Art Critic
2
Modeling Contracts
IT TOOK TWO WEEKS before Dee came to the studio to pose for us. I was surprised that Kendra managed to persuade her to model for all three of us. Dee was the most body-shy person in our class. The first time I’d drawn her nipple, she only pulled her shirt up high enough so I could see it without seeing anything else. She even hid her bra so I wouldn’t see that. She described it as a liberating experience, though, and the next session, she simply removed her shirt and bra and sat for over an hour as I drew. There was a downy softness to her with fine light hairs all down her torso. It made me want to reach out and pet her.
Mavis got to the house early and set up three different lights to flood the area where Dee would pose. She had a pretty hefty camera on a tripod, but we managed to accommodate all her equipment. It was kind of funny in a way. We now had five workspaces in the studio. Annette had her little sofa and reading corner. She called herself a Luddite because she wrote out all her first drafts longhand in a spiral notebook. Of course, she transferred it all to a laptop later, but she felt strongly about her first drafts. Morgan had a desk in the corner and spent nearly all her time on the computer or the phone. I felt bad about the fact that she was the only one of us that we didn’t have a class with because she was a year ahead of us. She even commented about being left out and considered taking a year break so we could be juniors together. But she couldn’t stop any more than one of us could stop painting or writing. Kendra had a worktable with a high-intensity lamp clamped to the edge. She liked working in clay and created maquettes that she then used as models in the sculpture studio at school where she created the plaster master for her casting. She talked about experimenting with porcelain, but didn’t think she’d be allowed to do that until the next year. Of course, I had my easel and paints. And now Mavis had her camera.
Dee didn’t pose completely nude. She was still a little nervous, especially with the camera added into our mix. Kendra had been the de facto organizer of models ever since she convinced Susan to pose for me last Christmas and then facilitated poses by everyone else in our Lib Arts class. But Annette slid smoothly into the coordinator role as Kendra focused on getting her clay ready. Annette gave Dee a fluffy robe and told her she could get ready in the bathroom and then just come into the studio. We wouldn’t remove the robe until we were ready to start. Dee came out dressed in just her panties and the robe.
I hadn’t seen that robe before and I loved it. It was really fluffy. I suggested that we put her on a stool and keep the robe, but have it slide down her shoulders as she held it together just below her breasts. We positioned her three-quarters back to us and got a nice expression on her face.
Mavis and I had our first mild conflict when she wanted to use a flat blue paper backdrop to isolate just Dee with no surrounding ‘distraction’ as she called all my drapes. Of course, I wanted to fill the background with falling fabric. We managed a compromise. I got one draped strip with the rest of the image against the blue screen.
“Um… Dee? May I position your robe? We want it pulled down your shoulder and back. I’ll try not to touch you inappropriately,” I said. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I’m all yours,” she sighed. “And after what Susan told me about what you did to her last spring, I’ll be deeply disappointed if you don’t pet my breast at least once.”
“It’s really not about being sexual,” I explained rapidly. “Just posing.”
“I know. But it would still be a shame to waste the opportunity,” she whispered. “No one’s ever touched them but me.” I pulled the robe down in back and all the way to her elbow on the left sleeve. I’d intended to leave her breasts mostly covered, but what she said moved me. I didn’t get really turned on by Dee. I liked her and appreciated her body, but it wasn’t like the instant arousal I felt with Mavis. As I’d realized with Kendra months ago, caring for my models was more than just seeing that they had a break every half-hour or so.
I leaned in to Dee and very lightly kissed the startled girl as I ran my hand down her chest and over her left breast, pushing the robe down below the downy globe. While our lips touched, I circled her nipple with my fingertip to be sure it was fully erect. She whined a little as I stepped back. Her eyes tracked me as a huge smile lit her face. The flash from Mavis’s camera and lights went off as soon as I was out of the picture and we were all focused on our work.
“You should have seen her aura light up!” Morgan said. “It wasn’t… hmm… Well, there was an element of arousal involved, but I’ve seen more sexual arousal in people who were watching a football game. It’s not like she was suddenly getting ready to orgasm. There was just this light of joy that came from her.”
“You could see that just in her smile,” Annette said. “What a beautiful glamor shot Mavis got. The whole set, actually.”
“Did I… um… do wrong? Kiss her?” I said. My Lady, Fay, and I had frequently discussed the relationships that developed as I was posing a model. I was really worried when Kendra and I both orgasmed the first time she modeled nude for me. She’d modeled a couple more times since then and we didn’t see any adverse effects for either our friendship or my relationship with Lady and Fay. Perhaps we were more casual in the way we treated each other, not avoiding contact that we might have considered inappropriate before.
