Girlfriend Experience

The room was full of paint fumes, which the ceiling fan was trying to blow out of the opened windows. I belatedly shut the doors to the room to keep the fumes out of the rest of the house, and then peered into the mishmash of opened jars of paint.

Most of them were close to empty. Oh. Yeah. Broke.

I looked more carefully at the evolving canvas. Lots of bright colors - no grays or browns. I realized the grays and brown paint jars were sequestered on the small table, far away from the action, that held the little speaker pouring out hard driving music, like Cheri had decided to not muddle her paintings with non-colors other than black.

I sat on a small chair behind and to the right side of Cheri, far enough away to not intrude, and watched her paint, somewhat distracted by her big sexy booty swaying to the beat. The chair was covered with a smaller version of the paint splattered canvas drop cloth protecting the entire floor of the room.

After a long mesmerizing spell watching a master at work, I realized I was still pretty tired. So went and picked up my empty rice bowl.

Cheri must have picked up the motion out of the corner of her eye, because she turned around and looked at me, sweaty, heavy lidded with fatigue and sleep deprivation, sexy as all fuck. "Back to sleep?"

"Nah. Gotta send some work emails."

She lifted her chin a tiny bit and pouted her lips in a Come Here and Kiss Me Already gesture.

I came over and carefully kissed her, her arms held out to the sides, still holding sponges in her paint smeared hands, trying not to get paint on her fluffy red bathrobe that I was wearing. "I love this painting."

She gave it a critical glance. "Wait til it's done. Still getting the image to pop."

"Great Jollof rice, by the way."

She sighed. "It's OK. Needed meat."

I padded off into the living room, sneaking one last peek at her magnificent booty before I shut the doors.

***

Cheri reopened the doors of the studio as the first rays of sun peeked in the windows.

"Done?" I asked.

"Whattaya think?"

I went inside the studio. "Holy. Fuck."

"Is that a good 'Holy fuck?' "

"Fucking is always good," I said, winking.

She rolled her eyes. "Seriously."

The painting was spectacular. It was a huge canvas, six feet by four feet, with 2 inch thick museum quality edges, barely fitting on the easel. Cheri had covered most of the canvas in brightly colored sponge work, including all the edges. She'd rendered a 3D surface from the heavy bodied paint, then crisscrossed it with thick lines where the color varied along the entire length of each line, finishing with metallic, fluorescent, and iridescent touches to lead one's eye around the canvas. I stared at the painting, an embedded pattern nibbling at my subconscious, not just pure abstraction.

"What's it about?"

"I don't believe in defining my paintings with the sort of pretentious word salad so many artists use. The viewer gets to assign their own meaning to my work."

I stepped up to the canvas. "Can I turn it, figure out which orientation I like best?"

"Sure. Paint should be dry."

I carefully hefted it. The canvas made a squicking sound as I pulled it off the bottom lip of the easel, where all the weight had been resting.

"Well, dry except for that bit of the side which wasn't exposed to air."

"Did I damage it?"

"Nah. I can touch it up if needed."

I turned the heavy canvas ninety degrees clockwise, from landscape mode to portrait mode, watched a series of metallic and iridescent accents glitter and gleam off the tiny peaks and valleys in the paint, on and off and then on again, as the angle of reflection from the room lighting changed. Put the painting back on the easel. Stared at it.

The pattern -- the meaning -- hovered tantalizingly close, but still elusive.

Picked up the painting, rotated it another ninety degrees, back to landscape, but upside down from the original position.

Glanced at Cheri. Her eyes were amused, presumably waiting for her somewhat slow but endearing boyfriend -- or was that "boyfriend"? -- to get it.

I looked. And looked. Nothing.

And then the faint pattern suddenly snapped into focus. It was a view of a long haired, dark skinned woman, presumably Cheri, laying on top of a lighter skinned guy between his spread apart thighs. The skin tones were composed entirely of colors instead of browns, a hard trick to pull off, but she'd succeeded. Despite the facial features being blurred almost beyond recognition, the guy somehow looked startled, or worried, or ecstatic or... something.

Once you saw the pattern, you couldn't unsee it.

Cheri either fucking my ass, or just about to do so.

"Fuuuuck."

Cheri was laughing silently. "They certainly are."

"Is that the moment when... you know...?" When I figured out you had a dick, I thought. Don't have to be PC in my thoughts.

Her eyes narrowed, glittering a bit. "It's OK to silently think the word 'dick'. Just don't say it out loud."

