The London Eye is deserted. It was worth getting up at crack of dawn. No one in their right mind will be sightseeing at this hour and in this kind of suffocating fog. There’s no one getting in the way. Just me, my camera, and the view.
In fact it’s quite eerie down here. The Thames slides silently between the two banks and even the rumble of cars and buses crossing the bridge is muffled. I shiver inside my old Parka, though I know it’ll be warm once I get inside. That’s why I’m wearing a loose silky shirt and old jeans underneath. I like to move freely when I’m taking pictures.
My pod glides alongside like a spaceship and I step in. I walk over to the far side, ready to rise up in the air. The white air and fog seem to rush at the glass, blocking everything out. Behind me the door slides shut.
The vents are puffing out great gusts of warm air. I take off my jacket, toss it onto the bench. It’s had a rough life. Dates back to my grubby teenage years. I unbutton my blouse a little, lean my forehead against the cool glass. I can see Big Ben leering through the cloud, but that’s about it. I can barely even see the other pods. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket in here, totally secret.
We are barely moving, but already we’re suspended above the ground. I say ‘we’ because someone else is in here with me.
Shit. I grip my camera tightly, keeping my back firmly turned. Ignore them. Fingers of watery sun are fanning round Big Ben’s face like a weird halo and I focus.
I can hear the faint rustle of clothing. I turn sideways, as if to frame another picture. A man is sitting on the bench, staring down the river towards Battersea. Fine. I’ll just get on with it. Trust me, though, to try to take my prize portfolio in dense fog.
‘I daresay you wanted to be alone up here,’ the man remarks. He has the most incredible, deep voice, like chocolate. ‘Me too.’
My shoulders hunch with irritation. I feel like ejecting. I glance at him. Big dark coat, open over a battered looking suit. Cool glasses. Dark stubble on his chin. So he got up at crack of dawn, too.
‘Never alone, though, are you, in London?’ I look up at the pod above us. I can see movement. Can’t see who, or how many. ‘People everywhere.’
‘Sorry. I should have taken the next one.’
We catch eyes. His are grey, turned down in some kind of sadness. I lift my camera to hide my face, and take a picture of him. Catch a smile just starting. Christ, he’s handsome. What stupid woman has just hurt him?
My hand holding the camera is shaking. He keeps his distance, but he is still looking at me. I can see myself and the white sky reflected in his glasses.
‘What do you see?’ he asks, stepping closer. ‘With your camera?’
The tightness has gone from my shoulders. Now it’s somewhere in my stomach, clenching like hunger. A trickle of sweat runs through my hair, down my neck.
‘They really ought to sort out this heating. It’s tropical in here.’
He nods, takes off his coat. Loosens his tie, but doesn’t undo it. A couple of hairs curl through his shirt collar. They are dark, like the stubble on his chin.
‘People, or things?’ he asks, taking off his glasses and wiping them. ‘Scenery, buildings, animals?’
‘Everything.’
‘Ever catch something secret? A couple kissing at the tube station? Or see them through a window, having sex?’
I hold the camera uselessly now, wiping my upper lip. He’s right up close. He takes the camera off me, scrolls through my pictures.
‘I see all that,’ I say, watching his hands holding my camera, the way his finger flexes over the tiny button. ‘There is one here, yes, not posed at all. Two people fucking.’ The word is out there, stark and sensational. He looks up at me and I go hot. ‘I just try to make the world look better.’
‘And they look great, don’t they, those two? The black and white is a good choice, too.’ He lifts the screen right up to his face. ‘They’d be pleased, wouldn’t they, if they could see these? So flattering. Look how long the woman’s legs look, sort of kicking like that. How firm her breasts. How big his cock –’
I snatch the camera away from him. ‘They didn’t know I was taking them. It was right across from my office. Into a hotel.’
‘It’s lovely. Artistic.’ He puts his hands on his hips. We’re practically touching now. ‘But you were turned on as well, weren’t you, watching them? I can tell, by the way you’ve zoomed in. It’s so hot in that room, isn’t it? Like it is up here.’
‘Yes,’ I whisper, looking at him, not the picture. ‘I got horny.’
‘Horny now?’ He runs a finger under my blouse, just along my collarbone. Something neglected in me leaps at the touch. ‘Because it’s hot in here, too.’
