Private Pleasure

Quentin watched, surreptitiously, over the top of his book as the girl in the red sweater flicked through the rack of CDs for sale. He waited, still watching, for her nimble fingers to miss a CD or fumble a flick, but she seemed to have made an art form of it and didn't skip a CD as she deftly flipped them forwards so she could see the next one. To someone concentrating as closely as Quentin was it seemed almost hypnotic, the plastic cases clattering slightly as they fell like dominoes. He reached for his camera, it was an unconscious motion, as he lined it up on her, adjusted the shutter speed and pressed the shutter button firmly down.

She turned to glare at him as she heard the distinctive clunk of a camera taking a photo, she didn't want some strange, creepy little man photographing her, but her mum was trying to move her towards the exit and she didn't want to confront him. Quentin smiled to himself as he put his camera back on the floor under his chair, that photo would be just for him. He had a collection of pictures at home that wouldn't have meant anything to anybody but him, a bizarre congregation of face and body parts of complete strangers all getting on with their day to day lives, unaware of the observer with the camera.

He often spent Saturdays in this library, it was a good place to watch people quietly without drawing too much attention. The librarians had been wary at first, but he stayed out of their sight when he was taking pictures and he seemed harmless enough. Quentin was always careful never to photograph the small children he watched, despite the fascinating games they played that he loved to observe. It was one thing to make a record of events that adults got up to, the worst that could happen was an official police warning, but he had no desire to be had up on a count of paedophilia.

He stayed in the library till 5pm, then walked home past the station, stopping to take a couple of photos from the bridge as the sun dodged between clouds, leaving the elegant historical buildings lining the banks in picturesque silhouette. It wasn't artistic, it wasn't even, to him, very interesting, but he knew what sold and he needed the money from the pictures he managed to sell at the local art galleries and tourist shops.

It was late before he got in. He had detoured by the city centre on the way home, hoping to get some more of the photos he delighted in of young couples on their way out to dinner and groups of young people and teenagers in their finery heading for the nearest bar at the beginning of a long night of drinking and clubbing. He had a telephoto lens with him and he knew how to be discreet, and managed to get some candid shots of a rowdy bunch on their way to an even rowdier night spot. The girls were showing acres of bare flesh and the boys couldn't seem to believe their luck.

Quentin watched as the girls not so accidentally brushed bare arms or soft breasts against the boy of their choice, occasionally tripping and almost falling, hoping to be caught in the nick of time by one or even two of the helpless, hopeless boys. In the human world, Quentin observed, it was the females who wore the bright colours in the hope of attracting the males. His camera zoomed in on intimate shots of a girl's brightly painted face smiling up at a slightly spotty youth, his arm protectively and gingerly encircling her waist. Another shot caught a girl's hand lightly resting on the same boy's opposite arm in seeming supplication, the chewed, pink enameled nails clashing with his orange shirt. Quentin felt a rush of empathy for this ignored and silently pleading hand, how often had he felt the same way, trying to attract the attention of someone far above him on the attraction scale.

The voyeuristic nature of Quentin's hobby was, more often than not, an outlet for his own frustrations. It wasn't a sexual stimulant for him, despite the comments made by anyone who caught him, he wasn't interested in that aspect of his photography. Instead his subversive photographs were a catalogue and a reflection of his own thoughts and feelings. He didn't keep a journal, he kept carefully dated files of photographs.

Although fairly innocent on the whole, there was a rare picture that triggered a surge of heat and lust within him, these photographs were often subtle, sensual compositions, always taken on the sly. He had been known to sell them to the more arty pornographic publications in return for a reasonable sum when he was short of funds, there would always be men interested in the peeping tom feeling of Quentin's art.

Tonight was an unusual night, the image of the girl's fingers flipping relentlessly through the CDs appealed to Quentin's curious libido, something about the deftness of her hands aroused him to a state where all he could see was the sensual nature of human relations. As the evening wore on, more and more of his photos centred on erotic imagery, what would normally seem entirely innocent became heated and sexy when viewed through Quentin's eyes. A picture of a warm hand rubbing a chilled arm, the skin raised in delicate goose-bumps seemed to linger on the flesh touching flesh, the thumb lightly brushing the side of the breast, the fingers causing dimples under their pressure. Another showed the cold air penetrating a girl's thin top, caressing her nipple to a tantalizing hardness, visible through the light fabric, proudly displaying the lack of bra.

