Chiaroscuro

I suspected that Susan hadn't yet gotten over us. She was always so willing to come over at short notice to pose and I would get the feeling at the end of the hour that she was hoping for something more than my gratitude and the insultingly meager sum that the University saw fit to pay live models. I got the feeling ... unspoken, but hovering like a ghost between us ... that she would rather I took her home, splayed her open on my bed and claimed once again that sweet tight cunt that always made me break into a sweat.

And there were times, when driven by a sudden fit of loneliness, I was sorely tempted. I missed the intimacy of two bodies squirming and writhing against each other in the grip of a desire that neither could control. I missed the sweet, sobbing mercy of release. But most of all I missed pleasuring my lover. I missed my fist twisting in Susan's blonde locks as I drove my strap-on into her pleading cunt and the noises that she made as I plumbed her depths. I missed the sweetness of her surrender as I lapped up her musky juices from the wet folds of her pussy. And most of all, I missed the way her muscles softened as I finally wrenched her orgasm from her flailing limbs. But I resisted the temptation and steeled my heart against the shadow that passed over her soft blue eyes every time I merely smiled my thanks.

I sensed that I was being watched and lifted my head to see Anees regarding me unblinkingly. I smiled at him and softly stroked Susan's trembling flank as though I were quieting a kitten. He quickly averted his eyes, embarrassed.

I walked from easel to easel as they worked, offering a word of advice here, picking up a charcoal stick to trace a line there. When I reached his easel, he glanced up, but his eyes didn't make it to my face. I have a rebellious streak and my sense of dressing is not demure. When I had joined the faculty, I discovered to my consternation that it was a dank place filled with old fossils whose loins did not appear to have stirred since at least the Carter administration. I resolved to change all that and blow a breath of fresh air into that gloomy dungeon. My rather reckless taste in apparel was part of the plan. I like to believe that I keep the old fogies alive. That day, I had gone braless and my thin white t-shirt did nothing to conceal my nipples and the sharp outline of the ring that pierced each. I leaned down to whisper softly in his ear, laughter in my voice.

"I have others too, where they can't be seen."

He blushed at being caught staring and looked down quickly, not willing to meet my eyes. I stepped behind him and placed a hand on each shoulder. The sheet of paper on the easel was blank as usual.

"Are you planning to start any time soon?" I asked him.

"I can't work with you peering over my shoulder. You make me nervous," he mumbled.

"In that case, I will leave you be," I replied. I gave his shoulders a light squeeze and then walked away.

I scanned the sheets of paper as they turned them in. Most of the work was rather wooden. Almost all of them had drawn Susan as though she were an object, not a woman. His work was again the exception. It positively screamed to be noticed. His lines were firm and confident ... alive. She appeared to breathe, her muscles almost stirring beneath her skin. I marveled at his virtuosity. He had drawn the woman I had fucked.

As the class was emptying, I said, "Anees, could you wait for a moment? I would like a word with you."

He looked anxious as we waited for the last person to leave, wondering if he had incurred my displeasure in some way. I quickly moved to put him at ease.

"Anees, I've never had a student with so much promise. And I mean it. It's a pity that you can't paint at home."

"I've a studio which is large enough for both of us," I added, "I'd be delighted to have you use it. I generally work on weekends. That's when I'm most relaxed."

He seemed dumbfounded by the offer.

"That's very generous of you," he stuttered, "Are you sure I won't be in the way?"

"No, you won't be in the way." He didn't seem to have anything more to say and the silence deepened between us, threatening to become awkward.

"That's settled then," I said as I scribbled my address on a piece of paper, "I have a loft at SoHo. It doubles as my pad and my studio."

"Wow," he exclaimed, "Isn't that kind of expensive?"

"I have no doubt it is," I laughed, "And I wouldn't be able to afford it. My parents bought it in the sixties. They were both artists. It's the only thing they left my sister and myself when they died in an air crash in Bolivia eight years ago."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I think they would have wanted us to keep it. So we have, though there were times in the last few years when both of us were sorely tempted to sell. The money would have come in handy."

"Now of course we can afford to keep it," I added.

"Can I come and have a look tomorrow?" he asked, his voice full of barely suppressed eagerness.

