by Marni Mann
I kneeled on the floor, not far from his feet, and dragged the canvases from beneath the bed. I removed the plastic wrap and placed one on top of the other, setting them between us as I took a seat by the pillows. He turned to face me.
“This is one of my newer pieces.” The mask made Cee’s eyes darker than normal; they pierced through mine. She stared into Cameron as well. The painting was of her face only, with her black nails pressed into her chin. Her black glossy lips were plump and slightly parted. Black lace spread from her hair down the length of her nose.
I focused on Cameron, dissecting his reaction. His breathing sped up as he examined it; some part of his body was in constant motion.
“You’re—”
“And this is the other,” I said, interrupting him, pulling the second canvas out from beneath the first.
In this piece, Cee lay on top of the bed in my wing, the sheets bunched underneath her. She was lying on her side with her legs curled close to her stomach in a fetal position. She was naked. Every curve glared at me from the grain; every imperfection and scar was exposed. Cee was—I was—completely vulnerable. And in the moment I’d captured, I was spent; saliva had dried all over my skin. I smelled of a client. But more significant than any of this, I’d painted myself with my face pressed into the blanket and my hair splayed around me. Unless they knew my marks, no one would ever know it was me on that bed.
This painting captured it all. I began every evening as Cee, dressed in a costume that was richer than anything I owned. It heated my skin, made me feel powerful. Powerful like Victoria. Because of the tingling in my clit and the mask over my eyes, my view of the client was always distorted. I wanted an orgasm, and I knew he would give me one. But as soon as he left my wing, I became Charlie again. Thoughts started to swirl; reality burned every pore that he had filled with his spit. Soreness throbbed between my legs. Lilly, Emma, Cameron, Dallas, school, the exhibit, bills—all of it slammed into me. I was consumed every time by a loneliness far darker than my mask or my lingerie.
I was lost in thought as I re-examined the canvas that bore my likeness…and my darkness. I felt Cameron’s fingertips on my chin, gently pushing it up toward him. He moved the paintings to the side of the bed, closing the gap between us. When his hand stopped guiding my face, I expected to find his lips on mine. Nothing but air touched me.
“Thank you for sharing these with me,” he said.
His free hand moved to my neck, and he slowly pulled down the collar of my shirt until my shoulder poked out of the hole. His finger rubbed the two hidden freckles that were side-by-side, an inch past my bra strap. I followed his eyes to the painting, viewing their twins, dabbed in brown madder in the same spot on Cee.
His stare moved back to me. “I knew these looked familiar.”
His breath licked my face. There was no smell to it, but the feel was everything, like the sharp blast of cold air that heralded a storm. It was like fine linen waiting for my paint. Our tongues would be our brushes, meeting in empty space; our saliva would mimic the colors. Goose bumps covered my skin as he continued massaging my shoulder with his thumb. Tingles spread, and I bit my lip.
There was too much lying in front of me. I had to take it.
I slowly leaned toward him so I could taste his mouth, stopping a few inches before we met. My hand moved across the bed and landed just below his neck; my palm concealed his scars. I met his eyes as they searched within me, reading my desires. I crept a bit closer. But just before I reached him, his fingers dropped from my face, then my shoulder, and he got up from the bed. I didn’t feel instant rejection like I had with the Doctor and Dallas; this time, I felt challenged—by the way his posture had shifted, his fingers had tightened into me, his mouth had appeared hungry. I knew he was aroused, but he obviously wasn’t ready to give me what I wanted. It made me want him even more. My flesh ached for his touch. The wetness from my pussy spread to my thighs as I rubbed my legs together.
He moved to the other side of the room, taking The Lace Mask and Naked with him. He stood in front of the wall where the other paintings sat and began changing their order. “It feels like there’s a sequence to these pieces,” he said.
