Ashamed to look the barman in the eye, I mumbled for a straight Talisker. Peaty, dry and smoky with a bitter hit on the lips, it always seemed to suit nights like this. Here I was again, dressed up and alone, soaked in aftershave as if it could somehow hide the stench of what I was lowering myself to.
'Thanks,' I murmured, taking my whisky without raising my eyes from the bar. I lifted the glass to my mouth and found my thoughts wandering, as they always did. I was married, happy, loved; I had everything, I didn't need this. I was still young, thirty-seven, in the best shape of my life, years of running chiseling my body like coastal winds erode a cliff. What's more, I craved young, supple bodies and the excitement of the forbidden.
My wife was everything, but everything wasn't enough. In the same tired way, my better angels wrestled with my baser instincts; they always lost. So here I was, again, alone in a backstreet lap dancing bar in a city just far enough away to reduce the chances of my being recognised. I had planned every detail, even down to the thin, smart trousers, with no underwear for extra feel. Fuck me, I was pathetic.
'Hey,' the inevitable soft voice and tap on the shoulder. For all my self-disgust, I couldn't stop my instinctive excitement; my stomach dropped a note and I felt a stirring in my groin as I turned my head to my girl for the evening.
'Aoife!' I exclaimed.
She reeled in surprise. 'Mr...'
'Neil,' I interrupted, sharply. 'Please,' I corrected myself and recovered some composure, 'call me Neil.'
'Neil.' She sucked on my name like a gobstopper, trying it out then spitting it back, 'Neil...' She giggled a nervous laugh.
'I don't...' I began my excuses, not really knowing where the hell they would lead. Shit, I thought.
'Don't,' she interrupted. 'It's okay. You don't have to, you know, explain.'
Aoife had been my student, two or three years ago now, in my advanced history class. She must have been twenty, perhaps twenty-one. She explained that she was in the final year of a law degree and had 'got into this as a fun way to earn a bit of money.' She leaned in to look me in the eye.
'Are you okay?' she asked. 'I mean, you've barely looked at me.'
'I'm just...'
'Don't!' she insisted, placing a hand on my knee and looking directly into my eyes. 'It's okay to be here. I'm here too, aren't I?' She smiled, reassuringly as much as anything else.
I smiled back and looked tentatively into her face. Other than a simple brush of mascara, a smudge of black eyeliner and a smear of dusky pink lipstick, she was without makeup. Aoife had always been stunning, one of a handful of students who had fueled my fantasies and many illicit wanks that always made me feel terrible afterwards, but which I just couldn't resist. Irish by background, her skin was pale and unblemished, like Greek marble, and her long, luscious hair the deep brown colour of Guinness just before it settles. Her eyes were a grayish, pastel green, more jades than emeralds, and a dusting of tobacco brown freckles was scattered across the bridge of her nose. Her mouth was lively and expressive, twitching and curling in conversation.
My eyes surveyed her body as she spoke about her degree. She was wearing a simple, strappy black dress which clung tightly to the contours of her body. She was thin and petite, but adulthood had sculpted her tight body into breathtaking curves, at her small, pert tits and down her hips.
'So,' she interrupted my wandering thoughts and eyes, 'do you want to dance?'
'Er... sure,' I replied, now a little freer of my embarrassment and inhibitions.
She led me by the hand past security and through a cordoned passageway to a private area. I paid a heavy-set, bald guy for a ten-minute dance and followed Aoife into a small, curtained booth, containing only a chair, a small table and a stereo.
I placed my drink on the table and sat dutifully on my hands while Aoife drew back the curtain and pressed 'play' on the stereo, starting up a side of bassy R&B. She began swaying confidently to the pulsing rhythm, slipping herself from her black dress, strap by strap. I was conscious that she must have done this hundreds of times, for hundreds of men, that this was just a job for her, but I was still entranced. Inch by precious inch, the milky ocean of her skin was revealed, glistening in the soft lilac light they always use to flatter the girls. Not that she needed it.
Her hands felt behind her neck, tossing dark chestnut waves across her porcelain shoulders, then wandered purposefully and slowly down her chest, lingering on her perfect little tits. Her eyes locked in orbit with mine and watched me watch her trace her hands down her flat stomach, meeting at the band of her black knickers. Her impish face crumpled a cute smile at the very moment I gulped and felt a wave of excitement fall to the pit of my stomach, her eyes narrowing as she nibbled suggestively on her tongue. Slowly bending over her long, straight legs, she wriggled the last item of clothing from her body; I saw her pussy for the first time, a narrow strip of thin black hair only partially hiding the glistening, fleshy pink lips of her womanhood.
The music quickened as she strutted towards me, placing a perfectly pedicured foot between my legs and running it slowly up the inside of my right thigh. I glanced down at a harp of Erin, no larger than a pound coin, tattooed elegantly on the top of her foot, and felt my cock strain and harden to meet her touch; somehow this was so erotic, a secret part of the real Aoife revealed in confidence to me in one intimate moment. She pressed deeper into my crotch, caressing my cock with her toes.
I moaned deeply, throwing my head back against the chair.