11 comments/ 13544 views/ 1 favorites Through The Lens By: Adrian Leverkuhn ©2008 by ©Adrian Leverkuhn Few things are as disheartening for a photographer as finding oneself confronted with the best of all possible circumstances: that perfect golden light as the sun falls behind purple clouds along a far horizon and sunbursts shoot toward heaven as if on cue, the composition you've worked so hard to find after hiking for hours along the Grand Canyon's North Rim Trail is better than you'd ever dare hope for, and then -- you press the shutter button, that climactic moment gathers in your soul, and -- zingo -- nothing happens. It doesn't matter what the cause is -- either no more film in your twenty year old M5 or the cards in your shiny new D3 were full; or you check the battery and it is -- God forbid -- dead, or -- worse still -- some arcane setting you've inadvertently made foils the cameras metering system and the dreaded word "error" blinks in the viewfinder . . . it doesn't matter . . . the result is the same. A nauseated feeling passes from your balls to your stomach, feelings of black dread blot out every other thought in your brain . . . and you look down at the offending instrument as if it is your best friend you've just found screwing your wife up the ass in the back seat of the new Porsche you've saved all your life for. You can't decide whether to hurl the mother-fucker over the rim or jump yourself. In the end, however, you do neither. You go on, make your way to the next shot because in this life you don't get second chances very often. So, you watch the light fade, perhaps even enjoy the moment for what it is -- a rare, precious thing worthy of so much more than your glistening incompetence -- then you put away your gear in a black sulk and walk back to the trailhead as night gathers all around you, faintly depressed because you know better but got sloppy, careless. Thunderstorms gather six inches over your head as you walk and even mountain lions and rattlesnakes know better that to fuck with you in your present state. You get back to the Land Rover that -- if you remember correctly -- seemed old when your grandfather bought it when JFK decided to run for president. Well, what the fuck. Still some ice in the cooler, a couple of Cokes and a sandwich in there. Fire up the GPS and the satellite radio and head off into the night. Maybe Durango? Mesa Verde? The leaves are turning further north . . . maybe Aspen? The Maroon Bells? My iPhone picked up a signal out there under the stars -- about three million miles from the nearest toilet (and this was of some immediate -- and alarming -- concern that had something to do with green chili stew); it hummed and burped as messages filed into memory then beeped with its unnatural, annoying cheerfulness -- "I'm done now! Look at ME!" I picked up the silly thing, wondered how it would look in the rear view mirror bouncing merrily down the road in a shower of sparks, then decided I'd better check my messages: - from: Nan D. (my agent . . . so far so good . . .), and in red, bold-faced type: "Urgent". Now, I typically associate "Urgent" with unsolicited credit card offers or unwelcome correspondence from dour, gray-faced women who work for the government, but when Nan (and I have to admit, this is somewhat rare) sends anything even remotely "urgent" my way it tends to involve money, so I tend to sit up and take notice when it happens. I slowed down and searched for the screen that would take me to the screen that would take me to the screen where I could read the message, and then -- with an annoying reminder from the aforementioned green chile stew making itself known urgently as well -- decided it would be ever so much more practical to read this message squatting by the side of the road in front of the Rover's headlights. Despite engineers and technicians having solved many of the technical issues that accompany driving a three ton truck over terrain that would give pause to a mountain goat, they have not yet, to date, thought to mount a toilet paper holder on the front bumper of even one of their offerings. This thought, too, never occurred to me while I read Nan's email in front of the headlights. Indeed, the only other concern I had at that particular moment was the remote possibility that someone, anyone, might drive by while I was so -- urgently involved -- with my urgent correspondence. If there were children involved they might be scarred for life. To make life even more interesting, while I read little green men in track shoes pranced around inside my small intestine practicing the four-forty, and I'm sure more than one crawling insect by my boots succumbed to my own overwhelming display of "shock and awe". Anyway, one of the big weekly news magazines in New York was fresh out of staff writer/photographers and was willing to pay big pesos for some words and photos from a hastily called economic summit in Switzerland that coming weekend, the details of which were mundane at best and had something to do, if I recall, with a merger between OPEC and Toys-R-Us, and they were offering all expenses and accommodations on top of a hefty commission, and Nan (ever the comedienne) had gleefully accepted on my behalf. And now we come to the punch line. I'm squatting here by the side of the road on a brisk October evening, a Tuesday night to be more specific, hoping the mother-ship doesn't come down just then and catch me with my, uh, pants down, and here she's telling me I need to be in Davos on Friday afternoon; details on flights to follow. Though the math was daunting, and the cramps overwhelming, my bank account was in certain need of this infusion: I could not say no. Sitting out there on the warm asphalt (well no, actually, still squatting -- but now with some of the aforementioned green men now in the final stretch running high hurdles, somewhere in the vicinity of my duodenum, I think), here I was in front of the old Green Brute, pecking away on an impossibly tiny touch-screen "keyboard" (yeah, right, the very word I'd choose...), writing something witty and smart of how wonderful the assignment sounded and that of course I'd be able to make all the connections, then I hit the send key with all the gracious aplomb of one squatting by the side of the road in excremental agony can muster. I put the phone away smugly in a vest pocket before remembering that said engineers and technicians in England had indeed not installed tissue holders on the front bumper of my Land Rover. Shock and awe, indeed. ___________________________________ It's harder than you can imagine getting to Zurich these days, much more so than it was just five or six years ago, but unimaginably so from the 'Four Corners' area of the desert southwest. It's a strange new dance, and it goes something like this: Durnago to Denver, change terminals, submit to proctologic examination at the TSA/Homeland Security check-in line (And couldn't they have come up with something more original than Soviet-style nomenclature? George Orwell, where were you when we needed you? Anyway...on to...) Denver to JFK, transfer to the International Terminal, another endoscopic examination by a very determined TSA employee named Rufus (and whose hands were larger than an orangutans), thence onto a jet just a tad smaller than Yankee Stadium and into the toilet to remove all the K-Y that Rufus so thoughtfully left in an used corner of your Fruit-of-the-Looms. Dinner? You bet. In your dreams. Lights out as soon as the wheels leave the ground, unless you're in First Class, then they wheel out carts loaded with prime rib and Yorkshire pudding (but not until the Wine Steward presents you with the evenings selection). You are, of course, sitting between someone who looks just like Idi Amin-dada (and whose odor reminds you of a recent roadside experience in Arizona) and a delightful young lady who has obviously just escaped from a mental hospital (shaking hands, three prescription tranquillizers before she can get her seat belt fastened, non-stop blather about airline crash statistics and the comparative safety of travel by steamship); then a flight attendant announces that non-alcoholic beverages will be available for one hundred and fifty euros a shot. Some gonzo in the seat ahead reclines his seat just after takeoff and you spend the next hour and a half examining the zits on his bald head -- the back of which is now hovering just about four inches above your testicles. And this is Business Class. You wonder if that's the shuffling of hooves you hear from behind the curtain at the aft end of the compartment as you drift off into a somewhat contented sleep. You dream of German trains steaming into quaint Polish towns in 1943, then you exit the upper deck bleachers and file into the terminal at Zurich-Kloten about eight hours later. Your mouth tastes like horse manure and your eyes feel like an old girlfriend dropped a used tampon on them somewhere over Greenland, and you can't decide if this is from the long flight or the soldiers in black fatigues walking around the baggage claim with machine guns and black dogs that look on expectantly -- as though they've had nowhere near enough to eat -- until they look at you. And guess what? Only one more flight to go, and as you walk (yes, walk) across the tarmac to this one, you are saying under your breath that this one looks to be a doozy. One engine, a propeller, and six seats. You sit down and a cubic meter of vinyl makes a "whoosh"-ing sound as it's sucked up your anus. The plane takes off in a little less than half the length of a football field and buzzes through the Alps at a serene pace, and you know this is so because farmers on tractors are pulling ahead of you on the road five hundred feet below. Three weeks later the plane sets down in Davos in about half the length it used to take off, and as you take the one step down from plane to earth (Thank You, God!) you're hoping the vinyl hanging from your asshole hasn't fused to your scrotum. Once on the ground you turn and look around, see you're surrounded by hundreds of little jets with names like Gulfstream V and Dassault 9000, but you remember the really big players arrive at Zurich or Geneva in Boeing 747s registered in Dubai or the Cayman Islands, and who are at that very moment shuttling up the valley in sleek helicopters the color of crude oil. It's a nice club if you can get in, you tell yourself, but you know you never will and the thought makes you happy. If people stopped to think about it, being around these people would be like a remora swimming along under a shark's open mouth; they'd be feeding off the scraps, and that just wouldn't do. There ain't no fun in that. So, how about a couple of shots to get the flavor of the place. Whip out the D3 with the 200 f2 and fire off a couple before Security hits you with a cattle prod, then hop in the press shuttle and off you go to that cute little hotel on the other side of the lake. You remember, the one you stayed in three years ago that looks like a quaint chalet and that smells like week-old wiener schnitzel. Yes . . . the very one. Drop your bags in the same room and slip a couple of lenses into the vest and away we go. Shuttle bus to huge hotel to pick up Press Credentials and submit to proctologic examination by Saudi security experts from North Carolina, then off to a pre-conference briefing where you'll no doubt be told when and from where you can take your photographs, and be given a handout with all the sound bites necessary for a top shelf Pulitzer Prize winning piece already summarized neatly for your due consideration and prompt utilization. Nothing happening tonight except for a few "meetings" (or so the PR hack tells the assembled "reporters"), so come back tomorrow. The lobby is a media circus: oil ministers and prime ministers arrive in black-as-crude stretch-Mercedes S-Class limousines; they are confronted by adoring throngs of paparazzi who pause, fingers hovering over shutters, looking on expectantly to catch knowing glances from bored old Bedouins as starving refuges might line up for Krugerands. Representatives from Nikon and Canon are on hand to make sure the front ranks of the press corps are wielding the appropriate (read two and a half feet long, glistening white, brand-name prominently displayed) lens at the decisive moment (i.e., when CNN is taking pictures of the press corps)... "This is a fucking zoo," I heard from somewhere behind me, closing in. I recognized the voice instantly and hoped it would go away. No such luck. "Rittenhauer? Is that you? What the fuck are you doing here?" Why me? Why, God? Why me? "Last time I checked, Needham, it was indeed still me. And I thought I'd come up here and check out the snow. Really want to work on my slalom technique this winter." Hank Needham, hailing from Freer, Texas, and now working for a large daily in Houston. How best to describe him? Charitably, I suppose. The crew-cut face of a hedgehog atop a body stunningly similar to Orson Welles in his latter years: there, that about does it but mere words will never do him justice. Routinely called The Queer from Freer; not out of any reference to an alleged sexual orientation, but rather Hank's predilection for walking around with his hands in his pant pockets whilst jingling his scrotum about to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas. Parenthetically, one assumes Needham's sexual orientation would be given as: "right hand." "Geesh, Rittenhauer, it's too goddamn early for snow here." "Well, there you have it. Time for a new travel agent." "Geesh. I didn't know you ski. Thought you were too old for that shit." Needham looked confused, but then again his hands were deep in his pockets. Maybe I'd just upset his rhythm. "Say, are you staying out at the Edelweiss?" "No, Hank, I'm staying upstairs, with Queen Elizabeth and Oliver Stone. We're shooting a porn, and I signed on to do the script." "Geesh, I didn't know she was here. Fuck man, can you get me in a scene? Always wanted to do a porn." "You bet, buddy; bet you'd be a star. Just wait right here. I'll be back for you around midnight." I shook my head and slinked off through the crowd. Besides, there were more strobes popping-off now than in a San Fernando Valley disco in 1976; and certainly no story to be had here. That's always my cue to get the fuck out of Dodge and head for the hotel bar. Funny thing, though. The bar at the Edelweiss wasn't half bad. Maybe Needham wouldn't show. _______________________________ The place was packed to the rafters with drunk reporters. Well, reporters -- at least real reporters, the one's who actually hunt down a story -- are always drunk, and there were a couple of them in the bar too. Cigarette smoke so thick it would make a pulmonologist shit his pants; noise level somewhere up there with an (old) Led Zeppelin concert (not that new shit, either...nothing more sad looking than a bald-headed fat dude doing pelvic thrusts on stage while belting out Whole Lotta Love). There were even a couple of decent looking women hanging around the fringes. Looked promising. First table I come to they're talking about how good Jimmy Page looked at the concert. And how 'bout that broken finger? Fuck. Try the next table. Two guys in leather vests from a Dutch TV network putting the moves on a very straight guy from CNN who usually reports on religious matters. Fuck. Next. A woman older than my great-grandmother hitting on the religious affairs correspondent from USA Today? Nope. Fuck, fuck, and double fuck! Move on. But hey, wait a minute. Why are all the religious affairs types at an OPEC conference? What do they know that I don't? That the way to salvation is through your gas tank? No. Surely not. Fuck! Next. Ah, behind those round, tortoise-rimmed spectacles? Is that the ever-hairy Mindy Tompkins. That hard working Ivy Leagued New Yorker, late of the The Times Tel Aviv bureau, sharpest observer in the Middle East, twice voted hottest reporter with Birkenstocks and a MacBook. What's she doing at an OPEC conference? This is way off her beat. Ah, perhaps this is a story worth looking in to. And she's alone. My, what a surprise. Maybe she'd attract more men if she took up shaving those legs. I sat down next to her and let out a big sigh, dumped my Billingham onto the stool between us. Big round eyes, silent, observant, more than a little like an owls. And she's eying me like I'm some kind of rodent. What does she say? Nothing. Not