The next morning she showed up at Simmons' loft down by the Thames. It was in an old
warehouse, a dull, gray, chunky block of concrete, quite ugly on the outside. The door was
steel, and she pressed the small buzzer next to it without hearing a thing through it.
She had dressed carefully in a black silk T-shirt, gray linen blazer and black trousers
with small black boots. Her red hair, always difficult to control with its mass of
ringlets and curls, was bound loosely behind her.
The door opened, and she took a pace back, unprepared for the sight which confronted
her.
Simmons was an enormous man. There was simply no other apt description. She was almost
six feet, but she had to cock her head back, for he was a good eight inches or so taller.
He was completely bald, shaved nicely, she thought, and had broad shoulders and a thick,
powerful chest.
He was nude to the waist, wearing tight jeans, and her eyes widened at the beautiful
musculature which rippled down his chest and belly. He was no bulging behemoth like the
professional weight lifters, but he was only a few shades removed from them.
He was also quite black, and her liberal feminist awareness took a powerful jolt at her
instinctive reaction to him as both a powerful male, and a black man. She ought to have
paid no real attention to either, but was finding her insides squirming in decidedly
improper ways.
"Ah, Mr. Simmons?" she said warily.
"Yes," he said in a tight, careful voice.
"I'm Pamela Grosvener? I ahm, called you the other day?"
He looked at her wordlessly, then nodded slightly.
"I uhm, hope I'm not intruding or..."
"Come in then," he said abruptly.
He backed up slightly and she had to squeeze past him to get into the stairwell. He was
making her nervous, and she berated herself for that. There was absolutely nothing to be
nervous about. He was a respected artist, not a street criminal. Her nervousness was
sexist and stupid and even racist, she thought to herself angrily.
The door closed heavily, and he threw the bolt before passing her, brushing against her
again in the narrow stairwell, then leading her upwards. She determinedly kept her eyes
off his behind - after one brief, appreciative stare.
Then they were at the top of the stairs, in an equally narrow corridor, and then out to
the right and into a broad open area with light streaming through broad windows and - .
She halted with a gasp, jaw dropping. He ignored her, continuing on to his easel,
leaving her to stand there in the doorway like a stupidly bourgeois middle-class white
girl seeing a naked body for the first time.
Yes, he was working, painting, and she clasped her hands together behind her back to
hide the trembling in them as she finally forced herself deeper into the room.
The woman there was almost... it was hard to think of an appropriate description. She
wasn't a person at all. A flesh coloured mask covered her face, while leaving her
brown hair free. The mask was almost flat across her face, with no eye sockets, no mouth,
no nose. The girl's nose must be squashed down somewhat, she thought as she moved
forward.
The girl was standing on her toes, arms behind her, back arched so sharply it was a
wonder she could stand. As she got closer Pamela saw there was a flat steel frame behind
her, rising up from the floor and bent back near the top.
The woman's arms were behind her, tightly back, bound together from wrist to elbow
so as to thrust her breasts out better. There were several small, sharp metal spikes
pushing out from the flat frame behind her, requiring her to keep her lower body forward.
At the same time her upper arms were bound to the top of the frame, forcing her back.
It was, Pamela thought, quite awkward for the girl, and probably quite painful as well.
She was on her toes, and Pamela could see them trembling slightly. Yet if she dropped her
heels her lower back would come into contact with the spikes. It was a sight to make her
own legs rubbery and her stomach flutter. And yet it was also an unquestionably erotic
sight. The spikes leant it a dangerous air, however.
"Why have you covered her face?" she asked softly.
"I want to concentrate on the body," he said tonelessly. "On the signs of
pain. The face is too easy to read. The body is more difficult."
"Is she in pain?"
"Just cramps so far. The back, shoulders, and legs get very sore after being held
in that kind of position for very long. And, of course, her toes are being strained, even
if she is a dancer when she's not modelling."
Pamela could see that. The girl's legs were strong, her physique athletic. She
found herself imagining what she herself would look like in the same position and flushed,
jerking her mind back, turning to stare at him instead.
He picked up two small metal devices the size of rings, and walked over to the girl.
Pamela licked her lips nervously, blinking her grey eyes as she saw him finger one of the
girl's nipples. He tugged and pinched on it, pulling it outward, then fastened one of
the devices around it. There was a click, and he drew back his hands.
The girl's body shook, and Pamela heard a soft muffled moan coming from behind the
mask. She stared at the metal ring, a clamp, she saw now, pinching in hard against the
nipple, crushing the small button between tight little jaws and clinging to it. She
watched breathlessly as he snapped another one on the second nipple, hearing another
muffled cry, and watching the girl tremble.
"Pain, you see?" he said casually. "Sexual pain."
"S-sexual pain?" she gulped, her insides twisting.
He turned his dark eyes on her. "Of course. That's the attraction, the small
thin line between pleasure and pain."
She felt his closeness, his musky male scent, felt the awareness of the power in arms
and chest. Something within her responded, and she crushed it desperately.
He returned to his easel, and Pamela switched her attention back and forth from him to
the still-trembling girl, feeling pale and jittery.
"But they're opposites," she said, staring at the nipple clamps,
imagining how much they must sting.
"No. They are just different dimensions of the same thing."
