The Diary of an Artist's Muse

Lightning struck, he arched, then roared.

She squealed triumphantly as he jetted frantically into her mouth, thrashing below her. Niamh grunted eager, staccato gulps and held him steady, her slick tongue sliding back and forth under his end as she swallowed, swelling his orgasm until it became unbearable. Too big to fit in him. He jerked in her grip and tried to pull away but she was lost, calmly drawing on every last pulse.

The world became syrup.

First her toes melted, then her ankles, calves and knees. Her bottom next, hips, then the length of her back.

She scowled, sucked him harder, as if to bring them back together, but her relentless vanishing crawled up her body. He grabbed her face and pulled it to his. Kissed her, tasted himself on her tongue.

Gone.

#

4.15am, Wednesday 22nd June 1881

Diary, he came for me! And I drank his essence like the vampire fiend in Mr Stoker's novel! What more proof of love than that? I've never wanted to do this to a man. In truth, I've spent my adult life avoiding it. It's not even a fantasy I've indulged more than once or twice. But I did it to him. And he loved it so much I thought he might bawl like a babe. He kissed me with such gratitude! If I didn't own every sinew of his heart before, I do now, for sure.

His taste is vanishing from my tongue even as I write. I wanted to capture it for you, before it went. Hot, salty syrup. Oddly... applish.

I fear I may have to return for more. It's intoxicating to take all that power into my small mouth, swallow for my own illicit pleasure, while pleasuring him! Diary, forgive me, but I spill now just thinking about it.

Oh Animus, how poor Shackam would rip his heart out if he read these words: Just the thought of sucking him sickens me, yet I drip in anticipation of tasting you again.

And you, me, I hope, sometime.

So Animus, I hope you read these words for I'm certain this book Mam gave me brings us together and that you must find it in my future house. If you do, you must meet me in the garden at midday. We must lunch together.

If you've recovered!

I'll see you soon, my love.

X

Grunt shoved his head under the ensuite's rattling cold shower. He relished a blissful moment of shock and clear-headedness. A moment free of the dizziness of Niamh. He'd lost track of reality. Unsure if he was reading about her, or beside her. Whether she was in his bed, or he in hers. Whether her voice was in his head or in his ear.

Not a complaint. It was just that the minute she disappeared, he grabbed his phone and spun to her diary entry immediately after. But he'd read ahead, about his own morning to come, and now time's order was all messed up and, worse, he was worried he had no free will at all.

#

7.00am, Wednesday 22nd June 1881

Diary I've a few hours before the big fella meets me and proves my noodle-headed nonsense correct. He's from a future time. I feel crazed even writing it, but if I'm right then who knows how long it might last. Beautiful things have the shortest lives.

While I wait for my man to recoup his strength, I must put some plans into practice and today is Mr Rossetti's turn to paint me. I think he may help.

How the artists clamour for my time, and how Shackam gloats at his prize being so prized by such greatness as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. I don't mind their attention--who doesn't like to be admired for hours at a stretch, at a polite distance? -- but how they dress up their desire with such airs and graces. If they want to see my bottom, they only have to ask. Shackam is a shit, but at least he's honest.

Mr Rossetti is kindly, but he always paints me fat, I don't know why. Mr Waterhouse caught my likeness best I think, painting me as his nymphs (ha ha) or John Collier, when he painted me on a horse as Lady Godiva. His depiction of Lilith best captures my cheekiness. Though they all got my nose wrong. Animus, if you're reading, guess who I imagined I was riding in that Godiva painting? He caught it so well, my attempt to hide my arousal.

Rossetti likes the light in my bedroom (funny, that) so he sets up while I'm having my morning bath. Today was no different. He left a silk robe hung on the door handle because he knows if he doesn't I walk in naked and nothing gets done. Call me old fashioned, but I thought artists were above all that. I mean they all, every one of them, want me nude at some point. Why be coy?

No easel today. Rossetti wants to sketch me while he formulates his next masterpiece. Sketch days are always frisky.

"Darling!" Rossetti kissed my fingers. He's older than the rest but still a pretty boy. Big eyes, strong mouth. I won't lie, it isn't painful posing for him.

He sat me on a cushion in my wicker peacock chair, turned slightly toward the windows, but mostly facing him. The sun was low, and lit me all up gold. He opened my collar so my left tit popped out, then proceeded to draw my face (...) I contemplated the lawn and looked forward to my lunch.

"Mr Rossetti, I need a favour." I crossed my legs, knowing the robe would slip off my knee.