a word. "Grant Rittenhauer," I say, and suavely, too. "Howdy." I can lay it on thick sometimes. At least I've been accused. No reaction, then: "Sounds like an after shave lotion, or maybe a shirt manufacturer. But yeah, Grant, have a seat." I'm sitting there thinking 'now I know what an amoeba feels like while someone up above adjusts the focus on their microscope,' when who comes tumbling into the bar? Yeah. Hank Needham. He catches my eye, waves, crosses the room, headed my way. Tompkins takes one look at Needham and groans. "Of fuck. The Queer from Freer." Okay. She's just come up a notch in my book. "Grant. No. Don't let him . . ." "Very funny, Rittenhauer. Queen Elizabeth my eye. Geesh, peckerhead; I checked with registration. She not in town." "Come off it Hank. She's not registered in her own name. Go back and wait for us." "Us?" "Yeah, Hank. I've talked this young lady here into doing a scene with a donkey. You won't want to miss it. Get back over there; we'll be there in a half hour. Soon as we get some Astroglide." The hands in the pocket are going full steam ahead again. "I got some upstairs. Want me to get it?" "Yeah, Hank. Get it and head on over to room 222. Ask for Kotter. That's the code to get in." "Shit. Fuck-a-duck. Right." Needham bounced up the stairs and out of sight. Tompkins looks at me like I'd just stepped off the mother ship. "I don't want to know, do I?" "Not unless you're into serious self abuse." "So . . ." "Something to do with the Queen and Oliver Stone -- and making, uh, a film." "A film." "Yeah. Kind of a documentary." "Uh huh." "Yeah. Mating habits and shit. For National Geographic." Tompkins snorted into her beer; actually, she kind of exploded. Foam flew. People stared. She turned red. It was great. A two liter stein of beer magically appeared. Greater still. "And you told The Queer . . ." "Oh yeah. He's gonna headline. The big money scene . . . all his." "Astroglide and donkeys. Sounds right up his alley." "I take it you've run into Hank before." "Yeah. He was in Tel Aviv with W a few years back. Covering the religious angle for the True Believers back in Houston. He's a Grade A asshole." "Yep. Nothin' like Hank in the known universe. The man can flat go through the pockets in a new pair of pants faster than laxative through a sick hog." She looked at my press tag while she laughed. "I didn't know Newsweek was hiring?" she said, suddenly quite serious. "They're not. Freelance." "Ah. The scourge of our age." "Sign of the times." She held up her stein: "Well, here's to the good old days." "Yeah. To old days." And friends long gone, I thought. I tipped back my stein and tossed off about half of it in one go. "So what are you doing here? Kinda off your beat, isn't it." Just a hunch: my bet she was on to something. Would she talk about it? Not by a long shot. But did she want to talk about something else? She was looking kinda cute. We drank for a while. Really, we drank for three hours. Jet lag and fourteen liters of turbo-charged beer. Nice combination if you dig the vomit scenes in The Exorcist. Finally, she's looking at me like she's gonna talk. I'm thinking of just the right question to get her started when she leans into me and whispers: "I think I just pee'd my pants." Through The Lens I lived at the top end of the village, my bedroom overlooking the main road and, of all things, a cemetery across the other side. Beyond that was the mountain that separated our valley from the next one across, so you'd think this was not exactly the ideal domain for somebody who held an unhealthy interest in space and astronomy while he was growing up. What we did have, though, was a loft conversion with two large windows - one on each side - that tilted open so you had a clear and unobstructed view of most of the night sky from inside the house. While most people had to put their stargazing telescopes outside in the garden, mine was up there in the loft warm and dry all year round. It was a nice 'scope - 250x magnification. What that means is that something five hundred feet away would seem almost within touching reach of you as you gazed at it. I don't know how much it cost - £300, £400 maybe - as it was part of a long stream of space related Christmas presents that spanned several years from when I was 8 or 9 years old to the time that this tale relates to, when I was a nineteen year old getting ready to graduate from sixth form with my A levels and go to university. Water rockets, star charts, planetarium balls, computers and cameras had for years been my birthday and Christmas presents, and while the telescope was still a few years old, it was my most prized possession. And not just because you could see details of the moon's rugged terrain with it, or make out the shape of the horsehead nebula in the constellation Sagittarius. Oh no. Since I had become sexually aware it had quite often been turned away from the night sky, and tilted much more earthward as a growing curiosity of not only what was above me, but also what was around me, began to plague my imagination. It had started with furtive spying on other kids playing on the mountainside, lighting fires with stolen matches, on older teens drinking and snogging and touching each other up supposedly out of sight of the village and their parents. Then once that had paled it had turned even more groundward in search of voyeuristic delights. As I lived at the top end of the village the loft had a commanding view across the large, rectangular plot of allotments that lay behind our house. Around these allotments were other houses, all tightly packed terraced dwellings arranged around the perimeter of the allotments that took about ten minutes to walk around with my dog in the mornings. From the loft, with the telescope angled below the horizontal, I could see inside peoples gardens, kitchens, bathrooms and, obviously, bedrooms. The angles limited exactly what you could see, but with many houses I had what could be considered a fairly interesting view. That's when I fell in lust with Rebecca. Rebecca was like me. Imperfect. I was skinny, geeky by nature, more interested in technology and astronomy than playing football and rugby and would rather be out with a radio controlled car than a pushbike. Rebecca was a little overweight - though certainly nowhere near obese - and spent most of her spare time in her bedroom either playing The Sims on her computer or wiling away the nights on the internet. I knew this because I could see her through the telescope. I didn't have a full view of her bedroom, but I got enough of an angle on her room that I could see her desk and dressing table, and maybe a third of the bottom of her bed. It was a bit of a mess, with clothes scattered everywhere, books and papers and hair care containers all over the place, but that was no different to my own. Occasionally mine was tidied, usually shortly after my parents had gone ballistic on me, but more often than not it looked little better than Bex's. I didn't notice after a while, though, because all I was interested in was her. The lens no longer looked out into space, but deep into Bex's bedroom. She was a little younger - not by much, though, and had long black hair, most often tied up in a pony tail, and pale milky skin because like me she would rather stay indoors than go out. I don't suppose she had many friends - I never saw anyone else in her room while I was spying on her - and her habit of locking herself up inside rather than going out probably contributed to not just her pale complection, but also the extra pounds that she carried. D on't get me wrong here, Rebecca was not a fat girl, but she did carry that extra baggage that comes with growing up and it hadn't burned off due to the lack of exercise that her internet regimen dictated. She had also been one of the b-grade pupils through her years in comprehensive school, and that's why I hadn't noticed her before - we shared no common classes. Pupils were segregated into achievers and under-achievers from the age of thirteen, but Rebecca had clearly worked hard to move out of the lower band and into the uppers, which I reckoned might also help to explain her lack of close friends. She had outgrown her old ones by leaving them behind in their second grade classes, and the ones in the upper band had their own cliques and she hadn't found a way to be included in those. As is common with some overweight girls, her face was rounded and relatively plain. Soft. When you looked closer - as I did on the bus on the way in to school every day and during Maths which was the single cross-over lesson that we both endured together, you could see that beneath the puppy fat there was a very pretty face waiting to break out. Most don't notice these things normally, but when you begin to really focus on somebody the potential becomes so apparent that you wonder why the rest of the world doesn't see it. What attracted me to Rebecca, though, was not so much the awareness of how this girl could grow into a good looking woman, but that her secrets were every bit as dark as mine. You see, the telescope showed me things about her that you would never normally imagine. It started when I was scanning the back bedrooms of the houses that overlooked the allotments, hoping to find a couple going at it like rabbits with the lights on and the curtains wide open - something that had happened just twice in about three years of below the horizon stargazing. Then one evening my lens settled on the glow of Becca's computer screen, and her profile highlighted in off-white light in the darkness as she MSN'd to complete strangers with her right hand while she felt her own boobs up with her left. My God that got me so hard it was painful, even though all I could see was a ghostly hand moving over her bra as the position of her desk and chair in relation to my view was at a bit of a difficult angle. I couldn't make out what she was typing, or who she was typing to, but I could see from the images that flashed up on her screen exactly what the subject matter was, and that made my stiff meat harder still. Men were sending her grainy photographs of their cocks, and while they did that she was navigating through an array of folders and pulling up mobile phone pictures of her own hidden treasures. On one occasion I watched her spread her legs and put the mobile down there, before plugging the phone into her computer and uploading a beautiful picture of her fur lined pussy being invaded by a dainty finger, relaying20it then on to some unknown lucky bastard over the broadwave. She was very careful not to show her face on-line, but her tits and fanny were flaunted to all comers with wanton abandon. I longed for her MSN address as I watched her on those rare occasions when she was online and hadn't closed the blinds, my own hand working my hardness slowly as image after image of hard dicks and gaping pussies flashed up on her screen. Sometimes images of women with cocks in their mouths or men fucking away at their engorged, distended cunts made it up onto the monitor as anonymous wankers from all around the world traded dirty photographs with the object of my secret obsession, while I in turn wanked myself off into the microfibre cloths that I used to polish the lenses on my telescope. All the while she sat there, leaning into the screen as she sent and received photographs, her hands working on her tits or moving purposefully between her thighs and out of sight to me. We wanked together, Becca and I, though she knew naught of me, remaining blissfully unaware of my hard, erect manhood being stroked in rigid salute of her as she laughed and sighed in a world of her own until my semen spurted into a cloth, often catching me by surprise as I watched her bare legs and feet propped up on the edge of her desk as she leaned back in her chair, the laptop showing a webcam of some stranger also wanking himself off as she chatted over MSN with him before the days of Skype made t yping old hat. How I longed to hear her voice whispering those fuck-me lines, encouraging me to pump my cock harder, to spurt my semen over her full teenaged tits or her open slit, wet and slippery from having just been fingered by red painted nails. I lay awake at night long after she had switched off and gone to sleep herself, replaying the images in my mind, my eyes closed as her husky, lust laden voice urged me to finger her, to eat her out, to ram my hard cock inside her, to flood her womb with my seed or spill it down her gulping throat. I showered every single morning, desperately trying to think of an angle that could get me closer to her as I readied for school, paying more attention to my appearance than I had ever done in my life, depleting Lynx shower gel bottles at an alarming rate and going through a tube of toothpaste a week. Then one day in Maths class when I was trying to conceal a raging hard-on beneath my desk, it suddenly came to me. This was the last lesson of the day, yet it was only lunch time. Normally I'd walk the four miles home instead of waiting for the bus, but most people that lived our way either spent the afternoon in the sixth form common room or in the library. So this time I stayed behind, leaving my bewildered friends to walk home without me, claiming that I was staying behind because I was having trouble with one of my subjects. I looked for Rebecca in the common roon, found it deserted, then after lunch break I wandered into the library. She was there, and she gave me nothing more than a cursory glance as I entered the room. I left it five minutes, thumbing my way through the shelves of books, before finally plucking up the courage to sit opposite her at the table as she worked away at an assignment that she had been given while waiting for the bus to pick her up at the end of the day. She looked up at me, her eyes reflecting annoyance and a little bewilderment that of all the seats and tables in the near deserted library I could have chosen to sit at I chose the one opposite her. " Hiya Rebecca. I'm sorry to be a bother, but did you get those equations in maths at all?" "What d'you mean?" "I just didn't understand how you get the answer from the question. I'm probably just being thick, but the workings out didn't seem to take me to the answer that everybody else was getting." "Probably." she laughed. I was captivated already, I just hoped it didn't show too obviously. " It all seemed pretty easy to me." "Could you show me?" I asked, and pulled out the work that I had done in the class and deliberately got wrong, having carefully made the same mistake on each of the sample equations that we had been given. "Ah, I can see what you've done..." She said after she'd studied my work, then she proceeded to patiently explain to me exactly where I 'd screwed up. "That's it?" I asked, still playing my role as class dunce. "That's it. Easy!" She exclaimed. "Well, thanks very much for walking me through that. I can't afford to screw up this close to the exams. Not with uni on the line." And from there the conversation blossomed. I told her my hopes and ambitions, why maths and physics were so important to my future plans while I worked towards an astrophysics degree, and she shared her dreams of working in investments and banking, and I bought her a can of coke from the common room dispensing machine as we wasted the rest of the afternoon while waiting for the bus home. I helped with her assignment as best I could, which basically meant that I held her up for a couple of hours, then when the bus arrived I made a point of sitting beside her on the way home. As we disembarked at the end of the ten minute journey I gave her my thanks once again, then went to walk home. She turned away and headed to her half of the village without even a backward glance at me, so I did an about face called out to her. "Becca, what are you doing tonight?" "Why?" She asked suspiciously as I walked back up to her, setting my bag on the floor between us. " I've had a good time this afternoon, and I was wondering if you fancied, well, I don't know.... going out and doing something." "Are you asking me out?" She blus hed as the bus pulled off noisily. "Well, yeah. I guess I am. I know I'm not the greatest catch for a girl, and I won't be at all offended if you turned me down - I expect you've got much better things to do than waste your time on me." I said, and I said it honestly. I'd had dark dreams of blackmailing her with spreading her secret if she