A Real Mentor

Amy naked, wrists and ankles bound to each corner of the bed, and Sarah leaning over her, teasing her, touching her, making her beg again and again and again for release, Amy promising her the world and more, anything, absolutely anything to please please please just let her cum...

"Your boarding pass please, madam."

Luisa came back to reality with a start, realising that she'd been day dreaming again... fantasising about what Amy was going to do with Sarah that night, the thoughts going round and round and getting more outlandish by the minute.

She blushed and smiled, replying in her accented English as she handed it over, "Sorry, thinking too much."

"No problem," came the reply, professional but friendly. "Have a good flight."

Luisa nodded and headed to board the plane, bound from London for Naples to take her to her latest modelling job in Amalfi.

Before she realised it she found her mind drifting again, imagining Amy and Sarah pleasuring each other at the same time, heads between each other's legs, bodies tensing, hands gripping at each other's thighs as they both got close, so close but not quite there...

It was funny, she thought, that she didn't even know what Sarah looked like, didn't know what her and Amy did together except for some brief mentions of a whole dominant submissive vibe and Amy's demonstration back in LA a couple of weeks before that she knew her way around the world of strap ons and restraints and who knew what else.

So for now, Sarah was played in her mind by another powerful, older businesswoman that Luisa knew, an agent in LA that Luisa had always had a bit of a crush on, not enough to do anything about it but enough to know it was there and to be open to something if the opportunity ever arose. And her mind ran free imagining what they were doing.

All of this distraction, all of this day dreaming because of having seen a couple of messages come up on Amy's phone that morning, messages from Sarah making it very clear that that night her and Amy had something intimate planned, something that she was clearly excited about.

Not a problem, not technically. Amy and Luisa were in love, but they were also in an open relationship... a necessity for both their lives, Amy with her thing with Sarah as well as, until recently, a long term boyfriend, while for Luisa there was, well, for want of a better word her compartments, complexity in spades, not forgetting the fact that the two women lived 5,000 miles apart, Luisa in LA and Amy in London.

Amy didn't know that Luisa knew that she was seeing Sarah later, but that was ok, within their relationship parameters. They had no obligation to tell each other. Luisa felt jealous, yes, but not an all consuming how dare you do this sort of jealousy. Well, maybe at first but that had soon abated as she had time to think about it.

More, she realised, it was jealousy that she couldn't be there too... she wanted to share her life with the woman she loved, and these fantasies that kept flooding into her mind had Luisa there, in the room, an interested observer. Maybe even a participant... she felt herself drifting again, imagining herself there in the room with them and stopped herself, forcing herself back into the moment.

And, of course, if she was genuinely jealous she'd also be a massive hypocrite. Because waiting in Amalfi was someone who had been very special to Luisa over the eight years of her professional modelling career, someone interwoven in the fabric of that time. Luisa's version of Amy's Sarah.

Alethea.

Luisa's kryptonite, her Greek goddess, the one woman that Luisa knew she could never, ever say no to. Never wanted to say no to. The one person who had been there at the outset of her career and was still there eight years on.

Amy's turn this time, Sarah waiting, obedient, submissive, on her hands and knees while Amy built the tension, walking around wearing a strap-on, a sordid, erotic image that Luisa knew well now from lived experience with Amy, before Amy positions herself behind Sarah, a fistful of Sarah's hair in one hand, her hip held by the other, Sarah moaning loudly as Amy slides into her...

Stop it, thought Luisa. Focus on the moment. Focus on what lies ahead, not what is happening in London.

Alethea.

It had been a surprise seeing her name on the call sheet, particularly so soon after she'd last seen Alethea just before Luisa had first met Amy. She hadn't been ready for that yet, for the overlap between whatever it was she had with Alethea and the woman she loved in Amy, the two people that stood above all others in her life.