Rossetti cleared his throat. "Don't move, darling." Scribble. "Anything for you. You know this."

He isn't stupid, he knows favours are paid in kind.

"All these paintings, that you and your friends--"

"Brotherhood."

"Yes. Sorry. Well, all the paintings, they belong to me don't they?"

Rossetti sighed. "Yes, your... benefactor is a generous man."

"Maybe. Or your work has no value to him. Perhaps he sees them as trinkets to hang about my neck?"

"Ridiculous!" Rossetti coughed into laughter.

Imagine. Being so sure of your greatness. I want to say --Do people admire your brushstrokes, Mr Rossetti, or my sexuality?

Instead, I groom his mane. "I know. Your works are priceless. That's why I want to make sure they're safe. For the future. For my mam and sisters, you understand. How do I do that?"

Rossetti tapped his charcoal to his chin. "I know some lawyers, would that be of help?"

"Yes!" I clicked my fingers at my desk, at a letter I wrote by candlelight in the small hours. "Would you take that to them? My instructions."

Rossetti nodded. He chewed his cheek. "If I don't forget."

I twirl my hair. "Is there a way I can make sure you won't forget me?"

Rossetti smiled. He rose from his chair, and opened my knees to the morning sunshine. He sat between my feet, and sketched my golden cunt.

Sometimes men are so pathetic, I feel like their fucking queen.

So I pictured you, Animus, the only man I want between my knees. Your mountainous shoulders forcing my legs wide, your tongue lapping me to my peak. A tame old fantasy, but recent events had turned my imagination wild. A thought popped up that inflamed my cheeks.

Animus, you might be overwhelmed by my climax on your busy tongue. You might shakily stand before me to present your bursting, so close I can press my lips to your shaft, while your overexcited pump gushes salted honey all over my happy, dirty kisses.

Another image I should never share with my Lord and master.

Time passed with the throb of my clit, and a cool breeze chilled the liquid guttering slowly down my bum crack. Rossetti, working, pink of cheek, was (literally) no fucking use. Then the door creaked, and there you were, filling the doorway, naked, soaked. Hard.

I can't help it, beautiful man. You light me up.

Rossetti gasped. "Oh my Darling! Don't you dare move." He sketched furiously. "That face. That expression!"

I rolled my feet to their sides to open my knees wider, to your sincere eye, Animus, not the so-called artist's.

"Mr Rossetti?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"These erotic sketches you and your boys draw, they're mine too aren't they?"

#

Grunt doused himself again.

It was the first time he'd dared look ahead in the diary, and read Niamh as Rossetti's muse. When he appeared at the end of the entry, when he saw in black and white, predicted 139 years before, what he would do that very morning after his shower, he'd chucked the phone and vowed, "No." As much as he wanted to be adored again by Niamh he put his foot down. He was his own man. He had free will. He was not so predictable.

So he hid in the cold rusty water, and tried to put his obsession from his mind.

But.

That picture he had on his wall for years, that he still dreamt about. Lady Godiva. That willowy girl, lost in her thoughts, looking down at her nakedness in the saddle. According to the diary, that was really Niamh. And she really did imagine she was... riding him? The room lurched. He grabbed hold of a pipe to steady himself. Too much.

But regardless of how it messed with his head, and whatever questions it raised about his freedom to act, the sexual fact that his fantasy woman fantasised about him still nodded him erect, even after the blowjob of his life.

From Niamh's room, a lusty, "Darling!"

Niamh's deep, honeyed voice responded, indistinct.

He could resist going in there. Prove everything wrong. Niamh didn't write about him in her diary. They were just coincidental dreams. She wasn't riding Grant Johns from 2020 while posing as Lady Godiva. She was lost in her fantasy. A fantasy he liked to think was him. A fantasy that probably got to the last caretaker too. Gave him porno hallucinations. Sent him running. Is that what Grunt wanted too? He needed to grow a pair. Resist.

But then if he proved Niamh's diary wrong, that would mean there was no real, magical connection between them.

What was more important, love, or free will?

He stepped out the shower and, like the cock-puppet he was, stepped into to Niamh's bedroom.

#

Later, he emailed Carboys and Carboys to formally accept the job, as the agent had asked him to, then he sat waiting on the lawn. He was early, and as it neared twelve, he remembered that it didn't matter how early he was, the only way they could meet was if he desired her. He pulled out his phone. Her voice never failed to fill his head. Or his trousers.