refused to go out with me, but those ideas were quickly squashed once I'd spent a little time with her. If it wasn't going to work, then I'd just keep on secretly using her as my masturbatory muse. I held my breath as I waited for her answer. She seemed to be weighing me up, unsure which way to lean, then after what felt like an eternity but were probably just a few seconds she asked; " What you got in mind?" I didn't have anything in mind, actually. My mind was a total blank. " Pictures?" I blurted. "What's on?" "I haven't a clue." I admitted. And from there it began. That night we caught a movie, and I didn't even hold her hand as I walked her home from the bus stop. She leaned against the doorway of her house as I said goodnight, and I hesitantly leaned forward. Even in the dark I could see her go red, but her eyes fluttered closed and that was all the invitation that I needed. Our lips touched, and I briefly entertained the notion of sliding my tongue between her lips, but her mouth refused to part when I pressed harder so I consciously held ba ck until we broke apart. "I'm sorry." I mumbled. " It just happened. I couldn't help myself." "I'll see you tomorrow." She murmured, then she opened her door and disappeared inside. It slammed behind her. I ran home through the dark alley that bordered the allotments and the backs of the houses, not caring if I trod in dog shit as I bombed through the lane. I kicked off my shoes in the hallway and poked my head through the living room door, saying; " Hello, and goodnight." to my parents who were up watching something on TV, then I careered up the two flights of stairs to the loft, threw the window open, and trained my telescope on Becca's bedroom. All was darkness. Obviously she was still downstairs, so I waited impatiently. It took about ten minutes, but soon Rebecca's room was bathed in the yellow glow from the landing as she went in and then the room lit up as she turned on the light. I saw her walk past her desk, still wearing the jeans and black top that she had worn to the cinema with me and my cock jerked alive when she slowly lifted the black silk garment over her head, her back turned to me. I saw her back split horizontally by the white line of her bra strap, and then she turned out the lights. With no street lighting at the backs of the houses everything was pitch dark, and after ten minutes I realised that she had gone to sleep and wouldn't be turning on her PC for some anonymous roleplay. I didn't know whether to fee l disappointed or not. On the one hand I would have loved to see her feeling herself up after being so close to her all night, but on the other hand I was happy that the one kiss we had shared was enough to send her to sleep and possibly fuel her own fantasies. Perhaps she was even rubbing herself beneath the sheets in the darkness. I closed the window, crept down to my room, and dreamed of Rebecca. I made myself deliberately late for the bus the next day, making sure that everybody else had got on while I ran to catch it, last aboard. I caught her eye as I showed my pass to the driver, and she looked away somewhat coyly as if embarassed about the previous night and my amateurish attempt at kissing her. She was sat next to the window and the seat beside her was taken by her bag. I stopped at my friends, and had never been so glad to see that they hadn't kept a seat for me, and we chatted for a minute as the bus pulled off. The driver shouted at me to sit, so I did, moving up the bus and away from my friends, after asking Rebecca if it would be ok to sit there. She slid her bag off the seat next to her and I sat down. "About last night." I began. "Nothing needs to be said." She interrupted me. " It was a nice night out. I had a good time." "And the kiss?" "I've had better." She admitted, grinning in a somewhat mischievous way. "Is that a chal lenge?" I asked. " Cuz I hope it is." Her fingers moved across, furtively touching mine as she glanced past me to make sure nobody was watching. I curled my fingers around hers and slid a little closer, our hands now hidden between our thighs. With my other hand I pulled a small scrap of paper out of my breast pocket and handed it to her. Home number, mobile number, email and AIM address, and also my newly created MSN messenger account. The day passed slower than any other day in the history of days had ever passed before. After tea I went to the loft and switched on my laptop. There was no MSN invite waiting for me, so I quickly lined up the 'scope on Rebecca's room to confirm that she was not there and her computer was off. For the next hour I played some Quake, then when I logged off that and logged back on to MSN there was an invite waiting for me. I quickly confirmed it, sending a 'hi' as well, and took a furtive glance through the telescope, finding Rebecca sat at her desk, PC on, doing what I assumed to be homework. I watched her expertly ALT-TAB out of her MS Access screen and got a quick one word hello in reply. "Whatcha doing tonight?" I asked. "English. I suck at it big time." She shot back. "I don't have any work to do, but I hear my kissing needs practice." I replied, closing the message with a wink emote. This time there was a lengthy pause, before she lolled back. I noticed that her status was still 'offline', so obviously she didn't want her cyber-boyfriends interrupting her while she did her assignments, but had made herself available for me. This I took to be a very good sign, so I pushed my luck as far as I dared. " Is that all you're doing tonight?" "Gotta get it finished. What you up to?" "Waiting for it to get dark." "Why? What happens when it gets dark?" My screen flashed up. "The stars come out." "Pardon?" "I told you in the common room that I stargaze when I'm bored. Want to come across later and have a look?" This time the answer took a long time coming. I watched intently through the telescope as I waited for the audio tone that told me I had an incoming message, watching Rebecca hesitate over the keyboard as she mulled over a response. "Isn't it too cloudy?" She tried stalling. "Weatherchannel says it'll be clear overhead by nine. You've got plenty of time to get bored of that assignment, then you can come over here and I'll show you my stuff." "Stuff?" "My telescope and some of the photos I've taken. It's not as boring as it sounds, honest!" "Hmmm... let me be the judge of that." She lolled back. " I'll msn when I'm leaving. You can meet me halfway." Yessss! I punched the air, and I watched her through her blinds for the rest of the evening, stroking myself through my jeans as she criss-crossed her room from wardrobe to dresser in nothing but a bra and white knickers as she tried on various garments until she was happy with the way she looked. Tonight it was black jeans and a red v-neck sweater. She spent a lot of time on her hair, wearing it down and tousled instead of tied back in her usual severe manner - the same as she did when she was pretend fucking over the internet - and she also took extra care over her make-up, but went relatively light on the lip gloss. She hadn't done any cybersex since I'd started hitting on her as far as I could tell, so I hoped she was getting extra horny as a result. If I went two nights without jacking off I'd be ready for anything, and I hoped that principle applied to girls as well as guys. I watched her as she typed an 'On My Way' into MSN and acknowledged it at my end before heading out into the street. I was outside her front porch before she'd even opened the door, then out she came. Through The Lens "I like your hair that way." I smiled as I walked her to my house, then let my hand brush against hers as we rounded the corner into the darkened alleyway. At the second brushing of our hands I curled my fingers around her thumb and pulled her hand into mine. She didn't object. "Taking a friend up the the loft." I called through the living room door as I led Rebecca along the hall way and up the stairs. The steps to the loft were difficult, as they were recessed and staggered, so I coached Rebecca through the motions, staying as close behind her as possible just in case she slipped off the narrow steps. She smelled of almonds, and I put my hand on her hip to help steady her as she climbed awkwardly to the top of the house. I turned on the lights when we reached the top step and moved around her, opening the window that looked out over the front of the house and the cemetery. The telescope had already been hastily moved over to that side after she'd messaged me that she was ready - it was heavy but it only took a few seconds to move it into place in the narrow loft. I walked her through the photos that I had blu-tacced to the walls, then when I was running out of cool sounding explanations of exactly what the dots that she was looking at were, I trained the telescope with a practiced hand onto the crab nebula in the constellation of Taurus. " That's what it looked like 6500 years ago, because that's how long it takes the light to get here from there." I guided her into position over the eyepiece, one hand on her hip and the other steering her hand to the focus dial. " Just turn this knob if the image isn't sharp, and be careful not to jog the telescope or the image may disappear completely." "How do you take the photographs?" "The eyepiece unscrews and I have a camera adaptor. I ca n also plug it directly into the computer with a digital camera. I'm a proper geek. In geek classes I'm untouchable. I know more than the teachers." She laughed her cute and sexy laugh as I turned out the lights, plunging the room into instant and almost total darkness. "That better?" I asked. "Oh yes," She replied. " It's so much clearer now." I let her gaze at the night sky for a minute or two, talking her through the dials so that she could swing it around the sky looking at other stars and the moon, then when she pulled back from the telescope I put my hands on her hips and we faced each other. "You didn't ask me here to play with your toys, did you?" She said reprovingly. "Tell me you didn't come here to play with my toys." I challenged back as I drew her closer. Our faces were just inches apart in the darkness. "I didn't come here to play with your toys." I heard. "What did you come for?" I murmured as I allowed my closed lips to brush briefly over hers. "You know why I came." She answered demurely, pulling away an inch. "Tell me." I whispered as my hand slid up and down the curve of her side. " Tell me what you want from me tonight." I said, my voice almost inaudible as I moved my lips to her ear, my hand now sweeping her cascading hair out of the way. " Tell me what you want me to do." When she spoke it was almost a groan, as if I was forcibly tearing the words from her body. " Kiss me." She whispered as my lips lightly brushed her ear. I closed my hands around the back of her head and turned her face to mine. My lips pressed softly against hers, then I pressed a little harder, parting them when the contact was firm enough that I knew that hers would part, too. I wasn't exactly green at this. I'd had girlfriends before that I'd gone as far as open mouthed snogging with, but not for a while, and when her lips parted I slid my tongue inside her mouth. It was mint, and it was hot and cool at the same time, and my hands slipped down her back to the base of her spine, insistently pulling her forward onto me, her heavy breasts squashed against my chest while my fingers settled on the waistband of her jeans and pulled her closer still. Conscious of my growing hard-on, and also a little embarrassed at it, I wormed my tongue deeper into her mouth. Now she fought back, her own tongue sliding over mine, around mine, under mine, darting past my own teeth as we feasted upon each other. I knew she could feel the hardness of my cock against her belly and I didn't care. I wanted her to be fully aware of the state of arousal that she was putting me in, wanted her to understand that the physiology could not be denied, that what she was doing to me was making me harder than I had ever bee n. I did it shamelessly, and my hands moved to her ass cheeks, stroking them gently, absently, while our tongues still battled for dominance. We broke for air. Then we plunged in again, just as intensely as before, and as my hands began to press more firmly against the flesh of her backside, she dropped her hands down my back to my own butt. We crushed our groins together as we kissed. Was this too much, too soon I wondered? I didn't care. I was nineteen, she was eighteen and this was the first time I'd had my hands on a girl's ass in my life, the first time my cock had been pulled into firm contact with the belly of any woman. Her hands were digging into my ass cheeks, pulling them up and down as we swayed in the small room. I pressed her against the wall in an effort to stabilise things and prevent us from falling over as we got more carried away, and she broke away from me in a desperate search for breath. I moaned softly, then I moved my hands up to her hair, grasping a hand full of the lustrous black strands, and felt her mouth close over mine again, her tongue forcing past mine, almost pushing me back. I fought against her, trying to keep her pinned against the wall, and eventually she gave up and sucked hungrily on my tongue. "Tell me what you want from me tonight." She whispered as her hands pressed against my chest and pushed me away. " Tell me why you brought me here." She asked again. "I have," I murmured. " That was everything I ever dreamed of. Intense. Arousing. I have no idea how we can better that without going too far too soon and risking spoiling everything. I want more, but I don't want to risk having nothing by pressing for more right now." I admitted. This was going forward far quicker than I had ever anticipated. From her point of view it had been just two days and I was ready to rip her clothes off and kiss every last inch of her body. There was no way she could have known that for months all I had thought of was this moment and how it would come about. "Come on, then. " She smiled, reaching for my hand. " Walk me home." "Already?" I said, wincing at the naked disappointment in my words. She stepped in close to me again and we fell into each other, all hands and lips and tongues. I wanted to touch her breasts, squeeze them together and run my fingers over her nipples. They were already hard - I could feel them through her bra, her blouse and my own shirt - but I didn't dare. I didn't want her to think that I thought she was easy, so the next half hour passed with snogging, more than a little ass feeling, and a sensuous dry grinding of our pelvises against each other before I finally relented and walked her back to her place, my jaw aching a little from the exertion it had been put through. We snogged on her doorstep again, and when she disappeared inside I ran home, straight back up to the loft, and trained the telescope on her bedroom window. Tonight she stood in front of the computer desk with the bedroom light on, facing the window, and unbuttoned her blouse, peeling it off her shoulders in one smooth shrug and allowing it to drop to the floor behind her. She was standing there in jeans and her straining white bra, and I unzipped my trousers and awkwardly pulled out my stiff and aching cock as she reached behind her to unclasp her bra. I saw her big tits full frontal then for the first time, and I watched rapt as her hands cupped them, thumbs stroking the still hard nipples in exactly the way that I had wanted to touch her just moments before as she closed her eyes and licked her lips. Did she know, I wondered, that I was watching her? Was this a show? Had she twigged that the second loft window, the one that I hadn't let her look through in the telescope gave me an unobstructed view of her window? Or was she just doing what she liked to do - touching herself up after she was turned on, whether by the strangers on the internet or by what we had done tonight, and had simply forgotten to close her blinds? Did it matter, I asked myself as my hard cock jerked again at the sight of her unbuttoning her jeans, unzipping them, easing them down past her hips, her panties inadvertently coming down her legs with them. The triangle of her pubic mound stared me in the face, then disappeared as she20bent forward, eclipsed for several seconds by her hanging tits as she stepped out of her jeans. I swallowed as she stood again, now totally