The Honeypot Ch. 01

What were the secrets hidden within the seedy little Soho smut shop?

I made my first visit to London in the late 1970's, when I was twenty-eight. I had grown up in the States, in the Midwest to be precise, but I had always hankered to visit Britain, and especially London. Perhaps it was my avid reading of the "Complete Sherlock Holmes" when I was ten, or the British Invasion bands that took over the American radio-waves just as my adolescence arrived; but whatever the cause, from early on, I thought of myself as an Anglophile.

It took a good while -- at least a decade -- but once I got some money in the bank, I bought a round-trip ticket from Chicago to London. With the help of a travel agent -- remember them? -- I booked an off-season flight at the tail end of September and got a reservation at one of the numerous small hotels near Russell Square in Bloomsbury. The exchange rate favored the dollar at the time, so my meagre travel funds could just cover a single room with a loo and showers down the hall, and a nice big breakfast in the morning that helped me skip lunch most days.

My hotel -- St. Margaret's, as I recall -- was perfectly situated for my pursuits. It was just a block or two from the British Museum and Library, and within walking distance of Charing Cross Road, back when it was still packed with second-hand booksellers. Since my idea of a well-spent afternoon was poking around in the dusty shelves of used bookshops seeing what serendipity turned up, I was as happy as a lark. That was especially the case when I discovered that Charing Cross also marked the eastern edge of seedy Soho. Jackpot!

One small bookshop on the Soho side of Charing Cross seemed to be mainly marked-down "remainders", but a narrow staircase at the back of the shop led down to a cramped basement room with racks of British smut devoted mainly to spanking magazines. As something of a perv, I was delighted until I discovered that most everything was sealed up in plastic bags, with few browsable copies, and those that I perused looked pretty tame. However, they whetted my appetite for further kinky fare, and so I ventured into the sleazy side streets of Soho, with shop windows filled with fetish garb, adult toys, and promises of the bizarre.

One nondescript shop seemed devoted to booklets and magazines featuring men and women wearing rubber boots and Mackintoshes. This did not interest me in the least, but I was suitably impressed that there were enough Londoners with that particular kink to support a shop solely serving that clientele.

I banged around some more, though a light drizzle was beginning, when I came upon an unremarkable adult shop of some sort whose very anonymity piqued my interest. It was on the ground floor of an ancient dirty red brick building with another floor or two above, with a faded shop name painted above the wooden front door: Honeypot Bookshop. It sported no Venus & Mars symbols, no pink neon or "adults only" signs, no clues whatsoever as to what it was about.

"Hmm," I said to myself, "let's check this out. You just never know..."

I tried the door handle, both pushing and pulling, but it seemed to be locked. Then I spied a small sooty white plastic doorbell labeled "Bookshop" and pressed it. After a short pause, there was the sound of a sharp click and the door released, allowing me to enter. The heavy door swung shut behind me and I tried to make out the features of the rather ill-lit shop. Off to one side, behind a tall counter was a white-haired old coot giving me the once over. He was dressed in a rumpled white shirt, his grey woolen trousers held up by a pair of ancient black suspenders.

"How can we help you, young man?" he asked with a surprisingly warm but scratchy voice. "Any special interests, eh?"

He gave me a classic wink, as if he were a fellow conspirator who had been hoping that someone like me -- a kinky naif -- would show up and ring the bell. I gave a nervous glance around, trying to figure out what was on offer. It mainly looked to be cheaply printed booklets with pastel colored covers sporting black ink drawings of women with whips towering over cringing men, intermixed with other booklets showing shapely lingerie-clad women bound in all sorts of difficult postures. Neither were quite what I had in mind, but I was getting closer than the spanking bins in the basement of the first shop or the rubber raincoats in the last one.

"Er, can I just browse? I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for, to be honest. Something unusual, perhaps a bit bizarre?"

"Well, you've come to the right place, young man! Feel free to look around, certainly. But I will warn you that our best material is not on display. We only bring it out for serious customers who know what they are looking for."

This struck me as a rather self-defeating store policy guaranteed to drive off new customers like me who weren't sure what they wanted or what was available. As far as I could tell, the self-defeating policy was working quite well, as there were no other customers in the shop, and from the dust on some of the plastic wrapped booklets, I suspected I might be the only walk-in of the day, if not the week.

