Body Wisdom & Uncompromising Portraits

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  “You can have all the personal freedom you want, do whatever you like. But it’s not the way I want my marriage.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be so backward and narrow minded, I’m not sure I want you for a husband,” she barked.

  “Well good. That pretty much settles it.”

  There was a lump the size of a grapefruit in her stomach, another in her throat, and it felt like the whole world was crashing down around her. She loved Gabriel, the gentle, generous, passionate creative man, but she hated this attitude of his. And what was worse was the underlying feeling that he never had, and never would approve of her sexual appetites. Sure he liked the sex, but as strange as it seemed, she often thought he found her too loose. In the back of his mind, he seemed to have this feeling that she was just too sexual to be a good wife. Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!

  Chapter Three

  Sydney came home from the cafe a week later, to see Gabriel moving the last of his belongings out of the apartment. He’d left the night of the big fight, after he’d meticulously finished cleaning the kitchen. It wasn’t until several days later that he returned to get his things. She thought maybe he was waiting for her to give in, and decide not to do the modeling, but she remained firm.

  For her part, Sydney had hoped he’d just cool down, discuss things with his more level headed friends, and he did have more level headed friends. But apparently he was not going to budge.

  It seemed so sad that it came to this, but Sydney couldn’t see any other choice. Every compromise she tried on in her mind, just fell apart, with her giving up her liberty over some relatively inconsequential sexual matter, that wasn’t even sexual as far as she could see it. After all, she wasn’t posing for a men’s magazine, or doing erotic dancing, or even posing for another group of art students. This was just a little nudity in an artist’s studio, with no one but she, and Malcolm, and the other models he might be using.

  It was far more likely she’d get hit on by the customers at the Cafe, than she would standing naked for hours in Malcolm’s studio.

  “You really have to leave?” she asked, as Gabriel picked up what appeared to be his final box of things.

  “Are you changing your mind?” he asked.

  “No,” she confessed.

  “Then I’m gone.”

  She sighed heavily. There were so many things she’d wanted to say to him. But over the last week she’d already said a lot. They’d fought more every time he returned to get more clothing, and she was too weary from the battle to go into it again. She was sure he was too.

  “Well, just remember, Gabe, I don’t want you to go.”

  “Maybe so. But it sure looks that way to me.”

  Seeing her husband walk out the door, she wasn’t certain that they could ever agree on anything again. Then again, maybe they’d never agreed on the really important things. Perhaps it was better that this happened before they’d made the commitment of children, and more years that would have made a breakup harder still. It didn’t seem right, not when there was so much love, but there was no arrangement that seemed right to her. Gabriel was an impossibility in her life, an enigma, a mystery, a perplexing rogue, like one of those silly Christmas puzzles that you try all day long to solve, and never get anywhere.

  Sydney didn’t have much time to think about her nagging woes. Just after Gabriel left the apartment, the phone rang. It was Malcolm wanting to start his work that night. Early yes, but he now had a deadline, six months until the work needed to be done, and he couldn’t waste any more time getting ready if he was going to do it.

  Even as her life was turning into a bizarre drama, she agreed to meet with the artist that night, regardless of what happened with Gabe. As it turned out, it was just as well. With Gabriel gone for good, there was nothing to keep her home. Wandering around the near empty apartment would only make her sadness more acute. It would be a grand mistake.

  Pushing back her tears, Sydney changed into jeans and T-shirt. As she dressed for the evening, it seemed a little funny doing no more with her body. Malcolm told her no make-up, no special hairdo. He wanted her as natural as possible. He’d be treating her body as his art project, doing with it what he liked. Strange to feel a little like clay, flexible and unfixed, though it was an appropriate metaphor for her life.

  “It’s for the best,” she reiterated silently over and over again, as she quickly locked the apartment door, and raced off to the Eisley Studio.

  Chapter Four

  “Stand here,” he said. His warm tones were very businesslike. He was being the artist at work, not the mentor/instructor. It was a different side of the man than she was used to seeing. She was a little taken aback at first, that she was just a body, just a simple nude female body that he would move about and pose and play with, as it suited his fancy. It was all detached, and not nearly as provocative as that night in the art institute. Malcolm was a perfectionist, everything would have to be just so.

  However, when he pulled her from one position to another, and posed her with his “hands on” style, she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he were to slip, just a little, fingers touching her pubic mound, or brushing against her breast. Her arousal would mount then.

  Putting her sexual thoughts aside, it was probably better keeping things strictly professional. It made it easier dealing with the dam of emotions that was threatening to break loose all around her. In the gentle quiet of the studio, with some soft classical music playing in the background, the peace seemed to put a tight lid on the impending flood. She knew she’d eventually burst. But she could save it until later, when she was home, able to face “home” again, without Gabriel there.

  Now, the quiet gave her a moment to reflect and gain some perspective; the posing allowed her time to create some response to the horror of her real life. Maybe she could just accept this separation from Gabriel and know it was right, that it was the way it should be. Perhaps, she and Gabriel didn’t belong together. Perhaps.

