Her toes turned in as she looked from one direction to another. The city was huge and loomed over her, full of skyscrapers and lights. People shuffling past paid her no mind.

Her bottom lip trembled. She looked down at her shiny Mary Jane shoes. She was wearing her favorite summer dress, blue to bring out her eyes. Her prettiest rainbow-striped socks adorned her legs all the way up to her thighs. At the end of two perfect little chocolate brown pigtails two rainbow ribbons matched her socks.

A van pulled up to the corner, big black and shiny, blotting out everything else. Even the hubcaps were black. The windows were tinted too dark to see anything inside. A gust of wind blew up the little girl’s dress. When the van window hissed down, she was tugging on the hem to restrain the skirt.

“Lost?” The voice was deep, strong and cold.

She peered into the van but in the darkness saw only two eyes staring at her. The baleful gaze made her squirm.

“Oh … yes sir, I think I’m pretty lost. Do you know where the bus stop is, mister?”

“Where ya headed?” The voice was gravelly and hard, reminding her of daddy’s, but this man’s voice was even rougher and stronger.

“I live on Blossom Street. I think I’m supposed to get the Number 3 bus, but I don’t remember where the stop is and —”

“I know where Blossom Street is. I pass it all the time. It’s getting late. You better just let me drive you home.” He leaned over and opened the passenger side door.

The lost little girl looked down at her shoes. A colder wind blew and she shivered. The summer dress was fine all day, but now the sun had set and the wind was picking up. Goosebumps speckled her arms.

“I probably shouldn’t, mister. I’m not supposed to. I mean I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

The laugh sounded like a growl or was it the other way around? “What’s your name, little girl?”

She shrugged, toes turning in farther, still holding down her dress because the wind was coming faster and the long socks didn’t quiet reach the hem.

“April.”

That laugh again. “April showers bring May flowers.” The little rhyme sounded odd on his lips. “Get in the van, April. It’s going to rain soon and you’ll be cold and wet. I know where Blossom Street is. The last bus already left and it will only get colder out there on the street.”

April bit her lip and her eyes teared up again. She didn’t know what to do. Daddy was probably already mad. She wasn’t supposed to be out this late and if the last bus had left she didn’t know how she would get home.

“Oh! Okay … okay, mister. Thank you.” The vehicle was so tall she had to hold on to door and seat to pull herself up. Before she could study him the man reached across her to slam the door. The automatic locks thudded.

She found herself sitting in a big leather seat. The city looked different from behind tinted glass. The van was warm and smelled of grownup things: spicy cologne and pipe smoke of the kind her uncle used to smoke.

The man was very tall and large, not exactly fat but big like a football player or something. He reminded her of Bluto in the Popeye comics. He didn’t have a beard though, just stubble. His face was serious, eyes looking ahead as the van moved out.

She shrank back in the big seat, hardly able to see over the dashboard. “Th-thanks, mister,” she said meekly as they drove slowly down the street. When they came to a light, she thought she recognized the street and it seemed to be the way home.

The man turned to her and their eyes locked. He wasn’t smiling and she couldn’t tell if he was mad, happy, angry or what. She felt a chill as his hand reached out, but he only pulled the seatbelt across her.

“We have to buckle you up and make sure you’re safe.” His voice was just as rough and gravely. He had an accent.

Once she was buckled in she couldn’t see over the dashboard at all. He stepped on the gas and the van sped up. She jerked at a noise, almost a moan, from the back of the van. The man craned his neck backward with concern on his face but returned eyes to the road with a satisfied grin.

It started to rain heavily. The sky darkened in seconds from purple dusk to night black. April’s heart beat faster as the hard rain rattled on the roof. From the back of the van she heard another sound, like a whimper.

“Um … mister.” She felt tears in her eyes. “Is somebody back there?”

The man’s eyes narrowed on her in assessment. “Don’t worry. That’s just my pet rabbit. She’s scared because of the rain.”

April’s eyes widened. “A bunny?”

He gave her a half smile. “Yeah, it’s just a little thing.”

She smiled brightly. “A little tiny bunny rabbit?”

The man’s dark demeanor cracked into a full smile. “Yep.”

“Um … mister … you think I could see it? I mean hold it? I’ll be really careful! Just for a minute?” She strained against the seatbelt trying to see in the back of the van, but it was dark. She just made out the glint of a cage.

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t want you moving around in the van, not with it raining. I’d have to pull over somewhere.”

April’s face screwed up with thought. She was already very late. A few minutes wouldn’t matter. She strongly wished to hold the fuzzy warm bunny. Maybe the man didn’t want it. Maybe he would give it to her if she was nice!

“That’s ok,” she said. “You can just pull over somewhere. I’ll be really gentle, I swear!” She was hopping in her seat. Her dress rode up and almost showed her panties. She blushed and pulled it back down.

The man looked around on the road but went even faster. “I think I know a place. Hold on.”

They drove for a few minutes and then pulled into a parking garage. The headlights shone into the empty garage. The man unbuckled himself and turned to face April who was smiling and shaking with excitement.

“Now you have to be careful, she is a skittish little thing,” he said as he unbuckled April’s seatbelt, which had a heavy and complicated clasp.

He flipped a few switches on the dashboard. The headlight went off and a light in the back of the van went on. April heard a rustle of movement in a cage and another whimper.

The man got out of his seat. He had to crouch to move into the back of the van, but April could easily stand up and move around. The back of the van was painted black with two tinted windows in the back doors and a small round window on the side. Two large doors on the left side were locked with a padlock.

The cage was the size appropriate to train large puppies. It contained one of the cutest rabbits April had ever seen. The rabbit was about four feet tall, scrunched up in a ball. Her skin was very pale and her hair was blond and curly, cut short like a boy’s. She had two perfectly white rabbit ears mounted on a headband, popping out of that curly blond hair.

The rabbit wore furry white mittens. She wore matching furry boots as well but was otherwise naked.

April smiled. Her friend at school had a bunny, but it wasn’t even half as big and cute. This one had bright green eyes and really big pouty lips. Her breasts were tiny but the large puffy nipples were very pink. She seemed to be shivering.

As the man fumbled near, the cage shook and the rabbit’s eyes darted all around for some escape. “She’s very skittish, like I said. You have to be careful when you pet her. I bet she’ll like you though. I have big rough hands, but yours are small and soft. Just be gentle with her and she’ll warm up to you.”

He took a thick ring of keys out of his work pants and unlocked the cage. The poor little bunny, pink skin pale and raised in goosebumps, cowered in the corner.

“It’s okay. Come here, girl.” He thrust large hands into the cage and said to April, “I haven’t even named her yet. I just got her last week.”

He put his hands under her arms and picked her up effortlessly. She kicked her feet reflexively but was mostly frozen in fear. Clear of the cage, she curled into a ball in his arms. He had one arm around her and one arm under her with his hand resting on her bottom.

April noticed that although the rabbit was a skinny and scraggly, she had many plump and puffy parts. Her lips and nipples stuck out prominently. Her bottom was round with two puffy pussy lips between her thin legs. April was breathing hard, excited to play with a bunny. She wasn’t sure about this strange man who had given her a ride, but she didn’t think any really bad person would have a bunny this cute.

The stranger turned to April and held the rabbit out to her, holding it with both hands under its arms so the nude body hung down and its ears stuck up ridiculously.

“She’s so pretty!” April squealed excitedly.

“Sit down and I’ll put her in your lap,” the man said patiently.

April quickly sat Indian style and straightening her dress. The man lowered the rabbit into her lap. April smiled brightly and petted the rabbit girl on her head, running her fingers through the golden locks and fingering the fluffy white ears.

Shaking in her arms, the rabbit cuddled for warmth in the folds of the girl’s dress. She rolled up into a fetal position again, paws and boots both between April’s legs, buttocks protruding awkwardly to the side.

“Her hair is so soft!” April marveled, petting the blonde curls and letting her fingers run down the rabbit’s back and bottom. The man’s jaw clenched as he watched.

Her fear melted away like the chill as the rabbit pressed herself against April’s body. The strokes of April’s hand soothed her. The rabbit raised her bottom high like a cat and April let her fingers brush against the hairless slit with the puffy lips.

“The vet takes good care of her, makes sure she is waxed and fresh.” The man’s voice was smoother now.

April knew how rabbits liked to be petted. She had watched her friend play with his rabbit for hours. Slipping a finger over the puffy pink lips of the rabbit’s sex, she felt the smoothness of the inner lips, the tiny nub of the clit and wetness in the rabbit’s slit. She first slipped her pinky into the rabbit’s tight hole then coated her middle finger and tried that. The rabbit whimpered and nearly jumped out of April’s lap.

“Be careful there!” the big man said in sudden concern. “I just got her, like I said. She’s sore from when I was petting her last night.” He moved closer until he was only two feet away, watching the young girl soothe his pet.

April slid wet fingers over the rabbit’s clit. The pet whimpered and moaned and ground her butt back into the girl’s hand. April giggled. “I think she likes me!”

The large man’s eyes were trained on April’s fingers and the pink hairless lips she fondled. The rabbit was young and so clean she smelled like nothing more then fresh dew, even though in heat.

April was so enraptured by the rabbit and how its hips were rising to meet her hand as she rubbed its clit that she didn’t notice the man getting closer, slowly rubbing the bulge in his work pants.

“Mister this is the nicest rabbit ever —” She looked up as the large man unbuckled the belt of his pants.

“You keep petting her like that,” he said in a low growl, “get her nice and wet and I’ll take care of her.”

Alice knew grown ups did such things with their pets — it was why grown ups bought pets — but this man was so huge! The rabbit was so small that he would hurt her. Alice felt the rabbit start to shake and whimper, the poor little thing!

“Mister! You probably shouldn’t. You said she’s awful sore.”

The man pulled out his penis. It was enormous, so thick April doubted even full grown pets could take this monster. Surely it would rip a rabbit apart! The rabbit cried out and tried to twist right out of April’s lap.

“Mister, I’m petting her really nicely,” April begged in her cutest baby voice, the one that made Daddy forgive her for anything. “Please, you’re scaring her.”

The large man stroked his menacing cock, watching the two on the floor with cold intensity. “She’s my pet. She has to learn to play nicely with me. Now hold her and I’ll —”

“Wait, mister! Please! You’re really going to hurt her. Look at how she’s crying and trying to jerk away. I’ll … I mean … I can play with you, if you won’t hurt her.”

The man’s attention focused on the lost little girl with a wide and not very nice smile. “You’re not much bigger than her, don’t you think you’ll get hurt?”

He knelt down and put his hand on the rabbit’s bottom.

April nervously started stroking the rabbit again, letting her fingers pull at the now soaked little lips and achingly erect clit. The rabbit was scared but also wet and aroused by April’s fingers.

“I’ll be ok, mister. I’ve got a daddy who’s as big and tall as you.” She swallowed hard. “Well, almost.”

April pulled the rabbit around so that its ass and sex were not so exposed and such an easy target for the man’s huge throbbing cock. She pinched the rabbit’s facial cheeks, which were now blushing red. The rabbit had the most amazing lips, bee-stung and pouting. April kissed the rabbit and the rabbit eagerly kissed her back, sucking on Alice’s top and then bottom lip.

April fell onto the kiss. The rabbit’s soft lips and sweet tongue gave April thrills. They continued to kiss as the stranger stood up next to them and moved his huge cock towards their two mouths.

“Show me a little of how you play and maybe I can take it easy on my little pet.”

April turned, still drunk from kisses and faced the huge penis.

“Okay, mister, but then you gotta drive me home, okay?” She looked up to his intense eyes with pleading.

The rabbit, crouched on the floor, shivered violently.

The man chuckled. “Sight of my cock scares her to death. She thinks I’m going to stuff it into her pussy and I’m working on that, so far with no luck. I bruised her pussy lips when I tried a few days ago. To save her pussy she’s been sucking me ever since.”

He gripped one of April’s pigtails and pulled her mouth to his cock. Though frightened, she opened and took the cock head between her lips. She sucked it timidly, fitting as much in her mouth as she could, maybe the first third of it. She licked it around the head, hoping that would satisfy him.

April had been hesitant, a little scared, until the kisses, the feel of the rabbit’s naked body against her and now this huge throbbing cock in her small hands. The blood was pumping in her veins and she felt her panties wet with desire. While she sucked the head of the large man’s cock, the rabbit rose from the floor, kissed her neck and held her. April suddenly wanted more of it. She pushed the huge thing deeper into her mouth and almost choked. She sucked it hard and slithered her tongue along the ridge of the head.

The rabbit pulled up the girl’s dress, exposing rainbow colored panties that matched the thigh high socks. The red and blue and green stripes were darker at the crotch where the girl was wet and hungry.

April would have been surprised had she noticed how easily the rabbit freed one of her hands from its mitten. As she sucked faster on the man’s cock, she only felt the rabbits hands inside her panties. Two of the rabbit’s fingers slipped easily into April’s wet sex.

The man watched his pet finger the lost little girl and growled with pleasure. Pulling April off of his cock, he grabbed her arm roughly and turned her to face away from him, her bottom in the air. The rabbit was flung to the floor.

“Mister! Mister, no!” April cried.

With the young girl on her hands and knees he gave her rainbow-pantied ass a firm smack. She’d been spanked plenty of times, but this man’s hand was so large and firm it was like being hit with a paddle. He ripped the colorful panites easily in half, exposing her ass and cunt.

“It’s you or the rabbit, slut.” The man knelt and slapped his meaty cock against her bare sex.

The rabbit stared at the man in wide eyed horror. April pulled the rabbit to her, kissing her again on the lips and looking her in the eyes. “I’m not going to let him hurt you, okay? You have to help me though. Go back and make me very wet. Go back there and help me take him. Do you understand?”

The rabbit’s big green eyes sparkled with tears but she nodded twice. The two kissed again. Even with so much fear and stress, the feel of the rabbit’s soft puffy lips against hers made April melt.

The man stroked his hard shaft and watched as the rabbit knelt facing the small pussy. The rabbit’s nose scrunched up as she sniffed around the girl’s wet sex. April shivered to the soft lips tracing her thighs with tentative nibbles and licks until they reached her wet pink folds and found her clit.

“Use your fingers,” April moaned.

