by Evie Blake
She approaches the light box and stands facing it. She recalls the erotic negative she was looking at this morning. This is the beginning of her fantasy. To re-enact the image that Theo gave her.
Leonardo silently offers her his hand, and she climbs on to the light box. She feels the heat of the bulbs beneath the glass, and the blinding light makes her look up, yet she can see nothing and no one else in the Dark Room. She cannot even see the way out. She takes a deep breath, and lies down on her front. She imagines how she might look, her body emblazoned by the floodlights. She is completely naked apart from her boots and the mask on her face. She parts her legs and bends her knees upwards, kicking her high heels out to the side provocatively. She lifts her bottom and exposes herself, feeling a delicious thread of seductivity coursing through her body. She twists herself around and places her hands between her buttocks, then spreads her fingers and pushes her index finger into herself, lifting her backside so that she is showing herself off. She feels wanton, and bold. Leonardo stands behind her, watching, his mask concealing his reaction. She looks at him, and opens her mouth, trails her tongue along her bottom lip.
He comes right up to the edge of the table, so that the light illuminates him from below and gives his masked face an otherworldly aspect.
‘What is your desire, Valentina?’ He speaks in his dominant’s voice.
‘To please you,’ she whispers, pushing her finger further inside herself, and raising her bottom so that she is offering herself to him.
He lifts her hand from her bottom and brings it around and above her head. On either corner of the light box table are leather restraints. He slips her hands through the restraints and buckles them tightly. She feels her nipples hardening with anticipation, her breath shallow. He trails his leather finger down her spine, all the way to the curve of her bottom, and down. She gasps as the cold leather touches her inside. He removes his hand quickly and she is throbbing now, desperate to feel his touch once again. He pulls her booted legs further apart, bringing them down so that she is lying spread-eagled on the light box. He belts her ankles to either corner of the table.
He strokes her legs with his gloved hands, massaging her flesh with the leather, going higher and higher up her thighs. Now his hands are above her backside, pawing and massaging her cheeks. The sensation of the supple leather against her pliant skin becomes more and more intense. Suddenly he stops massaging her. One hand is pushing down on the small of her back, and the next thing she feels his gloved palm smacking her buttock. She gasps from shock, fear, excitement. He spanks her again. The leather stings against her skin, sending her mind into a delirium. He spanks her one more time, and this time it resonates deep within her, vibrating through her body, stimulating her deep inside.
Oh yes, this is just like her fantasy, but so much more.
Four. Five. Six smacks and Leonardo stops. She is quivering inside, her passion screaming at him to touch her again. He walks around the table to the top of the light box. She looks at him from beneath her mask. They are two players in her erotic drama. Exposed, and yet protected. She watches him pull each glove off, slowly, finger by finger, and then he removes the plume from the top of his mask with a flourish, dragging the fine black feather between his fingers. She licks her lips, holding her breath with anticipation. In silence he walks around behind her again, trailing the tip of the feather all the way down her back, drawing circles on her skin so that she is imagining them as tattoos of her yearning, imprinted upon her. The signs of what she craves.
Leonardo’s feather has now reached her backside, and he is tipping it under her, teasing her clitoris with it. It is light, caressing her delicately after the severity of the leather smacked against her skin. The contrast warms her blood, makes her soften further inside. He circles the feather, and at the same time she feels his fingers pushing inside her. Not one, but two fingers, up, up deep inside, making her quiver and tremble with want.
‘Oh please,’ she stutters, breaking her silence.
Leonardo pulls his fingers out, and gradually slows the action of the feather upon her clitoris.
‘I believe you are ready now, Valentina,’ he says. ‘For your surprise.’
She tenses slightly. What surprise?
‘Isn’t this what you really want?’
