In all my straight life I’d never had such an unexpected jolt to my snatch as I had on the day that Aia told me, gazing right into my eyes, that she’d thought of me while she wanked. It was while we were on our break, having a cigarette under the corrugated awning in the backyard, a space we shared with the seafood freezer and the dessert freezer and a bucket where chefs’ whites lay soaking in bleach. The smell of bleach fumes are what I remember, in my mouth and eyes as much as my nostrils, coating the back of my throat, making me blink, a thick wall of it. Muffled clinks and chatter coming from the restaurant. And Aia’s bad black eyes looking into mine. I always thought of her eyes as characteristically Eastern European, for no other reason than they were dark, and darkness made me think of mysticism, and the East, and everything that I imagined Aia to come from, everything opposite to me.
The way she said the word “wank” was cute. The end of the word was clipped in the Essex style, not the kind of sub-Bond girl “vaank” you’d expect from a girl from Bulgaria. Her grasp of English was extraordinary. She’d lived here less than two years. And that was almost all I knew about her, except what I’d observed during work time. She ate slices of onion bread when the chef wasn’t looking. She took as many cigarette breaks as she could possibly get away with. She couldn’t cut a butter-curl to save her life, but she had a way with the customers and was good at convincing them to have dessert.
‘So, yeah,’ she said, ‘but you don’t mind, do you? You don’t mind that I told you.’
I smiled, thinking. Aia having a wank. How did she do it to herself? I remembered reading somewhere that for many women’s whole lives, they use the same method for masturbating that they develop when they’re young. There is an astonishing variety of styles, the vulva being such a neat and versatile thing. Women lie on their backs, on their fronts. They watch themselves in the mirror. They rub themselves up against pillows, chair legs, handfuls of duvet. They raid the kitchen for vegetables, they raid the bathroom for bottles.
What did Aia like to do?
‘Aia,’ I said, tapping my cigarette ash, ‘there’s so much I want to ask you, I don’t know where to begin.’
She laughed quietly.
‘I’m sure you can find somewhere to begin,’ she said.
‘I honestly had no idea.’
‘Why would you?’
‘I didn’t even know you were gay.’
‘I’m not gay. I love men, God, I love men and their cocks.’ She laughed at how this sounded. ‘Don’t get me wrong.’
‘But don’t put you in a pigeonhole either,’ I offered.
‘That’s right.’
‘Don’t shut yourself off to new experiences.’
‘Exactly,’ she said, looking up at me again. She was so much smaller than me – five foot nothing, if that. Her thick black fringe shone faintly green in the halogen floodlight. She had a ballpoint pen sticking diagonally into her ponytail. The look in her eyes went straight to my clit, and suddenly it was obvious. All those stupid adolescent clichés about good times and new experiences. The most stupid of them were the most true.
‘So, you want to begin where?’ she said.
‘Tell me what you thought about just before you came,’ I said, surprising myself.
‘Oh, that,’ she said, rolling her eyes and smiling broadly. ‘Honey, you should have seen what you were doing. You were lying on my bed, and your clothes were all over the floor. Your knickers were on the pillow next to you. You were playing with yourself and begging me, begging me to come over and touch you. So this is the picture in my head. You directing me between your legs and showing me your cunt which is all wet and big. You’re so excited and so desperate for me to touch you.’
She paused and took a drag on her cigarette.
‘And then I crawled over the bed towards you. But I didn’t touch you between your legs. I crawled up your body instead and I put my boob into your mouth. And that drove you wild. You were biting me and sucking, and I wanted to feel that mouth on me for real, God, I wanted it so, so bad. So what I did was this. I kept that picture of you in my head while I wanked my cunt with one hand and with my other hand I brought my boob up to my mouth and you know what? I can just reach it with my tongue. And as soon as I did that I came. Thinking about you.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘It wasn’t much of a substitute, though. The very tip of my own tongue. It’s not like what you were doing to me.’
I could feel the night air freezing the back of my throat. I closed my mouth.
‘So,’ she said, businesslike. ‘What else do you want to know?’
I wanted to know why she’d decided to tell me this. Being a confessional type myself – can you tell? – I’m highly aware of other people’s weaknesses for self-revelation. And Aia didn’t give herself away lightly, I was sure of that, or else I’d have known a lot more about her than I did after God knows how many fag breaks on how many Saturday nights. She wasn’t drunk either, that much was obvious. Which meant, I supposed, that she was making a deliberate move. On me.
She was very self-contained, very cool. Not looking at me now. No sideways glances as she blew her smoke into the night. Apparently it was my turn.
I threw my cigarette end down and faced her. The halogen had lit up all the tiny fine wisps around her hairline. In all my straight life I’d never seen such a thing as Aia.
The kitchen door swung open and slammed noisily into the wall.
