by Freya Kane
I used to have a black t-shirt with the words “Never sit when you can sprawl, never walk when you can saunter, never stand when you can slouch” scrawled across the front. Until that day, I had never met anyone who exuded that slogan, but then until that day, the rain was just rain, not a reminder of old scars.
Davis. His name was Davis.
He introduced himself with the confidence of a man who had never been rejected. His voice was like honey drizzled over gravel when he asked if I wanted to continue this conversation somewhere dryer, and I couldn't think of a single reason not to follow him into the nearest building, a gallery with a scarred sign reading "Dark Strokes."
There is nothing romantic or sexy about wandering around a Gothic art gallery in wet clothes, but as the minutes wore on, I began to forget about the soaked blue fabric clinging to my skin. Davis peppered the conversation with comments on the art lining the velvet swathed walls. Most of the paintings were horrendous, but the photographs were beautiful, if images of a gentle-faced man chained to a lamppost or the light of a burning dumpster reflected in the eyes of a girl too young to get into an R-rated movie could be called beautiful.
We examined every piece in the small gallery while asking and answering the timeless questions of mankind. I learned Davis was a devotee of everything artistic, and I was the person paid to decide if what he wrote or painted or sang was good enough for the world to see. He drove a black DeSoto that was bigger than my apartment, and when he sang a few lines of the song he was struggling with, I suddenly knew why Mick Jagger could have any women he wanted because any man who growled when he sang had to be unparalleled in bed.
His black hair fell in Medusa’s untamable coils, and when I looked into his eyes in front of a black and white photograph of a broken bottle stained with something I didn’t want to identify, I wondered if I would turn to stone for staring too long. A quick glance at his sodden jeans told me that one part of his body was slowly becoming more rock-like.
I kissed him in the doorway of the gallery. It was still raining, and the wind had shifted, driving the drops at us like tiny bullets, but the sting was addictive as the taste of acid rain on his lips.
The doorway to my apartment was white and worn by the touch of those who came before me. It opened that afternoon without its usual creak, and we slipped inside. I felt illicit, like the big-busted heroines on the covers of the romance novels hidden under my bed. On those pages, forbidden love was better than chocolate.
Davis kissed like a man trying to devour his last meal. His lips pressed against mine with an insistence which I couldn’t have ignored if I had wanted to. His tongue teases the edges of my lips, just dipping inside before pulling back, never quite giving in to what I wanted.
I found myself pressed against the wall just inside my apartment as Davis peeled off my clothing, taking time to savor each sliver of skin he revealed.
My shirt went first, the soggy blue velvet clung to my skin and made a wet slap on the hardwood floor when he tossed it aside. Underneath I wore a pale pink bra made nearly transparent by the rain. My nipples were hard points from the cool water and Davis ducked his head and sucked one into his mouth. Those perfect lips and that silver musician's tongue worked at my nipple before switching sides to give the other equal attention. I shivered at the sensations rolling through me.
“Cold?” Davis asked, pausing in his ministrations. A tone in his voice said he knew cold was the last thing on my mind, and that the wetness I was feeling now had nothing to do with the rain.
He unbuttoned my pants with a one-handed ease that spoke of large amounts of practice, skating his hands over my flat belly. His fingers dipped inside the V of my open fly to lightly tease the edge of my panties before investigating further. When his guitar-callused fingertips touched my flesh, my knees almost buckled, and when two of those searching fingers parted my lips and breached the wet inferno of my entrance, it was only the wall that kept me upright.
Davis played my body like an instrument. Fucking me on those long, slender fingers with maddening slowness, ignoring my clit and just concentrating on stroking me from the inside while his lips and tongue traced the contours of my neck.
Before I could regain my thoughts enough to reach for his belt, Davis slipped his fingers from me and dropped to his knees in one fluid motion, dragging my jeans and panties to the floor with him. Standing bare from the waist down, I felt the usual twinges of, but those were quickly forgotten when Davis’s mouth found its way between my legs and he gave my pussy an open mouthed kiss that had me wondering if the wall would be enough to keep me from collapsing.
Davis’s tongue was everywhere. The internal topography that he had been mapping moments ago with his fingers was now the territory of his tongue. Like a serpent, it dipped inside me, before withdrawing to trace circles around my inner lips before finally honing in on my clitoris.
At his first touch on that swollen nub, I dug my fingers into his shoulder, my nails leaving marks even through the layers of damp fabric. Davis flattened his tongue and pressed it hard against my clit, and I saw stars. Two of those fantastic fingers pressed into my slit, adding that perfect feeling of fullness that threw me over the edge as Davis lapped at my clit.
I keened and clung to his shoulders as the most powerful orgasm I’d ever had wracked my body. Every muscle contracted and shook, leaving me boneless and exhausted, but still very eager for more.
Davis stood up and pressed his mouth against mine, giving me another one of those sole-searing kisses. I could taste my juices on his lips, and my only thoughts were Naked. Bed. Now.
