I’d never been one for revenge. The moralist in me always considered it too calculating and too undignified.
I had been celibate for six months – a reaction to a broken love affair. Cut free, I went into retreat, developing casual friendships with two men I’d meet for coffee. I flirted with the idea of sleeping with them, but decided I couldn’t trust the emotional consequences of any sexual involvement. I should have known then.
One of the men was a journalist – a laconic, self-effacing chap with an acidic wit. The other man was Humphrey. Humphrey was an artist and his reputation as a notorious womaniser made me curious. I didn’t consciously find him attractive, but I found the idea of so many women falling under the spell of this odd man fascinating. There was even a rumour that the sound of the orgasms of all the women he’d ever made come followed him around like a faint echo, like the ocean trapped in a seashell.
It was the end of summer, a hot night when the humidity gets under the skin and creates a sexual friction, and before you know it the streets are crawling with people in search of some kind of contact – the brush of fingertips, a kiss, anything. I was in huntress mode, adorned to swallow some man up. I felt hot. Let’s face it I was hot, my vows of celibacy evaporating every time my suspenders rubbed against my thighs.
The party was held in a converted garage. The basement had been transformed into a dance floor. I pushed my way through the usual suspects– students, journalists, models, unemployed actors, junkies and would-be film directors – down towards the dance floor. I could feel men watching me. The hunger in their faces made me wet.
I opened my eyes to find Humphrey dancing in front of me. He moved as if he was making love, caressing the air between us.
Outside, dawn had turned the sky a pale grey.
His flat was in an old Victorian block, bleak in red brick. I had always resisted visiting him there, feeling that the proximity might have an inevitability to it. A sexual fatality.
There are two kinds of men: those who are c*nt-shy and those who are not. Those who are not are the connoisseurs who know where a woman likes to be worshipped. And Humphrey was the ultimate connoisseur, a sex artist. There was a complete abandonment of intellect in his lovemaking, as if he was tapping into a higher frenetic power in direct communion with the great god Pan. I became drunk with his tongue, his cock, his lips, the hair on the back of his neck, his hands and the danger of it all. What could I do? We were lovers for three months and I fell heavily like all the women before me.
My fascination with his past moved from the objective to the subjective. I could no longer listen to stories of sexual duplicity and deceit without identifying with the female victim. And I made the fatal mistake of believing in his touch, as if the intelligence of his hands, our orgasms, the way he penetrated me, had affected him as much as it had affected me. Perhaps this is the catch cry of the egoist: I love, therefore I must be loved. Perhaps it is the Achilles heel of my gender.
Soon like all conquest junkies, he began to detect the stale smell of victory and he stopped returning my texts.
I first met Elsa at a cocktail bar situated above a gay pub. She had the kind of grace that turned heads, as if you had caught the flight of some tropical bird in your peripheral vision. She was tall, with black hair that fell to her shoulders, high cheekbones, heavy eyebrows and green eyes a shade I’d never seen before. It was as if she had no iris. Her large breasts swung free under a loose T-shirt below which a pair of leather jodhpurs cut angularly across her hips. She threw herself down into the chair next to me.
‘Don’t get paranoid,’ she said, ‘I know you’re straight.’
By the time Humphrey arrived we were drunk, and firm allies. Humphrey noticed Elsa immediately, assessing her youth, her body, her beauty in one glance. Faking indifference, he could hardly look her in the eye, but I knew, that glint as he glanced surreptitiously across at her.. He performed for Elsa, while Elsa performed for me. It was perfect.
It was then that I knew I would eventually persuaded Elsa to commission a portrait from Humphrey.
We meet outside his studio. Elsa presses the buzzer. Humphrey’s voice sounds tentative over the intercom – I have never heard him sound so uncertain.
A canvas sits on an easel, and an old bed swathed in sheets waits in the centre of the room.
‘I want something that represents physical decay. Death and the maiden – know what I mean, Elsa?’ He turns to her, avoiding my eyes completely.
‘I know exactly what you mean.’ Elsa picks up a piece of white chalk and draws a large circle around the easel and his palette.
‘Stand in there.’
‘What?’
‘I choose the conditions and I want you to stand in there.’ Humphrey steps inside the circle. ‘You’re not allowed to step outside, understand?’
He nods slowly and picks up his paintbrush. Elsa leads me over to the bed.
‘Take your clothes off.’ I begin to move towards the bathroom, but she grabs my arm. Hard. ‘Here. Take your clothes off here.’ I begin to strip. At first shyly, but, feeling the other two watching me, I begin to take on the persona of a performer. I stop at my bra and underpants. Elsa stubs out her cigarette.
‘Those too.’
Slowly I unhook my bra. As I turn I can see Humphrey sitting on a stool beside his easel. He stares at my body as if he has never seen it before. Elsa stands behind me, turning my body towards him for display. She touches the tips of my breasts until they become erect. I can hear Humphrey’s breathing become heavier. I shut my eyes. I feel Elsa’s hands as they slip down the contours of my body towards my underpants.
‘Open your legs.’ Like a sleepwalker I obey her. Parting my legs slightly, she pushes her arm roughly between my thighs and pulls the underpants down. I am damp. Humphrey lurches forward out of the circle, but Elsa swings around, yelling, ‘Move – and it’s over!’
