by Violet Blue
I give him a half smile instead and raise my camera. We regard each other through the viewfinders, only seeing shiny black surfaces where eyes and nose should be. Photography robots. The two clicks are almost simultaneous. Just like back in college.
“You know what would make this better?” he asks, carefully raising himself from the ground, mindful of the expensive equipment in his hand. I raise my brows, encourage him to go on.
“Nudity.”
I snort and roll my eyes.
“Right, because the only real contribution women can make to photography is to take their clothes off…”
George just grins, above me now, my face at the level of his crotch, and he touches the tip of my nose. Just for a moment I want to be a different me, in a different body, and go right ahead. But then he shakes his head.
“You and your assumptions,” he chides with that naughty schoolboy grin on his face. “Who said I was talking about you?”
My mouth falls open, just for a second, and my eyebrows seem intent on trying to disappear under my hairline. George laughs and offers me a hand to pull myself up from the floor. I accept. His hand is warm and I bite at the side of my lip, feeling lumpy in my long, shapeless sweater-dress and tights I’m wearing for comfort of movements.
“It would make good pictures,” I agree, frowning as professionally as I can at the scenery. George seems satisfied. He hands me his camera and pulls his sweater over his head. It is a careless gesture only people with beautiful bodies, people without shame could be capable of. I place the strap of his camera around my neck and raise my own. In the first picture, he is unbuttoning his jeans; in the next he has pushed them to his knees. I snap the next of the curve of his back. In the shaft of lights, the tiny knobs of his spine are visible though his sleeveless shirt.
“I’ve always liked your portrait work,” he says casually when he has finally liberated his jeans from his sneakers. My heart beats faster and I grin, not even capable of waving the compliment away.
“Thanks,” I manage, and I catch that glimpse of stomach in the sun as he is pulling up his shirt. There is a fine light-brown line of hair that runs down into his tight boxer-briefs. It is just a shade darker than his hair. I exhale a shallow breath; send a prayer to the god of professionalism. But then he meets my eyes and he holds my gaze, fierce and serious in a way I have hardly ever seen him. I know he’s pulling down his boxers but my eyes are arrested, held in place. Almost in panic, I throw my camera between us and manage a picture of that expression before it fades.
He doesn’t cover himself; I wet my bottom lip and wordlessly direct him into the light. It throws beautifully stark shadows over his chest and face: planes of light and dark, all angles and masculinity only the magic of light and shadow can create. When I finally dare a glance at his crotch, I hardly manage to take it in before I tear my eyes away. He is not aroused—but I am. Tingling and nervous.
He looks like a god in the tiny preview screen. I ask him to pick up the chandelier and hold it up next to him: a hundred lights sparkle over his chest. I want to render these in black and white, I think—time in the studio will tell. I click, click, click—I can’t get enough of the lights, of his body, his face. For long moments I get so lost in the work, I almost forget the aching tingly feeling between my legs but it always comes back, harder and more demanding than before.
Finally, I hand him back his camera, and he raises his brows questioningly as he sets the chandelier back onto the floor and shakes out his arm, tired from holding it up too long.
“Vulnerable photographer in dark corners,” I tell him with a smile and bring a tripod, light and soft-box from the table.
“Still trying to be deep,” he teases, and I want to blush, but I think I manage not to.
“Trying to be?” I ask instead, jokingly menacing where I don’t feel like either. Not deep down. But he just looks at me for a moment too long and then starts to take pictures. He keeps the camera just far enough from his face to let me capture his expression, his natural body language. He is beautiful and I find myself envying his freedom. I catch him squatting by the chandelier, checking his setting, staring almost meditatively at the view-screen.
“Aren’t you cold?” I finally ask. I never know how long I’m snapping away, but I finally caught a close-up of his shoulder and arm and I saw the gooseflesh rising there.
“Not very,” he answers, but I think he’s lying. I let my camera sink and take a deep breath. George is still watching me.
“What?” I finally ask.
He cocks up his chin, just once. “Your turn.”
For the second time, my jaw drops. This time I am more prepared for it. Raising any opposition isn’t easy, and I take a deep breath.
“I’m not…” I start, but George interrupts me, before I can denigrate my looks, the state of my hair, or any of the million other imperfections I could name.
“You are,” he says with a strange emphasis. “You really are.” His eyes travel down my shoulder and along the side of my breast and he finally smiles. And there is something in his smile that has power and magic, especially in a place like this and without clothes to detract from his magnetism. I finally shrug as though I, too, think nothing of it. As though I do this all the time. I hand him my camera and try not to linger too long with my hands clinging to the hem of my long sweater.
“There’ll be pressure marks all over,” I warn ahead, then open my mouth again to say something else, something about my thighs or my stomach but then I don’t.