"Yes, of course," I said.

I was feeling absurdly happy. I seemed to have made his day.

*****

It was Saturday morning. I was barely awake when he turned up at the door like an apparition, bright eyed and well scrubbed. When he saw me all bleary and disheveled in my PJs, he looked apologetic. I reassured him with a happy little smile and waved him in. The day was already looking up.

I gave him a free run of the house while I showered. As the warm water pounded my flesh, I felt a deep sense of well being slowly settle over me. I didn't remember feeling this cheerful in a long time. The loft was rather large and overpowering for one person. The prospect of sharing coffee with someone else in the morning was a welcome one.

I found him in the studio, walking from one canvas to the other, examining them carefully. I leaned on the doorframe and watched him as he moved slowly through the room. He sensed my presence and turned to face me.

"They are beautiful," he said, "Suddenly, I feel ... very inadequate."

"You wouldn't need to," I replied, "if you saw your work through my eyes."

I walked into the studio and dropped into the couch in the middle of the long hall. I patted the place next to mine in invitation. He accepted the steaming cup I held out to him and sat down. Light was streaming in through the large windows that ran the length of the wall. The antique metal fire escape that ran down the outside of the building stood outlined in the window directly opposite, slicing the clear blue sky into manageable pieces.

"I love this place," he said, "and the neighborhood."

"It has such ... character," he added groping for the right word.

That it did. I had grown up in this neighborhood ... of imposing cast iron architecture and quaint cobblestone streets. I was deeply attached to it, despite its gradual transformation from a haven for struggling artists to a hip destination for yuppies, with million dollar homes and fancy boutiques. The artists had gradually left, seeking lower rents and like minds. There were now very few of us who continued to hang on. But I could never imagine leaving. The memories of my parents were woven into the fabric of this neighborhood, into the noise of its cafes, it's bohemian pretensions, it's decorative facades, it's smooth paving stones. I was afraid that if I left, the memories would abandon me too, leaving me bereft of what little tenuous connection remained between us.

"I know," I said, "I'm grateful for having it."

I showed him around the studio so he would know where to find the things he needed - brushes, palette, paints, canvas. I set up an easel for him at some distance from mine. It was near an open window with plenty of light. He seemed a bit overwhelmed and was running his fingers along the grain of the wooden easel with something that resembled reverence.

But once he began to work, he was all business. I admired his focus, his single-minded absorption in the figures appearing on the canvas, which he would later drench in color. We worked steadily for a few hours, barely exchanging a word, before we broke for lunch. As we munched burgers and sipped beer at Fanelli's, we reveled in the pleasurable exhaustion that comes from creative activity. We were emotionally drained, but also kind of elated.

It became a regular feature -- our shared weekends when we would work feverishly in the morning, scarcely acknowledging each other, and then spend the evenings in each other's company, either lounging in one of the charming little cafes that dot the neighborhood or walking the lanes of SoHo or down Broadway gawking at the window displays. He unwound a little during these excursions, but he was still a bit stiff, quietly respectful, unwilling to cross the boundary into easy camaraderie. It dawned on me all of a sudden that I was no longer happy with the role of a teacher. I wanted to be a friend. Or did I want more and dared not confess it -- even to myself?

One Sunday, as I watched him working at his easel with the smooth, almost poetic efficiency that I had now become accustomed to, I was suddenly filled with an insane little urge, which at that moment seemed quite irresistible. Before my brain could dampen that urge with some caution, the words had already slipped, fully formed, from my lips.

"I want to paint you."

I looked as startled as he did at this declaration. He hesitated for a moment, then whispered, "okay."

Our eyes were locked together now, both of us wary of this new animal that had been unleashed and was now prowling about in the room flicking its muscular tail and regarding us with yellow hungry eyes.

"In the nude," I added. I was beginning to get a bit worried. Something seemed to have gotten hold of my tongue. I was saying things that my mind was not even conscious of processing.

His lips seemed to have dried up and his tongue flicked out to lick them wet.

"Does the idea make you nervous?" I asked him. My voice was flat, as though we were discussing something entirely commonplace and not his peeling off his clothes in my presence.

