Undercover

[JohnAubrey]

Here we go again. I've had some free time recently, and was feeling in the mood to write again. Apologies for any mistakes you may spot - this was written quickly and only given the briefest of proof-reads.

Enjoy! Or not. But if you do enjoy, let me know! I hope the next chapter isn't too far away.


Starting to Feel Sechs-y

Harriet was aware that her heart rate was quickening and she was fidgeting non-stop as she changed clothes in her cubicle. It wasn’t just the usual jitters caused by the pre-workout kicking in; she was definitely nervous, and understandably so. After all, so far her time undercover had essentially comprised a holiday from her usual desk job and a lot of time spent getting paid to work out. She had done no investigative work, had interviewed no suspects, and followed no leads for months. Instead she had dutifully gone to the gym six days a week, every week, and spent most of the rest of the time eating and sleeping. Her detective instincts felt like a blunt edge in need of a whetstone.

Today was Harriet’s first opportunity to do some actual undercover work on this mission and this was an operation she had instigated herself. It was she who had suggested to Beck that she take the proactive step of making contact with Chardonnay with a view to inveigling herself into Florence’s inner circle, and she felt even more pressure because of the personal responsibility.

Harriet had always got nervous before interviews at the SFO, even though forensic accounting was hardly pulse-quickening stuff. And asking gently probing questions about a company’s accounts was her métier; all this cloak-and-dagger stuff was entirely new to her. So far her entire experience of successful covert work was limited to remembering not to announce herself as an officer of the law to the receptionist at the Wimbourne Hall front desk when she signed in for the gym.

In the past Harriet knew just what she had to do to ease her nerves before an interview: over-prepare. She would go over and over the case files and her notes, and then she would go over them again. It was like swotting for an exam, and her school and university marks were testament to the efficacy of her meticulous preparation. “Never half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing,” as a wise man had once said, quoting Ron Swanson.

This time was different though. Harriet couldn't prepare like she had in the past. This time it wasn’t about memorising facts and figures, or combing through spreadsheets. It was going to be a matter of attitude - it was going to be a performance. And whereas normally she would prepare her mind, today the main tool she had at her disposal today was her body, and she was going to have to amp herself up like an athlete getting ready for an event. A natural introvert, she was going to have to affect a new personality and a new attitude for the duration. She was going to have to go method.

Granted, what Stanislavski had in mind probably hadn’t specifically involved ordering the smallest pair of booty shorts and the most revealing sports bra Harriet could find from an online company that actually sold athleticwear as opposed to lingerie masquerading as gym clothes, but it was one way of getting in character. Even alone in her flat, Harriet had squirmed with embarrassment at how exposed she was in her new gym clothes when she had tried them on - and now, as she stood in the changing room cubicle with just a plywood door between herself and the hordes of gym-goers without, the half a dozen eggs she had eaten for second breakfast were at serious risk of making a premature reappearance.

All Harriet could think about was all the attention her exposed flesh was bound to attract. But that was what she needed, and she was just going to have to deal with it. She was going to strut into that gym feeling like the most confident woman in the world, she was going to go out of her way to attract attention, and then she was going to bask in it; she was going to get into the mindset of someone like Chardonnay, become shamelessly preening and exhibitionist, and, with any luck, all that fake confidence was going to transmute into real confidence.

Harriet took a deep breath. Youcandothisyoucandothisyoucandothispleasedon’tthrowup she repeated to herself like a mantra, and she opened the cubicle door.

The funny thing was, she reflected later, all the doubt, all the self-consciousness, all the nervousness, all the nagging little voices in her head disappeared as soon as she wrapped her hands around two dumbbells and hoisted them from their rack. She was transformed by the iron.

And with every exercise Harriet did grow in real confidence, especially when she spotted various men checking her out, with various degrees of subtlety. This was a novel experience. She had only ever witnessed men perving over other women before, and had always thought that in the event it happened to her she would have felt violated, but she was coming to realise why some women found it empowering.

They are in your thrall, she told herself. You control them; you are a Siren and they are enchanted by your song. She forced herself to walk closer past the ogling men than was necessary, and chose to linger in their lines of sight, taking much longer than was necessary bending at the waist to fiddle with her shoelaces. That’s right, she thought,  take a good look, boys, because I am worth looking at.

There were no two ways about it: Harriet was starting to feel amazing. Now it wasn’t just pre-workout pumping through her system; she was overflowing with a lubricious confidence, and it was an exciting and intoxicating feeling for someone who had never before even sipped from that cup.

She felt so amazing that with each new exercise she began to challenge herself to break her PB, and when she smashed record after record, she felt even more amazing. Her excitement peaked when she started to do alternating curls and realised that she was actually lifting more than the middle-aged man next to her - okay, he was built more like a runner than a lifter, but he was obviously physically fit, and he was a man, and he was clearly trying so hard to challenge himself because he was so obviously embarrassed about standing next to a young woman who was easily curling dumbbells ten pounds heavier than his, and for more reps, and with stricter form.

By now the pump was real. Harriet’s arms were engorged with blood and looked bigger than they ever had before, her cephalic veins prominent and pulsing. Never mind the fake confidence now; when your arms looked like this, it was impossible not to feel as indomitable as a Gaul after drinking Getafix’s secret potion. But Harriet wanted more. She wanted the sort of pump where your arms feel like they are too exhausted to move while simultaneously also feeling like they are stronger than ever before.

Harriet decided to finish with sets of cable curls. Her arms were by now full of blood, to the point where contracting her biceps was difficult, not because she was struggling with the weight as she pulled on the cable handles, but because even at a ninety degree angle her arms were so ludicrously inflated that it felt like she may not be able to bring her fists any closer to her shoulders. But Kane had taught her not to give up so easily. She focussed, breathed deeply, and forced her way through more reps.

While Harriet had walked tentatively out of the changing rooms, she now positively swaggered back into them, red-faced, clothes saturated with sweat, but feeling like a million dollars. At the end of the room standing in front of the mirrors, she spotted a woman she recognised on sight as Amy Bain, not one of Florence’s pet projects, but a successful bikini competitor with a big social media following of her own.

Harriet’s only previous interaction with Amy was to be scolded by her for daring to walk in front of her camera when she was filming herself performing glute thrusts. Harriet felt sure that Amy wouldn’t even recognise her, not least because she seemed to spend almost all of her time in the gym filming herself and snapping at people who got in the way of her camera, as if they were intruding on a closed film set. Amy had a harsh, sarcastic tone and a carrying voice, and if she wasn’t using it to bitch at people, she was boasting on video to all of her online followers about how she wasn’t just a bikini competitor, but also a successful and sought-after marketing executive #ladyboss #bossbitch #shecandoboth.

If Harriet was being completely honest with herself, she would have admitted that it wasn’t just Amy’s unfriendly personality that had made her take an instant dislike to her, but the fact that Amy was also the sort of woman whose looks and lifestyle inspired envy - a lissom beauty queen who was gym-buffed, salon-coiffed, and who drove an expensive car and always but always wore revealing designer clothing.

When she had first seen her, Amy was the sort of woman that Harriet could only dream of becoming: athletic, desirable and completely self-assured. Except Harriet hadn’t spent the last few months only dreaming, she had spent them pumping iron, and now - a joyous epiphany - she realised that for all the finely detailed musculature, Amy the bikini competitor was actually small compared to her. At some level, Harriet must have been aware of this discrepancy for a while, but the image Amy projected, the force field of glamour, had not allowed her to see the truth clear.

Amy was certainly not a woman who suffered from shyness, and she had stripped to her underwear in the middle of the changing room to film a ‘check in’ for her posing coach - but also, frankly, to show off, because if you've got it, flaunt it, right? - loudly narrating her satisfaction with how she was bringing a ‘better package’ to the stage this year, and throwing in some bonus flexes to show off her gains to her followers.

This is level two, Harriet thought. She had shown off to a crowd in the gym from a distance, and now it was time to get personal; now she had to meet and dominate a woman like Amy one-to-one - and then her rendezvous with Chardonnay would hold no fear.

Unnoticed by Amy, who was staring over her own shoulder into the mirror and lovingly detailing how impressed even she was by how her rear delts were looking, Harriet retrieved her hoody from her locker, zipped it up, and then quickly walked over to Amy and stopped right in her personal space, coming face to to face with her as Amy turned around. At this close distance, Harriet calculated, Amy would be denied a sense of perspective - until it was too late.

“Excuse me!” hissed Amy, “Can’t see you see I’m filming; I need to update my posing coach with my latest progress.”

Harriet smiled what she hoped was a disarming, shy smile, and tried to channel her tongue-tied personality when she was baffled by a conversation with Beck.

“Oh, sorry, sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that, you just look so amazing and I was just wondering if you compete at all?”

The obsequious approach did not have its intended effect. Amy snorted dismissively.

“Erm, obviously I compete; I mean, look at me!” she said, gesturing at herself, “Nobody looks this sensational if they’re not planning on competing. Do you have any idea how much hard work and dedication it takes to look this fabulous? Oh, silly me; of course someone like you wouldn’t know. I doubt you could handle even one of my workouts.”

Harriet had been correct in assuming that by wearing her baggy hoody and by standing so close to Amy, the conceited woman would assume she was just a fatty. Little did Amy know this hoody was actually a pump cover. Harriet feigned embarrassment.

“I know, right? I saw you in the gym earlier with your booty bands and, well, you looked incredible. I can’t imagine what it must take to look as good as you.”

“Dedication, honey,” purred Amy, softening her attitude slightly in the face of more unadulterated praise. She twisted her hips, angling her torso away from Harriet, and pointed at the accentuated result in the mirror. “This squat booty didn’t build itself, you know.”

“Oh wow,” said Harriet.

“Damn right. You might not think it to look at me,“ said Amy, playing up to the still-rolling camera and tossing her glorious blonde hair while pouting in the mirror, “but I am actually a lot stronger than the average man.” She was warming to her theme now. “A lot of people think bikini contests are just beauty pageants, but we are definitely bodybuilders; we just happen to be bodybuilders who want to look sexy as hell in a bikini and heels. Strong and sexy. Take a look.”

Amy flexed her bicep, and a firm, lemon-sized bulge appeared on her arm.

In the past, Harriet would have been genuinely impressed by this display of strength, but now it took no little effort to fake it.

“You look so good, girl! Do you think you could show me some poses, please? I’d love to know if you think I’ve got what it takes to compete too?”

It was now or never. Without waiting for an answer, Harriet unzipped her hoody and dropped it to the floor. For the first time in her life, she hit a double-bicep pose outside the privacy of her own home, and in front of another human being. The results were gratifying. Amy’s jaw dropped. She stopped putting any effort into her own bicep flex, and the lemon disappeared, leaving a lithe arm poised in the air.

Harriet twisted her wrists and felt the big balls of muscle twitching. She didn’t look at her arms, but she could feel how big they were, and how the biceps were bunching and bulging. She didn’t need to look in the mirror: she could tell exactly how impressive they must have looked just by watching Amy’s stunned face.