He intended to read some lurid story from her past, but since he'd started reading ahead this morning all he wanted was to skip to the end. Her last ever, unfinished, entry haunted him. He could take a glimpse into Niamh's future. Into their future. But the glimpse he'd had already, when he first photographed the diary, was too chilling. The last page defaced in ink blots. "Just know that I love--"

It sounded like someone's last words.

He put his phone away. Why focus on the end of something before it even started? He closed his eyes and let the images come as they would.

One hundred and thirty nine years and five hours ago, he found Niamh in her room. She was sat in her peacock chair as if on a throne, naked beneath her robe and feet planted wide, an artist sat between. When Grunt entered the room, she smiled, even burned, at him.

It was bewildering to read this scene from Niamh's diary and then step into it. He felt like he'd strode out of her head. He knew exactly the state of her mind, what she'd pictured as she sat there. So it was no surprise when she looped a leg over the arm of the seat and regarded him with her unique, coy brand of hunger.

It was a surprise to Rossetti, who flustered, tossed aside a page full of fleshy, dripping, orchids, and started another.

She dipped a fingertip into her glossy slot, and slid it over her prominent hood. Then again.

She sighed.

Grunt sighed.

Rossetti sighed. "Darling, will you climax for me this morning, like you did for our Austrian student last week? Young Mr Klimt was much inspired by the day he spent with you."

"No." Niamh's eyelids drooped, her fingers itched at her clit. "I can't this morning, I--shit!" She let herself go, hovered splayed fingers over her mound, blew out a long calming breath. "I--I mustn't."

Grunt moved behind the oblivious Rossetti. Niamh shivered, eyes locked to Grunt's hips, chewing the inside of her cheek. Her excitement at his excitement at her excitement bounced and flared between them, doubling and redoubling. He was glad she'd sorted him out so thoroughly earlier, or he might have burst as wildly as her Animus. Their expectancy over their "lunch" this afternoon didn't help.

Rossetti lay on his front. "Then keep yourself on the edge, darling. Please, stand for me, take off that robe. I must capture this ecstatic angel above me."

Niamh kicked the chair away, and tossed the robe. Unselfconsciously, and with an easy grace, she flipped her hip to dance a slow pirouette, as if basking under Grunt's gaze.

"You must record this, Mr Rossetti," she said. "I don't believe any girl has been hornier than I am right now."

"You flatter me, darling. I will do my--" He pressed his lips into a white line as Niamh's sway revealed the puckered "S" on her buttock. He didn't put the scar on his sketch.

Grunt wished for a way to connect just one good punch to Shackam's face.

Finally, Niamh faced Grunt, with the artist prostrate at their feet. She brushed fingertips over her breasts, down her stomach, underneath her russet patch. She shivered. Stopped. "My love. I'm too close."

"I know, my darling." Rossetti peered up at her. His drawing depicted light streaming from Niamh's skin, radiant, the glowing mist of orgasm circling her thighs. Teasing between. "I won't be long."

She snorted like a piglet at the artist's misunderstanding. Grunt squeezed his cock, beading pre-cum on his tip. It spilled down his length. Her gaze locked to it and her breath grew ragged. "Please don't--oh!"

Her hips lurched, she released herself again, trying to subdue her spasms. Her juices looped thickly to her inner thigh, glittering in the sun.

Rossetti bit his knuckle. Muttered. Started another page.

Grunt rubbed his cock briskly. Niamh's cheeks look slapped, she bit her lip, slid her fingers along her groove and curled two inside. Grunt matched her fingers' dive insider her. She groaned, then shuddered. Stamped her foot. "No! You must... go."

"Not yet Darling. Not yet."

Grunt left the room.

#

"So you got my message!"

Grunt opened his eyes. The sun and breeze teased Niamh's unfettered hair into a fiery halo.

He leapt to his feet.

"My tresses are naughty and overexcited." Niamh raked errant curls off her face, tied them behind her head. She wore a simple, white smock dress with pale Celtic embroidery and laces up the front. It was so light the sun shone through it, silhouetting her legs. Her feet were bare. Grunt felt clumsily dressed.

"My God you're even bigger in real life!" She grabbed his fingers as they tugged at his t-shirt. She flushed. "So I take it you were thinking of me?"

He nodded.

Her eyes softened. "Oh dear, can you really not talk?"

He shook his head.

She stood on tip-toe and tipped her face to him. He stooped and pressed his lips to hers. Her tongue teased his. She squeezed his arms. His arse.

