by Selena Kitt
Without toe shoes, the dance was no less graceful but somehow more physical, her lines less clean, her landing not quite as soft. Today’s revelations moved through her, dark secrets burning her skin, unlocking an expression in her body she had never understood before. She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it, but her body followed its longing, a passionate, frenzied dance of a woman with a ravenous appetite. She felt as if she could swallow the whole world.
Her memory of those photographs, those titillating pictures, and the rush of feeling it created in her, made her chest burn and her limbs sing. She danced with the memories, she danced the sin and shame of her own lust, the final acquiescence to her body’s need, and the sweet triumph of reaching that peak. The dance was hers now, no longer anything she had learned. It was the pure expression of her essence, every feeling and thought that had been running through her head on some endless loop.
When she finally collapsed in a heap in the middle of the floor, breathless and panting, she felt like crying, as if her body had been filled to bursting and it must now have some sort of deliverance. The dance she had hoped would exhaust and deplete her had simply served to energize her further. Leah lifted her head, opening her eyes slowly, and saw him standing there in the shadows, like a dream.
Her heart fluttered to her throat like a trapped butterfly and her hand leapt there, as if she could catch it. He was watching her, just outside of the circle of lamplight, leaning against one of the tall supports she and Erica used to dance around that ran floor to ceiling throughout the warehouse.
“Mr. Nolan?”
She heard the click of his throat as he swallowed dryly. “You’re so beautiful.”
The look on his face was the one straight from her imagination, like he worshipped her, and at the same time, like the big bad wolf accosting an innocent red riding hood, like he wanted to eat her all up.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I just… couldn’t sleep...”
“So fucking beautiful.”
She was stunned to silence, lips parted with words she couldn’t speak, staring at him as he took a step toward her, the light on his face now, a wolfish look in his eyes making her skin bristle all over. She had never heard Mr. Nolan swear before. Ever.
“Leah...” Her name on his lips was like a caress. His gaze moved over her, no tights, no leg warmers, no toe shoes. He’d seen her like this a hundred times of course, but she had never felt so naked. The look on his face changed when he met her wide eyes. She saw the emotions cross his features, from horror and shame to something like anger. “Jesus. Go to bed.”
He turned and waved her toward Erica’s room, and she went, grabbing her nightgown and bolting down the hallway. Erica was still asleep and Leah stripped down quietly, pulling her chaste, white nightgown over her head and slipping into her sleeping bag. She shut her eyes as tightly as she could, until she saw stars, and tried to forget. She tried to forget the images she’d seen that afternoon, the look on Mr. Nolan’s face when she was dancing, the feelings she’d had coursing through her all night.
She tried to forget, but she couldn’t.
Finally, Leah got up to use the bathroom. The house was completely dark now, even the living room light turned off, and she listened for the familiar sound of Mr. Nolan snoring up in the loft, but didn’t hear anything. The bathroom was past his bed, on the other side of the kitchen, near the darkroom—the real one, where he developed photos of people like Elvis and Agatha Christie and Mickey Mantle. Not the other darkroom, the one hidden behind the tapestry under his bed.
She stopped at his loft, still listening for the sound of his breathing. It had stopped raining and the moonlight from the skylights above threw just enough silvery light for her to see the outline of his desk, the oriental pattern of the tapestry hiding the door behind.
Curiosity drew her forward, although she knew she shouldn’t. Seeing those photos had changed her somehow. She moved toward the door in the darkness, breath held, knowing if she woke Mr. Nolan, she’d have to find some sort of excuse. But something in her wanted to see. She wanted more of those titillating images. Her body craved them.
Leah saw the tapestry was already drawn aside, the padlock open, the bolt too, the door slightly ajar. Curiosity overwhelmed her and she crept forward, inching the door wider, wider still, confused at the darkness. If Mr. Nolan was in the darkroom, why wasn’t the light on?
Holding her breath, she fumbled for the switch, the red glow illuminating the photos hanging on the line, the sight of them making her belly kindle with excitement. So wrong. So sinful. So wicked. So very provocative.
But Mr. Nolan wasn’t there.
Had he left the door open?
She touched the first picture—a woman wearing a bikini top, but no bottoms, on a beach. Right out there in broad daylight! Where was this taken? she wondered, staring at the woman’s sex. It was completely hairless, a sight that shocked her to the core. All the hair had somehow been removed, the woman on her knees, leaning back in the sand, hips lifted in an arch, as if showing off her shock of naked flesh.
The next photo was astonishing, a full close-up of the woman’s mound. She was dark-haired, and up-close you could see some of her hair growing back at her cleft—shaved, Leah realized—but the most surprising thing was the way she spread herself open for the camera, her long fingernails parting her own flesh for the exposure. Leah had never seen anything like it, a labyrinth of flesh. She’d certainly never taken a mirror down there to look at her own!