“They’ll plush out soon enough,” he assures me, and I turn around to pull the sweater over my face. I suck a sharp breath through my teeth at the cold against my skin. With my shoes, I clear a patch of ground and kick them off. Then I peel down my tights, my panties and finally reach back to open my bra. Unlike me, George grants me that moment of privacy. He is fumbling with the light and his settings. When he concentrates like this, a strand of hair falls into his face. His frown and the stance of his naked body suddenly take away from his jock appeal—he seems buffer in clothes but more handsome without them; he looks thoughtful and somehow more, deeper. I feel my chest flutter.
“Ready?” he asks, looking up at me. He comes around and picks my clothes up, then moves them out of frame. Out of reach. Wearing his sneakers but still nothing else, I notice that his cock is not quite as disinterested in the proceedings anymore, perking up as though in greeting. I feel more naked immediately and tear my eyes away, but also less nervous.
“Ready.”
“Good, move against the window.” His voice changes when he takes pictures. I have noticed that before. He is serious and intense. “Like that, look outside; place your hands on the window, careful where it’s broken.”
I try to take deep breaths; he tells me to relax and I do my best. Muscle by muscle I force the tension to flow out of my body.
“Ass too,” he finally chides with a grin in his voice, and I have to laugh.
“Fuck you,” I say, giggling, shake myself, and when I return to position he hums in assent. I can hear the camera shutter click and click. So fast, furiously clicking at every inch of my naked skin, the plush curve of my hip where it moves into the narrower waist. I turn toward him only a few degrees to let him catch just the hint of my breast. During those first poses, I feel torn between being all too conscious of my body, the extra softness, the lines and dimples over my ass—and my professional knowledge of taking pictures of women’s bodies, and how to make them all believe in their own style of beauty. With time, I start to gravitate toward the latter. Moving slowly, I stretch myself, turn around and lean against the wall—grappling for courage I stare down the lens. A storm of clicks washes over me. The fear is starting to fade to exhilaration, adrenaline. We try more adventurous poses; I crouch in the dirt behind the chandelier, I rise up high to my toes, I turn around and touch my ass, my breasts. I place my chin on my shoulder and run my hands through my hair. I feel like one sore nerve ending, ready to explode
at the smallest touch. Every once in a while he issues demands but for the most part, he seems happy to go along with my sudden sense of freedom.
When I take a break to stretch my arms out and rub them against the cold, George mounts his camera on a tripod, carefully sets the field and then nods at me to turn toward the wall. I hear the shutter click again, and again, and suddenly his hands encircle my waist. Another click—I hold my breath.
“You are beautiful,” he whispers against my hair. Click. His teeth graze over my neck and I feel his cock pushing up against my ass. Click, click. Then he turns me around, and there is something in his eyes—seeking, wanting. I know that feeling, and for a moment seeing it in his eyes hits me like a slap across the face of an unconscious person. I wake up gasping for air and lean in to kiss him. He crosses the rest of the distance. Click. Click. I find the remote in his hand and take it from him; I can hardly breathe. His hands run down my arms and up my waist until his thumbs caress the undersides of my breasts. This time I release the shutter: click. Click. He walks me back a step; I find myself pressed against the wall, cool against my ass; then his hand is between my legs and my head falls back. Click, moan, click. With two fingers inside of me, the world grows hazier, I hardly think of the photos anymore, just know that the click sends tiny shoots of electricity through my body. I kiss his chest, his shoulders—he is so hard and tight under his skin, no softness like my body has in abundance. Click. Curling his fingers, he touches that perfect point inside me and I rise to my toes, aching, breathing, moaning. My tongue travels up his sternum; he tastes like salt and I want more. Soon I can’t keep quiet and he lifts my leg over his hip. The angle is terrible but god, his cock feels good against my clit. Click. Click.
“A… around. Turn me around again,” I moan, and his lips crash onto mine, hands grappling my face hard once more before he pushes me against the wall. My fingers find purchase, and I spread my legs. I can hear his aching sigh and suddenly, his hands push my ass apart and his tongue takes one long drag all the way from my clit up my crack. Fuck, fuck! He is fucking me with his tongue; I go cross-eyed for long heartbeats at a time and the grimy wall in front of me fades in and out of focus. A moment later he is inside of me. So full, so tight. His hand lands next to mine on the wall, and our fingers cross. We groan in unison, and he pushes his teeth into my neck. I almost forget: click, click, click, click.
The wall under my fingers is rough and he is digging his hand into my hip so hard it almost hurts, pushing into me again and again. With each thrust it feels like he’s pressing every atom of air in my lungs, and each time I have to moan to let it out, or I might burst. And still I want more, more.
Slipping my hand between my legs, I find my clit and he sounds another groan. I return the remote; I need my hand to keep myself upright against the wall. Immediately the clicks storm faster, more aggressively; he seems to time two with each thrust: I am curled inward, rubbing, panting, greedy.
