The Uncommon Artist

Lauren sipped her wine, then said, "Parker, at the risk of trashing what has become the most enjoyable professional period of my life, I wanted to ask you something very personal. Do you mind? You don't have to answer; you can forget it entirely if you wish and it will not affect our relationship."

"Please, go on."

"Do you have a lover in your life?"

That was different, but for some reason she didn't mind it at all. In fact, she was aroused. "No, Lauren, I don't. My life's been rather sterile since my father died, and I have no one, really."

Lauren noted the almost wistful tone in her voice. She spoke almost in a whisper, "Then would you be my lover?"

Something that ought to have been difficult or confusing, for some reason, wasn't at all. Her reply almost tumbled out, so much so that Parker stuttered momentarily. "Lauren, I, I don't know what to say. That is so precious, so intimate."

"Please say, 'yes,' Parker."

"Oh, yes, Lauren. Yes, Yes. Will you be my lover?"

'Yes, my beautiful one. You are an answer to a great longing and need. I'm afraid that I have fallen in love with you. Does that frighten you or offend you?"

"Offend and frighten me? Heavens no! Lauren, this is one of the two greatest compliments of my life. I cannot believe that I am here with you, talking about this. What shall I do, now?"

"To start with, you and I are sleeping together from now on. Larry knows of my, ah, how shall I say it delicately, my enjoyment of women. He has never had a problem with it; but I have never expressed it like this. I want us living together, Parker, here in this house. This is your home. Your room is already prepared for you for whenever you wish to be alone, or when Larry is here. Even then, when you are at ease with it, we must sleep together when we desire it. Does that sound flakey and weird to you?"

"Not at all. I understand, Lauren. I simply want to be with you when possible. Yes, this is different. No, I don't care. And now I can be deeply happy here. It's wonderful to be home."

Both women rose from the table and embraced. It was sweet, slow, and deeply sensuous. Parker had kissed only a few women before, and it was a memorable experience. Lauren's lips were soft, warm, and her tongue immediately began flicking serpent-like into Parker's mouth. Without thinking, she responded, and they held to each other as their heat grew.

She felt Lauren's hands unbuttoning her blouse, then she removed it. Without a word, Lauren unfastened Parker's bra, let it fall to the floor, and slid her hands over the girl's breasts.

"Oh, my lord, you are so big and beautiful. You have to be larger than I. This is like dipping my hands into warm cream and caressing delicious things that I must devour. Your flesh is smooth and your nipples are hard. I have to eat you, Parker."

"Laruen, how do I describe what I'm feeling? Honored. Blessed. Hotter than lava. Wanting this for longer than I knew. Your hands are so sensuous the way you touch me.

"I want to ask you something, and you must be truthful with me. Does my body hair pose a problem for you, for us, or in any way for our office? I know that no one else looks like me. That has never bothered me, but it matters where this wonderful job and you are concerned."

She stared at the woman embracing her, awaiting her reply.

"Parker, come over here to the couch and sit with me." Lauren had the girl lie with her head in her lap, gently fingering the heavy growths under her arms and fondling her breasts. "One of the things I've come to treasure about you is that, though you never make an issue of it, you are not like anyone else in our company or that I know. Eventually, that will be a great help in bringing to us young women with sensuous characteristics that appeal to many, many different people. You certainly do make an immediate impression on those who meet you, but though your body fur may be a turn-off to a few, others grant you the liberty of being different, not cut from the same mold, and yet others are incredibly aroused by you.

"Now as for me...Honey, you yank out of me a fetish I'd buried so deep that I think I was afraid to admit it. You are so sensuous to me that I can hardly keep my hands off you" She chuckled at a thought flitting through her mind.

"The other day I was on my way out of the office for a lunch meeting, and as I passed your office you were tying your hair into a pony tail. You have such lovely, muscular arms anyway, and the sight of that gorgeous fur in contrast to that cut-away white sweater made me so hot that I had to detour by the ladies room. I was fifteen minutes late because I lost myself and had to calm down."

"Do you really enjoy me, Lauren?"