She stands between me and the white chalk circle, teasing, knowing the full control she has over her spectators. She begins to peel off her clothes very, very slowly. I watch Humphrey’s face, pale and trembling, his mouth twitching slightly as behind me I hear the thud of her jeans as they hit the floor, her T-shirt thrown down carelessly, her white lace bra flung over the bed and finally her underpants, which she places daintily at the edge of the chalk circle. Her long, firm legs led up to two ripe cheeks. Her arse small but firm, her waist tiny, her ribs ripples of light. The most feminine thing about her are those full mother’s breasts, no hint of any sexual ambiguity there.
Humphrey moves to the edge of the circle, his whole body stretching in an attempt to meet hers.
‘One more step and you’re a dead man!’ Elsa screams. He stops, his erection visible in his baggy trousers. ‘Want me? Smell me? Want both of us? Suffer, boy . . .’
Humphrey dips his brush into a pigment, it drips scarlet. He stands in front of the easel poised, ready for the first mark to be scrawled across the virgin canvas. Elsa moves across the polished wooden floor. She lifts me up in her arms in one effortless movement I can see the muscles strain in her upper arm. She carries me over to the bed. I lie on my side, waiting, impassive under her fingers.
‘Pose number one.’ Kneeling behind me, she pulls me up so that I face Humphrey. She wraps her legs around my waist. I can feel her sex against my back, her clitoris a fleshy spot that sticks to my skin. She parts me with her feet. Wide. So wide I am forced to lie back onto her with my head resting between her breasts. She runs her hands around me, cupping my breasts. The pose I recognise from a Chinese etching she likes. An eternity lapses and I find myself wanting to be taken by both of them.
Humphrey sweeps in bold red arcs across the canvas; the curve of the two backs arch over each other, the slash of my cunt between Elsa’s two feet. By pulling her feet further apart, she pulls my lips back. I can feel my clit swell and lift, wanting to be touched. Tempting Humphrey. He crouches over, pathetic, holding himself, his wide-open eyes eating everything up.
Delicately, she begins to touch me with her toes, pulling gently at me as I become wet between her feet. She has me pinned. I don’t want Humphrey to see that I am close to coming, so I take one of Elsa’s nipples into my mouth, tasting salt and feeling her grow erect as I tease with my teeth.
Humphrey bends over the easel, maniacally splashing paint in great sprays. He eases his cock out of his fly. He holds it in his left hand, running his fingers along the whole shaft, pulling down over the tip. The paintbrush in his right hand pushes huge globules of paint over the surface in rhythm with his left.
Elsa lifts her legs away from me and kneels on the floor. I move forward so that I am curled over her body. She turns me around so that my pudendum is facing Humphrey.
‘Pose number two.’ There is a precision to her actions as she orchestrates the making of the image. Her hands slide around the orbs of my arse. She prises me open, turning my secret parts into a visual feast. I sit over her face and can feel her breath on my thighs. One finger slides into my arse while two others enter my cunt, and she pulls me down to her mouth. Her tongue touches the tip of my clit, teasing, flicking. Humphrey groans, almost weeping with frustration.
Elsa lies spread below me. Tentatively I run my hands along her legs. Silk. Such young skin. Her jet-black pubic hair lies in wisps. I can see her lips through the hair. Gently, I pull back her outer lips and feel her moisten, her clit a cherry.
The room fills with our groaning. From between Elsa’s legs I can see Humphrey kneeling at the edge of the chalk circle, his trousers down to his knees, his cock hard and shiny rising up through his fist. He leans forward, getting as close as he can to our bodies without crossing the chalk boundary. I can feel his breath on my back. Elsa shoves two more fingers into my arse, taking my whole cunt into her mouth. She licks my lips then pulls back, sucking my clit.
Slowly I lower my face into her sex, tasting her clit with my tongue. Salty. Clean. I want to give her pleasure. I take her whole clit and play it across my tongue. I can feel her stiffen. More. I dig my nails into the cheeks of her arse and start sucking vigorously.
Humphrey is close to coming, his cock enormous, he suddenly lashes his paintbrush through the air. The yellow paint splashes up between our bodies. Elsa smears the paint across my breasts, drawing her own breasts across my belly. The paint feels wet and sticky.
Humphrey watches in anger. Impotent, he flings another dash of paint across my back. Blue drips down between my buttocks and onto Elsa’s forehead. She smears it down over my arse and my thighs. The streak of blue across her forehead has transformed her into a frenzied warrior queen.
She massages the blue into the yellow. She has given me a mask. She has given me a license to be different.
She’s on top now, her cunt spread above me. She manipulates me so that I slip up and down in the pool of paint as she pulls at my cunt with her mouth. The paint oozes between everything, between my fingers, between my toes, between my legs.
Humphrey, now naked and splattered with colour, pulls at himself furiously. He rolls back his head in the way I know so well, in the throes of Pan. But I don’t want him to come with us.
I push my fingers into Elsa and take her clit between my teeth. We both start to come when Humphrey suddenly spurts sperm over the chalk border. It spills across my skin in a thin, hot stream.
In the silence afterwards we all start to laugh. Revenge – I was always lousy at it.
Tobsha Learner was born and raised in England, lived in Australia and currently divides her time between the UK and the USA. She is also a playwright, is a best selling author of both thrillers (TS Learner) and historical fiction. As an erotic writer she is best known for her collections of erotic short stories – QUIVER, TREMBLE and YEARN, her latest book is an erotic thriller – PICTURE THIS.
