“No.” He tugged on her hair again, and threads of desire uncoiled between her legs like marionette puppets responding to their master’s touch. Who knew “no” would make her so hot, so fast?
Amy hesitated. Should she insist? Accept his refusal quietly? Uncertain, she met his gaze. The slow, lazy heat in his eyes stopped her breath.
“Why not?” she whispered.
“Because I’m a little selfish too.” Mac dragged her closer, shifting on the bed until his knee rose high against her mound. He splayed his fingers over the back of her head. “And this isn’t only about your fantasies.” The tips of his thumb and middle finger pressed behind her ears, another pair of wicked response buttons that elicited a new surge of heat in her veins. His hand tensed, slid down to cup the nape of her neck. Amy barely had time to suck in a breath before he pushed her mouth down onto the head of his cock. She opened up eagerly, determined to deliver a very sincere thank-you for his generosity.
Efflorescence
by
Katrina Strauss
With frail and trembling arms, the woman diligently rolls her wheelchair across the linoleum floor. Triumphant, she comes to rest at the metal bureau, which she shares with her roommate. Studying the spines of the books stacked on her side, the titles ranging from hardbound classics to paperback romance, she spies the one she wants. Her hands shaking, she tries to lift the heavy tome. Her strength fails her, and she eases the book across the bureau an inch at a time until it drops onto her afghan-draped lap.
She thumbs through the medical journal, the pages yellowed, the scent of aged paper wafting toward her. From behind her bifocals, her wearied eyes skim outdated charts and ink-sketched illustrations, glossing over symptoms of deadly diseases since eradicated with a simple prick of the needle. She shakes her head at entries for consumption, dropsy, and dysentery, the conditions still in existence but their names fallen out of use.
Toward the center of the book, her gaze lights on what she seeks—one blue rose, dried and pressed. Her hand trembling, but her grip firm, she gingerly retrieves the memento between her fingertips, the petals as crisp as the pages within which it has lain in wait for over eight decades. She holds it to her nose and inhales gently. The preserved bud still bears a hint of fragrance, a refreshing change from the ammonia-tainted air of the nursing home.
Recently, she has read an article describing how Japanese scientists have cultivated a blue rose straight from the seed due to genetic manipulation. But this rose hearkens back to the days when the process, though simpler, yielded results no less miraculous.
She looks up at the 30x20 inch photograph mounted on the wall above her chrome-railed bed—the Eiffel Tower at dusk, the diamond grids silhouetted against purpled sky, the base circled by prismatic streams of traffic light—a time-lapse image taken when color photography was a rare and innovative wonder. She had returned from that trip with an award-winning masterpiece; but for all her success, her heart had ached with a sense of longing, for an ulterior purpose had lain behind her visit to the City of Light, a purpose, which had gone unfulfilled.
With a wistful sigh, she presses the bud to her breast and closes her eyes. Softly, she recites a stanza from a Kipling poem.
“Roses red and roses white, Plucked I for my love’s delight. She would none of all my posies, Bade me gather her blue roses...”
Today is her one-hundred and fourth birthday, yet her memory remains sharp and clear. With a smile, she remembers. Another time, a different place, a younger woman…
* * *
As Hannah waited in line, she glanced down at her attire. While the other girls wore navy or checkered serge dresses, their flounced skirts belted at the waist, Hannah’s orchid linen suit with straight, fitted skirt and double peplum stood out as horribly dated. A few of her peers even wore the newer-styled pumps, baring their shapely ankles. Court shoes, one model had called them, pointing her right toe, pivoting her left heel, as she’d flicked a disdainful glance at Hannah’s worn kidskin boots.
Yet Hannah had continued to receive assignments for the past two weeks now. She tilted her chin and stood straighter as the matron stopped before her.
With her refined, elegant manner and coifed, silver pompadour, the elder woman sorted through the cards for the day, squinting at them from arm’s length through her monocle. With a brief appraisal of Hannah’s figure, she passed the younger girl a card and then silently moved on.
