Pictures of Her

I knew I would have to aim the next one better, to just graze her face without splashing hard against it, but I also knew that I was about to be gripped by a thundering orgasm that would obliterate any control I had left of anything.

I aimed slightly more downward and left this universe for a while.

When I came back, I saw that I'd done a better job than I thought. Her neck was covered, and there was a big dollop in her near ear - I could crop those out with the right camera angle - but her face was clean and bright except for one thin line stretching across her upper lip and onto her far cheek.

"Get the picture," she reminded me when she saw that I was aware of the world again.

Of course, I had completely forgotten, but I managed to snap the shutter twice before collapsing back to sit on my feet and try to breathe.

I never did make a surreptitious copy of picture #43 on card 2. I found that I just couldn't do that to her. It wasn't mine, I hadn't earned the right to have it. But I never forgot it for the rest of my life.

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"I have another first I want to commemorate this year," Tina told me at her 20th birthday party.

I looked at both of her through my alcohol haze, knowing that after she'd used me at last year's annual photo session to commemorate her first time getting and giving head, there was only one first left for her.

"Tomorrow?" I asked.

"Let's wait till Monday. I think tomorrow is going to be rough for both of us."

I wasn't really that drunk, but yeah, I was probably going to be hung over.

The previous year had been rough for me. We became even closer friends, but just friends. We were both too busy seeing other people to be anything but.

I was in love with her. She was clearly not in love with me. Maybe it was the intimacy of our photo sessions that made her feel like we had to keep it on a professional level.

The things she'd shown me... no, dammit, not me, just my camera, and her future self, they haunted me all year. My imagination ran away with me about what new things she was experiencing. Things I would not experience with her, even when she inevitably made me recreate them with her after her birthday.

I didn't feel much jealousy about her dates and boyfriends, not really. Not the possessive kind of jealousy anyway, more the longing kind of jealousy, the pining kind.

She'd experienced many of the same things that any extremely attractive woman of 18, and then 19, would experience. And she'd used me as a prop for some of them. Just my hand, and last year, my penis.

Faceless body parts, simulating the doing of things to her that some man had done for real in the previous year.

I couldn't take it anymore.

There was one first left. She hadn't lost her virginity as of our previous session. Now, she seemed to be telling me that that too would be included in the commemoration this year.

I wondered exactly how she would want that event commemorated.

I'd fallen in love with her last time. Not because of her body... well, yes, but not because I got to see her tits and ass. Because of how she was when I saw them, who she was. How she was so unselfconscious of her nudity, yet fully aware of it at every moment while still fully focused on whatever task was at hand. How she treated her body as a simple fact. It was just her body, and whether nude or fully clothed, it was always there, always with her, always part of her.

She was as poised in the nude as she was clothed. Even in the throes of an orgasm, she was self-contained. She attacked it with dignified abandon, let it whip her body, let it wrack her with convulsions because she had decided it was proper to allow that.

She'd let me witness that as well. I just wasn't supposed to see it, to feel it. That I, the photographer she'd chosen to document it year by year, could see it was of no consequence. I made her comfortable, made her feel safe, my presence was unthreatening. My professionalism meant that exposing herself to me wasn't really exposing herself. It didn't count. I didn't count.

She didn't friendzone me, it wasn't like that. She never led me on, never suggested I might get a taste for real if I did what she wanted. We were genuinely friends, and the one thing she wanted from me, I did because she asked, because she bought me a very nice lunch, because it was what I did. Because we were friends.

Over the last year, we'd continued our accidental pattern of on and off dating, with others. When she was on, I was off, and vice-versa. Even if I thought there was some chance she'd want to date me, there was never more than a few days, a week at the most, when we were both fully single.

We'd seen a lot of each other, even gone out on Platonic dates. None of the second-hand intimacy of what she'd let me see and do in our photo sessions brought any tension to it. Except inside my guts every time I saw her.

