Along for the Ride

He pushed the magnifier out of the way and spun his chair to the workstation. Snatching for the mouse, he opened up his calendar to check events for the following week, to keep his mind off Zoë on the front page again. God, they loved her. The paparazzi followed her everywhere, reporting her every move. It was like some warped dream haunting him. If he thought about it for too long, his gut started to ache.

He scanned the calendar. Everything was in place for the week ahead. He often had to drop everything and head off across the country in a pool car for a shoot, responding to the demands of the press. It was a lifestyle that he thrived on, but it was difficult to keep track sometimes. He pulled up his email. Scanning down through the spam, his eyes hunted out any relevant messages.

“Bloody hell.” There was an email from Gregory, his cousin. The subject line read the same as the newspaper headline that was blaring at him from the other side of the office: Zoë Mac looks well stacked. That old, familiar gnawing feeling was creeping into his gut. Guilt and loss were a powerful means to undermine a guy’s

confidence. He deleted the mail without opening it, stood up, grabbed his backpack, and stomped out of the office.

Of course, going to the gym to escape her image probably wasn’t such a good idea, when it looked as if that was where she was headed in the photograph. However, that’s where he usually went on his lunch break, and he needed to sweat that image out of his mind.

“Hi, Jason, and how are you today?” The blonde nymph on the reception desk at the health club simpered at him as she put his membership card through the scanner. She glanced back toward the CCTV screens. A guy working with weights filled one screen, and a lone female swimmer moved across the other. The club looked reasonably quiet for lunchtime. The heat must have sent everybody off into the wine bars instead.

“Hi ...” He glanced at her left breast where her nametag was stationed. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipple nudged up under the plastic badge. “Susie. I’m just fine. You?”

“Great, thanks. Here’s your towel.”

She gave him a pouting, bubble-gum-pink smile and a wink. Jason often wondered whether the staff in these places flirted with everyone as part of their health club patter, or to relieve the routine of watching other people working out all day. He glanced back as he went into the gents changing rooms and found that she was leaning round the edge of the counter, watching him.

Twenty minutes on the cross trainer pushed the thought of tacky tabloid headlines out of his mind. It was probably more to do with the CCTV cameras than the exercise, though. Susie was watching; he knew it. That helped a guy forget. He grabbed a cup of water and stood under the camera as he poured it over his head. He grinned cheekily, then moved to the rowing machine. He felt obliged to keep the poor woman from getting bored out of her mind. When he finally left the studio, he gave the camera a wave and then saluted.

The shower felt glorious. He’d worked for it. Only two days until the weekend. The weekend and the babe: Calvin’s babe. He ran through the plan Calvin had suggested for Saturday. Bloody deviant, that man.

Jason wasn’t about to turn the suggestion down, though. He liked the idea. It was all for the sake of art, after all, he thought to himself with another grin. He leaned his back against the wall, the full force of the shower coming straight down onto him. He closed his eyes, lazily massaging his stiffening cock with a soapy fist.

Georgie girl, he thought, remembering how inviting her luscious body had looked on those cushions, all that glorious female flesh. Her tits were beautiful, weighty. He imagined them in his hands, molding them while he nudged his cock inside her. His fist began to move faster, the splatter of water on its swollen head sending needles of sensation into his very core. His balls ached, his spine tingling.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think there was anyone in here.”

Jason’s eyes snapped open. The girl from the counter, Susie, was standing there with a mop in one hand, the shower curtain pulled back in the other.

No one in here? Who was she kidding! She knew exactly what she was doing, and as if to prove the point, she was staring at his cock with avid interest.

“You don’t get many of those to the kilo,” she commented, one overly plucked eyebrow arching dramatically. “Don’t let me interrupt. I do love to watch a man wanking.”

“That’s just as well, because I’m not about to stop now.” Jason had no trouble performing for an audience.

She glanced up and down the shower room, then set aside her mop. “Don’t worry. There’s no one about. Jack’s the only other guy in here, and he’s got a good eight hundred reps to go.” She unzipped her fly and pushed her hand down the front of her shorts “Do you mind if I ...?”

“Not at all,” he grunted, his free hand reaching for his balls. He cupped them, feeling the tautness, reveling in it. He rode his fist up and down the length of his cock from base to tip. She had her hand wrapped round her pussy, rubbing vigorously, holding back the curtain with the other hand, watching him with a glazed expression. Her nipples had peaked, her breasts riding high and firm under her neat white polo shirt.

“Fuck.” Her eyes widened.

“Uhu.” He was about to come. He moved forward. The water hit the base of his spine just as his cock bulged up in his fist and spurted.

He breathed deeply, leaned over, and pulled her hand free. He plunged his hand into the open fly of her shorts instead. She gasped, quickly squirming against the solid mass of his hand.

“Oh, yeah,” she panted, gripping the shower curtain as she rode his hand up and down, fast and wild. He flicked his thumb from left to right over the nub of her clit and was rewarded by a sudden shriek followed by the sound of the shower curtain popping free of its hooks and collapsing in a wet heap on the floor.

* * * * *

Georgie lived in a basement close to the college of art and design. It was a bed/sitting room masquerading as a flat. A tiny bathroom with a creaky shower and plumbing that shuddered each time it was asked to cooperate had been tacked on to give it its exalted status. The main room was arranged around the boiler room for the rest of the building. In one corner, two electric rings and a tiny sink acted as the kitchen. On the other side, a rail with a velvet curtain pinned across it pretended to be a wardrobe. When the door to the flat was opened, it slapped against the side of the bed, which invariably let out a metal-spring laugh in response, like a delighted woman who had been teasingly patted on the rump.

Georgie loved it, although it was always too hot -- the boiler room constantly kept her floating around the space in the flimsiest of garments. Even during the colder weather, she had been kept warm. It came as quite a shock to her body when she stepped outside on those cooler days.

Georgie knew that she was living a somewhat bohemian notion of student life, but she was having fun, and that was more than she had done stuck at home in Randlethorpe for the previous few months. She had a small allowance from her father. Despite the fact that he hadn’t exactly approved of his daughter going off to London to study fashion design, he had eventually agreed to her request. He was well aware that she was suffering from ennui with village life in the heart of the countryside.

Since he had retired his parliamentary seat, Georgie had been at loose ends. Prior to that, she had been his principal caseworker for several years, a job she had truly enjoyed. He knew the prospect of another season of charity ’dos and parties with the neighbors was not going to satisfy the daughter he had sent out to investigate the people’s rights in order to broaden her mind.

Had he realized his daughter was such a sexual libertine, he might have done more to dissuade her from exploring life in the capital, and exploring that side of her life was exactly Georgie’s intention from the moment she had landed in London. She was no shy innocent. She was more than ready to sidestep convention in the pursuit of pleasure.