Marcus was a slippery sort of lover. ‘Ally, I need you,’ he drawled, his voice over the phone deep and cajoling. He paused for effect, letting Ally’s mind flicker with pornographic images, a mixture of memories and fantasies yet to be fulfilled.
‘My model for tonight has cancelled, struck down by a broken heart,’ he went on. ‘You’ll fill in, OK?’
Ally hesitated, wondering if this was what Marcus really wanted her for. With Marcus, sometimes words like these meant no more than their literal truth, but at other times they were invitations for nights of sex, with an intensity Ally found almost dangerous.
It was a game they played together, this ‘will we, won’t we’, and Ally understood her role well. She was meant to want him, as she invariably did, but never assume she would get him. She assented, letting the game pick up again. Excitement flushed over her.
‘Come as you are’, he said, ‘now’.
Instead of going home from her classes Ally went straight to his Soho studio. Marcus was an artist, living life in the centre of the London art scene, exchanging ideas and fluids with other sculptors, painters; women, men. Ally’s London was a cramped flat-share, her university college and a flagging rampant rabbit. It wasn’t just the sex that kept her answering Marcus’s calls, it was his ability to take her out of herself, her life. Ally sometimes found the daily grind, the pressure to get her coursework submitted on time, the need to wait tables to eat, unbearable. With Marcus though, her anxieties could fall away. Lying on the studio floor, their bodies rendered in soft shadows, he would tell her she was a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, his only voluptuous flame-haired muse. Soft lies where the words didn’t matter.
Ally crossed London on the cramped tube then emerged into the constant throng around Leicester Square. She wove through the milling tourists in Chinatown, then on through the back alleyways of Soho, dimly lit by the neon signs for sex shows. The studio was hidden away, an impossible large white space behind a shabby doorway. The lights were on. Ally didn’t knock, she never did.
At first she didn’t see Marcus. Spaced around the cavernous room were his sculptures, life-size human figures of wire wrapped in bandages. He had made them with plaster with hard, moulded hair. They looked like classical figures, except their faces were covered by white plastic masks, and their postures were somehow more erotic. She recalled Marcus trying to explain once that he was subverting the classical forms of art, making them lewd, more overtly sexual. Set on metal poles atop wooden plinths, they towered above Ally, powerful and intimidating.
Marcus eventually appeared, rekindling her hopeful desire for tonight. He was tall, lean but muscled from his work. His dirty blond hair was tousled and streaked with plaster. Ally realised he was dressed in crumpled, well-worn clothes that meant he really was working on his art tonight. Her heart and pussy sank.
‘Ally, I thought you’d never arrive.’ Marcus kissed her in greeting, his lips grazing hers too briefly. Fleeting electricity. ‘I have plans for you.’ He smiled in that predatory way of his, all teeth. His marble-green eyes lit up as he looked at her and she knew that she’d go along with whatever he had in store. Ally felt more alive in his command than she had all day, the constant stresses of life diminishing.
‘What do you have in mind,’ she asked somewhat nervously. ‘Nude modelling?’
Marcus had asked Ally to model for him before, but her insecurities always stopped her. He said she had the perfect form for his work; a full, curvy body, unlike the women who normally answered his ads for models. Ally didn’t mind revealing her figure, its folds, to Marcus when they fucked but the thought of being on display was too much.
Instead of answering straight away, Marcus moved behind Ally, and wrapped his arms possessively around the girth of her body. He nuzzled his head into the smooth flesh at the crook of her neck, biting deeply. Ally moaned.
‘Not quite,’ Marcus eventually answered, then paused to lick the sensitive skin behind Ally’s earlobes. ‘I’m having an exhibition of my work tonight. An intimate gathering of art critics, to determine if I’ll get a guest spot at the new gallery I told you about.’ Ally knew this meant a lot to him. As self-assured and dominant as Marcus was when they had sex, he was highly strung when it came to his art.
Before elaborating on what role Ally would play tonight, Marcus brought his hands up to fondle the large globes of her breasts. He pulled the neckline of her top down, then her bra, so that her breasts were exposed; his fingers snaked up lightly to her dark pink nipples, gently brushing against them. Ally felt her pussy responding with light spasms of arousal.
‘I need your help making the last sculpture,’ Marcus went on, using his voice delicately, hypnotically. He released her nipples, making Ally groan, and indicated with his hands to an empty plinth in the centre of the sculptures Ally hadn’t noticed. ‘Madeline was supposed to take the part but, as I said, she’s let me down. I knew I could rely on you.’
‘What part am I to play exactly?’ she asked, a break in her voice betraying her nerves.
Once more, Marcus didn’t say anything immediately. He started biting her neck again, working his way round until his body was in front of hers. He brought his mouth to her nipples, biting one and then the other, savagely. Ally grasped his body, running her hands under his T-shirt to feel his warm skin. They launched themselves full tilt now, pawing at each other’s clothes. Marcus undid Ally’s jeans, and thrust his hand into her underwear, as Ally groped his hardening cock through his trousers.
‘The last sculpture is the most important,’ Marcus explained, panting, ‘you will be the centrepiece; a living object of art.’ His long fingers were absorbed in Ally’s very wet pussy; he scissored her clit between them, sliding in her juices. ‘I’d like to bind you, like the figures, against the pole.’
Ally gulped; this was a bigger request than she had imagined. Marcus’s hand continued to play with her clit, making it hard for her to think, but still – to be exhibited ... not just to her lover, but to an audience?
‘Will I be naked?’