Letter to the Artist Ch. 01

PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here
1rndm1
1rndm1
83 Followers

"What do you want?" he grunted over the phone.

Jac was startled at his tone. Only one person had ever dared to address her in such tone. She knew who it was on the other line and it angered her.

"Do you always answer the phone in this manner, Jerzy?" Jac said haughtily.

"And who said I was Jerzy?"

She took note of the way he said his name. Yer-dge.

"Only an insolent oaf would address me in such a manner!" she replied clearly angry.

"And who might you be?"

Jac grunted out of anger and frustration. She refused to answer his question. He knew very well who she was. "Stop what you're doing Jerzy. Just stop it all."

"Assuming I knew what you were walking about, why should I? It is obviously working... enough for you to call."

"You're hopeless!" she blurted out of frustration. "Well, stranger, can you PLEASE tell the GREAT George Gorszewski to stop!" she said dripping with sarcasm.

"And what if I told you I will not? Not now. Not ever. What would you do then?"

"I will stay on this line until he accepts my terms!" Jac said defiantly. "Call rates be damned!"

There was a tense pause before Jerzy answered. "And what if I told you I want you for myself?" His tone was quieter and much more intimate now.

She laughed nervously as fire raced through her body.

He heard the nervousness in her brave laugh. "What if I told you all my wants and desires. Would you hang up?"

"Stop it!"

"How I imagine your soft moans while I touch you. How it would be so sweet to taste you. How you scream my name while I claim you."

Jac could not reply. Her breath caught in her throat. The images he presented were bold and outlandish, yet she could not stop listening. Her heart was pounding too much. She felt an unfamiliar wetness pooling between her thighs. No man had ever elicited such a reaction from her.

"What are you going to do Jac?" he said as he heard her shallow breathing.

Jac was panting at the image he presented and embedded in her mind. She could still hear his low tone, raspy and thick with desire. His accent, somewhat a mix between English and Russian, made it all the more appealing.

Jac was fighting a losing battle. Dear God how she wanted this man. But fear won over her desire. "Just stop," she said in a whisper and hung up.

===========================================================

"Alright team! We have two major events to cover next month." The chief editor was ecstatic to bring what she had lined up for her team. "Pool and CD release party at The Standard by Kanye and Lagerfeld at the Barker Hangar with Chanel's CC11."

The Sartorial office gasped in unison, except for Jac. She was buried in her moleskin, absentmindedly jotting down ideas for the events. The whole table was in chatter about who to meet and what to wear and everything else in between until eventually the meeting was adjourned. Jac was the last to file out of the board room, but before she could do so, the chief had some parting words.

"Oh! Jac, I almost forgot. Jonathan down at Rowan has this big opening reception next month for this internationally acclaimed artist. Anyway, I just need an article about the event and about Rowan and nothing else. Jonathan says the guy refuses to deal with the press," Greta said as she rolled her eyes. "Apparently, he's always refused show in the US, but Jonathan managed to snag him. And since you're my best writer, I'm sending you to handle the situation. And apparently the artist is a recluse. Can you imagine a recluse in this day and age!" Greta laughed.

"And the artist?"

Greta Vanderwoods was surprised at her best editor's question. In her two years with Sartorial Press, never had she seen Jac with one bit of interest until now. Greta had always wondered why Jac chose Sartorial Press. The girl could easily work for The New Yorker or TIMES if she wanted to. She fished out a piece of paper from her folder and handed it to Jac.

"Go get 'em kid!" Greta said as she exited the board room.

Jac did not hear the door close for her world stopped. She felt faint and sick at reading the one name she dreaded seeing. The one name that kept her sane. Her one sanctuary. She skipped the date, the time and the location and read the only information that mattered.

"I envy how you touch them and make them yours" by George Gorszewski.

===========================================================

The rooftop pool of The Standard Hotel was the place to be. It was where the world gyrated its heated limbs to the intoxicating pulse of the music. Scantily clad women walked about, wet from their swim, as if the pool water was the only form of validation for their existence. Men were tense from the summer heat and the anticipation for instant gratification hung thickly in the air.