“I’ve been doing some working out too, but I’m afraid I don’t really know any other poses. Maybe you could show me? What was that one you were doing earlier? When you made your back spread wide?”

“That… that was a lat spread,” Amy managed, after winching up her jaw.

“That one. Show me how to do that,” asked - no, ordered - Harriet.

Like a robot, Amy turned back to face the mirror, set back her shoulders and flared her lats. It wasn’t a pose in a bikini competitor’s routine, but she was proud of the width she had built after years of struggling with pull ups.

Harriet stepped behind her and copied her pose, a little awkwardly, because she had never attempted to flex like this before, but almost immediately dwarfing the size of the woman standing in front of her. Amy was in heels, Harriet in trainers, but they happened to be standing at almost exactly the same height, which made the span of Harriet’s inflating lats all the more impressive. Standing behind Amy and out-flexing the woman in front of her in this way, Harriet felt like a snake dislocating its jaws to swallow its prey.

Amy stopped flexing again, and her body subsided. She almost looked like she had shrunk a little. She was no longer a confident athlete striking poses, but a humiliated little girl who just wanted to pack up her stuff and run for the exit.

Harriet wasn’t done.

“Does this qualify as a squat booty?” she asked rhetorically, turning around and tugging down her sweat-stained shorts as she did so. Presented at close quarters with enough booty to keep even the most spendthrift of pirate crews happy on shore leave for a month, Amy’s jaw dropped again. Harriet pulled down and kicked off her damp shorts, her thighs billowing as her feet hit the floor.

“I asked you a question.”

Amy’s mouth flapped up and down, but no words came out.

“Well, if you’ve lost the power of speech, instead you will demonstrate to me how you pulled that pose a moment ago, when you sort of half-twisted and made your little booty pop. Quickly, now.”

Wordlessly, Amy repeated the movement. Harriet watched closely and then mirrored her movements. Her left glute ballooned out and smacked into Amy’s right buttock, knocking the smaller woman off balance. Taken by surprise, and in heels, Amy toppled sideways. Harriet flashed out an arm, hooked Amy around her waist, and hoisted her back upright.

“Careful there,” said Harriet. “Don't tell me you're one of those silly women that just can’t stand up straight in high heels?”

There was an awkward pause.

“Could you maybe put me down... please?” said Amy, squeaking the last word.

Harriet realised that she had not just caught Amy, she had actually hoisted her off her feet and was holding her suspended, coiled in one arm. She had a sudden flashback to the time Kane had wrapped an arm around her and helped her to the water fountain all those months ago. She wondered if Amy felt as awed by the strength in her arm as she once had in Kane’s grip?

“I suppose so. Oh, hang on, clumsy girl, one of your heels has fallen off. Let me just…”

Harriet easily flung the woman over her shoulder into a fireman’s carry position, and squatted down to retrieve the shoe. She could feel Amy panicking, incorrectly fearing that Harriet wasn’t going to be able to handle her weight as she crouched to grab the high heel, and giggled as Amy’s arms scrabbled around for hand holds, tickling the small of her back. In the end the only things Amy could find to grab on to were Harriet’s meaty glutes. Amy’s hands felt comically small to Harriet as they squeezed hold of her bottom; in her mind she pictured a small child struggling to grab a basketball in each hand.

Having retrieved the shoe, Harriet stood back up, without any obvious difficulty.

“How much do you weigh, anyway?” Harriet asked.

“One... one hundred and twenty pounds,” panted Amy.

“Oh, you little thing, that’s not even my warm up; no wonder you feel so light,” said Harriet, dropping once more into a squat and then working her way through a series of easy reps. She could feel Amy’s hands slipping from her glutes - either her new booty shorts had been too sodden to absorb all the perspiration from her workout, or Amy’s palms were damp with a panic-sweat.

Finishing the last squat, Harriet made eye contact with herself in the mirror. Or at least, she made eye contact with a woman whom she eventually realised to be herself. There she stood - formerly such a prude that she would struggle into a swimsuit after her workout just to take a shower in the public changing rooms - in only a sports bra and a thong, dripping with sweat, her body thick and heavy with muscle, pumped and veiny, and with a sexy woman slung casually over her shoulder, almost as if she were a cartoon caveman claiming her mate.

She looked unrecognisable when compared with the prim, nervous young lady in a smart trouser suit and sensible shoes who had hesitantly walked into Beck’s office all those months ago. And, more importantly, now she felt like a different woman altogether. Perhaps she could borrow one of those hashtags Amy was so keen on using - hell, no need to borrow it; now she could just take it. It wasn’t like Amy was going to be able to use it any time soon anyway...

#alphafemale

Harriet glanced across as Amy started whimpering. Could she? Of course she could: the tanned, toned buttocks draped over her shoulder were simply too inviting not to. She flashed a wicked smile at the camera and then delivered a ringing slap to Amy’s honed little arse. Amy squealed. The red imprint left by Harriet’s hand remained clearly visible on the otherwise flawless, peachy little bottom, as if Amy had been branded by her owner.

“Send that to your posing coach.”

[buddon]

Brilliant! But mare DC Kane. Right hoping she goes steaming in n right batters a few bams, ken?

[Hello345]

I've got to say, this is one of the best written pieces of work on this forum, in my opinion. Good luck and I hope you continue!

[JohnAubrey]

Brilliant! But mare DC Kane. Right hoping she goes steaming in n right batters a few bams, ken?

Kane will definitely get her time to shine, but not just yet... 

[JohnAubrey]

I've got to say, this is one of the best written pieces of work on this forum, in my opinion. Good luck and I hope you continue!

Thank you! I was a bit annoyed reading the last chapter back after I posted it because I think it needed a a few little tweaks. Hey ho. I'll try to be more careful next time.

[Gertos]

I've got to say, this is one of the best written pieces of work on this forum, in my opinion. Good luck and I hope you continue!

I concur. Excellently written. I'm looking forward to more.

[JohnAubrey]

And here's the next instalment.

I've just started playing around with a body swap story in the last couple of days, and I've got an inchoate idea forming for a husband and wife story too, so I'm not sure what I'll have the time and inclination to write next. This one definitely isn't done though.


On Your Marks, Get Sept, Go!


By the time Harriet came back out of her cubicle, Amy was gone. She must have left in a disorganised rush, as she appeared to have left her high heels and a few items of her clothing in a pile on the floor next to the sink countertop where Harriet had deposited her before walking away without another word. Amy did appear to have accidentally taken Harriet’s shorts and hoody with her though, as they were no longer where Harriet had dropped them. Harriet didn’t give it a second thought; she had no need for them at the moment anyway.

She was on her way to the pool and had changed into her new bikini. It was a hybrid design that was marketed as being suitable for both swimming and playing beach volleyball. She had ordered it after admiring how athletic and sexy the model on the website looked wearing it, but now only false modesty would make her deny that she thought she looked even better in it.

Even taking into account her other recent purchases, the booty shorts and sports bra, the bikini was the most revealing item of clothing she had ever worn in public. Unlike the last time she had emerged from the cubicle though, she felt no trepidation at being seen wearing so little - she was even enjoying the fact that the bikini bottoms were already struggling with her glutes and had started to gather up into a wedgie, revealing more of her muscular curves. She didn’t unbunch them. Let people admire my murves, she thought, and smiled inwardly, realising that she didn’t just have a new body, but that all that time spent on social media admiring fitness babes had provided her with a new vocabulary with which to describe it as well.

Murves. She liked that word, with its suggestion of both strength and femininity, neither of which were attributes she would have formerly considered herself to possess in any great measure.

She liked the fact that she could justifiably apply the term to her new physique even more.

Despite the beach towel draped over her shoulder which obscured a swathe of her torso - and replacing the supple form of Amy who had occupied much the same position just a few minutes earlier - a single glance at Harriet would have confirmed to even a casual observer that this was a woman whose life revolved around exercise.

There were more than a few casual observers as she walked towards the swimming pool, and none of them were satisfied with a single glance.

After draping the towel over a chair next to the pool, Harriet casually stretched, buying herself a few moments to calm herself, allowing her to analyse the situation, and to locate Chardonnay. She was pleased with this simple ploy, deciding it was the kind of thing a spy would do in a film, cool and casual as you like.

Much like a teetotaller who had got tipsy after being persuaded to have a couple of large glasses of wine at a business lunch, as great as Harriet was feeling, she was aware that she had been starting to lose control of herself in the changing room, and now she was consciously trying to reign herself in a little, constantly reminding herself that she still had work to do.

Not that she wanted to completely sober up just yet - and who was to say that she might not embrace the opportunity to become inebriated once more, as long as she could still get the job done? After all, didn’t James Bond repeatedly save the world while positively sloshing with martinis?

As it was, Chardonnay was just where Harriet expected to find her, sitting submerged in the small jacuzzi adjoining the far end of the pool.

Business time. Harriet rotated her shoulders experimentally. The bikini top was, she now realised, too tight, but not so restrictive as to prevent her swimming in it. A lifeguard standing behind Harriet did a double-take as her still-pumped biceps jumped to life as she checked her hair was secure in its bun. He caught the eye of a colleague, waggled his eyebrows and jerked his head in the direction of Harriet, mouthing ‘WTF’.

With four steps forward and no hesitation, Harriet dived smoothly and confidently into the pool. She had always been a keen swimmer but now, with the explosive strength generated by her legs, she had no need to start her stroke immediately, letting her body glide through the water, until she was almost halfway along the pool. 

As she enjoyed the feel of the cool water rippling against her hot body, she kept repeating her plan to herself, with the exaggerated care of a drunk trying to pull off something which she knew ideally required a clearer head. The plan, such as it was, was simple, and didn’t need to be over-analysed, but ‘preparation’ was Harriet’s watchword, after all: so yet again she told herself that she would swim a few lengths, then stop for a rest close to Chardonnay before innocently striking up a conversation, all so her target wouldn’t suspect Harriet was there specifically to meet her.

Those few lengths were the smoothest and speediest Harriet had ever swum, cutting as quickly and quietly through the water as a racing yacht, her arms no longer tiring out long before her legs as they would once do when she was younger, leaving her clinging to the pool edge and gathering her energy before starting again.

Eventually she made her way towards the shallow end, and the jacuzzi, and came to a stop, grabbing hold of the little dividing wall and making a show of catching her breath. Chardonnay was almost close enough to reach out and touch. She made eye contact with Harriet...

“Hey, sexy.”

Harriet and Chardonnay both started at the unexpected intrusion. A cocky pretty boy was standing at the jacuzzi edge, running one hand over his abs and another through his gelled hair. To Harriet, he looked like a complete waste of space, but Chardonnay would flirt with her own reflection if she noticed it looking at her.

“I’m Liam.”

“Hell-o” Chardonnay trilled, getting good value from her false eyelashes by fluttering them hard enough to generate a gentle breeze, and shimmying a little below the water, just enough that her submerged breasts were briefly, tantalisingly, visible.