Eyeing the huge cock poised to enter, the little rabbit obeyed, licking the hard little clit that seemed to get fatter. A rabbit finger slipped into April’s waiting cunt, light pink and slick with juices. The rabbit added a second and a third finger before she felt tightness. She pushed and pulled her fingers in a slow rhythm as she twirled and sucked on April’s clit.

The man enjoyed the show but was getting impatient. He slapped the rabbit hand away and shoved one of his thick fingers into the girl, who groaned and pushed her plump little bottom back at him. He worked another finger into her, twisting and coating them with her juices until both fingers fit up to the first knuckle.

“A lovely little slut!” he growled, pushing his fingers in farther until April whimpered and tried to pull away. “You’ll take my cock if we have to try all night.”

The rabbit crawled around to April’s face and kissed the girl again, her silky lips and honey tongue wet with April’s juices. They worked their magic on April again, even more so with the added dirty pleasure of tasting herself on those perfect lips.

Feeling her wetness grow as she kissed his pet, the man growled a laugh. He slipped his fingers out and grabbed the girl’s hips. April’s body tensed.

The rabbit did everything she could to calm the girl, pushing her fat puffy nipples against April’s lips and coaxing her to suck them. This was almost as thrilling as kissing the little rabbit. Then the rabbit set upon April with deeper kisses, swirling her tongue in the girl’s mouth.

The man wet the head of his cock against the girl’s slit and pressed the thick head into her entrance. Searing heat ripped through April as it stretched her. She tried to focus on kissing the perfect nymph rabbit in front of her.

The man groaned and exclaimed, “Tight and delicious!”

This huge rough man completely controlled her, pulling her little hips back against him. Along with this new sensation the pain and the kissing made April dizzy. She felt powerless and overwhelmed as the pain and pleasure mixed in her head. And all she could see, smell and taste was the bunny’s delightful plump lips, kisses and green eyes. April shook as an orgasm wracked her body.

The sudden contractions made the man groan as the tight pussy tightened further on his massive cock. The flood of additional lubricant let him slip almost his whole length into her. He increased his grip on her hips and picked her up off the ground with the force of his next thrust. Now he was fucking the little girl hard and fast.

The manhandling was too violent for the rabbit to continue kissing. She lay down and offered her bare swollen cunt for the girl to suck. April was climbing towards another orgasm as the man gave her a fucking the likes of which she had never imagined. It was brutal and euphoric at the same time. Her thighs were numb from his body slapping against her. She held on to the rabbit’s legs and clamped her mouth onto the wet little sex. The taste of the rabbit’s wetness and the feel of her little pussy lips pushed April over the edge.

The rabbit shuddered in a violent orgasm. The moaning, the smell of sex and the two little girls coming against each other were too much for the big man to take. With a pent up fury that had been building for hours he hoarsely barked out, “Fuck!” and came deep in the little girl. Over and over he jetted into her as her tightness squeezed him.

He finally slipped out of her, studying the obscenely red and swollen sex dripping with his come and growling with pleasure. He stood up weakly and held on to the wall of the van to pull up his trousers.

The girl and the rabbit lay panting together on the floor. The man returned to the driver’s seat and started the engine. April felt herself drift to sleep for a few minutes as the van drove into the night. She awoke as the van stopped.

“This is Blossom. Which house?” the man said in his deep voice.

She swallowed, her mouth dry and her body suddenly cold. “Um … number 204.”

He drove on. Beside her the rabbit was deeply asleep and looked adorable.

Shortly the van stopped again and he turned to her. “Well April, you’ve been a good girl. I drove you home like I said I would. Can I ask you something?”

April stood up, wincing at the pain between her legs, feeling the cold semen running down her thighs. She could hardly stand.

“Sure, mister,” she said weakly.

“Well, being that this rabbit is too small for me to properly play with, maybe you could keep her for me for a while, train her up until she gets a little bigger. Maybe I could come and visit you a few times?” Now his voice was a less scary.

April’s eyes widened. This was so unexpected! Having a rabbit was her biggest dream, but having this one, so beautiful and perfect, was something she couldn’t even imagine.

“I … I mean … really? Really, mister?”

He smiled for the first time without leering. “If your daddy will let you.”

She nodded. “He will, he will, I promise!” She knew she could get her daddy to let her, even if he was going to spank her for being late.

The man stood up again and opened the lock on the side doors of the van.

“Well go ahead and take her then. I’ll be keeping my eye on you and my rabbit.” Though he smiled his eyes were menacing.

April climbed out of the van, happy to be home. She helped the rabbit out by the hand that still wore a furry mitten. The rabbit shivered in the night air.

“Okay, mister. I promise I’ll take real good care of her. When she’s bigger she’ll be ready for you!”

April led the rabbit up her front walkway. The man closed the van doors and drove away just as the front porch lights came on. The door opened and the shadow of April’s daddy appeared.

April put on her biggest, prettiest smile and tried to look as cute as she could. “Hi daddy! Sorry I’m late. Look what I found!”

She is on her side, turned away. The world is just the high flare of her hungry hips, her bottom, taught skin, pale skin, then the deep cutting black of a tattoo. Unrecognizable symbols, covered by the sheets, dark shapes barely seen through gauzy cotton obfuscation.

She is on her knees. Her body is facing me, but her eyes are turned down. Her hair, the jet black bob coming down to cover her face. The line of that hair coming to two points right above the bow of her lips. Bowed lips, arrow tongue, sword sharp eyes steel blue. She is weaponized sex.

Her body is facing away, but her head is turned half way towards me. She is expectant. She is waiting. Her profile, nose, small and slightly upturned; lips, huge and pouting; eyes, too large, too demanding. She is a cartoon. She is a little girl in a woman’s body. She is a physical overdose.

It’s all too much. It’s an odd kind of beauty. Not beauty, but something that demands attention. Her looks create addiction. She puts you into heat.

She is on all fours. Her back is supple and flowing feline into her neck where my lust always creeps like longing fingers. She is thin in her waist, thick in her thighs. She is wanton. She is built to fuck.

It’s the end. She is sitting on the bed, legs drawn up against her chest. Hair down in her eyes again. Every inch of her is human need. There it is, between up drawn legs. Just a glimpse. Gray speaking volumes of pink.

She is mine, dancing there in the breeze twenty times, still dripping and bound to the line. A decadent row of her across the studio expanse. Twenty scenes captured. Twenty times exposed to me. Exposed to film. Exposed.

I love the quite calm of my dark room. I love the smells of the chemicals. The sticky sweet fixer, like dead things and morgues. The thin smells of alcohols. The piss stench of ammonia. The soapy washes and oily developers. I love all of them. My beautiful factory of potions and elixirs. I am an alchemist, transmuting dull white paper into vivid life.

Most of all I love all this control. To bend everything to my will; even the sun obeys me in my dark room. The way I can compensate for the temperature and the humidity and every conceivable condition. It is so unlike life. It is so unlike the world.

After I got out of college, I got work quickly. I was an artist but not an Artist. I didn’t feel the need to be edgy and I certainly did have any kind of ego, so I got catalog work right away, then magazine stuff, food, architecture. I could do almost anything, though my agent though I was better at photographing “things” as opposed to “people”. The fact of the matter was I saw little difference in them.

All in all I liked New York a lot, even in the beginning. It agreed with me. In New York no one ever touches you unless you want them too. It’s a place where a person’s personal space is a constant concern. It might shock people, but it’s infinitely easier to be alone in a crowded place like this then out there where people want to belong and yearn to connect.

Here the connections are fleeting, though ever present. Our connections are sterile and carefully measured, like the chemistry of my life. We filter who we let in and how much of ourselves we let them see and take. We shuffle off, underground, into separate apartments, numbered cubicles. To some it might seem cold, but I couldn’t imagine a better way. This measured madness is the only way a city this huge could exist without collapsing on its own chaos.

In its own way New York was one big dark room. Perfect it its ability to create vivid images from pristine darkness and only able to be navigated by those who possessed the occult knowledge and experience of its secret sciences.

And so it was with my little studio apartment. A white walled womb. The ever-present post-collegiate futon. Book shelves and a folding tables. It was easy since every New York artist’s most important piece of furniture is simply the lack of a television.

It was perfect for me. On the wall a Brassaï, a Rodchenko a few shots I took around the city.

It was quiet, my little apartment. I call it a studio only because the one bedroom it had was converted into a darkroom. There were no two-bedroom apartments in the building. It wasn’t a family place. No noisy kids. There were occasionally parties on the weekend, but nothing huge. During the week we were all just trying to sleep. We all had to work in the morning.

My old neighbor could have been a stockbroker or a hooker or the ambassador of Brunei. I think I saw him twice and both times he was wearing a gray suit and carrying Indian take out. I never heard a sound come from his apartment. I didn’t even smell the Indian food. I didn’t see him move in and I didn’t see him move out. I was isolated. My apartment was a sensory deprivation tank, just the way I liked it.

Until she moved in.

The first time I heard the bass come through the wall I didn’t think much of it. I was curious more than anything. The rumbling was intense; it shook the water in the rinse bath I had an 8 by 10 in. It was a long bass line that seemed to echo a sultry walk. It sounded familiar, reminiscent of some old jazz tune but different, contemporary.

When the song ended I was staring at the white wall. I wanted to hear what came next. That’s when the first moan came through the wall.

It was laughable, at first. To think I never heard anything noise from my neighbors and now this.

The sound came again, a gasp, a little yelp of pleasure. Words came too, but they were muted, filtered through a foot of drywall and insulation. I didn’t know why, but I was on my feet. Cleaning lenses and drying prints be damned.

A cry, a moan, an indiscernible dirty word. Ambiguous sounds of fucking.

Then the banging. Right against the wall. They were on the other side. Thumping. The bed hitting a spot a foot away from where my hand touched the smooth eggshell paint.

That wicked Wednesday was the start. Every wicked Wednesday that followed was the same. Starting around 8 PM or 10 or sometimes not till midnight. Going on for hours. Sometimes it sounded like an argument. Sometimes it was just low moans building to an apex of shouted climaxes.

It wasn’t till the third time I realized that it was going to be a weekly event. It wasn’t until the fifth time that I realized I that I was scheduling these listening sessions. It wasn’t until the eight time that I realized I was addicted to the sounds. The rumbles of the bass. The chance of catching a syllable. The piggyback perversion of it all.

The first time I saw her, she’d already moved in. I don’t know how people move in here in the city, but one day I came home from a shoot and the door next to mine was open.

It is an odd thing to see a open door in an apartment in the city. There is something inherently wrong with it.

I walked slowly to my door. Just a peek.

“Get your ass- oh! Sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”

The first time I saw her, she was in a skin tight white tank top, loose blue painter’s pants with various shades of white spattered over them and her short ink black hair in two tiny pigtails.

I smiled awkwardly, the way an introverted photographer smiles when a beautiful exotic woman tells him to do something with his ass.

She smiled and apologized. I nodded and opened my door.

“See you around neighbor!” she giggled, closing her door.

There is was. I was intrigued. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I didn’t really think about it.

It wasn’t until a week later that the bass started.

The first time you handle a real camera is very much like picking up a gun; the weight, I mean. It’s surprisingly heavy. I am talking about a real camera, not the little things they make today for tourists and amateur shutterbugs. I mean a professional camera. The steel is cold and calculated, like a physical manifestation of surgery or solidified mathematics. To handle something like thing brings about images of clockworks, or still sterile rooms, chemicals and apertures and the machinations of long dead mathematicians.

My stomach felt cold and hollow. Sick and dead. I tasted iron, bile, palpable guilt. The taste of insomnia. My hands shook and the only thing that could still them was the camera. I dried my hands on my shirt before I picked it up and instantly I felt the coolness sooth me and the perfect mechanical faultlessness align my soul.

I distinctly remember the first time I looked at a camera as more then a tool. More then an object. It was in college, before I knew what I was and before anyone knew who I was.

My first good professor, the one who didn’t try to sell us the textbook he wrote, because he spent his summers actually working. He was tall and lanky, with a small pot belly that stuck out comically when he wore his tattered dress shirt open in the summer.

He was chocolate colored, but aged. Like Easter chocolate gone bad. Light patches on his balding head. Spots and marks all over from a life really lived. He was handsome in a way that was foreign to me. I respected him a lot.

Edwin Sherman. PhD, but he would be the last to tell you about it. He spoke like a character in a Walter Mosley novel. Jazz slang and a lyrical Brooklyn accent. He made me want to earn being called a “cat”.

I remember on the first day of class, he picked up his old rangefinder Leica with one huge hand. Long fingers slipping into every nook of the frame. He took a minute to look at it and smile in his ironic way, with that huge sensual mouth. He cradled it like a baby. No, something more delicate. A baby will grow up and leave you. That camera will be with him for ever.

I tried to cradle my camera like that. I tried to mimic his careful loving stance, just like the way I tried to match my father’s stride and the way he stood at a urinal with determined masculinity.

I succeeded as much as I could, but frankly I wasn’t much of a man.

He showed me those basics. Find lines, follow patterns, understanding shadows, controlling light and adjusting what you can’t control.

“They say you can fix it all in the darkroom, but that’s all a bunch of bullshit. If it ain’t there, you ain’t gunna find it in the darkroom.”

There I was, in the darkroom trying to find it. Trying to find something.

The safety light above makes everything calm and controllable. I can handle things in this kind of light.

I need photography because unlike my own natural chemistry, photography’s could actually be measured and counted on. Perhaps my mother was the same, only her body needed poisons as my father needed bile and grief.

I could never control my body. I was skinny and awkward. I was weak and always tired. Nothing I ate agreed with me. I couldn’t break things down like other people. Everyday was just waiting for the next pain to come. From my stomach to my head to those nameless murky parts inside that always seemed to writhe and hiss with pain.

In my makeshift dark room I measured my chemicals perfectly. I timed everything. I set up my faucet with thermometers and pH guards and filters to keep the amount of air bubbles to a constant.

Color or black and white. The two worlds in which I lived. Two wildly different worlds. Black and white always held my heart, but color demanded every ounce of my mind.

The hall on the ground floor of the apartment was dark, only lit by the florescent light above the mailboxes. Everything else was thrown into shadow, almost making it more mysterious and frightening then being totally dark.