We celebrated aced tests and commiserated over disappointments. We rooted for each other. She'd come to me when she broke up with the boyfriend that she'd hinted to me before might be 'the one'. She cried in my arms in my dorm room.

She'd told me his name once, but all I remembered him as was The One. Him, I was a little jealous of. A lot jealous of.

Her birthday this year was a small party, just for close friends. I was one of them. Neither of us had a date to the party. We were in one of those times - probably a very brief time - where we were both free.

I'd made a decision.

======

Back at the ruin of a barn in a wide-open abandoned field, we began our next photo session. I unpacked my gear while she unpacked her props.

This year, she didn't start out by dropping the sundress, the same one that still fit her perfectly. She seemed more nervous than usual. She did strip, at least to panties and bra when she changed clothes, but the pictures of her body would have to wait. First were the pictures of her year in review, the highlights of it, those highlights that didn't involve nudity at least.

I took pictures of her in a pair of fancy new shoes that were apparently one of the highlights of her year. I took a picture with her first ever speeding ticket held proudly in front of her, just under her chin like an old-time mugshot.

There were a dozen more props and three changes of clothes. She had an active life and had had a busy year.

I don't even remember what they were, and I'm sure my pictures this time were uninspired, would probably be recognizable as such when she saw them. I knew it would be the case; another reason for the decision I had made. She deserved my best, and I couldn't give it to her anymore.

She excused herself and went around the corner of the old barn carrying a bag. She was there a long time while I fiddled with the cameras to no real purpose.

She came back walking slowly, elegantly, her face entirely different than I'd ever seen it, her posture something... something more than she had ever shown me.

My jaw hit the dirt.

She wore the evening dress she'd worn to a formal party held by her sorority. The party where she'd met The One.

The dress was simply astounding. No, she was astounding, the dress was just a vehicle for it. It dipped low enough to show the flat of her chest and the inner swells of her breasts. It hugged her hips without being skin tight. It teased the shape of her ass without giving too much away, and in the front, it gave the illusion of dipping between her thighs without...

Her makeup was so subtle and so perfect that at first glance, I would have sworn she wasn't wearing any.

My Lord.

Her high heels made her statuesque, like that singular plane of existence she occupied had finally tipped up to float above the world of mere mortals. Whatever it was that heels did for normal women had done something transcendent for her.

I hauled my jaw up off the floor and got down to business. I did my best to capture her in a range of poses, knowing it was futile, knowing that no mere pixels could hold her, hold what she was now.

But she seemed impatient. Maybe it was because The One had turned out not to be. Maybe the dress was an unpleasant memory for her. The thought of her experience with him having ruined this... what this was, filled me with rage. For the first time, I wanted to punish someone for what they'd done to her.

At the same time, I gave her credit for still wanting to commemorate the event, the courage to remember the good, the bad, and the ugly. That was who she was too. Honest to a fault, never hiding from what was true, what was real.

The dress made me decide that emerald green was my all-time favorite color.

Despite the resolve with which I'd made my decision, and as much as I adored looking at that dress, I was getting ideas of seeing her without it. Certainly, that was coming. Just as certainly, some of my body parts would be playing the role of The One while I stayed out of view, out of her life memories.

"So, you want to get to those documentary shots?"

She smirked, seeing right through to my ulterior motive. She shook her head. "Not yet. One more first to commemorate before that."

I put the camera down on the table. I didn't need to ask her what that first was, and I didn't need to confirm with her that she knew that I knew. "And how exactly do you mean to commemorate that?" I asked.

She smiled nervously, and I got it. Her commemorative photos were re-creations, if not in full, at least in principle. She wasn't going to flinch from this one any more than she had the others.

I wanted nothing more than to re-create that with her, but not halfway. I wanted... well, what I wanted didn't matter. I was just the hired help, for the price of a fancy lunch and a vicarious thrill or two.

That she came to this right after the green dress told me that The One had been the one, at least for one night. I felt a stab of jealousy, but tried to console myself with the fact that he was history, and she was here with me right now.