This was no good, thought Harriet. Not this, not now. She had to get rid of this guy.

“Have you ever seen that before?” she asked Chardonnay.

“Seen what?” asked Chardonnay, looking back open-mouthed at Harriet, seemingly baffled by the question. In fairness, even less oblique queries addressed to Chardonnay often had much the same effect.

“A man with the legs of a chicken!”

Chardonnay snorted with laughter as Liam’s face reddened.

“Someone’s been skipping leg day. Someone’s been skipping leg year, from the look of things!” added Harriet.

It didn’t really make sense, but it made Chardonnay laugh even harder; her chest heaved and yet again caught Liam’s attention.

“How about you walk your scrawny little arse back to the rest of the boyband - they’re probably missing you,” Harriet said, a little more aggressively.

The young man’s circulatory system was working overtime: close proximity to Chardonnay had diverted most of the blood in his body southwards, but there was still sufficient to be pumped north and keep his cheeks glowing with embarrassment.

Seemingly unsure about what to do next, he plunged abruptly into the jacuzzi, perhaps trying to kill two birds with one stone: to hide his legs from further derision, but also to get closer to Chardonnay.

“They are skinny legs, though, innit,” laughed Chardonnay.

Liam finally snapped.

“Fuck you,” he spat.

Harriet watched Chardonnay closely. Her expression had shut down when she was insulted, and now her face was stoney.

“My ex had skinny legs as well. Which was funny, because he was actually a professional footballer, yeah? He told me I had to stop working out when my legs got bigger than his, but I didn’t want to. I said he should just, like, spend some more time in the gym, but he said his manager had banned him from working out with weights anymore because he was getting too bulky. I said his legs didn’t look bulky to me; they looked well skinny. It’s funny though - when we started going out, I didn’t think he was skinny; I thought he was proper buff. He was bigger than you, anyway. But he wouldn’t stop whining about it, so I dumped him. Skinny men like you are boring.”

“Fuck you I’m skinny!” said Liam furiously. “Ain’t no bitch calling me skinny just because she’s fat!”

Consider, if you will, the crocodile. They inspire fear, and rightly so. As Stirling Archer would tell you: “I’m afraid of any apex predator that lived through the K-T extinction. Physically unchanged for a hundred million years, because it's the perfect killing machine.” Perhaps the only thing worse than being in a body of water and seeing a crocodile snout emerge in front of you, is seeing two crocodiles.

Luckily, as a general rule, crocodiles tend to avoid jacuzzis in the grounds of country houses in the shires. Who can say why? Perhaps they dislike the bubbles. We may never know for sure. Anyway, the point is that this jacuzzi was a crocodile-free zone, but Harriet could have sworn she had glimpsed a couple of large, threatening... somethings lurking beneath the surface.

Chardonnay smiled an abrupt, forced smile and shifted her weight, seeming to recline further beneath the water. Her knees broke the surface and as they moved apart it was clear that she was spreading her legs enticingly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, babes. I didn’t mean nothing by it; it’s just a bit of fun. How about a kiss to say sorry?”

This was more like it, Liam thought; he had put the bitch in her place. All his blood started pumping south again. He waded forward.

Harriet watched as Chardonnay’s toes, nails painted hot pink, peeked out from below the water, and realised Chardonnay must be extending her legs.

Liam placed his hands on Chardonnay’s knees and looked defiantly across at Harriet, self-satisfied as only a horny man who thought he had bypassed a cock-block can be.

As Liam moved forward again, his hands left Chardonnay’s legs and his fingertips trailed through the water.

And then it happened. Chardonnay flexed and they surfaced. Not a pair of crocodiles, but just as powerful, and just as dangerous. Still sneering at Harriet, Liam didn’t notice, at first - but as the gigantic quads disrupted the surface of the water, expanding upwards and outwards, his fingers recoiled in shock. It was too late. Chardonnay scissored him around the waist and pulled him down until only his head and shoulders remained above water. Liam’s breath exploded from his lungs and he had no opportunity to even cry for help.

“Hnnnnnghh!” he wheezed.

“I ain’t no fat bitch, but I ain’t no skinny bitch, neither,“ Chardonnay whispered. “I’m a big, strong bitch. Do you like big, strong bitches, babes?”

Harriet guessed that Chardonnay emphasised each syllable in ‘big, strong bitch’, with an extra squeeze of her thighs, and Harriet could tell from Liam’s every wince that he regretted each application of extra pressure more than the last. Chardonnay’s expression meanwhile remained blank, disinterested, as Liam turned purple; Harriet half-expected Chardonnay to start studying her manicure to pass the time.

The bubbling water became extra choppy as Liam struggled to break free. Harriet could have told him he was wasting his energy; she had watched videos on Insta**** of Chardonnay leg-pressing the equivalent of multiple Liams. Liam was only getting free if he brought along his five-a-side team for help.

“I like being big and strong. Men can’t tell me what to do anymore. But sometimes that makes them angry.”

Harriet couldn’t look away from Liam’s face, the fear in his eyes, the helplessness. She pretended to take pity on him - in reality, she was suppressing a morbid curiosity to see what Chardonnay would do if left unchecked - but, if he actually passed out, it might attract unwanted attention and that wouldn’t make her job any easier. She easily pushed herself out of the pool and slipped into the jacuzzi.

“Why don't I show this guy to the exit?”

Chardonnay didn’t say anything, but released her hold. Harriet slipped her hands under Liam’s arms and supported his weight as he collapsed, coughing and spluttering.

Harriet walked backwards to the edge of the jacuzzi, dragging Liam along with her, until her heel hit the bottom rung of the steps. Liam still seemed incapable of bearing his own weight. Impatient to be alone with Chardonnay, Harriet placed her foot on the first step and started to ascend them in reverse, still pulling Liam backwards, until she was no longer just pulling Liam backwards, but backwards and upwards, her legs now carrying both their weight clear of the water. For the second time today, she unceremoniously dumped someone down on their arse, this time in a nearby chair.

She turned around and saw Chardonnay looking at her admiringly. Behind her, Liam stood up with legs as wobbly as those of a punch-drunk boxer, but determined to head for the nearest exit with all possible haste; he had no intention whatsoever of finding out if Chardonnay wanted to go another round.

“Looks like I’m not the only big, strong bitch,” said Chardonnay, clearly impressed.

“Yeah, I work out a little,” replied Harriet, trying to keep it casual. “Mind if I join you?”

“Let me just scoot over,” said Chardonnay, standing up to free some space on her perch.

As she did so, Harriet discovered that her recent experience of stunning Amy into silence simply by revealing her physique was no preparation at all for the feeling of finding the roles reversed.

She had thought that studying all the photos and video clips of Chardonnay online had left her well acquainted with the sight of her new friend’s impressive development, but as Chardonnay’s dripping torso emerged from the water it became clear to Harriet that all the progress pics she had seen had not told the full story. Harriet felt like she’d just tuned in to a favourite TV show only to find she’d somehow missed a key episode, and was now struggling to get back up to speed.

Chardonnay’s shoulders may have been no broader than Harriet’s, but the lines and composition of her upper body were very different. Chardonnay was absolutely shredded. Her body fat percentage must have been a number lower than an England opening batsman’s test average; it was certainly several points below that of Harriet’s, as relatively lean as she had remained throughout her months of carefully-controlled bulking. Chardonnay’s silhouette diverged from a tiny waistline, spreading into the chiselled V-shape of a competitive bodybuilder ready to step onto the stage.

Her extreme level of conditioning made it more obvious than ever that her breasts were implants. Whereas once she could have passed for a comely all-natural Page 3 girl, now her breasts sat like big, round finials on squared-off plinths of pectoral muscle. She had cephalic veins like Harriet’s, but with an additional network of pullulating blood vessels spreading across her arms and delts that looked like a series of catastrophic events branching off from the Sacred Timeline.

Chardonnay was a study in incongruity. Compared with someone like Kane, who was just built on a different scale to most people - naturally big, and tall, and heavy - and on whom all that muscle looked like a natural fit, Chardonnay looked like the result of an experiment.

With striations accentuating every pound of beef on Chardonnay’s body, Harriet could see her muscles flickering beneath the surface of her skin as she moved, almost as if she were spotlit by a strobe light.

Just to add to the confusion, there was Chardonnay’s face, which seemed to belong to another woman’s body entirely, a delicate bimbo whose skin, lips, teeth, lashes, brows and hairdo were all subject to the skilled ministrations of a small team of cosmetic professionals, and who looked like she had never broken a sweat in her life.

Harriet waded back in and they both sat down, not without some difficulty - the underwater ledge on which they were sitting was designed as a perch you wouldn’t necessarily want to share with a stranger; and two powerful women, both significantly broadened by muscle, were obliged to wedge themselves against one another. It was snug.

“I’m Chardonnay.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Harriet.”

“He was a knob, wasn’t he? Just like my ex. Men always say they want a strong woman, until they find out how strong a woman can be, then they just turn into scared little boys.”

“Oh, tell me about it,” replied Harriet casually, even though she had never dated anyone in her life.

“I think it’s the girls that attract the wrong kind of man.”

“The girls?”

“Yeah, you know, the girls.” Chardonnay thrust forward her chest to make her point and her implants pushed clear of the surface. “Somehow men always just see the girls, and never seem to notice the rest of me.”

To Harriet, who had been doing nothing but drinking in the entirety of Chardonnay’s stunning physique from the second she had seen it, this seemed bizarre; but then, she told herself, she didn’t have a penis doing her thinking for her.

“And then when they find out I can do this, they think I’m some kind of freak.”

Chardonnay started to rapidly flex her pectorals, her implants jumping upwards and outwards, rocking back together like a two-piece Newton’s cradle.

“Gosh! How do you do that?” Harriet exclaimed, unable to help herself.

“Don’t tell me you never flexed your pecs though?”

“No, never.”

“Oh, it’s easy. Look, do this.”

Chardonnay’s personality and expression were so animated and excited now that it was hard to reconcile this version of her with the blank-faced woman who was a few seconds away from choking out a man between her thighs. Now she was happy and giggly; ditzier than the company Harriet normally kept, but totally lacking in affectation. Harriet couldn’t help but warm to her. 

Chardonnay was also very tactile. She reached over and hooked a forefinger in the front of Harriet’s bikini top, pulling it down to expose the clearly defined channel that now ran down the front of Harriet’s sternum, between her pecs.

“Okay, now imagine you’re squeezing your boobs together without using your hands.”

Trying out a new flex for the second time that day, Harriet again surprised herself with how easy she found it to master. Her body was so responsive now; it could easily answer all sorts of questions that she had never thought to ask it before.

“Yassss, babes, that’s it! Make the girls dance!”