"A little," he replied.

"But I'll do it if that's what you want," he added quickly, "You've never asked anything of me."

"That's what I want," I confirmed.

We were both standing still as statues, not knowing what more to say or do.

"So that's settled then. Next Saturday," I finally said and turned back to my work.

The following week was awkward, neither of us able to wish away the specter of the little agreement which loomed large between us. But as I reflected on what had transpired, I realized that it was something that I had wanted for a long time. My lips had, in a fit of impatience, merely voiced what my mind had refused to admit. I wanted to see him naked. I wanted to drink in the vision of his smooth brown body with nothing to shield him from my eyes -- no concealment, no artifice, no flimsy defense of fabric. The thought made me wet. I caught myself hoping that he shared, at least in some small measure, my sense of excitement. I hoped that deep inside his heart he also wanted it, wanted to be naked ... for me.

*****

"Where do you want me?" he asked.

"On the couch," I said.

He was standing in the middle of the room, looking like a lost little puppy, fingering the buttons of his shirt nervously. My heart went out to him. It did nothing to change my mind though. If anything, he looked even more heartbreakingly delicious. I stepped up to him and gently reached for the top button of his shirt. He flinched at the light pressure of my fingers on his chest.

"Relax," I whispered, pretending to an easy confidence that I didn't feel at that point.

I slowly unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders, careful not to trail my fingers across his skin. I kneeled down to unbuckle his belt and slide it through the loops of his jeans. As his zipper rasped open, he kept his arms quietly by his sides. He didn't seem to know what to do with them. I slipped off his jeans and boxers, not looking directly at his crotch. I didn't want to make him more self-conscious than he already was. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at his thick fleshy circumcised cock, which was as yet flaccid. He must be really nervous, I thought.

I tugged his hand to lower him onto the couch and then gently pressed the flat of my palm on his chest to ease him back into the cushions. I nudged his thighs onto the couch until he was reclining. I flattened the knee of the leg closest to me and folded the one further away so that he was fully exposed from where I would stand, by my easel. I straightened up to examine my handiwork. As I ran my eyes slowly down the length of his golden brown flesh, I couldn't help whispering, "You are beautiful."

He blushed. There he goes again, I thought. I was getting addicted to that flush in his cheeks. It made my pussy lurch. So did the vision spread out before me. He was slim without an ounce of extra flesh, without the over defined torso of someone who pumps iron. His legs were lean, his thighs and calves well muscled. His soft silky hair drifted over his forehead and his liquid brown eyes were regarding me with a mixture of trepidation and something else which seemed, to my rather biased eye, like longing.

I wanted to paint him in colors that were stark ... to stretch his golden flesh across the canvas against a scarlet couch offset by the icy blue of the morning sky framed in the window in the background, the blue expanse broken only by the dark shadow of the fire escape. As I worked, his eyes darted around the studio as if he were seeing it for the first time. He seemed vaguely unsettled by the unfamiliar position in which he found himself ... at the receiving end of a searching eye, which ran unabashed, unashamed over his naked length.

And then as I was splashing the canvas with splotches of angry red using thick greedy strokes of my brush, our eyes met ... and something changed. He was no longer an object that I was committing to canvas. He was pulsing naked flesh, with desires and dreams and needs, blood tumbling through his veins, achingly vulnerable. The air seemed to crackle between us and he sensed the subtle shift in mood. He saw hunger flood my eyes and his body tightened as if in self-defense.

As I slid from behind the easel and stepped towards him ... slowly, purposefully ... his cock began to harden. He saw my lips twitch knowingly and blushed at being betrayed by his flesh. But there was nothing he could do. By the time I stood over him in my paint-spattered apron, a brush dangling from my fingers, dripping red, he was erect and quivering.

I held his eyes as I raised my arm and trailed the brush in a long vertical line bisecting his chest, marking him. He moaned at the fiery path I burned across his skin. When I tossed the brush aside carelessly and knelt beside him, he whimpered softly. I think he sensed what was to come ... sensed its inevitability, its utter necessity. I was still gazing into those limpid pools when I reached down and curled my fingers around his cock. It was hot and silky ... and it pulsed.