‘Service, hussies,’ said the chef.
And it was two full hours before I got to talk to her again. Ferrying platefuls, taking orders, I had time to plan a little. Here and there I glimpsed her as she carried a tray of coffees, pretended to laugh at something a customer said, picked up a dropped fork. She had a really beautiful arse. When she bent over, everybody looked. I marvelled that I’d never noticed before, this wave of silent attention she created when she moved. Accidentally I caught the eyes of one man who’d been looking at her. He looked guilty at first, then amused, slightly accusatory, obviously thinking I was jealous.
Perhaps, under normal circumstances, I might have been jealous. I could recognise that pattern of thought as mine, on an ordinary day. But at that moment envy was the furthest thing from my mind. She was interesting to me. She never stopped moving.
The next time I bumped into her was at the bar when we were both waiting for drinks orders.
She smiled coolly and said, ‘Busy busy.’
‘I’ve got another question for you,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, looking at her hard.
She laughed and said, ‘Not here though, right?’
‘Best not.’
Her wine bucket was ready and she had to go. When she brushed past me I just caught her humming to herself.
From then on I was her stalker for the night. I was on her, and she knew it, while she swung her ponytail and glanced over her shoulder and stuck her arse out much further than was necessary when she leant across a table to wipe it down. It was the first time in my life I’d ever looked at another woman and thought – little slut – with approval. I gaped shamelessly at her tits and replayed in my mind the moment when she told me, ‘I wanted to feel that mouth on me for real, God, I wanted it so, so bad.’
Little slut.
My mind went over all possible options, all possible escape routes. There was no point trying to make a move until the end of service at ten o’clock. I had to wait. Even then we’d need to be very careful, although by that stage of the evening the front-of-house manager Elias was often drunk enough that he’d forget all about his staff, intent as he always was on telling a captive audience his life story, with flourishes, sighs and the occasional tear.
At ten past ten I saw her disappearing into the passage that led to the toilets. I abandoned my half-cleared table and followed her.
She must have paused there because I was suddenly right on top of her. Grabbing her hand, I said, ‘Quick.’
She let me pull her into the ladies’. I locked the door behind us.
The lavatories of this restaurant were meant to be a talking point. Both were small rooms housing a single toilet each, and both were decorated in an absurd rococo style with damson-red walls, erotic prints – homoerotic male chests in the ladies’, gagged and bound women in the gents’ – and swag velvet curtains around a floor-length mirror. These lavatories were staged to be scenes of illicit encounters. Elias liked to tell people how often he found the seats smeared with cocaine.
There was something in me that resented this set-up. It almost made me feel as if having a screw in this environment was a conventional thing to do.
Then I remembered that it wasn’t meant for us. It wasn’t our stage. We weren’t customers. We were service hussies.
She was waiting, watching. I moved in and our mouths met. There was her smell, not a fragrance as such, not quite female and not quite male. It was the smell of her body, slightly salty and sweet and totally compelling. We kissed quietly and her tongue darted into my mouth, neat and precise. Just how I thought it would be.
There were fingers trailing down the side of my face, down my neck, over my shoulder. I concentrated on keeping my lips soft, kissing her with all the skill and sensitivity I could muster. Somehow I felt that for another woman I had to do this as well as I possibly could. There was nowhere to hide, unlike with a man, when raw passion and enthusiasm can always cover up clumsiness. With Aia I had to get it right, and maybe I did, because she rewarded me with a cute little sound that came from the back of her throat into mine.
She started to undo my shirt buttons and I did the same to her, spreading her shirt front open and covering her tits with my hands. They were surprisingly large on her small frame, weighing down the stretchy cups of her T-shirt bra. With a smile I left her face and moved downwards so that she could feel my mouth on her for real.
She was already undoing her bra for me. I helped her take it off, along with her shirt, and then I applied myself to the job of pleasuring her tits. I began by drawing a big circle with my tongue, running wide round one nipple but not touching it. I went round again, and again, my circles getting gradually smaller but still keeping clear of the centre. She leant against the wall and pushed her ribcage forward. I used the very tip of my tongue to make a final few circles and then I landed on her nipple, a solid nubbin of flesh that seemed, from her reaction, to be extraordinarily sensitive, causing her to bite her lips together to stifle her moans.
I sucked her quite hard, but not too hard, now and then breaking away to fret her with my tongue tip. I moved to her other breast. She plunged her fingers into my hair and cradled the back of my skull. I sank to my knees and found I was at the perfect height to come at her tits from underneath and graze them with my teeth and feel their velvety warm weight on my face. And I was at the perfect height to tuck my hand between her legs, where the heat and damp seeped through her black trousers.
I recognised that dampness. It was something I had felt on myself many times. There was so much that was familiar in this foreign situation.