As he speaks, she hears a match strike, and sees it flare in the expanse of the dark room. There is someone else in here. She sees the tiny flame light a candle, and a pair of hands lift it. The throbbing music in the room builds until it is consuming her body with anticipation. The beat is no longer outside of her but inside, making her heart race. As the candle approaches her, she sees a masked face above it, the light from the flame colouring it gold, in all this black and white. There is another man in the Dark Room with her and Leonardo, watching her on the light box, illuminated and submitting. She is their object, to be looked at, admired and adored.
Yet she cannot control the fear that courses through her body. She is completely in their power, tied to the light box. She could tell Leonardo to stop – he promised her that she could call a halt to her Dark Room experience at any stage – yet maybe he will ignore her and carry on. There is always the chance that he is not who she thinks he is. Maybe he is as dark as the room itself, and cannot be trusted. Maybe something terrible is about to happen to her.
As if he reads her thoughts, Leonardo strokes her hair gently, as though he is soothing a spooked horse.
‘Don’t be frightened, Valentina. I know this is what you want.’
The figure with the candle approaches her. She squeezes her eyes tight, her mouth suddenly dry. What will Leonardo and his companion do to her? He says that he knows this is what she wants, but she is not sure herself what she wants now. Does Leonardo believe she wants to be really hurt? How much more submission, pain would she be able to take? What is her limit?
As she lies there, conflicted, not knowing whether to bail out of the Dark Room, she feels herself pulsing deep down inside. Her fear is turning her on. She squeezes her eyes tighter still and starts as she feels a hand upon hers. It is warm and gentle. It is not a cruel hand. It is stroking each one of her fingers, and unbuckling the restraint around her wrist. She opens her eyes, and looks up at the second masked man. She cannot see Leonardo in the Dark Room any more. It is just her and the stranger. He moves around her, slowly unfastening the restraints on the light box. There is something in the way he moves that looks familiar to her. She strains to see him more clearly, but she is blinded by the glare from the light box.
Finally she is freed. She brings her legs together and kneels up. The masked stranger stands in front of her. She watches him, unsure what to do. He cocks his head to one side, as if asking a silent question, and in that exaggerated movement she suddenly sees who he is.
‘Theo!’ she gasps, crawling towards him across the light box. ‘Theo, is that you?’
The man doesn’t answer. She reaches for his mask to pull it back, but he catches her hands in his, holding her back. Then he leans down and kisses her. Oh yes, it is her lover, no doubt. She recognises his full kiss, the tenderness of it. Oh, how she has missed his touch. She pulls her mouth away from his.
‘Theo,’ she says. ‘What’s happening? Why are you here?’
Instead of responding, Theo raises his finger to his lips.
‘Shush,’ is all he says.
She feels a spark of anger. Why is he playing this game with her?
‘Theo, answer me,’ she demands.
But he shakes his head, and again puts his finger to his lips, and it occurs to her that this is what she does to him every time they make love. She won’t let him speak. For the first time she realises how frustrating that must be for him, not to be able to share his thoughts and emotions with her.
The light box flickers as Theo reaches over and lifts her off it, then turns it off altogether. How safe she feels in her lover’s arms, although it is now pitch black inside the Dark Room. She knows not where he has broug
ht her inside the room, but when he puts her down it is on something soft, a bed of some sort, covered in velvet and silk. The throbbing bass is ebbing away, and all she can hear now are the sultry tones of ambient music from the East. The room fills with the fragrance of frankincense, adding to the mood. Her body is still open from Leonardo’s games with her. Now that her fear is gone, she feels as languid as a cat, and liquid as syrup. She doesn’t care any more why Theo is here, or what he thinks of her and Leonardo. He must be complicit, if he is in the Dark Room and part of her fantasy.
