Barbi-Can

Sarah kept me waiting, but she was worth the wait. Black hair, white summer coat, black tights, and black four inch heels which still left her a good six inches shorter than I am.

A while back, going to a concert would have meant at least a suit and tie for me, and something close to an evening dress for my date. At least for places like the Royal Albert Hall, Sadlers Wells, or the Barbican. These days, it is all a bit more free and easy.

Since this was a summer concert at the Barbican, all I really needed were the trousers and the shirt that I was wearing, and I had left my jacket in the car. Still, I was still dressed more formally than most of the Nigel Kennedy fans. The crowd in the foyer included plenty of jeans, tee-shirts, or casual shirts.

To be honest, Sarah did not really need her summer coat. It was warm enough to do without. But then, she had not worn her coat for warmth, but her tube ride to the concert hall.

It was cut knee length, so that in describing her black tights, all I could actually see were her slender, nylon encased calves, and if they really were tights, I would be seriously disappointed.

They were just plain, sheer black nylon, no pattern, unusually tame for her, for these events at least. Sarah usually wears something more stylish. But if her choice of nylons did not immediately excite me, the promise of what lies between her legs still made a certain part of me extremely pleased to see her.

She seemed slightly breathless. It was just ten minutes before Nigel was due on stage. Maybe she had been running from the tube.

"Sorry," she said. "It took a while to get the children settled with Linda before I could leave them."

She came up close, raising her arms to reach around my neck. I noticed that she had removed her wedding and engagement rings. I always check. She likes to do that when we arrange to meet like this. Pretend that she is single. It never quite works completely.

When you have spent the best part of ten years wearing rings that say that you are taken, it leaves the skin beneath them slightly smoother, and their absence shows. But in its way, that plays right into the scene we are creating. It tells the more astute observer that a married woman is on a date, no longer thinking of her husband, and ready to put out to the guy that she is with.

I put my arms around her, holding her close, enjoying the feel of her against me, even through her coat.

"It's fine," I said. "We have a few minutes still."

Personally I like to be in good time for anything. No last minute rushes. But if you date with a married woman, you have to make allowances.

"I need to lose my coat. Have we time to get to the cloak-room?"

"Sure," I said.

We both knew the way, and headed down the stairs, neither of us needing to check for signage. We had, after all, been coming to the Barbican for years, even before we met each other, before we discovered how well our musical and sexual preferences complimented one another.

As we walked, I asked her about her day.

"Oh, you know, taking the kids to school, shopping, some tidying up, the pick up after school, brought them round to Linda's, and she wanted me to stay for tea. Ben was okay, but Laura was hanging onto my leg, not wanting me to leave. Finally I got away, got home, and changed into something I hope you'll like. And now I'm here!"

She was undoing the belt of her coat. It had not been buckled. Just tied. Enough to hold the coat together. She slipped it from her shoulders as we approached the cloakroom. Her dress looked new. Certainly I had never seen her wearing it before. Something she hoped that I would like. Nice choice. Really nice choice. I liked everything I saw.

We joined the queue, which fortunately was short. Two guys in black trousers and shirts, one maybe Polish, the other black, were busily taking receipt of coats and bags, fastening tickets onto them, and issuing the ticket stubs to the other last minute Kennedy fans.

The Polish guy smiled at Sarah, then, as the woman who had been in front of her moved from the counter, he registered Sarah's dress. His gaze went to her breasts before he regained his professional demeanour. Had she had been wearing a bra, his momentary lapse would still have been understandable, but she had been yet more daring, and the way he covered up his interest so rapidly was quite impressive.

The last time we had enjoyed a concert together Sarah had worn was could only be described as a little black dress, backless, mid thigh and with a plunging neck-line. This one was very different. It did not bare as much flesh, but it revealed more. A lot more.

The dress was look-at-me burgundy red, sleeveless, but with wide shoulders and a high, oval cut neckline, so that only Sarah's arms were bare. To describe the dress as sheer would be slight exaggeration. But only slight. Even in the artificial light of the Barbican interior, the under-curves of Sarah's breasts, the dark circles of her areoles, and her nipple stubs, showed right through.