“I want you to come all over my cock,” he breathes hot against my ear and I could cry it sounds so good. My body grants his wish less than a minute later, rearing, crying out and contracting all around him. He curses, groans and then pulls out. The splatter of his come lands on my ass and he whines like a wounded creature and collapses against my back. I shiver, find his hands and pull them more tightly around me.
“Hi,” I whisper. It still sounds frighteningly loud in the silence. George moves his head, his lips brush against my shoulder and finally, he turns me around again. I hardly dare to look—but he’s smiling.
“You’re cold.” His fingers trace my arms, then he rubs them a little ineffectually. We both feel gelatinous and tired.
“I didn’t notice,” I say, and grin. So does he. Click. We kiss. Click, click. He tastes even better now.
“Let’s pack up… I want to get you somewhere warm. Somewhere with a bed.”
I don’t know what to say but I curl my arms around him; his hands find my ass again, smearing his come, and pull me against him. Click. Somewhere warm with a bed is exactly what we need.
THE SEVEN RAVENS
Ariel Graham
When she was born, the doctors came to Cecily’s parents and told them not to expect their child to live. Her mother, still sweating and crying from labor, stared in horror at the managed care providers and tried to make herself understand. Her husband, shop clerk by day, wizard by night, went hard, his muscles tense, his jaw working as he started to chant.
“Don’t,” Cecily’s mother said. “Please. She’s just got here. Don’t let her come into a world where you’re—doing that.” Doing that was her way around saying “magic” or “casting a spell.” Cecily’s mother didn’t believe in magic. What Cecily’s mother believed in was the small bundle of baby the doctors brought and placed in her trembling arms.
Cecily stared at her mother with pacific blue eyes. She’d been born with a hole in her heart, a condition that might heal, a condition that might not heal. Whatever her chances, the managed care providers had options and choices, and all of those options and choices came with price tags.
Cecily’s father clenched his fists and tried hard to make money pour from the sky, or the cheap hospital silverware turn into gold, or for Cecily to heal spontaneously, but there are some things magic can’t change.
They took her home with them, into the nursery they’d prepared with green baseboard and sky-blue walls, with yellow curtains like the sun and murals of birds flying. Cecily’s father’s best friend and his family, all of them raven haired and white skinned, lived next door, in an identical home in a cookie cutter subdivision. Cecily’s father’s best friend and his wife came to visit, bringing with them home-cooked meals, infant mobiles and the promise that someday, somehow, their families would unite. Through friendship. Or marriage.
For a week Cecily’s parents lived in the wonder of Cecily, until the night her temperature rose, her cheeks flushing, her fists waving in infant fury.
“Send for a doctor,” Cecily’s mother said. “I don’t want to move her. I don’t want to take her out of the house.” It was snowing outside, a deep January snow, the kind that erases streets and houses and buildings and leaves only white baffling that deadens voices and hope.
Cecily’s father didn’t want to leave Cecily’s mother. He didn’t want to leave his child’s side. Terrified that his daughter would die, Cecily’s father called his best friend and asked if he and his family would run and get help. If each went a to different source, their number of chances would increase.
“Help is coming,” Cecily’s father said to Cecily’s mother when he went back into the nursery.
But help never came. Cecily’s father’s best friend’s family panicked and lost their way in the snow. In their panic, they searched for hospitals and doctors but found closed restaurants and shuttered churches and abandoned gas stations. It was as if the snowstorm had changed the city into an unfamiliar, haunted place.
They returned without a doctor.
“We’ll take a cab,” Cecily’s mother said, brushing past her husband with the baby swaddled in her arms. “Damn the out-of-program costs. I’m getting help.”
Cecily’s father agreed. His daughter had a hole in her heart. He had to do whatever he could to bring her fever down.
On the front porch, Cecily’s father paused and stared up at the sky. There were birds overhead, wild and free as his daughter might never grow to be. He didn’t know what had happened to his best friend’s family, or why help never came, but he felt powerless and angry.
His wife turned back just before she reached the cab, the word No on her lips. Too late.
Cecily’s father cursed his best friend’s family, causing his children to take the form of ravens and not know the comfort of human society. In his panic, he misspoke the curse. His best friend’s daughter was spared.
He followed his wife into the cab, ducking his head and sheltering his infant daughter from the snow.
Twenty-Four Years Later
“Where are you going?” her mother asked when Cecily started for the door just short of midnight. Even after twenty-four years, her mother worried.
“Just out to the porch for fresh air.” Cecily was tall and blonde, beautiful and athletic. Tonight she was restless. Something had bothered her all day, something about the way her father’s best friend’s wife had watched her at her birthday dinner.
“Maybe she just thought it was weird I don’t have a boyfriend,” Cecily muttered to herself. She certainly thought it was odd, and something she’d like to rectify. She was twenty-four and groping in cars and meeting in college boys’ filthy dorm rooms had gotten old. She wanted a boyfriend, a relationship and a life.