Harriet walked into the changing rooms, a reverberating chorus of totally naked, totally naked, totally naked playing over and over in her head like an earworm. Had she really just said that out loud?
She was greeted by an austere woman, tall, thin and angular, her hands crossed limply in front of her body. She looked like a praying mantis, but with none of that insect’s charm, warmth or generosity of spirit.
“May I help you?” the woman asked, in a disdainful voice that suggested she would much rather not.
Harriet, still distracted by her own boldness in making her surprise confession to Jessica, was brought to a halt by the woman’s acid tone.
“Um, yes. Yes. I’d like to try on some clothes,” replied Harriet, her voice trailing off as she looked down and remembered that her hands were empty.
The woman stared at her and, although her expression did not change, with a mere flicker of her eyes she managed to convey the impression that she thought Harriet was a badly-dressed simpleton.
“Are you looking for some more athleisure,” the woman said, enunciating the last word like she found it distasteful, “or do you need assistance finding something… nice?”
Jessica appeared by Harriet’s side, her arms full of expensive dresses.
“She’d like to try these on, actually,” Jessica said firmly. “I hope that won’t be a problem?”
The assistant did some quick mental arithmetic based on the number of items Jessica carried and, like a sallow waxwork coming to life, her face twitched. A disquieting, insincere smile jerked into place.
“But of course! Please, follow me. All the changing rooms are presently occupied but we have a couple of seats free on the banquette in the waiting area.”
The smile wavered as Harriet sat down and - for the first time - the woman seemed to notice how broad Harriet’s shoulders were and how much space she occupied. Evidently her hatred of sportswear had blinded her to this fact. Until that very moment, perhaps it had never even occurred to her that some women actually wore gym clothes for the purposes of exercise.
Harriet’s back and arms spread across most of the two seats indicated; barely any room was left for Jessica.
“Ah! There’s normally… You are… I shall try to find a chair,” said the woman, turning and bustling away down the corridor.
Harriet looked sheepishly up at Jessica.
“These seats aren’t really designed for me. I don’t think there’s enough room for us both to squeeze in. I’ll just stand until another seat becomes free. You should sit down instead.”
“No, no, it’s fine; you stay there. I’ll just sit on your lap,” Jessica replied, quickly.
Jessica abruptly sat down, the bundle of dresses in her arms covering them both like a warm blanket. Rather than sit on Harriet’s lap, Jessica settled herself on top of Harriet’s left thigh, upon which she wiggled around for some time, apparently trying to adjust her position.
“Am I comfortable? I mean, are you comfortable?” Harriet asked.
“Hmm? Oh, yes, yes, very,” said Jessica absently, still squirming.
“I can move slightly, if that would give you more room?”
Harriet raised her left foot off the ground and cautiously extended her leg until it was straight to ensure that none of the dresses got snagged and stretched over her knee; then she shifted her legs further apart and placed her foot back down.
As Harriet adjusted the angle of her legs her left quad shifted and surged upwards with an epeirogenic movement. Jessica rose up by a couple of inches and went rigid; her own legs parted like branches ramifying from the trunk of Harriet’s thigh, before quickly retracting.
Jessica’s whole body shivered.
“Are you okay?” asked Harriet, concerned she had inadvertently hurt Jessica.
Jessica wiggled on top of Harriet’s thigh again, and pressed her back more firmly into Harriet’s torso. Harriet could feel how tense Jessica’s shoulders were as they pressed against her pecs.
“Yes!”
“It can’t be comfortable for you - I suppose my quad is pretty solid to sit on. I’ll stand up and you can have my space on the banq-”
“No! No… Right here is good. I’m fine right here.”
“Oh, okay.”
The waiting room was silent.
The assistant had not returned, and was either struggling to find a chair or was perhaps busy biting the head off her mate. Harriet glanced at the other shoppers, wondering if she and Jessica had attracted any attention, but no one had so much as looked up from their phones when they had first entered the room, and they all continued to remain entirely uninterested in the new arrivals.
Jessica scooted forwards slightly along Harriet’s thigh, then arched her back like a stretching cat before slowly relaxing her body, reclining limply against Harriet.
Harriet looked down and caught a glimpse of goose pimples on the back of Jessica’s neck; she could feel Jessica’s fingers clench into a fist and press into her right thigh.
Jessica’s head tilted back to rest on Harriet’s shoulder, almost as if she had settled in for a nap.