It was dirty the way all old apartments were dirty in New York. Dirty from ware, from use, from a million fingers touching it and a million feet treading over it. They were walls that had been painted a million times. Painted quickly and without care. You could see little holes that transported you through decades with each shade of dull gray and institutional green.

The old metal mailboxes were covered with scratches. Missed keys and nosy neighbors. Angry boyfriends and careless children.

The little slot where you inserted a nameplate had been used so many times that the owners had just given up. So many names, so many lives.

I wondered how many people had used my mailbox before me. How many bills and postcards from far away places and love letters and goodbye letters and TV Guides had filled it.

I didn’t get much mail. Checks and bills that could really just be sent to each other for all I cared. One magazine shoot paid for electric and gas, one good ad paid the rent for that month. I lived on the leftovers. When a bunch of people I would never meet were done exchanging money through me, I made a good living. I had enough. I saved for some future I couldn’t fathom.

Then I saw that Her mailbox had a new sticker on it. A label. A name.

M. Mansfield.

M.

Mary, Marie, Maria, Margaret, Matilda, Melanie, Melinda, Monique?

I looked around. My heart started racing suddenly and my hands felt cold.

M.

I stepped back, into the shadow and under the stairs. I fumbled with my pocket and pulled out my camera.

My old Lieca, with a very small 30 MM lens, can fit right in the pocket of my p-coat. Snug. I can pop off the cover while it is still in my pocket and set the aperture before it even gets to my eye and there, I can snap off three shots and have it back in my pocket before I blink.

Her name in my rangefinder is sweet. It makes my belly tighten.

Gray gray gray and white and black black of the tiny print. M. If I could I would blow it up to poster size.

I want to read her mail. I want to peruse her life. I want to be in her head. I want to read her diary. I want to know everything.

I was fixated on her mailbox. So much so I didn’t hear the jingle of keys. I just barely heard the click of heels on the tile floor and then she was right in front of me.

She was wearing fishnet stocking and a black skirt. The seam of the fishnets was not straight, making me wonder if she had already been fooling around today.

Her ass was a bit bigger then I had thought. Plump for her frame. I liked it so much I almost let out an involuntary growl.

She had her short cut biker jacket on, with the word “hellcat” embossed on the back in red and orange.

I could see the fine cut of her black hair and her bare neck as she bent over to open her mailbox.

It was just then that I remembered that I was hiding in the shadows behind her and how creepy that would be. I swallowed hard, but quietly, and tried to push myself back against the shadows under the stairs.

She heard me move and froze.

I can tell, as she continued collecting her mail with tight muscles and a ready stance, that she was a practiced denizen of the city. No signs of fear, no signs of weakness.

She closed her mailbox and spun around to meet my eyes.

Relief passed over her.

“Hi.” She said with sigh.

“Hi.” I replied awkwardly. I couldn’t move.

Her forehead wrinkled a bit as she gave me a curious smile.

“What are you doing over there?”

“Just waiting… um… for my friend.”

“Oh, well I’m Mona by the way.”

“David.”

She smiled again and waved. Then took off for the elevator.

“Have fun waiting for your friend.”

Her name was Mona.

Mona Mansfield.

Through the walls again, I let myself ride her pleasure. I closed my eyes and breathed the way she does. I shut the world out except for her moans and caught breath and dirty whispers. She was even louder this time. Rough words I couldn’t make out. Rhythmic thumping and grunting and those begging cries.

What was he doing to her? Was he that good or was she just very receptive.

I could picture her there. I could extrapolate what she looked like from the bits and pieces I saw. That flash of leg when she came home in a short skirt. That cleavage I glimpsed at once when she bent down to get a sock that fell from her laundry basket.

I saw the room in black in white in my mind’s eye. Bare white walls, curtainless windows, dirty hardwood floor, lightly sprinkled with undergarments and abandoned shoes.

Her tattooed skin naked on white sheets. Thick black lines on her cream skin, stretching out around her arms, up her legs, between her breasts.

Sheets wrinkled, straining, lines swirl around her pretty fists as they pulled at the fabric, anchoring her from being totally swept away by the firm fast fucking she is getting.

Her partner was a faceless man. Muscular, masculine, everything I’m not. That’s what she wants. That’s the only thing that could make her scream that way.

Their sex is primal, violent, and explosive. They claw at each other, bite each other, mark each other’s flesh. They bargain for control with practiced give and take. He holds her down, she tightenes her legs, she makes him wait, he makes her come.

When they are done I open my eyes and the room is swimming with fuzzy electricity because I closed them too tightly. My hands are white knuckled fists in my shirt and I almost bit through my lip.

I taste coppery blood and the smells of the chemicals from the darkroom and my own thin clean sweat makes me dizzy for a minute. I am hyper, my brain vibrates. Everything is in perfect focus.

Hard and hot and crystallizing in my obsession.

The word is worrisome and exciting on my tongue. Obsession. Passion. Need. Hunger.

Obsession.

The first time we had anything like a normal conversation was right before her tenth Wicked Wednesday.

I was carrying about 100 pounds of equipment up to the apartment after a downtown shoot. The guys at the shoot got everything into a taxi trunk and the cab driver got everything into my apartment building, but I had to get it to the elevator and then into my apartment.

The problem was I could only carry a little at a time and I couldn’t leave any downstairs alone because someone would take it. So I had to flip the emergency stop on the elevator and fill it, then go up and hit the emergency stop again to unload it.

As I got up to the sixth floor, she was waiting.

“So you’re the one holding up the elevator.” mock annoyance on her face and a hand on her hip.

I just smiled awkwardly. Again.

“I’m just kidding. I heard the elevator alarm. Oh…” she looked at my equipment. “Do you need help?”

“No, no. I’m good. I got this stuff. Really.” I said, hoisting my strobe stands and Hasselblad case with the sudden adrenaline rush of meeting her in the hall.

“Come on, it’s cool. I’ll get this stuff.” She picked up my 35mm case and the duffle bag with odds and ends, the heaviest thing I had, and followed me out.

I fumbled with the keys. I tried to think what my apartment looked like. I wondered if she knew I could hear her at night. I started to feel those sensations. My hands went cold. My heart was racing. I felt like I was going to die. Panic attack. Stay calm. Stay calm.

She is in my apartment.

I flick on the lights and she sees my life. The futon and the bookshelf with a million oversized photography books. The table with portfolios and the long line across it all with drying prints. My life is 20 things and 5 gallons of chemicals.

The door closes behind her and she drops my stuff on the floor a little harder then I’d have liked.

“Wow. I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’re a photographer.”

I just melt a little. I lean against the wall, trying to pretend I’m tired or something. I try to get my heart under control.

“Yeah. Good guess.”

She walks in. She looks around. She walks up to the line and touches an 8 by 10 of an anorexic looking girl in lingerie.

“This your girlfriend?” She smiles.

I make a sound somewhere between a laugh and a punch in the stomach.

“No. Just some girl selling underwear.” I am moving now, putting things away. Do I ask her to leave? Do I make her a drink? I don’t even know how to make a drink.

“She is too thin. She needs a cheeseburger.”

I am a deer in headlights.

She is wearing a low cut black t-shirt and loose satiny pants. She looks ready for bed.

“I’ve been thinking about getting some pictures taken. I am an actress.”

I nod. I smile. I am calming down.

“Maybe you know somebody cheap.”

I just stare at her.

She is looking at me like I am a child or mentally handicapped outpatient.

“Cheap like inexpensive. Not cheap like… nevermind.”

I nod.

“Yeah.”

She walks to my darkroom door.

“This where you keep the dead bodies?”

“That’s the darkroom.”

“Oh. Cool. Chemicals are fun.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

She shakes her head.

“I could do your headshots. If you want.”

She smiles.

“You don’t seem cheap.”

She is batting her lashes. The words form in my head. Batting her lashes. I never realized how kinky that term is.

“You’re my neighbor. I mean. I don’t have to move anything. I mean. It’s ok. You can just pay for the prints.”

“Don’t you print them here?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So how much do you charge for prints?”

“I get free paper from the company I work for.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means… I’ll just do it.”

She is smiling.

“Cool.”

And then we are silent.

“Ok, well. When do you want to do it?”

Right now. Get on the floor.

“Wednesday.”

The word just comes out of my mouth, like speaking tongues.

She frowns.

“Wednesdays aren’t really good for me.”

“Any day then.”

She is still frowning.

“Is Wednesday good for you? Maybe I can do it if it is early.”

“Early is good.”

“Like noon early?”

“Yeah.”

“Great.”

Her smile is back. Wicked smile.

“You should bring someone.”

She wrinkles her eyebrows.

“What do you mean?

“Someone to do your hair. I mean, if you do your own hair and makeup it will take a long time and I doubt you’ll be happy.”

I walk over to my portfolios. I pick out the headshot/actor one. I open it to a picture of a shy blond in a summerdress. I wave for her to come over.

“You see her. She is all summery here, then she is dressed elegant and cosmopolitan, then business, then ready to tango. That is what people usually want. So you should get some different outfits and bring somebody to do your makeup and hair.”

She looked confused and impressed.

“Wow. That seems elaborate.”

I nodded, flipping through the book.

“When I said I was an actress I meant ‘aspiring’ actress.”

I nodded again.

“This girl was on CSI last night! Hah!”

I looked at the details on her heart tattoo.

“I’ve never acted. I was thinking of trying it out. I am a bartender and I am going for my BA in Psychology at Hunter.”

“So you don’t think you want to do the headshot right now? Maybe when you need it for a audition or something.”

She half smiled, fingering the edge of the portfolio. Thinking about what-ifs.

“Maybe. Maybe you can just take my picture sometime.”

I nod.

“I…”

“What?”

“I actually need some pictures. I need some pictures of… tattoos.”

“Tattoos?”

“Yeah. Like your heart. Things like that. I have been looking for some tattooed… people.”

“For what?”

“It is an art piece.”

She thought about this.

“So you might want to shoot my ink for an art piece?”

“Maybe.”

“That would be cool.”

Just then a phone rang. Her phone. We both turned to the wall.

“Is that my phone?”

I just stared.

“Thin walls, huh?” She smiled nonchalantly.

“Ok, so tattoo shoot. Cool. I’ll let you know sometime. I got to get that. We will plan something.”

“Yeah. That’ll be good…”

And she was gone. Out the door.

The darkroom, again. The still silence and the quite little sounds. The snap of a shot from the enlarger. The dripping as I lift paper out of the stopper. The hum and occasional crackle of the air purifier. These were the only sounds I needed. The dull amber light, when I can use it, makes everything warm and soft and sort of visually controllable. This was my womb and I could control it all.

The bass line comes again. It is early this time. It is the same song. Long deep bass. The chemicals ripple.

I don’t have to listen. I am working. I don’t have to imagine.

How she got naked, I’m still not really sure.

Sometimes when you work in a field you don’t stop to realize the idiosyncrasies of your occupation. You don’t realize you are using jargon. You don’t see how mechanical everything you do would look to an outsider.

Take a model for example. Normally I work with professional models. This is not to say that I work with the beautiful waif thin people you see on magazines, but I work with the wide array of part time actors or what have you that do catalog modeling and the sort. These are people with agent and agendas and people who have been indoctrinated into the idiosyncratic routine.

The air of distance, the awareness of the fact that we are doing a job, the vigilant psychological sterilization of it all is impressive. It’s too bad we train ourselves never to notice.

When Mona walked in I realized it all. I realized it because it was all gone.

She was dressed in what she was always dressed in. A ribbed white tank top, a red and black bra showing from under it. Faded blue jeans, a black belt and chunky black shoes.

I had met her in the hall again, my mind occupied with a thousand other things. I saw her in the hallway bending over in front of my door slipping a note under it. I dropped my lens bag. Luckily modern padding saved them. She looked surprised. She pulled the note back out.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Is that for me?”

“Just a note.”

“What does it say?”

She looked somewhat shy. She didn’t look like herself. She looked sad. Her eyes were more gray then blue. Her lips were pinker then I remembered.

“Just that I wanted to get some pictures done, if you still didn’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

“And you could take the tattoo pictures. I’d like that. I mean, being in an art project.”

I cradled my bag. I couldn’t look directly at her. My eyes kept going to her pink lips and her blue eyes and her red bra.

“Art piece.”

“What?” Her eyebrows furled.

“Art piece. An art project is something you would do for school.”

“I thought that is what you meant, something for school.”

“No, I finished school.”

“Then what is it for?”

“It’s just… art. It’s for me.” I quickly corrected myself, “It is art. It is for a gallery or something. I am trying to put together something to show at a gallery one day.”

“A gallery?”

“Yeah.”

“One of those things in SoHo where people walk around in a big room with white walls and sip white wine and look at weird pretentious paintings?”

“Something like that.”

“But I need some pictures too.”

“Right. For acting.”

“No, for my… boyfriend.”

Silence. Slight pain in my eye, shooting into my head. Autopilot comes on.

“It doesn’t matter what you want them for. I’ll take some pictures for you and you can have them. I’ll keep some of your tattoos.”

“Now?”

“What?”

“Can you do it now?”

For her boyfriend? The one who comes on those wicked Wednesdays? Now? I have a million things to do. I have to get to sleep. I have to be up at five in the morning. I have to take pictures of fruit tomorrow.

“Yes.”

Eyes bright she grabs my arms and smiles at me.

“I’ll be over in 15 minutes.”

Then I am in the hallway alone.

The entire idea of doing something for arts sake was foreign to me. I tried to remember fashion pieces I had done. I tried to remember art school. I tried to think edgy, wild, new.

All I could think of is her. I couldn’t jeopardize this chance. I had to just shoot. I had to just get as much of her as I possibly could on film.

I pushed my futon out of the way. I took sheets from the closet and laid them out over the hardwood floor. White wall and now white floor. I set up lights and filters over them. I wanted clean clean images of her. I wanted to eliminate all shadows. I wanted to see every line of every tattoo. I wanted perfection.

I took out the big guns. The Lieca, the Hasselblad. I stared at the bag of Black and White and the Color. That was the choice. I knew I should do Black and White, but the idea of capturing those pinks was too much.

Half and half. Color with the medium format black and white with the 35 mm. Maybe the other way around.

