‘Dear heart,’ she’d said to Venny when Venny confronted her with it. ‘Sure I slept with Micky. Well, maybe not slept. We kept rather too busy for that, as I recall. But I thought you two had split. Correction, you had split. So I thought, why not? And I took advantage of the guy. What sane woman wouldn’t?’
It was all very reasonable, Venny knew that. It all made perfect sense, when Dani explained it to her. And Micky had confessed, had come clean, after all. He hadn’t made any sordid attempts to cover up their affair, however brief it had been. And there was always the nagging thought at the back of her brain that she had very nearly succumbed to Dani’s seductive powers herself. But still, she felt betrayed. And angry. And so the very first thing she did – after she had dismissed Micky from the flat and spoken to Dani – was to phone Jamie, Dani’s Glaswegian sculptor protégé, who was very possessive of Dani. She supposed she was looking for a shoulder to cry on, or maybe even just a chat with someone who would feel about the situation as she felt – betrayed, and angry.
Or at least that was how she’d felt a couple of days ago. Since then she’d cooled off a bit. Now that she stood in the middle of Jamie’s midden of a studio with its weird metal mobiles hanging from the ceiling, its paint-splattered wooden floor, its stacks of oils, watercolours and bare charcoal sketches leaning against the walls, its overwhelming smells of turps and linseed oil, she was beginning to wish she’d kept her grievances to herself. But it was too late for second thoughts now.
‘I knew she was playing around with other guys,’ said Jamie, frowning heavily.
And girls, thought Venny, but didn’t say it. She was sorry she’d come here now. It might mean more trouble with the temperamental Scot for Dani. She tried to backpedal frantically.
‘Well, I suppose it’s a free country,’ she said lightly. ‘After all, you two aren’t in what you would call a committed relationship, are you? I mean, it’s pretty open, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not to me, it isn’t,’ said Jamie broodingly.
He looked pretty damned handsome when he was petulant, thought Venny. He had straight dirty-blond hair that he wore flopping over his grey eyes. He had a trim, tanned body although he wasn’t particularly tall. He looked as if he had just tumbled out of the unmade bed in the corner alcove, thrown on combat trousers and an open shirt – between the sides of which she could see his very tasty torso – and answered the door to her. He looked like he should be home where his mother could keep an eye on him.
And that was the point, she supposed. Jamie was only – what? – nineteen? And when love, or something very like it, hit at that age, it hit very hard.
To distract him, she looked around the studio, slipping off her fuschia-pink cardi as she did so to reveal a paler pink shift dress beneath. She could feel his eyes following the movement, following the heavy sway of her breasts in their push-up balconette bra as her arms moved, and thought, ha! One rule for the boys and one for the girls, as usual. He could look at her tits and want to touch them, but Dani had to be virgin pure, repelling advances from other males as if her life depended on it.
‘You know, you’ve got some very interesting work here,’ she said, although if she was honest the work wasn’t really to her taste. It was, frankly, weird. Otherworldly and a touch sinister. Jamie’s stuff reminded her of Dali’s melting clocks, of Van Gogh’s madly intense use of primary colours, of that strange picture by the other chap of a crazy, screaming face. Frankly, it gave her the shivers, but she was trying to put Jamie in a good mood and repair some of the damage she’d just done, so she was prepared to apply a little bullshit, like a poultice to his wounded male pride, if it helped.
‘Thanks,’ he said guardedly, but his face did brighten.
She spotted a sordid-looking sink in the corner, where a kettle and several dirty chipped mugs were laid out on an old wooden draining board beside a leaking bag of sugar and a catering-sized can of instant coffee.
‘Hey, I’ll make us a coffee,’ she offered, and headed right over there.
It certainly was a day for wishing she’d kept her mouth shut, she thought as she peered with distaste into the sink’s begrimed depths. Gingerly she picked up the mugs and gave them a vigorous sluicing under the tap. In the absence of hot water, she used cold. There was no tea towel in view, so she opened the small cupboard under the sink. She found herself looking at several bottles of washing-up liquid, a single bottle of bleach, and a small diamond-gripped blowtorch. The blowtorch had MQ marked on the grip.