Over the eight years of her modelling career, Luisa had perfected the art of compartmentalisation. It wasn't a strategy that she'd consciously developed. Rather it had evolved naturally as the only way to navigate the complex reality of her life in the modelling industry and the challenges of near constant travel and constant upheaval. Each aspect of her existence occupied its own separate space, walls between them thick and impermeable.

There was her professional compartment... the strategic and usually very short term arrangements with photographers, other models, and industry powerbrokers that had advanced her career. These relationships existed in a space where physical intimacy and professional advancement intertwined without emotional complication, but always, always nowadays in a way that placed a premium on a strong interpersonal chemistry and Luisa's personal pleasure too.

Then there was the compartment housing her casual relationships... the "not-boyfriends" as she sometimes called them. Carlos back in Mexico City until she moved to LA a year and a half ago. Later, Julian in LA. These men existed in a space of comfortable ambiguity, neither fully committed nor entirely casual, a halfway house for her emotional availability but always men around the fashion industry, men who helped her professionally.

Alethea occupied her own unique compartment... consuming, intoxicating, defying easy categorization. From that first night in Tulum when Luisa was eighteen, through their subsequent encounters over the years, Montana, Rio, Miami and the rest, Alethea had occupied a space unlike any other in Luisa's life. Not quite love, not merely desire, but something that transcended both, something that pulled Luisa back time and again with gravitational force.

And now there was Amy's compartment... terrifyingly different from the others, threatening to spill beyond its boundaries and flood every other carefully separated area of Luisa's life. What had begun as a chance encounter in an LA club had rapidly evolved into something Luisa hadn't experienced since before her modelling career began... genuine, all-consuming love.

As she settled back in her seat while the plane took off, she realised that that was what scared her most as the plane carried her toward Naples, toward Alethea. For the first time in eight years, Luisa's carefully constructed compartments were beginning to leak into each other. The walls were thinning. And she wasn't sure she knew how to exist without them.

With Amy, Luisa had found herself doing something unprecedented, imagining a future together, a shared life beyond the next photoshoot or fashion season. But after eight years of relationships that served her career, of connections maintained with professional precision, of her heart protected behind walls of pragmatic detachment, Luisa feared that she had forgotten, or perhaps had never learned, how to do this. How to be someone's partner rather than their arranged companion. How to love without strategic calculation, to love unconditionally.

Despite their agreement to keep things open, despite the rational understanding that their respective careers and circumstances made traditional monogamy impractical, Luisa knew that what she felt for Amy transcended these pragmatic arrangements.

Amy deserved better than a woman who didn't know how to love properly, who had spent nearly a decade perfecting the art of emotional distance. Amy deserved someone whose heart wasn't divided into compartments, someone who could give herself completely without reservation or hesitation.

Yet even knowing this, even loving Amy with an intensity that sometimes frightened her, Luisa knew with absolute certainty what would happen when she saw Alethea in Amalfi. It was inevitable, as certain as the laws of physics.

Alethea would look at her with those eyes that seemed to see straight through every defence, with that slight smile that told Luisa volumes, would touch her with those hands that knew exactly where and how, and Luisa would surrender completely... just as she had every time before.

Luisa closed her eyes, letting her head rest against the window as the plane continued its journey southward. She should have told Amy about Alethea. Should have explained this inexplicable pull, this one relationship that defied her otherwise impeccable control.

The open nature of their relationship meant Amy would likely understand intellectually, but how could Luisa explain the emotional gravity, the significance of Alethea to her when she barely understood it herself?

Instead, she'd kept silent, adding another layer to the compartmentalisation that had defined her adult life. Another secret, another division, another wall between who she was with Amy and who she would inevitably become the moment she saw Alethea again.

Somewhere down below, at the end of this journey, Alethea was waiting. And Luisa would go to her, as she always did.

The only question was whether the compartment that held Amy could survive what was about to happen. Or whether, at long last, the carefully constructed architecture of Luisa's emotional life was about to collapse entirely.

Realising that fantasising about Amy and Sarah together wasn't going to help, Luisa forced her mind to focus instead on how she'd got to this point, the experiences that had made her who she was.