Then she was knocking on the door.

She brought a bag full of wrinkled clothes. She brought a makeup bag. I took them from her and without speaking pulled her over to the sheet on the floor.

She just stood there, self-conscious, acutely aware of all the things we train ourselves to ignore in this business. Looking at the lights and flinching. Looking at the sheet and frowning.

I had the big Hasselblad on a tripod and I started metering light and moving the lights. She watched with curiosity.

Fear and nervousness were gone once I had her in my crosshairs.

The first shot was of her wrists, together. Two stars in thick black. Black and white. Her veins exposed, her fists clenched. Chipped paint on her nails.

“I have the same stars on my ankles.”

We both looked down at her jeans and shoes.

“Maybe I should change.”

I nodded.

I did what I always do when a model has to change; I turned around and fiddled with my equipment.

She takes the cue, though it takes a few minutes. I think she was waiting for me to show her to the bathroom. She coughed a little when ready. I turned around to see her in an almost transparent old wife beater and a pair of what looked like men’s boxers. The top of her bra peaks out. It is red satin lined in black lace.

“Better?”

If I just nod I will not say something stupid.

The next shot is of the heart on her chest, framed by the cotton top of she shift and under that the silhouette black lace of her bra.

She looks down, following my lens. Letting out a little sigh of contemplation, she pulls off her shirt.

With a snap I have her heart, the red and black of the ink the red and black of her lace and satin and the pale perfection of her skin.

As I shoot her, she grows more and more comfortable with me. I grow passive; I melt into the camera and the background. She is in the spotlight as she looks around my home, naked feet treading off the sheet onto the blond wood floor.

I wait, poised to capture another pose.

She goes to my bookshelf and touches a few spines. She looks out my little window.

A shot of her profile against the light of the window. I adjust the shutter speed now that we are away from the big light. I feel the weight of film in my pocket. Everything is perfect. She is mine.

She is facing away from me when she reaches back and unsnaps her bra.

I drop the camera. The thick weight hits my chest as the strap tugs at my neck.

I pick up the big Hasselblad. I zoom in and I catch the red lines that cut into her back and shoulders from the bra. She turns and I am zoomed into a world of thick pink nipples. One is pierced by a single silver ring.

She closed in on me. I had to move back and zoom out. Then I was against the wall. The wall. The wall that she fucks against.

She stops on the sheet again. She turns, then turns her head so that her eyes and back are both facing me.

On her back are two huge tattoos, thick and black. They are the f-stops you would find on a masterpiece cello. The classic curve of them makes her seem more… refined.

One shot of her back. Thick black against soft white.

She bent forward, slipping thumbs under the boxers. Pulling them down down until they puddle around her star marked ankles.

A shot. The bookshelves blurry in the distance. Red satin and black lace boycut panties. Her head ad torso invisible as she bends over. Only the curve of her ass and her legs crossed at the ankles.

Then the panties joined her boxers. Then she gathered up the sheet and it dragged and followed her to the bed.

Laying in my little futon, wrapped up in my blanket.

The pictures clicked away. Change cameras, change film, move the lights.

Her face is flushed now. Mine should be, but I am cold. My hands, my feet, my face, all ice. My blood flowed only into my camera.

She sat up facing me, knees up, looking at me. The pink of her sex visible. Bubblegum pink.

“Do you have enough?”

Her voice was husky. Her breath was short.

I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t answer. I shook my head. No. Not enough.

She looked down. She contemplated something. She bit her lip.

“I think it’s enough.”

Just look away. Put your camera away. Her eyes were sad.

I moved in. I snapped more. One camera at my eye and one hanging around my neck. I kneeled in front of the bed and snapped. Each time my finger pressed down on the little button, I felt that moment of resistance before it moves the shutter and I feel it in my chest and lower.

She moved back, legs falling open, sheet falling away. My camera was over the lip of the bed, between her open legs.

A shot of her eyes. Slightly drugged. Lips wet. Cheeks now bright red, like too much wine.

Her breasts, too large for her frame. Nipples pink against white. Larger then I imagined. Hard. Different then the kind I have seen on my girlfriends. Somehow, more intimate.

Her sex was shaved clean. It looks ludicrously naked. Somehow more then just nude.

She laid back and I knelt on the bed in front of her.

The shot is of the horizon of her body. The curve of her pelvis bone, the rise of her breast, she bites her lip right next to the silver ring that pierces it.

She rolled her hips, displaying every part of herself, putting on a show. Somewhere in my head I thought I could smell her sex. Her leg brushed my shoulder, I was so close and I felt the heat of her skin thorough my shirt. I backed up because it was too much and I went to get the other camera. When I turned back around she was getting up. She was getting dressed. I was trying to figure out what happened. I walked to my table and put away the film.

When I turned around and saw her pull her boots on.

“When will the prints be ready?”

I calculated. I shouldn’t seem rushed.

“A few days, I-”

She opened her eyes wide and moved in on me.

“No! I need them today, like later today, but today.”

She looked wild, angry. She grabbed my arm.

“I can’t get them today- it’s not like going to a one hour photo lab, I have to develop them and enlarge them and touch them up a little.”

She calmed. She let go. My logic was reasonable, even if it wasn’t what she wanted.

“Ok, ok. I need some by next Wednesday. I just need some… you know… some ones of my tits and stuff. For my boyfriend.”

I didn’t look at her. I just twisted the lens of my camera and nodded.

“Yeah. A couple of days. I’ll bring them over.”

She sighed.

“Just slip them under my door.”

When she was there, in my studio, I didn’t even really see her. I was so conscious of myself; my own body, my own fumbling, my own ineptness. It was only when I had her in the bath, in the enlarger, in my clean and perfect dark room that I got to see her.

She was somewhat thinner then she seemed when clothed. Her hips and breasts flared out hungrily and made her seem bigger then she was. This illusion like many of her others were lost when she was naked. After all, one can learn a lot by watching someone when they’re nude. How they look, how they carry themselves, how comfortable they are in their own skin.

Some women I’ve been with (and there have been a few, going to art school and all) had constantly seemed to be covering themselves. They never stretched and lingered like she did. They hid under the covers or under their nervous hands or between their nervous words. Not Mona. Mona was fearless when naked. Charming when unclothed. A wide smile, living innuendo, a perfect subject. I was the only one blushing and squirming when she was naked in my studio. I was the only one uncomfortable and we were both quite aware of that fact.

When dressed, she wore wild things. Layers upon layers of color or black. Dangling bracelets, big clunky boots, skirts and fishnets, shirts and vests. A collage of masks to make sure everyone knew the person she wanted to be. To constantly show people she was a rebel and a bohemian and a sexual object.

She had taken measures to take control of her nude form, too. She had spent years perfecting this work of art. The most obvious of these modifications were the two long black tattoos on her back, the curved f-holes you would find in a cello or violin. They were dark matte black and contrasted perfectly with the white of her skin.

Then there were the stars. Thick black stars, one on the back of each ankle, on each side of her chest where the collarbone met the shoulder and one on the tender flesh of on inside of each wrist. In the center of her collar bone there was a heart, deep blood red, outlined in black with a golden crown on top of it and flames all around.

I found it odd that her ears were not pierced at all, but she did have a silver barbell through the tender pink of her left nipple. The piercing which most interested me was the silver ring through her lip. Off center with a small silver ball.

I don’t know why, but I always cringed a little when I looked at that last piercing. Maybe because her lips were so very full and that metal cut so very deep. I can bite my lip and imagine the pinprick of the needle, the taste of copper, the sting. I don’t know why, but it drives me wild. It makes me want to suck on her bottom lip and do wild things to her lush body. Things I would never really do. Things that hover in my head like forbidden delicacies. That was what she was after all, a delicacy. A jeweled, glistening sinful treasure, with candied pink nipples and sugared lips and she bled wine and came honey.

How far I had come in my quest to capture her? You can’t even imagine what it took for me to get her here, to take these pictures. What kind of courage I had to muster.

But, could I be sated with pictures? Was it possible to be satisfied with her exposed across my livingroom? It’s how I quenched most of my desires. Sublimation through chemistry. Little pills, occasional shots, fixer and stopper and alcohol.

But she was twenty times mine across the expanse of the studio and I had to be content.

Until the noise started again. The noise started again through the wall, and I knew I had to have her.

That same Pavlovian pain. All at once, desire and guilt and shame. Always shame. The parasite that clings to everything that eats away at every other emotion.

Do you know what madness is? Don’t they say a sign of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different reaction? I remembered that every time I put my hands on the wall. I did it hoping I would appear on the other side. I listened hoping I would become the one. The one who made her bed clank and bang. The one who made her breath catch and her moans drift across the world like some fabulously exquisite songbird. Palms to the cool white paint. Ear pressed against the thin barrier, like a pervert. And I was most certainly a pervert.

Madness was listening to her fuck through the wall, unable to stop it or start it or touch it or even see it. Unable to stop myself from listening, from wanting, from imaging.

How did I get there? How did I get to that point? How did I become that person?

On Friday I was going out of town for a shoot in Miami. Sun and lights and all the things I wouldn’t enjoy. I stayed up for 38 hours straight making two sets of the shots I picked from the contact sheets I’d mulled over for far too long.

Before I left I knocked on the door. Nothing. I traced the flaking paint around the molding.

I promised myself that next week I would go out on Wednesday. My heart felt tight. My eyes burned a little. I felt like a fool.

I slipped the envelope under the door. Only 12 shots. What she wanted; the most explicit of the shoot.

I thought of knocking again, but I heard the horn of my cab. I gathered my suitcases and said goodbye to Mona Mansfield.

On Monday I returned to find three older Polish men with thick hairy arms moving ladders and buckets into the apartment next to mine.

The apartment, Mona’s apartment, was empty. White walls like mine, though dingier and less maintained. Scraps of paper on the floor and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Through the crooked doorway beyond I saw a naked mattress. I wondered if that was her darkroom.

“You know her?” one of the men asked.

I shook my head.

“She no pay rent, four month. She leave in the middle of the night. You know where she is you tell her I sue her ass.”

I nodded.

The building had a roof. Not much, just a wooden deck with a couple of chairs. On one side there was the building next door, which was three stories taller. On the other side there was a chain link fence with barbed wire separating our roof from the building next door. To the North was the dark of Harlem. To the South were the lights of the city, which swallowed the stars and made constellations of their own.

It was far enough uptown that the buildings were mostly low and mostly poor. You could see clotheslines out windows just like the old pictures and the skeletal remains of antennas poking from between water towers and the occasional garden. You could see the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings in the distance. You could smell the river. You could smell Autumn; wet leaves and cool air. You could smell chemicals on my hands and clothes.

I burned the pictures up there because I had to. They would become the new Wednesday night voyeurism. It would all keep haunting me. I burned the prints and the negatives in a bucket and the silver smoke curled up into the sky.

It took all the strength I had to do it and frankly I shocked myself when I struck the match. The minute they were gone I felt better.

That Wednesday I went out on the town.

END

I supposed it had been months before that the idea had taken root in my head. My college Watson had made some offhanded remark about his upcoming nuptials and how I would most certainly not be needing a “plus one” on my invitation. He had often noted my lack of romantic partners during our friendship. For a brilliant man, the dear doctor could be quiet daft.

Piecing together Watson’s various comments over our history, I started to see that there was an interesting theory in his mind about me. He was almost certainly under the impression that, either through my admittedly obsessive work ethic and insatiable curiosity about both the psychologically disturbing and the physically macabre, I had almost no understanding of sexuality. It may have even gone to the point where he believed that I was a virgin!

In deed it was a fact that in love, there were few people in my life whom I let strike those chords in my heartstrings. Fewer still were those who were ever made aware of my affections, if I did have them. My work, of course, came first. The matters of the heart often cause nothing but pain, as I’ve certainly experienced, and nothing will put lives in jeopardy and waste more time than ninny poems and moon-eyed longing.

Still there were times I have let myself slip into that heady world. The Elysian Fields of desire and romance were not unknown to me, nor the darkness of failed love. But we are not talking about love, dear reader, we are talking about sex.

The body has undeniable needs. Through meditation, the ingestion of herbs and rigorous mental acrobatics one can stave off the needs of the flesh for a time, surely, but as I attempt to thwart the even more nefarious temptation of a certain powdered extract of a member of the Erythroxylaceae family I have few diversions other than the violin and witnessing the inept failings of Scotland Yard to entertain my baser hungers.

And, to be frank, few things involve all my senses the way sexual congress does. Be it man or woman or any of the motley combinations I’ve found myself invited into, the number of reactions to account for; eyes dilating, tumescence, various wetnesses and swelling, the bevy of meaning in wordless moans and half held back whispers are too delectable for me not to catalog in my mind. Never is man more interesting than in that moment of ejaculatory inevitability. Never is the wonder of the female form more desperate and beautiful than when the sex blush blossoms between her breasts and those secret contractions reveal the priceless machinations of her enigmatic orgasm.

But I digress; let us get back to the tart.

Watson had, in his time, walked in on all variety of experiment and research in our abode. Often I was well aware of his schedule and set in motion things that would bring him into the cross fire of my tests for either comic relief or to push his curiosities into pace for my desired motivation in a case. As I said, a brilliant man who is at times daft.

On one Sunday I brought the tart, whose name was unironically Lily, though she held none of the pristine and innocent whiteness often metaphorically associated with said flower, into my chambers an hour before the dear doctor was bound to return.

I questioned her, as I often do, about the gossip and words on the street. Keeping abreast of the underbelly of these London streets. I seduced the sweet girl and in turn let her warm lips and plunging neck line carry the worries of my current case load away for a time.

I let her know in advance some of my plans, but not all. And even, though she almost refused, promised her a few pounds sterling to carry out my plan. Usually our affair was out of the clutches of her somewhat frowned upon profession and at times we played a game where she would even gift me with a tip of a few shillings for my heated ministrations.

After tasting the sweet lips of the temptress I involved myself in some of the more complicated ropework of the orient I had learned during my time with the Nipponese mystic Hiryuu. Intricate coils and webs of thin hemp line opened the girl’s legs to my full attention and made sure no impatient fingers got in my way. As well I bound her chest tightly so that her lush maidenly mounds were thrust out and nearly purple with pressure.