But I hated myself for thinking it. I wanted nothing more in the world than to see her happy. Any disappointment she suffered could not possibly make me feel better.

She reached for her shoulders to slide the thin straps off them.

"Wait," I said sharply. She froze, surprised, a hint of worry on her face. "You, right now, just as you are, you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." It was an unprofessional thing to say, but it had to be said.

I didn't want this job anymore, not with her. I'd spent the last year looking forward to it. Not to her commemorations specifically, but to just being with her. Just seeing her, clothes on and off. Seeing her smile, seeing the way her body moved in that easy but determined way, like she was in complete control of it, like it was just an extension of her thoughts.

I'd looked forward to it too much, and the thought that it would only be a shadow of what I most wanted gnawed at me the entire year.

Her face melted and her hands dropped to her sides. "Jason... thank you. That means a lot."

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

She shook her head no, but said, "More sure than I've been of anything."

It was a strange remark, but before I could process it, she asked, "What about you?"

I shook my head, and meant it. "No," I said. "I'm not sure."

Doubt flashed across her face. She looked broken for an instant, then regained her determined expression. She opened her mouth to say something, but I got mine open first.

"But I will. For you," I said, knowing it would be torture. But I could not refuse. I knew what this meant to her, this commemoration of her years, and what it would mean in the years to come, to have these pictures to look back on. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Did she print them out, the best ones? Or did she just keep them on a drive somewhere, to peruse when the mood struck her? I didn't know, but I knew she needed this, and if that was how she needed to preserve those memories, that is what I would do.

I resolved to tell her at our lunch later that I could not continue this. That it was too much for me. But I couldn't let her go without this one last chance to see her, to touch her, to watch her face and body in all of its moods, including in climax.

She nodded and slid the dress off her body to crumple at her feet. At first, all I could do was stare at that pool of emerald green, of the amorphous shape it took now, so unlike the ethereal shape it had taken on an instant ago. It was as if the dress being on the floor did more to reveal her than her nude body itself did.

I looked up at her. Her eyes twinkled, her lips smiled through that oh so subtle lipstick, a color that complimented her skin so perfectly it looked like she was born with it.

Then she was all business again. "You should take your clothes off too." Without waiting for an answer, she moved to her bag and unfolded a large blanket. A blanket made for two.

As she spread it over the ground, I stripped, not bothering to hide the fact that I had a full erection. She would know it, she knew me well enough. And it would be her prop for this charade.

I set up the two tripods almost as before. This time the ground level one was to the side. I made sure the high one was at its fullest extension. I had to bring out the small step stool I had as part of my kit to adjust the angle and camera settings to take in the right part of the blanket.

I had her lie on her back on the blanket to make sure it caught her face as well as... the main point, I guess you could call it. To be sure that I could position myself to be outside the picture. Most of me, anyway, the parts that didn't matter.

When I was satisfied, I knelt down next to the blanket, not yet wanting to be on it with her. Not yet convinced this was the right thing to do. Not sure I could handle it.

"Come closer," she said. "Touch me. We both need to get ready."

I was as ready as I could be, at least physically. I hadn't had the long build-up, but seeing her out of that dress was enough to get the equipment fully warmed up.

My brain, my soul, they had doubts.

I started touching her, running my fingers over her body, her belly, her chest, her shoulders. Her nipples were hard, solid, and I ran my fingertips over them.

"Like you mean it," she said.

I did mean it. That's why I was being so delicate. If I touched her like I meant to, this would not end the way she had planned. It would not be a simulation.

Though how she meant it to end, I had no idea. The way she'd ended the last first had an obvious counterpart for this. Did she really want to take it that far?

I squeezed her breasts and ran my hand fully over them. I flicked her nipples. I moved my other hand to her thighs. They were still pressed together, but as I caressed them, she opened them enough to give me access to the insides.

Then she gave my hand access to more. She was already wet, not just moist, but fully wet. My fingers traced her outer lips and I could tell from the heat alone without really seeing that they were red, engorged.

