Hearts and Diamonds (6 page)

‘Oh, they won’t know. They might guess . . . but they won’t know.’

‘Jason! Cut it out with the suspense.’

‘Go to the Ladies’ and take off your knickers. Put them in your handbag and come back out again.’

‘I can’t do that!’

‘Of course you can.’

‘Jason!’ Her face flamed red, but the idea was more exciting than she could ever bear to admit to him. Just the idea of sitting on that plastic moulded chair with nothing between the gauzy cotton of her skirt and her bare skin . . . That was a point – was the skirt definitely opaque enough? She would have to check in the bathroom mirror . . . but the restrooms would be thronged with people . . . there would be no chance . . .

‘Non-negotiable,’ he said. ‘Do it or we drive straight back to Bledburn. It’s up to you.’

‘You bastard,’ she whispered, looking over again at their growing audience. ‘All right then. I will.’

She took a gulp of her coffee, then stood up and marched, eyes front, out of the coffee shop and towards the toilets.

As predicted, they were busy, even on this workaday weekday. Business-suited women refreshed their make-up at the mirrors while retirees in slacks and polo shirts chatted by the hand-driers. Small children were helped to the soap by crouching mothers and a gaggle of glossy-haired students – Spanish? – giggled and eyed her from a corner.

She ignored them all to find shelter in the nearest unoccupied stall. There was bank after bank of these. It was hardly the most private place for a private moment. She looked up swiftly on both sides to check nobody was peering down on her. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

She put her bag down on the floor and stared bleakly at the poster on the back of the door, asking her if it was possible she might be diabetic.

‘Hope not,’ she muttered, then she raised her skirt until it sat rumpled around her waist and slowly lowered her knickers. It was difficult, in the space available, not to bang her elbows or head as she bent, but she persevered, catching them slightly on one kitten heel before they were all off and ready to be stuffed in her handbag.

She stood up again, keeping her skirt where it was, trying to assess how this made her feel. Vulnerable, she thought, and a bit furtive. She had the weirdest feeling that, even with her skirt back down, there would be some tell-tale sign on her face, some giveaway.

‘No, there
won’t
,’ she whispered to herself. She smoothed the skirt back over her bottom and thighs. Oh, how different it felt now against bare skin. It wasn’t skin tight, but it was fitted enough that the fabric would rustle and whisper against her naked curves with each step she took. And what about between her legs? What if she couldn’t keep herself . . . dry? The skirt’s pale colour would show anything up.

Better focus on not getting too excited, girl
, she thought. Who knew what a telephoto lens might pick out?

She needed half a minute to clear her head and gather her nerve, to put on her Jenna Diamond face. She felt like Superman emerging from the phone booth when she finally mustered the courage to push open the stall door.

She marched purposefully to the basins, deliberately avoiding her own eye in the mirror. She was trying to ignore the way her thighs were pressed together when a young girl slid into position at the neighbouring basin and said, ‘Please, I think you are Jenna Diamond.’

Jenna turned to the girl, one of the possibly Spanish contingent. She had eager brown eyes and a brace on her teeth.

‘I used to be,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Now I go by the name Jenna Myatt.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know. I watch all your shows. I am a big, big fan. Will you sign my book?’

She reached into her bag and brought out an exercise book with a picture of a patchwork owl on the front.

‘Sure. Do you have a pen?’

The girl handed her one.

Jenna’s fingers were wet and slippery and it occurred to her that she would never have agreed to this – to signing autographs at the washbasin in a motorway service restroom – if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with the state of things under her skirt. Any distraction was welcome, even an annoying or impractical one.

‘Perhaps should have waited until my hands were dry,’ she said ruefully, watching a blob of soap drop on to the page beneath her message.

‘Oh, it’s OK, really. Thank you so much!’

‘No problem – but please – don’t send all your friends to me. I can’t sign any more.’

Already a crowd of curious, cameraphone-wielding adolescents lurked at the fringes of her vision. She needed to get out of there before it got too much.

Luckily, they parted to let her through. Outside the restrooms, surprise surprise, a few impromptu buskers had set up and were warbling popular songs in competition with each other.