She lies back upon the bed, pulling Theo down on top of her. He takes their masks off, yet she can see nothing. And because they are blind and mute, the sensual music filling their ears, all sensation is focused on the interaction of their bodies. How right and true he smells within her arms. She buries her head in his neck and inhales. She realises how much she has missed him. They kiss deeper and deeper and she tastes his sweetness. No man could taste as good. She wraps her arms around him tight, never wanting to let him go, as he pushes inside her. She groans in satisfaction. Oh, how she was made for this man. He fills her so completely. He is perfection. They rock slowly together at first, and then gradually he builds up speed. All of Leonardo’s teasing has made her sensitised to her lover’s touch. She feels each push, the tip of him penetrating right into the very heart of her. Leonardo is right, this is her ultimate fantasy. To have her lover with her, here in the Dark Room. To show him her love. Although he cannot see or hear it, surely he can feel it. He brings her with him, higher and higher. His silence turns her on all the more, and she is spiralling in his passion, at one with him as they climax together.
They lie entwined in each other’s arms. She is so tired, more tired than she has been in her whole life. She lies with her head upon his chest, comforted by the beat of his heart lulling her to sleep.
When she wakes, she is still in the Dark Room, but now it is full of candles, their flames flickering, illuminating the dimensions of the room. She can see it is a vast space. All black. Yet soft. Brushed velvet on the walls, thick-pile black carpet, black silk and velvet cushions. The light box has disappeared. She looks around for Theo, but he is gone. She feels a tear inside her heart.
‘Theo!’ she calls out in distress.
The door opens, yet it is not Theo who enters, but Leonardo. He is without his mask now, and wearing a silk dressing gown tied loosely around his waist. He is carrying a large bowl in his arms. Steam rises from it, and she can smell ylang ylang and jasmine as he approaches her. It is such a familiar scent.
‘Where’s Theo?’ she asks, sitting up.
He sets the bowl of water at her feet, and produces a stack of miniature towels from beside her black bed.
‘Relax, Valentina,’ he replies enigmatically, smoothing back her hair tenderly. He dips one of the towels in the scented water, wrings it out.
‘Close your eyes.’
Instinctively she obeys him. He places the scented towel on her face, and the effect is instantaneous. Immediately it soothes her. She realises that her body is sore, turned inside out by her adventures in the Dark Room. She hears him dip another towel in the water, and bring it out. A steaming towel is placed upon her chest, and another upon her stomach. She lies back, swooning as if he has drugged her. It is only when he places a scented towel between her thighs and another one upon her pelvis that she remembers. He knows. Theo must have told him.
‘Oh,’ she murmurs, so softly it is almost inaudible.
As Leonardo bathes her with the fragrant towels, she remembers her lover doing the very same thing to her the night she miscarried. He carried her naked blood-streaked body out of the bathroom, into their bedroom, and placed her on the bed. And as she lay there, motionless, in shock, he bathed her with towels soaked in steaming water scented with ylang ylang and jasmine oils. He tried his best to heal her, and most astonishing of all, she let him. For the first twenty-four hours after the miscarriage, she surrendered herself to Theo. She let him care for her. All this time she had thought it was his sexy, mysterious persona that had attracted her to him, made her not want to let him go, yet it was his tenderness that made all the difference. As he bathed her, and afterwards when he held her in his arms and she said not a word, his compassion healed her. It was when Theo comforted her in a way her parents never had that Valentina fell for him. She has been trying to deny her feelings ever since, pushing Theo away bit by bit.
With shame she remembers how she shut him out when she went to the hospital the next day. Theo had insisted she should go to check everything was all right. He had booked her an appointment, and said he would go with her. Her natural instinct to be independent took over, however, and while he was out lecturing, she rang the hospital and changed her appointment. By the time he came home to pick her up and drive her there, she had already been. Groggy and tactless on painkillers, she told him that there was no need for him to feel sorry for her any more. She had been all cleaned out and would be ready and up for action again in a few days.
The look on his face comes back to haunt her. He looked so horrified by her words, so devastated and hurt, but she turned away from him, locking herself in her studio and sleeping on her couch for the next couple of nights. How could she have been so cruel? Why didn’t he leave her then, when she showed him just what sort of a bitch she really is?
Because he loves you, Valentina.