These secret sciences of bondage were perfected to not only secure the body of the subject, but to heighten blood-flow to more delicate regions and render them even more susceptible to the lurid acts I was inclined to participate in.

Having her very much at my mercy and having a bit of time to spare before my dear Watson was assuredly to barge in I procured a bowl of hot and soapy water and went about shaving the girl’s most lovely nether regions. This was a particular of mine as well as a wonderful safeguard from the various pestilences that can be found in the crotches of urchins and whores.

As I made sure the trollop shorn and tidy she was at once hypnotized by the ropes that held her and enraptured by my stimulation of her most tender bits. I made sure to be generous in my petting and rubbing as the blade made her as smooth as in birth.

Watson, as sharp as the pocket watch he wound every morning, barged in just as I washed her off and went to work making sure my shave was precise with the aid of my tongue.

“Good lord man!” was the familiar salutation of the doctor.

“Excellent,” I said, not even turning around.

“I’m completely fascinated by this one, Watson. As a doctor I wonder if you can find reference to the phenomena this young girl experiences. It will only take a moment.”

I said this all without comment on the absurdity of my best friend crimson faced and trying to form words as I manually stimulated a completely nude and thoroughly bound nineteen year old street walker who was perhaps the most attractive women either of us had seen to date.

“Holmes… you… she’s…”

“Yes, yes, she’s remarkable, isn’t she? Look at the blush pattern as she gets more aroused. Around the neck, down into a long ‘v’ between her breasts. Almost to her navel! Fascinating.”

“Holmes!”

“Yes, Watson, I assure you, I can hear you. Now look at the labia majora and how they have swelled. I wish you were here an hour ago and saw their flaccid state. I assure you, they’ve almost doubled in size! As well her nipples are fully erect and even her aureola have started to swell.”

The doctor was so flummoxed he sat down in a chair, eyes locked on the beauty and proceeded to drop his hat and cane, mute with confusion.

Lily, on the other hand, was making quiet a racket.

“Oh god! Oh dear Mary and Jesus above!” she cried.

“Yes, yes, let’s save the hymns for church, right now there is a trick we have to show my dear friend.”

I maneuvered two digits into her vaginal opening and, palm up, began stimulating the upper wall of the vaginal barrel, hunting for a ridged area I had noted a few weeks back as well as a small protuberance therein.

I explained the details of this to Watson, who was still trying to form words to express his shock, but was visibly both aroused and curious from a medical standing.

“As well as the manual stimulation, the subject is also obviously aroused by being held down. See her muscles tensing under the rope and how her eyes roll back when she is reminded again at her predicament. As well, her humiliation at being shown off to an audience, to a man she doesn’t even know is affecting her. Even as a well practiced street walker she is still overcome by the perceived dirtiness of this act.”

I then faced the girl and as I continued manipulating her genitals I grabbed her face to make her look at me.

“You’re ashamed of how aroused you are, aren’t you? At how your hips are trying to push against me as you writhe around a naked little whore in front of my well dressed companion. Aren’t you?”

Her green eyes opened wide and watered a little as she tried to shake her head in the negative.

“Holmes, please, the poor girl-” but I cut him off.

“Watson, save your chivalry. What I am doing has been agreed upon and I assure you it is consequential as well as much enjoyed. Lily here has proclivities I have explored and documented over the past few months and although her libido is high and her experiences varied, the apex of her desires can only be reached by these more elaborate and violent encounters. Only by the aggressive penetration with four fingers pressing hard against the base of her cervix combined with verbal debasement and humiliation will the desired effect I wished you to notice be achieved.”

At that point the girl started screaming, moaning, thrashing about as much as she could in her bonds.

“Holmes! You’re killing her!” he said attempting to stop my now fervently pistoning hand.

I pushed him away easily, filled with the adrenaline rush of amorous power and held him by the collar with one hand while fitting my other hand fully into the girl’s body.

With that, the awaited response began. Watson and I watched as the girl’s body tensed violently and two, then three arcs of clear fluid shot from her vulva as she screamed with pleasure.

I continued for some time, until she begged me to stop, speaking nearly in tongues.

When I finished I went about untying the girl as Watson once again sank into his chair.

“What a fool I’ve been,” he whispered.

I smiled, washing my hands in a basin as the girl, still shaking, curled around my feel like a deliciously pink cat. Her mind unable to think as a human as her body was still possessed by the orgasms I had invoked.

I smiled at the new blush that went over my old friend.

“What? With all of my knowledge you really though I had ignored one of the most driving forces in people’s minds? Do you really think I would be unaware or inexperienced with one of the most important desires of myself and all those around me?”

Watson’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly.

I laughed, still high on my activities with Lily and aroused by the sway I now held over my friend. I helped Lily up and sat her on a chair, then held my hand out to Watson.

“Come on, Old Hen, I have another experiment you may be interested in, as a doctor,” I pulled him up and led him to my table.

“You see, in exploring Lily’s particular ability I found most men have a somewhat similar spot that one can manipulate to most interesting ends.”

Watson let out half a laugh before realizing I was serious.

“Surely you-”

“Come now Watson, surely you wouldn’t hamper such important work,” I said, procuring a glove from my cabinat.

Lily sat, still nude and blushing, with rapt attention as I pushed my partner around and roughly pulled at his belt.

“Just relax Watson, I’ll show you exactly how much I know about these things.”

And with that, Watson learned exactly what my considerable experience could do.

Fin.

It was three stories of beautiful red brick, with large bay windows, and ornate wrought iron fences out front. She lived on the second floor, above a lovely older lesbian couple, with their two dogs and their fancy dinner parties. Upstairs there was a nice, if a bit mysterious, business man in his thirties named Henry.

The one thing she did know about the man upstairs is that he certainly had a lot of lady friends. There was nothing wrong with that, Caitlin supposed, but she didn’t really understand it. He was fairly good looking, but nothing special. Plus, what kind of woman would go out with someone so promiscuous? It seemed like he had a new one every week.

She wondered if those women had any self respect at all. It’s not that Caitlin was a prude or anything, but she had left her days of meaningless fondling and exploration back in Iowa. She’d come to the city for work and hopefully one day for love. She promised herself she wouldn’t give herself to a man until she found one that she was truly in love with.

Most days after work she’d shop for fresh things for dinner. She’d buy flowers for her small kitchen table. She’d sit in the little nook in front of her huge window and read; breathing in the fresh air and thanking god she was out of the small town she grew up in.

Sometime Lena and Margot, the women downstairs, would invite her over for dinner. They always made something new and unusual like Indian curry or Moroccan rice. Plus they were vegetarians! Caitlin wasn’t very adventurous with food, but she always made a point of giving their concoctions a try. Though honestly more then once she’d poured a bit of it into a napkin and fed it to their labrador retrievers.

One night about six months after she’d moved in there was a big storm that hit the East coast. Lena and Margot had gone out west to stay with some friends and couldn’t get home because all of the airports were closed. Caitlin was looking after the dogs and when the storm hit she was worried. After a few hours of listening to the wind howl, the power went out, which was her worst fear.

She considered going out into the windy streets and trying to find a store that was still open. She needed candles or a flashlight and other provisions. She wasn’t sure she could find a store since it was already dark out and there were no street lights.

Just as she was starting to really get worried, she heard the front door of the brownstone open. Rushing to the door she opened it to find Henry in the hallway picking up his mail.

“Oh, Henry! I’m glad you’re home. The power is out. Do you think you might have an extra flashlight or something?”

Henry, as always, sort of looked her over. It made her a little uncomfortable, but he wasn’t really being crude. He just took his time talking. He seemed to pay attention to everything. It made her feel very self conscious.

“Sure, don’t worry about it. I have candles, flashlights, all kinds of stuff. Why don’t you come up and you can pack a box of anything you think you’ll need.”

She smiled thankfully and closed the door behind her and followed the strangely imposing man up the stairs to the third floor.

Henry’s apartment was set up very differently than hers, with beautiful art on the walls, an elaborate kitchen filled with stainless steel appliances and German minimalist design. It all looked like something out of a catalog or a movie set.

Henry pulled off his leather gloves and hung up his jacket.

“I have some candles and flashlights in this closet. There’s plenty of bottled of water in the pantry. Canned food and so on as well. I don’t think the blackout will last to long. Feel free to take what ever you need,” he said showing her the pantry and the utility closet as he spoke.

Caitlin stood near the door and watched as he gave her a little tour. She knew he was probably a nice person, but there was something a little too aggressive about the way he walked around. There was something strange in his eyes when he passed over her, like he was smirking or something; maybe like he was making fun of her. It made her feel very much like a stupid small town girl.

“Are you alright? Sorry, I know the storm is a rough one. Do they have weather like this back in Iowa?” he ask, sitting on his leather couch and folding his hands in his lap.

She walked into the living room, convincing herself he was a normal guy and that she was being both rude and paranoid.

“Oh, in Iowa? They have all kinds of weather I suppose; even tornados.”

He nodded, but she noticed he was staring at her intently. Specifically at her body, sort of evaluating her.

Caitlin was fit. She’d gained a little weight in college, though she’d been told that she wore it well since it was mostly in her butt and hips and breasts. She was medium height, pretty dark brown hair, pale skin and the thing most people commented on were her huge and vividly blue eyes. They made her look like a cartoon character sometimes.

Normally she was proud of her figure, but his eyes made her embarrassed. She realize how thin her pink t-shirt was and that the white bra under it was probably visible. She realized that her shorts were probably too short. They were the shorts she wore inside when it was warm. She wouldn’t go out wearing them. Plus the t-shirt was very low cut. She probably looked like a tramp. A messy tramp with frizzy and out of control hair.

She was so wrapped up in embarrassment that she didn’t notice at first, but Henry was sitting on the couch watching her and laughing.

“What- what’s so funny?” she ask meekly.

He let out one last chuckle and waved away her question. “Nothing, nothing, just remembering a joke I heard the other day. Why don’t you have a seat? I can heat up some dinner. A friend of mine was over the other night and made a huge pot of seafood risotto. There is enough for about a week’s worth of meals.”

She didn’t sit down, she just looked at her feet as he stood up and looked her over again.

“No, no thank you. I don’t really eat seafood. I should get back to the dogs. Have you met them? Tippi and Topper?”

He laughed again and she felt like an idiot. She didn’t know why he made her feel that way. There was just something about his smug smile and his expensive glasses and his suit.

“I don’t talk to the girls downstairs much. I get the feeling they don’t like me,” he said with a laugh.

She swallowed and looked back at the door.

“Oh? That’s too bad. They’re super nice. I- oh- if you don’t talk to them how did you know I’m from Iowa?” she asked before she could stop herself. She was suddenly very nervous. She felt cold, but she couldn’t quiet gather the strength to turn around and leave.

“Iowa? Hah. You’re smarter than you look, hm? You caught me,” he said laughing again and then reaching into his pocket and taking something out.

A small silver box. He flicked his fingers and a flame came out. She sighed; it was only a lighter. She then watched as he lit candles on the table in front of him.

“Iowa, Iowa, Iowa. You think about it a lot. All those people going nowhere. All those boys and their cheap beer and bad intentions,” he said walking around lighting candles and getting out wine glasses.

“Yes, I suppose. That doesn’t answer how you know about it,” she was trying to put on a brave voice, but she was getting more and more anxious. Fear was spilling into her veins.

“I know lots of things, Caitlin. You wanna test me? I know secrets. That’s what I do. I collect them like your father collected stamps.”

She’d never talked to Lena and Margot about her father. She’d hardly told anyone in New York about him, let alone his stupid stamps. Her heart was pounding. She wanted to run out. Run away. Even the storm would be safer than Henry. He was a stalker or some kind of psycho or something.

“You’re two letters off, sweetheart,” he said absently as he uncorked a bottle of red wine.

“What? What are you talking about. How do you know these things?” she wanted to scream but the fear made her freeze up, her throat contracted and it all came out just above a whisper.

He sighed deeply and shook his head.

“Look, Caitlin, this really isn’t half as interesting as I imagined, so we’re going to skip the small talk and just get to the tits, okay? Okay.”

She was mad now. He was just some kind of sicko. She was going to call the police. She was going to have him evicted. Right after she took of her shirt she was going to get her phone and call the police. She was shaking with hate for him; hate with fear all wrapped up with it. It made her fumble with her shirt and made it so she could hardly open the latches of her bra.

“Well, well, hello Caitlin. It’s funny how some people aren’t that much to look at until their half naked. That farm living really did you right,” he said sipping wine and then putting down his glass and walking over to her.

She was sickened by him. With her shirt off his leering was a hundred times more horrible. She just wanted to leave.

“D cup? 36D? Has to be. They’re gravity defying. Let’s lose the rest of the clothes and see what going on downstairs,” he said standing a few feet in front of her and folding his arms patiently.

She shook her head. Some nerve of him. So what if he was right about her bra size. She almost threw her sneakers at him as she pulled them off. It would serve him right. She knew he wasn’t even dangerous, just some kind of computer hacker or something who found out about her. Once she got the rest of her clothes off she was going down stairs and calling her brother. He worked for a computer company and could figure this all out.

“The bush. I knew it was coming and there it is. What is this, 1972? Seriously kiddo, you’re in the big city now. It’s gotta go.”

The nerve of him! She was standing their naked, flawless skin, large almost comically pert breasts, a thinnish waist with thick thighs and a round ass.

“Everything that’s right about the midwest,” he shook his head in approval.

He walked over to her and traced a finger across her stomach. Her skin was smooth, hot and tight.

“Damn, if you weren’t such a little pill, you’d be perfect,” he sighed, cupping one of her breasts.

She was so annoyed. She should leave. Who knew what he would do next?

“Just because I don’t put out for ever guy-” but she stopped suddenly, unable to get another word out.

“Shh. That’s enough, kitten. It’s time for old Caitlin to go bye bye,” he said with irritation.

“But I do like all that confusion in your head. What makes you charming is how clueless you are. So let’s see what we can do. First, let’s put a little desire in that rusty libido,” and with that he looked into her eyes and put a finger in-between her breasts and tensed his jaw.

She was looking at him with distain and then suddenly her body shuddered.

