by Martha McKinley
(02/17/10)

Ceramic Art by Cassandra Jean Capra. She read it again. The review was good. Really good for the very conservative Observer, which lauded traditional art forms like painting and sculpture, but rarely anything else. After years of meticulously applying the glazes to her originally designed tiles, and sweating in anticipation every week upon opening the kiln, and tirelessly marketing her work to craft stores and galleries across the nation, she was finally getting some recognition from a big city art publication about her first ever big city art show.

Who should she call, she pondered, to tell about the article and to invite to the opening of her show? Her friends and colleagues, of course. And her two children. But that one special person. That one soul who would share the joy of her accomplishment. She couldn't think of anyone.

Her intimate relationships were foundering. Two marriages had ended in divorces from unfaithful husbands. She had seen a few men in the last seven years, but for various reasons, things didn't work out, so she broke them off. She was sure that she wasn't ever getting married again, but the closeness of another being, the touch, tight hugging, soft caresses...she missed them all terribly. And it had been a long, long time, now. Thankfully, she sighed, she had her art.

Then her mind lighted upon Marcos, the model in her drawing group. She had fantasized about him the first time he had posed some months ago. In fact, in the heat of that evening, she had herself so enwrapped in his sinewy arms as she encircled his muscled torso, and became so obsessed with how it would feel for her slickening nether lips to descend on his deliciously hanging penis, virtually engorged in her fevered imagination, that she couldn't draw him at all. During the succeeding times he had modeled, sketching had come easier, but she had so many questions for this attractive middle-aged man, that she vowed to approach him if ever they should meet alone. Her opportunity had come one afternoon at the local gallery.

He, too, she discovered, was an artist. But he also shared with her his love for the kinesthetic, for movement, dance. Cassie revealed her latent desire to tango, then told him of her repeated trips to Altamira, Spain to study the awe inspiring cave paintings there. Marcos enthusiastically queried her, before describing the Anasazi rock carvings he had seen in New Mexico.

They had exchanged business cards. He must have seen the fire in her gaze, for he promised to look up her tile work on the Internet. But like most men, she concluded, who find that most women pique their interest at the moment, if he did ever go to her Web site, he never did contact her.

On that fateful evening in September, he arrived for his modeling gig, informing the group that it was his custom to rehearse in the mirror for the hour before. As the artists were arrayed in a semicircle around him, he explained, he wanted to make sure every one of them had an aesthetically pleasing pose to render. After his second short one, in a coiled seated posture, she had let slip, "Great pose!" He looked to identify this rare exclaiming appreciator and locked eyes with her. Once the session concluded, they made a plan to get together the next evening.

Their conviviality of two months earlier resumed. Conversations during their weekly rendezvous flowed into one another:

"I'll eat anything you want to cook for me."

"I brought a bottle of Malbec to have with our chili."

"After dinner, will you teach me to dance? I've always wanted to learn."

"We dance well together. You pick up things quickly."

"You weren't always a dancing artist, were you? You are very interesting."

"Your paintings are so playful. They make me happy to look at them."

"I'm a romantic at heart."

"I love being in love."

"I do some of my best work when I'm in love."

"So do I."

"I don't think I ever want to get married again, though."

"I've been married for twenty years, now, but for most of that time I've had a spiritual wife as well; she died three years ago."

And with that remark, her burner flame extinguished and the hot air balloon ride ended on the ground in a heap of silks and nylon. Any future with this man was fraught with duplicity, secrecy, travel restrictions. And forget about sex.

She couldn't do that, she confessed to herself. And yet every week, she found herself lingering over each kiss, returning his powerful hug with one of her own, and permitting him to run his long fingers through her tawny red hair, closing her eyes as the scalp tingles percolated down through her neck and shoulders to saturate the parched earth of her sensuality.

