Cliff O'Shea retired from his lecturer position at Ruxton Technical College at sixty. He was fit and healthy, only marginally overweight, and with his full head of steel-grey hair a still presentable man. Nevertheless, after his divorce ten years ago he stayed happily single. He had shared his house with his son while the latter was a student and for two years longer after he graduated.
With Mat gone, the house felt too large and empty. Therefore, Cliff used his now free time and the payout for accumulated long service leave to convert his four-bedroom house into two apartments. Situated close to a university and other colleges, Cliff's first brief ad on the internet attracted dozens of students as potential renters.
Cliff, as a keen photographer, had always had an eye for female beauty. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he offered the vacant apartment to two well-dressed female students. They happened to be Chinese and one of the two was strikingly attractive. She appeared to be older and more confident than her shorter, comparatively almost childlike friend. Both loved the apartment and paid Cliff immediately one month's rent and two months' bond and moved in. From the rental agreement, Cliff learned their names and that both women came from Georgetown in Malaysia.
Cliff's friendliness and unfussed helpfulness put the women at ease, and a more familiar relationship than usual between landlords and tenants developed between them over the following month. In this Leisha, the older of the two took more of the lead than Cliff, as a landlord, would have done. Leisha had spent already four years in Melbourne and was in her final year of an Economics/Law degree. For her, the newly found living arrangements with Cliff was so much better than what she could find and afford in previous years.
Viv, the younger of the two, was in her first year of a degree in nursing. She had completed her final two years of schooling as a border in one of Melbourne's Ladies' colleges, spending her holidays back home. She was Leisha's cousin. Their families in Georgetown had decided to place her in her older cousin's care during Viv's first year at university. For Leisha, it made Cliff's age and fatherly manners doubly attractive. He would be, she hoped, an additional guardian of Viv's assumed innocence.
Regarding the latter, both Leisha and Cliff learned quickly that Viv was certainly in need of protection. Innocent or not, she was a flirt. The women had moved in at Cliff's in high summer. While Leisha spent sunny afternoons lightly dressed in the shared garden, Viv preferred a brief bikini that highlighted her nicely proportioned assets. When she noticed Cliff looking at her, she smiled while quite deliberately posing. It amused him but he was much more captivated by the sinuous grace of Leisha's body under the light, close-fitting shifts she preferred.
Cliff's focus on his tenants' physical appearance was, at this stage, more professional than sexual. From his teens until his early forties, Cliff had been an enthusiastic amateur photographer. After completing a six months part-time photography course, he joined a prestigious Camera Club. Over the following years, he took part in competitions and exhibited his work. In his later years, Cliff's photography concentrated on portraiture and character studies. It included some figure work but as Cliff was not interested in using professional models, it remained a minor part of his output.
The emergence and impact of digital photography killed Cliff's interest. It was no longer the craft he had practised and enjoyed. Although he kept his darkroom and cameras, he had not used them in twenty years. Neither had he printed any of the snapshots he had on his phone. But now, all of a sudden, his photographic interest had been pricked by Leisha and Viv. They would, Cliff imagined, be two interestingly contrasting models for a folio of nude studies. But as with other women he had known, Cliff would not risk asking them to pose.
In May, for a coming Chinese holiday, Leisha and Viv wanted to invite Cliff to a traditional feast. When they apologised for not yet having bought a large enough table and chairs, Cliff suggested the use of his dining room. The cousins happily accepted. On the set day they decorated the room traditionally Chinese and set up the table with the brought-over feast. Cliff kept out of their way but on completion contributed the wine and champagne. Being an epicurean, he greatly enjoyed the lovingly prepared, quite elaborate meal. Afterwards, it turned for the three into a pleasantly relaxed evening. For Cliff, however, as the evening progressed, some tempting and partially worrying ideas arose.
Viv and Leisha had during the afternoon spent some time unobserved in Cliff's part of the house. They could not have missed the dozen or so carefully framed prints of nudes that Cliff, in male-bachelor vanity, displayed on his walls.
Eventually - they were on their third glass of champagne - Leisha asked, "Cliff, have you taken all these photographs?"
"Yes, and I printed them too. It was my hobby many years ago. Do you like them?"
"I love your black-and-white studies," said Leisha, avoiding Cliff's eyes.
"These two are my favourites!" piped in Viv, pointing at two large colour prints.