I twist my head sideways to look out. We’re much higher now. I can see over the buildings towards St Paul’s and the City. He takes my face in his hands and turns me to look at him. His fingers are so warm. My cheeks are practically sizzling.
‘Yes.’ It comes out in a long sigh.
His finger is still running along my collar bone. I never knew it was so sensitive. Just below it, my nipples are pricking up. His eyes, behind the glasses, are direct and unwavering. I can’t remember when I last bothered to look someone in the eye, long and hard. Without my camera, I mean. When I last used my own eyes. My heart is really thumping now, pulsing in my neck. The silk ruffles along my skin, bumped by my heart and by the hot air blowing over us.
He takes his jacket off. His shirt is sticking to him. I can see the curve of his ribs, a wedge of muscle tensing under his arms. I can’t take my eyes off him. I can’t breathe.
I turn away from him. We’re floating right up in the sky now. The fog has thinned into ribbons. I can see people in some of the other pods now. I don’t think they can see us. Their heads swing about as if they’re on safari.
He sighs, too. He’s sitting on the bench, looking tired. One thigh rests on my Parka coat. It’ll be warm with his body heat when I pick it up. I want to stroke him.
‘What about that couple, then?’
I glance about. Looks like there are tourist groups in some pods. Some kind of business outing in another. ‘Couple?’
‘In the hotel. Were you jealous?’
My pussy twitches. On my camera, pictures of her spread legs, toes curling with pleasure. Stark dark nipples.
‘Jealous?’ I sound like an idiot.
‘Seeing a man and woman fucking. Lost in it. You couldn’t join in. You were behind your camera, behind your lens, behind sheets of glass.’ He leans forwards, his elbows on his knees. ‘Nose pressed up against the candy jar.’
‘It’s been a while,’ I mutter, gripping the handrail behind me. He’s turned up his sleeves. He has gorgeous arms. Strong, not too hairy. I want those hands on me. ‘Being a voyeur isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘Come here, then.’ He pats the bench next to him. I try to cross to him calmly, but I want to jump at him, pounce, claw his white shirt off with my teeth. Now who’s on safari?
‘Think how sexy that picture would have been if it was you and me.’
Our arms are touching. My hairs are up on end, the tips running across his skin. He takes my camera, holds up the hotel picture again, the couple arching away from each other. Their limbs are fluid but their faces are contorted, her eyes shut, his eyes staring, both mouths open, gasping, shouting in the soundproof room.
Our pod is deadly silent. We are at the top now. For a deranged moment I wonder what it would be like to come loose from our moorings, career through the sky and plunge, splintering, to the ground.
‘Amazing view,’ I cry out, waving my arm at the world outside. My limbs are taut with expectation.
‘You can say that again,’ he says, but maybe he senses something dangerous in me. He turns the camera off and puts it down carefully.
‘So how do you think it started?’ he murmurs, sliding his hands up my silky sleeves. My arms tingle in response. ‘Doyou think they were strangers? Who made the move on whom?’
I let my breath out. It whistles in my ears as I release the tension. The ruffles at my throat and down the front of my shirt shiver, and he looks down to where the shirt is straining slightly over my breasts. He strokes the silky ruffles and waits for me to stop him. But I can’t move. I’m just staring at his finger, moving so close to my breasts. We can both see them beneath the silk, the rounded, full shape of them cupped and lifted by my bra. Flimsy fabric separating my nipples from his fingers. He flicks the first button out of its hole almost hesitantly. I bite my lip until I can taste blood. He undoes the next button, and the next, until my shirt falls open.
‘Tell me,’ he urges. I can see his throat move when he speaks. Moisture at the corner of his lips.
‘She made the move.’ My voice is ragged.
‘How?’ His fingers are on my collarbone again, his hands pressing against my breasts.
‘She looked like she was gagging for it. Maybe they’d come for miles. Waited for years. She took her skirt off, and her knickers, and sort of flashed her pussy at him. It was easy.’
‘Not like you, then. I’m going to have to take these clothes off for you, aren’t I?’
I nod and blush bright red, unable to reply. He pushes the shirt open. My skin’s alive with the touch of the silk, his fingers, the warm air blowing over me.