Back arched, Aia was moving against the wall as if something had already entered her. She placed her hand on top of mine, demonstrating the stroke and the pressure she liked. I broke away from her tit and looked up, seeing her ribs and the underside of her breasts and the naked hollow of her underarm.
‘Hey, Aia,’ I said, hearing the strain in my voice as I rubbed as hard as I could.
‘Mm?’
‘I haven’t asked you my other question yet.’
‘What’s the question?’ she replied, eyes closed, breathing heavily.
‘Will you show me what you did?’
‘What did I do? When?’
‘When you were thinking of me.’
Her eyes opened momentarily, then closed again.
‘Don’t stop,’ she said.
Then her face broke into a grin.
I kept up the pressure on her crotch but soon I started to get impatient. It was beginning to look as though Aia was going for broke on my hand, and I hadn’t even got her fly undone yet. So I unzipped her and, just as I was beginning to pull down her trousers, she grabbed my wrists.
‘That’s quite enough,’ she said. ‘Into the corner with you.’
There was nothing in me that wanted to resist so I let her push me into the corner of the cubicle and I stayed there, the mirror cold on the back of my shoulders, as she returned to the far corner, just out of reach.
Her eyes darted down to my tits, spilling out of my bra cups that she’d pushed aside like curtains not long ago. Pursing her lips she smiled.
‘You are going to love this,’ she said.
The supreme certainty of this announcement made me catch my breath and squeeze my legs together. She had the naughtiest imaginable smile, and threw me a burlesque wink as she inched her trousers down with a knowing slowness, tits and hips swaying. I was so turned on, my snatch was roaring, but I was transfixed by what I was seeing and didn’t think to touch myself.
She sat on the toilet seat to take her trousers right off, leaving her black suede ankle boots on. Sitting very upright she looked at me with her brow slightly lowered. Hands resting on her knees, she opened her legs wide. The flimsiest strip of black nylon lace lay over her vulva.
Oh, but she looked perfect, with a face full of determination and a soft sheen on her thighs, half her hair escaping from her ponytail. Her eyes darted between me and the mirror next to me. Her hands began to move, sweeping up her legs, one heading for her breast, the other for her pussy, slipping inside her knickers. I could see on her face the little jolt of pleasure when she touched her clit: a blink and a smile and an indrawn breath. I could picture how it must have felt. I could relate to that smile and the smooth action of her hands, one stroking her slit, one pinching and pulling her nut-brown nipple.
And it struck me that this was exactly how Aia wanted it. She liked being watched, being chased by eyes. She wanted me to love her from a distance. Her ego was massive and magnificent. There was a slight shaking in her shoulders and legs as she leant back further, opening her body up more. I was getting tantalising glimpses of her labia, appearing and disappearing as her hand moved, and I fought the urge to launch myself over there and rip those annoying knickers off her.
The door handle rattled as someone tried to get in. Aia jumped, frowned, shook her head in a dismissive way and resumed her wank. The handle rattled again and someone knocked on the door.
Aia’s eyes met mine. I held my breath and listened.
It might have been a customer, but the brisk and businesslike way those knuckles were rapping the wood suggested it could well have been Elias looking for his absent waitresses.
For a moment I wondered if the game was up. Should we get our clothes back on quickly and try to pretend we’d been in there for some legitimate reason? Perhaps one of us could fake up a few tears, as if we’d been in the middle of some sudden emotional crisis? But if he didn’t buy it we’d be instantly sacked, and he’d probably even keep our tips, knowing Elias.
Aia was nearly naked. Her clothes were all over the cubicle. Her hair was a mess. It would take ages for her to get ready. I wasn’t too bad – I still had my trousers on – but what about Aia?
I heard a man clear his throat on the other side of the door, inches away from me.
‘Girls?’
It was Elias.
My hands were hurting. I realised that my fists were clenched and my fingernails were digging into my palms to force myself to stay quiet.
Elias coughed again awkwardly.
‘Girls, you in there?’ he said again, from slightly further away.
He was wavering in the corridor, obviously unsure whether the toilet was occupied by customers. Aia and I looked at each other and suddenly it was very hard not to burst out laughing.
‘Ah,’ said Elias. ‘Hm.’
Aia gave me another wink then bent her neck, bringing her face down to her breast which she pushed upwards with her hand, the other hand moving again in her knickers. Her long, purplish tongue came out, as obscene as anything I’d ever seen in my life. She held my gaze as she licked herself, her tongue at full stretch, nudging at the very tip of her nipple, flicking from side to side to build sensation.
I couldn’t hold back any longer. I dropped to my knees in front of her. I tore her knickers off and threw them aside. Wedging my hand down inside my trousers I leant in and took my first long, slow lick of her pussy.