“I think you did just right,” Annette said. “I heard her ask you to touch her. She placed a lot of trust in you at that moment. You could have just mechanically reached out and squeezed her boob, but you made her first time being touched by a man something that she’ll remember all her life. That little kiss sealed your friendship, but it didn’t make her a lover or damage anything we have.”
“That’s what I meant about it not being arousal,” Morgan said. “She didn’t fall in love with you but she was proud of… maybe how grown up she was.”
I was relieved. If Annette and Morgan were okay with it, I was okay.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that there would be other encounters. Not everyone wanted to pose nude. Rachel had made a very strong argument in favor of the school policy in her paper. She did pose in a little cheesecake outfit like a 1950s pinup. Her paper cited comments she’d made last school year about how seeing drawings of her classmates had affected how she thought about them, even though she had no objections to having posed topless herself.
Leonard continued to pose with Casey. They’d gone their separate ways during the summer, but once back in school they renewed their relationship. It still looked strange, considering Casey was about 98 pounds thin and Leonard was well over twice that, but they gave us one of the hottest poses of the year. Casey straddled his lap and planted a huge kiss on him that she was able to hold for thirty minutes with no difficulty. Leonard kept his briefs on, but we did a swirl of fabric around the two that occluded the small scrap that was exposed. Casey was fully naked and I think if he hadn’t had his underwear on, we’d have seen considerably more than either of them wanted us to.
Jonathan came in with his own pose. I’d expected something that let him keep his pants on. He’d complained of becoming aroused when he posed shirtless for my project last year. He didn’t seem to have any embarrassment about it this time.
“I practiced this pose in the mirror,” he said. He wore a flat cowboy hat and a Mexican blanket. The blanket was tossed up across his shoulders and the angle pulled the tail over from the right just enough to cover his junk. His left side was bare from his nipple to his toes. He stuck a short stub of a thin cigar between his lips. Hell, yes. He looked like a naked Clint Eastwood from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Mavis went over to adjust the angle of his blanket a couple times, making a comment about how things were escaping. I found myself a little jealous of their flirtations and a lot hard.
“You know, eventually you are going to have to pose for me, too,” Mavis said. School was out for another two weeks after Christmas and Mavis had offered to pose for me… just for something to do. I was really getting into having models using drapes in all kinds of classical poses like I’d done with Kendra. Of course, we were using them as inspiration and not trying to duplicate the poses. I had in mind doing a full suite of paintings of Mavis, though I hadn’t mentioned it yet.
I needed to see if I could survive one.
Kendra was out East for the holiday and for some reason, Morgan and Annette had both decided they needed to go to the mall. That was strange because one of them was always with me when I had a model in the studio.
And I was nervous. This was Mavis looking at me intently. And she was just wearing that fluffy robe we’d acquired for models.
And then she wasn’t wearing it. It fell in a casual heap at her feet. She was just standing in front of me and I was trying not to stare at her nudity but she was so… naked. And beautiful. And I was so hard it was painful.
She stepped right up to me and kissed me on the cheek. She took my left hand in hers and placed my fingertip on her right nipple. I moaned as she used just one of her fingers to stroke up the length of my cock in my jeans. Then she stepped back.
“I just want you to know that you affect me the same way,” she smiled. “Now what position would you like me in?”
I could think of several. I shook my head to clear it and got back to thinking about the pose I wanted. I’d done rough sketches of half a dozen and showed her one I thought we’d start with. She perched up on the stool and I artfully draped the long strip of silk around her. I’d chosen a dark blue that contrasted nicely with her blonde hair and intensified the electric blue of her eyes. Eyes that held mine the entire time I posed her.
“Can you keep your eyes toward me in this pose?” I rasped as I stepped back to the easel.
“That’s easy to do,” she answered. Her lights flashed. She changed the expression on her face and they flashed again. “Remote control,” she laughed. Then I started drawing.
I’d never posed a model so that she was looking directly at the artist… me. They always had another focus. But I couldn’t bear to have Mavis’s eyes looking anywhere else. I just had this visceral response to her that overrode all my other thinking. When I paused in my drawing to look up at the model, I wanted to look into her eyes.
Over the next week of daily visits, we did a total of eight drawings and I prepared a canvas for the first one. There didn’t seem to be any concern about whether or not one of my girlfriends was with us. Sometimes they were and sometimes they weren’t. We didn’t grope each other, but we didn’t shy away from each other either. When our hands brushed each other or I reached to tilt her head or position her arm, I felt an electrical tingle run through my body. We silently saluted our mutual attraction and then went to work.