Harriet’s flexing was slower and more deliberate than Chardonnay’s, and the end result wasn’t as dramatic, but Harriet could feel that familiar intoxicating sensation sweeping over her again. All the ideas that had been circulating in her mind about Chardonnay and her body were forgotten; her own muscles were the only ones that concerned her now.

Why had no one ever told her that being strong and showing off your strength felt so good?

She thought of all those times as a student when she had gone to the gym and spent most of her time on the treadmill in a Sisyphean slog - because lifting weights wasn’t what girls did; because she didn’t want to get bulky; because she hadn’t known the thrill of watching her body change and grow; because she didn’t know how exciting it was to lift more than the man standing next to her - and she could have screamed with frustration at the memory of all those wasted hours.

Chardonnay released her grip on Harriet’s bikini top and started to flex her own pecs again, raising her arms above her head and wiggling, for all the world looking like she was on the dance floor in a club. Together, they must have been quite the picture, because a young man walking past was so distracted that he didn’t see the chair in his path and sprawled over it in a classic pratfall. Harriet and Chardonnay burst out laughing.

It was natural, spontaneous laughter but, as it subsided, Harriet remembered her professional obligations and reluctantly started to calculate her next move. Clearly she had made a personal connection with Chardonnay, and if she wasn’t disarmed now, she never would be. She just needed to proceed cautiously and find the right combination of words to subtly plant the idea in Chardonnay’s head of making introductions between her and Florence. Where to begin?

“I like you, babes; you’re fun. You remind me of my personal trainer - she’s posh like you are, but she’s fun too. You should meet her.”

Well, that was easy.

[JohnAubrey]

Acht-ung Baby!


“I’ve been a good girl, mummy.”

Harriet didn’t even hear the little voice, completely absorbed in admiring her own body, until the curtain was pulled back by a small child clutching an iPad in her spare hand.

“You’re not my mummy,” the girl said crossly.

---

Harriet left Wimbourne Hall with no particular plan or destination in mind, too preoccupied with processing the events of the last couple of hours to think much about where she was going as she started the engine and headed for the exit. Normally this wouldn’t matter too much as she would drive home on autopilot, physically and mentally exhausted by her second training session of the day, but not this evening; at the moment her body was tingling with a nervous energy and her mind was buzzing.

As a woman who prided herself on always being organised, running through all the possible scenarios and precluding any complications, she was unused to finding herself dealing with the aftermath of unexpected situations - and now the repercussions of her afternoon's activities had provoked such an unexpected tangle of confused, and confusing, thoughts and ideas, all of them inchoate and hard to define, that she didn't know quite where to start in dealing with them all. She was aware that other people may have taken all this in their stride but, for Harriet, this was like one of those panic-inducing nightmares where you find yourself about to sit an exam for which you haven’t studied.

She drove around aimlessly for a while, until a rumble of thunder and the first fat drops of rain bouncing like golf balls off her bonnet jolted her from her reverie and she realised that not only had she driven past her flat, but that she had reached the outskirts of town, with the option of either joining the ring road or turning off into the shopping centre.

It wasn’t a difficult decision; she didn’t want to go back to an empty flat. Normally a quiet, solitary person at the best of times, her new regime had left her with so little free time that she had become even more isolated. She had become used to shuttling between gym and home and gym and home but, right now, she just didn’t want to be alone. She felt a need to be around other people in a social setting that wasn’t the gym; she was suddenly very aware that she had completely removed herself from normal life when the mission had started, and now she had an overwhelming desire to be back around normal people going about their normal business.

---

“You're not my mummy.”

Nonplussed, Harriet struggled to formulate a response.

The little girl continued to scowl at her, as if Harriet was the one who had burst in on her, intruding on her privacy.

---

Having parked, Harriet thought that perhaps a little retail therapy wouldn’t go amiss. She was not a woman who had ever previously considered shopping to be a leisure activity - quite the opposite, in fact: if she had been a character in Dawn of the Dead and the shopping centre was the last possible refuge from the zombie apocalypse, she would have opted to take her chances outside, thank you very much - but, realistically, she did need some new clothes. Although she had been ordering gym apparel online, she hadn’t bought herself anything else for months now and - she tingled at the thought - she cut a very different figure to the slender woman who used to spend her days working at a desk in a pretty blouse and slim legged trousers. She didn’t even know many of her old clothes would even fit her any more.

Harriet grabbed her emergency waterproof, a one-size-fits-all kag in a bag, from the glove compartment, pulled it on, and splashed her way across the tarmac to the entrance.

---

“You’re not my mummy. You’ve got more muscles than my mummy,” said the little girl. She paused, and tilted her head to one side, as if considering a problem. “You’ve got more muscles than my daddy,” she said eventually.

From somewhere outside came a voice, raised in complaint.

“No, I asked for the sports bra in white in a size down; this one is too big for me.”

“That’s my mummy,” said the girl, nodding in apparent satisfaction.

“Katy, who are you talking to? I told you to sit quietly with your iPad. Are you bothering someone?” snapped the disembodied voice.

“Mummy, come and look at the woman’s muscles; they’re much better than yours,” chirped the girl, in the guileless manner of the very young. “They look bigger than daddy’s!”

There was the sound of someone moving down the corridor.

---

Once inside, Harriet felt lost and aimless again - she didn’t like shopping centres, and she didn’t recognise the names of most of the shops. She couldn’t settle on where to go, or what to do, and she felt increasingly frustrated, almost aggressive, like she needed a way to let off some steam. Without any idea of how to relieve herself of this pent up feeling, she continued to wander up and down the halls, pacing like a caged animal.

Harriet was almost beginning to feel like she wanted to start an argument with someone, or perhaps even pick a fight. Still struggling to clear her mind and organise her thoughts, it began to dawn on her that perhaps she had not been wandering around as aimlessly as she had supposed, and that, rather than pacing like a caged animal, she had in fact been stalking prey like a tigress on the savannah.

She realised she had been tailing passing strangers, sizing them up, calculating their probable weight and level of fitness, considering the width of their shoulders, searching for the definition in their arms, assessing the girth of their legs.

Still feeling the effects of the pump, Harriet had been feeling improbably huge - but ‘improbably’ was the operative word and she was beginning to worry that this feeling was deceptive, that it was all in her head. And so she was prowling the halls of the shopping centre looking for some kind of confirmation that although she may have been surrounded by normal people, she was no longer one of them, no longer a normal person herself any more. With this realisation her inner monologue began to echo loudly in her head as she searched for vindication in the physiques of passersby: I’m bigger than her; I’m definitely bigger than her; I think I’m slightly bigger than him; I’m bigger than her; am I bigger than him?

---

“Don’t be silly, Katy, daddy is a man and men have much bigger muscles than women.”

A svelte woman appeared in the entrance to Harriet’s cubicle. Two lines of thought suggested themselves to Harriet, two paths of deduction based on two different types of experience.

The first, conditioned by her well-established instincts as a financial investigator, was that here stood a high maintenance yummy mummy who wanted you to be left in no doubt that she was a trophy wife. The ostentatious wedding ring made it clear that her husband was rich, the Cartier watch and diamond earrings established that he continued to lavish her with gifts. The healthy tan suggested a recent holiday somewhere hot and doubtless exotic, and her artful blonde balayage spoke of regular visits to a salon to keep looking her best.

The second was directed by Harriet’s more recent experiences, particularly the countless hours scrolling through fitness inspo pics on Insta****: the sports bra and leggings this woman wore were designed to showcase her body, and not for the rigours of strenuous exercise; the body itself looked honed by pilates, all long elegant limbs and taut abdominals. She was a prime example of what happened when an attractive woman worked out to stay skinny rather than to grow strong. The overall effect was to make, say, Gwyneth Paltrow look a bit dreary, and like she could stand to lose a few pounds in comparison.

And, as was now the custom, when she spotted Harriet’s body, the mother stopped still in stupefaction.

---

Harriet was stalking new prey, her attention drawn to two young men who might uncharitably have been described as ‘neds’. She was moving ever closer to them, and they had definitely noticed her presence, because they were glancing back at her and scowling, wondering what the hell she was doing. Harriet got the distinct impression that if she had been a man they would have already kicked off; as it was, the fact that she probably looked like a crazy lady at the moment, bedraggled after the heavy rain in a baggy, still-dripping, lime green anorak was in her favour.

The men were dressed in branded sportswear, trainers and hoodies, but Harriet got the distinct impression that if they were ever spotted running, they wouldn’t be jogging, but making off from a police officer shouting ‘Decamp! Decamp! Decamp!’

But what did she really want to happen, she started to wonder... To provoke them? To start a fight? To overpower them? To prove to them how strong she was? Or maybe she just needed to prove that to herself? No, this was insane. She had never even thrown a punch in her life. She stopped walking. The young men continued on, still giving her the occasional defiant glare.

The last couple of hours were starting to feel like an unlikely dream to Harriet. She needed confirmation that she wasn’t crazy, that she hadn’t been hallucinating; that she was, in fact, as strong and as dominant as she felt.

---

It was funny, thought Harriet, how women’s muscles seemed to have the greatest effect on other women. It was like they were discovering something they had never even suspected of existing, and that shook the very foundations of their beliefs, like an uncontacted Amazon Indian walking into a jungle clearing and finding a branch of McDonald’s.

The blonde continued to gawp at Harriet in silence until her daughter started giggling.

“Katy!” the woman exclaimed, coming out of her trance, “You can’t just walk into someone’s cubicle; you need to leave the woman alone,” she said, grabbing her daughter’s hand.

I’m very sorry about her,” the mother muttered to Harriet, but with an averted gaze, staring fixedly at a point on the floor near her feet, like a bashful schoolgirl.

“But mummy, don’t you think the lady has bigger muscles than daddy?”

The woman still couldn’t make eye contact with Harriet, but Harriet noticed that she couldn’t resist flashing a glance at her thick torso.

“No, Katy, daddy is a man and men have bigger muscles than women.”

Wordlessly, slowly, pointedly, Harriet brought her arms up into the classic double bicep pose. Her pump was still very much in evidence, and she could feel the blood throbbing in her veins and pounding in her temples as she balled her fists, set her jaw, and squeezed her arms down as hard as she could.

---

As the young men disappeared around a corner, Harriet wandered over to a nearby plinth which displayed a map of the shopping centre, and looked at the available options, searching for a high street name she could recognise. She was dimly aware that many of the shops where she had used to buy clothes had got into financial difficulties and closed over the last few months, but she was shocked to realise the only name on the floor plan she recognised was M&S - and she had no intention of suffering the ignominious fate of buying her clothes from the same shop from which her mother bought her underwear.

Then she spotted a name she did recognise: there was a branch of Lululemon nearby. Although she had been intending to buy some formal clothes, and would not normally have considered buying such expensive athleticwear, she felt like she deserved a treat - and anyway, she needed to replace the clothes that had gone missing from the gym floor.

Plus, the really important thing was just to find somewhere where she could enjoy the privacy of a changing room with a mirror.

---

“Look mummy!”

The skinny blonde’s eyes widened and she raised her hand to her mouth.

