t want to do it,’ Giles told Bowle, but then glanced at Sarah. ‘I don’t see why not, though. You love showing off.’
‘Giles!’ Sarah squeaked. ‘That’s private!’
‘You don’t have to worry about us,’ Bowle said. ‘We’re trade. Sid and I must have seen enough boobage to sink the Titanic.’
Sarah didn’t answer, rendered speechless by their casual discussion of her breasts, and the assumption that merely because the two men had seen a lot of other girls naked the exposure of her breasts was inconsequential. There was Giles’ revelation of one of her most private fantasies too and, worst of all, the sudden fluttering in her stomach and tightening of her sex at the thought of showing herself bare in a men’s magazine.
‘Think about it over a couple of jars,’ Bowle suggested, rubbing his hands together as he angled for the pub door.
There were only two outside tables free, and Sarah went to one, Giles joining her as the others went inside.
‘What a pair of old perverts!’ Sarah protested as she sat down.
‘I thought you’d love it,’ Giles answered her. ‘You said you –’
‘Not you too! That was private, and while we were making love. Anyway, don’t you mind?’
‘Not at all. I’m proud of you.’
‘So you’d like several thousand men ogling me naked!?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Why not? My last boyfriend used to go nuts if another man even glanced at me.’
‘Probably insecure.’
‘That’s true enough,’ Sarah admitted.
‘Why not go for it?’ Giles urged. ‘I’d love to see the results.’
‘Pervert,’ Sarah answered, her resolve weakening, only for another objection to occur to her. ‘What if my Dad sees, or my brothers!’
‘Do they read Boobie Babes? If they do, they’d be hypocrites to object to you being in it and, if they don’t, then it doesn’t matter.’
Sarah made a face.
‘I’m not sure Dad would see it that way.’
Bowle emerged from the pub, clutching a bottle in one hand and four glasses in the other. Sid was behind him, with a second bottle in a bucket of ice, which he set down on the table as Hugh spoke.
‘Champagne, to celebrate your syndication. You can do the honours, Giles.’
‘You’re just trying to get me drunk,’ Sarah said, half joking.
‘Usually helps,’ Hugh admitted as Giles began to work on the bottle.
Sarah hid a sigh. All three of them wanted to get her breasts bare for the camera, even her own boyfriend, and as usual she found the pressure hard to resist. Rebecca would have laughed in their faces. Céleste would have slapped them. Sarah was going to end up doing it.
The cork popped under Giles’ hand, emitting a froth of Champagne bubbles that made Sarah think of an ejaculating cock. The image made her sex tighten again as she thought of a young man masturbating over a picture of her naked, his cock in his hand, hard and virile as the spunk pumped from the tip and spattered his belly and the magazine, maybe all over her picture, unable to control himself for his excitement.
‘Cheers, boy and girls,’ Bowle announced, taking up the glass Giles had put down in front of Sarah.
She took the next and raised it in return, still thinking of spunk as she put the bubbling liquid to her lips, so much so that she was surprised to find it sharp and fresh instead of salty and hormonal and ended up choking on her mouthful. Giles patted her on the back, but only succeeded in making her cough up Champagne down her front. Hugh Bowle laughed.
‘Well, you’re going to have to take it off now, darling.’
‘That’s a thought,’ Sid put in, ‘we could start you off getting your top wet. You’d look great.’
‘Will you all please shut up about my breasts!’ Sarah snapped, finally losing her temper as she tried to mop up the spilt Champagne with a serviette.
‘We’re only kidding about, Sarah doll,’ Bowle answered her.
>
There was a period of embarrassed silence, which quickly replaced Sarah’s irritation with guilt. The men began to discuss sport, leaving Sarah to her thoughts for a while as she sipped Champagne and wished that she was better at imposing her personality on situations. Whoever she met, whatever the circumstances, she always seemed to end up allowing others to make her decisions for her, or basing her own decisions on what other people would think.
She drank her Champagne and a second glass. Giles opened the next bottle and half of that had gone too before Sarah reached a decision. She would do it, and enjoy it, not because they wanted her to, and certainly not for the money, but because she liked to be exposed. She would do it, but she would do it her way, following one of her favourite fantasies.
‘Okay, I’ll pose for you,’ she said, speaking suddenly before common sense could get the better of her, ‘but I decide how we do it.’
‘Best leave that to the pros, love,’ Sid suggested, and would have continued, but Sarah cut him off.