She returned to the moment. She would consider asking him to attend, but now she had to ready the house for tonight, which, coincidently, involved Marcos. Their drawing group was to meet in a few hours at the usual place, but for an unusual event. For a decade, they had drawn the nude figure, either a man or a woman, for two hours, with everyone being satisfied. But Marcos had wanted to stir the pot, so to speak, and proposed having two models, which he had been using for his own work for years. A few artists had cocked an interested eyebrow, some murmured tepid enthusiasm, but a vocal minority had quickly rejected it, for cost reasons, they declared, but she knew it probably ran deeper than that. With her encouragement, the minority had capitulated, and the date was set for tonight. Marcos and his chosen model, Tara, were arriving at her house an hour early, at 7:00 p.m. "to rehearse." She was to evaluate the poses and to adjust them for visual interest.

As he had requested, she opened the living room futon, tilting her head in puzzlement, since there was no such accommodation at their drawing place. She stoked the wood stove to get the room balmy for nude modeling, and then she showered and dried and threw on her flannel robe as she sprinted to the kitchen to answer the phone. Wrong number. Distracted by another detail, the refreshments, she selected a bottle of Cabernet from the lower cabinet. The clock hands on her antique Seth Thomas hung straight down. She scored the foil and peeled off the seal, wound the corkscrew into the top and liberated the bottleneck from its cork, the fragrance from its confines. She too, took in a deep breath.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The back door opened and in strode Marcos and Tara, excitedly jabbering.

"Going to join us, are you?" quipped Marcos as he appraised her appearance in the plaid robe, which revealed only her feet, her face, and a triangle of pink at the neck.

"We'll shock them with a trio," Tara remarked.

"You're way early. I was about to get..."

"Not to worry," interrupted Marcos, "you'll have time later."

"Wine? For us?" Tara inquired.

"I just uncorked it. Let me pour some. Marcos?"

"Just a half glass. Want to keep my wits about me."

"I prefer to be a little loose to model. Helps me settle into the pose, so to speak."

"Shall we get started?" proposed Marcos after a swallow. "It's plenty warm in here. Thank you, Cassie."

After draining their glasses, Tara and Marcos undressed, and Cassie took up her position in an overstuffed chair and watched them. She knew their bodies well, having sketched them each nearly half a dozen times. Tara was tall for a woman, perhaps 5-9 and had luscious chestnut brown hair, which she pulled back with a tight ring so that a large bushy horsetail leaped from her scalp and danced down her back. Though slightly unequal, her breasts were large and round, her hips flared with that classic womanly shape, and both upper and lower limbs were gracefully toned.

Marcos was a few inches taller, and in contrast to her milky flesh that flushed with the fire's glow upon it, he was completely tanned -- even for January in Minnesota! His goatee was neatly trimmed, balancing the ring of hair arcing like laurel leaves around his prematurely balding head. Though a dense coat of hair covered nearly the rest of his frame, she could still visualize his muscles, rotating his back in graceful twists, flexing and relaxing each upper extremity into place, and bulging as calf, thigh, and buttock raised him on tiptoe. At last, she let her gaze fall upon his manhood, large and dependent in the heat of the room. She sighed.

"Cassie? Cassie! Ready?" asked Marcos, interrupting her reverie.

"Let's see what you got," she replied, looking up, hoping that the heat she felt wasn't from her face reddening.

Each of the models had brought sketches of possible poses and they tried them out. For being semi-professional models, Cassie thought, they seemed particularly incompetent tonight. Awkward and off balance, they had needed her repeated direction to rearrange them, reposition an arm, or alter their look to a different direction. Marcos seemed to be having difficulty containing his frustration with her.

"Cassie, if you know so much, take off that robe and show us for yourself."

She heard that little voice inside, but her red hair now bristling, she chose to ignore it, stood, released the tie, and flung her robe back into the chair. She marched her petite, freckled, perky-breasted form to the center of the living room.

"Marcos, stand like so." She put her palms on his shoulders and torqued his axis to the right. "Spread your legs more. There. Much better. Now, wrap your left arm around my waist, while I straddle your leg."

"What if I put my right arm down here?" he demurred.

"Wait, wait," shouted Tara, "try arching a bit, and Cassie felt Tara's heat now cozily close to her own torso.

"Like this?" queried Marcos, laying a free hand on Cassie's thigh for balance.