We left a breadcrumb trail of wet clothes as we meandered to my bed, stopping every few steps to kiss or caress another exposed body part. The pronounced bulge in the front of his black jeans showed me that I definitely wasn’t the only person who had enjoyed the last few minutes. The wet denim molded Davis’s jeans to his slim hips, so unwrapping my present took a bit of work, but what was underneath was well worth the extra effort.
The cock hiding under those black jeans was something that a sculptor would carve out of marble and centuries later a historian would display on a pedestal in a museum. The shaft was thick and it tapered to a head that just begged to slid into your mouth and stay awhile.
Finally both free of our tangled clothes, we fell back onto the bed and I crawled down Davis’s body, licking and sucking the skin in my path, determined to give him the same pleasure he had given me. Face to face with that tower of flesh, I almost didn’t know where to begin, but I was never much one for outlines or planning ahead. I preferred to dive right in and this was no exception.
My first tentative lick across the head made his hips jerk. Encouraged, I opened my mouth and took him in, sucking on the head like it was my favorite flavor lollipop. Deep-throating had never been one of my talents, but Davis made me want to push myself to the limit. I relaxed my throat as much as I was able and began to slowly lower my head. The thick flesh if his shaft choked me at first, but I continued, tracing the vein that ran the length of his cock on my descent and swirling my tongue around the head when I pulled back.
Davis’s moans grew louder with each passing moment, a litany of filth pouring from his mouth that managed to sound like a mash-up of poetry and porn. “Yes yes ah suck harder- FUCK there- your mouth is where I want to go when I die – ah fuck Lia you’re going to make me come!”
Hearing this incredibly sexy man coming undone from what I was doing to him sent a lightning bolt straight to my pussy. As much as I wanted to swallow him down and feel him flood my mouth with his come, I wanted to feel that cock inside me, stretching and filling me, much much more.
I kissed my way back up his body and straddled his hips. My mind briefly turned to protection, but my dry spell means the closest thing I had in the house to condoms were sandwich bags. The thought of not feeling his cock inside me was too much, so I decided the risk was worth it. Just one time.
The thick head of his cock butted up a
gainst my entrance. I shifted my hips and he slipped inside. That first moment a new lover enters you everything stops. I froze above Davis, just relishing in the sensation of him breaching my body before I lowered myself down onto him, taking every inch of his length into my wet heat.
Davis reached up and pulled me down to lay flush upon him, thrust his hips upward and controlling the rhythm even from underneath me. His eyes slipped shut, and the look on his face was pure ecstasy. “I think your pussy must be the gateway to heaven,” he breathed into my ear. From anyone else, it would have sounded like a cheesy line, but somehow Davis made those profane words sound like a prayer to some ancient god of pleasure.
Every rock of my hips sent shockwaves of pleasure through me. Riding Davis with my skin pressed against his had me heading towards another peak already when Davis hooked his leg around mine and rolled us over, pinning me beneath him.
“Easier to kiss you this way,” he said, tangling his hands in my pale hair and tugging me upward to plunder my mouth with his while his hips pistoned that delicious cock into me.
"So hot," Davis purred, following the curve of my neck with his tongue. "So tight." Small nips on my shoulder that he then soothed with kissed. "So wet." Impressing me with his flexibility, Davis leaned down further and sucked one of my hard nipples into his mouth, biting just enough to send a shiver of pleasurepain down my spine. "I could fuck you all day."
“Is- is that a challenge?”
Davis's lips curled into a smile that said it most definitely was a challenge and he sat back on his heels, pulling me upward with him, his cock still buried in me. I wrapped my legs around his back for leverage, acutely aware that this position put every aspect of my body on display front and center.
I glanced at Davis’s face and saw that his eyes locked on the spot where our bodies connected. I couldn’t blame him. The sight of his cock disappearing into my pussy with every thrust was mesmerizing.
“Touch yourself for me,” Davis whispered, his voice sounding ragged. “I want to see it.”
Something about Davis stripped away every bit of silly self-consciousness I had ever felt. I dipped my hand between my legs and found my clit. I circled it with my fingers, finding a rhythm that matched Davis’s thrusts. My orgasm took me by surprise and Davis moaned loudly as my inner muscles contracted around his cock, squeezing him like a wet fist, driving him to his peak as well.
Heat flooded me as Davis came inside me, and we both collapsed back on the bed, boneless and satiated and still joined in the most intimate of ways.
***
Every crucial instant of my life was superimposed over a rainy sky. The trend began four years before Davis crossed my path when weeks of agonizing waiting finally ended with a letter.
“We’re sorry, Ms. Collins, but your painting Flesh does not fit with the overall theme of our gallery. You show great talent, and we thank you for your interest. . .”