Then we were back in class.
Les Dorn hung around all the time now. I liked him. He never said much more than I did and was often as tongue-tied when around other people. When we were alone together, we’d go for an hour without saying anything. Then, odd as it seems, one of us would say something that just cracked us both up.
“Kendra invited me to the sculpture studio to see her newest thing,” Les said. “When I got there, she and Annette were bouncing up and down as they looked at it. Then they kissed each other and I got an instant boner. God, she’s sexy.”
“Annette gets that reaction from me all the time,” I said.
“I meant Kendra.”
We looked at each other and both busted out laughing.
In April, the two of them finally got around to actually going out on a date together. Les moved in with Kendra at the end of the semester over his father’s objections. The objections didn’t seem to be overly strenuous, though. Mr. Dorn made a monthly maintenance contribution to Les to pay for housing and food as part of his college expenses.
It was cool that the five of us could go out together and no one felt left out or like they needed to include someone else. Kendra and Les were a couple just like Annette, Morgan, and me. Well, we were like a trio, but that’s what I mean.
More and more often, Mavis was with us when we went out, and occasionally, Susan.
It seemed that Zen blamed my art for the poor response to the auction of her portrait. She complained about having been taken to the cleaners and that no other model would work that cheap. Susan had told me that she needed to stop posing for me after the performance in the spring for fear she was becoming addicted to the sexual high it gave her. But when Zen forbade her from modeling, it really got her hackles up. Whenever Zen had one of her long cam sessions, Susan showed up at our studio.
Usually, she just sat with Annette while the two of them worked on their various literary projects. Susan was determined to become a poet, but she regretfully admitted that she’d probably make a living as a journalist. She had contributed a short article to the Examiner each week about the goings on at the university—especially during second semester when the BFA exhibitions got rolling. She didn’t get to review an exhibition unless the regular arts reporter didn’t go to the opening, but she did get to do an occasional interview. Aside from that, she was supplementing her income as a barista at Hallowed Grounds.
Morgan interned at a gallery again that summer between her junior and senior years and took three of my paintings with her. They didn’t sell during the summer months, but it was cool to see my paintings hanging in a gallery with real artists. And in September the first one sold. I had enough to pay models for the rest of my junior year.
That was good because it was the only income I was generating and I didn’t feel like I was contributing to the family. We were lucky that Mom and Dad were willing to support us through college and Annette’s parents were helping, too. But we didn’t want to be freeloaders. I didn’t. Annette had a part time job of just ten hours a week in the school library. That was about how much time Morgan could spend at the gallery. They’d asked her to continue working weekends after school started. Kendra had a teaching assistantship for the Studio Arts Fundamentals class. I painted. I was getting worried about ever being a contributing member of the family.
Les surprised us by bringing three other artists to Morgan to get her to represent them. He was good at talking to the artists but not at talking to galleries. Morgan, a year ahead of us, became a sort of mentor to Les since they were in the same discipline. They even created a working relationship in which he handled getting clients to represent and did the bookkeeping. She found places to sell the clients’ work and paid Les a referral fee from her commissions.
Morgan was working on placing some of my paintings in other galleries and larger cities in the Southwest. She had a couple of positive responses and encouraged me to just keep painting. Another of her artists had a successful opening in Phoenix. Morgan was gone a couple of days to help coordinate the installation and opening.
It was Les who made a breakthrough with my Lady.
“Annette, may I read one of your stories?” Les asked at lunch when we were all sitting around comparing our fall class schedules.
My junior year fall schedule was the most varied I’d had since I started. I had an art history class that focused on landscape painting from Nazca to Heizer. How’s that for thrilling? I was having fun in a photography class with Mavis called Ethics and Image. My one studio class was almost beyond me. It was called After Drawing and focused on the connection between idea and image. It was something I felt I had a handle on before I came to college when I was painting dreamscapes out of my imagination. Now I was focused on painting much more perfect representations of real life.
“Really? Why?” Annette asked. I admitted to myself that Les was paying more attention to Annette’s creative endeavors than I had been lately.
“I think it would let me get to know you better. I mean, I can see what Art and Kendra and Mavis create. When I look at their paintings and sculptures, I feel like I can see into them a little. See how their minds work. It’s harder to make that connection with you. Susan let me read a few of her poems. I feel like I know her a lot better now.”
