Atelier Dreams

Author's note

This is a work of fiction. The characters do not lead perfect lives of sunshine and roses. They are not automatons who always think, say and do the right things. The reader should be prepared for moments of darkness and surprise; there will not necessarily be fore-warning, both for dramatic purposes and for realism. Readers who have a fragile disposition should read on with caution.

1 – Wednesday (i)

"This isn't on. Not for one fucking second are you going to manipulate me like this. I've told you I'm not giving them up

three times

and that's the last word.

"Stop right fucking there. Don't you dare to try and talk over me. It's you or the fags, is it? That's funny. It's not even a fucking contest. The fags know their place. The fags don't talk back to me. I wouldn't put up with them if they did, and I'm sure as fuck not going to put up with this from you.

"You know what the arrangement was between us? The contract we signed, you and me, six years ago now? Remember that at all? Here, look, I've got it right here for you to read. Yeah, it says that

I

get to make the final decisions. Not you. You asked and I denied, now fucking deal with it and show your Mistress a bit of respect.

"Think you can save the whole wide fucking world, do you, one cigarette at a time? Fuck that. I'm not some fucking project for you to fucking work on. And, trust me, if you swan off now, there's no magic fucking drug that'll make me take you back.

"You can drop this right now. I'll show you what a kind owner I am and forget about everything you've said today. Tomorrow, we'll wake up and it'll be like it's always been. Fucking Arcadia, right here. Are you going to keep pushing me and make me make a decision? You sure that's what you want? Because, right now, I wouldn't bet on your fucking horse in the race.

"Fine, then. You want out of the deal, I'll help you with that. Look, it tears fine, just like any other bit of bumf would. What mug ever thought it meant something, when it's just some shitty paper and ink? It even fucking burns, too. Just like everything else, it goes to ashes and shit when you put it to the test.

"Go on. Take the collar off. We're done. Doesn't matter

one fucking bit

to me now. No tears in my eyes, see? No skin off my back if my pet gets some fucked-up ideas in her head about who runs things and goes and fucks off. See how much I care, why don't you?

"Good fucking luck to you. You're going to need it, I'll tell you that much, with your attitude. Close the fucking door as you go."

Interlude 1 – Model

Easter Sunday afternoon, years ago.

I shouldered the door open, careful not to upset the tray, and went up the stairs to the loft-turned-atelier and over to Mistress. As usual, she was sat behind her easel, brushes ready and globs of paint waiting to be mixed on her palette, facing a table covered with a sheet and—unusually—no immediate subject to paint.

Odd,

I thought, but Mistress only ever played by her own rules; I never really knew what she was thinking or what her next move would be. I set her sandwich, chocolate bunny and tea down next to her, kissed her on the cheek and made back towards the stairs.

"No. Stay." I froze, trepidation in my stomach—Mistress liked her surprises—but there was nothing that stood out to me as strange except for the mysteriously missing model; I couldn't see an obvious reason for that to be worrisome, but that had never stopped me getting anxious before.

"Today, I'm going to paint my little pet here," she declared to the otherwise-empty room, like a professor opening a lecture. An icy jolt ran through my body: Mistress had casually sketched me a few times before, but this was the first time she'd wanted me to formally pose for her, even though we'd been together for a few years now. I knew she would do a good job—how could she not, when Mistress was amazing in every way?—but I couldn't ever control my nerves. My lungs were trying to convince me that I needed more oxygen

right now

; I forced myself to keep taking deep, calm breaths and the moment passed.

She turned to address me directly, no longer speaking for the invisible audience. "C'mere and sit on the table here. There's a good pet, now." I did as she said, perching meekly on the edge of the covered table. She didn't pick up her brush yet; instead, she watched me intently, like a predator stalking its prey, and I was treated to her most leonine grin.

"Do you think you'll make a good model, pet?" She wasn't content with staring at me and making me awkward—she was actively going to toy with me.

"Um. If Mistress tells me how to pose, I'll do my best."

"Sit up straight. Don't slouch." She chewed on her lower lip, a perfect study in calculated catlike nonchalance. "I think I ought to be painting you in your best light. Don't you agree, pet?"

"Yes, Mistress. Definitely." I wasn't entirely following her esoteric meaning, but she was my Mistress and I knew she'd be right. "I'd like to look my best in the painting."