naked, and she threw her long black hair back over her head and put one foot up on the foot of the bed. I watched her hand slide between her legs and hug her crotch, watched it move up and down as she rubbed herself, watched her pinching her teats with her other hand as she closed her eyes and fantasised about fucking me. Did she know I was here with my cock in my hand, wanking slowly? Did she know that we were right at that moment doing exactly what she did with her internet lovers, that I could see her the through the telescope the way that she could see the webcam cocks that had gotten her off so often in the past? Then she turned and touched the keyboard of her PC, and the monitor sprang to life. She sat down still naked at the desk and typed away. My laptop burbled a warning of an incoming message. "What are you doing?" called the screen. "Thinking about you." I replied. "That's sweet." She responded. " Are you busy tomorrow night?" "Nothing planned." I fired back. "Come over at eight?" "Love to. Can I ask you something?" "Of course." Rebecca replied. "Can you send me a photo of you?" She lolled a reply, asking me if I'd forgotten what she looked like already, then I watched her browse through a folder before forwarding me a small 100k jpeg. When I opened it I saw a picture that she'd obviously taken with her mobile by simply holding it out in front of her and guessing. It was skewed and grainy, but the more I saw of her the better looking she seemed to be getting. "I like that one." I thanked her. "I chose one of the better ones. I don't seem to be very photogenic, to be honest. Now no jerking off over it." She warned. " I know what you boys are like." In a way I was shocked at the way she just blurted that out, but one thing I was learning about Rebecca was that she had a very mischievous sense of humour and wasn't afraid to use either innuendo or overt and frank sexual language. "Well I'm completely flabbergasted at your tone." I sent back. " As if I would do something like that. Bloody good idea, by the way. See you on the bus." "G'night." Came back, then we both shut down our screens more or less simultaneously. I watched her for a while longer as she sat naked at her desk, exploring the drawer. After a moment out came a shocking pink coloured tube that it took me a few seconds to recognise as a vibrator. She slipped it into her mouth and turned out the light." "Nooooooooooo!" I silently screamed, denied the delicious sight of her spearing her pussy with that sex toy, then my cum sprayed all over the floor, catching me completely by surprise. I was late again for the bus, but this time when I boarded there was a youngster sitting next to her. I put my bag on a seat that a friend had kept for me, then I quickly moved back down the bus before the driver pulled away from the bus stop. I leaned over the third former sitting next to Rebecca and kissed her hard on the mouth for a full five seconds before winking and returning to my seat before the driver yelled at me again. I left her red faced, while some of the younger kids whooped and laughed. I did it purely because I didn't want her to think that I was keeping our relationship secret. I didn't care who knew I was seeing her, though I had no way of knowing at the time that this act would see me suspended from school in the lunch break. "Morning." I grinned at my mate Steve. "What the fuck was that?" He asked. " You and Rebecca Lewis?" "And why the fuck not?" I said, still grinning. "What-the-fuckever, dude." Steve shrugged. " Didn't think she was your type." "What is my type?" "Dunno, just thought you went for more skinny girls than her. Girls more like your size. You usually do when we're out." "And where exactly has that gotten me in the last, oh, three years?" "Hey, I'm not judging, man. If that's how it is then you go for it and don't listen to what anybody else says." Steve went defensive. Mark, another friend, leaned across the aisle and said with a wink; " Ignore him, he's just jealous. As he should be. He hasn't snogged a girl since his great aunt Mildred on his twelfth birthday." "Fuck you." Steve gave him the finger as the rest of us laughed. The incident that triggered the suspension happened in lunch break when another sixth former caught up with me while I was sat in the dining hall by myself minding my own business with a paperback. I knew the guy, he was lower sixth, fresh in, and a bit of an arse. Bigger than me, as were most people near my age, and uglier. Which is saying something, believe me. "Becky Lewis?" He asked. "No, my name's Chris." I deadpanned. " And it's none of your business." "No need to be a twat. I'm doing you a favour." "Oh?" "She's used. Been fucked before. I've had her." He said, leaning in closer. " Just thought you should know." "So? What makes you think I give a shit?" I stood up, fists clenching at my sides. People were watching now, heads turned by the beginnings of a commotion. " It's still none of your fucking business so piss off. Who's being the twat now? Just because you say you had her first you have to show off to everybody who she goes out with in the future? What a fucking loser you are. What did she do, dump you because you were crap between the sheets and now you're carrying a grudge? Grow the fuck up, you pathetic jackass." I didn't realise my voice was getting louder, but I saw the punch coming a mile away when his right shoulder bulged. I stepped inside and head butted him full in the face. Fuck it hurt. But he was on the floor with blood streaming down his face from his nose while a chorus of 'Ooohh's sounded throughout the hall. "Don't bother getting up." I spat at him as I walked away. " I'll just put you back down again. Count yourself lucky I don't fucking piss on you." Needless to say I was in the head teacher's office before lessons began and my mother was picking me up in the car before two. " Don't worry about it," she said after I'd explained everything. They won't keep you out for long. They know you are an easy four A-levels for their league table. You'll be back in on Monday." And that was it. I expected a huge bawling out over ruining my chances of going to university, but all my father did was laugh himself silly at the big purple and yellow bruise growing on my forehead and making me look like one of Star Trek's Klingons. At eight I turned up on Rebecca's doorstep and she was furious. "So what the hell happened in school today?" "That jerk was dissing you, so I put him on the floor. No big deal." I shrugged as I stood out in the drizzle. " Are you going to let me in or are we going out?" "You got suspended over me? Jesus, you're even dumber than I thought you were." She shook her head. " Get inside before I change my mind." She closed the door behind me and led me into the lounge. " So what the hell happened between you and Clive?" "Clive? That's his name? He just came up to me and started bragging that he'd slept with you. Then when I gave him a bit of verbal back he took a swing at me, missed, and I Glasgow-kissed him on the nose with my head. No big deal." "It is a fucking big deal when you get yourself suspended. Jesus. Why the fuck didn't you just ignore him?" "He didn't look like he wanted to be ignored. Honestly, I think he still fancies you and was trying to put me off by talking shit about you." "And?" "Well, I'm here aren't I?" She shook her head in disbelief. " He never slept with me." She explained, slumping down on the sofa. I sat opposite her in an armchair. " We just fucked once, that's all." That was a bit of a hammer to the balls, I must admit. Obviously you can't go through life thinking every girl you meet is going to be a virgin when she falls into your arms, but I had always thought that my first time would at least be with another virgin. " Look," she carried on. "20I hope you don't think that I've been mummy's little angel all my life, because I haven't. A couple of years ago I ended up getting mixed up in the wrong crowd with a friend who dragged me along because I had money for booze. We did a little drinking, got a little crazy, one thing led to another and before I knew it it was all over and I was walking home crying all alone. It wasn't how I wanted my first time to be, it wasn't how any girl would want her first time to be, but sometimes shit happens." "There's no need to explain. It's not important." "Yes it is," she interrupted. "Not to me." "Well, it is to me. Look, I don't know how long we're going to last. We might not even make it through the next hour, but I don't want there to be any secrets, so that if some shithead like Clive starts telling tales you'll at least know the truth from the bull, ok?" "Fair enough." I accepted, and leaned forward to listen to her. "About two years ago, after I'd moved up from lower band to upper band, I was losing all my friends and had no new ones to replace them. Nobody wanted to know me because all the clever girls assumed I was still thick. It's why I've put on weight - I stopped going out altogether and spent almost all my time studying and playing games on the web." I almost asked her what sort of games, but didn't think that this was the right time for tha t. " I got lazy, and comfort ate. I'm working my way out of it, but it's not easy. There was one girl that I used to bother with when I visited my grandmother, and while my gran was looking after me overnight when my parents went away for the weekend I went to a small house party with this girl and some of her friends. There were about a dozen of us - five girls, seven or eight boys, and there was booze. Some of us got tipsy, some of us got drunk. Then my friend said it was time to play dice and would I play. When I asked her how to play, she told me. "Each of us took a number - one to six for boys, and one to six for girls. Then there was a list of 'tasks' for the third roll of the dice. The first roll and second roll paired a girl up with a boy, and the third was for what they then did with each other. I said no at first, but when they started playing I ended up watching and after a while the drink sort of took over and I offered to be number five for the girls. The tasks weren't all that big a deal, except for the six. Handjobs, fingerfucks, blowjobs, all that kind of stuff and I gotta admit that I got pretty turned on watching these impromptu couples making out. Anyway, the dice rolled and sooner or later my number came up. Then the dice rolled again and Clive's number came up. And the bastard groaned. I always hated him for that, and that was when I weighed more than a stone less than I do now. On the thi rd roll came the six, and that's when they all started chanting 'fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!' "Like I said, I was pretty blasted, and before I knew it I ended up on the floor with my skirt pulled up over my waist and Clive just did me. It's still all a blur in my mind. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't raped and I don't have nightmares about it. I went into that dice game with eyes wide open and fully aware of what the risks were and what might happen, but that's the first and the last time that I've done anything with a guy until you kissed me on Monday. The first time was painful, was over in thirty seconds, and I'm not making that up, and afterward I just got up and walked out, ashamed of myself. I haven't spoken to any of them since. It was one of the most hateful, disappointing ways to lose your virginity that you could possibly imagine, but what's done is done. You're the first person I've told and I'd appreciate it if you didn't spread it around, okay?" Through The Lens "I wouldn't do that. And I'm sorry. If I'd known the truth I'd have just laughed at the little prick instead of flattening him. He was trying to make himself out as some kind of stud." Rebecca showed me a curled little finger that signified what she thought of Clive's manhood, and we both burst out laughing, Rebecca somewhat nervously with a moist look in her eyes. "Look, I'm not going to lie to you." I told her. " I don't know how long we're going to20last, either but I do find you very attractive. The more I look at you the more I see that I find irresistibly alluring. I admit I'm a virgin. I had a chance to lose it when I was fifteen, but there's no point going there because that's just water under the bridge, a missed opportunity more than anything else, and I'm not looking to lose it any time soon, either. I'm just here to have fun, with you, doing whatever you want to do, and if we get physical further on down the line then so much the better. I'm not going to turn it down. Relax around me. I'm the no pressure cool dude. Ask anyone, okay?" She nodded. " Right then," I said, changing the subject. " So what are we watching?" It was a Harry Potter film, and by the time it was halfway through I was sat on the sofa while she lay on me with her head on my lap, her feet dangling over the edge of the sofa. I played with her hair, caressed her ear with my fingers, but most of the time I wasn't watching the film - I'd seen the Prisoner of Azkaban before - and just watched her cleavage moving up and down as she breathed. I knew she was dieting, but I hoped she ended up keeping most of the flesh that I was struggling to keep my hands off. They were big and round and I'm sure she knew that I could barely take my eyes off them moving when she breathed. When the credits rolled she turned her head in my lap and gazed up into my eyes. I bent over and kissed her on the lips, feeling her melt into me as her arms folded around my neck. She was impatient, pushing her tongue into my mouth before I'd fully parted my lips. I put my right hand on her belly as she squirmed into a more comfortable position on my lap, and my fingertips were just a few inches up from sliding between her parted legs, where I had watched her own hand work just the night before, then she twisted off my lap and got to her feet. I looked up at her as she stood over me, then she hitched her black dress up to her knees and straddled me, her knees sliding down my flanks, her hot crotch pressing down against my hardening cock, just the thickness of her panties, my jeans and a pair of boxers separating our sex organs. Her head dipped to mine and we sucked on each others tongues again, and I could feel the twin mounds of her breasts pressing down on me. I was unbelievably uncomfortable, my cock hard as a rock, trapped inside my jeans, crushed beneath her insistently pressing weight. " You have no idea what you are doing to me," I breathed when we broke apart for air. "I can feel it. Don't be shy." She whispered in my ear as she nipped at it with her teeth. I wasn't sure what she meant, but I took a chance and slipped my hands inside her blouse, running my fingers up and down the bare skin of her back, from the base of her spine to the taut band of her bra strap. She moaned into my ear as my fingers g lided softly over her spine, then her breath froze when I located the clasp and began to work at it inexpertly. The moment I managed to release the plastic clasp she began to gyrate her crotch against my bulging erection, and as the bra went slack and my hands skated along her flanks to the underside of her heavy tits she slid her tongue wetly inside my ear. I cupped her breasts in my hands, thumbs caressing the bullet like nipples in precisely the manner that I had watched her do it, and her lips and tongue quickly found mine and we hungrily began kissing while I fondled her tits. " Oh God that feels so nice. " She breathed when we broke for air, and I felt the uncontrollable urge to take them in my mouth. I eased her blouse up over her tits and used my hands to guide one of them up to my lips. She gasped as I closed my mouth over the hard bud and began to suck, my other hand still thumbing over the nipple of her other breast. " Oh fuck," She moaned, biting her lip as she leaned back, giving me more room to work. I switched breasts, biting down on the other nipple now and tweaking the soaking wet one that I had just been nibbling on with my thumb and forefinger. Her hands closed around my head, pulling me harder onto her tits, making me swallow more of her teats, my tongue circling around the nipple as I jammed more and more flesh into my mouth. I pulled away for breath and her face covered mine, her tongue doing the work in my mouth as my hands pushed her breasts together, the nipples nearly touching each other as I kneaded them. "Nobody has ever