She thought back to her first international photoshoot, to a luxury villa in Tulum, to the moment she first laid eyes on Alethea and felt her world irrevocably change, and how the journey that that had put her on ended with Amy.

8 years before

Tulum wasn't the centre of the world, Luisa knew that at the time, but for an 18 year old trying to make it in the modelling world, someone who'd never left Mexico, never stepped into a multi-day shoot where the photographers spoke several languages and the clothes were from labels straight off the pages of a magazine, it certainly felt like it.

It was her first big photoshoot, an opportunity that had come out of nowhere at the last minute when another model had dropped out and they needed someone urgently. Luisa must have fit the look, either that or her agent had been doing better work than Luisa gave her credit for, and before she knew what was happening she was saying goodbye to her parents, her boyfriend was dropping her off at the airport, she was sat on a plane with a car waiting for her when she arrived, her name held up on a board, a room in a good hotel, all expenses paid... it was one of those opportunities that comes up in life that you have to seize and make the most of, and that was what Luisa planned to do.

The photoshoot was at a luxury villa set back from the beach, gardens, a pool, large open rooms inside, she could see exactly why they'd chosen it. Walking around on that first morning after a night almost hiding in her room, too nervous and star struck to introduce herself to the other models that she knew and recognised from the magazine cuttings on her wall at home but had never met, never even got close to meeting, Luisa felt like she'd been transported into the pages. It felt right, it was where she wanted to be.

It was a hive of activity, make-up artists and stylists and creative who-knew-what-they-dids all rushing around, and when Luisa introduced herself, she was soon seated and being prepared.

Sat with her feet on the cool stone floor of what looked like the villa's dining room, she told herself that she would be professional, she would be focused, she would be the kind of woman who deserved to be there because, she told herself again and again, she did deserve to be there. Everyone had to start somewhere, and for Luisa this was going to kick start her whole career.

That worked, right up until she saw Alethea.

It was early on the second day of shooting, the air still cool from the night-time, the real heat of the day a few hours away yet. Luisa had stepped outside on to the villa's terrace in search of a cup of coffee, not quite used to being up so early, and there, standing at the edge of the pool, deep in conversation with one of the photographers, was Alethea.

Luisa recognised her immediately, had known she was going to be there from the lists she'd been given, but Alethea was different to everyone else... she was famous in a way that no one else there was, not necessarily to someone in the street but certainly in this world. Famous enough that she had clout, she had power. She was the star of this photoshoot, without a doubt, and with that came influence.

Luisa couldn't help but stare, seeing this person she'd admired in fashion magazines in the flesh. She was already dressed in her first costume of the day, or maybe her second or third, Luisa could only guess, wearing nothing but a simple black one-piece swimsuit and on oversized blue shirt that was unbuttoned and left one shoulder bare.

Alethea was tall, slim, a figure that Luisa knew well, her dark straight hair, almost black, falling to just below her shoulders and framing a stunningly beautiful face. Only a couple of years older than Luisa, Alethea by the age of 20 had had the exact career trajectory that Luisa aspired to, a rapid rise that meant her extra two years were a lifetime's difference in experience between them.

She was in intense conversation with the photographer, but it was purely professional. Serious but not confrontational, this was someone who took modelling as seriously as Luisa planned to. First impressions, Luisa was impressed.

The photographer nodded agreement and left, and Alethea turned, looking at Luisa who looked away instinctively before looking back again to see Alethea's eyes still on her. It was only a second or two before someone else came walking towards Alethea, calling her name, but it was enough.

Alethea had seen her and, Luisa fervently hoped, recognised her as a fellow professional.

A couple of hours later, the day starting to heat up, Luisa having gone through several different costumes already, she was taking a moment in the relative cool of the villa when she saw Alethea walking past.

No, not past. Towards her. Directly towards her. Seeking her out.

