Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (42 page)

We nodded and turned our pads to clean sheets of paper. I’d brought a Sharpie, but quickly put it away and bummed some charcoal off one of my colleagues. I did a quick mental calculation. With the four of us and the big room this was an expensive session for Ms. Scheffield. My eye bored at the door, wishing Mr. Irldale to enter, but of course inviting him had been a preposterous idea. After calling him I’d felt sure he’d come, then I felt half as confident in the morning, and just then not at all. What had he said about women chasing him? Right then, I was sure he was sharing breakfast with one of those women, freeing the segments of a grapefruit with a serrated knife, looking up at this woman as he handed her a plate with her half of the Ruby Red:
You’ll never guess what I was invited to right now
. They’d laugh. And maybe it was a little funny; he’d seem so out of place here. And as though fate wanted to answer
well let’s see
, in walked Mr. Irldale.

“Yes, yes,” the instructor said. “Take a seat. Muscles. We are working on muscles this morning.”

Mr. Irldale saw me and smiled. My delighted surprise gave way to confidence: of course he’d come. For me. He unfolded an artist’s easel, placed a still-unwrapped blank canvas upon it, and unlatched a wooden case which, as he opened it, revealed a set of oil paints and brushes. He’d gone all out. Art store visit and everything.

“They saw a sucker coming, didn’t they,” I said.

He made me a face which meant both
don’t make fun of me
and,
yes, they did
. A rolling of the eyes followed by a good-natured smile.

“Am I the only one with oils?” he asked.

“Please,” Ms. Scheffield said. “No talking. Muscles. Everyone focus on the muscles.”

Acting on the little communicative nod of her head, the model there at the couch stood and disrobed. There was a gasp in the small audience, perhaps from my lips as well. He was gorgeous. Every inch tanned and smoothed except for a perfect amount of chest hair and a neatly trimmed collection of curls above the loveliest penis I’d ever seen—and you know my thoughts on that member already. He seemed made of Plasticene, sculpted but not overly so, chest wide, waist tight, legs you wanted to touch. And that, that penis. I couldn’t even imagine it erect.

The model positioned himself lengthwise on the couch, facing us. His back leg was arched up at the knee, the right one straight, the penis resting at four, were he a clock. He lay right where I’d let Mr. Tailor unbutton me, right there where I’d come; the model’s butt rested on one-hundred and seventy-five dollars worth of cleaned velvet. I looked at Ms. Scheffield and tried to imagine, first,
why?
Why couldn’t the two of them be content, alone? Did their affair
need
an audience?

“I could get into this art thing,” one of the spectators said, then zipped her lips with her fingers when Ms. Scheffield gave her a look. That spectator being, of course, me.

For five or ten minutes we drew. Mr. Irldale, I could tell, was a little disappointed to find he’d been invited to what seemed a run-of-the-mill life drawing class. And it
was
real, come to think of it. We had a bona fide art teacher and male model, and we
were
, in fact, all doing our best to render the model’s musculature. I drew an oval for his head and a hint of eyes and a mouth. I left off the nose because I can’t draw a plausible nose to save my life. I think I got the torso down fairly well in wisps of intersecting ovals. The arms I misplaced and left in a smudge of charcoal, then worked my way over to drawing the model’s legs, an oval for the upper leg, a circle for the knee, another oval for the lower leg. Soon I realized that the model’s penis, that four-o’clock cock, was at three. And by the time I looked up again from my drawing, it was obscured by the model’s hands. How embarrassing, I thought, taken in by the verisimilitude of this session.

“Good,” Ms. Scheffield said behind me as she examined my drawing. I turned to look up at her and saw first Mr. Irldale, frozen, his brush wet, his eyes on our instructor. And then I looked back at Ms. Scheffield and saw that her blouse was unbuttoned, bra unclasped, her fingers tracing circles around her erect nipples.

“
¡Ay, caramba!
” Mr. Irldale said.

Ms. Scheffield paused beside Mr. Irldale’s painting and I could see him freeze and stare straight ahead. “Too abstract,” she said. “Muscles, remember. Muscles.”

She made her way to each “student,” rendering a critique and removing an article of clothing as she went. The male model’s face, I had noticed, had gone from its previous blank default attractiveness to something like fear, though he’d managed to remove his obscuring hands and once more give us a view of a not-so-slightly more well-rounded member.

While examining a rather stick-figurish rendering of the model by a colleague in front of me, Ms. Scheffield lost her blouse. At an impressively good sketch that I gave a silent clap of applause to from Zee, Ms. Scheffield removed her skirt.