Sarah's nipples are not exactly unobtrusive. They are not teenage cherries. She has had two children. She has kept her figure and her breasts have kept their shape, or almost so. When I first met her, they may have been just a little more firm, the nipples riding a fraction of an inch higher than they do now, but the only give away that she was a mother of two was the thickness of her nipple stubs. Those stubs had provided milk, and they pushed against the fabric of her dress.

Her areoles were just as visible. Some women have pink areoles, so pale that it is hard to tell where the edges are. Some have hardly any areoles to speak of, just the stubs. Sarah has wide brown circles. They may not be palm width but you would need three fingers to cover them from edge to edge. Beneath the stretch fabric of her dress, they were very definitely there, setting off her breasts so perfectly.

The dress hugged her. It was not just her breasts that it clung to, but her entire body, from shoulders to thighs, where it stopped, just above her knees. This was no thigh revealing, maybe-you-can-see-my-panties-or-my-cunt, short, short dress. It did not need to be.

Sarah has worn that kind of teasingly short dress to these I-am-not-married concert dates, but not this night, never with panties, more likely with a thong, and sometimes just commando. This dress did not tease. The length of the dress was just plain irrelevant. You could see right through it.

The opaqueness of the material revealed the outline of her legs beneath it, including where her nylons ended and her bare thigh began. There was no way that the contrast of dense black stocking top and pure white flesh would not be obvious, even if both showed through as burgundy, dark and light.

What was also obvious was that the light burgundy that was the whiteness of her flesh seen through her dress, was uninterrupted from mid-thigh right on up. Her stockings were self supporting, and they were all that she was wearing. My date's strategy for achieving the no-visible-pantie-line look was effortlessly simply. Just do not wear panties.

Not that her copse of pubic hair was visible.

Sarah has standards. Had she retained her copse of raven coloured curls, it would have been too obvious. It had been there last time that I had seen her, but now it was no more. From behind, following her back up the stairs, I could make out her labia protruding neatly between her legs, but from the front, with the dress stretched taut, there was just the shadow that made you wonder. It was clear that she wore no underwear, but her pubis was not quite discernible. You just imagined that it was.

As we walked, and went up more stairs, and across more hallway, to get to the door for our section of the concert hall, Sarah got the looks that she deserved.

You might expect that older concert goers would be more judgemental than the young, but over the years we had discovered that that was by no means the way it went. Those in our own age bracket were more willing to give looks of disapproval. But looks of disapproval were not the only looks that she received.

Surprise, interest, amazement, amusement, impressed approval, sheer voyeuristic appreciation, calculated appraisal, and blatant leering, together outweighed any disapproval or disdain, by three to one. If you are not much over thirty, have retained your looks, and your confidence, you can show off your body and the so called prudish English take it in their stride. Or most of them.

I heard the 's' word quietly used by a girl not much more than twenty to her female companion. A stage whisper, designed to be heard.

"Did you see that slut?"

I was holding Sarah's hand, and squeezed it encouragingly. She squeezed back.

The girl who checked out tickets at the doorway to the auditorium noticed, but stayed aloof. Sarah might just as well have been clad in satin as the sheer dress that she was wearing. The girl's face registered not the faintest reaction to visible breasts, areoles and nipples, or to Sarah's evident nakedness beneath the dress, from breast to thigh. She tore off the ticket stubs, returning them to me to hold for the duration, and we walked into the concert hall.

I hesitated, checking the seat numbers against the lettering on the ends of the rows. I heard another comment.

"My dear, I just wish I was brave enough, and young enough."

The woman was in her fifties, slim, wearing a pale blue dress that flattered her figure, her white blonde hair worn loose. She had paused just long enough to quietly compliment Sarah on her daring, and then followed her companion to their seats.

Our seats were mid-way along a row. Easing past the half dozen people already settled into their seats, Sarah had no choice except to let them enjoy a close up experience of her thinly clad body. They had to half stand, leaning against their raised seats as we passed, sideways, Sarah turning towards them as she went, her back to the stage, her nipples, areoles and breasts on view beneath taut fabric. Only one did more than mutely register what they had seen. A women in her sixties. She gave out a gasp.