‘Sorry, but we do it my way or not at all. I don’t want to be deliberately exposing myself, I want it to be accidental.’
‘What, like Peeping Tom stuff?’ Bowle asked.
‘No,’ Sarah explained, ‘more as if I’ve had an accident of some sort … maybe torn my dress or something. The sort of thing that always used to happen to Carrie, or Annie Fanny …’
She was blushing as she said it, and trailed off, unable to continue. Sid was looking puzzled, but Hugh Bowle was grinning from ear to ear.
‘I’ve got you,’ he said. ‘It’s simple, Sid. She goes out. She loses all her clothes. She ends up all embarrassed.’
‘That sounds fun,’ Giles put in, and squeezed Sarah’s thigh under the table.
‘All we need is some sort of story,’ Hugh said reflectively. ‘I know, how about you’re walking and you spill something down your top, just like you did then, only more so.’
‘That works,’ Sid put in, ‘and we’ve got to get her in a wet T-shirt, can’t miss that.’
‘She could be near a stall selling cheap tops,’ Giles suggested, ‘so she decides to find somewhere private to change.’
‘In a phone box,’ Hugh added.
‘Not very private, a phone box,’ Sid pointed out.
‘She’s in a flap,’ Hugh retorted. ‘She would be, wouldn’t she, with her tits on parade in the fucking street! Wouldn’t you love? Tits out in a phone box is great, ’cause you can show ’em squashed up on the glass and that, and she knows that people might see, so she’s in a real hurry.’
‘Only her bra’s all wet,’ Sid put in.
‘Yeah, so off that comes too,’ Hugh went on with rising enthusiasm, ‘only the new top’s too small, so she’s getting in a right flap, wriggling about and everything, so her titties are jiggling about like crazy.’
‘Nice,’ Sid agreed, ‘but that would be better on film.’
‘So let’s do a DVD,’ Hugh suggested, ‘and stick it on the cover of Boobie Babes as a bonus, with Sarah on the cover and all. If that doesn’t give us an extra ten thou on the circulation, I’ll buy the returns myself.’
Sarah sighed, openly this time. Her attempt to take things into her own hands had lasted rather less than a minute.
Five
With the trip to Paris booked for the Friday, Hugh Bowle wasted no time in arranging for Sarah’s film to be made. Giles was full of enthusiasm, also Mak, and with nobody to disapprove of what she was doing she found herself swept along by events and very quickly beyond the point at which she might have backed out. Just two days after agreeing to play out what had been one of her favourite fantasies for as long as she could remember, she found herself standing in an East End street, absolutely terrified.
It had seemed really quite easy the night before, as she lay in Giles’ arms. While they masturbated each other she ran through the fantasy, telling him how much more exciting it would be if she had to go fully nude. He’d been in full agreement, and had come in her hand as she described herself trying to pull up a pair of impossibly small jeans over her bum, with nothing on but a pair of minuscule panties already at breaking point. Now it was real, real to an extent far beyond what she’d expected.
From what Hugh Bowle and Sid had been saying, she had expected everything to be done in a studio. It wasn’t, it was to be done in the street. They had explained why: that the budget would be impossibly large for a convincing studio set and all the minor actors and extras they’d need. It was much cheaper, and easier, to simply play through the scenario for real, the only problem being to select a quiet street where there was an old-fashioned phone box in which she could do her strip. The rest was straightforward. As Hugh had pointed out, there was no law against a girl spilling beer down her chest, or filming it.
Giles was now talking to Hugh while Sid checked the light and adjusted his camera, but broke away and came over to Sarah, his face lit up by a happy wicked smile.
‘We’re ready if you are,’ he said, ‘only Sid’s getting in a flap over how to get enough on your top to make a really good show. This is how we do it. Instead of you just spilling your drink, I’ll be sitting with you at an outside table with a jug of Pimms. We argue, you throw your drink over me, and I throw the jug over you. Okay?’
Sarah managed a nod.
‘It won’t be real Pimms of course,’ Giles continued blithely, ‘just water with some fruit and stuff in it. We’ll drink the real Pimms.’
They were already outside the pub they’d chosen, the Sparrow, an old-fashioned East End pub with benches out on the pavement, safely tucked away off the main thoroughfares and just beginning to cater for City tastes. Sarah went to sit down, trying to behave as if nothing unusual was going on as Giles and Hugh went in to get the jug of Pimms. Sid was already filming, and she realised it had begun.