Harriet stayed as still as she possibly could. She didn’t want to move. More importantly, she didn’t want Jessica to move. After a while it dawned on Harriet that she had taken her commitment to immobility to the extreme and had been holding her breath ever since Jessica had relaxed against her. In need of oxygen, she tried to start inhaling and exhaling again as gently as possible, to completely minimise the chances of disturbing Jessica.
Jessica remained in repose, her body warm and soft. Her head turned to the side and nestled against Harriet’s neck; her hair tickled Harriet’s chin, her perfume likewise Harriet’s nose.
Was the waiting room silent?
Harriet’s heart was beating as loudly as a particularly exuberant timpanist playing the opening of Also sprach Zarathustra. She once again glanced nervously at her fellow customers, fully expecting someone to look up and ask where that drumming sound was coming from.
But no one else seemed aware of the noise that filled her world.
Jessica wiggled her hips again, slower this time, more deliberate in her movements, and gave a little sigh.
“I can hear your heart beating,” Jessica murmured.
Before Harriet could respond, a shopper emerged from the changing rooms and the assistant reappeared to lead one of the waiting women inside.
Everyone else shuffled along one seat. There was now room enough for them both to sit side-by-side on the banquette.
Neither Harriet nor Jessica offered to move into the empty space.
The assistant returned again and gestured pointedly at the vacated seat. Harriet paused for a moment, weighing up her options. She didn’t want to displace Jessica, but maybe there was a way they could both move along together.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” she whispered to Jessica, who gave a start.
Harriet wrapped her arms around Jessica’s waist and pulled her friend’s body tightly against her own until she was satisfied that she was safely held in place. Then Harriet stood up, easily lifting Jessica into the air, smoothly stepped to the side, and sat back down again in the free seat.
The entire manoeuvre was completed so quickly and quietly that no one else in the waiting room even noticed what had happened - a breathless gasp from Jessica as she had been hoisted into the air and a rustle of material as she nearly dropped her armful of dresses had been the only noises.
For a few moments they both sat still and silent, until Harriet realised that she was still hugging Jessica around the waist; she started to let go but Jessica made a soft, disapproving sound and placed her hands on top of Harriet’s own.
Hidden under the blanket of dresses they stayed in this position, Harriet’s powerful arms around Jessica’s slim waist; Jessica’s hands resting on top of Harriet’s.
Gradually their fingers intertwined.
Several happy, laughing women, obviously friends, exited the changing rooms in a group and the assistant began to usher the waiting shoppers into the available cubicles. She eventually returned for Harriet and Jessica.
Jessica stood up, clearing her throat and gathering the dresses tightly against herself.
“It’s very warm, isn’t it?” she said to no one in particular, fanning her face with a hand.
The assistant led them down to the end of the corridor and the last available room. Harriet held the door open for Jessica to walk in first and then followed her.
As Jessica began to hang up the dresses, Harriet hesitated by the half-open door in an agony of indecision, unsure if Jessica intended to stay inside or wait outside the changing room, not wanting to make her feel unwelcome but also afraid of being presumptuous.
“Don’t forget to close the door!” reminded Jessica.
Harriet’s hand trembled as she slipped the bolt into the lock. She took a deep breath and turned around. Jessica was hanging up her own blazer now, and Harriet took the opportunity to admire her arms and shoulders again. The extra muscle certainly suited Jessica’s svelte frame - she looked not only stronger but shapelier as well; as she raised both hands to flick back her hair from her shoulders, the definition in her biceps immediately became more pronounced.
Jessica turned around with an excited look on her face.
“So which one do you want to try on first?”
Harriet’s eyes quickly flitted from Jessica’s arms to the dresses.
“The white cut-out one,” Harriet replied impetuously, not really caring at all, forgetting why she was even shopping for clothes in the first place.
“Good choice! Like I said, this one will really show off your abs. It’s very ‘Greek goddess’, I think, like a sexy version of a toga.”
“Chiton,” said Harriet, automatically.
“Excuse me?”
“Um, or a peplos, maybe.” Harriet noticed the confused look on Jessica’s face but she carried on robotically, unable to stop herself. “The toga was worn by Roman men.”
“Hey, I thought you claimed you didn’t know anything about fashion?”
“Modern fashion. If you want to know about Archaic Greek fashion, I’m your woman,” said Harriet. “I’m a bit of a history nerd, I’m afraid.”