“She writes very sexy poetry,” Kendra giggled. “As you might guess. I don’t have any idea where she’d get any of it published, but I love it when Les reads one of her poems aloud in bed. We have… fun.”
“Wow! I don’t think you’d get the same response from my stories. They’re pretty dark,” Annette said.
“What do you mean?” Les asked.
“I like to write horror stories,” Annette said. “Things that creep a lot of people out.”
“I love Steven King,” Les said. “There has to be a market for what you write. Please let me read something.”
“Well, okay, but they all need to be rewritten and polished. This isn’t very good,” Annette said. I’d never seen her so shy about what she’d written. Nonetheless, she reached into her pack and pulled out a notebook. “I just handed the typed copy in to my creative writing class. The professor didn’t have much positive to say about it.”
Three days later, Les asked to read everything she had.
“This stuff is good. Makes Steven King look like he’s teaching Sunday School. I loved the one where the woman cuts off her finger to trade for a book in the antique store. And then the way the trades keep escalating until she sells her soul and becomes the shopkeeper. You have a devious mind!” Les said.
“But they’re not very good,” Annette insisted. “I can’t seem to get a decent grade on anything.”
“I think all you need is an editor,” Les said. “I read all the instructors’ comments and the problems they cite are almost all technical. Let me see what I can come up with.”
Somehow or another, the Les/Morgan partnership became de facto literary agents for Annette Sample.
“I haven’t had… a man… in me… in more than two years,” Susan said breathlessly as I tied a blindfold around her eyes. “I… You could… If I was wrapped up… Well, I couldn’t stop you… I mean if you, sort of, nudged into me with your cock. Not much, of course. Just, like, five or six inches. I really… couldn’t do anything about it. You know?”
Susan was giving me an open invitation! I could understand that much. I had my mouth wide open staring at Annette. She’d been close enough to hear every word as she helped prepare the setting. But once Susan had a blindfold on, as far as she was concerned, I was the only other person in the room. Annette rolled her eyes and stifled a giggle. I shook my head no, but didn’t say anything to Susan. Annette stood in front of me and kissed me. We stepped away from Susan as she stood there patiently waiting for me to position her.
“It would be okay if it happened,” Annette whispered in my ear. “But it’s really just her fantasy of being blindfolded, bound, and helpless. Play with her for a while before you start posing. You know she’s rebelling against Zen, but I don’t think she really wants to do permanent damage to their relationship.”
I understood. She and Zen had another argument. Zen really wanted Susan on camera with her. Susan tried a few times, but just couldn’t get into it. The last time, I guess, Zen had been kind of rough with her. Susan stormed out and came directly to the studio, demanding that I pose her. Please, sir. After a short talk with Annette, I agreed.
Susan stood, shifting from foot to foot as I returned to her side and touched her cheek. Her response—tilting her head into my hand—was immediate.
“Shall I undress, sir?” Once we knew what was going on with Susan and what she needed, I didn’t give her time to go change clothes. I just tied the blindfold on and listened to her confession of desire.
“My little artist’s Dolly does what she is told,” I said softly. Annette pulled me back and whispered in my ear.
“Be sinister. Dominate her and keep her guessing.” I added a little hardness to my voice.
“Does my Dolly want me to see her nakedness?” I hissed. I dragged my finger along her centerline from her chin to her waistband. She’d left Zen’s in a hurry, dressed only in a T-shirt and gym shorts. I wondered if she even had underwear on. “Does she want to feel my hands on her body?” I continued. “Does she want my touch?”
“Touch me,” she gasped. “Just please don’t hurt me, sir. I couldn’t take it if you hurt me, too.” That was telling. I was getting pissed at Zen. Annette nodded then retreated a few steps, still keeping an eye on our interaction. She used her cellphone to snap a picture. Thankfully she remembered to put it on silent mode.
“I will take care of you, little Dolly.” I wanted to pick her up and go cuddle her, but she needed this safe submission. I caught her hands and lifted them above her head. One of the things about Susan was that when she got into her roleplay as my Dolly, her body was mine to position and she didn’t drop her hands when I released them. I quickly pulled one of the long strips of silk hanging from the curtain rods close enough that she could grab it with both hands. I could have done anything at that moment and she would not let go of the safety line I’d given her. But to emphasize my ownership, I wrapped the drape around her wrists and passed it back between her hands. If she let go of the drape, it would fall away from her, but psychologically she was bound in place.