“She is stronger than daddy! She is!”

“Well… just because the lady’s muscles look big, doesn’t mean she’s stronger than a man,” said the mother quietly, but without real conviction.

Harriet could barely conceal her irritation at this woman and her negative attitude. Who was she to keep denigrating women’s strength to her own daughter? Just because she lived on what was almost certainly a restrictive, faddy diet to help her stay tiny, and clearly thought that a flat stomach was the aesthetic peak of female muscularity, that didn’t mean that all women had to be as frail as her.

---

Feeling out of place in the shop, and having hurriedly selected a few items, Harriet made her way to the changing rooms to try them on. And here she had another happy revelation: the mirrored cubicle was definitely her friend. In the past, Harriet, like many women, had found being surrounded by walls of mirrors like being subjected to harsh criticism; the mirrors were the bearers of bad news, the unflattering reminder of every physical flaw.

Now though, as she stripped to just her sports thong, she realised that she had never had such a good all-round view of her body, and her back in particular, and she delighted in twisting and turning, unashamedly admiring the width, the thickness, the definition of her physique. Once a smooth expanse, pleasant enough, but almost entirely featureless, her back’s topography was now disrupted by an intricate jigsaw puzzle of interlocking muscles; she had a hinterland.

Her trapezius looked like a butterfly with its wings spread, basking in the warmth of the sun, she thought; she rolled her shoulders and watched, amazed, at all the rippling undercurrents of movement in response. The bright lighting in the cubicle highlighted every twitch and contraction. Harriet sighed in contentment. It hadn’t been a dream; it was real. She had remade herself into a bigger and better version of the woman she once was, and built her body to become stronger than she had ever thought possible.

As she admired herself, the curtain twitched open to reveal a small girl.

---

“May I?”

Harriet reached over, took the open-backed top from the woman’s hands and let it dangle from her fingers, turning it this way and that, seemingly admiring the workmanship. Eventually, she slipped in first her right arm and then her left, and wrestled it over her head. As she struggled to pull it down her torso the elasticised fibres strained, the material becoming shiny as it stretched beyond its natural limits. It may have been too big for skinny Gwyny, but it was clearly far too small for Harriet, and the broad expanse of her back put it under extreme pressure.

Even standing at ease, the seams of the material were already cutting into Harriet’s sides, leaving red welts on her soft skin. Still without saying a word, Harriet insouciantly moved her body into the pose Amy had taught her earlier that evening, arms angled at her sides like the levers of a winged corkscrew, her lats unfurling and flaring like a sail catching the wind. In the silence the sound of threads rending became audible. The lattice of straps across Harriet’s back popped apart, one after the other, the bra peeling from Harriet’s pecs, her uncompressed breasts thrusting forwards, propelling the crumpled material, ruined, to the floor.

The little girl started clapping.

Harriet gave her a wink and cocked her arm at her side.

“Want to feel how strong a woman’s muscles can be?” she asked.

The mother immediately stepped forward and wrapped a dainty hand around Harriet’s tumescent arm.

“I was actually speaking to your daughter,” Harriet said, smiling.

If she heard Harriet, the woman didn’t respond; she was engrossed in squeezing Harriet’s bicep. The metal of her wedding ring felt surprisingly cold against Harriet’s arm as it pressed against her engorged muscle, warm with pumping blood.

---

The rain hadn’t stopped by the time Harriet walked back across the car park, picking her way around puddles as she tried to find her car in the gloaming. It was hard to be sure over the sound of splattering raindrops, but an occasional splash made it sound like someone was walking along behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and spotted a hooded head ducking for cover behind a car. She was definitely being followed, and by someone who didn’t want to be seen.

She kept walking at the same pace, resisting the urge to break into a run, making sure not to pass too close to any potential hiding places, aware of the possibility that, if it was one of the neds from the shopping centre, his mate could be hiding up ahead.

Even if she did run, where could she run to? She still had no idea where her car was parked and there were no other people to ask for help, or places to seek shelter in sight. She started to feel sick at the thought of how she had been seriously contemplating the idea of provoking a fight inside the shopping centre. Not only had she never thrown a punch, she didn’t even know how to. Kane had offered her some self-defence lessons once, but the prospect of fisticuffs at Wimbourne Hall had seemed a distant one and she had politely declined. Oh, to have Kane by her side now!

She may not be able to fight, but she knew she was strong. If she could grab hold of an assailant her chances of overpowering them had to be good, better than evens anyway. She started to cut diagonally across some parking spaces in a direction that would take her down the side of a Transit van; if she was quiet enough, and timed it right, she would be able to hide behind the rear of the vehicle and take her stalker by surprise. She just hoped they didn’t have a knife.

---

The sound of the shop assistant returning broke the spell. The blonde gave Harriet’s arm a final, admiring stroke, and quickly stepped backwards, grabbing her daughter’s hand, and then pulling the curtain closed; Katy giving a final cheerful ‘bye bye!’ as she was led away.

Harriet heard the woman tell the shop assistant that she would take the bra in both the smaller and larger sizes and then ask her if she wouldn’t mind ringing both through the till now and bagging up just the smaller one before she came out to pay, as she was thinking of wearing the larger size home; the self same torn garment that currently lay on the floor of Harriet’s cubicle.

If the shop assistant wondered why the woman wanted to wear a bra that she had been complaining was too big for her just minutes ago, she didn’t ask. Just another day in customer service. 

Harriet could hear the mother’s and daughter’s muffled conversation from along the corridor as they readied themselves to leave.

“Are you okay, mummy? Your face looks all red.”

“I’m fine, Katy. Would you like an ice cream? If you promise not to tell daddy about today, I’ll buy you an ice cream on the way to the car.”

“Not tell daddy about the lady’s muscles, you mean?”

“Yes, Katy, not to tell daddy about her muscles.”

“Okay, mummy.”

“Good girl.”

“But the lady’s muscles were bigger than daddy’s, weren’t they?”

“Yes, Katy. Bigger and harder.”

---

The splashing grew louder. Harriet stood in a half crouch, arms spread by her side, the stance of a goalkeeper in a penalty shootout. A figure emerged, and Harriet leapt forward, her powerful spring taking even her by surprise, her body slamming into her opponent’s, wrapping them in a bear hug designed to pin their arms by their sides. Harriet used her momentum to gather them up and pirouette, not delicately, like a ballerina, but with the brute force of an Olympic hammer thrower, and slammed them into the back of a SUV, where she pinned them tight against the boot.

“Who are you?” she grunted.

Her stalker struggled and squirmed, but must have been aware they were hopelessly outmatched; pressed tightly together like this, the size disparity was obvious and Harriet was clearly much bigger. Adrenaline pumping, Harriet squeezed even harder. Her attacker moaned.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

No answer. Feeling sufficiently in control of the situation, Harriet shifted her grip and brought her right arm up to grab hold of the hood. For a brief second, she had the weird sensation of a familiar smell and felt on the verge of a Proustian rush.

She pulled back the hood.

It was Amy. And the smell, Harriet now knew, was that of her own shampoo. It was Amy, and Amy was wearing her missing hoody.

Amy moaned again and bit her bottom limp seductively, shyly making eye contact with Harriet.

“I’ve been a bad girl, mummy.”

[phil123]

Great chapter and hope she will show daddy that she is stronger than him

[JohnAubrey]

Almost e-neuf excitement for one day

Harriet’s arms dropped to her sides, adrenaline ebbing away, fear and anger replaced by confusion. Amy may no longer have been wrapped in a bear hug, but she remained effectively trapped against the back of the SUV by her proximity to Harriet’s taller, wider, and heavier body. Not that Amy seemed to mind, although it took the naive Harriet a few moments to realise that Amy was breathing heavily not because she had been badly winded, but instead because she was panting with sexual excitement.

Confusion gave way to embarrassment, Harriet’s face becoming suffused with the roseate flush of pudeur, as shy and awkward now as a callow teenager being presented with their first Valentine’s card. But if Harriet had no sense of what to say or do, Amy on the other hand had some very clear ideas about what she wanted - arching her back off the car she began to writhe against Harriet, her smaller, but still sculpted, body pressing up against that of her captor. Harriet could feel Amy’s tight abdominals rubbing against her, as easily discernible through the layers of clothing as if Amy were wearing a cuirass below the hoodie, hard muscle pressing up against hard muscle.

Harriet’s instinctive reaction to this unanticipated, intimate physical contact was to try to push Amy away from her, forgetting there was a car in the way which left Amy nowhere to go, and so she managed only to emphatically pin Amy back against the SUV with her hands wrapped around the bikini competitor’s biceps, which tensed and hardened beneath her grip. Amy squealed in excitement at the force with which she was thrust back, then moaned with pleasure at being so roughly womanhandled.

Disconcerted by the effect she was having on Amy, but reluctant to release her in case her behaviour became even more erratic, Harriet maintained the pressure. Amy continued to push back, although if this was more in hope than expectation of escape, or perhaps because she was simply enjoying being unable to free herself, Harriet couldn’t tell; but as Harriet felt Amy’s arms twitch and grow beneath her hands, she couldn’t help herself and succumbed to her haptic fascination, her thumbs beginning to trace the sharp peaks of Amy biceps, gently massaging them, pressing into them, feeling how compact and resilient the balls of muscle were.

“Do you like them?” Amy asked coyly. “They’re so small compared to yours; yours are so big and strong. I’m just a skinny little bikini girl. I don’t have real muscles. Not like you do.”

As the words registered, Harriet was convinced that Amy was being self-deprecating, certain that she was angling for a compliment. After all, as spitefully as Amy had spoken to Harriet earlier that day, she had not been lying when she mentioned the dedication required to maintain her appearance. Finding a woman with Amy’s type of commitment and motivation was a rare enough occurrence, but for that woman’s laser focus to settle its crosshairs on a life spent in the gym in the quest for gains was even rarer.

After all, Harriet had marvelled more than once at the wealth of online contest pictures and videos that recorded Amy’s peak week body strutting and sashaying up and down the stage as she wore a bikini that was only some yellow polka-dots away from being celebrated in song. Harriet had watched Amy stand proud in a gleaming rank of bronzed glamazons, and noted Amy’s ersatz surprise as the judges had formally announced what was obvious to anyone with eyes: that Amy had the best physique of them all.

No woman like Amy could feel inferior to her, could she? Harriet’s insecurities began to occupy her attention again, insidious but no less insistent because of that.

Maybe Amy wasn’t looking for compliments?

Maybe Amy was mocking her?

And then Harriet looked down, and as she looked down, she was reminded how much bigger than Amy she was now.

More memories quickly followed, a cinematic montage of flashbacks illuminating her thoughts: Harriet remembered flinging Amy over her shoulder; and heaving Liam out of the pool; and the swelling muscles of her body reflected in the changing room mirrors; and tearing apart a sports bra just by flexing; and the soft caress of Katy’s awed mother…

Amy was not wrong: compared to Harriet, she was just a skinny little bikini girl now.