Jonathan Marshall saw Jac Carlson towards the end of the pool. She wore a simple black dress made for a summer evening. Her attitude made the dress elegant somehow and oddly fitting in this crowd. She was leaning against the railing in a mindless conversation with two gentlemen. She was engaged, yet detached at the same time. He saw her smile and laugh politely. He could not tell if she was laughing with them or at them.

He remembered meeting her for the first time nearly two years ago. He had known her as the socialite who grazed the New York Post's Page Six frequently. He purposely asked for an introduction for he knew her connection would take him as far as he dared imagine. He knew that she viewed him a parasite, that her apathetic insolence was the only reason he remained in her elite social system. And he would remain to be that lecherous parasite so long as he could hold on to that feeble and artificial relation.

He was terrified at the thought of her. As if her one look from her would flood his shallow world with the truth and that he would drown and die in her presence. Yet he pursued her regardless. He wanted her status and he wanted it all.

He approached her to announce to the world of their acquaintance. "I hear you'll be writing about me," he came up from behind her and whispered in her ear. She didn't jump like he wanted her to.

Jac turned her head and smiled coldly. "Yes... yes I am." Jonathan suddenly felt cold from her reply. He placed a hand on the small of her back and whisked her away from her companions.

"God Jac, you are so beautiful," he said as he drew her closer and gently placed a kiss on her bare shoulder. Jac should have felt revulsion at his insipid gesture, but she didn't. She just felt... nothing.

"Tell me something I don't know," she replied with a cold smile.

Jonathan grinned widely to hide his unease and fear. Regardless, he had Jac all to himself for the world to see.

"Come by my gallery," he slipped a key in her palm, "I'll give you an exclusive with the artist." Jac tensed at the mention of Jerzy. Her Jerzy. She felt bile and disgust rising from her stomach at the thought of Jerzy next to this man. This pity excuse of a man.

For the first time since meeting Jac, he saw emotion pass through her face. She seemed stunned at his gesture. He knew it was the opportune time to leave. Quite frankly, he didn't want to know the truth behind her reaction. He was too afraid to know.

She watched Jonathan leave her with a smile of satisfaction on his face. As if his poor and insipid gesture was the end of her.

===========================================================

Jerzy arrived from Warsaw to Los Angeles just hours ago and already he was working in the gallery. Of course, his first impulse was to see her, but he knew better. He would make her come to him and make her surrender all of herself to him. He would wait. He knew that Jonathan Marshall was a boastful man and he knew that the man would announce to the press the completion of his installation. Would she attend? He would find out by tonight.

"Vav, when you see her, I want you to try your best at wooing her," Jerzy told his most trusted friend and cousin in their native tongue as he put the finishing touches on his pieces. "I want to know if she is who I imagine her to be. I want to know if she will throw herself at you upon seeing your beautiful face," Jerzy finished with a hint of sarcasm.

This was a common, but rare practice between the two. It was a symbiotic relationship. Jerzy hated the attention and Vav, well, he didn't mind the attention.

The handsome young man only laughed. At twenty two, the young Jurgis Wawrinka, better known as Vav, stood at 6 foot 3 inches. He had a lean frame fit for a runway model and his perfectly chiseled face could make any woman swoon.

Their native conversation was cut off with a light rap on the door. High above atop a ladder, Jerzy saw Jac standing outside the gallery and was unprepared at the sight she presented him. He was suddenly swept with an unbridled feeling of possession. His body hummed with anticipation upon seeing her face and her body. Perfection and beauty were understatements compared to her.

She wore a short summer dress that hung loosely around her frame. A light breeze made her dress billow against the dusk light. Somehow, it reminded him of a cold winter sunset. His location allowed him to remain hidden while he was granted a generous view of her frame. He quietly commanded his friend to allow her inside the gallery.

Jac's heart began to flutter the minute she knocked on the glass door. The anticipation at meeting Jerzy for the first time made her hot and her body tingle. She closed her eyes to calm her senses, but she was met with disappointment when she opened them again. She saw a perfectly chiseled face before her. Her anticipation and excitement dissipated and she suddenly felt indifferent.