  For two hours Sydney was the centerpiece of Malcolm’s work. He moved her into a variety of positions, standing, sitting, reclining. Naked as a babe, she posed at all his odd angles. Many times the most private places of her body were exposed for his eyes, and yet the seductive vibrant man was too busy to view it sexually. And yes, his hands did graze those sensitive private places on occasion, causing Sydney to jolt, more on the inside than the outside. But the professional distance remained, which kept a host of feelings from getting away from her.

  Malcolm sketched her posed body a dozen times, gliding his charcoal over the paper with a practiced ease. “Beautiful!” “Perfect!” “Ah, just right!” The enthusiastic exclamations rattled off his lips. He was totally self-absorbed and fixated on her, but only on the most basic physical level.

  By the end of the second hour, Sydney was exhausted. She hadn’t thought she would feel so weary, but the weight of reality suddenly bore down on her with crushing clarity.

  “Here, my dear,” Malcolm said, throwing a robe her way. “You need a break. You can grab some juice in the fridge,” he said, pointing to the small kitchen in the corner of the room.

  Sydney dragged herself from the platform, and found that a tall glass of orange juice did indeed refresh her body, if not her spirit.

  “Do you suppose you can go another hour, or are you too tired? Be truthful.” It was nearly ten o’clock.

  For the first time that night, Malcolm let down the professional self-absorbed persona, and became the friendly instructor Sydney knew from her classes. Just that small change in attitude hit her with quite a force.

  “Oh, I don’t think I can go on,” she told him. She was trying to hold back tears, but it was quickly obvious that it wouldn’t happen. “In fact, I need to go,” she said, trying to rise from the couch where she was sitting.

  He pushed her down with a firm hand. “I don’t think so,” he countered. “What’s going on?” Seeing her unexpected distress, his concern was almost fatherly.
That, by itself, seemed to be the piece that loosened the floodgates of Sydney’s emotion, as tears began to spill down her cheeks, and she buried her face in a towel she’d been holding in her lap.

  Malcolm sat down beside her with a reassuring hand on her back, and let her cry. Not asking questions, or saying a word, he comforted her with just the palm of his hand, and the kindness behind it.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said, when the tears were finally subsiding.

  “Is this about the modeling?” he asked.

  “No, well yes, sort of,” she replied, only adding to Malcolm’s confusion.

  “Have I been too demanding?” he asked.

  “No, that’s not it. It’s just that my husband Gabriel left me.”

  “Left you? When?”

  “He finished moving out tonight, before I came here.”

  “Good god, why the hell are you here!”

  “Oh sure, stay at home in an empty apartment!” she exclaimed sarcastically. “I thought this was much preferable.”

  “This break up isn’t over posing for me, is it?”

  “Well, sort of.” She was hesitant to admit it.

  “That blithering idiot!” Malcolm exclaimed, with a burst of energy that surprised Sydney for the nasty twist it put in Malcolm’s voice. She’d never heard him talk that way.

  “Malcolm, it’s not just that. It’s more about those defining things in a relationship you mentioned a few weeks back. Neither of us could compromise, so here I am . . . “

  “I’m sorry to hear this,” he said. He wouldn’t try to talk her out of her decision to pose for him, since he could hardly support Gabriel’s narrow-mindedness. Malcolm Eisley had been a libertine more years than he could remember. To him, anything less wasn’t living. Sydney would learn her lesson now, and be better off. He was sure of that, even though it was hard to see her immediate suffering.

  He put his arm around her waist and held her, just for comfort. Yet even though he was just planning to soothe her, it was hard not to be aware of her vibrant body, literally pulsing with a fine passionate energy. All the poking and moving her about that night may have been for an artistic purpose, but he was not as oblivious to the sexual possibilities as it might appear.

  “You’re going to make a classically fine model, Sydney,” he said, gently brushing away a lock of ash blonde hair that had fallen in her eyes.

  “Thank you. And thank you for letting me get this off my chest.”

  There was a prickly aliveness between them, that seemed only to grow the longer they remained so physically close. All Sydney’s instincts told her it was sexual, but she didn’t want to believe that.

  The fact remained, Malcolm Eisley was a sexual man twenty four hours a day. And while the overt heat of sexual arousal had been squelched while the creator in him worked with his model, the heat was now out, open, and flowing toward her, in one crude burst of intensity.

  Sydney’s energy was the same. All emotions aside, she was horny. Her pussy pulsed, as indecent thoughts about the artist made her even more aroused.

  The juxtaposition of the highly charged man and woman needed just one simple sexual advance to ignite the coupling. It seemed like one of those fated things in movies, where two heads collide, or two bodies suddenly share an intimate space at just the right time, and there’s nothing but fate there to propel them forward. But the tiny accident of place and time didn’t happen involuntarily. It came more directly, not with a potent silence, but with a direct proposition.

  “Make love to me,” Sydney said, as she looked Malcolm eye to eye. Her words were clear and strong and certain.

  Malcolm looked at his model’s tear stained face with caution.

  “Make love to me, Malcolm,” she repeated. “I don’t think I could bear this night without a man’s hands on me. I couldn’t sleep in my bed alone.”

  Malcolm knew she was vulnerable to him, but he didn’t expect she’d regret her bold choice. If this was what she wanted, it was what she would have.