Amy strained forwards, craning her neck towards Harriet’s bowed head, clearly desperate to plant a kiss on Harriet’s lips; she continued to wriggle, straining for the freedom to move closer, but there was no leeway to be found in Harriet’s unwavering grip and the two women’s mouths remained separated - by the merest, tantalising distance, but separated nonetheless. Harriet started to feel light-headed as rational thought became subsumed by a mishmash of memories, crystallising realisations and surging emotions. Separated, but dangerously close, she thought, hazily, like Scylla and Charybdis.

Amy’s face was so close to Harriet’s now that not even the lack of physical contact between them could prevent Amy’s presence overwhelming Harriet’s senses: she could look deep into Amy’s limpid eyes, coruscating even in this dark corner of the car park, could feel Amy’s warm breath on her face, could smell Amy’s cherry lip gloss, could sense a stray lock of Amy’s hair, disordered as the hood had been pulled back, tickling her neck.

“I know I’ve been a bad girl, mummy, but I want to make it up to you,” whispered Amy.

Harriet bowed her head just a little further, just a little further, just...

BEEP BEEP!

The SUV’s lights flashed as it was unlocked remotely from across the car park by the approaching driver.


---


The crouching figure scurried across the garden, back to the cover of the garage, where he straightened up and delivered his report.

“It’s PVC, sir, definitely reinforced from the inside, too. It’s going to take a while to get in, even with the big red key.”

Twelve pairs of eyes turned simultaneously to the clearly nervous young officer standing next to the compact battering ram. He quailed at the extra attention.

Beck thoughtfully tapped his chin with his right forefinger, and then used it to point into the darkness, beyond the squad of officers clad in riot gear.

“Tempus fugit. I think it would be best if Kane expedites ingress.”

“Sir?”

“My sergeant will get us in quicker,” Beck translated.

“But, sir, that door’s just not going to come down quickly. Not unless you drive a car into it.”

“So you’ve met my sergeant, then?” asked Beck, smiling broadly.

“No, sir, but-”

“Sergeant! Time to blow the bloody doors off!”

Kane emerged from the darkness and strolled towards Beck. As she approached the squad of officers, all of them big, burly men primed for action, they quietly stepped aside to allow Kane passage. Kane didn’t have to ask, and the officers didn’t wait to be told - something about Kane’s physical presence, and the way she moved, suggested getting out of her way was a very good idea.

“Jesus, she’s built like a brick shithouse,” muttered one of the officers.

“Aye, and you’re built like a shit brick house, ya bawbag,” Kane casually tossed back, her sense of hearing apparently as well developed as her body. 

She stopped in front of the nervous young officer, whose eyes, already wide, now bulged as he looked up at the woman mountain in front of him.

“D’ya mind, wee man?” asked Kane, nodding at the battering ram.

The officer bent down, grabbed the ram with both hands, and stood up, cradling it in his arms like a baby. Kane casually slipped her fingers around the handle, and then raised it experimentally in a bicep curl, gauging the weight; it didn’t present her with any difficulties - if anything, she seemed deeply disappointed it was so light.

Beck’s mobile started to buzz; he glanced at the screen.

“Ah, inconvenient as it is, I’ve got to take this call. I’ll leave you all in the capable hands of my sergeant. Oh, and sergeant?”

“Aye, sir?”

“Do try to remember it’s just the door you’re knocking down; let’s see if we can avoid causing any structural damage this time. It just means extra paperwork for me.”

“Aye, paperwork that you’ll dinghy.”

“Oh, probably, but I won’t take any pleasure out of it. Anyway, I think all that unsigned paperwork is affecting the feng shui of my office. Do you know, I actually phoned up to see if Changing Rooms would be interested in coming round to sort the place out, but once they’d seen a photo they suggested I try to get on Hoarders SOS instead?”

Kane rolled her eyes and turned to face the front door. It was business time.

[JohnAubrey]

Hope you enjoy this new chapter!

If I may, I have a couple of quick questions to ask, and I'd be interested in hearing any responses.

For readers: do you prefer shorter, more regular story updates; or less frequent but more substantial chapters? Or are you happy to just let the author crack on at their own pace?

For any readers who are also writers: do you prefer to write in short, regular bursts; or less frequent, but more sustained sessions? Do you find one approach works better than another for you, or is it simply a case of making use of whatever time you have available?

There's no obligation to reply, obviously - but I'm curious to hear how readers and writers approach stories!

[seldom]

Your work has a great sense of humor and pacing! To answer your questions, I prefer longer, more substantial chapters. And for writing, I tend to get overcome by inspiration and bang out a few thousand words, neglecting other basic functions of life to do so. That other thing, short, regular writing sessions, would probably be a lot healthier in terms of time management and all that good life balance stuff... yeah... when I figure that out... anyway!

[JohnAubrey]

Your work has a great sense of humor and pacing! To answer your questions, I prefer longer, more substantial chapters. And for writing, I tend to get overcome by inspiration and bang out a few thousand words, neglecting other basic functions of life to do so. That other thing, short, regular writing sessions, would probably be a lot healthier in terms of time management and all that good life balance stuff... yeah... when I figure that out... anyway!

Thank you!

I know what you mean in terms of writing... if I could just get used to sitting down for brief, regular sessions then I'm sure that approach would fit around daily life much better and I'd be more productive, but somehow I only ever seem to write on the rare-ish occasion when I have a good chunk of free time.

Anyway, I'd like to keep the chapters of Undercover fairly substantial each time, so this story will continue to progress slowly but steadily, I think.

[JohnAubrey]

As much as she wanted time to gather her thoughts and then make her report to Beck, there was an even more pressing matter Harriet had to attend to when she finally got home: fuelling her body. Luckily she was now well into the routine of meal-prepping and had spent yesterday evening readying dinners for the coming week.

It was a sign of her agitated state of mind upon returning home that she didn’t even bother to lay the table as was her custom every evening, instead wrenching open the tupperware straight from the fridge, grabbing a bag of peas from the freezer, and beginning to eat the contents with her fingers, cold fistfuls of turkey steak and rice wolfed down with little concern for good manners. Eventually she realised what a mess she was making, retrieved some cutlery and sat down, telling herself this was a matter of efficiency rather than etiquette; but the reality was she could picture her mother's pained expression if she discovered her eating in this manner.

Having met her macros for the day, she walked through to her bedroom, pulled off her sweaty gym gear and tossed them carelessly onto the floor. But then she thought better of it and made a concession to tidiness, kicking the clothes into a pile next to the laundry basket, the better to neaten up tomorrow. She collapsed onto the bed and lay unmoving as the minutes ticked by, pondering her options, weighing up how much of the day she should report to Beck, and in what detail.

She came to a conclusion: she would sing only half the mass to Beck. She wouldn’t be lying, she told herself, merely omitting certain events and eliding others. That wasn’t dishonest, right? After all, Beck didn’t need to know everything. And really, when you thought about it, a lot of the stuff she would be leaving out of her report wasn’t even germaine to the case anyway. Beck simply didn’t need to know all of it, she rationalised.

She reached for her phone and made the call. As she waited for Beck to answer, she realised her spreadeagled form was completely naked. She accepted this was indecorous, but couldn’t bring herself to get up and find some clean clothes. In a compromise, she pulled the duvet over her body until only her head poked out, swaddled in a protective cocoon.

When he answered, Beck seemed happy enough with her highly selective précis of the last few hours, especially when he learned that Chardonnay had offered to introduce her to Florence, but Harriet found herself distracted throughout the call by the sounds of violence in the background.

“Um, is everything okay where you are, sir?”

“Oh yes, I’m just supervising a raid on a property outside town.”

“It’s just, well, it sounds quite violent?”

“Oh, nothing serious,” Beck said cheerfully. “Just some of the occupants resisting arrest. Unfortunately for them, the arresting officer is D.S. Kane.”

Harriet could make out the sound of a heavy crash and a scream.

“That reminds me, sir - a while ago Kane offered me some self-defence lessons, and I didn’t see a need for them at the time, but- “

“You think there’s a chance things may become violent at Wimbourne Hall?” Beck interjected, sounding concerned.

Harriet cursed under her breath; she had chosen her words badly.

“No, sir, I’m not worried by anything at the Hall - but I’ve been regretting not taking her up on her offer ever since, and, well, you just reminded me that there’s probably no one better to teach me self-defence.”

“Very true. Although if she offers to teach you how to fight off a man wielding a machete by throwing a chaise longue at him, I’d politely decline.”

“Sir?”

“A purely hypothetical situation, you understand, and not at all based on anything that’s just happened; it’s just that some people might consider that to fall under the heading of ‘police brutality’. Hypothetically, that is. Anyway, I’ll pass on your request once we’re finished up here, and we’ve picked up all the pieces of this broken, erm, fainting couch.”

Beck signed off, but Harriet couldn’t bring herself to put down her phone - she needed the distraction; she needed the comfort of a conversation. Then she remembered that her sister had emailed earlier. She had only skimmed through the lengthy message that morning, too distracted by the prospect of heading to Wimbourne Hall to start her mission to read it properly at the time, and couldn’t recall any of the contents now - but maybe her sister was back from her orchestra tour? Maybe she’d be free for a much-needed chat? She opened the email and read it thoroughly this time. Alas - bad news: the tour was such a success that extra dates had been added in several countries and she wouldn’t be home for months.

Disappointed, Harriet accepted that the best thing for her right now was to get some sleep. Which is to say, she couldn’t think of anyone else she could call up out of the blue for a late night chat. Never exactly a social butterfly, her bodybuilding routine had left her as isolated as if she were a specimen pinned to a board by a lepidopterist.

She put down her phone and turned off the light.

Lying in the darkness, she tried to clear her mind.

But try as she might, she couldn’t push the evening’s events from her thoughts, or forget the feelings they had evoked.

And now she was no longer lying still, but tossing and turning, suddenly hot and bothered.

Harriet gave up trying to fall asleep and reached for her phone again; she opened Youtube and searched for a video from Amy’s last competition. In fact, she was spoiled for choice as most of the available footage of this contest seemed to feature Amy prominently, even though all of the videos were uploaded by different users, and had been filmed from slightly different angles in the auditorium - Harriet could only imagine that the various husbands and boyfriends tasked on the day with filming their respective loved ones had all found themselves ineluctably distracted by the haughty beauty who had ended up walking away with the title.

After all, Amy had a way of always becoming the centre of attention, even when she wasn’t parading in front of an audience wearing only a bikini and heels. A fully-clothed Amy was still the kind of blonde who could make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window and then set fire to a cathedral. (Apropos of nothing, Amy had taken a city-break in Paris in April 2019.)

While her narcissism was obvious, nothing about Amy’s chilly demeanour gave any indication that she was aware of the effect her presence had on other people in her vicinity - but in reality, she was permanently attuned to every admiring and envious glance in her direction, and even if her mean mien gave the impression of total indifference, almost nothing thrilled her as much as knowing with unshakeable certainty that she could walk into any room and instantly raise both libidos and hackles.