done that before," She sighed as our lips released each other again, and she buried her head against my chest, her hands reaching for the buttons of my shirt, popping them open one by one before sliding her own hands inside and caressing my chest. I eased myself back onto the sofa and let her work, my shirt eventually fully unbuttoned as she kissed my own small nipples tenderly, her hands massaging my belly and my flanks absently while I played with her cascading black hair, feeling it tickling me as her head moved on my chest. Then there was the sound of a car door slamming outside, and she instinctively knew that her parents were back home. She slid off me and tidied herself quickly, while I buttoned my shirt, then she threw herself down onto the couch beside me moments before her parents came into the room. Rebecca and I rose to our feet and I beat a hasty retreat to the door, towing her behind me. She kissed me lightly on the mouth as we parted. " MSN in five?" "Sure." I replied, then I pulled her to me, kissed her hard one more time, then walked home to my waiting telescope. To my great disappointment she was still fully dressed when the viewfinder settled on her. The blinds were wide open, my view unobstructed, as she sat in darkness, the glow of the monitor on her20face and the keyboard the only light in the room. I watched her for a few minutes, then my laptop beeped it's message waiting tone. I ignored it for a moment, teasing her, watching her impatience mount as she stared at the screen waiting for a reply, then I opened her message. "Whatcha doing?" "Trying to figure out how to get this damn telescope to go low enough that I can see you." Her reply was lolled. " Not sure I like the thought of that." Came her next message. "You love it." I shot back. "What makes you say that?" She pushed back. "Instinct." I replied. " Open your curtains." "I dont have curtains. I have Venetian blinds. And they are open." "Fuck, wrong window." I lied, grinning. " I've put a thick book under one leg of the tripod so it's pointing down your way." She ROFLMAO'd, then; " Can you see me yet." "I got you. Jesus, this is a fantastic view." "What am I doing?" She asked, giving me the finger through the window. "Being very abusive to someone you just let feel your tits up. Not nice." I saw her laugh out loud in her room, then she turned her face to the window and waved. "I'd wave back," I messaged. " But you'd need a telescope to see." "My God, you really can see me!" "Not enough o f you, though. It's a bit of an odd angle from my house to yours. I can see the foot of your bed and your desk, and you're turned away from me when you are sat at the desk. I can see half of your back and half of your side when you're typing." "Fuckin' hell that's scary." She sent. "Close the blinds." I advised. "Nah, it's cool. I trust you." Jeez, if she ever found out that I'd been waching her cyberfucking over the web for the best part of two months I was history. Dead meat. "Any regrets about tonight?" I asked. "None." Came an almost instantaneous reply. " You?" "Just one." I typed. " I never got to see your lovely boobs." "Boobs? You mean my titties," she LOLled. "Yep, them things too." She turned to the window and did exactly what I suspected she would. She lifted her blouse and flashed her tits at me for a half a second. "Wow." I typed. " I need some tissues." I saw her rock back in her chair as she laughed again, then she turned back to the window and lifted her blouse for a few seconds, letting her tits swing back and fore as she wiggled her shoulders. "That's it." I typed. " Now I need a fresh pair of jeans." "Maybe you should have taken it out." Rebecca sent, attaching a wink. "You are so hot." I told her. " Most people would freak out if they knew they were being watched. I know I would." "I kinda like it." "Does it turn you on?" "It does." She admitted. "How much?" "Very much." "What's the wildest thing you would do, knowing that I'm watching but I can't do anything about it, can't stop you or nothing?" "Jeez, Chris. I dunno." "Just do it. Now." I watched her hesitate, alternately staring at the screen, then looking at the window, knowing that somewhere out there she was being watched, but could not see anything of who was watching her. This was just what I thought turned her on, was exactly what she had been doing over the internet all the time that I had been spying on her. I hoped like hell she hadn't figured out that I had been watching her all this time and was steering her into doing for me what she had been doing for total strangers. I almost sent a message telling her to forget about it as I watched the indecision of her body language, then she tapped away at her keyboard for a second. "Take your prick out and stroke it." She sent, then she turned to the window and spread her legs. Her top came off, thrown onto the bed, and she hitched up her skirt. I quickly sent a message; " Lights on. All I can see is your silhouette as the glow of the screen is now behind you." She turned at the beeps, read the message, then switched on the lamp on her bedside chest of drawers. It lit her up perfectly. Her skirt was up around her waist, her white panties shining in the lamplight, and I watched awestruck as she eased the gusset aside and showed me her pussy. She reached between her legs and slowly squeezed the sides of her mound together, and her crack duly opened into a glistening slit as she leaked fluids onto her fingers. I held my silence, my engorged cock thick and hard in my hand as I watched her fingers sliding up and down the wet crack. Suddenly she stood, and for a second I though she was going to turn off the lights and close the blinds, but instead she simply eased her knickers down her thighs and kicked them off. She settled back down in her computer chair and leaned back, spreading her legs wide apart, and she opened her labia with her fingers, showing me the hole that I hoped my cock would very soon be reaming out. Then she pushed a single finger inside that tiny hole and worked it in and out smoothly, in a delicate sawing motion. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open, her head thrown back, tits upthrust as she slowly, deliberately finger fucked herself. I swallowed dryly as I watched, my cum building up in my balls as my stroking generated the desired biological effect, then I saw her shudder, her thighs swinging closed, then open again as her finger slid out. My cum exploded=2 0everywhere, streams of it shooting with unprecedented force across the carpet and up the wall of the loft. When I looked back into the telescope the light in her room had gone out and she was sitting nude in front of the monitor once again. A message flashed up on my screen. " Well?" "Holy shit that was the hottest thing I have ever seen." I texted back. " How was it for you?" "Fantastic. Normally it takes a while for me to climax, but knowing you were watching me brought me off so fast." "Are we going to do this again?" I asked. "Wild horses couldn't stop me." Rebecca fired back. " Your place or mine tomorrow?" "Mine." I responded. " Your room looks a bit of a mess." She gave me the finger, grinned, and when she logged off her room was plunged into darkness. I was up early in the morning, watching Rebecca stumble out of bed and dress. She paid no attention to the window, just acted like it wasn't there, and I got a few seconds of tit for my troubles that set me up nicely for the rest of the day, my first day of suspension. It dragged. Daytime television sucked, and computer games only kept me busy for so long. Later on I showered, shaved, and tidies my bedroom like it hadn't been tidied in years. My cock books were hidden well , my dirty dvds torrented off the internet tucked away where I doubted even I would find them again. Air fresheners were strategically placed around my room and in the loft around the telescope that had begun to smell a little fausty with all the semen spilled up there recently, and I blew some of my carefully hoarded cash on a bottle of white wine from the local Spar and put it in to chill with a bottle of lemonade. It took a while to find a dice, but eventually I stumbled across one in the junk drawer and set it on top of my TV. Just in case of an emergency I put a pack of condoms in my bedside cabinet and made a nice playlist of what I like to call 'fuck music' on the laptop. Some Prince, some INXS, some Kate Bush, and Liz Phair. Some Hole and some pj harvey. Girl friendly seduction tunes. I wasn't expecting to get laid, but I wasn't counting it out, either. When 8 o'clock came and Rebecca knocked on the door everything was perfect. I took her up to my room, poured her a glass of wine, topped it up with lemonade, and we talked about my first missed schoolday in three years. "You should be back in on Friday. Clive went to the head an set things straight." "Oh?" "I told him that if he didn't I'd tell anybody who listens that he's got a tiny prick, can't keep it hard and blows his load in fifteen seconds." I almost spat my wine over the walls. " Wow, I'd best not get on your bad side." "Consider it a warning." She quipped. " Why is there a dice on your telly?" "Oh, no reason." I winked at her. She plucked it off the top of the TV and threw it onto the bed. Up rolled the 6. "Want to try again?" I asked. "Where's the prize list. What do I get for a 6?" She smiled, setting her wine glass down and laying back on the bed. "There isn't one. What do you say, three each. I do the odds, you do the evens?" "Pen?" I wrote mine down and put the paper upside down on the dresser. I'd gone for a gentle break-in. 1 was a three minute snog, 3 was a tit sucking, and 5 was a full strip down to nothing. Basically it was nothing that she hadn't already done. I had no idea what she'd written down for the evens, and she laid her piece of paper down on top of mine. " Who goes first?" She asked. "You do. And if you don't want to do it you can back out at any time. No pressure." I assured her. I placed the dice in the palm of her hand. " Roll it, baby." It came up a 4. "Hmmm.. that's one of mine." She smiled, turning over her piece of paper and folding it so that I could read only what she had written for 4. "Undress your partner?" "That means you. I get to undress you. Totally. Stand up." She commanded me. Somewhat hesitantly I obeyed, then she gently kissed me on the lips as her hands deftly worked at my belt buckle. "What about you?" I asked as she pulled my shirt up out of my jeans and began to unbutton it. "Well, you've already seen me in the nude, and more, so if you don't roll a 4 it gets to be my turn to see you naked and there's nothing you can do about it. Unless you want to chicken out now," She added as she slid her hands up my exposed chest and slipped the shirt off my shoulders. Of course, she didn't know that a 5 would see her stark naked as well, but with that she'd have to undress herself. In moments my shirt was on the floor, and her tongue traced lightly across my chest as she sank down onto her knees, my crotch at eye level as she popped the button on my jeans and unzipped me slowly. I gulped, and I looked out my bedroom window and across the main road, suddenly aware that my curtains were open and there was a possibility that we were being watched. "I'll close the curtains." I said as she undid the laces of my trainers. "No! Leave them." She said as she inched my trousers down, my hardening cock straining in my boxer shorts. If it got any harder it would be peeking out the top, and she'd be able to see it in a moment. My jeans fell around my knees, and I stumbled onto the bed after a gentle nudge from her that enabled her to then throw my trainers and my socks acro ss the room. " Stand up again." She said, still on her knees in front of me, my penis now stretching my boxers damn near to breaking point. " Almost there." She murmured, licking her dry lips as both hands began to ease the elasticated waistband of my shorts down. My cock was pulled about inside as she eased them down, bent into an uncomfortable angle as her hands tugged my shorts down off my hips, then she moved both hands into light contact with my cock through the thin fabric of my shirts and peeled the cloth over the head of my shaft, exposing me. After that my shorts were on the floor around my ankles, then on the window sill, and she kneeled before me, my cock almost in her face. "Now that's a good looking dick." She murmured. "Seen a lot?" I wondered aloud. "Internet access. Only good for stealing music and hard core porn." She laughed, and I felt her cool, minty breath wash over my prick, making it jerk involuntarily. Would she touch it? Would she kiss it, suck it, wank it into her mouth? I mused as I looked down at her and she looked back up at me in blazing, lustful eye contact. I felt her hand on my thigh, moving upward, then her fingers touched mine and pressed the dice into my hand. I rolled a 1, and showed her my list. She stood up in front of me and we snogged hard, my naked cock rubbing against her jeans as her hands roamed all over my body in the clinch, grabbing at my naked ass, pinching my nipples, her tongue next to frantic as it explored my mouth and my hands were inside her sweater, squeezing her tits through her bra as we moaned into each others mouths. She avoided touching my cock with her fingers as it stood erect, trapped between us, but still I could feel the juices building up in my balls from the arousal that she was driving me to. I broke away and she picked up the dice from the bed. She rolled a 2, which was also a snog, and lay down on the bed, beckoning me on top of her. I covered her body with mine and latched my lips onto her face again, and this time her fingernails were digging into my ass as I lay on top of her, pulling the cheeks of my butt apart as she writhed beneath me, my cock pressing down against the vee of her crotch. I groaned as her fingers traversed the crack of my ass, grinding my hips against her in a dry hump that also brought a few moans from her own mouth that were smothered by my tongue. The next roll was another 4 and I went to work as she lay on the bed. I straddled her now, my cock standing up, pointing skyward as I pulled her sweater up her body to expose her black bra. My balls pressed the pale flesh of her belly as I pulled the sweater over her arms and stared down at the double delights that would soon be unfetterred. I slid down her body, unbuttoning and unzipping her jeans, then I eased them down over her hips. She lifted her ass off the bed to assist me, and soon her black jeans were just a dark pile on the floor on top of her shoes. Now I knelt between her legs, gazing down at her pale skin that was offset by the black bra and knickers that were all she was now dressed in. Through the Lens Hi folks. Last week's story drummed up a lot of controversy. That can be fun sometimes and I love hearing your opinions on stories. We all have differing views on what is and isn't morally acceptable. And it's good to have a forum to air our opinions. This week's story is shorter and more fun. I hope you enjoy the lighter tone. Next week's story will of course be far different from this one so if you don't like it, don't worry. Thanks as always to the incredible Mikothebaby for her editing magic. SS06 * * * * * * As I walked up the walkway to our condo, following my wife, I shook my head. When I got to the door, she slammed it in my face. I let out a sigh and turned around to go back to my car. Just as I got to the end of the walkway, I heard her screaming again. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" she yelled. "We're not done talking about this." "Connie, you slammed the door in my face," I said calmly. "I just thought that I'd go back to the studio and work on the photo's I shot this afternoon. That way you could calm down and I could get some work done." "I don't need to calm down," she hissed. "I'm perfectly fucking fine. You're the one who has a problem. You let that whore lean all over you. Do you think I didn't notice her rubbing her tits on you? And you just sat there smiling. I wonder what she'd have done if I wasn't standing there. There will be no cheating in this marriage. If you cheat you're gone. No excuses; no mercy, goodbye." "Connie, she only gave me a hug," I said. "There's no need for you to go ballistic. Everyone I work with sees my wedding ring. They all know that I'm married and very happily. Plus, there's the fact that Serena saw you standing there. If there had been anything going on between us I doubt that she'd have come over and hugged me right in front of you." "Whores are whores," she hissed. "And you need to let yours know that you're married. And you need to let them know that your wife takes her marriage vows really seriously. I hear about and read about that shit all of the time. People in the media and the entertainment industry just think they're on a different level than the rest of the fucking world." I squeezed past her and into the house so our neighbors didn't have to listen to the rest of her rant. "And you need to know, that whore is as fake as they come. She probably has breast implants, butt implants, a nose job, collagen in her lips, her cheek bones re-sculpted, her teeth capped, her hair is bleached and leg extensions," she spat. "Not one thing on her is genuine. Shit, I could look that good if I'd had all of that work done on me too." "Leg extensions?" I said, shaking my head. "I thought that was an exercise." "Don't be stupid, Rob," she said. "You know how they do it. That whore is almost six feet tall and bone thin. She has almost no hips but she's got a bubble butt. That is not natural." "Connie, she played volleyball and basketball in college," I said. "That's why she's tall and thin. It's all of the exercise." Connie was staring at me like I was on a slide and she was looking at me under a microscope. This is a good time for me to pause and introduce the players in our little drama. My name is Rob, short for Robin Delgado. I'm a photographer. I started out when I was a kid with a cheap Kodak camera that my folks had bought me as a Christmas present. I won numerous photo contests throughout my teens and knew by the time I was old enough to think about college that photography would be my major. All during high school I didn't join any of the clubs or teams but I was at any and all big events for the school. I had to be at them so I could take pictures. It was the same at the parties I went to. I was never there with a girl or friends, but I was always there with a camera. There was one girl, Melissa Mulligan, who thought I was cute. She often asked me why I didn't participate in anything. She thought it was kind of creepy that instead of joining in and experiencing life, I preferred to watch it from the sidelines. I've often thought about that and it wasn't until recently that I had an answer to her question. It wasn't that I didn't participate in life. Each of us has his or her part to play in the grand drama that makes up life. My part in that drama is to photographically record events so that people who weren't present can witness great, beautiful or tragic events and see them through their own eyes. In my particular case, I've noticed that life is gritty and ugly, even at its best. And even when you do have those truly beautiful or transcendent moments, they look better to me when focused through the lens of my camera. Everything just seems to look better through the lens. My wife, Connie, and I have been married for only two years. I own my own agency. I have several photographers on staff and we shoot everything from fashion to magazine work. Often, models or artists who are worried about their image will let us know which parties or events they'll attend. They, or their managers, hire us to photograph them at those events because we'll take hundreds of pictures and let them have control over which shots we release to the magazines or newspapers. That way only pictures that flatter them are ever seen. On the other hand, when stars are on the way down, magazines often hire us instead of their staff photographers to get pictures of the stars that show them in a bad light. Like pictures of Lindsay Blowhard when she's drunk or high that help the magazine or paper to sell a particular story. Sometimes, the stars and the magazines will have a bidding war over my work. A magazine wants bad pictures, I get them and the star or their management hear about it and pay me more than the magazine has offered, to make sure the photos never see the light of day. This morning's shoot was for a magazine ad. One of the models, Serena Vascova, a nearly six foot Russian beauty, as has been mentioned, hugged me when the shoot was done. I've worked with Serena a couple of times before and she's a very nice girl. Her heavy Russian accent makes her seem exotic. Her pale gray eyes and long legs don't hurt either. For all that Serena calls her a whore, Serena is according to the rumors, a twenty three year old virgin. She's also on her way to becoming a bona fide supermodel. She's making all the right moves and landing a lot of covers. It also doesn't hurt that she asks for me a lot on her shoots. I seriously wouldn't mind riding her coat tails to bigger and better assignments, but that won't happen if Connie creates a scene whenever we work together. "Just stay the fuck away from that whore," says Connie. "Promise me that?" She's calmed down so I try to reason with her. "Okay Connie," I said. "If you don't mind giving up the cruise I wanted us to go on for Christmas; it's fine. We'll do things your way." "What do you mean?" she says, looking at me curiously. "Serena asks for me a lot," I begin. "She's on her way to the top as a model. She gets paid a ridiculous amount of money and gets a lot of say as to when, where and how things are done on her shoots. If she asks for me specifically, I get paid more, which means I can buy bigger and better things for YOU. I mean you and I are married. Long after Serena's career as flavor of the month is over, we'll still be together. But if me being on a set with her, even though as you saw today there are always tons of other people there, bothers you, I'll just stop working with her." "There were a lot of people there," she said hesitantly. "There were three hair stylists, two make-up artists and their assistants. Her agent was there. Her representative, her personal assistant, all of my assistants, the client's representative, the clothing designer and his assistants and four other models that all had their staff as well," I said. "I think there had to be close to fifty people there and that's the way it always is." "Well, okay," she said reluctantly. "But I don't want you to ever be around that whore alone. I'm not happy about this at all because you're too obsessed with your cameras and your career to notice the little things, but I'm a woman and I know how women think. And that whore wants you." "I promise," I said. "I'll never let myself get put into a situation where Serena and I are alone. Now why don't you go make us a nice brunch while I get on the computer and edit the whore's photographs so I can sell them and make us some money?" I went into my office and go onto the computer. The equipment I had at home was the same editing software I had at the office. That allowed me to work at home when I just didn't feel like going in. As I worked on the photos from the morning's shoot, a call came in on my iPhone. "Rob, where the hell are you?" asked the caller. "I already told you that we needed test shots ASAP." It was Friederick Bontemps, Serena's manager. I hate the shit out of him. He is as fake as they come. His French accent, which is also fake, grated on my nerves. "I should never have allowed you to take the pictures. You aren't well known enough," he said. "You don't have enough history or body of work. Now I'll have to have the whole shoot redone." "Fred," I said. He hated being called Fred. He preferred to have his name pronounced "Free Drick." That only proved what an idiot he was because pronounced that way, his name was German and there wasn't a lot of love between the French and the Germans. Anyway, it was all academic since it was fake. But I was tired of his shit, so I decided to let him know it. "It is pronounced Friederick," he snapped. "I am French." "Fred, the internet is a wonderful place," I said. "If you look there and you know what you're doing you can find out just about anything. Sometimes, you can even find out WHY. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out WHY." "Why what?" he asked. "Why a guy who was born Fred Thompson, in Corpus Christi, Texas, would want to pretend to be a French modeling agent. They have all kinds of pictures of you throughout high school. You were in the drama club weren't you? I take it your daddy wasn't too happy with you not being good enough for football. They take their sports pretty damned serious in Texas, don't they?" There was nothing over the phone but silence. "I found a video of you in the musical Oklahoma. You were a damned good little singer there Freddy. Besides, why you became Free Dick...I mean Friederick, which incidentally, I couldn't find. I also couldn't find any record of you actually going to college for that degree in fine arts and fashion design that is on the wall of your office. Even when I searched the college your degree came from. They did have you listed there as a student, but you dropped out. It says that you dropped out for financial reasons. My guess is that daddy didn't want to pay for you to go into fashion design, but I could be wrong..." "What's your point?" he asked slowly. "I guess you're going to plaster this all over everywhere huh?" "Nope," I said. "I'm a firm believer in "Live and let live, Friederick. From everything I've heard, with or without a degree or an accent, you're very good at what you do. I am too. Or at least I'm trying to be. All I want you to do is to let me do my job. Believe it or not, I'm working on the test shots even as we speak. I told you you'd have test shots that you could take back to your client by first thing in the morning, didn't I?" "Yes," he said. A little bit of Texas slipped out when he said it. "You'll actually have test shots by evening," I said. "As a matter of fact, I'll email you the first five shots right now." I clicked a few files on the computer and emailed them to his office. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes and then. "Holy shit," he said. "Uh Friederick, that didn't sound French," I said. "These pictures are great," he said. "I don't know how but...Hang on." As I waited he was doing something at his desk. "I don't know, it doesn't seem to be the lighting in the photographs, but Serena has just never looked better. Whatever you're doing, works. I'd really appreciate it if you can get me the rest of the shots on schedule. I won't bother you anymore. And Rob..." he said. "...what you said before, about keeping my secret...Thanks." A little while after I got off of the phone, there was a knock on my office door. I opened it and Connie came in with her best friend, Jessica. "Where's lunch?" I asked. "Oh that," said Connie. "I got too busy talking to Jess. Why didn't you tell me about the party tonight at the Dalton Hotel?" "Because I'm not going to do that one," I said. "I had two parties on the schedule for tonight. I decided to shoot the one at the Book Cadillac. That one is going to have a couple of really important politicians there. History could be made there tonight and..." "You mean one of those fat cats might actually tell the truth?" she snapped. "That would be historical, but not likely. They all lie, Rob. You should switch and do the other party. Jason Hamsker is going to be there. You know how much I love him. I'd love to have pictures of him. Remember what I told you when we got married?" "Sorry Honey, but I've already assigned Ed to shoot that party," I said. "My stuff is already at the other hotel. Switching assignments this close to the event would be a mess." Her face fell. "Next time there's a chance, I'll not only take pictures of him, I'll take you with me and introduce you," I promised her. She went back and spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with Jessica. I never did get lunch. * * * * * * Connie "God you're lucky," gushed Jessica. "Your husband is hot." We were just watching as Rob grabbed a couple of camera cases, loaded them into the trunk of his Mustang and headed off to the boring party at the boring hotel. "And his job is so cool," she continued. "Think about it. He did a fashion shoot with Serena Vascova this morning and a party full of important politicians this evening." "It's not that great," I said. "That bitch was all over him this morning. Every chance she got, she draped herself across him like a cheap suit. And she even had the gall to look at me with those big gray eyes like some kind of demented cat staking out her territory." "But Rob loves you, Stupid," said Jessica. "He'd never cheat on you." "Yeah, I know that," I grumbled. "But she pissed me off. Then there's the fact that if he really loves me he'd have arranged for me to see Jason Hamsker. Now that man is the sexiest thing alive." "I don't know," said Jessica. "He seems a little fruity to me. He seems like the kind of dude who'd bail on you at the first sign of trouble. I could see the two of you getting into arguments about using each other's makeup. What I can't see is the two of you growing old together or him wrapping his arms around you and making you feel safe. And you have to admit, Rob is daddy material. I just don't see Jason Hamsker that way." "Well, you're right about all of that," I said. "Besides I don't like Jason in a really serious way it's just a fantasy. But you do know that Jason Hamsker is my wild card, right?" "What do you mean your wild card?" she asked. "When Rob and I were first dating, we exchanged fantasy people. He told me who his dream woman was and I told him who my dream man was. We laughed about it. I told him that if he ever met Eva Mendes to feel free to go ahead and have sex with her, and if I ever met Jason Hamsker, he couldn't hold it against me." Jessica and I laughed for a while and then she jumped to her feet. "Come on," she said. We went back to Rob's office. She opened the door and looked on the desk in front of the computer. She held up a photographer's pass. "Yeah, I know," I said. "Rob gets to go to all of the cool places. I'll ask him if you can have that pass if you want it as a souvenir or something. Sometimes they have to be turned back in even if they aren't used." "You don't get it do you?" she asked. "There's no picture or name on this pass. It just says photographer from RDI Media. Anyone could use this pass. You should swing by the party and at least get a chance to see Jason Hamsker in the flesh. Who knows, you might even get a chance to meet him." As she smiled at me, I felt like I'd been struck by lightning. It would definitely work. I knew all of Rob's photographers and most of his staff. So once I got to the party, if there were any questions, I'd just hang out with them for a while. Maybe I would just hang out with them anyway until Jason showed up, if he did, anyway. Rob was working another party anyway, so he'd never know that I'd done it. And he was usually late getting back from these things anyway because he had to make sure that he got every possible shot and then had to make sure that he got all of his equipment. "I'm going to do it," I said. Jessica's face lit up. "Let me know what happens," she said. "I guess I'd better get my ass home and make dinner for my non-glamorous plumber husband. Have fun rubbing elbows with the rich and famous." I called my hair dresser and told her I had an emergency. I told her I needed my hair and makeup done in a hurry. When I told her why, she agreed to take care of it in exchange for me telling anyone I met where I'd gotten it done. I snatched my newest, ritziest, designer shoes and a new little black dress that I'd never worn and headed for her salon. Two hours later, I presented my invitation at the hotel and was escorted into the main hall where the party was being held. Once I showed the photographer's pass, the security people and staff simply ignored me. I noticed that unlike the other guests who were told where they could and could not go, I was simply forgotten. There were apparently three groups of people at this kind of event. There were non-famous guests who were either rich, had won a contest, or worked for one of the companies sponsoring the event. These people served as background. Their purpose was to fill the hall and make it seem like everyone wanted to be there. There were limits on what they could do and where they could go. The second group was the truly famous people. They were the ones who made coming to the event special. There were no limits