“Buff and brainy?” smiled Jessica. “You’re making the rest of us look bad!”
Harriet mumbled something unintelligible but intended to be self-deprecating, trying desperately to hide her delight at this suggestion.
Jessica sat down on the bench, crossed her legs daintily and rested her hands on her knee. She looked expectantly at Harriet, who tried to work out what was expected of her before she finally remembered where they were and what she was doing there.
“The dress! Yes, I’ll… um… time to try it on...”
Harriet started to reach for the hanger.
“Aren’t you going to take off your jogging b-”
“Oh! Yes! Yes, I should um…”
Jessica, perhaps sensing the note of panic in Harriet’s voice, uncrossed her legs and moved as if to stand up.
“Would you prefer it if I waited outside? I can give you some priv-”
“No, no, it’s, erm, it’s fine. I’ve just never… done this before. Shared a changing room, I mean - not even with my sister. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette; I thought you might want to leave, you see, and I didn’t want-”
“Do you want me to leave? I can leave, if-”
“No, please stay. It will be easier! There are so many dresses to try on and if you had to keep going in and out all the time, we’d be here forever,” said Harriet, trying to play it cool.
She was relieved to see that Jessica looked pleased by her suggestion.
“I was thinking the same thing!”
“Okay. Good. So...”
“Actually, when you think about it, the first time we met, well… I’ve already seen you n-”
Jessica’s voice trailed off, her eyes widening as Harriet pulled down her jogging bottoms.
Aware of Jessica’s stunned silence, but not certain what had caused it, Harriet looked down and suddenly remembered her unfortunate choice of underwear.
“Oh god! Erm, sorry, I haven’t got round to doing the laundry for a while. All my other underwear is sweaty from the gym and, no, you didn’t need to know that, did you? Oh god! Um. This was the only clean pair I could still fit into. They’re hideous, aren’t they?”
Jessica looked dazed. She gave her head a little shake.
“Sorry, what?”
“My granny pants.”
Jessica continued to look confused. She shook her head again and finally seemed to realise what Harriet was talking about.
“Those?” she asked. “Oh, we’ve all got a pair like those!”
Harriet relaxed and laughed with relief.
“But you looked so shocked when you saw them!”
“Not at those - at your legs!”
“My legs?”
“They’re huge! And when you stepped forward, all the muscle in your thighs sort of… moved like it had a life of its own. And look at all those veins!”
“I’ve been making some tweaks to my diet; I’ve been trying to lean out a bit. I guess it’s paying off because I’m definitely getting more vascular,” said Harriet, running her hands over the anfractuous veins in her quads. “But my legs aren’t that big,” she continued, contradicting the abundant evidence to the contrary.
“They. Are. Huge,” insisted a rapt Jessica, emphasising the last word with relish.
“I guess I’m used to seeing them every day - I sort of take them for granted,” Harriet said, thinking out loud. “It’s weird - when I started working out and I first noticed the muscle definition in my legs, I felt massive. And now my thighs are so much bigger and I can’t even fit into my old pairs of trousers, but I can look at myself in the mirror and still feel… small.”
“Small! You know I mentioned my personal trainer earlier? Her thighs are nowhere near as big as yours and everyone at the gym calls them her ‘man crushers’.”
“I suppose I’m used to feeling small. Being ignored or overlooked, you know? Made to feel insignificant.”
“It’s not your fault if other people can’t appreciate you for who you are. I think you’re amazing.”
“Thank you,” said Harriet, in a small voice.
“And your legs, they’re definitely a pair of ‘man crushers’ if ever I saw them. Do you… do you have a nickname for your legs?”
“I’ve never really thought about giving them one.”
“So… you don’t call them your ‘man crushers,’ then?”
Harriet wrinkled her nose.
“No, I’ve never called them that.”
“And… have you? Ever crushed a man with them, I mean?”
“No! That’s not something I’ve ever… I’d ever…” Harriet stumbled and stopped, lost for words.
“I was just being silly. I didn’t really think you’d be going around crushing men with your muscles,” said Jessica. “Although you totally could.”
Embarrassed, Harriet turned to reach for the dress again.
“I think you’ll have to take off your sports bra,” Jessica interjected. “The way the dress is cut, your sports bra will spoil the lines of it. You won’t get a true sense of the fit.”
“Oh, of course,” said Harriet sheepishly.