The first wave of desire flooded her mind and body at the same time and her knees almost buckled. The second wave was followed by the realization that she wanted to fuck this strange man in front of her. His finger was still there between her breasts and she thought about shifting her body so that it was on her breasts. Maybe a little, just so it was nearer to her nipple.

His smile was ear to ear.

“Want something, Caity?”

She grimaced. “No, you- weirdo! I should go. You’re- weird,” she said, unsure of what to do.

Suddenly she turned around, surprised that she could suddenly move she almost tripped over her feet. She walked towards the door, then remembered she’d taken off her clothes. Why had she done that? This guy was just really charming or something. She was so mad at herself she almost forgot to be ashamed.

“You’re leaving, sweets? Are you sure you don’t want some wine?”

“Fuck your wine!” she shouted, then she covered her mouth. It wasn’t like her to cuss. It wasn’t like her to shout either. She was all worked up though. Mad and still a little scared and all confused. She realized she was nervous too.

“Horny too, right?” he said under his breath.

She glared at him. How dare he? She wasn’t horny. That’s gross. She was, well, now that she thought about it she was kind of wet. The embarrassment crept over her face in red splotches. Her knees turned in as she wondered if he could tell how wet she was. She hadn’t felt like this since prom night when Danny Johnson brought her an orchid and they snuck back behind the old man Miller’s grain silo.

“A grain silo? What the fuck kind of life is that?” Henry shook his head.

“I have to go get some equipment. Listen, you are boring. That’s not what happened during prom. Stand there and remember it again. You went with Danny what’s-his-face, but you ended up dancing the last dance with Eloise Pickmen. That night you gave in to the feelings you’d been suppressing all through high school and blah, blah, blah, she went down on you in the bathroom. It was magical, but then a teacher walked in and caught you. The gym teacher, Mister Jacobs, who happened to look just like me. He made you both blow him and then he fucked Eloise doggy style while you laid under her licking her clit and then he came in your mouth. Right, dwell on that while I take a leak.”

Caitlin’s already huge eyes turned into saucers. How could she forget? Beautiful sweet Elouise! The mousy girl who blossomed into a little Betty Paige sophomore year. She remembered all the whispers when Elouise asked her to dance after Danny got drunk and went to throw up behind the bleachers. She remembered slow dancing with a girl for the first time and the foreign yet magical feel of their breasts pressing together. The heat of being pushed into a stall. The rush of Eloise’s fingers pulling down her panties. The sound of crinoline and their moans.

And then the horrible shock of the door bursting open! And Mr Jacobs! He DID look like Henry, now that she thought about it. And he did terrible things. Caitlin remembered watching Eloise suck on his cock. How scared she looked at first and then how she started to get into it. How in no time Elouise was sucking it like she wanted nothing else in the world. Caitlin remember how confused she was and how scared and turned on she got and even jealous. Then it was her turn and Caitlin-

“Okay, enough memory lane. You know what the next memory is? That bush. It’s bye-bye,” Henry said with his smug smile back on.

“Let’s make this easier on both of us, Caitlin. Listen, your pubic hair, you know that it’s the thing stopping you from fully enjoying sex. I’m going to go eat dinner and you’re going to go into my bathroom and run a bath and shave every hair below your navel off. While you’re doing that you are going to get hornier and hornier. You’re going to realize how horny you’re getting and how unusual it is. Then, you’re going to come out here and try and convince me to fuck you. After your bath you will realize that you really need to be fucked by me, because there is a hurricane and a blackout and no one else to fuck you and tonight you really need to get fucked. It’s the most important thing in the world tonight.”

As he spoke Caitlin’s eyes glazed over. She stood still and silent and the words went right from his lips to her head. When he finished she looked like she was going to cry. There was a deep new need in her eyes. Like she was looking for water in a desert.

“Can I use your bathtub?” she said with a whine in her voice for the first time.

“My bathtub? Seriously? That’s a little forward isn’t it?” he asked, with his mocking laugh coming back.

She sighed and pouted and stomped her foot. “Pleeease, Henry! I really need to. There are no lights on downstairs and, and, I just need to!”

She was shifting from on foot to the other like she was a little kid waiting to go to the bathroom.

Henry was thoroughly entertained.

“Okay, fine, but, you have to give me a kiss first,” he said pointing at his lips.

She pouted even more. He loved this look on her. She was trying to be so mature before and now she was a petulant college girl.

“I’m not going to kiss you! I don’t even know you!”

He waved her whining away.

“How old are you, Caitlin?”

She glared at him. “Twenty-two, why?”

“How old?”

She shook her head and folded her arms over her breasts. “I told you! I’m eighteen! God! Can’t you even hear?”

He laughed at his brilliance. “Priceless. Okay, you’re eighteen and you need to use my bathtub and so you’re going to kiss me.”

She winced huffed and stomped her feet. Thought she was still the same person, here whole body language changed. Her shoulders slumped a little and her bottom lip stuck out. “Jeeeze, do I have to?”

He looked at her expectantly. She looked down at the floor and then looked up at him over her big lashes. “I… I never really kissed somebody really.”

He rolled his eyes and walked up to her. He lifted up her chin and looked into those big blue eyes. She swallowed as he moved in and when he felt her soft lips tremble a little as he kissed her he let out a little groan. She was delicious. A timid little thing with a ridiculous body and something charming he couldn’t explain.

He kissed her deeply and she swooned into the kiss. He gave it his all and slipped his arms around her. She melted into him.

When they parted her eyes were still closed. She was panting a little.

“Gee wiz, mister, you’re a good kisser,” she mumbled.

He shook his head but was smiling wide and his lips tingled. “Go bathe, hayseed.”

The other night he’d picked up Leslie at a new Italian place in midtown. She was the sous chef and she had a way with seafood. Even heated up the risotto was some of the best he’d ever had.

As he ate he flipped through the little catalog in his head. All hose secrets, all those memories. Debutantes, doctors, entertainment lawyers, estheticians. Stabbing a piece of lobster and savoring it, Henry summoned up all the technical know-how of an esthetician he dated a while back. He looked to the bathroom and saw in his mind’s eye the pretty girl filling up the bathtub and shot the information into her head.

While he ate he rummaged through her head, picking out little monumental life events an shifting them. He inserted bits from novels; a little Dickens here and there, Jane Eyre, a big swath of Lolita, some Penthouse forum. He left all the small town guilt, he just gave her desires she could really feel guilty about. For a finishing touch he added some daddy issues, an oral fixation and a dash of masochism. Then he finished his dinner.

He looked in on her a few times and she seemed to be getting along well. He cleaned up, went downstairs and fed the dogs, switched the main breaker in the basement so the power went back on, checked on the girls in the chamber under the stairs.

When he got back she was wrapped up in a towel, her face red and here eyes wide an hungry. Her hands were nervously clenching and unclenching the edge of the towel. She was biting her lip.

“Listen, um, mister. Do you like me? Do you, um, think I’m pretty?”

He’d almost forgotten he turned her eighteen in her head. Looking at her recent memories he saw her in the tub, contemplating her pubic hair and realizing how it was the symbol of her prudish nature. Her luxurious shaving of her legs and every inch of her most intimate places.

“You’re very pretty. Why do you ask?” he said, toying with her towel and backing her up into a wall.

She was filled with want, her skin bright pink for the hot tub and all the desires bubbling inside of her. Still there was all that guilt, all that

“I just, I don’t know, I mean, maybe you wanna kiss me some more?” she was shifting her weight from one foot to another again and biting her lip.

“Absolutely charming,” he marveled.

He kissed her again and she nearly pounced on him. The towel fell away and she nervously looked into his eyes with a look of pleading. In her head she was begging, “please like me, please think I’m pretty, please- touch me.”

She couldn’t ask him to fuck her, not even in her head.

He cupped her breasts and groaned at the delicate weight of them, the softness and the firmness of her skin. She whimpered as he explored her, his hand slipping down her side, around to her soft bottom, all the while he kissed her almost becoming dizzy with her hungry kisses.

All this time, all of these adventures and the hungry kisses of a woman still got to him. He relished that. He hoped he would never lose his ability to be transfixed by the simple things.

When his hand finally reached the now bare cleft between her legs his knees almost gave. There were few things he loved more than a neatly and freshly shaved pussy. He kneeled down in front of her and kissed all around, rubbing his cheeks on the smooth and soap scented skin. He let the very tip of his tongue slip between her somewhat chubby and swollen lips and found her ludicrously wet.

“Jeez mister, that’s nice,” her mouth said, but her mind was nothing but “please!”

Standing, straightening his tie, Henry walked to the bedroom, opening the door and leaving it open for her. She stood there, naked, her desire to cover herself up fighting with her desire for sex.

As he watched her he leafed through her mind. Safe sex, doctor’s tests, all the details. He watched as she come to him, inching, fighting years of telling herself she was a good girl. He was undressed by the time she got there.

She stood at the doorway, leaning, letting her hair fall over her shoulder.

“Mister, can I come in here- with you?”

He nodded. He left her mind alone and watched her come to him, cat-like, crawl onto the bed panting from need. She crawled over his body, her breasts slipping along his chest. She kissed him, seduced him with her mouth, moaning into his lips.

“Turn around,” he whispered.

She was confused so he just made her do what he wanted. She carefully turned around, still on all frogs on top of him, but now facing his hard cock. She lowered her self, so that her sex was just above his face and he growled as he kissed and sucked on her bare pussy. He relished in it, the taste, the feel on his tongue, the way it made her squirm. His senses were full of her legs on the sides of his head, her wetness in his mouth and his hands on her ass and then, pushing everything to the next level, her hot mouth on his cock.

Looking into her he felt his own fingers inside of her, he figured her out, like a puzzle, testing different kinds of pressure and sensation until he felt her body react. He rode her pleasure as he felt his own, his body and mind writhing.

When he pushed her off of him, his mouth and cock both wet, she looked into his eyes with a wholly different gaze. She was wanton now. They both kneeled on the bed and kissed furiously. His fingers were in her hair and she she gasped when he pulled it hard and forced her down on her belly.

She laughed as she wrestled with him, her arms tangled in the bed sheets, her body pressed down by his. His cock pressed against the softness of her ass, then as she struggled it slipped between her legs, finally as if pulled by a magnet, it found her count.

He fucked her hard and fast. It had been years since she’d had sex and when she did it was certainly nothing like this. He drove into her at the perfect angle, She felt full, finally getting exactly what she had wanted, what she needed.

The world was nothing but his cock and his hand in her hair and his mouth on her neck.

“Push back against me,” he groaned into her ear and she did.

She pushed her ass back and felt him penetrate her harder. She got the rhythm and they were pounding against each other, the bed rocking, the sheets and pillows thrown about, a lamp falling from the bedside table.

When she started to come he put his hand in her hair again and as his fingers grazed her scalp. He experienced the full power of her orgasm inside of his own mind and his body started to climax. He then sent the sensations into her mind. She bucked and made a strangled scream of ecstasy. Her mind was nothing but waves of orgasm; his, hers, theirs, all of them together and amplified. She felt her penis shooting come into her body, the tight wetness of her own cunt from the inside and the outside.

As she writhed he pulled her hair hard and his mouth met her ear.

“You know what I did, don’t you? How I changed you and controlled your mind? You’re a weak little girl. I just want you to know before I erase all of this from your head. I just want you to see exactly what I did so that it plays back in your dreams.”

Her eyes went wider and wider. It all made sense. How could she be such an idiot? From that moment she took of her clothes without realizing it. He controlled everything. It was too much, the world went black. She passed out cold. She slept.

*

After the storm Caitlin was happy to be back in her apartment. As she looked around she saw the dinginess of her little bedroom. She looked over her checkbook and realized that as much as she liked the brownstone it was probably a little out of her league. It was certainly nice, but having a smaller place, perhaps closer to work, would be even better.

Plus there was that creepy guy upstairs, Henry. She’d never really spoken to him much, but she had a feeling he was a jerk. She’d even had a dream about him. Thinking about it she realized it was probably because he looked like her old gym teacher.

As she paced around her bedroom she suddenly felt a little wave of dirty heat come over her, remembering her prom, remembering that one crazy horrible and completely erotic escaped.

“I’m going to move,” she said to herself, deciding.

“I bet I could get Lidia, that redhead from my office to take on my lease. She said she was looking for a new place,” she thought to herself as she started browsing the real estate section of the newspaper.

The end

“Six?”

I shook my head and smiled again.

She bit her bottom lip, but under the circumstances, her demeanor actually changed very little.

Ana was a tough nut to crack. We’d met through this or that, the ways people uptown meet. She was bright, book smart, art smart, fit, and fashionable. Pretty and self conscious; a puzzle of desire and nervousness. We’d fallen into both flirting and friendship at the same time and there had been a long lull as we tried to figure out which one to pursue. In the end we picked a little from “column A” and a little from “column B.” Luckily, I’d set up my life to facilitate that sort of answer to that sort of question.

A week or so before our date, our conversation via email had turned to sex toys. I mentioned that I had reviewed them for a while and she skirted around the issue of needing some new ones. These were lovely little charged correspondences that made my days at work fly by. Passive flirtation; we weren’t talking about sex, we were talking about sex toys! As safe as talking about stereo equipment. Like so many things, there were layers of self defense and acknowledging self defense.

Eventually she decided on what to buy and it turned out that among her purchases was a remote controlled vibrator. Cliché? Perhaps. Let’s not judge. A wide variety clichés are actually tremendously hot. Romance, roses, rope, and handcuffs are all a bit clichéd but they all still work.

The flirty talk swirled and focused on said purchase and when it came time for us to go out for our monthly meet up and drink, we had both implied that said purchase might make an appearance, but honestly I was a bit dubious. Things had progressed past the point where flirtation would usually come to fruition and we hadn’t even kissed. Still I was game for a drink and a chat with a lovely friend. Anything else was gravy.

The bar was my first local haunt. I was still new to the neighborhood. She was waiting inside with her usual nervous crooked smile.

Awkward hug? Hand shake? Kiss on the cheek? We just sort of smiled at each other and sat and ordered fancy beers and sighed.

It took a while to get Ana to warm up; probably the same could’ve been said about me.

We talked and laughed and drank. There was the boy she was dating, the girl I slept with, the girl she flirted with, the girl I was dating. The whos, whats and wheres of the last few weeks. Occasional innuendo, entendre, downright crude joke.

