Pam's Lost Hours at the Shopping Centre

This is a story I published a few years ago under a different profile. I have 'tweaked' it to try and make it better, but you will judge if the effect is right. Vote...comment please. Writers need encouragement – or constructive criticism.

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Part 1."The innocent, unsuspecting prey..."

I blame myself. It was my own fault; I shouldn't have bought that bloody book of bloody erotic stories. But you know how it is, we all have needs. Besides, a bit of titillation is nice when you're at a loose end and the love of your life is a long way away. It's normally quite harmless – a distraction, that's all, an innocent way of easing the boredom and the sexual tension. That's the way I look at it, anyway. Still, maybe I shouldn't have bought that book...

I can't tell anyone at all about this, especially not Richard. Sure, he's a mature and modern thinking and a lovely man, and he wouldn't be at all surprised if I slept with a pilot or a steward occasionally when I'm working away, just as I don't think for one minute that he misses out on a chance to bang one of his pretty young sales girls whenever he gets the opportunity. We both have plenty of opportunity to screw around. But if I told him what I did, what just happened to me, it would blow his brains apart. I know it, his skull would probably implode. No excuses, though, none at all. It happened, and I can't go back and change it. You can't squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube, can you?

Nice Airport (that's pronounced Neece, the French place), here I am stuck between flights because of a strike by ground safety crew – or "sapeurs-pompiers" as they like to call themselves. Surprise, surprise, yet another lightning action for more money and less work by French so-called workers. Same old story, same old national sport. Another one of those 'lost days' when I don't know if I'll take off or not. But nothing is going to move during the course of the afternoon at least. Of course, the airlines could risk taking their planes in or out, but in the event of an accident and supposedly no guarantee of fire fighting or rescue crews on the ground; the potential downside from lawsuits is inestimable. So, nothing will happen until the whole dispute is resolved. To the complete satisfaction of the unions, of course. There's a meeting of management and unions later this afternoon, but nobody expects a result, let alone a positive one, at least until 18H00.

So here I am in Nice Airport. Anybody who's passed any length of time waiting for delayed planes knows what it's like to be stuck in an airport. The boredom factor is very high. The traditional medication for boredom is shopping and more shopping, coffee and more coffee. But there's only so much coffee you can drink, only so many times you can flick through foreign language newspapers and magazines you can't even read and don't want to buy. Only so much Sudoku you can fix your weary grey cells on. There's only so many times you can lust after those fabulous but highly priced designer goods you can't afford. And Nice Airport doesn't even have a Body Shop for god's sake!

I call Richard; he only has a few minutes to talk and says he'll be out of reach for the rest of the day. I end up wet between my legs. I shan't see him for a few more days, by which time I shall be in need of close attention to intimate detail. And so will he, I hope.

I resist the temptation to have a private rub; I remind myself that a moist kiss is better than a hasty orgasm. What a joke! But I have to get out of this airport for a few hours, otherwise I'll go crazy.

I could go to the beach, it isn't too far away. God knows I could do with some sun on my body; I look a little pale for summer. If I don't get any proper ultra violet on my skin soon, it'll be the Clarins self-tan for me. And besides, I love to strip down to the buff and play peek-a-boo with the guys on the sands, carefully angling my legs so that they can almost see my bald pussy lips, and occasionally opening my knees to reveal all, just for the hell of it, knowing what's happening to their naughty bits. It was Richard's idea, of course, that I shave my pussy absolutely bald. He loves it. And I have to admit, it gets me moist down there when men reach for their towels to cover those delicious erections beginning to break surface all around me. Even men with partners lying alongside them simply can't resist peeking. Hiding the precise direction of their eyes behind their designer sunglasses and pretending not to notice my charms, but swivelling their heads constantly. If they're naked on a beach, it's not so easy for them to hide a pumped up penis. I know I have a great body, and I know the effect I have on them. I know I'm a tasty bird, I know I have the power to excite men.

But then again, if I go to the beach in my uniform, I also know I'll end up sweaty and salty, with sand in my hair and in my pussy and in a quite unacceptable state for work. If by some unexpected chance, i.e miracle, we manage to get a takeoff slot for this evening, I have to be shiny clean, and ready for work at short notice.