Just looking at something so raw and open made her body constrict with arousal. She felt sticky and hot between her legs, the nightgown she’d borrowed from Erica moist from her own sweat. The tender pulse was back, incited by the string of photographs, kindling for the fire.
Leah couldn’t help herself. She lifted her nightgown up, exploring with her fingers, as if the photograph in front of her was a map she could follow. Her pubic hair was dark and curly, different from the smooth skin in the picture. And so many soft folds of flesh! There was that little button, ohhh, that vital spot, so sensitive when she touched it, she shivered. She couldn’t help but remember her own climax and her friend’s—I’m coming! I’m coming! Erica had cried—the delicious tremble and flutter and clench of it.
Did every woman feel the same way when they touched it? Or when someone else did? Or at the gentle press of a tongue? That was the next photo in the line—a man’s head buried between the woman’s legs, the same arch of her hips, pressing her sex into his mouth, head thrown back, dark hair brushing the sand. She tried to imagine what it would be like, to let someone do that. Her finger was already making circles around and around, right there, oh yes, right there.
The sound of her breathing filled the room and her gaze skipped to the next photo, this one showing the man holding himself in his hand, aiming it between the woman’s legs. She looked ready for him, open and wet, arms reaching out. Leah knew how it all worked. Not because of school or even her mother, but because of her dance instructor.
The dance instructors were the only teachers in the school who weren’t nuns or priests. The whole program, started back in the 1920s, had always been controversial, but several world-renowned ballet dancers had emerged from Mary Magdalene, and one of their largest contributors was an avid ballet connoisseur, so they kept it on, grudgingly. Anna, her favorite dance instructor in high school, had sat down an embarrassed group of ninth grade girls—soon after the Playboy incident—and instructed them on how not to get pregnant.
But looking at these photos was a whole different experience from hearing about how penises and vaginas and sperm and eggs related—and “ne’er the twain shall meet.” This picture was about desire and lust. This was sin incarnate, everything the priests and nuns said was the root of evil, and yet her body told another story. Her body wanted and there was nothing she could do about it.
Leah’s fingers moved faster, gaze skipping to the next photo, this one jus
t the woman’s face, and yet somehow more erotic than any of the others, her eyes closed, dark-lipsticked mouth open in an “o” of pleasure. Leah knew the feeling, and the newness of her experience made it all the more exciting. Was the woman “coming?” Was she about to “come?”
“I want to come.” Leah tried the words out in her mouth, turning crimson at the sound of them. She whimpered and moaned and rubbed herself a little faster, imagining the sound of the couple on film, the waves crashing, the heat of the sun and their sex, the slap of their flesh, her cries of pleasure.
“Ohhh yes! Fuck me!”
Leah froze, her eyes flying open wide at the words. They were faint, but the sound was real. She hadn’t imagined it. Had she? She could barely breathe, thighs trembling, bare toes cold on the tile floor, straining to hear.
“Yes! Oh put it in me!”
She turned her head slowly toward the wall, blinking in disbelief. It was the opposite wall from the door, around the other side of the developing table. There was no table against it, no shelves. That’s where the sound was coming from. She was sure of it. Impossible, but true. Who was it? And what were they doing?
Well, she knew what it sounded like they were doing!
Approaching the wall, she touched it in the darkness, finding it cool and paneled like the rest of the room. Her fingers found it before her eyes did—a seam, deeper and more pronounced than the rest of the paneling, revealing another door. Another room. Another secret room? A darker, darker, darkroom? What was going on in there?
She almost turned and ran. Her heart beat like a hummingbird caught in her throat, her hands shaking. The things revealed behind the first secret door tonight had been far too powerful already. Whatever existed behind this new door was a step too far. In her heart, she knew it, but her curiosity drove her to slide her fingers into the groove and pull.
She expected the door to be locked, but it wasn’t. It swung easily, silently toward her and she peeked through the crack, leaving it open just slightly as it revealed yet another room, deeper into the warehouse. There was very little light, just a flickering in the darkness, like the light of candles, or perhaps a television. The room wasn’t set up as a darkroom though, but rather some sort of studio with a large white screen backdrop, a wardrobe in the corner with what appeared to be robes and capes and other costumes, and several settees, couches, chairs, and one twin bed.
At first she didn’t see him, leaning back on the twin mattress. It was his voice, low but clear as could be, that drew her attention.
“Oh yes. Fuck yes. Suck it.”
How she had missed the flickering light was from the projection of an 8mm movie was beyond her own comprehension. It hadn’t registered at first, probably because the reel had been at a blank screen moment, but now there was an image before her, larger than life in black and white, of a woman doing exactly what Mr. Nolan said.
Leah stared in breathless disbelief, watching with her jaw agape, not unlike the woman’s mouth on screen, open and accepting the pumping male member, in and out, a sloppy, fast rhythm. Both people were wearing masks, like they had been at a masquerade party, covering their eyes but not their mouths.
