Read The Booby Trap and Other Bits and Boobs for Free Online Page B

heading into the sea to cool down. The sun was beating down from the empty blue sky, and he could feel his skin beginning to burn, a tingling sensation that wasn’t wholly unpleasant. He sat up, wincing as his back separated slowly from the white plastic of the lounger, and was about to slide his feet into his flip-flops when he saw her.
    Saw them.
    Her name was Ria, and she was a waitress in the restaurant they had eaten in the previous night, a narrow glass room wedged between the edge of the beach and main drag that was pleasantly amiable for such an obvious tourist trap. It sold Greek salad, prawns that were five times as big as the ones his mum brought home from Tesco on Saturday morning, and fillets of fish so exotic that he was only aware of them from photos in his encyclopaedia: swordfish, mahi-mahi, barracuda, stingray. All of which were available with chips, so as not to completely terrify the majority of the restaurant’s clientele.
    She had appeared beside their table, a vision of tanned skin, gleaming white teeth and long black hair, and introduced herself. Ben noticed a tiny frown appear on his mother’s forehead and a look of outright dislike rise onto Chloe’s face, but then Ria leant forward to pass out menus, and he would not have noticed if his mother and sister had got up on the table and started dancing the can-can. The top three buttons of Ria’s white shirt were open, revealing a deep, gently curving cleavage that instantly turned his mouth as dry as the Sahara, and a sliver of pale yellow material that whispered of hidden treasure.
    She took their order and glided away through the busy restaurant, leaving chaos in her wake. Ben stared blankly at the table, unable to remember what he’d selected from the menu less than thirty seconds earlier, as his dad smoothed down his hair and straightened the collar of his shirt, drawing a wide-eyed look of fury from his wife and an exaggerated roll of the eyes from his daughter. The atmosphere at the table was charged, almost electric, as they waited for their starters. When the food arrived in the unsteady grip of a middle-aged man with a bald head and a face that was running with sweat, half of the family tried their very best to hide their disappointment.
    Now she was before him again, silhouetted against the blinding blue sky and gleaming white sand of the beach. She was wearing bikini bottoms that were the same pale yellow he had glimpsed so fleetingly the previous evening, huge round sunglasses, and a pair of white flip-flops.
    And that was all.
    Ben’s breath froze in his lungs as his gaze came to rest on the upper half of her tanned, narrow body. He knew it was wrong to stare, not just at girls but at anyone, had been told so by both his mum and dad on many occasions, but he was simply powerless to resist. Ria was like something from another planet, a world of irreverent beauty and hopeless glamour so completely different to the one he inhabited; she seemed impossible. Her breasts rode high on her chest, full curves of flawless skin that defied gravity and logic. Then his vision was merely full of the beautiful contours of her shoulders and back as she strolled away down the beach.
    Beside him, his dad let out a spluttering snore, then rolled over to one side and farted loudly, breaking the spell. His mother tutted with disapproval, before turning her attention back to her novel, unaware that beside her, her son’s doors of perception had been thrown open to reveal a bigger, wider, and far more exciting world.
    Ben had told Sean about Ria as soon as he got home, his eyes wide and shining as he attempted to convey the power of what he had seen, the essential
glory
of it. His best friend, who liked to consider himself an expert in all things female despite abundant evidence to the contrary, had listened carefully, then asked whether or not he had slipped her one. Ben, who understood the essential concept of ‘slipping