She was sweating, and she rubbed at her forehead as she pulled her eyes off the model.
"It's... hot in here," she gulped.
"The windows are designed to intensify the sunlight," he said as he painted.
The girl, right in the middle of the sun, was sweating even more, beads of sweat slowly
trickling between and along her breasts, and down her taut belly. A faceless, personless
female body sweating under the bright sun, sweating from pain and torment, suffering so
Simmons' could record it.
"Do you pay a lot for your... models?" she asked softly.
"Higher than average."
Now there's a way to make money! she thought faintly.
There was an indefinable aura about the girl, bespeaking pain, anguish, and a terrible,
dark sexual need. She moved back from it as from a hot lamp, closer to Simmons.
"Why do you suppose there is such a demand for your work?" she asked,
struggling to keep her voice neutral.
"It strikes a chord in many people," he said, his hands moving quickly,
expertly, the brush light across the canvas.
"Among men, no doubt," she said, mustering disapproval.
"Most of my work is sold to women," he said, his eyes flicking from the model
to the canvas. "There is a submissive streak in many women, a fantasy of being
dominated, used, even brutalized as a sexual animal."
He turned his eyes from his painting and they seemed to bore into her, studying,
evaluating, assessing. She met them as calmly as she could, yet felt the same fear she had
as a model, that somehow he would sense her arousal.
"How ah, did you get started doing ahhm, this sort of thing?"
"I've always been into bondage and the S&M scene. A wealthy friend asked
me to paint his wife in bondage. The rest, as they say, is history."
She would not ask about bondage or S&M. She could not. She had to take the topic
onto safer ground before she embarrassed herself.
"You studied art?"
He had an educated voice.
"No, not really. I studied economics. I fell into art as a hobby, and then
investment."
He put down the brush and picked up another clamp. "You can see she's begun to
adjust to the clamps," he said, moving past her.
He walked over to her and reached down, his finger spreading her labia slightly, then
snapping the clamp around one.
Pamela tensed, appalled, yet fascinated, watching the girl tremble, her head jerk back
and roll in pain as Simmons' hurried back behind his easel.
"They've given you permission to do all... this?"
"Naturally," he said, painting quickly.
"A difficult way to earn money," she whispered.
"Most of my models are into S&M and bondage to some degree. I have no
difficulty getting women to pose. A harder job is keeping an assistant. They either quit
or I fire them."
"Because they disapprove of your art?"
"Among other things."
He picked up another clamp and tossed it to her.
"Do me a favour. Place that on one of her breasts."
She stared at the clamp for a moment, then dropped it to the floor as though it would
burn her. She cleared her throat, then bent and picked it up, returning it to him.
"Certainly not," she said as sternly as she could manage.
"Child," he said dismissively.
She glared at his back as he moved over to the girl and snapped the clamp against the
underside of one breast. The girl quivered and writhed, and Pamela felt a thrum of
sympathy within her lower belly.
"I don't enjoy inflicting pain on others," she retorted.
"The girl is a work of art in herself. I paint pain across her body and then
reflect it on canvas."
The clamps were trembling as the girl's body trembled, shaking, tugging at her
nipples and her labia. Simmons painted quickly, then returned with another clamp for her
other breast.
"I can see why you have difficulty hiring assistants," Pamela said. "I
take it this is one of their duties?"
"Yes," he said in annoyance. "It's quite awkward working without
one. Don't know anyone who needs a job, do you?"
She shook her head stiffly, watching his hands work, trying not to look at the girl
while her mind raced. She did not understand her attraction to this. She had indulged in a
little bondage before - just a little - but had no desire or interest in pain. None. None
at all.
Simmons returned to the girl, kneeling before her. His large fingers carefully spread
her labia, revealing her moist pink inner flesh. His index finger brushed back the hood
over her clitoris, and Pamela unconsciously put a hand to her mouth in mesmerized horror
as he eased another clamp around the small, wet swollen bud, and then let it snap closed.
The girl writhed and twisted as he hurried back to the painting, an Pamela stared, open
mouthed.
The sweat was pouring off the model now, as her body wriggled and trembled, her breasts
wobbling, head jerking. A small, muffled wail arouse from behind the mask, rising and
falling in a soft undulating scream.
Simmons' face was a mask of concentration, his hand flicking back and forth along
the canvas, the brushes dipping and slipping in the paint, then flying back against the
canvas.
Pamela could not find the words to speak. She stared, appalled, yet enthraled.
"Do you have an ultimate ambition? Are you headed in a direction you can
explain?" she asked, her voice barely audible.
"I want to make a lot of money," he said carelessly.
"Surely that's not all?"
"Do you think I'm a barbarian? A cultureless savage?"
"No, of course not," she said defensively.
She did, of course, but one could certainly not say that of a black man. Or at least,
she couldn't.
"Well, let me see. I also want to make violent love to a large number of women.
Many of those who buy my paintings come to see me, you know. They practically throw
themselves at me."
"Why ever for?"
"Because, as I said, the desire to be used, to be owned, to be subjugated is
present in many women."
He walked back to the model, and Pamela found she had crept closer. She stared,
absorbed, as he gripped the clamp over her clitoris and twisted it violently back and
forth.
The girl writhed and twisted, her hips rolling violently, small, muffled cries emerging
from beneath the hood.
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