"Let's have your top off, then." She picked up her brush but paused again. "And your bottoms, too." Her grin was wider than the Cheshire Cat's.

Oh.

I stripped down to just my collar; I was a good little pet and didn't have any self-consciousness left about her seeing my body when she wanted to. "Good. Now, face me. A little this way—too far. Back. There. Legs open wider." Thoughtfully, she nibbled on the brush handle and automatically tucked away a wisp of her black hair that'd come loose.

My nipples were hardening; cold in my gut and chill in the air, but no excited warmth in my body yet. "Mistress, could you turn the little heater on, please? I'll be cold if I'm sitting here for a while."

Mistress snorted derisively. "You'll be warming up soon. Put your leg up and sort of cross them—yes, like that, a figure four. Good."

Returning to silence, she worked out the framing and balanced the composition, then nodded, satisfied. I was expecting her to start putting brush and paint to canvas, but instead she gave me one more command: "Okay, my pet, be good now and play with yourself for your Mistress. I'm not planning on painting a still life."

The big cat had pounced on her prey. My cheeks flushed pink. Now, this wasn't going to be the first time she'd watched me—not by a long shot—but I still couldn't suppress a little nibble of guilt each time she did. It wasn't just my nerves I couldn't control, but my sense of shame, too—Mistress would tell me, only half joking, that it must be atavistic Catholicism being expressed; and then she'd ruffle my hair and undo my morning efforts to tame it. But Mistress always got what Mistress wanted, so I breathed deeply, bit down on my lower lip and slipped a hand between my legs.

I rubbed myself slowly at first, just teasing the outside of my pussy and pulling and pushing back and forth. Getting naked and doing what I was told was a thrill—especially if I was being told to do something transgressive—but I wasn't particularly warm to start with. Mistress nodded and watched me silently for a few moments before she set down the first few strokes on the canvas; I supposed that she was starting cold too, and the two of us would warm up together.

The world was entirely shut out while she painted—apart from what she wanted to see, and how she wanted to see it. She'd look at me, but her green eyes were deconstructing and painterly: seeing the play of light on my skin, judging the mix of pinks she'd need for my pussy, or the geometric forms underlying my limbs, instead of the whole of me put together. It wasn't exactly unpleasant, being a model—I was being taken apart and used, but she was my Mistress and to use me was her right and her duty.

I let one finger slip halfway inside myself, once I thought I was good and slick and slippery and that I'd been toying for long enough. My hands were happy to move under their own steam now I that had a higher operating temperature. I wanted to finish what I'd started—not just for Mistress but for myself, too.

Without thinking, I sat forwards and squeezed my breast with my other hand; her admonishment was instant. "No. Sit back the way you were; don't change your body's shape. It's..." She tried to find the right way to embed her visual process into words, getting more and more annoyed at herself for not finding

les mots justes

. "You have to be

open

. On display. You can't just close up your pose like that. Forget about the painting. Just do it naturally." She frowned, not happy, but I'd got the message. Some days, I thought I'd never quite understand what was in her head—especially as far as art went—but I knew how to follow instructions given to me by my Mistress. Shame-faced, I sat back; to make up for it I rubbed twice as hard between my legs and paid special attention to my clitoris, while Mistress went back into her trance of brushstrokes and intense glances.

My first orgasm hit me before I'd even realised I was close to it. The latent heat between my legs transformed me, turning my breathing into juddery gasps and banishing any kind of rational thought while my mind's bonds were broken down. Mistress kept painting while I trembled and tried not to shift position—if anything, she was working more furiously. I gulped down cool air as my thoughts gradually precipitated, clearing my head again, and I looked at her inquisitively. "Carry on," came her command. So I carried on—delicately, since my slit was still pulsing and tender to the touch.

I concentrated, narrowing my focus.

Do this for Mistress, no matter if I'll be sore later. Be a

good

pet.

I was sweating lightly. I noticed it even though I was trying to forget everything except what I was doing and why I was doing it—to dilute myself with submission, until there was nothing of "me" left but love for my Mistress. She had been right about not needing the heater—of course, since Mistress would never be wrong. I was so utterly in love with Mistress; I would have done

anything

for her, anything at all, if she'd told me to.