"You are visiting from the States, I take it?" the old coot ventured, no doubt tipped off by my flat Chicago accent. "I suppose you've never been in a shop like ours before?"

"Er, not exactly. I've been in adult bookstores back home, but they're set-up rather differently. Everything's in color and out on display, and no one speaks with each other."

"Yes, well, I dare say there are even shops like that in Soho, but ours is different. We like to get to know our customers, the better to supply them with sophisticated materials precisely suited to their tastes and, er, fetishes, as it were. Surely, you have favorite fantasies that stiffen the old rod, my boy? No need to be embarrassed! We are very discrete and keep such things strictly confidential."

I was somewhat taken aback by the old coot's direct approach, as I was not at all eager to blithely confess my perverted little fantasies with a complete stranger. But on second thought, why not? When you got right down to it, what did I have to lose?

"Oh what the hell," I thought to myself. "Let me toss a pebble in the pond and see what ripples it creates."

"Well, how about this? Do you have anything about voluptuous mature women in lovely lingerie who seduce shy young men and make them service them orally? Or perhaps invite them to bugger their large arses?"

I could feel my face go red and I felt like a total pervert, but the proprietor gave me an encouraging grin displaying a mouthful of ill-aligned teeth. He looked as pleased as punch.

"There you go now, lad! Now we are getting somewhere. As it so happens, I believe I have just the thing for you! Follow me upstairs and we shall have a nice cuppa. Let's give you something to remember us by, a nice souvenir of London."

* * *

The old coot briskly walked me past a half-open doorway into a darkened back storeroom seemingly full of half-open parcels of booklets and shelves of leatherbound volumes and lurid paperbacks, and on over to a narrow wooden staircase. He flicked on a dusty bare light bulb overhead and eagerly climbed the steps ahead of me, pushing a door open at the top that led into a tidy kitchen with an old gas Wedgewood stove with an ancient-looking kettle on a back burner.

"Mary! We have a young guest!"

A rather short pleasantly plump woman of a certain age, dressed in a light blue flowered dress, came into the kitchen, smiling warmly. She looked to be considerably younger than her husband, in her late forties or early fifties perhaps, her brown hair was streaked with wisps of grey and put up in a loose bun. Though plump, she was by no means fat, but rather shapely with a surprisingly small waist and generous bust and hips. Her lovely brown eyes were emphasized with subtle mascara and light eye shadow.

"Mary, here is a young man from the States, er, what did you say your name was again?"

"Uh, it's Neil." I had not said what my name was earlier, of course, but I was not about to argue the point.

"Yes, Neil, that's right. I believe he shares some of our interests, my dear, and I thought we might enjoy a cuppa and become better acquainted."

"Neil, this is my wife Mary, and I'm Henry. Pleased to meet you! Not in a hurry, I hope, my boy?"

"No, not at all, but what about the shop?"

"Oh, hang the shop. It can take care of itself. If someone rings the doorbell, I'll go down and buzz them in. But frankly, we have very little foot traffic. Our main customers are either mail-order or by appointment. Here, Neil, why don't you have a seat there at the kitchen table, while I make some tea and get some biscuits out."

In a rather excited state, the old coot filled up the kettle, put it on to heat, and dug out a fresh pack of biscuits from the cupboard above the sink. I sat down, as did Mary, and I did my best to check her out, without being too obvious about it.

She was really quite attractive in an older womanly way, with a warm and pleasant air about her. Despite her just hanging out at home, her shapely legs seemed to be encased in dark nylons, with shiny black pumps gracing her feet. Mary's breasts were the size of small cantaloupes, held aloft by what seemed to be an industrial-strength black brassiere, the outline of which I could clearly see through the thin material of her dress.

I fancied I could even see a hint of large erect nipples nearly poking through her bra cups. In a final attention to detail, she wore black celluloid bracelets and earrings, and a necklace of black celluloid beads. It was as if she had dressed up for some high street shopping earlier and just left her ensemble on once she returned home. She was definitely a class act and I envied Henry's good fortune in having her for his wife. For the moment, she just smiled at me and offered a breathy "Charmed, I'm sure".

"So, my dear, Neil was telling me about one of his favorite fantasies..."