He placed the Day of the Dead all the way to the left. Lace Mask followed, then Naked, and finally Kerrianna. Losing Emma hadn’t initiated the pain in my life, but the accident had certainly sharpened it. The Lace Mask didn’t hide that pain; it channeled it, and gave me brief moments of escape and release. And when I was alone on the bed and Naked, the searing pain seeped through the wounds I had slashed across Kerrianna’s skin.
He was right. There was a definite sequence.
“These don’t fit.” He placed The Doors on a different wall, along with Black Crow and the portrait that I’d done of him. “They’ll work for the exhibit, but there’s a story here. A revelation.”
The truth was deafening.
“A dark revelation,” he said. “But something is missing.” He moved all the way to the left again, pausing in front of the Day of the Dead. Then he slowly took a step sideways, traveling through my story until he reached the end. “It’s this piece…something needs to come after her.” He was pointing at Kerrianna.
I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“Such as?”
“Wounds heal, Charlie.” He didn’t smile. “So what happens to her after they do?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sandy had dressed me in a black strapless Chantilly lace romper. The sections that spread across my breasts and below my navel were backed with satin, leaving only my stomach and hips to be seen. Ballerina slippers made of the same colored material covered my toes and the bottoms of my feet, the ties crossing around my ankles several times and looping into a bow in the front. My lids had been decorated with a sparkly pink shadow; so had my fingers and toes. There was even a pink crystal decal that had been glued a few inches in from my bikini line. And my hair had been chalked with bold hues of pink, purple and blue dusting the ends of each curl. I looked like a human baby doll, or a Japanese anime: entirely too perfect, too provocative, and too well-endowed for her age. But I liked the costume, and Jay had asked that I play a more vulnerable role for the evening. I didn’t know if he’d requested this ensemble because he wanted to be a daddy figure, or if he had more nefarious fantasies in mind: dreams of domination, breaking, and deeply punishing me in the most sexual manner until a surrender was made. I never surrendered, though…but my screams and moans made him and my other clients believe that I was doing just that.
What these men never knew was that sex healed me.
Pleasing a man was simple; I listened and gave them what they thought they wanted. When I took them in my mouth, humming a tune of seduction, playing a ballad with my groans while their eyes rolled into the back of their skulls—that was power. While they pumped thrust after aching thrust, I devised my new direction. I reveled in the growing financial freedom. The sex was a definite release for me—a release from the past I felt I was stuck in—but I felt something of a release after each credit card payment I made, too.
I lay on the bed, feet crossed, fingers drumming the nightstand. I hated the pause between Sandy finishing early and the arrival of the client, the quietness in my room before the music turned on. The loneliness of a king-size bed. I usually tried to busy my brain by plotting a scene, an outline we could follow that would work well with the costume, one that would occupy most of the hours. The client would leave exhausted and satisfied. If enough of the men praised me to Victoria, I would receive another raise; I’d already gotten two. But tonight, I had nothing—no scenes, no fantasies, no plans. My mind was focused on the paintings I needed to create for the exhibit.
I had only a few weeks before the show. After Cameron had viewed my seven pieces, he sent his thoughts to Professor Freeman. The Professor requested that I come to his office. He set up the pieces the way Cameron had suggested, studying each canvas individually and the collection as a whole. He agreed with everythi
ng Cameron had said: I had a story, a gritty one, and it was exquisite. But he also believed that a piece was missing in the sequence…a piece that needed to come after Kerrianna.
Unlike some of my other works, the idea for the missing piece hadn’t come to me in a dream; I hadn’t had an epiphany while I was in class or while resting against the backseat of the limo. It derived from a feeling, an emotion that sat in my chest. I’d filled my palette with shades of red and purple and, without any planning or sketching, I’d composed the image. In the bottom right corner, shoulders and a neck were formed, the head tilting back enough for the face to extend to the middle of the canvas. In the top left corner, there was another face, disembodied. The two figures met in the middle, lids closed, lips parted, colors dripping from both of their cheeks. The faces were hairless; they lacked distinguishing characteristics. Their sex was ambiguous, but something drove them toward the center…toward each other. Was it commonalities, or comfort, or a sensuality they shared? Maybe it was their darkness and their scars. I didn’t know at that moment. I hoped I would figure it out soon.