The pleasure was quicker to show itself second time around. I was rubbing my outsides firmly; my hips wanted to gyrate up and down, but I kept them on the table so I didn't ruin Mistress's carefully-chosen composition. The obedience sent a quake through my body and I couldn't help but push my fingers harder against myself. Carefully pacing myself had come and gone as a goal; I wanted to fuck myself silly.

Two in a row; why not? It's what Mistress wants, after all.

So, this time, I wasn't caught out when the orgasm swept me up and carried me away—that didn't keep me from shuddering and gasping and my eyes closing and my hips bucking. Machine-gun rapid yelps—ah, ah,

ah!

—accompanied me, even as I tried to stifle them by biting on my lip—I don't know why I did that—pleasure-denying genes in me rebelling against the ecstasy and demanding I accompany it with some pain, perhaps; more likely it was my masochistic phenotype—largely environmentally determined—and not down to genotypic expression. And, this time, Mistress didn't need to tell me she wanted me to keep going when I scrambled back on to the rocky shore of sensibility and tried to hang on.

Breathe in, breathe out; fingers forward, fingers back; brush strokes up, brush strokes down.

Each rhythm pulled at me, like waves lapping at a beach and claiming anything that wasn't tied down for Neptune; each rhythm began to accelerate again, heat convection creating powerful ocean currents within me. I was still sensitive but there was no way to stop or even slow down now that I was going, especially not with my mind floating freely somewhere in the sea of total submission to Mistress. Swells of physical sensation rocked me, but none could drag me under again, not just yet. Abstractedly, I wondered whether this sort of pseudo-meditative state was what Mistress got into while she painted; but I realised that

she

could never be so passive and directionless. I didn't feel this way doing maths or chemistry, either. Funny, then. Was I a puzzle for Mistress to solve? Did my pleasure need to be designed like a novel synthesis would? Perhaps her mind worked entirely differently to mine; was I a songbird trying to understand why the hawk hunted it?

The third orgasm hit me hard. This one had a definite sharp edge of pain to it, my pussy saying to me that it'd had more than enough and that it would like a break, please, but that only made the sweet parts sweeter in contrast. I toppled over sideways, and that hurt me more than any physical thing because I wasn't in the position Mistress had carefully selected for me and I was letting her down. Tears were in my eyes and running down my cheeks as I sat myself up again and mumbled an apology to Mistress. I started rubbing again, each stroke making me wince, but I had to carry on.

But my Mistress knew what was best for me, as always. She came over to me and wrapped me up in a hug, murmuring, "You can stop now, pet." I sniffled and nodded, nuzzling into her shoulder. "Tea? I'll show you the painting in a minute."

"Yes please, Mistress. I love you."

Ten minutes later and I was sat in Mistress's lap admiring the painting, tea in hand and having my neck kissed and one tit casually groped. She had turned on the space heater; in the warming air was the unmistakable scent of sex—my sex—on top of the usual pungency of linseed oil and turpentine.

The oil on canvas wasn't in her usual style of bright, ideal figures in lush landscapes. Instead, it was claustrophobic, with more than a hint of Expressionism: she had captured me on the brink of rapture, biting my lip and my eyes closed, with a slightly unnatural and distorted body, but not so far as to be grotesque. I was leaning back on one arm and touching myself with the other, one finger inside and the others fondling my labia and splaying myself open; my legs formed a three-dimensional figure-four, one vertical and one horizontal. Even without an object for scale, I didn't fill much of the canvas and I looked tiny and small against the dark and unworked background, as if I could be picked up and carried around like an overgrown doll.

My skin looked candle-lit in ochres and yellows that suggested gleaming sweat. The most intense colour was reserved for my hair—cropped short on my head, curly and wild between my legs and little tufts peeking out under my arms—and for my pussy, flushed pink with excitement. She'd painted entirely wet-on-wet and hadn't applied much detailing beyond my face, hands and sexual areas, leaving the brushstrokes bold and raw—even my collar was more suggested than painted—but that only added to the effect of movement and vitality and of being there in the moment. Altogether, it had taken about an hour to paint, and the piece looked it—though Mistress had been effective with the time she'd spent and had made every brushstroke count, it was much,

much

cruder and more quickly done than her usual work.