“I don’t know what the art supply company was thinking when they dressed you for shipment. They certainly weren’t concerned about modesty. I can see your little nipples right through this thin T-shirt. It’s almost as if they wanted them to be seen. And touched.” I drew little circles around her nipples with my fingers, listening to her moan.
I glanced at Annette, who approached me with a pair of scissors. She didn’t look threatening, though, so I must not have done anything wrong yet. She motioned me to grab the hem of Susan’s T-shirt and rip it open. As soon as I had a good grip, she snipped the hem. It was a good thing. That knit fabric doesn’t tear all that easily—especially through a doubled over hem. I ripped with all my strength and it tore all the way up to the neckband. I dropped the ends so they dangled on either side of Susan’s pert nipples. Susan was near hyperventilating with gasps and moans as I traced her areolae and nipples with my fingers again.
“What a good little Dolly,” I said. “That nasty fabric was in the way. Now I can see how amazingly lifelike she is. Even the points of her little nipples harden and stand out when I touch them. Look at the lovely little navel and taut belly. I wonder…” I brushed the side of her breast with my lips as I pressed my ear against her chest. “Mmm. Warm. But, of course, no heartbeat. I should have ordered the deluxe model.” Of course, the truth was that her heart was beating so hard it practically bounced my ear off her chest. I trailed little kisses down her torso to her navel. Susan was gasping with tiny climaxes nearly every time I touched her now. No matter where.
I moved behind her and passed a length of silk around her waist, looping it at the side so it hung like a skirt. A very short skirt.
“I wonder… No, of course the deluxe model would have been, but this basic model? Still… I wonder if she is anatomically correct.” I slipped my hands into the waistband of her shorts and pushed them down to cup her buttocks. Mmm. That part certainly feels anatomically correct. I took a deep breath and exhaled to slow myself down before I pushed the shorts over her hips and down her thighs. There was no underwear to drag along. I knelt and pulled them off, lifting her feet one at a time and stroking up the inside of her leg until I felt the heat of her pussy.
“Oh, they scented her!” I said, inhaling deeply. I leaned forward so she could feel my forehead and nose against her bottom. “She smells positively edible.” Before pressing my hand up into her pussy, I stepped back, still behind her. I pulled her back toward me by the waist while pressing her torso forward so she had to bend. This pulled her hands tighter over and slightly behind her head. Annette quickly stripped my T-shirt from me so that when I bent across Susan, she could feel my skin against her ass. So could I. Damn! I spread her cheeks and blew gently between them. “There is a tiny little rosebud opening that flares when I touch it.” I pulled her ass against my face and the sensation of flesh touching her so intimately sent her into another series of fluttering climaxes.
I finally relented in my torture, frankly relieved as well. I reached between her legs all the way to her breasts, my arm grazing across the moistness of her swollen lips and my chest against her bare ass. Then I dragged my hand back toward her waist, into the wet folds of her sex, and around her clit. Susan cried out, letting her weight drag against the curtains.
I stood to find a very naked Annette next to me. The sound of my zipper being let down seemed loud in the tiny studio and Susan began to shake with anticipation. I stepped out of the trousers when they dropped to my ankles. Annette lay across my stool with her face near enough to plant little kisses on Susan’s butt. I stepped behind Annette to enter in a state of near-ecstasy. I pounded into her a few times, her face bumping into Susan with each stroke. We pulled back a bit and watched Susan’s ass and open sex directly in front of us. It only took a few strokes before I held myself deep in Annette and felt the release begin at the back of my balls.
Annette reached forward and thrust a finger into Susan’s sex. Susan’s screamed orgasm muted our own. We uncoupled and I stepped in front of Susan as Annette brought my sketchbook. And snapped a few very intimate photos of our Dolly.
“Now, my little Dolly, stay right in that position, sagging against your bindings with your ass in the air and the flower of your sex open for my use. Stay right there while I draw you.”
Annette got her first break early in the spring. Les placed one of her stories with a well-known genre magazine. I was horrified more by the tiny payment they made for the story than by the story itself. They paid her $25 for one-year exclusive rights. At the end of the year she could release it elsewhere. Les was already planning an anthology of Annette’s short stories, but wanted her to work on a full-length novel as soon as possible. ‘Book length’ was the requirement for her final project next year, but it was up to the writer as to what the book contained. Short stories, novels, movie scripts, volumes of poetry, essays, and other creative non-fiction, like memoirs, were all possibilities.
We all went out to celebrate the publication with dinner at an Italian chain we liked. ‘All of us’ now included the seven who routinely hung out at our little studio—Morgan, Annette, Kendra, Mavis, Susan, Les, and me. Morgan tapped on her glass for our attention.