Lowering her arms across her torso, Harriet grabbed the underside of her bra with both hands and pulled upwards. She had done this countless times before, yet repeated practice had never made it much easier, her improving dexterity constantly outpaced by the growth of her lats.
In theory, it should have been easier to remove the bra today, as she wasn’t all sweaty and sticky from the gym, but her fingers were clumsier than usual and she got the rhythm all wrong, moving too fast initially and then trying to slow things down, worried that she might look too eager to undress. Unfortunately the loss of momentum caused the bra to tangle around her head and become stuck to her face like a giant cobweb.
By the time she finally removed it, she felt even more flustered and awkward than she already had, her hair now unkempt and wild. How could something she usually managed with relative competency be made so much more difficult by the fact someone was watching her do it? She threw the sports bra to one side, a little crossly.
Harriet tried to tidy her hair and finally looked back at Jessica, who had clasped her hands tightly together like she was praying. Jessica didn’t seem to care that she was ogling, a look of wonderment on her face.
“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it. I just… After all this time, all these months since I first saw you, I’ve been telling myself that I can’t have remembered properly; that the time we met and you flexed right out of that sports bra… I convinced myself that I remembered wrong, that there was no way you could have been that muscular… Like, sure, your body was spectacular, but that bra must have been faulty, or something, because how could you flex right out of a sports bra?” Jessica paused and took a deep, calming breath before continuing. “Except, you’re actually even bigger than I remembered. Your legs are huge. And your chest… Your chest is just so… thick. So meaty. Does that sound weird? I’m sorry. It’s… I don’t have the words to describe it. I didn’t know a woman could have a chest like that. It’s amazing.”
Harriet fought the rising tide of self-consciousness and the urge to cover herself up. She looked at her body in the mirror and could see Jessica’s awed face staring at her too; suddenly she was inspired to see herself through Jessica’s eyes. Harriet’s daily posing practice - not to mention her compulsive need to check herself out in every reflective surface - meant that, when it came to her own body, while familiarity had not bred contempt, it had fostered a serious lack of objectivity.
But here and now Harriet had to admit: she was definitely bigger and leaner than ever before.
And Jessica did have a point: her chest was thick; it was meaty; it was amazing.
The thrustingly dramatic protrusion of Harriet’s pectorals was exaggerated by the overhead lighting, and the shadows cast down her body. And while she wasn’t delighted with the way her boobs had gradually shrunk over the months, she did love the way the outlines of her pectoral muscles flowed into those of her smaller breasts. It was a seamless transition, a serendipitous adaptation that nonetheless somehow looked entirely natural, planned from the beginning, a perfect complementary fusion of her new and old forms. Meant to be.
Something about Jessica’s excitement was catching and Harriet became swept up in the thrill of admiring her own gains. Maybe she should show off a little? Jessica would like that, she told herself; actually, they both would.
Jessica’s phone started to buzz. Without even looking at the screen, her eyes riveted on Harriet’s body, she reached out and dismissed the call.
Immediately, the buzzing started again; this time, Jessica picked it up to see who was calling.
“Oh, it’s… it’s my husband… I should answer it, or he’ll get angry; he doesn’t like it when I don’t take his calls.”
“Want to see me flex my chest?”
Harriet concentrated on showing off the control she had over her muscle and slowly flexed her right pec, making it ripple like the surface of a mill pond disturbed by a pebble thrown into the water.
The phone slipped from Jessica’s fingers and fell to the floor.
“What do you think?” Harriet asked shyly, repeating the flex with her left pec this time.
Jessica’s phone continued to buzz.
Harriet flexed both pecs simultaneously.
A strangled sound escaped Jessica’s lips, her ability to form words having momentarily escaped her. She stood up on shaking legs and stepped towards Harriet, her movements unsteady and staccato. She reached out, extending her arm, extending her fingers; her eyes wide, her mouth wider.
The buzzing stopped, and a message notification pinged. Then another. Then another, and another, and another; as insistent a refrain as an entire peloton ringing their bells at a dozy pedestrian ambling along the bike lane.
Jessica lunged for the dress, grabbing it so clumsily the hanger spun a full 360 degrees and continued to rock violently backwards and forwards after completing its loop-the-loop, scratching against the wall like nails down a blackboard.
“Let’s get this dress on you and see how it looks,” Jessica said hoarsely, thrusting it towards Harriet.
The phone fell silent.
“Okay,” said Harriet, deflated.