She had that lovely combination of shy and uptight with a layer of bawdy trying to escape. Sometimes I said dirty things and watched her try to casually laugh, but there would be a slight pause, a little blush; a lovely little victory.

Too soon the cafe was closing and we had to move on. I contemplated asking her back to my place but we weren’t there yet.

The next bar was a bit more casual. Sports on televisions and laughter all around. We had another drink; her eyes started shining and her jokes got a little dirtier. My hands found excuses to brush her leg or rest on the small of her back.

When she got up to use the restroom, I took the moment to check my phone. One message, from her; strange.

“I put the remote in your jacket pocket.”

I slipped my hand in and found it, like a little car alarm remote, only with arrows up and down and an LED.

The game was afoot.

I slipped the remote back in my pocket and sipped on my beer. I looked around the bar, seeing a few familiar faces, a few more coming in. As Ana walked back towards me I thought about how to do this, what the game plan would be.

She was intercepted on the way by a friend and she smiled wide but eyed me over the friend’s shoulder. My finger traces the little triangular button and I pushed it once while watching her.

She took a deep breath, her eyebrows arching a bit, but didn’t really seem affected. I waited, sipped my beer, looked around at the little cliques of people milling about in the bar, tapped the button again.

In some part of my brain I could feel the vibrations. I felt connected to her now tense thigh muscles, her slightly clenched jaw. This was the realization of a long held dream; to control someone’s body with my mind. Sitting on a barstool with my friend barely visible out of the corner of my eye I pressed the down button twice, shutting the vibrations off. She looked over at me again.

Walking back to sit next to me again and take a long pull on her cider, her cheeks were a little red and her smile a little brighter. I smiled back and mentioned that there were lots of people we know coming in. She nodded just as I turned the vibrator on three. I was getting addicted to trying to gauge her reactions. As we talked I cycled through the setting and recorded her responses.

On level one the distraction was barely noticeable. She could hold a conversation, though there was little secret smile creeping up here and there. At two or three if someone spoke to her for too long she would get a far away look and then shake herself out of it. At four or five she was noticeably preoccupied, any higher than that there was no real change. I think the higher setting were all the same simply with different pulsation rhythms.

As I played she looked over to me and raised her eyebrow and held up five fingers. Her red lips mouthed “five?”

I gave her a shake of my head. “Three.”

She frowned in her cute way. There was something charming about her and deceptive shyness and awkwardness that hid a kinky curiosity.

At one point someone came over to greet us and talk about the neighborhood gossip. I had her on five for a while. She hit my leg and gave me a look of concern. I brought her down, excited at the first real acknowledgement of what was going on.

I turned it off, let her catch her breath, then back on four. It was almost impossible for her to carry on conversation now, but she was a quiet girl anyhow. A friend leaned in and asked her if she was alright. She waved the question away and said that she was just happily tipsy.

I moved it up to the highest setting and she sat up straight. Then I brought it down, level by level.

She guessed a few more times and every time she was wrong I marked a little click on my napkin. I wasn’t sure what to do with this score but somehow I thought it would be handy.

Even more of her friends poured into the bar and I started to getting concerned. Fun was fun, but I didn’t want to put her in an odd position.

At one point I made my way to the rest room and when I came out she was hovering around the back of the bar. I pulled her behind a partition and kissed her. Our first kiss.

She seemed tight lipped and tense, but the way her hand grabbed my jacket, I could see all that desire just under the surface. There was lust teetering in her eyes, marshaled by social graces and embarrassment. My hand slipped around her thin waist and her eyes fluttered. Hot skin through thin cotton.

I wondered if I could pull her into the bathroom or hurry her out and into my bed. A whole array of lovely ideas swam around and I was as tipsy on power as I was on beer. In the end, I broke off the kiss and took a deep breath and reveled in her blushing cheeks and slightly messy hair.

I walked back to our spot, leaving her to collect herself. I’d almost forgotten the remote, which was on the lowest setting the whole time. I bumped it up and up and up until it was on the highest. She looked at me with wider eyes as she sort of awkwardly followed after. When she sat down next to me more people came over to talk about the uptown gossip. She laughed and her breath caught and then she gripped my knee tightly and looked at me with exasperation.

I took pity, I turned it off.

She excused herself and as she carefully walked to the bathroom I slipped the remote back into her bag. Taking a sip of beer I wondered if any of our friends noticed something amiss and if so, could they imagine what was going on. It was a small but amusing detail to a hot game.

When she got back most of her friends were starting to leave. They beaconed her to follow, seemingly unaware of everything that had been going on. I wondered if any of them had any idea.

Somehow we were hurdled in with the group and thrust out into the cool of the night. I’m not sure what reputation she was maintaining, but I knew she wasn’t going to go home with me in front of these people. Some of her friends were offering to walk her home and she wasn’t able to deny all of them. She told them she would be a minute and she walked me up my block, around a corner, into a dark spot under scaffolding.

The kiss was hard, fast, our hands balling into each other clothes for something to hold on to. I felt the beer and the teasing in my blood. My hand found her ass and she gasped. My hand slipped around her and quickly moved up her thigh, but she held it.

She pulled away from the kiss with a wild smile.

“To be continued,” she said; a promise, a dare, a request?

I kissed her again, just a peck on her now wet lips. She straightened her hair, took a deep breath and straightened her dress. She turned and walked back into the light, down the block to the waiting group.

I wondered who was really teased. Was the unfulfilled desire equal? My head was filled with nothing but slipping into her. That groan of need being sated. It felt good to want. It felt electric and alive to have all that need in my body and my head.

I walked for a while in the dark crisp night and then went home to write about it.

End

Title image by M.Angel Herrero licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial – Share Alike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Title image by sternenrauschen. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The entire Mister McIntyre’s Secret series can be found on the List of Stories

Mister McIntyre’s Secret, Part 10

I don’t remember the train ride home.

I don’t remember Penn Station or the cab or opening the door to my apartment. All I know is that I saw things on a Sunday in Autumn. I wrote them down in a little book and I gave them away and then I was lying in my dingy little bed.

I felt very still and very cool and very much a different person. At some point I stopped shaking. At some point I stopped crying. Now it was like I had woken up and there was dew on everything and everything was new.

I’d slept though; harder that I can ever remember sleeping. I’m not sure if I dreamed though. What can you dream about after a day like that?

When I got up I showered and touched my body. For the first time I realized how odd it was that in all that time in Mister McIntyre’s world no one touched me; not really. Not like they touched each other. Before I knew it the water was scalding hot and the bathroom was filled with steam and Eloise was banging on the door and yelling that she was going to be late.

I wore one of the skirts Marcy gave me. A pair a shoes I’d gotten for a wedding. A red blouse I bought a while ago but never had the courage to wear. Even the bra Marcy gave me and some underwear I bought for a date once. I treated myself to a blueberry muffin and I was still at work fifteen minutes early.

In the office I slipped a page into my typewriter and closed my eyes and smelled the perfume Holly, the girl in the next office, wore. Something soft and floral and French. She was always pretty and sweet. I smiled at her and she smiled back and gave me a quizzical little look.

Then the door slammed. The stomping. He was coming like a storm. I told myself to look up, look him in the eye and I surprised myself when I did.

“Good morning Mister McIntyre,” I said as boldly as I could.

He took the mail I handed him and let a half smile slip from his mask.

“Eleven o’clock with Mister Murphy. Lunch at one with your accountant. Drinks at four with–” our eyes met again.

“Coffee in fifteen, then get me my lawyer on the phone,” he took his mail and as he opened his door he looked back, “nice blouse.”

I was Cleopatra. I was the queen of the world.

Maybe I expected something to change. For him to do something to me. After the comment on my blouse the day went as it always did. He was busy, I was busy, though maybe I wasn’t as nervous as usual. In fact I was floating on a cloud.

On the train home the memories came as I watched the gray sky out the window.

He beat her. He beat her like I’ve never seen anyone beaten and she took it. Is it silly to think that I was so proud of her I nearly cried?

She did cry, at the end. All those blows with her own riding crop. His huge hand on her throat, on her face, on her bottom. Then he was holding her and it was like I was watching the most intense movie ever made. He held her as she cried and he kissed her tears away and she pulled his clothes off.

And then there it was.

I almost jumped out of my skin when Trudy touched my arm. “Breathe,” she said. I realize I hadn’t for a very long time.

There it was. Mister McIntyre’s… every word for it is a bad word. There it was half hard, I guess. Though I couldn’t imagine it bigger or harder. Marcy looked at it with greedy eyes and then she was burying her face in his lap.

“Write,” Chase whispered into my ear.

I tried to get it down, but I didn’t have the words. I’d never really seen one. Well, at summer camp there were some boys who went skinny dipping. Matthew Farrow, my prom date. He pulled it out and I touched it for a second before getting out of his car and running home.

None of them looked like Mister McIntyre’s though. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Marcy had it. She sucked it. I couldn’t even be jealous. I couldn’t imagine anyone being in front of it and not sucking it. It was like art watching it slide in and out of her mouth.

Then he pushed her onto the floor. Her legs splayed when she landed. Purple bruises on her thighs. The pink of her. Different than mine, I could see the wetness from my chair. I think I could even smell her.

Then, when Mister McIntyre got on top of her, something happened. My heart started hurting. My head started spinning. When I heard Marcy moan and then they were moving, rutting, and it was all too much. I couldn’t write. I wasn’t supposed to watch, not after she cried. Not after she took all that. I was just a stupid girl. I was just a stupid virgin.

Then, just like that, I was up and out of the room.

I heard Trudy laugh, I think. Chase said “stop,” but I was already up and out the door and running down the hall and crying. Then I was outside, on the huge porch. Out with the crickets and the bees and my heart and my mind out of control. Outside in a dress that wasn’t mine, peeking into a life that wasn’t mine. I was in a world that wasn’t mine.

No one came for me, not for two hours or so. When Trudy and Chase finally came out of the house they looked like they’d showered. Trudy was blushing and Chase looked tired. They said little. They didn’t yell at me or even say anything about the fact that I left. They just drove me to the train and gave me too much money for a cab.

Back in the subway car on my way home from the office, remembering, I wondered what would have happened if I stayed in that room. What would I have seen? What would he have done to the three of them, his play things, his little club? Would it have eventually have been my turn?

Did I want that? I wanted it so much much I shook just thinking about it. At the same time the idea of it was like looking over the Empire State Building and wanting to jump. It was too much. It was too scary and powerful. I was a mouse playing with lions.

Frankly there were few things I expected to find in my apartment less than Chase chatting up my roommate Eloise. I almost wanted to check the address of my apartment because I had to be in the wrong place.

No, there he was, so pretty in a white dress shirt and sweater vest. Dapper, but in some intrinsically different way than Mister McIntyre.

“Oh, there she is,” Chase said in his drawn out, somewhat feminine voice.

Eloise giggled and covered her mouth. In her hand was some fizzy pink drink.

“Hi Abigail!” Eloise chimed drunkenly.

I didn’t know what to say. I just stared.

“It’s a Sloe Gin Fizz,” Eloise said carefully through her drunkenness, enunciating each word. “Want one?”

I wanted to be mad, but frankly I hadn’t seen my dour roommate smile like that- well, ever. Chase put the cap on a bottle of liquor and patted Eloise on her knee. As he got up I could see her cheeks bright red from the intimacy of his casual touch.

“It was really lovely talking to you El, but I’ve got to chat with Abigail for a little bit. You’ll be here though? We can talk more about those records I told you about,”

Chase was charming, syrup sweet with an edge of sarcasm that I wasn’t sure Eloise got in her state. She was smiling and nodding to Chase, moon eyed. He was very pretty. Then she looked at me and raised her eyebrows and swooned.

Chase took me into my bedroom and sighed as he closed the door. He smiled and shook his head.

“That’s some roommate,” he said and winked.

I sat on my bed and wondered what he was doing in my apartment. I wondered what was next in this crazy ride. He could have done anything and I wouldn’t have been surprised. Ripped off his clothes, ripped off mine, snapped a picture, sang a song.

Though in classic style, silly me, silly Abigail was still surprised.

“Do you like dancing?” he said looking into my closet and flipping through my dresses.

“I- um- I guess,” I started.

He turned around with one of my older dresses, something I almost never wore. Why were these people so consumed with what I wore?

“Put this on, we’re going out,” he said with an expectant gleam in his eye.

And so I did. Because no matter my inner turmoil or my never ending introspection, I always did what they told me. Not just because that’s who I was and that’s what I did, but because what ever they told me seemed to be far more interesting than anything else in my life.

Title image by chikache. CC BY-NC 2.0

From a somewhat silly request on a forum comes a story I’m quite fond of.

The studio, his studio, that dirty gentleman’s studio, was bare.  All the carefully collected furniture (he collected many things, all of them carefully) was pushed out of the way. The long main room was clear and the mats were on the hardwood floor and early morning light was shining in thick square beams from the old windows and showed the little particles of dust in the air.

Dorothy, as usual, was making art. Luckily, she sometimes let me watch.

She said nothing but led me to a little chair with a connected desk; the ones they have in college lecture halls. On it was a small old fashioned portable typewriter. Black and scratched and loaded with a fresh sheet of paper. A table next to the desk held a box with more paper.

She kissed me on the cheek and left me to my part, which was to record what was about to happen.

I’m not sure who she got to set up the pulleys, but it was quite ingenious. She might have done it herself, since she was certainly a crafty woman. The ceiling was now dotted with black wheels, rope attached here and there and hanging down, making long shadows on the mats.

Dorothy was in her painting clothes. Black knee high socks spattered with paint, over fishnets, over some other hosiery, all mixed up and ripped and held up by garters and ingenuity. A well worn cincher around her waist, a demi-cup bra that was barely covering her rouge nipples.

Her face was serious, lips pursed as she tended to the girls on the floor.

Vyvyan was resting comfortably over a rather large ottoman, a small red velvet pillow under her belly to prop her up, her wrists an ankles each tied to the small legs. A spreader bar making sure she was open, ready. A sort of obscene piece of pink furniture, speckled with faded bruises and half healed cuts. My face was already warm from meeting this new person I’d only conversed with online and seeing every secret inch of her without even looking her in the eye.