Vav knew who the woman was for she was the topic of his friend's obsession for the past three months. He smiled beautifully at her. "Hello. You are friend of Jonathan?" he asked in his best English.

The term friend made her laugh internally. She also noted that his accent was so much thicker. "I'm early," she replied curtly with a polite nod. He waited for her to enter before reaching out his hand and introducing his self, "I am Jerzy."

She studied his extended hand. It was smooth and perfect. This was not the hand she had been imagining during her most intimate moments. She looked up at the angelic face that matched the gentle hands. This was not her Jerzy Gorszewski.

She laughed cruelly at the man before her. Of course he would test her. Bastard, she thought. "Of course you are," she ignored the extended hand.

"Listen," she said summing the man up before her. "Don't do the show. Tell Jerzy that." She turned to leave but stopped in her tracks, "And tell him... Tell him I don't intend to lose."

===========================================================

Jerzy saw every single expression on her face. He saw the excitement, which she tried to contain. He saw her close her eyes. A move which left her looking vulnerable and enticing much like her letter. He also saw her sudden change in demeanor. She retracted to her cold frame upon meeting Vav. He couldn't help but smile at that.

Jerzy halted his work and descended down the ladder. "What happened?" he asked Vav as he saw Jac depart.

"She told me to tell you not to do the show and that she doesn't intend to lose."

Jerzy smiled widely at her noble front. "We are done for the day," he said exiting the gallery and leaving Vav dumbfounded.

===========================================================

Bastard! To think he could play his mind games with me! Jac thought as she made her way up Spring Street towards her loft. The sun was barely hiding behind the horizon. She used to love how the city looked at dusk, but now she just passed through it like a ghost set to her destination.

Fear, hate and desire. Those were the three things she felt for this man. She feared that she would give herself up to him unconditionally. She detested his power over, how easily he could command her with his brash manner. But oh how dearly she desired him. She wanted him, all of him for herself.

"Ms. Carlson?"

Jac was interrupted from her train of thoughts. She hadn't realized that she had already reached her building and was already heading for the elevators.

It was the same young man. But this time, instead of a pile of letters, it was a giant bouquet of flowers set in a tall glass vase. "These are from a Jonathan Marshall."

Jac stared at the flowers. She didn't feel joy. She didn't feel disgust. She just didn't feel anything knowing it was from Jonathan.

She was just going to ignore it and head up to her loft when she felt someone watching her just outside the lobby. She turned her head to meet the gaze only to be met with the most intense green eyes. She could not help but feel fear, anger and desire course through her body as she locked eyes with this stranger.

There was a possessive gleam in them much like a predator would eye its prey. No one had ever dared lock gazes with her and yet this stranger did so without fear, as if he was challenging and mocking her at the same time.

The sight of this man immediately put forth Jerzy in her mind. She had a growing suspicion of the man's intent. To think he would challenge her, arrogant fool! She would find out who the stranger was.

===========================================================

Jerzy had followed Jac after she left the gallery. Despite the urban beauty that the city presented, he did not take his eyes away from her. He watched her brisk walk, noting its machine-like efficiency, uncaring of what she passed by or who.

He patiently stood outside her building, as she conversed with the concierge. He stood there, waiting, watching.

Finally their eyes locked and he could not help but smile internally with her reaction. This was where he wanted her; spitting with emotions and miles away from her cold, cold frame.

Jac was enraged at how he viewed her. How her dared to view her. All her life she was given everything and none dared to displease her. She had never encountered any form of opposition or authority due to it.

And now she was faced with blatant opposition. The mere idea of a challenge was foreign to her. She answered the stranger's challenge as best she could. She answered like an insolent person of money and power.

Jac slowly walked toward the stranger, summing him up and degrading him at the same time. The building doorman opened the tall glass doors at her approach toward the wide entrance. She stopped by the door frame, uncaring of the door man, and spat at the stranger with blatant insolence. "You there!"

Jac did not wait for the stranger to reply. "You look like a sturdy construction worker. How would you like to make easy money?"

