Capture

This is my first time participating in Kayla Lords’ Masturbation Monday meme (guest posts aside). I’d been meaning to join in for a while now, and then today’s prompt just sort of blew me away a little bit. It also felt like a perfect match with an image from this book, by Luke Austin, which I’m hoping to have a chance to replicate at some point…

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and do click on the purple square below to read more from the Masturbation Monday canon!

Capture

With the camera comes anonymity. With the camera comes power.

~

She is not accustomed to taking control – not in the bedroom, anyway. There she prefers to let Matt direct things. It’s not that she is silent or shy, nor is she passive, but his hands on her body generate a sensation almost unbearable in its intensity, and she gives herself up to him without hesitation. It is as if he draws all the heat inside her up to the surface, till her skin glows golden-red and each breath burns in her chest and throat.

Afterwards, serenity kisses the top of her head and falls around her like a soft towel at the end of a warm bath. The way they fuck is nourishing, or at least that’s how she thinks of it. Too long without his touch and her hair feels limp and dry; all the colour washes out of her. Shadows gather.

They often take photos together, just the two of them; she loves the way his camera feels like an extension of his eyes and hands, roaming over her as she moves into position for him. It is silent foreplay – she always knows exactly what he wants – and when they are done she falls back onto the bed, cunt slick with anticipation, and closes her eyes, not daring to move until she feels his arms hook under her knees, and the first long, languid stroke of his tongue between her legs.

She guards those private moments fiercely, and that’s why it jars, at first, when he asks her to shoot him with someone else. It’s for work, she gets that – there is no budget for a professional photographer, and it will be hard to sell tickets without an eye-catching poster to put up outside the theatre – but it still feels like an intrusion onto territory she’s always considered to be hers.

They arrive fresh from rehearsal, and she hears them clatter through the hallway below her apartment. Rich autumn sunlight spills through the living room window, wiping away the sullen expression she’d fixed carefully in place; she is left helpless by its beauty, and by the sound of Matt’s deep, carefree laughter echoing up the stairs.

She has met Liam once before, not long after the auditions. He’d given Matt a lift home from the pub, and they’d chatted briefly on the doorstep outside her building. She remembers only how self-contained he seemed; how soft-spoken, with a lilt to his voice that even now she can’t quite place.

When they bounce into the room, she already has the camera set up on its tripod, ready to go. It feels steadier fixed in place like that – or maybe she feels steadier. In her hands earlier it just seemed bulky and awkward; the weight threw her off-balance, robbing her of the poise she likes to wear as a shield in moments of discomfort.

Matt hands her a bottle of wine, and she roots around in the sideboard for glasses. It feels cosmetic – surely they have done this a thousand times – but she gives each man a half-filled glass anyway, and watches as they drain them in silence. She looks over at the record player in the corner, unsure what to do next. Matt clears his throat and the sound relaxes her; no, she’s really not used to calling the shots. He frowns, and gestures at the space in front of them.

“Let’s get started, shall we?”

~

Liam doesn’t look at her as he peels off his t-shirt and fumbles with the belt holding his combat trousers in place. She assumes it’s shyness at first, but then he glances up at Matt with an intensity so shocking that her finger squeezes down hard on the shutter button in instinctive response; she will look at the photo later, and his face alone will be enough to make her feel loose and buttery with arousal.

Matt is more guarded, she thinks. Not aloof, exactly, but perhaps a little detached as he steps out of his jeans and nudges them to one side with his foot. She turns the camera towards him, and he raises a hand in mock protest. Not yet, his eyes seem to say. Give me just a minute to figure this thing out.

She wants to reach over and tug at his underwear herself, but something holds her back. She has not seen this hesitation in him before – he is always so certain in everything he does – and she finds it intriguing and unsettling in equal measure. She wonders what else he hides from her. What else she might like in him.

They come together slowly, dancing round each other in the centre of the room as she watches on, hidden behind the lens. The shot is a simple one – Liam’s hands on Matt’s arse, their two bodies pressed together – but despite her earlier misgivings she doesn’t want to get it wrong. The small details fascinate her. The fan of Liam’s fingers. The angle of each wrist. The veins in his fuzzy, wiry forearms, roped tight over muscles that excite her each time he pulls Matt towards him for another take. She makes him do it again and again, zooming in on the small white marks that bloom out from under his fingertips, only to slowly fade whenever they disengage.

The two men don’t speak, but she still feels as if a whole conversation is playing out in front of her. Like a small dog nipping at her trouser leg, any brief flash of jealousy is easily shooed away; even if she can’t hear what they’re saying, the camera allows her to shape and frame the dialogue. She has not been left outside with her face pressed up against the window.

Matt’s arms are draped loosely over Liam’s shoulders. It is a pose designed to look casual – she wanted to capture the easy, almost liquid strength contained within his frame – but something about the way he leans into Liam’s broad chest makes her ache at the intimacy that vibrates between them.

Shifting position, she brings the camera closer. For the first time, she takes a proper look at Liam’s cock. It was an afterthought until now, so captivating were his arms and hands, but as the swollen head juts up eagerly against Matt’s stomach she has to fight the urge to reach out for it with greedy, grasping fingers. She wants to kneel down next to them, bury her nose in the tiny gap between their bodies, and just let their scent flood her lungs.

Her voice is clearer than she thought it would be. It gets husky when she’s nervous – sometimes she stammers – the legacy of too many years spent doubting her worth in front of men who did little to reaffirm it. Seeing Matt and Liam so lost in each other somehow gives her license to speak with greater confidence; while their focus is elsewhere, she feels not detached or alienated but liberated, and it makes her heart swell. Her cunt throb.

“Touch him,” she says, and it is Liam who looks up at her first. “I want to see you touch his cock. I want that.”

Matt’s chin tilts back in anticipation; there is a rippling in his chest and neck, as if her words have pulled something out from deep inside him. Liam stares into the camera. She clicks furiously, fingers beating out the rhythm on the shutter that she wants to feel on her clit.

It is only when Liam turns to kiss the base of Matt’s throat that she loses all sense of herself. The tripod teeters, knocked clumsily by her arm as it swings down to sweep aside the fabric at her crotch. Liam grasps at his cock with an open palm, corralling Matt’s alongside it. The noise that shudders out of her is like nothing she’s heard before; already she is close to slipping away from them, from everything, and waking up somewhere far from any reference point she’s ever known.

Matt thrusts into Liam’s hand, and dimly she notes the way their bodies melt and fuse around each other. It is rougher than anything she’s done with Matt, almost harsh, but he is so hard, so fucking hard for Liam, that she knows this is what he wanted all along. What he wanted her to see.

Liam’s cock is thick and heavy, pressing Matt’s shaft back as they twitch together. Reaching for the camera again, she steadies herself for long enough to focus on their shimmering dance. It isn’t one she will ever forget, but she presses the button anyway. How could she not?

With the camera comes power.