on them and they got VIP treatment. Lastly there were the staff and members of the support crew. That was where they thought I fit. We were only here to work. We could go anywhere and do anything we needed to do to accomplish our jobs. I went over and said hello to Rob's lead photographer at the party. I'd known Ed since I first started dating Rob. He's an older guy and a very good photographer but he just doesn't have Rob's gift. Ed is, as I said a very good photographer, but Rob is an artist. I hung out with Ed and his crew for an hour or so until the place started to fill up, then I began to mingle. In the second hour that I was there, my first hour of working the room, I met all kinds of people. It was easy to see when a star or some other famous person came in because they were immediately photographed and kept having cameras shoved in their faces all night long. I saw several people that I regularly watched on TV, but I wasn't interested in them. I'd come for one reason. All I wanted was to see Jason Hamsker. Getting an autograph or a chance to talk to him were more than I was hoping for. I did have an unpleasant experience though. I looked over my shoulder and saw a huge crowd of people gathered around one person. As I strained my eyes to see who the person was, I locked eyes with Serena Vascova. Somehow, I should have known that she'd be here. She was surrounded by reporters and even a couple of photographers. Strangely enough, I noticed that Ed wasn't one of them. And with Serena's rising status, he should have been. I did notice one of his staffers there though. I thought at the time that Ed agreed with me. The bitch simply wasn't important enough to waste time on. Through the Lens After a while, the crowd around her dissipated as other stars came in. Soon she was left with only a few people following her around and trying to speak to her. I kept my eyes firmly riveted to the doorway waiting for Jason to show up. I had forgotten about Serena when I heard her voice behind my back. "Do they lie to me?" she asked in her heavy Russian accent. I turned to face her and I had to admit the bitch was beautiful. Whoever her surgeon was he'd done a very good job. Even with us standing face to face, I couldn't see any traces of surgery or scars. Her fucking face looked extremely natural. Her boobs did too. As she looked down at me, I almost believed that she was naturally that tall. I hated the bitch even more." "I'm pretty sure they're all lying to you," I spat, not having a clue of what she was going on about. "So truly, Rob will not be at this party?" she asked. "Truly, Rob will not be at this party," I said, rudely mimicking her accent. "Then why are you here?" she asked. Before she could even finish her nosy assed question, there was a lot of noise coming from the doorway. I turned and my mouth dropped open as Jason Hamsker stepped through it in the flesh. Jason, unlike the other guys in the room, wasn't wearing a suit. He had on a long hockey jersey with his own name on the back of it. Everyone knew that Jason was Canadian. And all Canadians love hockey, except for the ones who don't. His hockey jersey was festooned with rhinestones and it glittered and sparkled. Jason was also wearing his trademarked low slung pants. He wore his pants like the kids in the inner city. The crotch of his pants hung down near his knees, which forced him to walk like a penguin that needed to take a shit. As he walked with his toes out and waddled from side to side, his arms and hands made all kinds of fake gang signs and he struck a lot of poses like he was Madonna or at least a model on the runway. My heart was stuck in my chest just seeing him. He pursed his lips together blowing kisses in every direction and smiling. "Yo, ya know what Ah'm sayin' y'all," he said as he walked. Unfortunately, no one did know what he was saying because he wasn't fucking saying anything. It seemed funny that a white kid from Canada who was too small and too wimpy to play hockey spoke like an inner city black kid. But I guess he was just that damned talented. "Oh, please," spat Serena. "Do not tell me you are fan of Jason Hamsker?" I just nodded and she shook her head. "Do you know him?" I asked. She nodded her head. "He tries to talk with me several times," she spat. "His people got together with my people. They thought that a romance between us might generate a lot of publicity and make us both some money." I stared at her with my eyes bugging out of my head. "Did you and he ever hook up?" I asked. "Of course not," she spat. "I'm like every other girl. When I fall in love I don't want Jason Hamsker, I want it to be with a man." She looked at me and smiled. "Come on," she said. "We will wait a few moments for the photographers to move on to the next person and I will introduce you." Suddenly the bitch was my best friend. Maybe she wasn't so bad after all. At least she was introducing me to Jason. That was far more than I could say about my husband. "Serena, has Rob ever met Jason Hamsker?" I asked. "Many times," she said. "If we had done the merger...I mean the fake romance. We would have gotten Rob to take pictures. Rob also took some of the pictures for Jason's CD cover. Wait...no, I'm wrong. Rob processed the pictures but he didn't take them. I'm sure you know about how Rob feels about Jason. He always makes fun of him. Rob has his own nickname for Jason." "He does?" I said. "I didn't know that. They must be friends and Rob never told me." "Rob is friends with a lot of people in the industry of entertainment," she said. "He is a very good photographer and his pictures make us look good." "So what is Rob's nickname for Jason?" I asked. "It is a very affectionate nickname," she said. "I wish he had a little nickname for me, but he just calls me Serena." "So what does he call Jason?" I asked again. "Oh," she said. "He calls him, "That little bitch." My eyes popped open in shock. I wonder if it was that English wasn't her native tongue or that I was missing something but it didn't sound like an affectionate nickname to me. "Come on," she said. "I'll introduce you." She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd. Everyone seemed to get out of our way when they saw her. Jason was sneering at the crowd and making faces like a teen aged girl does in the mirror when we got over to him. He was making hand gestures and nodding his head as if he was dancing to a beat that only he could hear. He looked up as Serena came over to him and smiled. Serena hadn't let go of my hand and I felt electricity as we approached Jason. The spotlight was on us. I was so nervous that I almost forgot to breathe. "Sheeeiittt, gurl. Ah knew you couldn't stay away from me," he said. Up close, he was a lot shorter than I expected. He was also a lot more delicate. He looked like the kind of kid who was constantly getting his ass kicked. He looked like the kind of kid who got his ass kicked in the suburbs, around nerds. If he ever went to the hood where his videos were shot, he'd probably get his ass kicked by elementary school children. As the crowd around us wandered off, Serena threw me in front of Jason. "Here's your greatest fan," she said. As she flung me in front of him, I felt like one of those scenes from the zoo, where the animal handler opens the door to the cage and throws a big chunk of meat to the hungry lions. I wasn't the animal handler, I wasn't the lion either. For some reason, I felt like the chunk of meat. The second thing I noticed was that Serena was gone. "So, Babe," he said, talking to my chest. No he wasn't being rude. That was how tall he was. "Let's talk about you," he said. "What is YOUR favorite thing about ME?" I felt that electricity again and noticed that Jason was holding onto my arm. A couple of photographers took pictures of us. "I like to try to get in touch with my fans," he said. Before I knew it, he had led me out of the party room and into one of the rooms off to the side. His huge hulking body guards were following us at a discrete distance. The room we were in was nice. I remembered Rob telling me about the interview rooms they had at certain events. They used them when a star had promised an exclusive interview to one reporter or writer. Sometimes they had a photographer along too. Then I noticed that even the body guards weren't in the room with us. It was only Jason and me. He kept talking to me even as he sat me down on the elegant couch in the room. He was sitting really close to me too. He kept rubbing my arm and the next thing I knew he was rubbing my shoulder. He kept talking to me and told me about how tough life was for him and how no one really understood him as an artist. He told me how he wanted to transcend the limitations of his art form and make music that would be considered the next generation of classic music. He told me that he wanted to do things so that two hundred years from now, people would remember Bach, Beethoven and Hamsker. I never noticed it but sometime during his talk his hand had slipped from my shoulder to my breast. I knew that it was wrong to let him touch me, but it was Jason Hamsker. Shit, he could do whatever he wanted to me. I was sure that Rob would understand. Jason eased his hand under my dress and strangely enough there were no tingles. I didn't dream about my husband like I did about Jason, but if Rob put his hand on my tit or even on my leg, I was ready to fuck his brains out. I knew then that I should stop him but I didn't. Ron would never find out anyway. He started talking about his newest song, "I'm thinking about you while making love to her," and even sang a little bit of it while he eased my legs apart. I was in a swoon. I couldn't believe that it was happening to me. The funny thing about it was that I don't remember ever being sexually aroused. I think that in actuality, I was just so star struck by Jason that I never had the chance to say, "No." The thought of saying, "No," never occurred to me. In fact, I didn't even realize that he was in me until he was out of me. It probably only lasted for about a minute. Maybe that should be the title of his new CD, "Minute Man." "Damn, gurl," he said. "Dat was some good pussy." It was then that I realized that I had fucked Jason Hamsker. All kinds of things went through my mind. I was a fool. I hadn't thought about it while he was doing it because I was so star struck. I wouldn't be able to describe what it was like for Jessica or my children when I had some. "Shit," I thought. Maybe I could get him to do it again. I looked down and almost laughed when I saw how tiny his dick was. Then I noticed that his thin watery semen had leaked out of me and stained my little black dress. I remembered then that I hadn't actually felt anything. His dick was about the size of one of my fingers and even when I masturbated, I used two fingers. I thought about it again and wondered to myself if what he'd done to me could come anywhere near close to what Jason gave me four or five times a week. On a purely sexual scale, this was nothing. The only thing that made it vaguely interesting was the fact that I'd just been fucked by Jason Hamsker. "Can I git dem digits, gurl?" he asked. I was starting to become annoyed by the sound of his voice. His voice was too high pitched and nasal sounding. "What?" I asked. "Can I git yo number so I can call you. You can be my little hoe in Michigan. What's yo name, baby?" he asked. "Connie Delgado," I said. Even as I spoke, I started to realize that he wasn't at all the way I'd imagined him. I also didn't like being called a "hoe." I guess that was some slang version of a whore. "Did you say Delgado?" he said sitting up. My eyes popped open as he said it because every trace of his accent was gone. "Did you say Delgado?" he asked again. "Are you related to Robin Delgado, the photographer?" "I'm his wife," I mumbled. "Oh fuck," he said. His English was perfect. Every trace of the hood in him was gone. "You probably shouldn't say anything to him about this," he said. "Oh fuck", he repeated. "Rob is a friend of mine. He's taken the cover pictures for every CD that I have that's gone platinum. Having him pissed at me would not be a good thing. Some of the concepts he designed for my covers are like art. We need to keep this covered up. Why the hell would you even do this?" he asked. Then he slapped his head as if a light bulb had just gone on. "It was that tall assed Russian giraffe chick wasn't it? I knew that bitch didn't like me. Those Russian women just don't like black men at all," he said. "But, uhm, Jason..." I said cautiously. "You're not black." "Whatever," he spat. He reached down in his pocket and pulled out a phone. He pushed one button and the two big burly bodyguards opened the door. "Get me the fuck out of here," he said. The body guards looked at each other strangely. "Ah mean, yo dog, git me outta this bitch," he said. "We got ta head fo the crib, befo dis shit git serious." The hulking men grabbed him by one arm each and pulled him out of the room. They looked at me as if I was somehow a threat to him. I pulled my panties up and tried to cover the stain on my dress. As I went back into the main room where the party was still going strong, I looked for the exit. Before I got halfway across the room, Serena stood in front of me. "How was it?" she asked. "I...I... nothing happened," I spat. She smirked and nodded her head. "You just spilled milk on your dress, right?" she asked. "Did you ever..." I began. She looked at me as if I was stupid. "I'm a virgin," she said. "There's no way I wanted my first time to be with that troll. When I do give it up, it will be for someone worth it. Someone I love." "I'll bet you'll go running home and have your manager call Rob and tell him, huh?" I said. "But what you don't know is that this won't matter. Rob and I have an agreement. If he ever met Eva Mendes he could have sex with her. And I could have sex with Jason Hamsker." "Rob has met Eva Mendes several times," she said. "I'm pretty sure he probably told her the same thing he told me." "What did he tell you?" I asked. "He told me that he was married to the most beautiful, most special woman in the world," she said. "He told me that all of this showbiz stuff was an illusion and he needed to have something real with a real woman. Not just something to get a few lines in print in the newspaper." "My God," I said. "I'm such a fool." "I need to go home now so I can tell him my side of it before you get to him," I said. I tried to push past her and found her blocking my path. "You don't have to run off on my account," she said. "Maybe you can fuck a couple of more famous people. Besides, I'm not going to tell him. I can't afford to for a couple of reasons." I just looked at her. "My manager is the Frenchman, Friederick Bontemps. He saw the test shots that we took today and told me that I have never looked better in my life. I need to have Rob continue to photograph me. Even the Frenchman says that he brings something out in me that none of the other photographers do. People tend to...shoot the messenger. So, if I were to tell Rob about what you have done, I might lose a photographer. You have nothing to worry about from me. I cannot vouch for everyone else here. Nor can I vouch for the photos of you and Jason that were taken when I introduced you. Good luck. You will need it." I looked around the room as she turned and walked away. The party was in full swing and would probably go on until after midnight. It was barely ten. I left the building and drove home. Once I got home, for some reason, guilt perhaps, I started drinking. This was all the fault of that Russian whore. I started the day out hating her. She had flounced into the shoot that morning as if she was some kind of Russian princess. She had ignored all of the stylists who'd been waiting for her and sat down to start talking to Rob. I guess that she thought that I was one of Rob's assistants because she never paid me any attention until she tried to send me out for coffee. Then Rob had told her who I was. Every time she changed outfits, she ignored the stylists and the designers and went over and asked Rob what he thought of how she looked. Finally, when they were done shooting, she waltzed over and draped herself bodily over my husband with me sitting right there. She knew who I was and just draped herself over him anyway. It was like watching a cat in heat. Then when I got to this fucking party, she introduced me to Jason