He picked her up, then laid her gently on the grass. She offered a knee to his crotch, and seemed happy with what she found.

He kissed her deeper, and rested his thigh between hers. She rocked against it, then gasped off their kiss.

"Animus, we have to be careful. If one of us should climax we'll separate, even if we lose our..." She made her point with a winding grind on his thigh. "You understand?"

He nodded. Her red hair was vibrant on the green grass. He stroked a curl from her eyes..

She cupped his cheeks. "Look at us, hmm?" Her ferocious intelligence seemed to drill into him. Perhaps the Red Lady's gaze had the power to freeze hearts after all.

"Let's walk." She pushed him away and sprang to her feet.

As she stepped over him and away, she waved her hem over his face. The quickest glimpse of bare bottom, puckered folds and flaming fur. He growled, pounced and chased her. She squeaked, but didn't run. She stopped and raised her fists, cackling like a witch.

He grasped her waist and threw her, screeching, high into the air, only catching her at the last minute to lower her safely onto the path.

"Tosser." She punched his arm.

He wondered if all the swearwords, and all the puns, were older than both of them. They strolled under the lollipop topiary. Niamh sidled backwards, swinging her hips, hands clasped behind her. "You've read my diary then." It wasn't a question. She kicked the head off a dandelion.

He nodded.

"Did you like it?"

Grunt pressed his heart.

"You loved it?" She barged him. "I bet you did." Her laugh was a clown's car horn.

"What year is it where you are?"

He raised two fingers. A zero. Two fingers. Zero.

"My God, 2020?"

He nodded, she took his arm, and steered him toward the box hedge arch. "Let's be cheeky in the maze. So what's the future like?"

Grunt shrugged, kissed her arm. Even if he could talk, how'd he answer that? Then it struck him. He pulled out his iPhone, turned it on, pulled up Google.

"What's this? A magic mirror?" She swiped at it

He dodged her, typed: 'Pre-Raphaelite' The screen filled with pictures of red-haired women.

She gasped. He added: 'Lady Godiva' and his favourite painting popped up.

"Fucking hell." She grabbed the phone off him. "That's me! What's Collier done to my hair? Fuck, am I famous?"

He was glad he couldn't speak to answer that. He'd never even looked up who the women were in the paintings he loved. He jabbed at the screen, at the picture, and patted his heart.

"You like that one? Sit." She pushed him onto one of the tiny, ornate benches set in alcoves along the route, then flopped onto his lap, all without taking her eye off the phone. She squirmed. "Keep it up fella, I don't want you disappearing on me." The lightness of her skirt, and her lack of underwear, had ensured that already.

"The date's wrong. He painted it last month, not 1897. Your magic mirror lies." She frowned at the phone, and tried to type on the screen, but suddenly the gadget passed straight through her, dropping into his lap. Her skin faded and her weight ebbed. Eyes wide in panic, she locked her arms about his neck, but her touch was light as silk.

Quickly, Grunt slid his hand up her skirt. She lifted a foot onto the bench and he cupped her tender mound. She sighed in his neck, growing heavier in his lap. Her squeezed her, and as she grew strong in his arms again, he slipped a finger along slippery flesh, then curled it into her. He probed, stirring his thumb on her clit. She clasped him in place and rocked her hips. A deep shudder.

"Too nice." She slipped him out, brought his finger to her mouth and sucked it slowly, chuckling when his cock throbbed against her bum-cheek. She bounced off him.

In silence, they strolled arm-in-arm around twists and turns. Grunt felt happy and sad at the same time. While it was great they only saw each other when they were horny for each other--and many would consider that a treat-- it was always going to be so fleeting.

"This is a hellish kind of heaven alright." Niamh spoke to their plodding feet as if she'd read his mind. "I want us to come together, but that means losing you again."

Before their sombreness kicked them apart again, Grunt picked Niamh up, swung her round and plopped her on a bench. In her pretty Victorian dress, in this formal garden in the shining sun, she was the picture of respectability.

He took her feet, spread them, and planted them on the bench beside her in a wide M, raising her skirt to her knees.

She chortled, then blushed. He recalled her fantasy in front of Rossetti, and her comment she'd not been licked since meeting Shackam. She obviously knew exactly what he was going to do. She sparkled, the tip of her tongue teasing her top lip. So he teased her, sitting back, enjoying the leafy alcove's prettiest flower, dripping in the sun.

She squirmed under his gaze. Then frowned and flapped her knees. "I'm sick of being drooled over, yet never eaten!"