Page 25 of Dark Ink

Class had begun.

Eithne

Rian came to stand just before me where I knelt on the wood floor, the toe of his boots just a hair’s breadth away from my knees. For a moment I kept my gaze down. I felt like a schoolgirl about to be punished. A daughter who failed to obey her father. A sinner at the altar, my priest backlit by the rain-streaked stained glass high above. With my eyes hidden from him, with my chin tucked against my chest, hair shadowing my face, I thought that I might be able to hide that my heart was racing, that my palms were growing slick where they rested against my thighs, that I wanted this. If there was a way to hide this obvious desire from myself, I would have done whatever it took.

Slowly I raised my chin up. It took craning my neck back, stretching the skin along my throat to see him; the motion compressed my arteries and I could feel every strained pump of my heart. Rian’s gaze was cool as he looked down at me. Already he’d taken the role of the artist. In his head I could see him assessing colour, perspective, form, style. And I hadn’t even spread my legs yet.

Rian’s fingers moved to my hair with a distant professionalism, and yet it took everything inside of me not to lean into his touch. To flutter my weary eyes closed. To rest against the warmth and strength of his palm. The shifting of my hair sent goose bumps down my spine. When Rian lifted my chin a little higher, drawing my eyes to his, I squeezed my kneeling thighs tighter when he gave a soft little sigh. To please him, pleased me. I wished it was different. But it wasn’t.

I remained as a doll would, still, silent, ready to be moved this way and that, made to move this way and that, as Rian let my chin fall, stepped back, and then circled me. I kept my gaze forward as the echo of his footprints bound me as surely as a rope around my chest would have. He squatted just a foot or two in front of me. Moved with the grace of a panther a little to the left. Then the right. On all fours he crawled to me. I shivered at the intensity of his pale blue eyes trailing over my body, looking for what, I wasn’t sure. But I craved the attention. I longed to be adored, wanted, lusted over. Even if I’d never really allowed myself to admit it.

Rian was gentle as he took one boot in hand and slowly guided one leg and then the other untucked. For a second I really did feel like a doll: legs extended out in front of me, hands limp at my sides, not moving them from where they’d fallen. But I was sure dolls didn’t feel lightning when a man brushed his fingers over their legs.

I was pliant, body feeling suddenly warm and loose, as Rian lifted my arms over my head, lifted my shirt from my body. I sucked in a breath as he leaned into me, his arms going around me so he could undo my bra. He set my clothes down carefully, unlike the sweatshirt I’d previously flung aside, placing it amongst the torn-up shreds of the pussies I’d drawn and seen rejected. He didn’t touch me, though I saw it took a considerable amount of self-control not to as he pulled back and gazed upon me. My breasts were exposed, the soft skin over my clavicle there to skim his fingertip over. But he kept himself back.

The outline of his erection pressed needily against the front of his pants. A sweat glistened on his brow. His lips seemed to be dry as he kept licking them. From time to time he would bite down on his lower lip, or, maybe thinking I couldn’t tell, chew at the inside of his mouth. The white cotton of his shirt clung to his shoulders as if he’d been working in the hot sun and there was an unsteadiness to his breathing. But he kept himself back.

When his fingers began to work on the button of my jeans, it was with the impersonality of opening a tub of acrylic paint. Pulling down the zipper seemed to have little difference from pulling a new brush clear of its plastic encasing. The only weakness Rian revealed was a quick hitch of his breath when his hands skimmed across my hips as he moved to help me out of my jeans. I watched him as I lifted my hips just enough for him to pull the thick material down. He kept his gaze on the blue folds always, but I saw the temptation of my milky flesh; it was like trying to watch the ocean without noticing the sky, big and expansive and calling above it.

My boots joined my shirt on the floor. Then my socks. My jeans. My panties. I expected the wood floor beneath me to have the cold sterility of a doctor’s examination chair. But I found it warm beneath my palms, like sand that holds its heat for the moon. Was I running a fever? Had I given in to madness at last? Allowing my professor to undress me on the floor of his lecture hall? Praying for him to touch me, move me, mould me? Getting wet at the idea of him taking up a pencil and his eyes falling on me, on my pussy, for inspiration? Or was it just the friction of my angry feet that had warmed it? Was it pleasure or rage that kept away the cold? Did it even matter?