"But Henry," I interrupted. "I thought that was confidential!" I was suddenly mortified and perspiration immediately broke out on my reddened face.

"Tut, tut, my boy! Nothing to be embarrassed about. Mary can keep a secret, too. She and I share all shop business. In fact, the shop was originally her idea.

"Now, as I was saying, Neil confided that he fancies voluptuous mature women in fancy lingerie who seduce shy young men and make the lads service them orally and in other naughty ways."

The old coot's wife, who until now had seemed rather reserved, suddenly brightened up and presented a different face altogether.

"Oh my! How very delicious! Neil, I would have never guessed! Gracious me! As Henry well knows, that happens to be one of my very favorite fantasies, too! No wonder he brought you up for tea. I would have never let him hear the end of it, if he had failed to show you our hospitality."

Mary gave me a look of sheer delight and reached across the small table and began squeezing and petting my hand.

"Oh my! We are going to have such a lovely time! This really is a treat."

I was at a complete loss for words. I just grinned nervously, letting her fondle my hand, and squirmed in my seat, all too aware that my trousers were tenting out in front as I sprang a boner.

I should have been ecstatic that it looked like my favorite fantasy was finally going to come true -- and with the very attractive Mary, at that -- yet sometimes fantasies work best when they are tucked away in the realm of impossibility. A fantasy imagined over and over becomes like a polished stone, very smooth and without any jagged edges. A fantasy thrust into real life is fraught with insecurities and fears, or at least it was for me.

Luckily, my fantasy began with my being seduced. After a moment's reflection, I decided to leave that task to Mary, as a proper seduction puts the seductee's worries at ease and out of mind. Once I realized that, much of my nervousness vanished. As I came out of my reverie, I heard Mary speak.

"Why don't we move to the drawing room for our tea? There are plenty of comfortable seats and side tables to put our cups and biscuits on."

Mary led the way and suggested where each of us might sit. Somehow, she and I ended up in nicely padded armchairs opposite each other at a slight angle, while Henry took a seat on the settee, after distributing tea and biscuits to each of us. Mary took a sip of tea and a bite of biscuit and easily led the conversation.

"So, Neil. What brought you to our little shop in Soho? We don't get many visitors, at least not anymore."

Good question. Harder answer.

"Well, you see, this is my first visit to Britain, Mary, and London was my main destination. I've always enjoyed hunting for interesting used books, so Charing Cross was at the top of my list. When I discovered that Soho was immediately next to Charing Cross, I couldn't resist exploring. Yes, I have my little kinks, and this was my big chance to see what Soho had to offer. Your shop was so unassuming and opaque, I just had to check it out. I didn't know what I'd find, or what I was looking for, but I seem to have taken the right chance."

We all paused for another sip of tea and a biscuit or two. I felt emboldened enough to ask a question of my hosts.

"Please pardon my boldness, Mary, but Henry mentioned that the shop was your idea. How in the world could that be? I m-mean, uh. . ."

"You mean, how could a respectable lady like me even think of our opening a kinky smut shop in the sleaziest district in London? Hmm?"

Mary paused to gracefully cross her legs, letting her dress hem ride up, and giving me a tantalizing glimpse of a pale white thigh just above her dark stocking top. She presented me with a mischievous smile as she raised her cup for another sip of tea. Then she set it down and raised a finger.

"I'll answer you in just a moment, Neil. Sit tight."

She turned to Henry, as if a thought had just occurred to her.

"Henry, my dear, I just realized that cocktail hour is fast upon us, and perhaps we would like a sip of something a little stronger and more relaxing than just a cuppa. What do you think?"

"An excellent suggestion, sweetheart. You are so on top of everything! What do you say, my boy? Will you join us for a nice dry Martini or two? Of course you will! It's just the thing to move our conversation along."

The old coot jumped up and hurried off to the kitchen. Mary once again turned her attention to me and smoothly uncrossed her legs and tugged her dress up a bit more, until she gave me a clear view of her rather scanty black satin knickers. I could not fail to notice that her lush pubic forest was unconstrained by the knickers' gusset which was by now visibly slick and dampened, her pubes sprouting down her white inner thighs in an entrancing vision of soft dark curls.