"Well!"

So English, I thought, as we took our seats, but then so had been the people who had been amused or appreciative. Never generalise about a nation.

Besides, the woman's husband, or companion, gave my date a rather more appreciative and lingering glance, before deciding that he should not be seen to have noticed anything. His pleasure, just the same, that we were taking the two seats beside theirs, was all too evident, magnified by the fact that it was Sarah, and not myself, who sat right beside him, her skirt riding up, baring her stocking top and a narrow strip of naked, milk white thigh. Not that he had much time to enjoy the display that she was offerin before the lights began to dim.

A trio of musicians took to the stage, drummer, bass guitar and cello. They tuned up briefly, then started playing a light jazz number. Then we heard the violin, and Nigel strolled in from the wings, playing furiously, torn jeans, off white tee-shirt, black satin patterned waist coat, hair in tufts, unshaven, as shocking to the eye as his playing was exquisite to the ear.

The concert was just sublime. From classical to jazz, Kennedy kept us all in rapture, joking in between the pieces with inconsequential tales of people he had met, and faux pas that he had made.

When the first piece ended, Sarah had her legs together, but she parted them as I placed my hand on her left thigh, fingers on the inner flesh, inviting me to explore further. I played it cool, taking my time, but taking advantage of her willingness to let my hand make gradual progress towards its inevitable destination.

Even turning my hand, I could only reach above her stocking top by easing the hem of her dress further up her legs. The sliver of white thigh between stocking top and hem became an inch, then two, and finally three, when I could feel the soft warmth of her protruding labia against the side of my little finger, and could use it to play between them. She was, totally predictably, wet with her own secretions.

I glanced down, deciding not to notice the way the man in his sixties, the woman's partner, on the other side of Sarah, was sitting with his hands palms down on his trouser legs, which themselves were casually parted just enough to allow the back of his left hand to rest against the side of Sarah's other thigh, all too obviously enjoying the feel of nylon stretched taut over female flesh.

Kennedy saved his fastest and most intricate fingering for just before the interval. I removed my hand. Sarah smoothed down her dress. The guy drew his legs together, so that his hand no longer touched. The house lights came up.

We made our way out to the bar, repeating in reverse the sideways 'excuse-me's to leave our row. Sarah went to use the rest room while I got the drinks. The crowd at the bar kept me longer than Sarah needed before she returned to what was by then a more crowded area, and when, carrying our two glasses of sparkling wine, I finally found her, she was engaged in conversation with someone else. Tall, fifties, grey hair, suave, making her laugh.

"Ah, the lucky fellow," he said when I joined the two of them. "Isn't she enchanting? Quite exquisite! I was wondering if she might be available to a third party."

Again so English. So discrete. Available to a third party. When what he meant was would I let him fuck her.

I handed Sarah her wine.

"I'm afraid that's not the arrangement we have agreed," I answered.

It was the simple truth. It was years before that, at another concert, I had been playing with Sarah through her thong during the first half of the performance, and then dared her to remove it while I queued for our interval drinks. She had not only complied, but had come back to bar and handed me the black, lace thong, and letting it dangle from her fingers momentarily so that those nearby would see what she was giving me.

Since then, we had explored the exhibitionist streak she had revealed, at any and every concert, play, opera and art exhibition that we had been to, how far she dared to go sometimes being at my request, sometimes, as with the sheer red dress, her own decision.

But the agreement was that it was purely a game of dare to bare, and there were no so called third parties. I was her only lover.

"Nothing I can offer to persuade you?" the tall guy asked.

How much will it cost to fuck her, was what he meant. I wondered how much he would have offered. I wondered if there was a price that Sarah might have agreed to. I did not ask.

"Not at any price," I smiled. "She's not for sale."

"Such a pity," he sighed, acknowledging that he had indeed meant that he would have paid to fuck her.

"Ah well. Good to meet you both."