If the image wasn’t enough to shock her, the sound that accompanied it was. Mr. Nolan had lots of home movies of them as little girls—Leah at her dance recitals, Erica cheerleading—but they were all silent, blurry, black and white images, the girls smiling and waving at the camera, but no sound at all coming out of their mouths.
She had never in her life seen a home movie with sound. Movies on film, at the theater, sure. But this had that shaky feel of a home, hand-held camera, something not quite professionally done. The woman on screen was making all sorts of noises, moaning and slurping around the man’s thrusting penis, and Leah was almost certain it had been recorded in real-time.
She stared at the flickering image on the screen, the man grabbing the woman’s hips, positioning her so she was standing, bent over, bottom up. His thing was big—far too big for such a small entrance, she reasoned, watching with wide eyes as the woman reached back to guide him in—but the two of them managed it quite easily, beginning to move together.
“Yes! Do it! Fuck her!” Mr. Nolan’s voice drew her attention. His words made Leah’s knees weak and her mouth go dry. She could see Mr. Nolan facing away from her, looking at the screen, stretched out naked on the bed. And she could see his hand moving between his legs as he watched the scene playing out before them.
On the screen, there was suddenly another woman involved. Leah managed to muffle the sound of her surprise as the women began to kiss and fondle each other. The man reclined, stroking himself and watching, just like Mr. Nolan was. One woman had dark hair, the other a blonde. And she noticed, as the blonde one pushed the dark-haired one down onto a sofa and spread her legs, both women were shaved down there.
Then the blonde one started to kiss the dark-haired woman’s sex, lashing her with her tongue, back and forth, round and round, while the man watched. The camera was shaky as it moved closer, showing the glistening wetness, completely smooth.
Why is she shaved? Leah wondered, finding her fingers brushing the softness between her own legs, wondering what it would feel like without hair.
Then the camera panned back to reveal the man behind the blonde, sliding into her from behind. He gripped her hips, squeezing and pulling them as he drove into her, making her moan against the other woman’s cleft. The sounds alone were enough to make Leah aroused, if she hadn’t been already—the slick slap of their bodies, the moans of the women, the grunts of the guy behind them.
A sound from Mr. Nolan drew her attention to him again, and she saw the hand between his legs had stopped and he was squeezing himself hard in his fist. She bit her lip, watching him slowly pull the skin down tight as he moved his hand toward the base, staring at the length of him. He wasn’t as big as the man on the screen—but almost! Leah was fascinated with the way he touched it, now pressing it up against his belly and rubbing it toward his navel as he watched the threesome.
“Oooooh yes,” he moaned, taking it into his fist again as, on the screen, the three of them rearranged themselves, the blonde lying on the sofa, and the dark-haired woman lying on top of her, both of them on their backs. The man knelt between their legs, sticking it first to the girl on top, then the girl on the bottom, switching back and forth. Mr. Nolan’s hand pumped faster, his hips rising a little.
Leah’s fingers moved over the soft, wet hairs of her sex, and in spite of the fact she’d just recently had an orgasm, she started to rub herself again as she pressed her eye to the crack in the door to see better. She’d forgotten all about having to pee—in fact, the need to go just increased the pleasure as she worked her fingers around in fast little circles.
The girls on the screen kissed, tongues meshing, as the man between their legs went after first one, then the other. Seeing him, so slick and wet as he slid out, the head of it glistening as he slipped it up and down before pushing it back in again, was almost as good as watching Mr. Nolan’s hand shuttling up and down the length of his shaft. She couldn’t decide where to look, and she was so wet she could feel it spreading to her thighs.
“Do me, do me!” the girls on screen begged. “No, me… me!” They were fighting over who got to feel him inside, and Leah wondered what it would be like to be pressed into, filled with that steady, rhythmic, pounding flesh.
She looked at Mr. Nolan, who was pumping very fast now, the movement of his hand a flash up and down in the ghostly light from the projector. His soft moans sent shivers through her, making her rub a little faster, matching his intensity. She couldn’t help pulling her nightgown up over her breasts and pressing her nipples against the door.
“I’m gonna come!” It was the man on screen, pulling out of the blonde on the bottom and aiming toward the dark-haired girl’s shaved mound. She spread it open for him as he, grunting and moaning and shoving his hips forward, spilled huge, white-hot jets of fluid onto her
flesh.
Leah almost groaned out loud when Mr. Nolan grabbed some sort of control device next to him, hitting a button—she wanted to see the rest! Back the film went, back to when they all first started rearranging themselves again. Leah’s fingers were slick with her own juices now, and she longed to explore and put two of them inside, but she was afraid he might hear the noise, even with the film on, so she just focused on the little nub at the top of her cleft, the hot wetness between her legs growing with every passing moment.
Mr. Nolan’s hand moved even faster, and she heard his breath, the sound of it filling the room, panting with his effort. Leah looked from the screen to him and back again, the intensity of the experience pushing her forward, upward, making her rub herself even faster, her forehead pressed against the door frame, nipples brushing there too, hard and throbbing.