Jac took in his large frame and looked him up and down. "I suppose a man like you is priced at about $15 an hour?" Again she did not wait for his reply. "Never mind, I'll match your rate regardless."

Jerzy quietly smiled at her insolence. He was dressed in his typical installation garb of tattered clothing splattered with paint. He could not blame her for her assumption. Her ceaseless ramblings, however, made him realize that she was grasping desperately for power. He would taunt her with his silence.

They stared silently at each other, fighting for dominance. His silence and his subtle mockery enraged her until she could no longer take anymore.

"Answer me!" Jac demanded.

Jerzy could not help but crack a tiny smile at her loss of temper. He was dressed in paint splattered clothing and he could not blame her assumption. He finally approached her and closed the distance between them until he was mere inches from her face. "Ok," he quietly said.

Jac watched him approach her as if she were some meat to be devoured. She fought down the urge to run and hide from this man. Not out of fear of danger, but from a foreign feeling of intensity she felt toward this stranger.

"Very well," Jac said, breaking the intensity of the moment. "Fetch that bouquet of flowers and follow me," she said haughtily and proceeded to her destination without waiting for the man.

However, she could not help herself from looking back to see if the man followed her orders. What she saw made her feel irrationally jealous. She watched his large hands, his rough and calloused hands, handle, caress, the smooth glass vase. She stormed off and did not give the man the satisfaction to see the intensity of her emotion. She also ignored her thoughts and suspicion, discarded them, that this man might be Jerzy Gorszewski.

==========================================================

Jac was now stopped in front of Rowan Gallery's entrance with a sign that said CLOSED. Perfect, Jac thought as she fished out the key that Jonathan handed her at the party.

The last ten minutes en route to the gallery had been a silent, but tense journey. She could feel his heated gaze burning onto her back, despite the distance she kept as he followed her from behind.

She found a sick satisfaction at the fact that he followed her like a servant or a slave. She had employed many servants, assistants and plain out slaves in the past, but they had all been willing and she never had the desire to command them. They had readily enslaved themselves to her for the sole purpose of her social status.

But this stranger, this man, was different. She wanted to enslave him, to posses him as her own. She had no idea why. Maybe it was his challenging and possessive gaze. Maybe it was the way his intense green eyes saw her. Maybe it was the raw and violent intensity of his body. Maybe it was the fact that this man reminded her so much of how she imagined Jerzy Gorszewski to be. But whatever it was, she had no intention of finding out. She just wanted to taunt him, defeat him and put him in his place.

She also, for some twisted reason, wanted him to be jealous. To have him as a puppy was one thing, but to have him carry another man's form of affection was another. She surmised it would be torture. And tortured was what she wanted him to be. Jac had never been one for flirtation or seduction, but somehow, unbeknownst to her, her walk had become an alluring sway under his heated gaze.

Jac began to unlock the gallery door when she accidentally dropped the key. Without any thought, she quickly bent over and picked it up. She realized too late the position of her body and the generous view she gave him. She should be appalled by this lowly act, she hated women who used such tactics, but somehow, she lingered in the position for a bit longer. She wanted him, this man, and this stranger, taunted and tormented with the perfection of her body.

Just as quickly as the thought entered her mind, she was up and had unlocked the gallery door. She turned to face the man to pin him with a haughty gaze and stood to the side. She folded her arms across her chest and stood waiting with a pose of insolence as if implying he could never get it.

She wanted to test him, to push him, but the smug look on his face only angered her. There was no smile on his face, but something in those green eyes told her that he was laughing and mocking her. She also saw in those green eyes a basic animalistic look. It was pure unadulterated lust.

There was a time in her youth when she loathed, hated, the idea of obligated chivalry and gallantry. The opening of doors of men for women was an idea she abhorred. And then she gave it all up and became indifferent. Now, however, it thrilled her, to the very core, to command this man, this stranger.

"I'm not paying you to stand about. Now wipe that insolent look off of your face and open the door," Jac said out of irritation, not caring of the massive bouquet that must have weight over fifty pounds that he was carrying.

1rndm1
1rndm1
83 Followers