Elle was sitting cross-legged on the mat, looking around, biting her lip but relatively still. She looked scared, but as I watched Dorothy kneel in front of her and push and pull her around Elle’s embarrassment seemed to be waring with her arousal.

Dorothy was all business, as she often was while working. She straightened the girl and painted her face. A sponge with foundation, a little more theatrical than I’d seen her do it before. Then two circles of blush high up on the girl’s cheeks. A Cupid’s bow of lipstick making her kiss seem smaller, permanently puckered. Elle’s eyes made bigger through the science of shadows and highlights.

The girl wore nothing but a pearl white slip and as Dorothy went to pull it off Elle’s eyes went to me for the first time. Her cheeks flushed noticeably red under the makeup.

Dorothy saw her reaction, but pulled the girl’s hands away from her clothes and pulled the slip off gingerly.

There was something deliberate and precise about the way Dorothy handled the girl. The way she batted at her if she didn’t move the way she was supposed to, the way she grabbed Elle’s chin firmly if she looked away when getting makeup applied.

Dorothy slipped a small white lace bra on the girl and pushed and straightened her breasts. The girl looked over at me and I smiled. I was drinking her in. This wasn’t my scene, this wasn’t my art piece but I was there and I could enjoy it. I could enjoy the way she swallowed and squirmed as my eyes followed the curve of her long neck down to her smooth chest and belly and down to the bare split between her legs.

Dorothy almost smiled. Almost. For a moment she slapped the girl’s legs open and I could swear Dorothy shifted to give me a momentary look at the pink between the girl’s pretty legs. It was refreshing to see that kind of embarrassment over something so simple flash over a girl’s face.

From a trunk nearby Dorothy took a leather harness which was thicker than most I’d seen. I noticed two metal rings set on each side and two more on the front and back, separate from the intricacies of the harness’s straps and buckles.

Into the harness went a sizable but not absurdly large cock. Lewdly black and threatening. Cock went in harness and harness went on the girl, who now looked both absurd and formidable.

Pulling the doll up by her hands, Dorothy brought her over to a dress form in the corner which wore a short pink party frock, complete with white petticoats, lacy little sleeves, perfect bows and sparkles.

Elle sort of rolled her eyes and her crooked smile broke into a laugh when she saw the dress. She stepped back looking around.

“That dress is way –” but she was silenced by a smack.

Dorothy frowned deeply and Elle’s smile disappeared. She went to rub her cheek, but her hand was swatted away.

Dorothy didn’t say a word, the only sound was Elle’s now labored breathing and my typewriter. Slowly the smart girl got the point. She wasn’t there to speak, nor to move. She was there to be a tool; a doll. A puppet for a performance.

As Elle was dressed her fidgeting seemed to diminish. As white stockings were pulled on her long legs and matching gloves up to her elbows, Elle’s body relaxed. Dorothy carefully slipped pretty black Mary Janes on her feet and a matching black bow around her neck.

As Dorothy stood and started to gather the ropes that hung from the ceiling Elle sat on the floor in her new dress, looking younger, paler and almost lifelessly beautiful.

Ropes went around the pretty girl’s wrists and elbows. Rope around her knees and ankles. Rope up under those pretty skirts and through the rings on the girl’s harness.

Dorothy, with the strength of the craftsperson she was, grunted as she pulled at various ropes. The pulleys turned and the ropes creaked and the girl was soon standing and then dangling in the air.

Her arms now poised high above her and her hands hanging down limply. Her head resting on her own shoulder. Her eyes now unfocused and cold.

Dorothy set about brushing the puppet’s hair, pulling it into short pigtails, tying it with pink bows. She set about covering up any little freckles on the puppet’s exposed skin. Fixing her pink dress and pulling her towards Vyvyan, who hadn’t made a sound the whole time.

Looking at the woman on the ottoman I saw that the main reason she wasn’t making a sound was because of the ball gag in her mouth. I couldn’t see her face though, only her ass in the air and the split of her pussy.

Dorothy, working quickly, checked Vyvyan’s hands and feet; making sure the ropes hadn’t cut off circulation. She then smoothed her hands over the women’s skin before turning her attention back on Elle.

Pulling the neck of the pretty pink dress down a bit, then adjusting it so she could pull it down more, Dorothy pulled the girl’s breasts out of the top just enough so that her nipples were exposed. There was a moment of protest on the puppet-girl’s lips, but by that point she knew to swallow it down.

Dorothy retrieved two objects from the table, each a pair of nipple clamps attached by a chain. She then, gingerly, attached one clamp to each of the girl’s nipples so that the long chains dangled down. Gathering the front of the girl’s dress she attached the other end of each chain to the hem so that the dress was help up in the front and the frilly dress and pettycoats were attached to the girl’s ever reddening nipples.

Dorothy knelt in front of the girl and straightened her white stockings, her garters, the black cock. She then led the girl across the room until she was hovering behind Vyvyan’s prone form.

The girl’s face was awash with fear and pleasure. Her mouth slightly slack and her doll eyes wide. Soon she was poised right behind the prone woman, rubber phallus inches from pink wetness.

Dorothy checked all of the limbs. She checked tautness of rope. She reached down and rubbed the exposed slickness between Vyvyan’s legs. That was the only time so far I saw a little smile creep over her face. She procured a little bottle, oiled the hard cock with its contents. liberally smoothed the liquid into Vyvyan’s pussy.

Final shifts in ropes before Dorothy took her place at the helm of two ropes. She stood a few feet away from the women cum props. She held the rope with one hand and brushed her callused fingers over a remote. Music sprang from speakers in the corners of the room. I typed furiously.  Dorothy wrapped the ropes around herself to hold them while she slipped on a pair of leather gloves. Her eyes were focused on the inch between glistening cock and glistening girl. She pulled one rope slowly and the girl’s hips moved forward, forward, the head of the cock closing in and closing in and almost slipping into the wetness but just missing.

Dorothy stomped her foot with a huff and that little motion, the little involuntary tug on the rope mixed with the lubrication make the thick head of the cock slip right into Vyvyan who for the first time tensed and made a groan into the gag.

Dorothy nearly jumped, her eyes bright and her body bouncing with energy. She leaned to one side and the cock slipped in to the hilt, then she paused before pulling on the other rope which pulled Elle back and almost out.

It went on like that for a bit, Elle now completely a puppet, fucking Vyvyan by Dorothy’s control. The rhythm shaky and uneven at first, slowly becoming harder and smoother. Dorothy stood, shifting all of her weight, pulling one rope then another like pulling the rigging for a great ship. Vyvyan moaned louder and louder as she was penetrated by proxy.

Dorothy was flushed for the first time. She bit her lip as she pulled each rope, her eyes glued on the cock slipping in and out. She maneuvered the ropes so that she could move closer, watching intently. She pulled harder on one rope making Elle’s possessed body thrust hard into Vyvyan. She did that over and over again until Vyvyan’s body started flailing and tensing and her head shook.

As if on cue the music started to die. Dorothy was panting. Elle had gone limp, now wholly held up by the ropes.

Dorothy lowered the doll-girl to the floor, slowly until she pooled like a puddle on the ground. She went about untying and unhooking the used girls and I sighed deeply, feeling like I was the lone audience and the curtain had just fell.

hotcoffeeandcream recorded one of my stories! I think it sounds lovely. I had forgotten about this silly tale and how much I liked it.

The original story can be found here: Anthony Boudain and the Naughty Chef de Partie

The girls were sat on a blanket, back to back; naked, save their panties. The black blanket was laid neatly on the somewhat dusty hardwood floor. I knelt in front of Margot and Hector knelt in front of Betty. The rope was around both of their pretty necks. Looped and looped around and around. Their hands tied at their sides, their backs held straight out of either eagerness to please or suspense at what might happen next.

The jigsaw jumble of intentions and desires was so thick and confusing that listing them alone would take up a whole story. The young girl, Betty, was such a pretty thing: ridiculously buxom, deliciously pouting and so stylish she seemed fashionable even in nothing but cotton underwear. Her boyfriend Hector, the rigger, was serious and capable with hands of a carpenter, masculine grace, economy of movement. Then there was Margot, brilliant eyes that were always communicating with me. Classy in a way I’d never known up close. Artist, model, dancer, character.

Hours before we were drinking bourbon in a dark bar; Betty flirting with me, Hector with Margot, Margot and me, Margot with Betty. Hector and Betty had been a couple for a while and sadly were relatively straight; but Betty was greedy enough not to be that particular about things, plus she loved eyes on her. Hector was greedy enough to put up with me as long as he got more skin to touch, more hands to bind, more girls to hurt and kiss.

Margot and I were peas in a pod. Whispering plans to each other between kisses. It was going to be two-on-two, perhaps three-on-one? We had hours to play and few real rules had been discussed. We were shaking in our seats with anticipation as well as pride in ourselves for facilitating this whole thing.

In the apartment I tied Margot to a small table. Bound tightly, her legs fastened to the table legs, her arms at her sides so she couldn’t move. Betty got strung up from a thick beam that ran across the ceiling. One girl bound down, one hovering over her. The stockings had been ripped and the hair was a mess. Looking from girl to girl was like looking at presents under the tree. What to open first?

As Betty dangled above her, each of Margot’s nipples were pinched with metal clamps, which were connect to chains which into turn were connected to clamps that were attached to Betty’s nipples. Then, Margot’s hair was tied up with a rope that was then attached to the ceiling so that any movement of her neck caused her scalp to throb. The whole thing looked like some bizarre art project, the mostly naked girls twisting this way and that, letting out little gasps and whines as they felt the pain in their nipples and hair that happened every time they got too far from each other. It was lovely, one of the most interesting things I’ve been a part of, but the girls couldn’t last very long like that and soon we had to bring them down.

Once down we played on the floor for a bit. They were still half tied up so we pulled them by the rope this way or that. Breasts smacked, asses spanked, mostly Hector and I focusing on our partners, but occasionally switching girls. The four of us wrestling on the floor. Blankets thrown over us as we laughed and played.

The girls teased Hector because he wouldn’t strip. Margot’s eyes caught mine as I tried to defuse the bit of tension. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but at the same time I was desperate to see more of the girls. Betty was whining for more, more hands on her, more attention. In those moments when the four of us were under the covers my hand found its way to her leg and she grabbed it and slipped it between her thighs.

Even in the openness and the fact that this wasn’t out of bounds, there was a little secret there, under the covers. My fingers slipping into somehow forbidden wetness.

When Hector had the two of them sit up, back to back, I wasn’t sure what they were going to do. I watched as he coiled the rope around their necks and I swallowed hard. This was danger. This was not something I would have done. He was very skilled though. The three of them had played these kinds of games before.

When I pulled Margot forward and kissed her I heard the squeaks and groans of Betty as her air was cut off. Margo’s eyes went far away too. When I pushed her back Betty gasped for air, then Margo heaved a long breath. Back and forth, Hector pulled, then I did. Sighs and groans and occasional coughing. We kissed and pinched and smacked and played with the girls as they became like rag dolls between us, glassy-eyed and limp-limbed.

I tried to be bold, look casual, but the worry rose and fell inside of me with the tidal push and pull of the two of them. Margot looked beautiful, red cheeked, red lipped, fainting then popping back up. When I fingered her she seemed unsure what sensation to focus on, what direction she needed to move to get away.

After tense minutes like this Hector thought the two girls had enough and gave me a look that meant we should release them. We took them out and rubbed their sore necks and kissed and cuddled them on the floor. Sighs and smiles abounded. The little tribulations forgotten, the miscommunications insignificant compared to the heat of it all.

In the middle of the night we let the other couple leave and finally found our way to bed, trying to summon enough energy to finish all the things the day had started.

The painter is a chemical necessity in these situations. She is a catalyst in a way I am used to being. One of the million ways we are the same. The same hungers, the same taste, the same perceptions.

The redhead is on someone’s lap. She has been morsel I’d been coveting for a while now. Not seriously, not even particularly, but one of those shiny beautiful people your eyes linger on for a few second when you see them across the room. All cream skin and fire hair and cool attitude.

For all the ways we are alike, the painter has many advantages I do not. She is a woman, she knows all of the privileges of that, especially in this setting. And she knows everyone. I thought I knew everyone, but she is entrenched and this is her crowd. I get a nod from this crowd, she gets a kiss on the lips. And now she is kissing the redhead.

The music is loud, I am next to a pretty blond thing, my hands around her waist, my lips on her neck, but my eyes across the room as the painter is on her knees in front of the redhead who is still on someone’s lap.

The well dressed crowd is throbbing around us. Suits and ties and garters and fishnets and finery is everywhere. Clothes are coming off quickly though. Lean muscles and naked breasts catch my sight and the whiskey is making everything vivid and dull at the same time.

The blond in my arms is squirming. She’s watching the show too. She is nervous energy under my fingers as I toy with the edge of her panties.

The painter is pulling down the redhead’s flimsy bra, her bare breasts small and pretty. Nipples almost the same cream color as the rest of her skin. Then the painter’s curly black head is between the thighs of the redhead. I can see her hungry hands pulling black panties to the side.

My girl, doing the exact thing I would do to that prize of a redhead. I can close my eyes and almost slip away, into her, imagining what she tastes like.

The thought dissolves as I kiss the blond, hands consumed with all that skin in front of me.

When I see the painter dizzy and swaying towards me later I am smiling and she is smiling and she kisses me. She knows, of course, of my crush. We spill secrets faster than we spill our drinks. She knows and she kisses me again and I’m torn between wanting to kiss this beautiful woman and wanting a little taste of the redhead.

“I want to taste her,” I groan into the painter’s ear. She laughs and almost slaps me, but then her fingers are in my mouth. Salty, and wet. It’s bad, but it’s just a little bad. I suck on those two fingers and I can taste her. Then the fingers are almost down my throat, because I should remember what’s mine and what isn’t. Then we are kissing and her eyes are on my eyes and as always we are communicating a million things.

I’m drunk and happy and the world around me is dark electric bacchanalia. The music gets louder, people are hitting each other and kissing and rubbing and pulling. A girl stretches her hands up to the ceiling as a man ties her tight with red rope.

This is exactly where I want to be with the person I want to be with. It’s perfect.