The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine Read Online Free Page B

the window, chocolate shops
placed their delights in heart-shaped boxes, florists carried only red flowers, roses,
carnations, tulips, the colour of love.
    It was the flash of electric blue that caught her attention. The shop was tiny but
the peephole of a window was decked out for Valentine’s Day in blue. Not red for
love or pink for girlish blushes. Bright, stabbing blue. Holly felt a little uneasy.
This was a shop filled with the forbidden accessories of desire—a sequined bra, the
flash of a blue g-string, little cups with tassels, all of them the secret colour
of her own excitement. Holly leaned closer to the window. It was impossible to tell
what the little tasselled circles might be used for but whatever it was, it had the
whiff of sex about it.
    A curtain was suddenly flung open. Holly jumped back, startled as the tiny window
became a stage. On it, a woman in a blue robe leaned forward and pushed aside the
tassels along with the rest of the window display. She was extraordinary, her eyes
dramatically made up with pale blue lashes curling, her neck unnaturally long, the
blue-black hair piled high on top of a fine-boned face. Peacock feathers dangled
in the long drop from her ears to the straight plane of her shoulders, and when she
turned back to face the window, a glittering flash of blue peeked out from the slight
gape of the indigo robe.
    Holly was transfixed by the swell of cleavage, the long stockinged leg, the blue
velvet shoes with their impossible heels. She reached up and secured a huge fan of
peacock feathers on the curling tumble of dark hair.
    Holly stepped to one side as a shop assistant struggled out with a large A-frame
sign. She settled it on the footpath, smiled politely at Holly and disappeared back
into the shop.
    Honey Birdette, read the sign, Valentine’s Burlesque with Madame Glimmer. 1pm
    Holly checked her watch. It was five minutes to one. Burlesque was something to do
with stripping, wasn’t it? She felt nervous. She found herself turning her abstinence
ring distractedly on her finger. Other passers-by had stopped to watch, a group
of Asian schoolgirls hiding their excited grins behind their hands, a middle-aged
woman in a heavy cotton skirt, three women who might be burlesque dancers themselves,
tall and gorgeously adorned with a rattle of glittering bracelets and diamantes in
their hair, an old man with a stick and a slight hunch. Surely if an old man could
watch the show then it wouldn’t be a problem for Holly to take a peek.
    A brassy blare, a pause, another brazen blast of horns shouted out from a portable
stereo. The dancer leaned back onto a tall pillar that looked like a structural support
but was transformed, with her elegant body stretched against it, into the entry to
a temple. The practical suddenly become decorative, a simple shop window transformed
into a magical diorama, the ordinary made extraordinary. The woman moved her hips.
A deep throbbing rhythm set up by one foot tapping, the movement displaced the blue
robe and Holly was treated to a glimpse of the sequined gown beneath. Her hips shimmered,
a bright blue waterfall of tassels swaying to the gentle rocking of her frame. Her
body twitched out of the robe, one rhythmic hip-bounce at a time, until her whole
body was finally, glitteringly, exposed. Holly heard the old man beside her draw
in his breath. The dancer began a gentle shimmy of the shoulders that slipped the
robe like a silky skin to show the heavy sequined train starting at the very base
of her spine and plunging, full as a waterfall, to the floor.
    She danced. Holly was transfixed. The woman’s hips were fluid. It seemed impossible
that she could sway so easily on such heels. Her spine became a snake. Holly could
see every nub of it flexing and curving with the movement of her thighs, responding
to each whim of her hips. In perfect timing with the music’s crescendo she swung
around to face the growing crowd, and stilled. Her gloves were long, fastened