‘Here we are,’ Giles said as he put the tray down and passed her a glass. ‘Smile, chat, act natural. We haven’t started arguing yet.’
‘OK,’ Sarah answered. ‘What shall we talk about?’
‘Sex?’ he suggested. ‘It might help if you were turned on.’
‘That’s true,’ Sarah admitted and took a swallow of Pimms, draining nearly half her glass.
‘Last night was good,’ Giles said. ‘I think I could watch you pulling your knickers up and down for ever.’
‘No you couldn’t,’ she answered, ‘you’d come. Anyway, it was really unfair of you to make me do that. I felt so embarrassed.’
‘I know,’ he told her, ‘that’s half the fun. It’s going to turn me on when your knickers come down in the phone box too.’
‘They’re not,’ she answered, wondering why he had raised his voice. ‘We’re only doing my top, aren’t we?’
‘No, every fucking stitch is coming off, you unfaithful bitch!’
He had screamed the last words, and as he did so he hurled the full contents of the jug into her face and across her chest. She gave a shriek of surprise as the chilly liquid hit it, her mouth going wide in an involuntary gasp, just in time for Giles to push in half a lemon that had been floating on the Pimms.
‘So you can just fuck off!’ he yelled and turned on his heel.
Sarah was left dripping, too surprised to react for a moment as Sid zoomed in on her, first her face, then her chest. She looked down in horror. Her top was soaked, her nipples poking up through the wet cotton and every detail of her rounded lacy bra visible as well. Her jeans were wet too, and she could feel the cold liquid soaking through onto the skin of her thighs and into her panty crotch.
‘Great shot,’ Sid said happily, taking the camera from his eye. ‘Sorry about that, love, but it’s hard to get a really good look of surprise on a girl’s face if she knows what’s coming. Now, slap your hands on your titties and run off. Action.’
She obeyed, too numb to resist, and again, and a third time as he made sure he had plenty of film of her wet breasts. People had stopped to look, while she was shaking badly and her nipples wouldn’t
go down, all helping to make her feelings ever stronger. By the time Sid was satisfied, she was on the edge of panic, and immensely grateful for Giles’ fleece.
Five minutes later she was wishing she was still sitting outside the Sparrow with her top wet, or just about anywhere else. The stall they had chosen was the end one of a row in a side street, manned by a surly-looking woman who had grudgingly accepted twenty pounds not to argue with Sarah when she came to buy her clothes. Without the fleece, but with one arm clasped over her wet breasts, Sarah didn’t need to act as Sid called out for her to start the scene.
‘I – I’d like a top please,’ she managed, ‘and some jeans. Bra and panties if you’ve got them.’
‘Looks like you need ’em,’ the woman answered, ‘but I ain’t got a bra in your size. What are you?’
‘Thirty-six F,’ Sarah admitted. ‘Please, can we be quick?’
‘Can’t do you a bra,’ the woman insisted.
‘That’s okay,’ Sarah answered, snatching a pair of frilly-edged white panties from the tray marked 10, sure to be too small, ‘and these, and these.’
She’d picked the clothes they’d decided on in advance: black low-cut slim-fit jeans she had no chance of getting her bottom into, and a garish Union Jack top with a picture of a bulldog smoking a cigar on it, cut for a man and utterly inadequate to hold in her breasts.
‘Thirty-one fifty,’ the woman said, holding her hand out.
Sarah passed over the notes with trembling fingers. A lot of people were looking, and she was forced to take her arm away from her chest to pay over the money, leaving the full wet bulges of her breasts on show until she could snatch her purchases and run for cover. Sid followed her wobbling bottom with the camera, then made her do it again so that he could film from the front.
‘In the can,’ he said as she reached him. ‘Nice one. Now for the big finale.’
‘You were great,’ Giles put in, handing her the fleece once more.
Sarah grimaced, wondering how she could ever have wanted to be exposed in public and yet unable to deny her rising feelings. Now came the phone box, public striptease, a thought that made her tremble so bad she could hardly stand up. Giles guided her, past the stalls and around one corner, then a second, to where an old-fashioned red phone box stood in a corner between two walls of dirty red-brown brick. A railway embankment rose behind the wall, and the street was empty, a tightly packed line of cars providing extra concealment from anybody who happened to look out from the houses opposite.
Strip Girl Page 7