Jessica stepped behind her to help her into the dress. Harriet was unable to see her friend’s face, but it seemed to her that Jessica was assisting only reluctantly, her hands shaky and her movements tentative, as if she were trying desperately to avoid touching Harriet.
“What do you think?” asked Harriet, pulling the straps into place in the grooves between her traps and her delts.
“It, erm, it looks great,” replied Jessica flatly, sounding non-committal and stooping to retrieve her phone from the floor.
Harriet turned to inspect her side view and found that she had a clear line of sight to Jessica’s reflection in the mirror - unaware that she was being observed, Jessica’s head stayed bowed over her phone as if she were reading her messages, but the screen was black and her eyes were clearly glued on Harriet’s exposed back. Harriet watched as Jessica stroked her throat with her hand and bit down on her bottom lip.
Emboldened, Harriet turned around to face Jessica; she leant back slightly and exhaled, crunching down on her core muscles.
“Does the dress show off my abs like you thought it would?”
Jessica gulped. She moved towards the bench and, for just a moment, Harriet thought she had lost Jessica’s attention for good, that Jessica was going to sit down and read her messages, ignoring Harriet’s muscles. But Jessica carefully placed the phone down on the bench and stepped closer to Harriet, her hands again slowly reaching out until she glanced up, met Harriet’s stare, and froze, blinking rapidly.
“It’s okay. I don’t mind if you want to touch me.”
Jessica slipped behind Harriet, once more disappearing from view. Harriet watched in the mirror as her friend’s arms slowly appeared at the sides of her own torso, the hands moving towards each other until they met above Harriet’s navel.
Jessica’s hands slowly stroked down and up and down and up Harriet’s six-pack, then settled delicately on Harriet’s sides, exposed through the triangular cut-out panels of the dress.
“Rock solid,” Jessica murmured, her hands running across the powerful digitations of Harriet’s obliques, each of them thicker than any one of Jessica’s fingers.
Harriet giggled and squirmed slightly as Jessica’s fluttering fingers began to move faster, stroking up and down like a harpist running her hands over the strings of her instrument.
“Hey, that tickles!” Harriet squealed, reflexively adopting a defensive position, hunching her shoulders forward and bringing her elbows closer to her body with the result that Jessica’s hands became tightly clamped between the gunwales of Harriet’s lats and her arms.
Jessica cried out in surprise.
“Ha!” said Harriet. “I’d like to see you try to tickle me now!”
Laughing, Jessica tried to pull herself free, her upper body leaning backwards as she pushed her hips forwards in a desperate attempt to gain some leverage, her mons pubis thrusting against Harriet’s unyielding glutes. Try as she might, her escape attempt was clearly a futile one, and yet Jessica did not give up the struggle without a fight, even butting and burrowing her head into Harriet’s back in an attempt to tickle her with her hair rather than her fingers.
“Okay, okay. I surrender,” Jessica panted, eventually. “Please let me go - your muscles are so hard, they’re literally cutting off the blood flow to my fingers.”
“And if I let you go, do you promise to stop tickling me?” said Harriet jokingly, like she was admonishing a child.
Jessica played along, peering out from around Harriet’s arm to look at her in the mirror, strands of hair across her eyes, a sulky pout on her lips, a suitably contrite tone to her voice.
“I promise to try to be a good girl.”
Harriet relaxed and straightened up. Freed, Jessica shook her hands energetically, trying to get some feeling back in her fingers.
“I really did cut off the blood flow to your fingers! Why didn’t you say something? I’d have let you go sooner if you had.”
“It was fun. Besides, I wanted to see if I was strong enough to break free.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t mind if you want to be a bit rough with me.”
Harriet felt lost for words again, an explorer who had crossed the border into terra incognita and was staring at a map, unhelpfully blank apart from the legend ‘Here be dragons’. She stared at Jessica in silence. Jessica’s hair was tousled, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed, an irrepressible smile lighting up her face. She had never looked more beautiful.
Harriet blurted out the first anodyne thing she could think of, desperate to avoid saying something else she might regret.
“You never told me what you thought of the dress? Do you think it’s the one?”
Jessica gave a wicked smile and put a thoughtful finger to her lips in a cartoonish manner; she seemed to be enjoying herself.
“Hmm, you look great in it and it definitely shows off your abs, but, I don’t know; I’m not feeling it. I think the best thing will be if you take that one off and try on another one. How about this?”