I sensibly opt for a cooler alternative. Someone amongst the airport staff tells me about a massive new shopping centre close to the airport. I grab a quick, unsatisfying salad lunch courtesy of the visitors' canteen, stow my flight bag and uniform jacket so I'll be cooler in crisp, thin white blouse and sky blue skirt, and armed with my shoulder bag containing, of course, my credit cards, I leave the airport and take a taxi to the brand spanking new "Centre Commercial Lagrange".

The taxi driver is a road maniac, pure and simple. At any time it's scary driving on the wrong side of the road, but today I've never seen so many crazy manoeuvres achieved by a taxi driver over such a short distance. This one lives with his foot on brake and accelerator at the same time, and only my seat belt saves me from being thrown violently all around the car. The worst, though are the French kids on motor scooters. Suicidal two-wheel slalom at maximum speed seems to be another national sport. And when these idiots don't have that two centimetre margin of safety to rocket between the bumpers of two cars, they eyeball me through their oversized smoked visors. I'm nervous; I've travelled enough in a sometimes ugly world to be wary of potential hijackers. I heard that some of these vicious thugs even carry hammers, ready to smash a car window if they see easy pickings. My crazy taxi driver clearly knows all about it – he watches every one of them, and his head swivels from road to rear view mirrors all the time. When these scooters pass alongside us and pause between death defying lurches, I don't know whether they are ogling my bare knees or my tits, or just on the lookout for something to steal. My bag is carefully hidden out of sight, but I don't give a shit if they can see my legs. I have good legs.

So we get to the shopping centre, I pay the man an indecent amount of euros plus a tip for the terror ride and go inside by the magnificent glass entrance. When I visit places like this, I always go straight to the top floor and work my way down. So I start my tour of the many shops, which are mostly blasting out obstinately loud techno music from one doorway to the next. I'm impressed by the quality of goods I see - all the designer labels I know, plus a lot that we don't get back in the UK, even in New York. I'm tempted to bust my credit card limit and buy stuff everywhere, but I remain sensible. I allow myself, though, a very expensive bra and panties set in oyster, and start anticipating straight away Richard's reaction when I start to parade it for him next week at home. He has this fetish about sexy underwear, and it'll be a miracle if he can keep his cock in his trousers and his lovely hands off me before I finish the striptease number I shall do for him. There I go again, anticipating hot sex with Richard and wetting the gusset of my panties, without being able to do much about it for days and days. And days.

So I walk around, knowing that I look good. In my uniform I'm usually a kind of curiosity. I feel men's eyes on me wherever I go. Standing outside women's shoe shops waiting for their wives and girlfriends to exit, they look at my jiggling breasts, my legs and the swish of my hips under my thin blouse and skirt, which leave no mysteries about my sleek curves. There amongst the noise and the confusion of sour elderly ladies with slow plodding feet carrying shopping bags, I feel the eyes of French men mapping their routes around my body and imagining what it would be like to travel them. I'm aware of the occasional, exaggerated and lustful double-take as I pass a man head-on. I'm enjoying the sneaky, voyeuristic attention but keeping my cool air, my eyes forward; my sophisticated air hostess appearance is intact.

In a small, crowded boutique, I can't avoid brushing against the body of a chunky, middle aged Frenchman between rails of summer dresses. We both turn inwards, so that our chests are touching, and he's apologising even before we touch: "Pardon." He has a pleasant body odour. I feel his barrel chest slide across my nipples and the metal of his belt buckle graze my belly, and there is an astonishing charge of electricity as we pass. My tit ends reverberate like crazy. I look back, and see that he's trailing behind him a waddling, pregnant Emmanuelle Béart look-alike. I let him continue his life.

Time drags by. I look at brochures in a travel agency, but am more interested in drooling over the impossibly handsome, bronzed male models depicted on the beaches, than the holidays they're trying to sell me. Finally, I run out of anything interesting to see on the top floor of the "Centre Commercial Lagrange", and so I make my way towards one of the moving staircases, anticipating more treasures as yet undiscovered on the floor below. Anything that will get me through the next few hours.