Busted. Fuck. How does she do that?

"The meaning you think you see here can be mighty slippery. It might change over time. Evolve. And that's OK."

"How much?"

"It can evolve a hell of a lot."

"I meant, I fucking love this painting. I want to buy it. How much do you want for it?"

Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then a soft look appeared. "I'd give it to you as a gift -- if I could."

I raised my eyebrows, waiting for a price.

"Ummm... I've got paintings this size in galleries priced at fifteen. After the 50% commission -- taxes -- replacement paint and canvas -- maybe clear six."

I waited, letting her take her time.

"If you could pay cash, the boyfriend price -- uhh -- four thousand?"

I wanted to blurt out 'yes', but long experience at negotiating made me wait. Ostensibly thinking about it. Agree too quickly, and Cheri would feel remorse at not asking for more, instead of feeling good about closing a sale.

She stepped inches away from me, watching my eyes, a soft wounded look on her face. Put her warm hands, still covered in dried acrylic paint, on both of my cheeks, caressing them gently.

"If it's too much, I --"

I put a finger on her lips, silencing her. "Negotiating tip from someone who's really good at that. After you name a price, stop talking. Make them respond. Don't undercut your own price."

She nodded, then a wicked gleam sparked in her eye. Slid her lips over my finger. Sucked and licked. A faux blowjob.

"Mmmm. Never had a woman do that to me."

She took her lips off my finger, presumably to speak. I instantly regretted the tactical error. What sort of idiot interrupts a blowjob?

"OK. How many * guys * did you let do that?" she teased, her eyes merry.

Thought about it. "Four."

"Four guys?"

"Four thousand. Cash. For the painting. If you come to my house and hang it for me."

Her eyes widened. "You're the best boyfriend ever." She gave me a lingering hug and kiss. I hugged back, let her kiss me. Make her work for it.

She broke the kiss. "Kissing you ain't work, sir," she said in a Texas drawl.

"How the fuck do you DO that?"

"I'm smarter than your average bear. Remember that if you're ever tempted to lie to me, even a little bit."

I nodded. Glanced at the time on the microwave. "My bank outta be open by the time you shower, dress, and we load up my SUV."

She put my finger back between her lips, gave it a three second blowjob. "By the time WE shower, you mean."

"I think that might be pushing my dick's refractory period a bit much."

"Don't have to cum to enjoy a leisurely, steamy blowjob."

"Mmmm. I'd love to have your lips wrapped --"

"Who said YOU would be getting the blowjob?"

My eyes widened.

She grinned. "Kidding."

I relaxed again.

"Maybe."

I gave her stink eye, stuck my tongue out at her.

"See? Changed your mind already," she said merrily, her lovely wicked eyes sparkling.

I hurriedly retracted my tongue.

***

After a long soapy semi-platonic shower together, we dressed, and then I walked to retrieve my Lexus SUV from where I'd parked it yesterday, while she packed some gear to hang the painting. Driving the couple blocks back to her apartment, I mused on how surreal it felt that I'd met Cheri only about a half day ago.

And how I was planning on driving her to my house and giving her four thousand dollars. In cash.

Things were moving really fast.

My internal Red Flag O' Doom popped up.

I mentally told that idiot savant to go sit in a corner, wear a dunce hat, and shut the fuck up.

Back in the apartment, I picked up the painting, while Cheri flicked off the lights then hefted a green worker's bag full of her gear. As I headed to the door, I noticed the rice cooker, the jollof rice still warming in it. I nodded at it. "Hey, could you bring that? Thought I'd make breakfast at my house, use the rice as a side."

She nodded, held the door open for me as I awkwardly maneuvered the huge painting, then went to retrieve her bag and the cooker. Locked the apartment. Rode down in the elevator with me and the Ginormous Painting O' Ass Fucking.

Outside, she eyed my black Lexus appraisingly. "Really nice SUV."

"Thanks." I tapped my key and the hatch quietly raised up.

"Is that gonna fit inside?"

"Sure. If I fold down the middle seats and angle it in."

"Really?" She looked skeptical.

"Not my first rodeo, hauling shite."

I had to adjust the front seats a bit, but soon the hatch closed silently, the glass barely clearing the top corner of the painting. "Ta-daa!"

In the Lexus, I said, "I live quite a ways south of here."

"I think I can just about manage to free up a few hours from my busy schedule," she said, deadpan, her eyes more heavy lidded than when I first met her. Tired from being up all night.