Jessica unhooked the Hervé Léger bandage dress and dangled it from her fingers.
“It looks so tight - will it even fit?” said Harriet, doubtfully.
“I’ll help pour you into it.”
“Okay…”
In silence, Jessica helped Harriet disrobe and then took her time carefully hanging up the white dress while Harriet waited expectantly, wearing only her granny pants, once again admiring the definition in Jessica’s shoulders and arms. It dawned on Harriet that she was standing virtually naked in a room lined with mirrors and for once she had no interest in checking out her own muscles, not even out of the corner of her eye.
Jessica turned around and bent down in front of Harriet to allow her to step into the second dress. Once Harriet had done so, Jessica - carefully, precisely, unhurriedly - eased the dress up and over Harriet’s powerful decussate frame, the skin-tight material contoured by her marmoreal muscles. There was no hint of reluctance this time; now Jessica was attentively fondling Harriet’s body as she smoothed out the wrinkles that formed over her abs and pecs and encouraged the shoulders of the dress up and over her capped delts.
Harriet was amazed at what she saw in the mirror. She knew she was wearing a dress - she could feel the dress, she could see the dress - and yet something about it made her feel more exposed, more naked than she had before she had put it on. She told herself that this feeling made no sense and reminded herself that she routinely wore only shorts and a sports bra in public, which exposed more of her skin, more of her thews and sinews, but somehow those clothes did not feel as revealing as a form-fitting midi length dress with three-quarter sleeves and a scooped neckline.
The dress hid almost everything, but it hid almost nothing. Every curve and muscle was enhanced. Something about the way it fitted her and the way it made her look was… indecent.
Something about the way it made her feel was indecent too.
Jessica suddenly crouched in front of her.
“What are you doing?” asked Harriet, alarmed.
“Sorting out your VPL. Hold still.”
“What? Wait!”
Jessica slipped her hands up Harriet’s dress, running her fingers up her thighs. Harriet gasped like she had just plunged into an ice bath.
“Don’t move!” warned Jessica. “If you bend over to pull them down yourself, you’ll rip right out of it; this dress is already working overtime just to contain your booty. I’ll just… hang on… nearly!”
Harriet felt Jessica’s fingertips reach her hips and fumble for the waistband of her knickers, but the dress was so tight that Jessica struggled to get an adequate grip. Harriet looked down at the top of Jessica’s head, her friend’s face so close to her body that she could feel the damp warmth of her breath on her crotch. With every passing second, Harriet could sense the heat building and what felt like Jessica’s breath beginning to condense on the thin material.
Finally, Jessica managed to hook a finger over the knickers’ elastic and slowly slip them down. Harriet flinched as she felt them peel away from her body; as they reached the hemline she shook her left leg until her knickers quickly dropped to the floor, and then she kicked them towards her bra and out of the way.
Jessica stood up, stepped back, and surveyed the results.
“Wow.”
“Do you think it looks good?” Harriet asked.
“I think it looks… scandalously, sinfully sexy.”
Harriet wanted to deny that she thought the same, wanted to say something self-effacing, something modest, if only for her own benefit, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead she stood and stared at the vision in the mirror.
“You never told me what you wanted the dress for, but if it’s a date, you’re going to be a total knockout,” continued Jessica in a hushed voice.
“A date?” Harriet began, ready to correct Jessica, but then changing her mind. “Yes, I’m going on a date… Do you… I’ve not had much experience with dating… Do you have any advice for me?”
“What sort of advice?”
“Well, how should I behave on a date if I want to let someone know I, um, I like them? Like, really like them.”
“People like it when a strong, beautiful woman takes charge, so you should definitely use that to your advantage.”
“Me?” mumbled Harriet, “Beautiful?”
“Yes. You. Beautiful. Beautiful and powerful: there’s something about soft femininity meeting hard muscle that’s just… intoxicating.”
“So I should take charge? How should I take charge?”
Jessica took a few steps backwards until she was pressed up against the wall. She twirled a lock of her hair around a finger and looked coyly at Harriet.
Harriet watched her, her mouth dry.
“I think you should walk slowly towards them, so they can watch all your muscles moving and rippling underneath that skin tight dress. Really slowly, like you’re a lioness stalking your prey… Slowly, slowly, right up to them until they’ve got nowhere else to go and you’ve got them trapped.”
“Like this?”
Harriet edged forwards.