Venny’s lips thinned as she looked at what was obviously Micky’s chef’s blowtorch. That would come in pretty handy for making metal mobiles, she thought. And she’d be willing to bet that Micky’s knife was here too – probably being used to smear paint onto canvas, if she knew Jamie. The light-fingered little toad.
She shook the mugs out over the sink, negotiated the horrors of the semi-solidified bag of sugar and the sticky-rimmed coffee can, boiled the kettle, filled the mugs, and returned to Jamie.
He was sitting on a beanbag in the centre of the studio now, holding a poster-sized block of good quality artists’ paper. He was scribbling away on the top right-hand corner of the block with a stick of charcoal.
‘Thanks.’ He looked up at her as she put his mug on the floor beside the beanbag. ‘You know, I’d appreciate some help here,’ he said.
‘Help?’ Venny looked puzzled. She sipped at her coffee. It was just as dire as she’d expected but, what the hell, it was coffee. And what could he mean, ‘help’? The only help he needed was from a shrink, to thrash out the reasons for his obsessive personality and his kleptomania. ‘Like what?’ she asked cautiously.
‘You know Dani’s commissioned an ice sculpture from me for the Blue Ribbon awards bash next week?’
Venny nodded. Of course she knew. Dani was talking about little else at the moment. It was all the awards menus, the seating plans, the sculpture for the centrepiece, and what about the flowers? What colourway should she be going for? Blue seemed too obvious and anyway it was too awkward to get truly blue flowers in the types she wanted. How about peach? Peach and purple – or lime and purple, how about that?
Yes, Venny knew all about Dani’s plans for the catering, down to the last boring detail. What with Dani’s constant wittering and her own rapidly escalating nerves, she felt she knew more about the Blue Ribbon award night than she actually wanted to know, right now.
‘Well, you’ve got a good body, haven’t you? I’ve been looking around for suitable models for the ice sculpture. I thought an embracing couple, melting together in passion like Rodin’s Kiss and melting together for real as the evening passes – what do you think?’
What Venny thought was that, in typical Jamie style, he was leaving it all rather late. The melting in passion bit sounded quite lyrical and poetic, for him. But then he was an artist, and she supposed all artists were a touch on the mad side, really. And she was flattered that he should ask her.
‘I’ve got someone in mind for the male part, but I’ve been having trouble with the female.’ Jamie looked down at his doodles, and for a moment he looked like a bashful twelve-year-old. Then he looked up at her and gave her both barrels from those cute baby-grey eyes of his. ‘So would you sit for me? Today? Um – now?’
Venny shrugged and put her mug aside on a shelf. It was still half empty. ‘Well, if you like,’ she said.
Jamie grinned. ‘Yes, please, Venny.’
‘So – where do I pose?’ She looked around. Every surface in the little room was covered with junk, or dirt, or both.
‘On the stool there.’ Jamie jumped up and dusted down the tired-looking wooden stool that was placed by the north-facing window to catch the best of the light.
‘All right then.’ Venny walked over.
‘But you need to get changed first.’
Venny stopped and looked at him in surprise. ‘Into what?’
‘Well. Into nothing.’ Jamie looked bashful again. ‘I thought you understood w
hat I meant. The couple melting in a passionate embrace. They’d have to be naked, wouldn’t they? It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.’
‘Oh! I see.’
Venny hesitated. Was she really happy about stripping off with Jamie? She thought he was about as stable as Semtex. On the other hand, he was very sexy. And she quite enjoyed the idea of sitting there in the buff while he sketched her. It was titillating.
‘Have you got somewhere I could change?’ asked Venny. ‘That’s the drill, isn’t it? The artist provides a wrap or something, so the model can preserve her modesty?’
Jamie looked perplexed. ‘Well, no. There’s only this room. And anyway, surely you don’t care about stripping off for me? It’ll be fun. For us both,’ he added, and Venny could certainly see that he was getting in the mood for fun already. She could see his cock standing up beneath the loose-fitting combat pants.
‘I don’t know,’ said Venny uncertainly, although she could feel her crotch growing moist at the thought of it. Propped up by her sexy new balconette bra, her breasts felt suddenly sensitised, her nipples tingly.