Luisa looked at her and smiled, trying to look open and welcoming, but Alethea simply said, "Come with me." Her voice was smooth and quiet yet confident, spoken in accented English, and Luisa was left in little doubt that Alethea was the one with the power here and Luisa wasn't.

Without really thinking about it Luisa followed her, walking barefoot across the stone of the terrace and round to the side of the villa where there was a low stone wall shaded by trees above.

Alethea produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and lit up. She leaned against the wall, resting on the top of it, and Luisa copied her. It felt surreal, both wearing swimwear with thin robes on top, leaning there with someone she'd only seen in a magazine.

After a couple of drags, Alethea looked at Luisa and said, "You're new." A statement, not a question, but she said nothing more, just looked at Luisa as she took another drag and exhaled, somehow making smoking look cool as hell.

Into the silence, Luisa said, "Yes." She wanted to say more but she felt star struck, tongue tied, so ended up saying nothing.

Alethea seemed to understand instinctively. Maybe she was used to that reaction. "You won't be for long," she replied. She held out the cigarette to Luisa, offering it, and Luisa leaned forward and took a drag while Alethea held it to her lips, not because she wanted to but because it didn't feel like she could say no.

She breathed in deeply then exhaled, not a smoker normally but certainly she'd experimented enough in her youth to not make a fool of herself by coughing. Alethea watched her and smiled in approval.

"You're local?"

"Tulum, no. But Mexico, yes. My first international photoshoot."

"You'll be fine. We all start somewhere." She paused. "If you need something, come and talk to me."

Luisa smiled but wasn't sure what to say, it feeling more and more surreal by the minute.

They stayed there in companionable silence, Alethea giving Luisa another couple of drags, then she stood up straight. "They'll be expecting us." She paused and looked at Luisa, looking like she was about to say something else, but then said nothing before she walked off.

From that moment Alethea took Luisa under her wing. Or maybe, in hindsight, under her control. Luisa had never been sure then or after where one ended and the other began.

On set, when she wasn't being photographed herself, Alethea would stay close, stepping in to correct her stance with a touch on her hips here and a hand on her shoulders there, guiding her chin with a light touch of her fingers on Luisa's jaw, quiet words of encouragement when Luisa was struggling to understand instinctively what the photographer wanted from her, coaching her and teaching her the professional tricks behind this type of modelling.

When they broke for meals or had a lull in the schedule Alethea would find her, inviting her to sit with her at the long table on the terrace, sometimes just the two of them locked in conversation, sometimes with others as well. Alethea seemed to get on particularly well with the other models and the stylists, and Luisa soon felt like she was part of the group.

When it was just the two of them, Alethea would try her broken Spanish on Luisa before invariably it reached her limit and they both broke down giggling, and sometimes she taught Luisa some of her native Greek as well, just a few words but enough for Luisa to greet her when she saw her, before they both switched to English as their common language.

Luisa felt welcomed, she felt visible, she felt like she belonged. Even when she realised that Alethea had singled her out for special attention, she didn't want it to stop... she genuinely liked Alethea, her relaxed, no nonsense approach to everything, her professionalism, and not least how much she'd helped and guided Luisa through what could have been a difficult week.

The others on the set noticed. Luisa didn't realise what it was at the time, but looking back years later when she'd been on too many photoshoots to count, she realised that she'd seen it since too.

It was the way the others glanced between each other, the knowing smiles from the makeup artists, the little well intentioned comments that meant nothing on the surface, the space that they all gave Alethea and Luisa as the week went on. It was like they'd all seen this story before, maybe not with Alethea but certainly with somebody like her, and they all knew how it ended.

It wasn't until the last night that anything actually happened.

They'd finished early that day, the final shots done and the villa packed up. The crew, the models, everyone headed into town to party, from what Luisa could tell all expenses paid.

It was an experience and a half for her and gave Luisa even more of a taste for the life of a model on the up than the days before. She had a great time, getting to know various people that she still worked with from time to time eight years later. Kind of like her induction into the world of fashion modelling. She liked it.