1.
A fastidious hand brushed fussily across the blank white paper sheet. Fine shavings of wood and lead skittered to the edge of the levelled sketching table beneath, overlooking the bare old wooden floor beneath. With a faint breath inward and a well-aimed blow outward, it all went tumbling into blinding Sunday oblivion.
The waste-paper basket's placement at Carrie Sledge's opposite foot dutifully stood forgotten, so happy was she with the hack job performed on the points of her pencils. Carefully she retracted the blade of her craft knife and set it down on the crowded table beside her, where a hot cup of sugary tea steamed away in the intense afternoon sunlight.
She tilted the drawing board of her sketching table next, drew it close to her and hitched up her croc-clad feet on the support beam to secure it, even though it didn't have wheels on which to run away.
Fingers smudged a dirty grey with lead residue, she drew in another breath, eyes focused on the white nothingness of the A3 sheet of drawing paper, and for a long time she stared blankly.
Where to begin? Like an empty-headed writer before the opening hook, eyes were sharp in focus, brows knitted into a frown of concentration, and without thinking she reached to a small carton stood next to her tea on the table, and the cigarette lighter beside it.
Smoke soon escaped her lips and into the stunningly sunlit living room, dancing through the diminished shadows in plumes. An uncommon and guilty pleasure, a cultural remnant of artists past who fuelled their arduous creative journeys with all manner of stimulants, tobacco once as innocent and essential a thing to grownups as chocolate.
She relaxed, her shoulders stooped, she turned to her laptop, which sat now on her swivelling leather office chair, hooked up to the wall-mounted flatscreen TV. Leaving her seat she knelt before the laptop sat in the other chair and crawled, like Alice, into the rabbit hole.
This particular rabbit hole was her newly updated photo gallery, filled with such provocative sights. She skimmed and she skimmed through photo after photo, and it was like piling naked flesh upon flesh. So much naked flesh.
Conclusively she stopped on one picture which suited her mood without question. On the big screen the scene intimidated her for reasons that did not include, nor threatened, her artistic ability. She stood up straight before the television screen, rose to its inviting occasion, and considered its essence - considered the reason for her contained emotional response.
On her memory stick she now had years of material to draw inspiration from. If she wanted to spend years drawing inspiration from Jean-Luc and Arthur's sessions thus far, she could have. But something beyond the camera's eye - the reality and the emotional response to it - threatened to suck her in deep.
But threatening was not the true word. Temptation, seduction, the promise of a pure and primordial gratification of the Carrie Sledge behind the mask, the identity, the personality.
This had gone beyond the typical understanding of professionalism, certainly. But in her heart and mind it had also gone beyond the need for it. Nobody or nothing else to worry about, just the three of them in a free phase of artistic and emotional experimentation.
Arthur and Jean-Luc had become more than just models in the pursuit of a nude portrait. More than performers, associates, friends, and whatever they were by this point. They seemed to have it in them to become lovers, whether or not they were living vicariously through their rudimentary characters.
And judging by their chemistry on-screen, they would ideally be comfortable as lovers come the next and final session, removing any final barriers between them without, in hindsight, one day deciding that it had been something to regret or feel ashamed of.
That was it! Carrie smiled on the inside as she glared with almost lascivious intent. What appeared before her carried convincingly the essence of love, and her response, and therefore the response she would seek, was the primal response.
The physical and emotional compulsion to consumate. The undeniable sexual urge to bond in the physical sense and beyond. Carrie Sledge sought the rapture. Her own urges said so as contemplation now surged like a river through her thoughts.
And really, where was the line crossed from art to all else? Was there a line when art expressed the human response to all else in the human experience?
The mind, the greatest and most powerful erogenous zone, the conscious avatar connecting spirit to living organism, and the divining rod with which we traversed reality, logic, and emotion as though they are land, sea, and air, knew its way no matter how lost or aimless.
Carrie Sledge didn't know exactly why she did the following, but with eyes glued to the screen of that television - where Jean-Luc straddled Arthur and pinned him down into the cushions by his wrists, lips locked - she hitched up the hem of her dress, slid the black lace knickers she wore that day down her pale slender thighs, and simply stepped out of them.
From there she returned to her drawing board, feeling bare, exposed, and delightfully chilled by the promise of winter's close residence. And as she began to draw her thoughts and her focus relayed between what her eyes saw on that screen and what was being said between her body and her impulses.
2.
All around groaned and creaked heating pipes and wall-mounted radiators as the apartment's central heating system flooded with boiling steam. Mutually they opted for open blinds. Let the light in. Let the sun see. Be loyal to the essence of the source material that they had come to honour.
Arthur shivered as he crossed the threshold with Jean-Luc into the blindingly lit bedroom, but not because it was so cold. It wasn't. The power of the sun passed through the glass with such intensity that its rays landed on his body like a spotlight by contrast of the faint chill of the room - soon to be extinguished as the radiators quickly altered the temperature.
They turned to each other, knowing, for a mutually decided moment was now coming to fruition, and regarded each other with a silent commitment to taking their tendencies into a new realm. However that should work, now it was just the two of them alone, together, free to explore, without referee. That fact hung heavy in the air, and gladly.
Arthur started, taking the initiative, though his fingers toyed for time as they reached for the waistline of his pants, and then came to grips with the leather belt that held up his jeans.
"Let me," insisted Jean-Luc, who took over, confidently unbuckling Arthur's belt. With a firm but deliberate slowness Jean-Luc kept eye-contact, conscious of his appeal and effect on the man before him, popped the top button, pinched the puller between index finger and thumb, and began to slide enticingly downward.
Arthur, who had spent now roughly four paid hours naked with this man in the studio of Carrie Sledge, was suddenly more affected in mind by the subtlety of the minor act. Next his snug jeans were being peeled from his muscular well-rounded thighs.
Arthur helpfully popped off his shoes and tugged the socks from his heels with his toes, lifted a knee to allow Jean-Luc to slide a pant-leg off one at a time, and otherwise for the time being held his silence.
Within him a seed of anticipation grew and bloomed, and he considered what Jean-Luc truly had in mind by suggesting they get together in private to work on their form. He was eager to find out.
Stood in just his shirt and briefs now, Arthur took his turn in their game and had off Jean-Luc's shirt first, and proceeded to undress him the opposite way, top to bottom. When he got to the pants he gently pushed Jean-Luc to the bed in a sitting position, slipped off his shoes and socks, and then pinching the cuffs of both pant legs he slid the jeans right off his fellow model with a cheshire cat smile.
When all was said and done in the act of undressing one another they again stood toe to toe in nothing but their briefs, fixed to the spot by each other's expectant gazes. The invisible pull between them was so much shorter now. But a promise was a promise, no matter how threadbare.
To make this as deliberately difficult to oblige, though deliciously, his body's and Arthur's now touched, and so did the growing bulges between them, stretching elasticated cotton and the will to defy temptation. Without Carrie's adult supervision, this could turn into one very happy incident.
Jean-Luc's fingers landed first on Arthur's bare waist and relished the ability to do so without it being work. Arthur too relished the touch, feeling desired for it. Trailing downward an inch, Jean-Luc's fingertips came to rest on the waistband of Arthur's snug briefs and, for the time being, held their place.
"I think we should set some ground rules," he started.