La Doña , they called the matron, for she was of Castilian descent and came from a famed artisan family. Her parents had left the mountains of Spain for the French countryside, where her father had painted alongside Degas, and because of this connection, she had sat for many noted Impressionists in her youth.
As La Doña made her way down the line, Hannah eavesdropped on the two girls beside her and watched them furtively as she pretended to study her card.
“Who did you get?” asked the first girl. In a white lace frock with sailor collar, her long tresses pulled back in a large bow, the model’s appearance was nearly as unfashionable as Hannah’s; yet somehow, she shone as the most stylish girl in the room. Hannah detected a trace of an accent—French, with Spanish inflection, a reversal of La Doña’s origins. Having grown up in the Village, Hannah had grown good at guessing mixed heritage.
The second girl, as tall and lean as a man, with her black hair bobbed high, narrowed her eyes at her card. “Pavel Ruka—Rukavish—”
“Rukavishnikov,” offered the first girl, her pronunciation fluid.
“Of course,” said the short-haired model stiffly, as though she hadn’t needed any help. “It says he is starting a new series for a private client.”
“Oh yes, Pavel, the Russian émigré. He came here after fleeing to Paris a few years ago.” She smiled mischievously, and then offhandedly added, “He is a Marxist, you know.”
At the tall girl’s wide-eyed shock, the first girl laughed, a soft, sing-song titter, and continued.
“I assure you, Pavel is quite harmless. I have posed for him twice. Very quiet, although his English is good.”
Intrigued, Hannah interrupted. “We are told not to talk with the painters.”
Where other modeling houses had been exposed as fronts for prostitution, La Doña was known for a respectable operation with wholesome girls under her charge. To ensure her professional reputation remained intact, she had laid down strict rules regarding her employees’ association with the clientele.
The shorter model smiled and shrugged, cocking her beribboned head to one side. Not a classic beauty by any means, the petite waif still carried herself with delicate, swanlike grace. The girl’s brunette coloring, paired with a pale, heart-shaped face and slightly prominent nose, made for an exotic subject who could portray a variety of looks. Hannah, herself, did not meet all modeling standards, though her painters simply changed the details, perfecting nature’s mistakes with the magical stroke of the brush.
“I always speak with the painters,” said the girl. “I wish to be a writer, and so I think of our conversations as interviews.” Craning her neck, she looked to the taller model. “I would gladly trade cards, but I am in the middle of a catalog set.”
Hannah spoke up again. “I’ll trade. Mine is for a Coca-Cola advertisement. I’ve posed for three already.”
And it was no wonder. At the age of nineteen, with a more voluptuous figure than the other girls on the roster, Hannah’s blonde curls, azure eyes, and rosy cheeks lent her the cherubic look still perpetuated by the soft drink merchant. One of her painters had told her she would have made the perfect Gibson girl if she’d been born two decades earlier and trained to wear a corset. This same painter had asked if Hannah might consider modeling corsets for the next Montgomery Ward catalog, as older women still insisted on wearing the monstrous garments, but young, full-figured models to wear them had grown harder to come by.
As much as Hannah wished to try something new, modesty had gotten the better of her. She had politely demurred, thou
gh she knew that underwear ads entailed extra pay.
Of course, private client left the table open for all sorts of scandalous possibility, despite La Doña’s rigid screening process. However, Hannah was admittedly curious about this artist Pavel. She had never met a Marxist.
The short-haired, long-limbed girl traded cards without question. As she strutted away, the brunette laughed and shook her head. Turning back, she grasped Hannah by the hands and smiled warmly. “I am Anais. What is your name?”
“Hannah.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Hannah,” she said, a twinkle in her expressive brown eyes. She squeezed Hannah’s fingers and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “When we next meet, you must tell me of your session with Pavel.”