Cliff almost blushed. Although he loved them for a different reason, they came for his taste too close to the eroticism of professional glamour. But it was what Elisa, the wife of a colleague, the statuesque blonde almost stepping out of the pictures to fuck, had wanted; and secrecy, both about the pictures and their following short-term affair. Cliff had only hung these pictures post-retirement, twenty-five years after their creation. But now - having drunk more wine than Viv -- it intrigued him if she saw and sensed what was hidden in these, for him, so evocative pictures.
Smiling at Viv, he asked, "Why do you like them? This woman is rather different from you?"
"Yes, she is so honest," Viv blushed and stammered, "and beautiful and sexy! My photos on my phone, the ones taken by my girlfriend and selfies are rubbish! They are not what I want to be." Then, Viv suddenly giggled, "I'll show you my snapshots. You must tell me, Cliff, why they are so bad."
As Viv scrabbled for her phone, Cliff saw that Leisha had left the table. Champagne glass in hand she stood in the hallway. She faced six black-and-white prints of his classical nudes mounted in a row on the wall. He would have loved to stand behind her to kiss her neck and tell her how much he wished to take such photos of her.
Viv interrupted his thoughts. With her lit-up phone in her hands, she snuggled up to him. Cliff could feel the pressure of a firm boob on his arm while she clicked down shot after badly lit and composed shot. All of them were little girl snapshots with the naughty one -- where Viv stretched her cloth-covered tits into the lens -- embarrassingly immature and unsexy. And Cliff, with her thigh pressing against his and her tit rubbing on his arm, suddenly suspected Viv wanted more from him than advice. He did not know how far young Viv wanted to go. Tempted, he decided on a hidden offer that would leave her free to choose. Putting his hand over her phone he said:
"Good photos with phones, just as with cameras, are not made by just shooting. Firstly, you Viv, must be totally happy and ready to be photographed. Secondly, the mood, the setting, the background, light direction and composition must be right, even if all else is automatic. However, with phones, you still finish up with a small picture unless you print. If you, Viv, want great pictures of yourself, hand your iPad to a friend who knows the drill. You will get this way great pictures of your sexy, beautiful self on the brilliant screen of your private iPad. So, if you don't have one, get an iPad and look for a photographer you like and trust."
Viv thought for a while. Then she grinned, "I won't look for a photographer in Georgetown. I could find one in Melbourne. Couldn't I, Cliff?"
Soon after they went happily to bed, leaving the clean-up and some other things for tomorrow. By noon, it being Sunday and the students at home, the order in Cliff's home was restored. When he checked his computer at night, there was a mail from next door:
"Dear Cliff, I know you know why I am writing. I am asking you to become my photographer. In the pictures we make, I want to be as grown-up and sexy as the blond woman in your prints. Am I crazy? Can you do it and can we keep it a secret? Especially, from Leisha. I am sending this mail from my iPad(!!!), so it is safe for you to reply. I hope you say yes. I promise to be a good girl, happy and ready to be photographed by you in any way you find me beautiful and sexy. Love, Viv."
"Dear Viv, Photographing you will be a pleasure. Give me a time, not less than three hours, that you are free and unobserved by Leisha. We will do it at my place. Bring some make-up and 'interesting' clothing. Or none, the choice is yours! And, of course, your fully charged iPad. Love, Cliff.
"Dearest Cliff, On Thursday, Leisha is at Uni all day. I need to wag only one lecture. Imagine! When can we start -- 10 o'clock? All excited, Love, Viv."
And it wasn't just Viv that was all excited. Cliff had a restless night, got up, had a shower, and picked his best underwear and jeans, assuring himself that at his age he could not possibly get into trouble with Viv. Then he prepared the setting for the photo shoot: he pulled back the curtains in the living room to get the full morning light on the rearranged diwan and lounge chairs. In the bedroom - with some twinges of guilt - he set up two photographic lights he had stored in his darkroom. He carefully focused them on what he imagined could happen on the new blue covers of his queen size bed.
At ten o'clock sharp the doorbell chimed. When Cliff opened the door, Viv smiled shyly up at him. God, she is tiny, thought Cliff. But then he noticed how grown-up she had done her make-up. It discretely accentuated her high cheekbones and the sensuousness of her lips. He was somewhat disappointed that Viv was dressed in denim. Her pants, though, were skin-tight and displayed the shapely roundness of her ass to perfection. Also, Cliff noticed, Viv wore a silky buttoned-up blouse under her jacket instead of her usual cotton tops.