"My dear love, only time will tell you how deeply you have sunk your precious hooks into me. It's not just erotic; that alone is such a shallow pool. You are strong, sweet, confident, challenging, and simply a beauty who casts an aura that is unlike anything I've ever known before."

Parker remained still, feeling those hands gliding over her skin, manipulating her nipples, tenderly adoring her breasts, stroking her abdomen and arms. She felt at peace and greatly treasured. She stared at the woman above her, the one who from nowhere had emerged to give her a new lease on life.

"Lauren, please take me to bed. I need that more than I can possibly express."

The two women undressed slowly, prolonging the delights that awaited them. Lauren loosed her long hair, brushing it until its waves billowed about her face. Parker had the scent of something vaguely tangy and oriental. The girl was gorgeous, her curvy body the picture of shapely perfection. They left on a night light in the far corner of their bedroom, then began a slow search for every conceivable means of expressing their affection and desire to each other.

Weariness, excitement, and the sheer weight of a week of hard work did its magic and they dozed curled on their sides, Lauren behind her, whispering snippets of desire to her lover, squirming gently against Parker, relishing the softness of her body.

Finally they slept.

Chapter 10

The Greatest Possible Loss

The next day they two women laughed, swam, sat and planned, and decided how they would describe to Larry when he got home that afternoon just what they had been doing. Lauren and Parker left in Parker's Jeep to collect the hunter home from the hills at the Palm Beach International Airport. Larry was not on his promised flight, so they checked his schedule, the spelling of his name, and every other thing they could think of.

Not only was Larry not aboard; there was no record of him ever having boarded the aircraft in South America. In fact, no one ever saw Larry Campbell again.

Lauren was overcome with grief and worry as the days of fruitless checking became months of useless effort. It was as if he had never existed. As she desperately tried to manage PRISM Designs while she marshalled her efforts to find her husband, more and more of the load devolved upon Parker. She grew into Lauren's ten-league managerial boots by raw necessity and, while there were some errors, she did an admirable job at it.

One day just shy of noon, the receptionist came to Parker with the cryptic remark, "Parker, there's this weird man out here, and he wants to see Lauren."

Parker smiled her thanks and remarked to the thirty-five year-old wife and mother of three boys, "Cassie, you are the perfect representative of this company for our short, short skirts and gorgeous legs. If only I could be you."

"Why, thank you, hat's the nicest thing anyone has said to me this week."

Parker led the man into Lauren's office and would have left, but for some reason, Lauren asked her to stay. "Mrs, Campbell," said the odd little man, "I represent the United States Government...," and he flipped out a folder with a badge and a picture ID.

"Oh, do you have information about my husband?" she fairly shouted.

"If you'll please let me finish. I regret to inform you that your husband was killed in a mining accident in Bolivia. All of his insurances and benefits were designated to you. Here are five copies of his death certificate; that should make your arrangements and legal matters considerably easier. Good day."

With that brief confirmation of her worst fears, he was gone. Silence ruled in the office, then Lauren said in a voice that could just as well have asked Parker if she had also seen the UFO hovering just outside, "Did I just hear...I mean, can you tell me what that was?"

"Lauren, he just made official what we've feared for two months now. Larry is dead. Oh, I am so very, very sorry." She held onto the woman who shook with sobs. At such a time Parker knew there are no words, only the presence of one who must now comfort.

Chapter 11

A Plan for Revenge

Ralphie Mertaugh hated his name. In fact, he hated just about everything and everybody around him as he glanced across the strip club. Just released from Raiford Prison, also known as Union Correctional Institution, and an alumnus of the same graduate school as greater lights like Ted Bundy, Martin Grossman and Eileen Wuornos, Ralphie had learned nothing from his five-year tryst with the Florida legal system.

Nothing that is, except how to hate more intensely those he blamed for his time there. He had dropped out of high school with the deep conviction that all his teachers were fools with intellects two points above plant life. Petty thefts gained him his first run-ins with the police. He graduated in short order from that to assault, then to rape.