Can he really? Is this why all this is happening with the book of erotic photographs, Leonardo and the Dark Room? What is Theo trying to tell her? She wishes so much that he was still here so that she could interrogate him, but her lover has disappeared again, and now she is just going to have to trust him.
Belle
SHE SCOURS THE QUAYS, WHILE PINA STANDS UNDERNEATH a stone archway, gripping their big carpet bag and shivering. It can’t be. She is sure this is where Santos had his schooner moored, and yet she can’t see it. She paces up and down alongside the choppy lagoon, uncomprehending. She cannot believe he would leave without saying goodbye. So where is he?
It begins to rain. A raw wind sweeps in across the lagoon, and in a matter of minutes the two women are soaked.
‘Come on.’ She takes Pina by the elbow, and they scurry along the cobbled Fondamenta Nuove. Maybe he has moved his boat, she thinks desperately. Maybe he is waiting for her at the apartment as usual.
The water of the lagoon is getting wilder by the minute. It splashes over the stone steps into their pathway, wetting their feet. They cross a bridge, and the wind is so fierce that Belle has to push against it with all her strength. She can hear Pina breathless beside her. They turn down Fondamenta dei Mendicanti by the side of the hospital. They are out of the wind now, but the rain continues to lash into them. They run for shelter. Belle leads Pina across the campo and down the tiny alleyway to her apartment. She takes the key from her purse and unlocks the front door, and the two of them stumble into the dark stairwell, drenched and shivering. She leads Pina up the staircase, and unlocks the door to her apartment.
It is how she left it yesterday. The bed is still unmade. She looks at the swirl of sheets and imagines the imprint of her and Santos within them. There are two empty wine glasses by the bed, the dregs of a bottle of Amarone beside them. She goes over to the dressing table and takes one of the white roses out of the vase, bringing it up to her face and inhaling. Only yesterday her lover was scattering rose petals on her naked body.
‘Where are we?’
Pina is still standing shyly in the doorway. The rain drips off her face, and her meagre clothes are wet through.
‘We are in my hideaway, Pina,’ Belle tells her, walking to the window and looking out over the canal, hoping to see a boat approaching, her lover within it. But the canal is empty.
‘You own this?’
‘I rent it,’ says Belle, turning around. ‘Here I am no longer Signora Louise Brzezinska. Here I am Belle.’
Pina’s mouth drops open.
‘Belle . . . the courtesan?
’
‘Who else, my dear?’ She opens her wardrobe wide and shows Pina her costumes.
Pina looks at her mistress in awe.
‘You are Belle of Venice. Really?’
‘Yes, one and the same.’
Pina drops down on the bed, all the time staring at Belle as if she is looking at a mythical creature.
Belle smiles.
‘Is it really that hard to believe, my dear?’
The girl shakes her head, seemingly coming to her senses.
‘No, no . . .’ She pauses, colour returning to her cheeks, her eyes lighting up. ‘I think it is wonderful!’ She brings a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. ‘Oh, if Signor Brzezinski knew!’
‘It is my way of getting my life back,’ Belle says, and her maid nods, as if she understands.
‘I think we should get out of our wet clothes, don’t you?’ Belle says briskly, suddenly aware that they are both drenched to the skin. ‘Pick anything you want.’
Pina approaches the wardrobe hesitantly. She tentatively fingers the hem of one of Belle’s silk dresses.
‘I couldn’t . . .’
‘You have to, Pina. You will catch cold if you don’t get changed.’
The maid reluctantly sifts through the clothes. She pauses when she sees her old uniform’s transformation.
‘You can try it on if you want,’ Belle offers, but the girl shakes her head, her cheeks blushing scarlet.
‘I don’t know what to put on,’ she says. ‘All of it is too good for me.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Belle. ‘Besides, you are just wearing something until your own clothes dry.’
‘You choose for me.’
Belle dives into the wardrobe. She knows already what she is going to wear. She is anxious to get changed and get out again. Her eyes light upon her black ballerina dress. She pulls it out and hands it to Pina.
