Page 55 of Dark Ink

I closed my eyes briefly. I shivered as I went back to the biting wind, to cold paint against naked skin. I smoothed my clammy hands down my thighs as I remembered the goosebumps that spread across my bare thighs like a wildfire. I pressed my toes against the soles of my boots as I tried to go back there: tiptoeing across the canvas, careful not to touch the paint, careful not to leave a mark…

“What I wanted to do here,” I finally said as I opened my eyes to fill my gaze with the canvas, Professor Sauer forgotten, the awaiting class ignored, “was to show passion.”

I heard Professor Sauer murmur a low, “Interesting.”

I traced the lines that Rian’s fingernails had clawed through the still wet paint as I rode his cock.

“We see their movement,” I said as my eyes trailed over the outline I’d poured around Rian. “We see them there, on the canvas. Their thighs, their shoulders, their hips. We see their desire, their yearning, their… burning for something. There’s no restraint. They take what they want. They move how they will through the piece, through his world. They will claim what they want.”

I swallowed heavily. I couldn’t stop the memory of Rian beneath me from invading my thoughts. It coloured all I said about the art. Because he was the art. We were. It was his words that enraged me, his body that aroused me, his taunting that drew me nearer. But on that canvas, I took what I wanted as much as he did. I claimed as much as I was claimed.

The art was us and we were the art.

I found my breath fluttery, weak inside my chest. “As first I wanted him to dominate the piece, this mystery man, this enigma that we fully see but cannot even begin to understand,” I continued, my fingers tracing the dominant paint outline of Rian’s back. “It would be easier to pretend that she didn’t also want to dominate. To take. To claim.”

I rubbed the half-dried paint between my fingers, remembering how my knees had slid, how it was inevitable, the paint, the art drawing me closer to Rian, drawing me down onto Rian.

My eyes darted to Professor Sauer. He was at the edge of his seat. His eyes fixed on the canvas. I was in uncharted waters, finding the meaning that was always there, but hidden. Unearthing bones buried long ago. I wasn’t sure what I would find. I wasn’t sure whether I even wanted to find anything at all. I was suddenly frightened. Suddenly very, very excited.

“Go on,” Professor Sauer said, and I realised I’d stopped speaking for too long.

I sucked in a shuddering breath, licked my lips which I hadn’t remembered as being quite so dry, and let my gaze fall again on the art I’d created with Rian.

Because of Rian.

It was just like that, falling. Letting go of who I thought I could be, letting go of who I thought I should be. Seeing nothing but what was right there. Seeing nothing but myself, my true self.

“At first glance, there’s hardly a trace of her on the canvas itself,” I said, my voice almost haunted, sounding much farther away.

My fingertips brushed against the smears my knees had made. It didn’t look like much. Just streaks of paint on the right and the left of the outlined figure. A minor discrepancy. An error even, if you wanted to see it that way. A tiny imperfection that caught the eye like a splinter.

“When you look without much thought, just a passing glance, you don’t even see her. Maybe you have to want to see her. Maybe you have to stop. Search. Grab hold of her. Grab hold of her even when she tries to hide. Tries to deny. Tries to not be seen…here on the canvas.”

“But then here…” I said as I moved my fingers across the canvas in the same direction we had rolled and I traced the angel I’d made on the canvas, the strands of hair fanning out from my head, the fingers streaking to fists on either side of my hips. “Here I…” I caught myself and reminded myself to be careful. I almost revealed the truth of the painting’s conception. “She appears. She…accepts. Here she arrives.”

I was gaining confidence as I spoke. It seemed the meaning of the painting was rising up like a bubble of air from dark depths. I could see it. Its shape, its form. I could touch it. If I dared.

“She embraces her passion just as fiercely,” I said, feet shifting excitedly as I forgot Professor Sauer once more, forgot my classmates, turned to face the canvas fully. “And then you realise that she is everywhere. Because every mark made by him is dictated by her. Is a response to her. Is in effort to please her, to pleasure her, to give her control. Every movement by him is a reaction to her. Like simple physics. Even when we can’t see her, we ‘see’ her because of him, through him, in opposition to him, in union with him. Them. Their desire. Their craze. Their curse.”

I’d lost myself. Lost myself in finding myself. I wasn’t in the art studio at college. I was back on that roof. I wasn’t looking at the canvas. I was watching myself. Thighs covered in goosebumps from the cold. Knees astride Rian’s cock. Nipples hard beneath my sweatshirt. I watched myself seek out pleasure for myself and take it. I watched myself move not with shame or disgust, but pride and fury. I heard him call her “his dirty little slut, his perfect greedy whore,” and she claimed it. Reclaimed it.

I watched the girl I’d never thought I could be, be.

My chest was heaving. My breathing was loud in the sudden silence of the room. I came back into awareness and my cheeks flared red from embarrassment. I was sure I had gone too far. Lost myself too much. I was afraid to face my professor, my classmates. They knew; surely they knew how this painting was made. Surely they would see me as my father saw me. Surely I would turn to find judgement and scorn. Worst of all, even pity. The poor little slut.

But when I turned, I found Professor Sauer smiling. I circled my gaze and none of my classmates were even looking at me, but instead at my art, heads tilted, chins held between thumb and forefinger.

Professor Sauer nodded and said, “I’d like to see more of this, Ms Brady.”

A blush fell over my whole face and neck like a shadow as I remembered exactly how the piece had come together.

“Well, um,” I said, flustered, “well, recreating this…and the, um, situation that, um, made it all come— I mean not come but come together. I’m saying come a lot, I’m sorry.”

Snickers filtered amongst the art studio and I resisted the urge to hide my face.

“While I find the artwork rather stupendous, Ms Brady,” Professor Sauer said, taking back control of the class, “what I really mean is more of this.”

I frowned slightly as he waved his hand vaguely at me.

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