“Stand on the bed,” Jay said from the doorway. “Hold on to the front left poster.”
His voice startled me as much as his presence did, the way his back straightened and his hands pushed against the door’s frame. Because I’d been thinking about The Kiss, I had almost forgotten that I was in my wing, dressed in lingerie, waiting to be fucked.
I got to my feet and moved cautiously across the mattress until I reached the front. Then I steadied my toes and wrapped my hands around the wooden pole. There was ornate linework carved into the wood, and my nails fit inside the grooves. I wondered how many other girls had gripped this pole, how many wrists had been clamped with handcuffs, how many faces had stared into the mirrored floor to see who they wanted to be. Would I ever get the chance to meet any of them? Had we passed one another without knowing? After having had years of practice, I wondered how similar their stories would be to mine, if they’d still be able to smell and feel and detect the mansion on another girl.
Jay walked closer, stopping when he reached the end of the bed and extending his hand. He was asking for my foot, without words. I set my heel on his palm. He nursed the tip of each toe, slowly caressing my arch, removing the lace slipper with ease. He lavished my heel with attention, before placing all of my toes in his wide-open mouth.
“Baby,” I moaned.
His tongue was long, and his sucking was intense and hard. My eyes closed as my body began to relax. Music started to play. I didn’t know the genre or the artist, but the beats were heavy, hard hitting, heart thumping, rhythmic orgasms, and the voice was deep and drawn out. His movements seemed to match the music. The pace was unhurried, the sex exploratory, almost as though he were testing his hunt, teasing a bit, then savoring it.
He lifted my ankle higher, placing my calf over his shoulder, my knee bending at his muscle. I balanced on my other foot and clung to the pole. The romper was so restricting, the elastic around the bottom of the shorts began to dig into my thighs. His tongue laboriously inched up my foot and continued traveling up my leg, reaching beneath the elastic, working as far as the fabric would stretch. I moaned softly, voicing my need.
The way he commanded and dominated my body made me forget—forget Lilly and Emma, and the thirteen paintings that I still needed to create. I clutched the poster, my ankle wobbling from supporting my weight, and his hands began to rip the fabric. Once he tore off the bottom half, revealing my freshly waxed strip, I knew I wasn’t in control anymore. He was.
“Hold on,” he said, his hands cupping my ass, “I’m going to move you.”
He stayed on the ground, but lifted me in the air above his head, and positioned my back against the pole. Using the wood as leverage, I wrapped my legs around his neck, my hands combing and squeezing his thick black hair. He breathed against my folds, teasing them, and I begged for his tongue. I squirmed under his hands as his air hit me. I bucked against his nose…then his lips…finally melting into him when he gave me his tongue. My back arched as it licked, flapped, flicked against every inch of me, sucking after every other beat.
“Fuck,” I moaned.
I couldn’t move to the side for fear that we’d both lose our balance, but he shifted up and down and applied pressure. It caused the pole to grind against my skin. My shoulder blades burned from the rubbing. I knew that I would have light traces of the carvings imprinted in my flesh, temporary evidence of his longing. But the pain didn’t last, and it added to the pleasure of his fingers, which were running the length between my holes. My wetness spread. He inserted the tip of his finger into my first hole, then moved to my second. It was just enough for the passion to increase, for the tingling to build faster than I could control.
His tongue quickened; his fingers, each now in their own home, plunged deeper. My hips rocked against his face. My mouth opened as a scream poured from my lips, followed by a moan, and then a grunt. My sounds blended like the sensations that spread throughout my body.