“Slower. With more confidence. With more… arrogance.”
Harriet suppressed the urge to rush forwards and tried to remember the way that Amy had moved in her competition videos.
“Yes! Like that, and then, when you’re close enough, reach out and lean against the wall with your arm just to the side of their head. Casual, but… deliberate.”
Harriet extended her arm until her palm pressed against the mirror. She shifted her weight and turned her hand as she leant forwards, funicular fibres in her forearm twisting and tensing; even without contracting her bicep, the convex mass of her muscle bulged out from her straightened arm. She heard Jessica shakily exhale through her nose.
“They’ll feel intimidated by your muscles, but also fascinated. They’ll want to stare at your broad shoulders, at your thick pecs, at the outline of your ripped abs through your dress. Let them. You’re in no hurry. Let them admire your body; your body deserves to be admired, after all. Flex your muscles for them. Show off your strength and let them drink you in.”
Harriet cocked her other arm and flexed her bicep in front of Jessica’s face. It was like watching orogeny in action; a mountain of muscle formed.
“They… they won’t be able to look away from your muscles. They’ll have never seen anything like it before, maybe in their dreams, but not in real life, not this close up… You’ll have to remind them you’ve got something you want to say to them. Grab their chin and tilt back their head so they have no choice but to stare deep into your eyes…”
“Like this?” Harriet whispered, raising Jessica’s face with a firm but gentle movement.
“By… by now, they’ll be at your mercy, squirming with anticipation, barely able to contain themselves. Their knees will be weak, they’ll be trembling, their breathing will quicken, their pulse will be racing, and all they’ll want is for you to take them, there and then. So do it!”
Harriet nervously flicked her tongue over her lips.
“Take… them?”
“Take them! Press your body tight against theirs, pin their arms above their head, squeeze them, grab them. Don’t be afraid to be rough with them, to show them how easily you can dominate them. And then kiss them. Kiss their shoulder, their neck, their throat, their chin, their cheek, their ear, make them wait, hold them back, make them wait, drive them crazy, and then kiss their lips… kiss them until you’re both dizzy and out of breath, and then kiss them some more.”
Harriet closed her eyes. She already felt dizzy and out of breath. But she knew now what she needed to do.
What she wanted to do.
What she had to do.
Jessica didn’t resist as she grabbed her arms - not that it would have made a difference if she had: right now Harriet felt like she could have held back a charging bull.
Harriet pinned Jessica’s wrists to the wall above her head.
“Tighter,” whispered Jessica, “harder.”
Harriet transferred both of Jessica’s wrists to just one of her hands and pushed them back more firmly; she used her other hand to caress Jessica’s breasts, Jessica’s waist, then to pull Jessica’s hips towards her, to squeeze a handful of Jessica’s firm arse.
Jessica moaned.
And then Harriet pressed her heavy body forwards, pushing her abs into Jessica, pinning her whole body against the wall, grinding her crotch against her, trembling, panting, her very breath quavering with desire. She could feel her pecs squash Jessica’s breasts, Jessica’s nipples hard and sharp through her blouse, Jessica grinding in rhythm against her.
They kissed.
The world stopped spinning. Everything stopped. There was only Harriet and Jessica.
A lifetime passed. Several lifetimes. Aeons.
Eventually they both came up for air.
Gasping, panting, laughing, nose to nose, they stared into each other’s eyes.
“Have I mentioned that you’re scandalously, sinfully sexy?” asked Jessica.
“Have I mentioned that I like you? Like, really like you?”
“No, I had no clue! None!”
They dissolved into giggles and then shares another passionate kiss.
Jessica’s phone began to ring. Jessica pulled back, her expression changing immediately.
“That’s Katy’s ringtone. The film must be finished. I have to go.”
Harriet’s face fell as Jessica grabbed her blazer.
“Do you have to go now?”
“I’ll give you my number. When are you free? You’ll have to come round,” said Jessica hurriedly.
She spotted the distraught expression on Harriet’s face and stepped back to give her a last, lingering kiss.
“Promise me you’ll come round?” Jessica whispered. “We have… unfinished business.”
“I promise.”
“Good. I’ve got to go, but I can’t wait to see you again.”
Jessica paused by the door and had one last admiring look at Harriet in the dress.
“Did you mean it? Does this dress really make me look that sexy?” asked Harriet.
Jessica laughed.
“It’s not the dress,” she replied, and then she was gone.