***
Hannah rapped the brass knocker, the red paint cracked and peeling from the paneled oak door. She shifted in her boots and winced. After taking the trolley down Sixth Avenue, she had gotten off at Bleeker Street and walked several blocks to the row of brownstones, then ascended three flights of stairs to the top floor. She lived in such a place with her mother and sisters, but her family claimed all four floors of their northern Greenwich home, with the ground floor let out to two boarders since her father’s death. The houses, which bordered the lower Village, such as the one she stood in now, had been divided into several small flats.
The arches of her feet ached, her heels throbbing from the stress. She wondered, wistfully, if pumps might prove more comfortable. Perhaps she could set aside a portion of her earnings for the black satin pair she had admired in a shop window along the way.
At least her lightweight dress had proven suitable for the unseasonable February morning, so much that she had removed her shabby Empire lamb coat with its passé leg o’ mutton sleeves, now draped in disgrace over her arm.
Nervously, she tucked one stray fringe curl beneath the rolled grosgrain brim of her straw hat. Checking the card to ensure she had arrived at the correct apartment, she knocked again, louder.
A muffled baritone sounded through the door. “Yes, come in, come in.”
As she entered the flat, the familiar scents of paint, linseed oil, gum turpentine, and fresh linen canvas assaulted her senses. The sounds of the street drifted through two tall, narrow windows, the shutters opened to accommodate the fresh breeze.
Before closing the door, Hannah took a quick survey of the sparsely furnished, one-room studio. A modest kitchen took up one corner of the flat. Mason jars filled with paintbrushes sat on the shelf above the deep-basined porcelain sink. Some jars were filled with turpentine, the bristles immersed downward for cleaning, a layer of pigments filling the jars where they had sunk to the bottom of the transparent solvent. In the remaining jars, the rinsed, squirrel-haired tips of the brushes stood upward for drying.
Beside the sink, the embers in the potbellied stove burned low, enough to warm the two porcelain teapots set atop it, one large, the other small. As the current from the windows wafted past the stove and around the small, two-chair dinette, Hannah caught a whiff of strong tea.
Her hand still on the doorknob, her fingertips absently worrying at the beveled glass, Hannah’s gaze strayed across the room to the opposite corner. She noted a twin, iron-framed bed, the threadbare patchwork quilt thrown like an afterthought across the mattress. On the nightstand, the twin-bell alarm clock ran about half an hour slow, while the dingy shade of the tassel lamp needed dusting. Near the bed stood the cedar armoire; beside the armoire, a narrow door opened to a small washroom with a private toilet.
Next, she took in the numerous canvases stacked against the walls in varying dimensions. Though her uncle’s attempts to teach her to paint had proven unsuccessful, Hannah recognized the different stages of canvas preparation. Some were freshly cut and in the process of being stretched on their wooden frames. Others had been treated with size—animal glue—followed by a primer coat of lead white. Preliminary sketches were outlined faintly in charcoal on a few of the canvases. Half-completed paintings featured the typical assortment of the commercial artist, with less focus on imagery than on lettering and logos.
One finished ad depicted a Pyralin vanity set, complete with comb, brush, handheld mirror, powder box, and picture frame, the details rendered so painstakingly that the smooth, sleek contours of the fake ivory looked real where the light reflected off them. Hannah thought the artist’s careful efforts on such a banal subject to be both a waste of paint and talent.
Another ad proclaimed the benefits of cocaine teething drops, guaranteed to soothe distressed infants and parents alike. Use of the drug had been outlawed, once and for all, just a month before along with alcohol, so she supposed that was why the ad remained in the artist’s possession.
Finally, Hannah glanced toward her employer for the day. Hidden behind the easel, he sat on a high stool, one foot propped on the stretcher, the other leg extended straight to the paint-splattered muslin drop cloth on the floor.
Impressed with his work, and satisfied that she was safe, Hannah shut the door. At the sound of the click, a wide yet elegant hand gestured around the canvas toward the center of the room.
“Please. Make yourself comfortable.”