A drunken couple kissing up against a wall looked like an outtake from a documentary about club reps in Ibiza, until the long lens zoomed in and selected a thick fingers pushing up a skirt; a head tipped back in submission to kisses; a hand splayed against a rough brick wall. This last one seemed particularly erotic to Quentin and, as his breathing quickened and the blood started to rush to his groin, he felt an urgent need to go home.

It was almost 1am and he was sitting at his computer, sifting through the pictures from that evening. For Quentin the pleasure at the time was never from watching, but from the anticipation of looking at the pictures later. He loved this late night quiet, just the rush of traffic outside and the soft clicking of his mouse as he flicked through his spoils. As the images from the evening flashed past his arousal built until he was unable to ignore it. He'd come to the pictures of the couple against the wall now and there were pictures he didn't remember capturing. Innocent ones like a hand on a face, suggestive ones like a knee inserted between bare thighs and a downright pornographic shot of the woman being penetrated by the man's fingers, her moist, swollen folds fully visible through the high magnification of the telephoto, the whole shot tinged with the dusky, orange glow of the streetlights. Normally such graphic imagery wasn't interesting to Quentin, but the almost abstract appearance of such a close-up, heightened by the lighting that was so obviously outdoor and the cumulative effect of the evening's visions left him unable to restrain himself. Unzipping his trousers he reached inside and began to play with himself. He looked briefly at the screen, his eyes flicking back there every 30 seconds, but for the most part he watched himself in the window's reflection. He even spied on himself in moments of pleasure. He was nearing orgasm when he noticed the building opposite.

There was a light on in a window on the floor below him and, sat on the bed with her legs apart, sat a woman in a silky dressing gown looking right at him. She wasn't doing anything, just looking, seemingly waiting for him to notice her. Quentin froze. Totally unused to being watched, his erection melted away faster than a London snow fall. Slowly he reached out for his camera, but the woman only smiled when she saw him open the window and lean out. When she saw the camera she stood up and he feared that was an end, but then she winked at him and slowly, teasing him, started to untie the sash of her dressing gown. Underneath she was wearing a pair of sheer stockings and some high heels. She stood, the dressing gown pushed back off her shoulders, waiting. As he raised the camera to his face she smiled, satisfied. The voyeur meets the exhibitionist.

Slowly she let the gown slide down her arms to the floor, whilst Quentin took a series of photos showing the progression of the silk down her pale, slender arm. As she reached up and unfastened her hair, letting it fall loose about her shoulders like a shampoo advertisement he caught the curve of her breast as it melted into her upraised arm, the motion of her fingers in her hair, the silky locks falling over her face as she shook her head.

Once she was sure of Quentin's undivided attention she walked back to the bed and sat on the edge of it. Slowly, tenderly, she ran her hand down her neck and over her breast. Quentin took a picture of her beautiful, luscious breast cupped in her elegant hand and a picture of the nipple puckering and hardening as her fingers slipped lower. Another shot showed her hand stroking the soft, white skin of her inner thigh, the slight bulge where the stocking cut into her flesh. Finally there was a series of shots of her busy fingers, dipping, stroking, dipping, rubbing as she lay prostrate and squirming on the bed, her legs open wide to Quentin's lens, her breasts wobbling with the movement.

When she had come, the pleasure/pain expression of her face during that exquisite moment captured for posterity, she quietly got up, put on her dressing gown and pulled he blind down. Quentin sat there, amazed and aroused. The photographs were sensational. Grainy, slightly blurred, photojournalist style. He converted them into black and white and printed them out, every single one. For the rest of the night he sat there, gazing at the photographs, bringing himself to the brink of orgasm over and over, hoping she'd expose herself again, but the blinds stayed down. In the morning, when all hope was gown, he finally allowed himself the luxury of release, followed by a profitable morning selling his latest collection of images.

That night he picked up his camera and went back to town, Saturdays were even more profitable than Fridays, usually, and maybe, if he was lucky, she would be waiting for him when he got home...