That's not to detract from it: I thought the effect worked. I turned my head and kissed her on the cheek. "I love it, Mistress." And I really did; her eyes filled with satisfaction at my approval, too, and I loved that as well. Anything I could do for her—to make her happy, to help her with anything, just because she wanted me to—I would do it in a heartbeat, a million times over.

2 – Thursday

Senior Chemist Dave was happy to sign off on me taking a week's leave, no questions asked. I just had to turn up early (hair askew, bags under my eyes and completely un-made-up), tell him there were some 'issues' at home and that I'd like some time off, please; he'd said that that was fine and then I had a letter to take to the sluagh in HR and the absentee landlords in management, saying that I could be spared for a few days without the lab grinding to a total halt.

I knew he'd give me the leave. He'd said he would a few months ago, on one of the chemists' regular nights out, when we'd research the effects

in vivo

of various solutions of ethanol and water (I was the regular non-ethanol control). I hadn't realised that the bruises on my back were still showing—Mistress really had been hitting me exquisitely hard—so I had worn an entirely unsuitable top; his eyes had just about popped out behind his glasses when I turned around to hang my coat on the back of my chair. With all the social grace and wordsmithing skill of a biochemist, he had asked if there were any problems or anything at home. I'd assured him that everything was fine (

"

No, really. I literally asked.

"

) and swore him to secrecy on the subject. I wasn't sure how much he understood or knew already (

Did he clock on to what the collar meant? Did he even know I was gay?

), but it didn't do to go around discouraging good intentions; I trusted him as a fellow awkward, geeky weirdo to not out me. He'd looked at me long and hard, but his gaze couldn't hold a candle to hers and I didn't wither but returned it with interest; then, he'd nodded and told me that if things didn't stay fine and I wanted some breathing space away from work, I only had to ask. I kept my coat on for the rest of the night and I don't think any of the other chemists saw the marks; if they did, they kept absolute shtum, which worked well enough for me.

Space was just what I needed now and I was thankful for Senior Chemist Dave, unsubtle but sweet. I rented a car and didn't know where I was going until I'd pulled up directions to the Lake District on my phone while I was stuck in commuter traffic on the M25. I took my eyes off the road for a few moments (

bad! Not like I was moving anyway

) and queued up some proper comfort listening:

The Stone Roses

,

Doolittle

,

Substance 1987

(both discs),

London Calling

,

Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

, and

The White Room

. It didn't really help me feel less numb, but the singalongs made the driving less tedious.

Five and a half hours later, I was parking in Kendal just as Carl and Pete were singing about how two people can't stand each other any more—

more right than you know, lads

. I busied myself in the shops, buying some solid hiking boots and a lurid red windcheater. Luckily, I'd had enough presence of mind last night to grab some necessities—a change of clothes, my bag, my phone's charger—so I didn't have to spend the drive up in Wednesday's clothes or worry about getting money out.

By the afternoon, I was seriously feeling the all-nighter. I'd finished gathering up the domestic essentials—my absolute favourite, Kendal mint cake, counted as an essential—and had booked myself into a bed-and-breakfast, but I still had something I needed to do before I could crash out.

The drive was barely twenty minutes, then I was standing on the shore of Windermere, just off to the side of the A591. My parking was probably very illegal, but I wasn't planning to stay long enough to get clocked by a sight-seeing traffic warden.

The lake's surface was pure white, reflecting the low sun; the only flaws in the water were little black rips where it was moved by the breeze. On the opposite shore, the fells were hulking blue shadows silhouetted against a clear evening sky. My collar was in my pocket. I pulled it out. She'd been right about it: it didn't look like something special, not in the chilly April light a hundred miles from home—just a black band of cloth and velvet with a heart-shaped steel fastener.

I didn't want to start crying, not after I'd lasted this long. I tried to blank my mind and get on with it—down on my hands and knees, looking for a good-sized rock. After a few moments of searching I'd found one, and wound the collar twice around it. I threw the rock and the collar with it as hard as I could into the water. They didn't fly incredibly far, but did sink satisfyingly fast, and then they were gone—forever. I probably should've felt better, had some sense of closure, but I must have been too tired for that because all I had was anger, confusion and the remains of affection.