Rian came in close enough that I could make out the distinct colours of his irises. The palest of blues speckled through the deepest of blues like light through leaves. The contrast was subtle, nearly not there. And it was the trying to find it that drew me in like a labyrinth.

I kept my eyes on his as he carefully arranged my hair. I shivered when a silky strand came to cover one peaked nipple. My eyes fluttered closed when Rian adjusted that lock further, making it meander across the swell of my breast like a stream down a mountain. I noticed the stubble across his strong jaw as he worked.

The purple beneath his eyes seemed more pronounced, up this close. It made me wonder if real art really did require something of oneself, some sort of sacrifice. And was it really worth it? Art feeding on Rian like a succubus, me feeding on Rian like his very blood alone could sustain me.

Rian gave soft instructions even as he lifted my hands himself, beckoned my shoulders this way, my chin that way.

I was wet by the time his hands moved to my knees. I found myself more turned on than I could ever really remember. The close attention. The softness of his voice. The pampering, almost; time just for me, touch just for me.

Of course he had to move my legs apart. It was after all, my pussy that I’d dared him to draw. To show me what I apparently could not see. It was bound to be the final piece of the puzzle. What was all this for without it? And yet as Rian began to part my thighs a panic took over.

Whereas his touch on every other part of my body had been a pleasure, a tingling delight, I found his manoeuvring of my legs caused pain. Everything inside of me tensed to the point of snapping. I relented only because I was frozen with a sudden onset of terror.It was the very human fear of being awake for a surgery and not being able to tell the intent, huddled over, nameless doctors.

And the worst part was I didn’t understand why. Why was it that the same girl who let her professor thrust his fingers into her soaking cunt in an art classroom now tremble at the thought of the same man simply looking at her, there on the floor?

“Relax, Eithne.”

In my muddle of fear, I just…obeyed. Eased into his command. It felt so easy. It took all responsibility away from me. I was sinless. I was merely a puppet, I could tell myself, forced to submit.

Rian eased my knees apart until they could fall out no farther. He leaned back on his heels and sucked in a breath as he stared. He’d been able to hide his emotions before, but not anymore.

He picked up his charcoal pencil and began to work.

Fuck, it was too intimate. Too close. There on the floor I felt defenceless. Fear seized me. I was just a little girl with her legs spread for an older man. Never had I been so certain that my father was right about me. This was how my professor would remember me: the girl who barely fought when he pulled her thighs apart. When he took his token for later use. When he left her like that for whoever came next.

The sound of Rian sketching became the sound of claws on a cage. Out in the hall I heard movement, voices, a class dismissed, and I was sure they were all talking about Eithne Brady, Professor Merrick’s toy, pet, slut. Easy, they whispered. Pathetic, they laughed. I hear she can’t even come, they said. I hear she doesn’t even care because she’s a whore.

It all became too much. The scratching, the eyes, the murmuring voices just past the door, so thin, so insufficient. I tried to stay where Rian had put me, tried to remember the pleasure of this. There had been pleasure, hadn’t there? But I was overwhelmed.

My heartbroken sob was masked by the hollow knocking of my knees together as I snapped my legs shut.

Rian

The snapping together of Eithne’s knees sounded like the jaws of a wounded animal. I set down my charcoal pencil as if to show her I meant her no harm. For I didn’t. I was certain, at that point, that I couldn’t.

Eithne flinched slightly as I moved to pick up the page. I paused. Glanced over at her. She met my eyes with shimmering ones of her own. Her bottom lip trembled. The first tear fell down her cheek and when I tried to get closer, she shut down completely. Forearms covering her face, elbows over breasts, fingers tearing at the crown of her head as she bent over herself. A doll folded back into its box. Playtime over.

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