I let my fingertips trace inner shapes, wondrously delicate curves and wrinkles and ridges. She gasped when I drew slick fingers across the base of her hood. Her hand shot out and wrapped around my cock.

She leaned in, her mouth joining her hand and then surrounding me, her tongue swirling. This was starting to feel less like a mere reenactment, but I supposed she needed to get worked up to make a convincing show for the camera of how her face must have looked when The One had penetrated her for her first time.

How she would recreate that unique experience, the sharp pain turning to ecstatic pleasure, I had no idea. I was just here for the show.

She looked up at me with those eyes, eyes that I could get lost in forever. She smiled and backed off me, reaching to the hand that was still between her legs to pull it away.

She gestured with a nod in that direction, and I shuffled my knees over her spread thighs to position myself. My cock, much more ready than I was, twitched and waved over her pubic hair, a glint of her saliva catching the sun.

I picked up the remotes for both cameras in one hand and grabbed my dick with the other staring down at her soaked entrance, which I would be pushing my stand-in penis through any minute now. I tried to savor it, the view, the anticipation, but my mind could not let go of the fact that it was not real, that it was all for show.

"Make sure the camera gets my face when... it happens," she said. "I want to remember it forever."

I felt for her. As much as 'the one' had turned out not to be, she would have thought otherwise at the time. Her first time, the one she could never take back, could never rewind to try again with a better choice. She would remember it forever regardless, but how could she not remember it with mixed feelings? With pangs of regret clouding the pure joy it should have been?

I moved my cock down to make contact with her, ran it along the line that cleaved her lower body. I lined up with her opening and looked at her, making sure one last time that this was really what she wanted to do.

She reached her hand and put it on my body just below my waist, pressing against my pubis to hold me back. "Did you ever wonder why neither of us has managed to keep a relationship going for more than a few months?"

I paused, taken out of the moment, wondering where that came from. "I don't know. I guess we never found the right person-" I cut myself off. "I'm sorry. I know you thought he was it. I'm sorry if that wasn't what you'd hoped it would be."

"Neither of us has ever found the one, have we?"

"I guess not," I said, lying to her.

"Or maybe we did."

I looked at her, confused. She pulled her hand away from my groin and put it on my hip. She pulled me forward.

I was shocked, but instinct took over. I pushed into her and...

There was resistance. Her face scrunched up and she sucked in a hard breath. Pressure from her hand stopped me.

After a moment, she relaxed and her hand slid up my side. I leaned my upper body forward so she could reach as it went up, and it went up further, making me lean forward more. It was getting harder to hold my hips back.

When her hand reached my neck, she looked into my eyes. "He never made it this far," she said in a flat, toneless voice, her eyes misty.

She pulled me down on top of her and gasped as the motion drove me further into her. She winced in pain and a tear seeped out of her eye.

Then she pulled my neck again, pulling my face to hers, kissing me. She broke the kiss and stared into my eyes. "I had the one right in front of me all along, didn't I?"

The One, the guy that had first met her in that emerald green dress that now lay in a heap at the base of my workbench, he had not had her. I knew it now.

This was no simulation.

"It took me too long to understand it, Jason. That I love you." She pulled me in for another kiss while wrapping her heels around me to pull me in even more. "I want this to be with you, and to remember it like this, in case... if you don't...."

Had I been too good at hiding it? Did she never see that I was in love with her?

I put my finger over her lips. "I know the exact moment I fell in love with you, Christina. I took a picture of it."

Surprise showed in her eyes, then she smiled, the pieces falling into place for her. Another tear seeped out of the corner of her eye.

She reached for my hand, the one holding the camera remotes, and pried them out of my fist. She clicked each one once, then tossed them into the weeds. Her hips pushed up against mine and her heels pulled.

I kissed her. I filled her entirely, then backed off, then again, never moving my lips from hers. I finally broke the kiss and stopped, our bodies pressed together as closely as two bodies can be, our eyes locked together every bit as much as our bodies were.