Almost nothing: because, for Amy, even better than the unspoken understanding that she was the most attractive woman in any room - even more of a tonic than the resigned and resentful looks on the faces of all the other women once she walked in and they had each realised how deficient they were in comparison with her - was having her supremacy made official. And panel after panel of expert judges had unanimously decided to crown her the winner in a series of bikini competitions, each result as foregone a conclusion as the outcome of a Russian election.

Lining up alongside other highly ambitious, muscled-up glamour babes - all of whom had structured their lives around the contest, thinking of little else for months on end, training and dieting like Spartans, and spending thousands of pounds to look their absolute best - and being so obviously destined to win from the moment she stepped on stage? Amy knew no finer feeling, and winning contests like this one as a matter of course was what underpinned her complete self-confidence.

In truth, it went beyond self-confidence; it was arrogance, and it was on full display as Harriet lay in bed watching the video...

Amy was so arrogant that she deliberately began her stage walk while the previous competitor was still working through her routine; as the unfortunate woman turned around for her back pose, Amy locked eyes with her and began her implacable advance across the stage. Flustered and, yes, intimidated, the woman stumbled awkwardly and then staggered towards the exit without completing her set of rotations, and with no dazzling smile for the judges.

So arrogant, that Amy made sure she walked the centre line of the stage, totally nonchalant, with all the easy elegance of Claudia Schiffer modelling Valentino on the catwalk in her 90s heyday. Amy appeared oblivious of the fact that there was still someone else on the stage with her, or that she was forcing this woman into an ungainly and embarrassed scurry off to one side to make way for her own grand entrance, her predecessor’s walk of shame made even longer and more unbearable by the detour.

So arrogant, that Amy then lingered on stage beyond her own time limit, a complete lack of compunction seeming to allow her to ignore the next competitor hovering uncertainly at the top of the stairs. The reality, Harriet guessed, was that, unseen by the judges or the audience, the stoney expression and imperiously arched eyebrow Amy used to repel fellow gym-goers from her personal space at Wimbourne Hall were now being used to hold this woman at bay. And so Amy had extra time for an additional wiggle here, another shimmy there; one more unhurried transition to show off her muscles in motion; no, make that two more; and then a toss of her tresses that made Rita Hayworth look like she was having a bad hair day in Gilda.

So arrogant, that during the first callout, Amy calmly and casually manoeuvred herself to take up more than her fair share of space on stage, hitting her front pose with her arms swung out in a manner which should have looked aggressively clumsy, but was instead somehow dynamic and graceful; her fellow competitors were each forced in turn to take a step back and shuffle to the side, giving Amy greater prominence, leaving her looking like a royal surrounded by deferential courtiers.

Just watching Amy in motion was an education in itself, her athletic, sensual movements across the stage, and her combination of poise and power, fierce but feminine, almost making Harriet feel inadequate as a woman. As the video continued, Harriet started to feel like she had been letting her gender down, like she had been moving wrong her entire life, hobbling everywhere like a hungover cave troll in comparison - she began to empathise with Jack Lemmon in drag watching Marilyn Monroe arrive at the railway station in Some Like It Hot.

“She must have some sort of built-in motor,” Harriet whispered, smiling despite herself, and shaking her head in disbelief. The movement aggravated the pain of her black eye, which began to throb again. She winced and put down her phone, continuing her line of thought while staring straight up at the dark ceiling, trying to ignore the discomfort.

And yet, and yet… as sexy and strong as this woman undoubtedly was, Harriet thought, Amy had been easily overpowered by her own new muscles.

She was aware of the fact that she still thought of her powerful body as ‘new’, as a sort of enjoyable accident, rather than the cumulative result of months of hard work. Perhaps that would all change after today, the first time she had ever truly reckoned with her own strength and explored what her body was capable of doing when in direct competition with other people.

Lifting bodies just hit different to lifting barbells, no matter how many plates you were squatting.

Just getting hit was different too.

Newly strong or otherwise though, it didn’t matter: the important thing, thought Harriet, was that, pressed against her powerful body, Amy the flawless ice queen had melted, and had been left concupiscent and quivering.

But so what? Harriet thought, glumly. She tentatively touched the swollen flesh around her eye.

So what if Amy had tried to kiss her? In that moment, where had all her new-found swagger and main character energy gone? She had instantly become the timid and prudish young lady of old, too embarrassed to react, her control of the situation disappearing. She had gone from a proud, sparky Austen heroine in control of her destiny one moment, to the heroine’s plain, spinterish sister the next, relegated to an ironic supporting role.

What might have happened had she seized the moment, had she eagerly responded in kind and met Amy’s lips with her own, before they were so rudely interrupted?

Well, she might still have a black eye, but she suspected she would also be feeling much less frustrated.

Harriet sighed, She had left the bag of frozen peas in the kitchen, and she needed it for the swelling. She turned on the bedside lamp, threw back the duvet and rolled out of bed. A few steps across the room, she paused in front of the wardrobe mirror and was immediately taken with the way the angle of the light across her body cast shadows caused by her muscles.

Her muscles were big enough to cast shadows!

She raised her arms, admiring the effect of the distorted, exaggerated images she threw across the room, just as she had admired the size and shape of her actual body in the changing room mirrors earlier that evening.     
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Her muscles weren't big enough. She knew that now. As large as she had become, as impressed and satisfied as she had been with her own physique even just a couple of hours earlier, this evening had taught her that she needed to get bigger and she needed to get stronger. She angled her arms until the silhouette of her biceps on the wall became monstrous... Now, this was a version of reality that would make it worth staying in the cave forever!

But she wasn’t just suffering from body dysmorphia. Her bruised eye hurt, of course, but not as much as her pride. Right now, the embarrassment of having felt powerful, dominant, virtually invulnerable, only to pick her first fight and lose it, stung more than a bruise ever could. She simply wasn’t strong enough yet, that much was clear.

She still didn’t really know why she had done it. Was it that same yearning from earlier, a bubbling curiosity to see who else she could overpower? Was she just angry that her intensely private moment with Amy had been interrupted? Or was she grateful for the interruption, the chance to strike out and relieve all the tension that she had been unable to resolve by succumbing to temptation and kissing Amy?

Regardless, he had provoked her.

When he had seen strangers leaning on his car, his step had quickened.

“Oi! What the fuck are you doing?”

And then, as he had taken in the scene and realised the two women were apparently entwined in an embrace, he had stopped and surveyed the scene. A lecherous grin had spread across his face, his whole demeanour had changed.

“Looks like you’re missing the filling in your sandwich, girls. Don’t worry: I’ve got plenty of meat.”

Harriet remembered turning around, but not how she had felt... Had she been angry? Embarrassed? Relieved?

There had been a sound behind her, she had glanced back over her shoulder and had found Amy had slipped away, swallowed up by the darkness of the night.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, darling.”

He had stepped forward threateningly, one hand on his crotch.

“Oh, why don’t you just fuck off!”

“What did you say, you fucking dyke?”

Then she had taken a couple of steps forward, and had squared up to him. What had she been thinking? Nothing she could call to mind now; these all may as well have been the actions of a complete stranger.

“What did you call me?”

“I called you a fucking dy-’”

He had staggered backwards, as Harriet had planted her hands on his chest and pushed. His eyes had widened - while he had evidently been expecting her to lash out in some way, he had not thought her capable of such explosive power. Still, he had clearly known what he was doing, and had already subtly shifted his weight and adjusted his stance the moment Harriet had approached him. He had stayed standing.

Harriet had fully expected to have taken him by surprise and dumped him on his arse; she had wanted the satisfaction of leaning over him as he cowered on the floor, suddenly afraid of her, and of telling him mockingly, ‘You’re strong - for a man, that is’.

“You’re strong - for a woman.”

It wasn’t a compliment - it was a taunt.

And now Harriet remembered getting angry. She had already been acting irrationally, but now reasoned thought evaporated like cartoon steam from her ears in the heat of her rage.

With the benefit of hindsight, she realised that her opponent was taller than her, was heavier than her, had a longer reach than her, and - crucially - clearly had more experience of fighting than her. Even if she was stronger than him - and she was no longer as certain about this point as she had been at the time, her self-confidence left cracked and crumbling after her defeat - the odds had been stacked against her. With a personality like his, Harriet thought bitterly, he must get a lot of practice fighting - social interactions ending in violence were probably a daily occurence.

When she had swung a clumsy and telegraphed punch at him, he had easily avoided it. Off-balance, she had barely deflected his left fist whirling in retaliation; it had not even occurred to her that this might only have been the first blow in a crude combination, and that he had jabbed at her immediately with his right arm. Fireworks had gone off in her head and she had crumpled to the ground.

She remembered him laughing, and stepping closer; the disgusting drawn-out bubbling noise as he had filled his mouth with saliva and then spat on her; the sound of a fly being unzipped. She remembered feeling powerless, any notion of self-worth and of her own strength extinguished.

And then she remembered hearing voices, lots of voices, getting closer, ever closer. Crowds of people heading across the car park. Closing time! The shopping centre was kicking everyone out!

“Ah, fuck it. Little bitch.”

He had jumped into his car and driven off. From the ground, Harriet had an excellent view of his rear bumper.

She stood still and concentrated. Then she walked back into the kitchen, grabbed a bag of peas for her eye, found a pen and a notebook, and scribbled down the personalised number plate she had just managed to remember.

[JohnAubrey]

Happy New Year! Here's a new chapter to celebrate...




Ever since she was a little girl, Harriet had been used to winnowing her way through crowds. She had been a small child - sylphlike and nimble - so she could easily slip into the narrow gaps that larger adults couldn’t fit into, and she would necessarily take the path of least resistance. Hers was always a circuitous route through a crowd, neither the most direct nor the quickest, but certainly the most non-confrontational. Even now as an adult, she always took the same approach; she would still yield at the slightest pressure, and she would never push past other people, because not only was there no need, but that would also have been impolite.

—

Harriet’s morning started badly.

She had suffered a fitful night’s sleep, full of disquieting dreams that illuminated her brain with images that made her heart pound and left her sheets drenched with sweat.

There were certain recurring features from dream to dream, the last of which featured a 4x4 inexplicably parked in the middle of the Wimbourne Hall weights area. At first the gym seemed to be deserted, perhaps because the fire alarm was sounding and the sprinkler system had been activated - but there was Amy, draped over the car bonnet, her clothes sodden to the point of transparency, writhing her hips from side to side in time with the windscreen wipers.

Then another sound started, arrhythmic and percussive, punctuated by an occasional rattling. On the far side of the gym, Harriet’s assailant was working over a punching bag, which swung back and forth like an eccentric pendulum in an unreliable longcase clock. Then the man noticed Harriet and started to walk towards her. Harriet turned back to Amy and tried to warn her to run, but her voice wasn’t working; she started to run herself but somehow made no headway, her legs attenuated and ineffectual. Again she tried to warn Amy, and again she found herself mute; she turned and found the man's ghoulish face leering at her, looked back and found both Amy and the car vanished. The fire alarm grew louder, shriller, ever more insistent.