He offered me his hand, like an old acquaintance taking his leave, or perhaps as a gesture of respect. Either way, I shook hands with him.

He turned to Sarah.

"Goodbye, my dear," he said.

One hand went around her back to between her shoulder blades. The other went lower, cupping a buttock through the fine fabric of her dress.

He moved his head to kiss her, his lips caressing her cheek. Sarah turned her head, no away from him, but offering him her mouth. It was just momentary, not lingering. He was too much the gentleman for that. But within that moment Sarah opened her mouth to him, he reciprocated, and tongues no doubt touched, or intertwined, or both.

They broke off, he released her, gave me a glance as if to thank me, turned, and walked away.

Sarah grinned.

"He was nice," she said. "Not at any price?"

"And if I had said yes?"

"Who knows?" she shrugged. "I left my wedding ring at home."

Back in the auditorium, we settled for the second half, the lights were dimmed, and my hand went back to Sarah's thigh. I was still wondering. Would she have let a total stranger make love to her if I had not been there? Was that really all it took, her wedding ring at home?

I glanced sideways at her, and saw the guy's hand, the sixty something year old guy whose wife had disapproved and who was sitting the other side of him to Sarah. I had to give him credit for his daring. The house lights were down, but it was not so dark that his hand could not be seen.

I guess he had worked out the angles.

His wife would be focused on the music, and Kennedy was good to watch as well as listen to, so he would keep her occupied. His left hand would be outside of her line of vision, where he had placed it. Sarah had clearly not objected during the first half of the concert when he had been enjoying the feel of her nylon clad leg against the back of his hand. She was obviously dressed to show off her body. It was worth risking a more direct exploration of just how far she would let him go.

To his credit, the guy's hand was resting on Sarah's other thigh, turned sideways, his fingers dipping between her legs. He had nerve.

Sarah was making it as easy for him as she had done for me. She was slightly slouched in her seat, her buttocks towards the front, her legs parted enough to give him room. Had I not taken that sideways glance I would have dipped my own hand between her legs, and would have found it touching his, back to back, between parted thighs. Instead, I conceded that he had got there first. Presumably that was the other angle he had calculated. If I was willing to let her dress like that, I might be willing to let him touch her. If that was his guess, then he had got it right.

He played the same game that I had done during the first half of the gig. Slow and steady, ever so gradual, moving from nylon onto flesh, easing the hem back just that bit more, turning his hand, bringing it closer, inch by soft, smooth, available inch.

Sarah put her hand on mine, maybe for comfort, or maybe to signal that I should not move my hand from where it was, in case I disturbed the other guy's progress. A few moments later, she squeezed, signalling something else. The guy had reached his objective. His fingers were at her entrance.

Keeping her left hand on mine, where it rested on her knee, Sarah slowly moved her right arm, from where it had been across her body, forearm neatly tucked beneath her breasts, to as not to impede the guy's access. She brought her hand between her legs. At first I wondered if she was going to ease the guy's hand away, but instead she rested her forearm on his jacket sleeve, close to the cuff, encouraging him to keep his hand exactly where it was.

Nigel played on oblivious, his fingers dancing on the violin strings, but three of his audience were seriously distracted, and one had her head back, turned towards mine, mouth open, eyes closed, her arousal all too evident.

I thought of the open mouthed kiss in the bar, with a stranger who had offered to pay to fuck her. Now a different stranger was fingering her. Leave your rings at home and dress in something sheer, and guys will make the inevitable assumption. In spite of being married, my date was enjoying a new level of exhibitionist behaviour.

It finished all too soon. Kennedy ended on another rousing high. The audience stood, applauding and demanding more. The guy had removed his hand and was clapping, staring at the stage. It might have been my imagination, but the side of his left hand seemed to glisten as if it might be wet. Sarah and I both were standing. She had pulled down her hem, making herself as decent as a sheer dress will allow. Kennedy returned. The trio had not left the stage. We all took our seats as Nigel slipped his violin under his chin and raised his bow.

Exquisite.

He finished, and spent the next five minutes receiving yet more applause, bowing and smiling in all directions, but no more encore.