As I drove, I chatted with Cheri about painting techniques and fucking, with her at one point teasingly describing me as being "Gayer than that time when gay came to Gaytown." I got on 183, drove over the Colorado River to 71 and then 290, cutting across south Austin, and took the swooping flyover way up the air, heading toward Mopac freeway.

"Whee!" she said, flinging her arms up at the top, an expansive view of real estate for tens of miles around. "Great rollercoaster!"

"Nice view, yeah?" I drove back down, got off at the William Cannon exit, stopped at my bank. "Back in a bit. Gotta get your cash."

"K." She turned up the radio, rocking out.

I withdrew four thousand for the painting, plus a couple hundred more for walking around money, rejoined Cheri. Got back on Mopac, kept driving south as the city tapered into suburbs, then into the rolling roads of the Hill Country exurbs.

"You weren't kidding about living a long ways away," Cheri said. "Thought you lived in an apartment." Her forehead creased for a moment, like she was idly speculating if she had terribly misjudged me and was being abducted by a serial killer.

"You're not an ax murderer, are you?" she said, lightheartedly.

"Nah. I prefer chain saws." Glanced at her, deadpan.

A flash appraisal from her dark eyes.

Eyes back on the twisty road going up yet another steep hill. Not a drive for lingering, loving gazes, if you liked keeping your car's sheet metal intact.

She make a sound halfway between a scoff and a chortle. "Like you would know how to run a chain saw, city boy."

I turned into the woodsy exurban housing development where I lived, taking the corner at spee. Not my first time zipping thru that turn. "This look like city to you?" I slowed down, watching for those fucking deer, or maybe another wild pig. Or pedestrians. Texas.

Interspersed among the woodlands was some pricey real estate. I kept on driving.

"Never answered my question about the alleged apartment you allegedly lived in."

"After my ex trashed the place, I changed the lock on the door. Then the arsehole apartment manager told me I had to give them keys for the new locks, one for them, one to give to my ex if she came back. Since she was still on the lease."

"Annd?"

"Nice thing about having minor levels of Fuck You Money. You can tell people like that to fuck off, and then break the lease, walk away. So I bought a house."

"In a month?"

"In about a week. You'd be amazed at how fast you can close with motivated sellers and an all cash offer." I signaled right, hit the garage door button. "We're here."

She stared at my large two story house, with a three car garage on an expansive lot. The house was painted a boring beige -- fucking HOA -- with some limestone cladding. "Oh my fucking god. It's gorgeous."

"Thanks." I hit a button near the top of the door's armrest, out of habit, and the mirrors turned inward. Not that I needed more room in the two car main bay. "Probably should take the painting in via the front door. Oh. Almost forgot." I fished a bank envelope out of my pocket, stuffed with bills. "Got you a mix of bills -- hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens."

She stuffed the envelope in the pocket of her jeans, not counting it.

I raised my eyebrows just a fraction as we exited the vehicle.

She shrugged. Answered my unspoken question about not counting. "You know my Three Rules. I think you kinda like me, wouldn't want me to abruptly exit your life."

I got the hatch opening, then headed to unlock the front door. "Damn straight, skippy. I do kinda like you. A lot."

She tagged along, carrying the rice cooker and green workbag. "Again. Not nearly as straight as you think."

I rolled my eyes. Opened the door.

"Ooooh," she said. "Niiiice."

"Quit gawking. Let's get that painting inside, then I can give you the fiddy cent tour."

She put the rice cooker and the bag inside, to the right of the doorway.

We unloaded the painting from the Lexus. I hit one button on my keychain to close the hatch, and when it latched shut to the whirring of some hidden motor, got the double bay garage door rolling shut too.

I led, steering the painting along the hardwood flooring. Down a hallway past a fully furnished front room to the left and my home office to the right. Past the stairway swooping up to the second level, and into a big open area, a luxurious kitchen on the left with a huge marble island, and a two story high living room with natural light pouring into it from a bank of windows stretching from thigh high up to the ceiling twenty four feet overhead. The windows overlooked a beautifully landscape back yard stretching back to a black wrought iron fence with a gate to the woodlands beyond.

"Wow," Cheri said. "Love all this natural light. Great painting light."

We leaned the painting against the wall facing the bank of windows. At the top of the wall, one floor up, a wooden railing upstairs overlooked the living room.

"Thanks. Where in this room do you think we should hang the painting?"