I tilt my head back and his fingers tread inside the warm crack of my cleavage. Oh God, he’s not waiting for a word from me now, he’s caressing my breasts through the lace bra until my nipples start to burn. His thumb flips across them, and then he stops. I open my eyes. He’s just watching me. Maybe he is waiting for permission.
My knickers are getting damp. He gasps, or laughs, I can’t tell which.
‘Did he suck her tits?’ he asks.
‘Do we have to talk?’ I groan, distracted.
‘I can only do this if you to tell me how it was.’
‘Then no, he didn’t. Maybe she didn’t want it. Her tits were small – smaller than mine.’ My body gets hotter. I’m proud of my tits. ‘Not big or juicy. Like mine.’
We both smile then. Excitement is almost strangling me. All I can see are his grey eyes. All I can feel are his fingers on my tits.
He squeezes until they start to hurt. I groan. The pain is zig-zagging into pleasure. He pulls me towards him so he can bury his face in my warm cleavage. I hold very still. Through the glass ceiling is white sky, the straight trail of an aeroplane shafting through the clouds. We are slipping downwards. In the pod above us some people are watching us.
‘See how they go hard when I pinch. How have I gone without such gorgeous tits?’ He moves his head across my breast then scoops it out of the bra. ‘You’ll let me suck it, won’t you? I can’t resist sucking it.’
He pinches one nipple and then takes the other out of the bra, nips it between his teeth and bites. I squeal, not caring about making a noise. Liking the noise. My own voice in that breezy silence makes me horny.
‘You can suck as much as you like, honey,’ I croon, stroking his hair and pulling his face hard into me, his eagerness turning me on. ‘Suck, and nibble, and tease, and suck, go on, as much as you like –’
He sucks at my breast and I wriggle up to get comfortable, straddling his lap. He doesn’t stop, and I go further. I push my breasts into his face, pushing my torso against him, so that he has to get his balance. I watch his
head moving from one nipple to the other and I am so wet now.
I pull away abruptly. He looks up, as if half asleep. But it’s only because I want to get naked. I glance up. Two pods are above us. The fog has cleared. They can see us, if they want to. Someone has binoculars trained not on St Paul’s but on me, as I throw my jeans across the floor and kick out of my knickers.
Then I bend, tits dangling, reach into his coat, and undo his trousers. He doesn’t help me. Just sits there as I open his flies.
‘Did she undo his trousers like this?’ he asks, suddenly looking vulnerable. ‘Or did he do it for her?’
‘What does it matter? They didn’t have half as much fun as we’re going to have,’ I promise him, throwing care to the winds.
He grins as I reach inside his flies and take hold of the warm cock lying there in wait. ‘Do you always take control like this?’
‘Excuse me,’ I say, climbing back onto his lap, ‘I think you touched me first.’
I glance down and gasp. He has the most enormous cock, lying quite still, stretching up his stomach. Who would have thought that a thumping great erection was hidden under that slightly shambolic exterior?
‘Why would any woman,’ I breathe, half to myself, nudging his cock against me, ‘let this go to waste?’
I brush myself back and forth over the tip, moaning with anticipation.
‘Go on. Don’t stop,’ he gasped. ‘What woman?’
‘The woman who’s driven you to this. Sex with a stranger. You looked like you’d been dumped by someone.’
He runs his tongue across my breasts and shifts his hips, thrusting his cock at me.
‘Well, she did me a favour then, didn’t she?’
I smile and reach down. Between my legs it’s lying there. Big. Hard. For the moment, mine. Its taut surface is already trailed with moisture where I’ve slithered over it. Excitement thrills through me to feel my own juice slicked there. I take it in both hands. I hitch myself back onto his thighs and stare at its swollen, stiff length. As I hold it and run my hands up and down, it leaps, the rounded end winking already with a droplet of spunk.
‘And me,’ I agree breathlessly. ‘I’ve got you now. And I want you inside me.’
I guide the rounded tip of his cock into my ready wet pussy. It touches the burning nub of my clit and I groan deliciously. It sounds filthy in my ears.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask him, easing his cock further inside.
He grins. White teeth. Nice mouth. ‘Mr Grey.’
‘Listen to this, Mr Grey,’ I whisper, sliding his cock in and out. ‘Listen to that juicy wetness.’