Unknown to the authorities, Ralphie also sported two murders, both of them prostitutes who flew well below the radar screens of law enforcement. Those two had left no record of their existence or of their passing from it. One of their bodies was never found; the other, only after it had decayed so completely that no one could identify the girl's remains.

Rape coupled with having nearly beaten a girl to death as she walked home from a sorority party got him convicted and sent to Raiford. He conned a parole board, those bastions of gutlessness and psychobabble pride, into thinking that after five years of stellar conduct, he could be successfully paroled from a much longer sentence. His goodness lasted until just beyond the release gate.

This time he was determined to make someone pay for real.

In the course of having stopped in one day to buy lottery tickets and scan the passing chick meat, he spotted what he believed to be the epitome of haughty, upscale, lord-it-over-'em-all snottiness. The middle-age woman wore a gray pants suit and had a rack that no woman ought to show off unless she was going to let you feel those sweater monkeys on the spot! As she held open the door for him on her way out, he caught her perfume; it was just the sort of trigger that shouted, 'I'm better than you!' in spite of the fact that Lauren had held the door for him.

Hate boiled within him. Ralphie followed her home, being very careful to do what his cellmate had told him about how to successfully tail someone. Just as he suspected, she lived in one of those rich-bitch neighborhoods in a rich-bitch house. In what passed for Ralphie's brain, he decided that this was the one who needed to pay for the wrongs done to him. He hoped she was married, that way the insult would be all the greater.

And if she put up too much of a fight or saw his face, then he'd enjoy killing the whore.

Chapter 12

A Perfectly Beautiful Man

Parker concluded the meeting with Lauren and left for a dentist's appointment. She had described to Lauren her plan for setting up an erotic website that would be notably different from others in several respects. Parker wanted the site to offer the very best in its sample and commonly available or free pictures, photos that were full-size and did not need to be sharpened. Moreover, subjects who looked at the photographer should only be those involved in specialty panels. All others must avoid the cheapening effect of participants in sexually explicit series looking as if they had to get approval from someone behind the camera before they did anything.

She explained to Lauren the benefits of photographing a sizeable portion of their erotica in public, rather than depending on private posed shots, bedroom shots, and so on. Micro-skirts and shorts, thin and low-cut tops, braless scenes, their sensuous clothing in general, professional and casual, even sexual engagements ought to be arranged as normal activities in view of others, natural acts that brought planned exposure while not being literally 'staged'. The photographic team would be a vital aspect of this endeavor, capable of shooting quickly erotic scenes in which their subjects would move on to other acts and locations. And in many shoots, Parker would be the lead photographer.

Finally, for completely nude events, public sexual intercourse, the prolonged public baring of bodies and other erotic activities that simply could not be shot in the United States, they would go outside the country. The budget would easily handle the cost.

The best in digital equipment, fast imagery, highly-skilled photographers, men and women with imagination that enabled them to conceive far more than the stock pictures of many websites and select appropriate locations, all these would make the project successful while avoiding offending the public, at least as much as possible. Parker proposed that she be permitted to take charge of this project, and Lauren agreed.

Not long after Parker left, Mark, Lauren's son, stopped by her office. When he strode in, she shot up from her chair and rushed over to hug him. He had previously come in to spend time with her after the death of his father, but he then was forced to leave and return to the oil rig, Elizabeth Varden II, where had worked for nearly six years after being graduated from the Colorado School of Mines. Mother and son had spoken often by phone, but both believed that actual visits were much too few and far between.

This time he intended to spend more time with her and, at her invitation, meet her office staff. Lauren stepped back and gazed at her son who was, in her estimation, so beautiful that except for his build and the expression in his gray eyes, that he could have passed for a woman. He wore a pinstriped charcoal suit with a multicolored tie and the Tony Llama black western boots he had favored for years.

His waist-length mane of thick, black hair curled in deep waves about his face, an asset for which many women would gladly have given body parts to possess. He wore it loose and full today, and Lauren felt again the inner heat of longing for her son. He was lovelier than she remembered from his visit a few months before.

