[timewarp]

Here is something I wrote a while back. It was inspired by actual events, but I shall leave it to you the reader to guess how much of it is fiction and how much is the truth.

Hope you enjoy it.


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The Photographer and His Muse

"Are you… ?”

He looked up from the magazine he was browsing and saw her in person for the first time. She did not look anything like she did in her picture. But as he regarded the attractive young woman hovering by his table, he decided it was a very good thing.

“Hi,” he said as he rose to his feet. They traded awkward smiles, the sort that you would have if you were meeting someone for the first time under the circumstances in which the both of them had come to meet.

A week ago, he received an e-mail from a stranger. In it, the stranger had written how much she loved the pictures he took and that she was wondering if he would oblige to have her model in a session. There was little else about her in the e-mail, not even a head shot, and as he reread her e-mail in the hope that there was more about her he could pick up, he had begun to imagine what she looked like.

She has a quiet dignity about her and a shyness her beautiful almond eyes betrayed as they made some small talk. He opened the lid of his laptop, and, with a couple of clicks, opened a gallery of nudes he had shot before.

Turning the laptop around so she could see the screen, he said, “These are what I’m thinking of doing. These are what I could not post online.”

She rose and moved her chair closer to his. Locks of her hair fell free from her shoulder as she regarded the photos closely; she studied each one at length, her attention completely fixed on the photographs on the screen. Photographs of past loves of whom he had no problem convincing to shed their clothes for his camera. Perhaps it was his natural born charm. Or perhaps it was the unspoken and latent desire in every woman to be utterly uninhibited. Often in such sessions, it was as much a surprise to him as to them how explicit they were capable of. In those private sessions, each and every one of them was his Succubus.

He found himself studying her; the long, gracious finger that hovered above the keyboard; the toned arms she must have spent many a gym hour working on; her fair complexion, a light shade of cream, of which the spaghetti top she wore modestly revealed. Just as he was glancing at what little bit of cleavage her top allowed, she leaned closer to the screen and propped her elbows on the table. The neckline of her top crumpled away from her bosom and revealed exquisite black lace.

“You’re wearing underwear,” he frowned.

She glanced up from the laptop and gave him a puzzled look. On the day before, he had sent her a short list of what articles of clothing to bring and the such for the session, along with an instruction that she was not to wear any underwear so that her skin would not have marks.

"I forgot about it completely!" she exclaimed as it dawned on her. "I'm so sorry; I'll go remove them now."

Halfway across the cafe, she turned back and sheepishly stuck her tongue at him, a gesture that was so unexpected and childlike it made him laughed. While she was gone, he turned to his laptop and hovered the mouse pointer on a folder marked Reference. Within the folder were pictures he had downloaded in the past week, pictures shot by others that he admired greatly and wished to attempt himself. He wondered if he should show them to her.

She reappeared clutching in one hand her bra and undergarment. He glanced around to see if any one was looking at this strange sight of a young woman walking around with her undergarment in her hand. There was only a middle-aged couple at the far end of the cafe and they had not noticed.

"I have something to show you," he began as she rummaged her bag. "There are some pictures I want to try and recreate. They're pretty explicit, though."

A small, mischievous smile crept onto the edge of her lips.

"Porn?"

"No. Well, not to me."

He pulled his chair closer to her and moved the laptop closer. As the thumbnails drew themselves on the screen, he thought he saw her flinched slightly. She stared hard at the pictures, her brow creased. The photographs, while tasteful and were done in a style that remained in the realms of art, left little to the imagination. Legs spreading as far as they went. Hands squeezing breasts. Fingers pinching nipples and parting pussy lips suggestively left out of the frame. They reeked of pure lust. In the long dead silence between them, she advanced through the pictures quickly. Once in a while, she would go back one or two pictures, before she resumed clicking to the next. He grew increasingly nervous.

"Look, I'm sorry if you are offended—" he began. But she cut him off.

"These pictures are…" She searched for the word. Her gaze flitted from her cup of coffee to the napkin next to it. His expression turned more and more worried. Finally she glanced up and looked right into his eyes.

"These pictures are what I've always hoped to do."

He heaved such a great sigh of relief it made her raise an eyebrow.

"I've tried to take shots like these in the past," she explained as her cheeks began to turn a rich shade of pink. "You know, with my ex boyfriends. With phone cameras and all. But they never turned out well."

"Not this time round."

"Of course not. You're a professional."

She settled back into her seat and leveled her gaze at him with a small smile.

"Yes, I'd love to try shots like those."

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More to come.