Jenna wanted to laugh. As if she’d interrupt her toilet break to sign up a potential star act. Still, she had to admire their spirit of enterprise.

She found herself rushing to get away from it all, and the rushing made her more intensely conscious of the cling of her skirt and the rubbing of her thighs.

By the coffee shop entrance, Jason stood waiting for her, but he was no longer alone. He was chatting to a couple of lorry drivers, leaning back on a high stool, his expression one of satisfied vanity. Jenna knew that look. It was his swaggering I-am-the-dom look. What the hell was he telling those men?

She hurried up to him.

‘So you were on remand for a while then?’ one of the men said.

Ah. They were talking about the false drug charges that he’d been accused of.

‘Yeah, thought I was going down, for sure.’

‘But Jenna Diamond came to your rescue. Fuck, that’s a story. What’s she like?’

‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’ she suggested, stepping up to the trio. She sensed that the lorry drivers were keen to find out a bit more than she wanted known, and Jason might be too puffed up with self-importance to hold back.

The lorry drivers did nothing but stare for a few moments, while Jason held out his hand and pulled her into his side.

‘Wow,’ contributed one. ‘Well done, mate. Pleased to meet you,’ he said, more formally to Jenna. ‘The missus loves that show of yours. Wait till I tell her.’

‘Would you like a photograph?’ she asked graciously.

She posed with each lorry driver while Jason took pictures.

‘Lovely to meet you,’ she said firmly, so that they could be in no doubt that the encounter was over. They mumbled thanks and shuffled off towards the burger bar, looking over their shoulders every few steps.

‘Good lads,’ said Jason.

‘You can’t possibly know that,’ said Jenna, a touch tetchily. ‘And you’re going to need to learn the wisdom of reserve. Smile and chat, but don’t ever discuss anything personal.’

‘Don’t get too close to the little people? Is that what you’re saying?’ He was teasing, but there was a smidgen of ice in it.

‘Of course not.’

The makings of a tiff were soon forgotten when Jason, making sure their backs weren’t visible to anyone, ran his hand over the curve of Jenna’s bottom.

‘So did you do as you were told?’ he said softly into her ear. ‘Mm, I think you did. Good girl.’

She tried hard to keep her breathing even but his hand felt so sinful and so delicious, running over her thinly-covered cheeks, that she had to focus hard.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ she muttered. ‘I feel like everyone that passes has X-ray vision.’

Jason chuckled.

‘Perhaps they have.’

‘Not helpful.’ She wiggled his hand off her bottom and marched off towards the main entrance.

‘I want proof, you know,’ he called, hurrying to catch up with her. ‘When we get to the car.’

She had a delirious vision of raising her skirt there and then while the crowds ambled around them, baring herself to the sun-bleached expanse of the car park and beyond. God, what put these things into her mind? Or his, for that matter?

She didn’t feel quite safe until she was back in the car, and confident that there was nobody parked nearby who could see them.

Jason opened her door and peered in, looming over her.

‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘Get in the back seat.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because I told you to.’

She reached down to her handbag and took out the knickers, waving them defiantly in his face.

‘Put ’em down,’ he said, taking hold of her wrist. ‘And get in the back seat. Now.’

She wanted to argue with him, but his tone brought out that strange meek side of her she hadn’t known existed before she met him and she climbed into the back, looking carefully out of the tinted back window to make sure nobody was peeping – not that they could see much through the opaque glass.

‘All right,’ he said, once she was seated in the back. He got in beside her and put a hand on her knee. ‘Now, show me.’

‘Jason! We could be seen.’

‘No we won’t. Lift up your skirt and show me what’s underneath.’

He was calm and confident and she found herself reaching for her hem and shuffling it up her thighs. He slung an arm across the seat, leaning in to her to watch as closely as possible. When the cotton inched up to the top of her thighs, he stopped her with a hand on hers.

‘Let me finish,’ he whispered.

She obliged him by raising her bottom slightly off the seat to let him push the fabric all the rest of the way, then sat back, the leather cool and thrilling against her bare skin. Why did this feel so extravagantly dirty? It was surely no different than bare legs and yet it felt completely, decadently other. Her pussy was throbbing and she knew that she would feel the wetness of it if she clamped her legs together.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

‘Open your legs,’ whispered Jason.