"I see that my delightful and sensuous mother has done it again, winning today's Sensuality Prize for her office attire," he complimented her with a lascivious grin. Lauren wore a light maroon cut-away sweater that fit her like a second skin with no brassiere. Its high collar emphasized her marvelous chest. She and Parker both had coordinated with white, tight pants with knee-high black stiletto-heeled boots. Her rich black pussy bush was faintly visible under her pants. 'This gorgeous woman never was much for panties,' he mused.

"Lauren, two things...you have the most gorgeous tits! How about dinner right now? Second, can I take a break for a restroom conference? My back teeth are floating."

His mother grimaced at his expressions, recalling how she had labored for years to eliminate crudity in her men's language. She had failed, of course, and Mark and his father had good humoredly said things they knew would provoke a response from Lauren. They egged her on, and she fell delightfully into their trap. Which of course only encouraged them more.

"Marcus, you know what I think about your...do you realize that when you say delicious things like that you get me all aroused just when I'm trying to be mad at you...," but he was gone.

In the meantime, Parker had returned and stepped into her office. She had gone home to change after having spilled coffee on her pants, had selected a short red knit dress that exposed nearly everything about her, and drove back to the office.

When she entered Lauren's office, her supervisor remarked, "Darling, you are going to get arrested in that. If you even dare to turn around, everything you own will be on display!" She embraced her younger lover who whispered, "Then, should I go to the ladies' room and change?"

"Absolutely not...unless you want me to relieve you of your job. It's perfect. You are perfect. And Mark just stopped by here; I want you two to meet. Go stand over there where he won't notice you when he walks in. You'll be the tastiest surprise he'll get all week."

Seconds later her son strode in and walked up his mother, now seated near a window. "Mark," she said with a note of worry, "you don't look so good. Are you all right?"

"I've got some sort of stomach bug, or the Mummy's revenge...I just lost ten pounds, and all of it brown."

"Mark, there you go again! You know very well that I hate those things you and your father say! And besides, I want you to meet someone very dear to me, actually a member of our family. Parker, this is my son, Mark. He is not as crude as he sounds. Mark, this is my love, my second-in-command, and my precious friend, Parker Scott."

Parker, from her position out of Mark's view, had decided when he entered that this was some stunning woman with hair to die for. When he turned and the two saw each other, both seemed struck dumb. Parker had never seen a man who exuded such a sense of strength and purpose. Her first thought was, 'He is lovelier than most of the women I know. He smiles a lot, I can see the lines. He seems so capable...now where did I get that? And, oh, my lord, he reminds me of my father.'

Mark saw a stunning young woman with hair so dark that the waves about her face seemed to almost glisten with a bluish cast. The short red dress displayed perfectly her curvy figure, shapely legs, and the body hair on her legs beneath the light decorated stay-up hose. 'That woman is absolutely top-heavy,' he thought, 'but she must be sharp. My mother never would have hired her, otherwise. She is strong, I've seen it before.' Then it occurred to him that speech would be a proper response instead of staring at her and drooling as if she were a New York strip.

"Parker, I am honored to meet you. No wonder this place runs like a well-oiled machine with someone so capable at the controls." He extended his hand to shake hers, and only then did he notice her exceedingly long fingernails.

She in return did likewise. His compliment was genuine, and seemed so natural for him. Being nearer him brought her into contact again with that impression that here was a quiet, powerful and in a delicious way, dangerous man if the need arose. A peculiar sense of security swept over her like a small evening breeze, vanishing almost instantly. 'Who are these people?' she thought as she recalled the way in which Lauren had completely possessed her in their loving, entering her heart and her head with no resistance.

The handshake communicated far more than mere perfunctory courtesy. Their grip lasted longer than typical, both gripped tightly as if messages needed time to ooze through their hands, suggestive messages, promises. hopes. Parker saw him quickly examine her talon-like nails, undoubtedly to see if they were real; they were.

"Mark, it's a great pleasure to meet you as well. Lauren has told me so much about you, but I've never seen your picture. Can you stay a while and meet some of our other members?"