He pulled me off the pole and I slid down his chest, landing at his waist as he wrapped my legs around him. He climbed onto the bed and rested his head on a pillow while I stayed on top. His clothes were still on; so was my tattered romper. I stood over him while he unzipped his pants. I yanked the one-piece down my breasts and past my stomach, stepping out of what was left of the fabric. Finally naked, I sat directly on top of him, positioning my knees so that my feet and legs could bear the burden of my weight. Just as I was about to claim what was mine for the night, he flipped me onto my back and stretched out next to me. Moving onto his side, he pulled me against him, his erection tapping against my ass.
“Beg me for it.” His teeth nibbled my shoulders. His fingers squeezed each of my nipples.
“I need you,” I breathed.
He lifted my hair and licked the back of my neck. When air hit the wetness, a shiver ran down my spine.
“Tell me you want my dick.”
“Give it to—”
And that’s when I felt him, deep and fast as soon as he was in, punishing my pussy in a delicious rhythm. I bounced back and forth, meeting him, squeezing the headboard with one hand, his hair with the other. I tugged his strands, hoping the pain would cause him to fuck me even harder.
I curled my knees to my chest, tightening my legs around him, and pushed into the mattress to steady myself. I let his fullness take me, eliciting screams, threatening my release. His hands roamed my hips and ass; his mouth continued to lick and bite the skin that was within his reach. His mask brushed up against me. It only added to the sexiness of my ascent.
I no longer heard the music. I didn’t hear the thoughts in my head, either. My ears were filled with the sounds of sex, the heavy breathing from his nose, moaning from his lips, the slapping of my cheeks against his thighs. The noise my nails made when they scraped the pillow. My mouth filled with the taste of his skin.
The mask restricted my peripheral vision, but there was nothing on either side that required my attention. Jay had flipped onto his back, moving me on top of him. One of his hands was behind me, a finger filling the back hole. The other rotated between my nipples, squeezing and pulling each one. The combination had already given me one quick orgasm, but I continued to ride through it. I was going for another.
I pushed my toes into the mattress, alleviating the weight from my knees and took longer, deeper strokes; my fingers drove into his abs.
“Ride me,” he yelled.
My breasts bounced with each spring. My ass tightened, squeezing him within.
“Faster,” he shouted. “Show me you want more.”
I moved my hands to the headboard, gripping the wood tightly so I could use its firmness, its steadiness to sway over him. I ground a little quicker; I clamped down harder.
He gave me a second finger. His hand poked as fast as I moved on top of him. It wasn’t pain that shot through me with each stroke; it was a dark sensuality, and he knew how muc
h I enjoyed it because his fingers were wet. And they stayed that way.
Suddenly, I was in the air again, and then on the mattress. He stood in front of me, yanking me to the edge of the bed, submerging as far as he could go. His two fingers fucked me at the same time. His other hand sauntered over my body. But in this position, with my legs on his shoulders, I could enjoy the passion he was producing without the pressure of having to ride him.
I could feel him getting closer by the way he moaned, the way his teeth bit into the arch of my foot and his fingers sped up as he neared the peak. It wasn’t just his actions that caused my orgasm to build again; it was also the sound of his arousal, his pleasure, the smell of our sex, and the taste of his sweat. As each sensation washed through my body, as his flesh pounded against mine and his fingers rubbed my clit, I let myself go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Since the day the Doctor had made his unsolicited visit outside the confines of the mansion, I’d been constantly looking over my shoulder. I found myself searching the shadows, trying to divine their mysteries before something could reach out of them and pull me in. My paranoia may have been unjustified, but I didn’t like surprises or being caught off guard. This had been especially true after the accident…another way in which Emma had affected my life. But the Doctor was clearly concerned that he’d be caught contacting me, and there was no way to ask him when he would be coming for me again; in the mansion, there were cameras in both my wing and his office, likely capable of detecting sound. I didn’t have his phone number, and I had no idea where he lived. But I trusted him; why, I didn’t exactly know. All I could do was wait and hope it would be soon. Somehow I suspected that he’d be more careful, less open in his approach than he’d been last time.