There, I notice a couple of youths making a nuisance of themselves, blocking the way onto the belt. I'm not the only one who appears uneasy, one or two people clearly unnerved, walk away towards the stairs rather than take the escalator. One of these very unsavoury looking characters reminds me of Miss Piggy, an ugly sod, his military-style cargo pants are hanging loosely down below his MacDonald's inflated pot belly, where his T-shirt has pulled up, showing a piercing ring in his navel. He's not very tall. On his feet are unfastened trainers, white tongues flapping out of their laces. He sort of dances menacingly around a few metres in front of me, like a low grade amateur boxer, showing his teeth brace like a gum shield and uttering what I know must be disgusting things in French. The other one is taller and skinny, dressed much the same, but less ugly, not so frightening. He pivots sort of inanely too, but keeps looking furtively around him, as though inwardly fearful of being seen by someone from the centre sécurité. They both look at me with a lewd adolescent interest as I approach, eyeing the front of my blouse, then my classy legs. I see a long, pink tongue eject itself lasciviously from the little bugger's mouth, and I am very unsettled.

My nerves tighten and begin to hum. My heartbeat quickens somewhat and I start to tingle inside with budding fear. But according to my flight training, I clutch my underwear package and shoulder bag against my breasts, I stride forward, looking straight ahead. The two nerds plant themselves in front of me and I stop dead in my tracks. I look up at their pimply, grinning, imbecile faces. Thoughts are flying around in my head like pipistrelles at dusk. I'm about to be robbed, I decide. You hear stories of rape, but that's unlikely here in broad daylight in a shopping centre, isn't it?

Just then a stocky, dark skinned youth with longish jet black hair brushes past me and literally shoulders Miss Piggy, enough to knock him off balance and spin him round to my right. The pig instinctively regains his balance and turns back to square up to my saviour. But equally quickly I see the grin has gone, and a look of apprehension, even of recognition has appeared in his eyes. When he sees the size and shape of his adversary, he starts to move backwards, like he's doing a moonwalk. The other juvenile delinquent, now on my left, circles slowly around behind me trying to look tough but clearly keeping his distance, and finishes up beside his pal. Then my tall dark knight in denim bermuda style shorts and white T-shirt, whose tanned legs are a very nice shape, I note, says something I can't translate, directly at them. The pig inelegantly hikes up his cargo pants, as though in final defiance, aims an imaginary pistol at the good guy and fires once, blows on the end of his smoking gun and slips it back into its holster. Both young thugs slouch away into the crowds, just like that. Game over, I say to myself. I'm grateful for the timely intervention of my young French vigilante hero.

The youth who has surely just saved me, deliberately or not, from losing my bag and my precious credit cards, maybe my new underwear, doesn't look back. He steps onto the descending staircase and before I can come out of my near catatonic daze, he too has gone.

My heartbeat slows almost to normal by the time I step off the escalator at the bottom and continue my tour on the lower level. Now I need a shot of quality caffeine, and also I decide to get something to read. I'm lucky; there is a large bookshop, or "librairie" as they say in French, on this floor, with even an English books section. They must get lots of anglophones from the airport, passing though. I can read some French and manage to speak it quite well after a glass of wine or two. But novels can be hard work in anything other than your mother tongue, and are certainly not relaxed reading in French. So I'm especially pleased when I find a small selection of erotic novels in English. I shouldn't get myself excited, I know, with my Richard a thousand kilometres away, but I give in to my immediate need for personal cerebral stimulation and pick up one of those ubiquitous blockbusters about South Carolina rice plantations. You know the kind: disgustingly rich American white masters and mistresses on black slave-driven plantations in centuries gone by, the men screwing the black slave women instead of their own wives, and the white women bedding the big handsome black bucks at will. 'Gone with the Wind' but with blatant sex on demand, if you like. It's a nice thick book, and I think it could keep me going for a few hours, perhaps more if that strike goes on. And on.