Hannah hung her coat from the spare peg on the wall beside a long coat of brown gabardine lined with fur. She then carefully removed her hat so as not to dishevel the topknot twisted at the crown of her scalp. Unsure as to where to leave the hat, she stopped as she walked past the kitchenette and set it on the dining table beside a vase of small, tight roses, the buds still green, cut prematurely from the vine. The late morning light from the window touched the tender shoots and shone through the clear glass of the vase. Curiously, she studied the blue-tinted water.
“The old woman who lives below me, she grows potted roses on her fire escape,” the artist explained, still seated at the easel. He continued, his accent thick, but his English good, spaced with the deliberate enunciation of foreigners. “The roses bloomed too early. I asked her to cut a bouquet before the final frost.”
“How kind of her,” Hannah commented quietly.
She strode across the studio. Her spool heels echoed crisply off the floor, the planks creaking beneath her feet, the wood scuffed and in need of a good polish. She took her seat in the maple bow-back chair centered in the room. Her posture prim, she crossed one knee over the other while discreetly tugging her lisle stocking straight.
The painter rose. Hannah tried not to stare, but she had never seen a Marxist in person.
He looked decidedly Russian, his white shirt in need of pressing, tucked into brown tweed trousers supported by black suspenders beneath his open vest. Errant strands of slicked, brown hair, shorn close at the neck but long at the top, fell into his eyes. A thin layer of stubble shadowed his stern features. Tall in height, he bore the broad chest and wide hands of a laborer, not an artist. She might have found him handsome if not for his age, which she placed around thirty-four or thirty-five.
He stopped just inches from the chair, arms crossed, studying her in turn. His brow knitted, forming a deep crease between dark, piercing eyes, so dark they were almost black. A long, clean paintbrush with small, rounded bristles was tucked behind one ear.
“Good morning,” he greeted her, his voice gruff, his tone polite.
She swallowed, shifting in the scooped seat of the chair. She peered up at him, her fringe curls shading her eyes.
“Good morning.”
“What is your name?”
“Hannah,” she murmured.
One thick brow lifted, and his lips curved at the corner. “La Doña, she tells her girls not to talk to the painters, no?”
Hannah smiled down at her hands, folded demurely in her lap. She shook her head.
Smooth, supple fingers brushed her jaw line. Pavel tilted her chin back up, angling her face from one side to the other, scrutinizing her with the cool, detached manner of the artist with which she had grown accustomed; yet unlike previous painters, his touch warmed h
er, leaving an odd flutter in the pit of her belly.
“I have a new client. He wishes for paintings that are, how would one say it…suggestive?”
Hannah jerked her head straight, her pale cheeks instantly scalding. La Doña had assured she could say no if she did not wish to participate in any project that went against her morals. In fact, she was to report any request or action that left her uncomfortable.
On the other hand, she had traded cards behind La Doña’s back. And some girls had whispered more provocative sessions proved a good way to earn extra money, which a model might then stash in her pocket unbeknownst to their mistress.
Hannah flushed harder and forced herself to speak. “You will pay extra?”
Pavel chuckled heartily. “Ah, there. You are ten times more striking with color to your face.” Though his laugh sounded casual, he averted his gaze, his dark features gone ruddy. “Of course, I will pay extra. But please, do not worry. I will not ask you to fully undress.”
Hannah detected his mutual embarrassment. A few painters had left her vaguely unsettled during the most pristine of sittings, yet she sensed no lechery on Pavel’s part, only professionalism. She exhaled slowly and willed herself to relax.
Pavel returned to his stool. He took a tin tube of paint from the easel tray and squirted a dollop of red on the palette. Brush in hand, he began dabbing and mixing the fresh paint with a spot of blue. The color orchid, the same shade as her dress, gradually emerged.
“Perhaps you might wish to sit more, er…comfortably? Turn around in the chair, like a man sits.” He waved his hand, gesturing with his rainbow-splotched palette. “Go on,” he assured her, “I will not watch. I will be a gentleman and mix my paints.”
A Rose of Any Color: MaleDom: A BDSM Anthology Page 19