‘Hey, I’ll strip too, if it makes you feel any happier,’ offered Jamie.
‘Well, I guess that might make me feel a little less conspicuous,’ allowed Venny doubtfully. And it would enable me to get a better look at that trim young bod of yours, she thought privately. She liked that idea very much.
‘Great!’ said Jamie enthusiastically, and reached for his fly.
Chapter Fifteen
Venny stood frozen in fascination as Jamie shucked off his combat pants. There was no hint of shyness about Jamie. No vestige of underwear, either. His erect cock was waggling around like a bowsprit as he bent and kicked the pants to a corner of the room. He shrugged off the shirt, too, and looked her straight in the eye, spreading his arms wide.
‘How about that?’ Jamie asked her. ‘Look, I’m nude, too.’
Venny was smiling down at his looming penis. ‘The state you’re in, that’s hardly a reassurance,’ she pointed out.
Jamie looked down at his twitching appendage regretfully. ‘What can I say? It’s got a mind of it’s own. Sorry.’ He snatched up a paint-covered rag. ‘How about this?’ He draped the rag over his lusty protrusion and looked at her hopefully.
‘That just looks ridiculous,’ said Venny, trying hard not to laugh out loud. She had this gorgeous, hard-bodied, hot-headed young man standing naked in front of her, except for a little square of fabric that actually seemed to flaunt rather than conceal the fact that he was erect. The fabric didn’t even completely cover his balls, she noted. And she wasn’t particularly sorry about that; he had very nice balls. He was looking at her so pleadingly that she felt her resolve melting. Well, what could it hurt? It was quite flattering, really. She had never been sketched before, not even wearing all her clothes. And being sketched naked might be exciting.
‘All right then,’ she relented.
‘Oh, great.’ Jamie turned away from her to take his seat on the beanbag again. In so doing he displayed to Venny a fetchingly broad set of shoulders and an alluringly taut male bottom. As he dipped down to pick up his artist’s block, she got a flash of his anus, and his balls swung heavily. She felt herself starting to salivate – at both ends.
Down, girl, she thought. This is business. This is art.
Jamie had now taken up the sketch block and charcoal. He had flipped to a fresh page of paper and was looking up at her expectantly. Actually he needn’t have worried about the rag over the genitals, thought Venny. The sketch block more than covered his cock. Sadly.
Venny leaned over, grasped the hem of the pale pink shift dress, and pulled it up and over her head with one swift, smooth movement. She tossed it aside with her cardi, then turned and looked at Jamie, whose eyes were out on stalks despite his efforts to appear the dispassionate artist.
She put her hands on her hips and glanced down her body. Well, she had to admit that the lacy balconette bra was quite something. She wasn’t exactly short in the tits department, and this well-constructed little purple gizmo made the very most of the curves she had. Her tits were hiked up to amazing heights by the bra, so that the upper curves of the big globes were very pronounced. Her nipples sat squarely on the lace-covered upper edge of the bra, half-revealed, half-covered. They looked like twin half-moons perched there, she thought, looking down at them. Jamie was looking up at them. He fidgeted awkwardly, and Venny shot him a secret smile. She guessed the rag was under a bit of strain.
Something devilishly provocative seemed to rise in her. She was in this situation, so why not enjoy it? She turned a little, placing one foot in front of the other to accentuate the long line of her legs and the elaborate cut-away edges of the pants she wore.
‘What do you think of these?’ she asked the squirming young man. ‘They’re new; do you like them?’
She turned around further to display the purple pants to him. She’d taken ages selecting them a few days ago while shopping with Dani and Flora. The pants, like the bra, were a work of art, a masterpiece of engineering. They were fastened at the sides with tiny bows, and cut away into a thong at the back – as Jamie was now beginning to appreciate – to showcase both silky buttocks.
‘They’re – um – great,’ said Jamie, a bit hoarsely.
Venny decided she was going to have a lot of fun with this. She strolled over in her high-heeled pink mules to Jamie’s beanbag and smiled innocently down at him.
‘The trouble is, the bows are very difficult to get undone,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Can you help, Jamie?’