"You've got almost no art on the walls!"

"Moved here from a small apartment with not much wall space. Been a bit busy since then, what with escaping my psycho ex and grieving my lost innocence and whatnot."

"Where's the master bedroom?"

I pointed to the right, toward a bare two story wall. "Other side of that wall."

She peeked in the bedroom. "One story in here. Big painting like this, two stories up would be better." She stepped back in the living room. Pointed at the right wall. "Here. Go hold the painting up where you think it should be."

I carried it over, held it up, centered on the wall in landscape position. High enough up that the bottom edge of the painting was around my shoulder level.

"OK. Now let me hold it there, and you take a look."

We switched places. "Looks good," I said.

"What do you see?"

"You getting ready to fuck me on your bed."

"You only tried it in three orientations. Let me give it another turn clockwise."

She turned it. I tilted my head to the right, trying to get the bed in the right orientation.

Cheri waited.

And then the meaning snapped into a different configuration. We were no longer laying on a bed. We were standing up, with me pressed against a wall, and Cheri standing behind me, her limbs entwined around mine like a grapevine. Her outer thighs pressing my thighs farther apart, her feet crossing mine in the front, stepping on my feet, pinning my legs in place. Her arms holding mine above my head, grabbing me by the wrists. Getting me ready to be assfucked, in a position where I would be utterly submissive, unable to break free.

"Oh," I said. "Not from last night."

She nodded, her eyes narrowed, an almost predatory look on her face. "I'd say... in about five, ten minutes in the future. Depending on how much foreplay you need before you allow me to take your virginity." She placed the painting on the floor, leaning it against the left side of the wall. Strode toward me. Grabbed my hand, tugged me toward the wall, pushed me against it so I faced her.

Pressed against me, kissing me hard. Her rolled tongue pushed thru my lips, fucking my mouth. She impatiently unbuttoned my shirt as I unbuttoned hers, racing to undress each other first. She flung my shirt away first, and then I lost more time unhooking her bra, freeing her sexy small breasts with erect dark nipples.

By the time I had one of her nipple in my mouth, biting it, she'd unbuckled my belt and yanked both my pants and underwear to mid thigh. I clumsily fumbled with her jeans.

"Take off your pants and shoes," she gasped. As I did so, she grabbed the waistline of her jeans, yanked them down but kept her black panties on, a slight bulge in the front from her clit. Kicked her shoes off, stepped out of her jeans, flung off her socks.

By now I was completely naked, and she only had her underwear on.

Hiding her clit from my sight? I thought.

She kissed me again, urgently, her hard nipples pressing against my chest, her crotch grinding into mine.

She grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, roughly shoved me against the wall.

Grabbed a tube of lube from her green bag, clicked the cap off.

I glanced at the painting next to us as she emulated the position, entwining her legs and arms around mine, roughly spreading my legs apart further.

"You ready to get fucked?"

"Yeah."

"Ready to lose your anal virginity?"

"Yes!"

"Say it," she said, spreading lube liberally between my cheeks. "Say what you want."

"I want you to fuck me!"

"Fuck what?" she said, her finger rubbing circles around my hole.

"Fuck my ass. Please!"

She jammed her finger inside, all the way to the knuckle. I yelped in surprise at the suddenness. She withdrew it.

"Reach around your back and pull my panties down. Show me you want it."

I hooked my fingers around the waistband, slid her panties down to her thighs.

She slowly started grinding her cock -- her clit -- between my cheeks, teasing me. Slowing the pace.

"Do you want me inside?"

"Fuck yes."

"Say it. Say what you want."

"Shove your clit in me, baby."

"Do you want me to put on a condom?"

"No. I trust you."

"You gotta promise me something," she whispered in a small voice. Holding still. Hugging me tight.

"Mmmm?"

"If we're not using condoms - we can't have sex with anyone else."

I turned my head. Searched her eyes. They were anxious - pleading.

"That's a big commitment."

She rubbed her nose against my cheek. "I'll take good care of you, baby. I promise."

I nodded.

"You can call me anytime. Fuck me any way you like."

"What if I change my mind?"

"Then tell me. We can use condoms. Or break up. Just don't cheat on me and then not tell me." She took a deep breath, raggedly exhaled. "I don't want to die."

"What about your other... boyfriends?"

"This is my first time doing... this."

I looked in her eyes, softly, wondering if this was her not breaking character in the role playing. Or whether she had really been that desperate...