"Ah, I feel more relaxed already! But, poor Neil, just look at you. You can't be very comfortable with your impressive package trapped within your trousers like that. Be a good guest and remove them at once! I must see what present you've brought for your hostess."

Usually I would feel rather self-conscious undressing in front of a lady I had only met a half hour before, but Mary's relaxed and charming manner made it seem like the most normal and reasonable thing in the world. Besides, I had nothing to be ashamed of. My cock was neither the longest nor the thickest rod around, but it had a nice bulbous crown and was proudly rigid. I undid my belt, let my trousers and briefs drop, kicked them aside while I unbuttoned my shirt, and quickly removed my socks and shoes. Just then, Henry came back in with a tray bearing three Martinis in crystal glasses, with two green pitted olives on a glass pick in each. He gave us each our cocktail and retired to the settee with his.

"I see things have moved right along as I was mixing our drinks. Excellent to see you have gotten right into the spirit of things, Neil. Well, cheers!"

We all raised our glasses to each other and then took a good sip. I suddenly felt as if my skull had expanded and spun around 360 degrees.

"Wow! I feel as if my brain just got an erection! That's a mean Martini, Henry!"

"Thank you, my boy. The pleasure is all mine. I like to make my Martinis quite dry, but a little dirty. A light splash of olive juice adds a certain zing, I believe."

"Delicious as always, my dear. Just perfect," Mary told her husband. "Well now, Neil and I were just getting acquainted and about to fondle our privates, care to join in?"

"I wouldn't miss it for the world, sweetheart. I do enjoy a good wank while you corrupt yet another innocent guest. It keeps me young at heart and gets the blood circulating. Alright, off with these old rags." Henry proceeded to strip himself naked.

The Martini had done its work and Mary and I were back to the business at hand. She had deftly removed her dress and pulled her knickers down to her knees, letting them drop to her ankles, and giving them a good kick half-way across the room. Seated again, she was sliding two fingers up and down her slickened labia and then dipping them into her gooey honeypot. My hardened cock was dripping precum, which I spread around its crown and stem, giving it a good yank now and then. Under Mary's spell, it all felt quite civilized yet delightfully prurient.

"Now, where was I? Oh yes, how in the world would someone like me open a smut shop, of all things? It's only perplexing if you don't know the real me. Yes, I was raised to dress well, observe proper etiquette, and be mindful of others. But from the very start, I've also had an extremely strong sex drive. Henry has been known to refer to me as 'insatiable', haven't you, dear?"

The old coot raised his Martini in a toast to his wife.

"It's one of your most charming qualities, my dear. Never a dull moment!"

"So, you see, dear boy, opening a smut shop was the most logical thing in the world. My appetite for cock was constant -- far beyond the ability of a single man to satisfy. No offense meant, Henry."

"None taken, my dear. I'm just along for the ride."

"I required a constant supply of horny young men and what better way to bring them to my door than to open our own porn shop? Why, for a few years at the beginning, we even had a glory hole booth in the back room, in which I would sit at lunch time and fellate anyone who had bought a proper token. However, over time that proved a bit too impersonal and monotonous.

"Eventually I just stayed up here and had Henry chat up our customers and learn which ones had fantasies that matched mine. Then he would usher them upstairs and I would do the rest. No money was exchanged, so it was all on the up and up, though we did insist that they buy some of our pricier stock before leaving.

"We do have our regulars, some of whom we've known for over twenty years, who make appointments for both purchasing stock and a jolly bit of fun. For instance, every Wednesday at 2 p.m. we are paid a visit by a small South Asian gentleman with the softest and tiniest hands, and I'm sure you can imagine where they get up to!"

Mary gave a couple of light pats to her full array of naughty bits and allowed herself a little giggle. There was a moment's pause during which Henry caught Mary's attention and calmly addressed her.

"Please pardon me for interrupting, my dear, but two things. Would everyone like a refill? Yes? Fine. And, two, I have a very strong hunch that young Neil would love to see your titties and smother them with kisses. Let's not forget his fantasy after all."

"Oh my goodness! You are absolutely right, Henry. So sorry, Neil. I completely forgot about my bra. Please come right over here and help me remove it. I think we've taken leisurely diddling about as far as it can go, at least for now. I know you must be aching to get your hot hands all over me, and the feeling is mutual."