“Muscles,” Ms. Scheffield said, stepping up to the couch.

I heard the model’s hissed whispers at Ms. Scheffield then, even as she picked up the model’s robe and cast it farther afield. The model’s eyes followed her even while the rest of his body remained frozen. Ms. Scheffield lost her underwear then just as the model broke his concentration and sat up, hands over what had to be a growing erection. She put her head to his ear then and I heard, among the whispered words, the word “birthday,” and watched as the look of confusion on his face broke away, relief turning to a grin, turning to a laugh.
So this was it!
I laughed as well. To think that the poor guy hadn’t been in on the session’s intent at all! To think that he assumed we were some band of rather old art students in the city’s most difficult-to-find art school.

“Birthday present,” I whispered to Mr. Irldale.

“But whose birthday?” he answered.

And just then, I wasn’t completely sure.

Ms. Sheffield, dressed only in tan stockings and her headscarf, kneeled down in front of the model and pushed him back into his previous position, even as her curly head of hair began to go down over the model’s thighs, moving left, then right in unseen licks, waiting, waiting, and then taking him within her mouth.

Now, my play with both the shower spray and Mr. Sticky had not, it turned out, left me all set. A little thrill went through me at the sight. As much as I abhorred that pigpile I’d seen in Petunia’s bedroom,
this
was different.
This
was fantasy; detailed, rich, well-planned, full of surprises. And I joined Mr. Irldale in enjoying being a voyeur. Maybe the fact that my heart was not with anyone on the couch made voyeurism even more palatable.

A couple of my colleagues had moved positions for a better view, but I stayed where I was. One wrote, “Hot damn!” in big letters on her canvas and showed it to me.

“Not your everyday art class, huh?” I said to Mr. Irldale. His brush still hung in mid air. “You’re dripping paint,” I added.

Mr. Irldale was dressed in white, like he’d just come in from the Bahamas, but now there was a bright orange dab on his pants. He mouthed
wow
to me. I heard a loud slurp from Ms. Scheffield as she turned toward us once more.

“Muscles,” she said. “Pay attention.”

It was with a little bit of sadness that we watched her break away from the model and walk around the room again, pointing out a good line, decrying another, but always with humor, with encouragement. If it weren’t for the fact that she was completely naked, you’d think that whole fellatio moment had been an illusion. Oh, and only if you could overlook that wince-inducing (in the good, very good, way) erection on the model.

“Switch,” she said when she came to me and Mr. Irldale. “Try the charcoals,” she said to Mr. Irldale.

She planted me in the seat Mr. Irldale had been occupying. I looked at his canvas. Like a child approaching a landscape, he’d begun painting the surroundings of the room, gray, crimson. The middle was still white and unpainted. I took up a brush and looked at the paints. Ms. Scheffield scooped the tubes out with her hands and handed back just three colors to me. “That’s all you need,” she said, and went back to the other “students” as they hastily bent over their sketches again on her approach.

I looked over and watched Mr. Irldale, charcoal piece in hand, as he stared at a blank page in my pad, then followed his gaze back to the rather callipygian Ms. Scheffield as she walked up to the couch, her ass cheeks rubbing against each other in a kind of slithering
S
shape below twin prominent dimples of Venus.
Wow
he mouthed again.

“Watch how the muscles change,” Ms. Scheffield said, and she said something to the model then, who broke his pose and stood. Ms. Scheffield climbed onto the velvet couch on all fours and lowered herself so that her ass was the only raised part of her anatomy. The model, that tan, matte body of a man—wet only there where she’d been—moved to her and, with a quick breath from Ms. Scheffield, entered her. For a moment I thought they were going to hold that pose for us to sketch, but no. He continued, his thrusts mirrored by her own push-backs. And it wasn’t long before everyone had put down their pencils, pens, charcoal and paints to watch. Ms. Sheffield turned her head and looked at us occasionally, which sent our eyes back to our canvas and paper for a moment, but mostly we watched them fuck. Or rather, I watched Mr. Irldale as the art teacher and model fucked. Mr. Irldale had unbuttoned the top of his shirt and I could see all the places his hands had been by the marks of charcoal. The collar, yes, but also a readjustment down at his crotch, and streaks on his white pants to wipe away a sweaty palm.

When I caught his attention I raised an eyebrow. “Like the class?” I whispered.

“Wow,” said my new monosyllabic friend.

The couple had separated again, and this time Ms. Scheffield had her model lover sit facing us while she straddled him seated in the same direction, her breasts doing their little cross-purpose dance, like claps of joy, his strong arms holding out her legs so that we could all see, without a doubt, the source of her pleasure there. She took hold of one of his hands and brought it down on herself. His fingers circled and rubbed her there as well as any practiced woman’s. Now I was sure it was
her
birthday we were “celebrating” here. She hadn’t said a word in minutes. She just panted.