The incredible insincerity of the form letter left me reeling that day. During the last three months, the stack of rejection letters had grown at a horrifying speed, and the letter in my hand was the last one. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven galleries and twenty-seven walls my paintings would not be hanging on.
The pile had been easier to ignore the day before. I was always able to cling to the hope that the next letter I opened would tell me I was good enough. Now I had nothing but the final nail in my coffin in the form of Insincere Letter #27.
I was twenty-three, freshly graduated with a double major in Creative Writing and Studio Art and filled with images of art shows featuring my work where obscenely trendy critics would fawn over me. In the last thirty days, the art show in my mind had been slowly dissolving. As the last critic faded away after laughing condescendingly, I made a decision that part of me would always regret.
I decided I had been the powerless artist for long enough. I wanted control. I wanted to become the people I had cursed for the last month. I was sick of being the defendant. I wanted to be the judge. I turned to literature because everything about the art world was still too raw to me. I still had friends and loyalties there, but the business side of literature was as foreign to me as stock brokerage.
I made that choice with the phrase that my friends lived by echoing in my head. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, criticize those who can.”
They were right.
***
“Has anyone ever told you what a goddess you are?”
Completely caught up in the mundane task of sifting through the small pile of mail spread across the scarred blue countertop, I barely heard him. Bill. Bill. Paycheck. Junk. Bill. I may have won one million dollars! Guess I won’t need that paycheck anymore.
Goddess?
“Did you say I was a goddess?”
Davis grinned at me from his permanently sprawled position on my black leather couch. He was clad, as usual, in worn leather pants and a black t-shirt, leaving me hard pressed to find exactly where the couch ended and he began. “I did, but I think I was wrong.” His earlier calm was forgotten in favor of artistic frenzy as he all but sprinted to the corner of the loft he had claimed as his own, marked with half-finished sketches, paintings, and stacks of sheet music. A blank canvas was deftly removed from the half-dozen leaning against the blue wall.
“You’re something much better than a goddess,” he said. “You’re a muse. My muse.”
I crossed the room and knelt at his side, watching as he dug through a chipped metal toolbox filled with paints. Cerulean and Eggplant and Vermilion shared a space once populated by nails and screwdrivers.
He turned to me, his quest for the perfect color momentarily abandoned. “Lia.” The urgency in his voice erased any thoughts of the overdue phone bill or the two manuscripts I had to finish reading before tomorrow. “Let me paint you.”
I had never been called anyone’s muse, and no one had ever painted me. I was the quiet girl alone with her art, but today I got to be a goddess.
“You should take off your clothes,” Davis said. Feeling an odd shyness in front of a man who had seen me spread out on my bed like a feast, I slowly began to disrobe before settling down on the sofa.
“Paint me like one of your French girls,” I said teasingly.
Davis chuckled briefly, but he was lost in the artist’s world as he stared appraisingly at the canvas before turning back to me. “Sit back against the couch and open your legs,” he directed.
I opened my mouth to protest that nude was one thing and spread eagle was another, but Davis’s eyes said “Trust me” so I help my tongue and widened my legs.
Sitting nude in such a sexual position in front of a man you're currently having lots of sex with pretty much guarantees that you're going to get aroused. I tried to focus on holding still, knowing the importance of light and shadows when you're trying to paint a figure, but I couldn't help shifting in my seat. With nothing to do but sit there and stare at Davis, I would look at his face and remember the way it felt to have those pillowy lips wrapped around my nipple. I would stare at his hand as he held the brush and remember the way that same hand had slipped under my skirt while we sat in the park in broad daylight. My eyes drifted lower and I saw the tent in the front of Davis's pants and smiled at the realization that this was affecting him as much as it was me.
My nipples were already hard from the cool air in the room, and I was getting wet just from the awareness that Davis was watching me and I was making him hard. I was completely aware of every sensation flooding through my body and they were all focused on that spot between my legs that Davis was so intent on painting. My clit was begging to be touched and my juices were flowing enough that my pussy actually glistened.
“I can smell how turned on you are from here,” Davis said, his voice husky with his own arousal.
“You’re hard,” I replied, wanting him to throw down the paintbrush and take me.
“How could I not be?” Davis’s focus went back to the painting, his hand drifted to his erection,
idly stroking himself through his jeans.
I lost track of how long I sat there, my arousal growing to the point of pain while he painted. Finally, Davis put the brush down and stalked towards me, unzipping his pants. "Stay like that," he said. "I'm going to make you come, and then I'll be able to finish the painting so you can see yourself the way I see you."
Davis took his cock in his hand and guided it into my welcoming pussy. I was so wet he slid home with no hesitation and I found myself shaking and whimpering as he brought my oversensitive body to an orgasm with that first thrust. He froze and it was obviously taking every bit of his iron control to keep from coming in that moment. When my shaking stopped, he began a slow, deep rhythm. He would pull back with every thrust until only the tip of his cock was still inside me before pushing back in, making every thrust feel like that delicious first thrust.