What I found there was Aia in concentrated form, slippery and beyond delicious. What amazed me was how alive, how responsive she was down there, her clit growing and growing under my mouth, her juices flowing down my chin. It was shocking to have such close contact with something so new, another woman’s clit, something I’d only ever seen in porn. The sheer sensory overload drove me wild. I had a finger between my own pussy lips, dabbing away madly as I licked and sucked and snogged her pussy with enthusiasm bordering on delirium and no finesse whatsoever. I don’t think she minded my clumsiness too much. It was the way she clasped my head with both hands and gripped my hair and rocked her snatch into my face that made me relax about it completely, so that I was only vaguely aware of the strange gasps and grunts I was making. I was only vaguely aware of the lack of oxygen and the crazy heat in my cheeks that were clamped between her wet inner thighs. I was in heaven itself. Whether Elias was still out there, listening through the door, I didn’t even consider. Even if he had crossed my mind I wouldn’t have cared a jot for my job, my dignity or my tips. Playing this soft, soft morsel with my tongue I felt as if there was something happening in this ludicrously decorated room that was very good, very secret, and really, really pervy.
I found her hole and slid two fingers up inside, as easy as anything. My God, it was hot up there, and there was a definite, gradual tightening, ever so slight, ever so gentle, the kind of feeling I could really relate to, shrinking round my fingers as I drew them out and dipped them in. Her thighs relaxed and dropped a little, allowing me to look up the length of her. Her mouth was open and her lids so heavy I could barely make eye contact. I picked up the pace, thrusting a little harder, and her legs opened up more. She was pushing her weight downwards onto my hand. Screwing her more and more vigorously I had the idea that I should lighten up on her clit a little, so I pulled my head back and just laid my tongue lightly on her, allowing only the smallest movement, imagining that it was just the right counterpoint to give her.
And then it happened, right in my face, with an abrupt escalation of noise and thrust, with a rattling of ceramic as she arched her back and pushed against the cistern with such force I thought she was going to knock the lid off. And then, as she came back down and her limbs relaxed, she did knock the lid off. It crashed onto the floor and broke into several large pieces and a shower of china splinters.
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘That was a bit loud.’
Biting her lip Aia looked around herself.
I fingered my slit, feeling slightly mournful because I realised it was time to get dressed and start thinking up excuses. I had no doubt whatsoever that Elias would be at the door within seconds.
Aia jumped to her feet, full of energy again.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK, OK. Action stations.’
And instead of starting to get her clothes on she grabbed my trousers and pulled them to my ankles along with my soaking wet knickers.
The door handle started to rattle.
‘Aia,’ I whispered.
‘OK, OK.’
Standing up she whipped me round, pushed me down so I was sitting on the toilet seat, got carefully to her knees, swept some shards to one side, and pushed my legs open. Elias’s knuckles were rapping the door as she parted my lips with two fingers of one hand and plunged two fingers of the other up inside me, making me gasp and grip the edges of the toilet seat. I was half-panicking and it felt amazing, so urgent, so inappropriate, as she stroked my clit with the edge of her thumb and thrust into my pussy at the same time.
‘Hey, what’s going on in there?’ said Elias, sounding angry. ‘I’d say that’s enough of the good times, wouldn’t you? We’ve got to clear up before someone gets hurt.’
I looked up and in the mirror I could see us both, surrounded by lank velvet curtains, plaster scrolls painted dull gold and glinting ceramic fragments. Naughty Aia had placed herself slightly to one side of me which allowed me to see everything, the gleam on her fingers, the shuddering of my legs, the glow of my reddened hole. Her tits leant over me. The certainty of coming was flitting round peripherally, just within reach, then just beyond.
‘Nearly,’ I groaned.
‘You in there, girls?’ said Elias, his voice coming from right up against the door. ‘Girls. I’m warning you. Those good times are going to cost you. I mean it.’
Her hands were taking such good care of my snatch. To feel and see it so graphically was almost too much. She was panting and breathing heavily, willing me on. I was so, so close and she leant over and lapped at my nipple with her filthy purple tongue.
I must have shut my eyes at that point because all I was aware of was this chain reaction bursting all down me. I must have been loud. I don’t remember. All I recall is opening my eyes to the sound of a thudding fist on the door.
‘I got customers here who need to piss,’ shouted Elias.
After that it went quiet in the corridor while Aia and I tidied ourselves up, sorted our clothes and got dressed. We didn’t rush. Elias didn’t bother us any more. He must have retreated back into the restaurant. He’d be waiting for us at the bar, fiddling angrily with the stem of his wineglass, calculating whether he should fire us immediately or wait until the end of the night when we’d finished the mopping and emptied the bins.
Before we unlocked the door we took a last look at each other’s flushed faces.
The good times were going to cost us. The wink she threw me told me Aia didn’t care.