She spread her knees wide and sat, looking down on what went on lower down as if it were all happening to someone else. It wasn’t her, Jenna Myatt Diamond, sitting in a car with no knickers on, letting a rough estate lad take a good, long look at the goods. She would never do such a thing . . . She would never let him run his hand up her thigh and push his fingertips into the slippery centre of her, rubbing and teasing and whispering dirty words into her ear all along. She would never sit there, clenching her hands and her sphincter, trying not to gasp or cry out while he circled her clit with such cocky self-assurance, knowing exactly what he was doing to her and how to make her beg for more.

And Jenna Myatt Diamond would never have an orgasm in a car.

‘No, never,’ she panted, as she came over his fingertips.

‘Never what?’ He gave her a puzzled grin.

She sat back, shut her eyes and let herself flop against the leather.

‘Nothing. Don’t worry. God. You’re evil.’

‘I know. But I’m good as well, eh?’ He nibbled at her earlobe, then moved down to her neck. ‘Like you. My good girl. Doing as she’s told. Thought you deserved a little reward.’

She opened her eyes again.

‘And what about you?’ she asked, looking pointedly at his bulging crotch. ‘That looks uncomfortable.’

‘It is,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you might want to . . . give me a hand?’

She didn’t need asking twice. She released the protrusion from its close confines inside his jeans and gave it all the loving attention her hands could provide, using some hand cream to enhance his pleasure. The car park, the motorway services, the entire world fell away as she devoted herself wholeheartedly to making him feel as he had made her feel. He half-climbed over her, burying his face in her neck, and when his climax came he spurted himself over her bared thighs and pussy, sighing low and long.

‘What a mess,’ hissed Jenna, fumbling in her bag for some tissues.

‘Who cares?’ drawled Jason, sounding half-asleep and fully blissful. ‘Gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. I love you.’

Her minor irritation faded and she kissed him, delicately removing him from where he clung so that she could get at the creamy residue on her skin.

‘I love you too,’ she said. ‘But I really think we should have waited until we were in the hotel. I hope nobody caught any of that.’

‘You’re paranoid,’ said Jason with a yawn. ‘Why would they? The windows are tinted out. It’s completely private.’

‘I hope you’re right. Damn, there’s some on my skirt.’

‘Take it off then,’ he said with a wink.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not driving to London naked from the waist down.’

‘I’ll drive. You stay there.’

‘Can you even drive? Do you have a licence?’

‘Yeah.’

‘On you?’

‘No.’

‘Well then.’

‘It’s with a load of gear I have to pick up from Mum’s. I have got one though.’

‘Yes, but you can’t actually drive without it to hand. So there goes that plan. Anyway, how long is it since you drove?’

‘Dunno. Couple of years.’

‘Did you ever have a car?’

‘Not one of my own, no.’ He took a tissue and helped Jenna finish off the cleaning operation.

‘Well, if all this works out, I daresay you can have one.’

He shook his head, looking a bit disgruntled.

‘What?’ she said, tugging down her skirt preparatory to climbing back over into the driver’s seat.

‘You sound like a parent talking to a child. Behave yourself and I’ll get you some sweets.’

‘You know I don’t mean it that way.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘OK, I know you don’t. I just wish it could be me in the driving seat.’

She put her hands on the steering wheel and twisted her neck around to him.

‘It will be,’ she promised. ‘We just need to do the groundwork first. Come on. Let’s go to London.’

‘
SO, WHAT DO
you want to do first? Shower, eat, see the sights?’

Jason was peering through the curtain at Hyde Park beyond from their penthouse suite in Park Lane.

‘Aren’t we going to see your friend?’

‘Tomorrow,’ said Jenna, coming up behind him and resting her cheek against his shoulder. ‘I thought it’d be nice to have the evening to ourselves.’

He grabbed her swiftly into his arms so that they stood in the floor-to-ceiling window together, not that anybody could have seen them from below, unless they used binoculars. Jason seemed to realise this, because their kiss had not lasted long before he pushed a hand up her skirt, revealing the bare skin beneath.