My sex lips close round the smooth, pulsating length. I have to pause every so often to spread my thighs and luxuriate in the huge, warm, animal length filling me, pushing inside me, its rigid dimensions fitting inside me. I’m impaled on it. I could lift my legs away and balance myself, cunt on cock, even spin round on it.
I glance at it going in and out of me. A movement catches my eye, and his, at the same time. Several pods above us now. We must be more than halfway to the bottom. A camera flashes. Hands move about, fingers point, heads waggle, feet stamp with curiosity as if they all want to burst out of their glass prison and get to us.
He grins again, staring up at our audience. His big hands squeeze my tits, pulls them to his mouth so he can suck and bite the waiting hard nipples again.
‘So easy. Just what I needed,’ he murmurs, stopping for a moment to watch my cunt swallowing him whole, tightening his grip as I slither down to the base of his cock and we both wait for the violent rhythm to begin. ‘You’ve made this so easy for me.’
His cock seems to swell inside me, igniting at all my nerve endings, and I have no choice but to move, easing myself up and down the long shaft, and once I start I can’t stop, so aware of those shocked, curious, horrified, titillated eyes above us, watching.
Every inch of him rubs against every screaming inch of me so that I can only go so far before slamming back down on him, groin on groin. I start to buck faster against him, my tits bouncing, my hair flying, my thighs tensing to grip his.
‘Let’s give them a show they’ll never forget,’ I shout.
He echoes my rhythm as if we’re dancing. How intimate you can get, so quickly, with a stranger. How hungry you can get for him. Joined to him by sex. He draws himself back as I rise off him, then slams back up inside as I ram back down. My voice is rising in a crescendo of desire, whimpering with the powerful sensations ripping through me, the cold morning air, so bright, lighting us up so everyone can see what we’re doing, more pleasure, rising to the peak of the pleasure, getting harder, getting wetter, tongues of fire streaking up inside me.
‘Watch, everyone!’ I shout out. ‘This is what that couple in the hotel were doing. Watch!’
Mr Grey’s eyes gleam behind the glasses and I see my breasts reflected there, bouncing frantically as I ride. Suddenly he plunges his cock in as deep as it will go. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. My thighs spread round him, my breasts smothering him, the red silk shirt slipping over his face. He grips me and pumps into me so hard that I’m thrown back by the force of it. Then I’m moaning as he thrusts at me and I can tell he’s climaxing and now I’m coming too, arching away from him, the shape of us both reflected in the dim glass as we descend to the ground.
The wheel is coming on to the level, carrying us slowly towards the halt. I pull away from him, still panting. I’ve made his trousers wet. Mr Grey smiles. I pull the shirt across my bosom. He casually fastens one button. The gesture is almost as sexy as fucking me. We both glance at the pod sliding in behind us, and laugh. Everyone inside is pressed as close to the glass as they can get. The men are clutching their crotches. Several have video cameras. The women are crossing their legs, wriggling as if they want to wee. Everyone’s mouth is open.
My Mr Grey zips up his trousers. Then he stands, holds out my knickers, helps me on with them as if I’m a child. Helps me on with my jeans and my old Parka. What a complete gentleman. Something else in me stirs now. Lust, sure, but something else. I like him.
‘Thank you, Annabelle,’ he says.
The tense, sad man of earlier has vanished. He looks positively cocky. I’ve done that for him. As for me, I’m shaking, and hot, and euphoric.
‘How did you know my name?’
The doors slide open, surprising us with the cold air blasting in. Mr Grey pushes his glasses up his nose, once more the bashful stranger. He gives a curious farewell bow. I want to burst into tears as he walks away. I think of that battered suit, the amazing cock inside, which just filled me. I want to do it again. I bet he’d think of somewhere we cold go. The British Library, for example. Or the Reptile House at Regent’s Park zoo.
‘Label sewn into your anorak.’
I wriggle with amusement, but he’s gone. I walk along the Embankment for a while, my stomach rumbling with hunger now that the morning has started.
Mr Grey calls to me from the bridge above my head. ‘Same time tomorrow, Annabelle?’
Commuters are scurrying to work, heads down, eyes fixed on the pavement, faces white and drawn at the prospect of the week ahead.
But I can’t wait.