‘Oh. Sure.’
Jamie put the block down on the floor. Venny glanced down; the rag was definitely under an acute strain. His cock was leaping about, trying to get out from under there. Decorously Jamie straightened his little square of concealment before reaching up to assist his model with her disrobing.
His fingers shook slightly as they plied the tiny ribboned bows. And he seemed puzzled that they were in fact quite easy to unfasten. He unfastened the right, then the left; coyly Venny caught the fabric at her crotch in one hand when the unfastened pants would have fallen away to the floor.
‘Whoops,’ she breathed. ‘Thanks, Jamie.’
‘That’s OK.’ He picked up the block again, swallowing awkwardly.
And to think that she had thought there was no shyness there, no boyish awkwardness! His tender years probably accounted for his overreaction to Dani’s playing around, Venny considered. At nineteen, it was easy to be obsessive – like a child with a favourite toy, unwilling to share. Maybe his problems had something to do with his impoverished background too. That couldn’t help. Poverty could easily make one hoard objects like a manic magpie, even if those objects belonged to other people. And poverty could make anyone cling on to any sort of security with a sort of desperation. Dani had been Jamie’s only point of reference when he had first come to London from Scotland; and his fierce possessiveness where she was concerned was only natural, when you thought about it.
Venny had never thought about it before. She guessed that Dani had never thought about it at all. If she had, she would maybe understand Jamie a lot better – and treat him with more circumspection. Poor Jamie, thought Venny. She resolved that today was going to be fun for him too. He deserved some fun.
‘I suppose you want me to …?’ she asked, indicating the little scrap of fabric that constituted her pants. She was holding them in front of her crotch like a maiden protecting her virtue. From Jamie’s uncomfortable movements, she guessed that her reluctant virgin act was driving him wild with lust.
‘Um, yes. Sorry,’ he gulped.
‘No, don’t apologise,’ said Venny. ‘That was our agreement, after all.’
So saying, she let the little scrap of fabric drift to the floor. Jamie stared at the tender mound with its now lusher covering of toffee-coloured curls. Venny gave a girlish giggle.
‘Oh goodness, this feels so exposed,’ she said, wriggling her hips and putting
a hand back over her mound. ‘So naughty. And I suppose you want my tits bare too?’
‘Please,’ whispered Jamie, dry-mouthed with wonder as he stared up at her – naked except for her fuck-me shoes and that outrageously sexy bra.
‘Well, you’ll have to just help me with the fastening, it’s quite stiff,’ said Venny. Just like you, she thought with an inward laugh. With apparent artlessness she turned her back to him. She could feel his eyes crawling all over her pearly nude buttocks and could feel her own wetness seeping from between her legs in sympathy for his arousal. She knelt down with her back to Jamie, and lifted up her hair. She was careful to sit with her abdomen pooched out a bit, to accentuate the lush inward curve of her back. One leg was tucked beneath her slit and getting damp as she felt Jamie’s fingers tentatively start to fumble with the bra’s back fastening. She rubbed her swelling clitoris lazily against her own leg, enjoying the pressure. She could hear Jamie’s breathing, harsh and shallow. God, he was ready. She hoped he didn’t shoot off too soon. She hoped she wasn’t overdoing this.
‘There,’ he rasped, having freed the catch of the bra. ‘It’s open.’
‘Thanks, Jamie.’ Venny stood up, unhooking the bra from each arm as she went. Turning back towards Jamie, she smilingly imparted, ‘You know, these things may look good but they aren’t very comfortable. Look how red my skin is beneath my tits from all that underwiring.’
She bent down to Jamie with her naked breasts dangling almost in his face, and lifted them up a little so that he could see the faintly pink line the bra had left on the skin beneath them.
‘Yeah,’ said Jamie, looking dazed as he ogled her deliriously coral-coloured nipples, her full fleshy mounds, her rounded curves leading his eye down to that other mound, that secret mound dusted with hair the colour of burnt sienna and sporting beneath that a pair of fleshy lips that all too easily he could stick his tongue – or his cock – between. ‘Oh God,’ he moaned.
After Hours: Black Lace Classics Page 20