"How about this?" chimed Tara, her forearm and palm against Cassie's buttocks

Arms slung around trunks; toes placed upon a thigh; bellies nestling breasts, and bottoms against balls. Like in a provocative game of Twister, when Marcos tried to put his left foot near Tara's knee, the trio toppled onto the futon, convulsing in laughter, hugging, pressing, caressing.

In the tangle, Cassie felt her hair being finger-brushed, delicately, by one of Marcos' hands, while his other trailed along her ear, down her neck and onto her chest, circling her breasts around and around. Her nipples filled. Her feet were being divinely kneaded by Tara, who dug thumbs into her soles, before tugging on each toe from greatest to least with steady traction. Up her ankles she came, gliding softly over her calves and onto her thighs.

That little voice tried to summon her, but it was so far away, as she lay languorously on the beach in Barcelona, with Marcos' hands like warm waves, washing over her breasts, and tugging ever so gently on her nipples. Tara's soft palms lightly fanned the lanugo of her thighs and, effortlessly, Cassie let them drift further apart.

"Oh how wonderful to feel your finger trace along my nose, skip across my lips, ride over my chin and down to that little hollow on my chest," she sighed, silently. "Yes," she exhaled when he kissed her left nipple, and felt his response when he then nuzzled the right.

Ripples on her nether shores; Tara teased her crimson pubic frizz, pulling rhythmically with varied tensions. Grunts, unintelligible moans, were escaping her now, and she made no attempts to grab at them. Marcos was arching over her, kissing her playfully at the corners of her mouth, before pressing his mouth and the little prickles of his mustache fully against her wetted lips. Hotness flowed into her vulva. Tara's finger moved down the right side, up the left, and circled her nub. Gingerly, she flicked it, and Cassie braced for a big warm wave to wash over her. Crying out, she shuddered and gasped, stiffening with her first release.

As if rehearsed, he kissed her deeply on the lips, and then Marcos and Tara changed positions. With his model partner massaging Cassie's scalp, forehead, and neck, Marcos lightly sailed his fingertips over her inner thigh and anchored in her steamy lagoon, his finger sliding into her cavern in search of the roughened ridges of her vagina, the limestone icicles they would follow to rooms of deeper beauty.

Off they went exploring. With every stroke, it was as if he were holding a torch to illuminate for them a new chamber filled of stalactites white and ochre, burnt sienna and umber. Phthalo green reflections erupted from ultramarine shadows. By her hip rocking she begged to be shown more, and he did so with two fingers now moving inside her. "Si, Senor, Si. Si. Si," she cried out to her guide, "Dios mios! Que magnifica!"

Tara kissed her hair, cradled her head and shoulders, and slowly rocked her, as Cassie stiffened in readiness for another surge. As he massaged her, Marcos gently pressed his thumb onto her clitoris. With that, herds of auruch, bison, ibex, and boar were revealed. Ancient images in red oxide and black, brushed on stone. Lines. Dots. Circles and spirals. Primal marks of timeless forms. Universal symbols of Being. Of Life. Of Love.

A giant wave broke like the flood of waters from the womb, birthing for her a new mantra -- "openness to the world" -- and she cried like a lusty newborn, coming again in great shrieks and shouts. Grasping Marcos' now mighty stalagmite, she polished it with deft strokes from base to tip, base to tip. When his head came to rest heavily upon her breast, she reversed direction, thrusting her hand down his shaft, and he crested and crashed upon her abdominal shores, his shouts reverberating through her chest, his pool of heat oozing down to meet her own.

They lay closely together, Marcos on Cassie, panting to regain their breaths, Tara along side, stroking both of them. Her eye on the clock, Tara quietly announced that they were to go on in fifteen minutes. Reluctantly at first, then with the alacrity of urgency, they showered, dressed, and departed.

Still in a daze, Cassandra Jean Capra sat in the semicircle with eleven other artists, all excitedly drawing one fantastic pose after another. She paused to contemplate the significance of this observation. How were they now so accomplished? And in the afterglow of one of the best orgasms she could ever remember, she felt a cocklebur of panic. What had she done? What, in effect, had she communicated by her acquiescence? How would it be seeing him again? Would she even see him again?

And, after plucking off that little fear and wonder, she turned her attention to rendering another fabulous pose.

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