I pay for it, carry on browsing the boutiques for a while, looking for a place to escape the madding crowd. I find a cosy looking coffee bar piping out bland but quiet pop music, where I sit down and order a large cappuccino. I look around me and see people eating, drinking, yawning, tapping fingers on tables, cracking their knuckles, reading, talking on mobiles, dreaming, even sleeping. I see heads swivelling in a dozen directions. When my coffee comes at last, I lace my fingers through the ear of the cup, feel the heat on my palm, sniff in the odour. I open my book and sink rapidly into my caffeine and erotic encounters. It's an easy read; my eyes fly across the paragraphs, and loose-end boredom soon becomes increasing lubricity.

I lose track of time somewhat reading about all those black bodies and frantic couplings, then realise, not only that my cappuccino is finished and I am dribbling love juices into my panties again, feeling a growing urge for penile penetration, but I also need to pee. I make my way to the ladies, there's always one on each floor in these places. In the cubicle, I pull up my skirt and slip down my panties. I notice how moist my pussy lips are, am encouraged to take instant advantage of this natural lubricant, am simply overwhelmed by a sudden urge to masturbate. Visions in my head of all this interracial stuff have been just too much for me, and I can't restrain my natural instincts. I am a very highly sexed woman. I make myself a nest of toilet paper on the wc seat, as I always do in public toilets. Sitting there, I pee, and at the same time start to finger my emergent love button as golden water trickles, then spurts out of my pussy lips. I manipulate my clitoris delicately at first and the focus of my fantasies switches between my beloved Richard who is several million miles away just when I need him, and hard, sweaty, black male flesh.

I glance at puerile felt-tip pen sketches on the cubicle door and walls, of cocks and pussies created by either female sex fiends or frustrated artists; there are even phone numbers. I try to decipher a few badly written French words I can't understand. I resist the temptation to write down the phone numbers. It's like being in a non-speaking confessional. I close my eyes to shut it all out, and I rub on my clit, enjoying the anticipation of a burst of sexual release.

Suddenly I hear a high-pitched humming in my ears all around me and feel a sting on my inner thigh. Fucking mosquitoes! How I detest those nasty little things. Why me, I ask myself? It's uncanny just how mosquitoes always manage to find me when I'm anywhere south of Gatwick. How they seem to love good quality British blood! That's it, I say, rubbing session over, orgasmus interruptus. I'm still wet, my insides are contracting deliciously and I'm absolutely longing for a quick climax, but I also know I need to get out of this cubicle before the hateful little bugger tells all his pals there's pure English blood to be had on the WC menu and they all join in the sanguine feast.

I tidy my hair and freshen my makeup like all good air hostesses do, and I wander on through the Centre Commercial Lagrange looking anxiously for a pharmacie and hopefully some cool soothing ointment that might be available without prescription for my itching mosquito bite. I also look over my shoulder periodically, you can't be too careful. I check my voicemail. I hear my Richard's soft sexy voice say 'hi darling', that he's thinking about me between heavy and boring meetings and has a hardon. My heart goes out of rhythm. Then I listen to an over-long complaint about life from my mother which cancels out the pleasant bumping in my chest. No news from the airport is bad news I guess. After drifting in and out of one or two more classy shops on this floor, after successfully resisting overwhelming temptations to buy, and then getting cross at seeing no sign of a pharmacie anywhere, I need to get back to my book, back to my fascinating story.

I spot another smart café bar, where I order another cappuccino and this time a "patisserie" and dive once more directly back into my own personal, private, erotic world of hot, steamy colonial rice plantations and those utterly fascinating and endless black and white fucking permutations, pausing only to slip my hand furtively under my skirt on a regular basis to scratch my itching thigh, where a large, angry red bump has now developed. This is the only distraction from my lubricity for a while.

"Mistress Anna whimpered, as she felt the hard callused palm of Sam the plantation worker's hand slam across her pale delicate face. She clutched her cheek as she fell backwards, half sitting, half lying, onto her wide, luxurious bed, looking up through tearful, fearful eyes at Sam's sweaty, glistening, naked black torso. She could smell his appalling odour; his black chest heaved, showing his huge pectorals and Mistress Anna saw a mixture of lust and racial hatred on his wide, flat-nosed, thick lipped face as he glared down at her. He said nothing, but began to unbuckle his thick leather belt. His baggy, filthy, worn out pants fell to the ground, and his long, black snake of a penis sprang out, distending and swelling before poor Mistress Anna's eyes."