"Andrea ..." he whispered.

I sighed.

"I've been waiting for so long to hear my name from your lips, Anees. Tell me what you want, baby."

"Andrea ... no," he moaned.

"No ...? But your body tells me otherwise, my pet," I replied.

And indeed it was. His hips were surging softly, fucking his tumescent flesh into the velvet glove of my fingers. He groaned, unable to deny the truth of what I had said ... resentful that his body wouldn't allow him to lie ... and buried his face in the skin of my throat. He wasn't getting away that easily. I slid my free arm under his neck and around his shoulder and gently twisted his body until he was looking at me again.

"Tell me what you want, baby." I repeated.

His lips fluttered softly, but made no sound.

"Well, if you won't tell me what you want, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do to you."

I smoothed his silky hair back from his forehead and gently pulled him against my shoulder. He was looking at me expectantly, awaiting my pronouncement of his fate. I smiled at him softly before I whispered into the shell of his ear, "I'm going to make you cum so hard that you'll feel like you are being turned inside out."

He shuddered in my arms as the words dripped like molten wax into his ear.

"I'm going to make you spurt your thick hot cream all over your body, Anees." I whispered hotly, "That's how I want to paint you, utterly spent, your balls milked dry."

I reveled in the way his shoulders shook against the length of my arm as I cradled him. And then I began to play with him, my fingers sliding up and down his hot shaft, milking him. The head of his cock swelled with need as I slid his velvety skin against his throbbing flesh. I maintained a steady rhythm, not too slow, not too fast. I didn't want him to die of boredom; but I didn't want him to spurt very quickly either. He would want that release very, very badly before he got it.

As I fisted him, without haste and without mercy, I gazed into the beautiful midnight darkness of his eyes. I watched as desire began to pool in them making his pupils dilate. I savored the shadow of surprise that flitted across them as I used him. ... And finally, I tasted the raw pleading that rose from their depths like smoke and sought some glimmer of hope in mine. My baby was getting more and more frantic. He reached upwards, his softly trembling lips aching to find mine. But I retreated, my lips just beyond his reach, my breath tickling his flesh. He whimpered at being so cruelly denied. Soon, I whispered, soon. My fingers sped up a fraction.

I held his eyes with mine until they fogged over with lust. And then finally, his eyes fluttered closed and his head rolled back against my arm. He was close. Time to finish him. I rested my cheek against his chest and looked down at his hard throbbing shaft as my fingers accelerated to a blur. I wanted to watch his cock in its final helpless throes; watch it spew his essence.

I held his thrashing body down with mine as he spurted. He came for a long time, his cum staining his belly, his thighs and the couch. I watched as thick creamy blobs of it slid down the muscled slope of his thigh, leaving wet, glistening trails in their wake. I held him for a long time in my arms, waiting for his breathing to quiet. When I finally stood up, I drank in the glorious vision on my couch, of him cum stained, emptied. That would make one hell of a canvas.

I fetched wet towels from the bath and wiped him dry, my fingers soft and tender. I gently hefted the softening length of his cock in my palm and wrapped a warm towel around the pulsing flesh. When he was all cleaned up, I planted a soft kiss on his forehead. It was the first time I had kissed him and it seemed so heartachingly intimate ... even more intimate than the release that I had just torn from his flesh.

When he opened his eyes, I saw doubt in them ... and desire ... and a million other things that struggled for voice. He sat up slowly as though he were awakening from a lifetime of sleep. He sat on the couch, hunched, his hands curled loosely in his lap. When he turned towards me, I saw that he had made up his mind about something. He gently took my hands in both of his before he began to speak.

"Andrea ... I need to be alone for a while. What you did just now was beautiful ... the most beautiful thing anybody has ever done for me." He hesitated. "But I need to sort out my feelings ... about all of this. Do you understand?"

His eyes were anxious. He seemed mortified at the prospect of offending me. I smiled at him reassuringly.

"I understand, Anees." I said softly, my palm covering his, " But I want you to know that I'm not sorry for what happened. I'm not going to apologize for what I did. If given a chance, I'd do it all over again. So, you do need to think long and hard about what you want. Whatever it is, I'll respect it."