“I don’t want to take anything away from the celebration of Annette’s success, but we’ve already spent more for dinner than her royalty check.” There was a lot of laughter. “Don’t worry, honey. There are going to be a lot more of them in the future. This was a real breakthrough. And thank you, Les, for getting our little agency established in the literary world as well as the art world.” We all applauded. “Les, Annette, and Susan are going to three different literary conferences in the Southwest this summer to make contacts and shop stories and poems. I wish we were all going.” That got a few questions about the nature of the conferences and why they were going. We also found that Susan was a finalist in one literary competition and Annette was a finalist in another. No one would find out the results until the conferences.
“I received another inquiry today regarding Art’s work,” Morgan continued.
“What?” That was news to me.
“The suite of paintings you did of Mavis,” Fay continued. I had a little twinge of anxiety. I’d actually considered just keeping that set for myself. Not everything had to be sold. And Mavis… She was kind of special. “I’ve sent photos out to several galleries and there has been some interest, but one wrote back today. It seems that a book publisher saw the images while touring the gallery. He has inquired about licensing limited reproduction rights.”
“You mean like making prints?” Kendra asked. Wow! That could be cool.
“No. He wants the right to use the images on book covers for a new series he’s publishing. It’s not a huge amount and we’d have to do the work of getting high-resolution scans of the artwork, but it would be pretty widely distributed and the copyright page would include the artist and contact information. His use would be restricted to book covers and promotional material. He would specifically be prohibited from selling reproductions of the artwork itself. We would retain the rights to that.”
“I could make the digital copies,” Mavis said. “The photography studio has the equipment set up for making art print masters. For art prints, we do film negatives for printing plates. I could do the digital masters at the same time. Then we’d have everything ready when Artie’s ready to create a limited edition.”
“We can make money from that?” I asked.
“$250 for each license,” Morgan smiled. That would mean um… $2,000 for the series. And I’d still have the original paintings and rights to make prints. I’d never sold anything for that much! My heart was beating in my chest so hard I thought I’d pass out. I jumped up from the table and ran to the restroom where I immediately threw up the dinner I’d just eaten.
I was a working artist.
Our sales were not the only cause for celebration. In mid-May, Morgan crossed the platform to receive her Bachelor of Business Administration diploma. She was officially a college grad and a working girl. The gallery she’d been employed with since her internship three years ago wanted her full time. She accepted the position with a few caveats that the gallery graciously agreed to. Everyone knew that her plan was to be a full-time agent. Eventually, the gallery would be a secondary project.
“I really enjoy meeting people in the gallery and talking about the art and artists,” she sighed as we cuddled in bed. Annette petted Morgan’s hair and placed little kisses along her neck. “Let’s face it, though. I make $7.50 an hour plus commissions. The whole gallery averages just half a dozen sales a week. If I’m lucky, I’ll make one of them. If I sell a $250 painting, the gallery makes 40-60%, depending on the contract with the artist. I managed to negotiate 50% for yours, Pen. So, let’s say the gallery makes $125. I get a 10% commission. Let’s see. $12.50 is half of what Annette earned from her first short story sale!”
“Mmm. Less the 2.50 Les earned from the commission on my story,” Annette laughed. “So, you didn’t do so badly.”
We all giggled together and had a few nips and strokes as we cuddled in bed. We were so profitable! But as long as we had each other, I didn’t care about money. I supposed I’d feel differently when our parents stopped supporting us. We’d really be starving artists.
“I think we should lock in our group,” Annette said. “Right now, we’re all showing that we can produce at some level. I mean, Les even got three of Susan’s poems published. The fact that they didn’t earn anything is beside the point. He’s really got a lot of drive on the literary end. It matches well with yours on the art end of things, Fay. We should figure out a way that we all support each other. Some kind of cooperative.”
“A quest,” I said. I’d thought about it before and agreed with Annette. I just had a different way of saying it. Words weren’t my specialty. “Pendragon, le Fay, and my Lady. Our quest for the Holy Grail.”
“Kendra, Susan, Mavis, and Les. Our Knights of the Round Table,” Morgan joined. “Why not?”
“We could call it The Grail Associates. Independent but intersupportive.”
“Is that a real word?”
“It says what I wanted it to,” Annette laughed.
Giggles, caresses, and kisses slowly evolved as my Lady and I showed our pride in Morgan’s college completion and our love for my gentle sister, our le Fay.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