—

“Oh, sorry!”

Harriet apologised as her right shoulder hit a man heading in the opposite direction, and then she immediately found herself apologising again as a woman on her left squawked with indignation as she too received an inadvertent blow.

Harriet was mortified. How could she have been so careless, not once, but twice? She glanced from side to side, trying to judge if tiredness had affected her peripheral vision, but found her attention drawn to the way her sleeve heads were distorted by the fullness of her deltoids. She gave an experimental shrug and belatedly realised quite how tight the jacket was, how the sleeves had bunched in her armpits, how the cuffs were stuck partway up her forearms, the ratio of material to muscle all wrong. 

—

Harriet was eventually roused from her hypnopompic state by what she came to realise was not, in fact, a fire alarm in her dream, but the ringing of her doorbell. As she sat up, her phone slid from the duvet and hit the floor; the battery, she realised as she picked it up, was dead. She rarely wore a watch these days, and the heavy curtains allowed in no daylight, so she was unsure of the time, or if her alarm should have woken her already.

The doorbell rang again. Still groggy and yawning widely, she pulled on her dressing gown and made her way to the front door. Without stood her neighbour, Mrs Jones, carrying a large box prominently stamped with the branding of the sports nutrition company whose products Harriet had come to know so well. Harriet mumbled a greeting.

“Yikes, looks like someone kissed you good and proper last night!” Mrs Jones laughed as she caught sight of Harriet’s face.

“What? No! No one kissed me! No!” Harriet replied, altogether too loudly and too quickly to sound relaxed and normal, the sudden panicky recollection of the previous night - and the idea that other people might somehow have heard about it - doing the work of a cold shower and a double espresso and jolting her awake.

“I meant a Glasgow kiss. You know? How’d you get the shiner?” Mrs Jones responded after an awkward pause, gesturing at her own eye to emphasise her point.

“Oh, that,” said Harriet, trying to compose herself. “Just, just an accident at the gym. Silly of me, really - I wasn’t being very careful.”

“So you do go to the gym? That explains this box - I thought the postie had got the address wrong when he asked if I could take this in for you yesterday. I thought it must really be for that big lad downstairs - what’s his name again? Tip of my tongue… No, can’t remember it. Anyway, I said to myself, there’s no way this was for you; you’re a nice young lady, not the sort who goes to the gym and gets all sweaty and muscly.”

“I’ve been working out at the gym for quite a while, actually,” said Harriet, defensively.

“Really?” came the reply, polite but dubious.

“Isn’t it… isn’t it obvious?”

Mrs Jones registered the disappointment in Harriet’s voice and gave her a curious, appraising look. The thick fleece dressing gown in which Harriet was mantled gave no hint as to what lay beneath.

“Sure, if you say so. You look great. Anyway, got to go - late for work.”

Briefly, Harriet considered calling Mrs Jones back and dropping the dressing gown to the floor in an act of glorious defiance. Only the fact she was completely naked it beneath it stopped her, and even then after a moment of hesitation.

Feeling deflated and regretting her timidity, Harriet carried the box inside and closed the door.

—

As commuters surged around her, Harriet stopped still by a shopfront, shoulders slumped and arms rigid by her sides, trying to take up as little space as possible, as if a mere change of posture would magically shrink the powerful body which now bore little relation to her lithe frame on which the jacket had looked so chic when she had first tried it on a couple of years ago.

A businessman in a hurry forced his way past Harriet’s left side. As Harriet had straightened her arms, she had inadvertently flexed her triceps, and the lateral head had hardened and jutted out, digging into the man’s ribs as he pushed past her. He looked back at her angrily, in the mistaken belief that she must have deliberately stuck her elbow into him - after all, what other piece of her anatomy could have been so solid?

Red-faced and scowling, he stopped to confront Harriet.

—

Harriet dropped the parcel on the kitchen table and went to inspect her black eye in the bathroom mirror. Yesterday’s swelling had largely subsided and it was, in fact, no longer just black, but had turned an interesting shade of purple overnight; she was so pale that if she stood really still she looked like a marble statue on which the sculptor had decided to experiment with a porphyry inlay for the eye socket. 

She gave the bruised flesh a tentative poke, flinched, and then gave herself a rueful smile in the mirror. Idiot, she thought. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

If she didn’t want to answer the inevitable awkward question that everyone she met was bound to ask her, she needed to do something to hide it. Given how gloomy it was outside today, wearing sunglasses would be impractical - and besides, did she even have a pair? It wasn’t as if she was one for sunbathing on a beach holiday; she had spent the last summer on a walking trip in the Highlands where it had been so dreich that she was more likely to get rickets than a tan. Instead she grabbed her laptop and searched for a Youtube video on how to use makeup to hide a black eye.

Ten minutes later she had a basic idea of what she needed to do, but a rummage through her kitchen cabinet and bedroom drawers only confirmed her suspicions: namely, that her selection of cosmetics was just marginally more impressive than her range of tinted eyewear. She owned only one dried-out lipstick that had not seen service since the office Christmas party two years ago, and some mascara that looked even more clumpy than her mum’s porridge. She checked the clock and decided that she could get ready, make it to the high street, pop into Boots to buy the necessary items, and get back home with just enough time to spare.

—

Constantly jostled by the stream of commuters, Harriet was starting to feel harried and discomfited. She felt strangely out of place and out of control. She stopped pulling at her jacket lapels - as if it were a simple matter of teasing the material into place so it fitted her better, and nothing to do with the uncompromising taper of her torso - and looked up to see the businessman staring down at her, his face angry…

Suddenly Harriet was back in her nightmare, her assailant close enough to strike, and she was unable to speak, unable to move. The entire world was collapsing in on her. As her pulse quickened and her breathing became ragged, she remained just aware enough to recognise the telltale signs of a panic attack.

She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, let this feeling overwhelm her.  She was strong, she told herself, she was disciplined, she was in charge. She tried to clear her mind and get into the zone, pretending she was preparing for a big lift -  going for a PB was always a little scary, but any apprehension on her part was always tempered by anticipation and excitement as she stepped up to face the challenge. Focus on the positives; you can do this, she thought.

No matter how difficult things seemed in the moment, lifting had taught Harriet that ultimately she was the one in control. Her breathing fell back into its usual rhythm and she started to feel more like herself - but she knew that she needed to get out of this crowd, and quickly, if she were to find the space and the peace required to properly gather her thoughts. Slowly she inhaled and then exhaled deeply, opened her eyes, and stepped forward.

—

Harriet was pressed for time, so she decided there was no point showering before hitting the gym for her first workout of the day and getting sweaty all over again. Besides, an increasingly audible borborygmus left her in no doubt as to what her body’s priority was at the moment: eating her first breakfast of the day - and she could only have been anticipating this meal more keenly if she were a hobbit.

She may have felt sticky and disgusting, and would not normally leave the house unwashed, but to make an omelette you had to break a few eggs - although, strictly speaking, the egg whites Harriet used for her breakfast omelette actually came straight from a carton (after months of fiddling around separating out the yolks, discovering this product a few weeks ago had made Harriet happier than she would care to admit).

Her mind still occupied with keeping to her schedule, Harriet dressed without much thought; when she couldn’t find a hoodie, she grabbed an old jacket from the coat rack, draped it over her arm and headed for the door, stopping only to grab her keys and purse.

—

Opening his mouth to unleash a stream of invective, the businessman was taken aback, first, by Harriet’s thousand-yard stare lasering straight through him as if he wasn’t there; and, second, by the fact she then also walked straight through him as if he wasn’t there. It was enough to give a man an existential crisis. Off-balance and too startled to even call out, he tried to resist her advance, but found himself driven backwards into the crowd, trapped in a rolling maul.

If anything, Harriet was even more surprised than the businessman at her easy progress. Her intention had been to press her way through the crowd a little more quickly and a lot less politely than usual, just as she had often seen other people in a hurry do on many occasions… But instead with every stride forward she was actually bulldozing commuters out of her way, and she didn’t seem able to prevent it.

Harriet was discovering that, while the high level of strength and aggression she had developed was necessary for her to push herself to the limit in the gym, she could not easily modulate this physical intensity when applying pressure to passersby to make headway in a crowd. Weightlifting had trained her muscles to rebel against the very notion of passivity, and to fight back until the point of exhaustion.

Once upon a time her slight frame would have bobbed around in a crowd like flotsam in a current, but not any more; now, she was the one making waves, and the surprised businessman was not the only person tossed aside as she advanced.

—

What Harriet hadn’t counted on when she left her flat was that the high street would be clogged with commuters on the way to the station, a seething mass that would slow her down considerably. To make things even worse, roadworks had closed one side of the street and scaffolding covered the frontages of several buildings, further narrowing the available space and causing a lengthy bottleneck into which people were obliged to squeeze by each other.

Realising that her strict timetable was now imperilled by the crowd in front of her, Harriet quickly pulled on her jacket and joined the hordes. Perhaps pausing for breakfast had been a mistake - there was no way she could get to the shop and back home in time now. She should probably preemptively admit defeat and text Kane as soon as she had a quiet moment to warn her she was running late. How inconvenient! She wished there was a way to cut through the crowd more quickly, but experience told her that she would make painfully slow progress.

—

It wasn’t that Harriet wanted to push the businessman - or anyone else - out of her way, it was just that she didn’t seem able to avoid it. Used to slipping gently through crowds, she was finding it physically impossible to make headway without barging into other people and knocking them bodily out of her way.

Even though Harriet had abandoned her usual strategy of squeezing into the gaps in the crowd, she was still taken aback at first by her total inability to avoid collisions, her sense of spatial awareness now incommensurate with her muscular bulk.

She was like a captain piloting a cruise through the Corinth Canal in the mistaken belief that the ship’s beam was several feet narrower than the reality.

Wherever and however Harriet moved she seemed to hit someone, unused as she was to manoeuvring her larger frame in this manner. Her body was wider and thicker than ever before and the geometry of her gains still eluded her. She twisted and turned, but if her delts weren’t obtruding on passersby, her glutes were militating against slipping through gaps that would once have been manageable; her meaty quads and thick arms were too powerful to remain inconspicuous, the exigent breadth of her limbs clearing space with every swing.

Eventually, Harriet realised the futility of trying to avoid people, and stopped making any effort to do so, choosing instead to plough straight on, her face set, apologies far from her mind now. Everyone she barged into was at fault for not getting out of her way quickly enough, she felt; those people must be as stupid as Mrs Jones if they couldn’t see how big and strong she was, and avoid her accordingly; it wasn’t her fault if they couldn’t see what should have been obvious, was it?

You’re a nice young lady, not the sort who goes to the gym and gets all sweaty and muscly… Ha!