Mr. Irldale was even more smudged when I looked over at him again. With the little sighs of the women around us adding to those of the art instructor, I was afraid that I was becoming transparent to Mr. Irldale.

My fingers took the initiative and, unlike Mr. Tailor’s deliberately slow undressing, my digits hastily unbuttoned my top. I turned away and reached back to unclasp my bra, then extricated myself and turned back to face Mr. Irldale’s eyes. I coughed to get his attention and his head went back in surprise. His eyes briefly shot back to the couch, but I coughed again and felt for my skirt’s clasp, then pulled it down. The wool skirt fell to the floor with a soft thump, my panties within them. I had him now. I picked up a dry unused brush and took off the protective wrapping over the bristles, then slowly traced the outlines of my breasts. I brushed my nipples, wove a sensual little trail down my stomach, but quickly—I didn’t need him ogling me there for too long. I brushed at the insides of my thighs while his pants became smudgier and smudgier. I smiled as he left a black line across his brow.

I’d never done something like this before: exposing myself in this way in front of others. Part of me didn’t care; the other half was glad the room was all faced the other direction at the artistic fornication. I picked up a larger brush and ran the soft bristles down below, then back up and across my lips and felt, then, that the brush was moist. Keeping my eyes on Mr. Irldale’s wasn’t hard. If that face had looked curious back in Petunia’s bedroom, or surprised at the sight of the art instructor, it was now so soft and full of gratitude that I wanted to hold him in my hands. I don’t think any man has ever looked at me in quite that way. Not Terrance, not my ex-husband. Perhaps Mr. Irldale had, that one time we’d made love, but the room had been too dark to tell. I could see why a woman might leave him, in a way. Especially if she was the kind of woman who wanted a man whose face made her say, “Take me.” Mr. Irldale’s vibe was one more of appreciation, meekness. Maybe it says more than I’d like to admit that this turned
me
on.

I heard the sound of skin bucking skin and glanced over at the couch where teacher and model were now at it hot and heavy. Ms. Scheffield was now straddling the couch’s soft velvet top, hugging its sides as the model took her from behind. One lover flesh, the other fabric.
That’s going to cost you,
I thought, anticipating the couch-cleaning fee.

“Antony,” Ms. Sheffield kept saying, “Oh, Antony.”

Zee, up front, came then I think, just rubbing away at her jeans, and we laughed because she too had said, “Antony.” It became a theme, a lock. Antony. I heard it on the out-breaths and the in-breaths, but the words on my lips were
Mr. Irldale.

I spun the brush around and ran the handle up and down my labium, then brought the handle within me. It was no Mr. Sticky, that’s for sure, but I was more interested in Mr. Irldale then. This was all for him. He’d added another smudge on his cheek and his pants were hard and taut below.

“Antony!” Ms. Scheffield called out. His thighs slapped against her ass, slapping, slapping, slapping, slapping.

Mr. Irldale shook his head, back and forth, back and forth. I could see him panting. And then the brush went rigid within me as I watched him get up, unbuckle his pants and pull them down. He stood there facing me, his penis erect between the part of his shirt. He kicked off his pants angrily and came at me and I pulled out the brush and let it fall to the floor and yes, I pulled him close. Yes, I let him enter me, yes, we both fell to the floor (and broke the chair) and yes we didn’t stop. Not through Ms. Scheffield’s coming and the quick coming of her boy toy right after (how he held off so long I’ll never know), not as the attention pivoted from the front of the room to the back, not while I held my legs wide to take him in, all of him, even as my arms pushed up his shirt and wrapped around his hot back and sides. Not when my colleagues stood there around us, giving me the
what the hell?
look, (or my answer, the smile). I didn’t know this Mr. Irldale. I suspected
Mr. Irldale
didn’t know this side of him. I felt the cold floor beneath me as he pounded at me, every thrust sending us back an inch. I loved every fucking second of it, even if it was a different kind of pleasure. And even if it was only sixty seconds or so. He came with first a yelp and then a big bellowing groan and lay suspended there above me in a push up pose. I brought his head down, wrapped my legs around him, and brought him close to me. We kissed and this got his pelvis moving again, slower, like I’d remembered from the first time. But he grew soft and awkward within me and when he slipped out, we just kissed, tongues our heart’s avatars. At some point the lights went out and I broke away from our kiss to see that everyone had cleared the room.