  Not saying a word, he laid her back on the reclining couch, watching the robe as it fell open just slightly. He’d viewed her naked body all night, but now that sumptuous flesh peeking through the robe was far more stimulating. Each small tug on the giving fabric revealed another view of her breasts, and another hint of her cunt below. He could think of nothing so sweet as to have so effortlessly seduced her. What an uncomplicated woman she was, knowing what she needed.

  Malcolm’s mind was rapidly designing a robust screw, since he’d hardly had to design the seduction at all. From the outset of his project, he figured that before their association was over, husband or not, they’d have to get to bed; but so freely and so soon? It was a delectable feast waiting for him. Perhaps he’d get to enjoy this model all through the long painting sessions.

  Seeing her offered breasts inviting him further, Malcolm pushed the robe away altogether, and took the soft mounds in his hands. He fondled them with a gentle, though certain hand. Her small nipples were quickly made large with a few brisk pinches, that turned them readily into tight buds. He leaned in and kissed them, then took them in his teeth and toyed with her, pretending he would bite them.

  “Ah yes, oh god,” she whispered her accord.

  “These are so lovely,” he said, as his mouth began an attentive journey around the white flesh. While his hands continued to play with her breasts, he moved his mouth down to her pussy, where it was wet and warm, and a succulent sweet juice flowed so it stuck to the inside of her thighs, and made the pink folds shine.

  Sydney hadn’t made love to anyone but Gabriel for three years, one year when they were dating, and two when they were married. Marriage had really been a concession to his conservative family, though she’d thought it would work out okay, thinking that Gabriel could easily be all the man she’d ever need. Now, she needed Malcolm, not so much for a deep intimate relationship, as for what he could give her in sexual pleasure and emotional comfort. It would be a moment to put aside all the wretched things that had happened that appalling week, and bask in pure raw physical gratification.

  He didn’t appear to be a particularly inventive lover, at least not at first. Though when his cock entered her early on, she was well aroused, just as he was. A quick climax was not altogether a bad thing. After all, there was so much built up passion that had to go somewhere. He was tender and efficient, taking his time with his cock in her cunt. She squirmed easily beneath him, since he held himself above her. She even played with her clitoris, until she was ready to come.

  When he orgasmed it was three strong quick jerks, and a lovely swoon of pleasured sound. Sydney followed quickly after, her body bucking madly as she tried to feel every blessed feeling, every sharp burst of sensation, and especially, every wild horribly nasty thought of pure lust that was barreling through her mind, and making her body into the rebellious haven of wanton appetite.

  She liked being this wicked, liked the fact that she’d taken another man the very day her husband had moved out. It was a fine fine revenge, and she planned to make it stick, at least for the moment. Malcolm was a perfect lover for her. She suspected that he would only want one thing from her, and that was what they were enjoying now. She wouldn’t want to give him everything else, and she wouldn’t have to.

  The two were reclining together on the couch, recouping from the screw. It was a most satisfying ending to too much excess need, though Sydney couldn’t help a small wave of guilt that passed through her as the reality sank in.

  “Oh, my god, what have I done?” were the first words she spoke.

  “Enjoyed yourself,” Malcolm replied.

  “But isn’t this pretty sordid, my first real day of separation?”

  “What difference does that make?” Malcolm asked her. “You’re trying to be too conventional for your own good.”

  “Too conventional?”

  He had his fingers on her wet pussy, playing with her clitoris with hands so skilled, she was certain another org
asm would quickly mount. Still, she tried to pay attention to the conversation.

  “You were trying to bury yourself in a traditional marriage. Face it, Sydney, you were just biding your time before something like this would happen.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I don’t try to tell people what they’re about, but Sydney you’re not a stay-at-home wife. You’re not the regular sort of woman who should allow a man to confine her. I didn’t say you couldn’t make marriage work, but you have to have the right terms, and the right man.”

  “And you think it’s not Gabriel.”

  “I don’t know your Gabriel. But he’s a hell of a crazy asshole for leaving your bed.” He kissed her on the ear, his lips giving it a gentle tug.

  “But if he can’t accept what I am, then we’re both better off, don’t you think?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Malcolm said.

  It made sense to Sydney, though her heart wasn’t all that convinced. A thousands regrets were making her wonder if Gabe wasn’t right about her loose morals.

  “Don’t torture yourself,” Malcolm said, as he raised up on his arm, and looked down at her. “We’ll have a fine time together pursuing this lusty body of yours.” He played with her cunt, several fingers going into her soppy wet cavern, only adding to the mounting sensations that he’d already started there. “I don’t even think you know the woman inside this body of yours. It’s why I choose you for a model, there’s a inferno here. You’ll see it in the paintings.” He pushed his fingers in and out in a vigorous fuck, as she lay back listening to his words, and allowing the action of his hand to make her orgasmic again. “A storm, my darling, something rampant and savage. You don’t even know the kind of woman that you are here.”

  He withdrew his hand from inside, and grabbed her cunt firmly. He shook it with a hearty fervor, as she moved against it, thinking everything he said was so right, and real, and why did she have to go through all this pain to find the pleasure she needed?