Hamsker. Since she had a history with him, I'm pretty sure she knew what an asshole he was. That feeling I had of being thrown to the lions was more than a little bit true. I really believe that she did it on purpose. The vodka seemed to make me understand Russians better. Serena had told me that there were a couple of reasons that she wouldn't rat me out. But she'd only given me one of them. The vodka made it all clear. Serena hadn't been lying to me but she'd hid the most important reason. She couldn't afford to tell Rob but it wasn't because she was afraid to lose a photographer. The bitch didn't want to lose Rob. It had been staring at me in the face all the time. Serena was in love with my fucking husband. She didn't want to tell him about me because if he reacted the way she'd said, he wouldn't want to have anything to do with her. And she wanted to swoop in and pick of the pieces after my fuck up. It was all as clear as day. The reason that Rob supposedly brought out things in her that no other photographer did was because whether he knew it or not, he put them there. The light in her eyes came from the fact that the bitch loved him. That was also why she constantly flounced her ass over to him to see if he liked the clothes she wore in the pictures. As I sat there drinking, I thought about all of the things I'd done wrong during the day. I'd heard for most of the time that Rob and I had been together how spoiled and childish famous people could be. He'd told me time after time that their attitudes were fucked up and they weren't like normal people. He also told me that they weren't real people, there was usually something missing in them. They were more like caricatures than real people. I wondered then about a lot of things. Rob had met Eva Mendes several times according to Serena. Serena had been sure that Rob had never done anything with her if the chance had come up. The biggest slap in my face was that Rob had turned Serena herself down. It shocked me to think that he'd turned down one of the most beautiful women in the world and told her about how beautiful he thought I was instead. He loved me that much and I just spread my legs and fucked Jason Hamsker without giving him a thought. Jason Hamsker had fucked me and called me a whore and then practically ran from the room when he found out that I was married to Rob. He was more afraid of losing Rob as a photographer than he was about hurting my feelings. He never gave me a moment's thought. It was as if I was nothing. Despite all of those fucking songs he mumbled about true love and sacrifice, Jason Hamsker was an asshole. Rob was so much better in every sense of the word than Jason Hamsker would ever be. Jessica had been right all along. I don't know if I ever actually got drunk. But I passed out. * * * * * * Rob The emergency call from Ed made a terrible night worse. Ed's wife was pregnant and just before the party he was shooting got started, his wife had gone into labor. He called me and I told him to leave the guys in position and that as soon as all of the guests had arrived for the party I was shooting, I'd hop in my Mustang and come over there and grab a few special shots of all of the most important guests at the party he was covering. He thanked me and ran off to meet his wife and her parents at the hospital. Ed was a good guy. If I'd been working for someone and Connie had gone into labor, I'd have been out of there like a bat out of hell. I'd have told my colleagues on the scene what was going on and after that, I'd have let the chips fall. If I got fired for trying to be present for the birth of my child, then whoever I was working for didn't deserve me. What I hated the most about the situation though, was the need to split my focus. The two parties, though separated by only three miles in actual distance, couldn't have been farther away in tone or impact. On one hand, you have a bunch of overgrown publicity seeking actors, models and musicians who are the public's total focus at the moment. On the other hand, you have politicians and movers and shakers who can affect all of our lives in reality and will continue to do so for decades with the laws and policies they support. One group represents youth, vigor and fun, while the other group represents experience, wealth and responsibility. As I jumped into my deep purple 2012 Mustang GT, I wasn't thinking about the difference between the two groups, I was thinking about their similarities. Both groups loved publicity and having their pictures in the papers and magazines. One group did it because publicity meant album sales or movie seats filled. The other group did it because publicity got them closer to election or being re-elected. In the end I guess they're the same. As I pulled up in front of the second hotel, I realized that I'd left my photographers pass for this event at home. I called Polly who worked with Ed and had her borrow one from one of the guys who was already inside. As long as he didn't leave and need to get back in, I'd be fine. Through the Lens She met me just outside the door and I laughed as I waved at the guys doing security. I knew the owner of the security company and probably could have gotten in without a pass. I quickly ducked behind a corner as I saw Serena get out of her limo and head inside. Serena, for some reason, had taken a liking to me and I didn't want to encourage her. She's a really pretty girl and a nice one to boot, but I'm married. Besides that, Serena had already gotten me into enough trouble today as it was. As soon as I got inside, I ducked into the room that we'd set up for storing our equipment. I greeted all of my people and got an update on what they were doing. I told them that Ed had been thorough as usual in his planning and they should keep doing what they were doing. I had a different thought though. Most of the shots they were going to get were going to be posed and prepped shots just like the ones every other photographer from every other source would get. I wanted to go out and hide and capture some shots that were raw. I wanted to take photos of the stars in unguarded moments. A lot of them would probably be crap but perhaps a few would be gold. After about twenty minutes of working the room, I saw that asshole Jason Hamsker with some short woman in a black dress. Her legs were thick but shapely. There was something familiar about them. I didn't think about it at the time because I've taken photos of so many different women that they all tended to blend together after a while. I moved around the room to get a better angle and almost dropped my camera. Jason was talking to my wife, Connie. I don't know what she was doing here or even how she got in but I was determined to find out. I started to get up and go over to them and ask her exactly what the fuck she was doing but then thought better of it. I was sure that she just wanted to meet Jason, her idol. I'd put off introducing her to him because I wanted her to have her little fantasy about him. So often when we idolize people, it's a big let-down to find out that they're just not the people we thought they were. I decided to keep taking pictures of them so at least she'd have a few memories of meeting the asshole. Then he moved her out of the room and into one of the interview rooms. My heart clutched in my chest. I ran out of the building and around to the side. I went back into the building once I found out that the ballroom wasn't exactly level with the ground. I got on the second floor balcony and trained a telephoto lens on the rooms on that side of the building. Several of the rooms were empty. Then I found them. I started snapping pictures. Jason had his hand on Connie's left tit and I got pissed. Jason had eased his hand under Connie's skirt and she was letting him. He got off of the couch they were on and got between her legs and she just sat there motionless. If her eyes hadn't been open, I'd have thought that she'd been drugged. I don't know how I managed to do it. But somehow, I put the camera on auto. It continued to click away at one second intervals, snapping picture after picture as my heart broke. Despite what I said earlier about how life looks better to me through the lens of a camera, what I watched then wasn't improved by the best lens I own. There was no mistaking what I watched. I stood there on that balcony and watched the end of my marriage. The thing that really pissed me off was all of that bullshit Connie had given me that morning over a hug from Serena. When Serena hugged me, she'd draped herself over me because I hadn't returned it. But now, here was my loving wife, letting that fake, white chocolate, droopy pants, loser, fuck her. I knew that outside the door to the room, Marco and Will, Jason's huge bodyguards would be stationed. There was no way I'd get past those two former football players. I also didn't need to create a scene at the party. That would be the fastest way to career suicide. Most promoters and even the stars themselves, liked to avoid drama and scenes whenever possible; unless they needed the publicity. Having a person who was supposed to be invisible; whose job was to simply take pictures, creating a scene would be unpalatable. The best possible answer would be to just walk away and think of a way to get my revenge on them both without creating a scene. I shot a few last pictures where I zoomed in on Connie's face and then turned to leave. Back inside of the main hall, I went and spoke to my people. I told them all that they were doing a great job and that we'd get together at 2 a.m. at the office to go over the shots they'd gotten. By four, we'd have gone through every shot we took at both parties and emailed them off to the magazine that paid us for them. We'd also take some of the other shots and sell them to various newspapers who either didn't have their own staffers there or who didn't get the shots we did. That gave me four hours to do what I needed to do. I left the building and got into my Mustang. The roar of the engine comforted me. I drove home and took enough clothes to last me a few days and got back into the car. I drove downtown to the building that I rented office space in. I rented the entire third floor. We had offices, several photography studios, a couple of conference rooms, storage space and a couple of editing suites and we needed every square foot of it. I knew already that in a few years we'd need our own building. One of the cool things about it was that in my carefree bachelor days, I often lived out of the small ready room behind my office. There was a very comfortable couch and a complete bathroom with a shower and even a small kitchenette in the space behind my personal office. Until I got a new apartment or condo, that would have to do. Connie and I had only been married for two years. When we'd gotten married, my business lawyer had told me that it might be smart to get an agreement signed that in the event of a divorce prevented Connie from being able to get any part of my business. It wasn't quite a pre-nup. But it would do. There was also the fact that since we'd only been together for two years Connie wouldn't get very much in the form of support or alimony and we have no kids. The divorce would probably be very simple. I saw it more along the lines of, "Okay this didn't work. You take your stuff I'll take mine. One of us can take over the payments on the condo if they want to live there. It was nice knowing you. See ya, Bye." The guard in front of the building waved at me as I pulled my Mustang into my assigned parking spot. My spot was near the front of the building near where the owners parked whenever they were in town. I had a great spot because by renting the entire third floor, I was one of their largest tenants. The guard, Greg, was used to our unusual hours. We came and went almost twenty four seven because the media worked around the clock. The internet meant that we could sell photos all day long because it was always day time somewhere in the world. As I stepped off of the elevator, my few night staffers looked up. Elsa, my office manager, who looked like she'd just awakened, came over to me with a cup of hot coffee. "I wasn't expecting you before two," she said. "I wasn't expecting to be here," I said. "I'll be in my office for a while. I don't want to be disturbed. I need to edit and print some photos I never expected to take." She looked at me and could tell I was upset. "Do you need anything?" she asked. "Maybe some more of this coffee every so often," I said. "Oh! Elsa...what's the largest hi quality photo paper we have in stock that we can print on?" "I think we have some 18 by 24 card stock glossy paper left," she said. "Great, bring me some of that," I said. "How many sheets?" she asked. "As many as you can find," I said. "I need at least ten but twenty would be better. If we don't have that many then bring me all of those that we have and then drop down to the next biggest size." I worked alone in my office. I downloaded the pictures of Connie's infidelity to my computer and then picked out the most damning pictures. I started with a few innocent pictures of Connie standing in front of Jason looking star struck. Then I worked on a couple of pictures of the two of them going into the room. Then I used a series of them talking and finally I started on the pictures of the actual act. There was a picture of Jason with his hand on Connie's breast and her allowing it. I superimposed a blow-up of the hand on the breast at the bottom. The next picture showed his hand under her skirt and Connie wide eyed but not stopping it. The next picture showed him pulling her legs apart. And the last picture I used showed them in the act. I took a last sip of my coffee and sent all of the pictures to the main printer. The printer in my office wasn't large enough to print on sheets that big. I walked out to the printer in the main room of the office and waited for the pictures to print. I printed them in reverse order so if we ran out of the bigger paper, the most damning pictures would be of the larger size. When all of the pictures had printed, I took them and left the building. It had taken me almost two hours to process, select, edit and print the pictures. I told Elsa that I'd be back to help go through the evening's shots. I drove back to the condo and I have to admit that I was still numb. Maybe it was because the shock just hadn't worn off yet, but I didn't feel a sense of overwhelming pain. I was icily calm. I think the prospect of buying a new car would have felt more stressful than the idea of ending my marriage. I expected to find Connie in our bedroom and I hoped that she'd be asleep. One out of two wasn't terrible. Actually, it was closer to none out of two. Connie wasn't in our bedroom and although she wasn't conscious she wasn't actually asleep. It was more likely that she was simply passed out drunk from the nearly empty bottle of vodka that was still clutched in her hand. That caused all types of questions to go through my mind. Had she been drunk when she went into the room with Jason or was she drinking to ease her guilt? I guess to me it didn't matter either way. I left her where she was and went into the bedroom to begin my plan. I pulled out a roll of duct tape and started placing squares of duct tape on the walls of our bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom. After all of the tape had been placed, I pulled out a jar of safety pins out and added a safety pin to each piece of duct tape. After that, I went back and strung pieces of fishing line to the safety pins. It looked like a very sparse yet intricate network of clear plastic lines. It was almost like a spider's web throughout the condo. I went back to the living room and got Connie. I picked her up and carried her into our bedroom and covered her up. Then I took all of the pictures I'd printed and clipped each picture to one of the fishing lines in order. Directly over the bed there was the picture of her meeting her hero, Jason Hamsker. The picture was hung at eye level so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. She'd be able to walk her way through the house and into the bathroom where she'd find the last picture. I'd used a very thick white paint marker on the last picture to write her a message. It was very clear and only one word. So she'd understand it even in her hungover state the next morning. I turned off the lights as I went back through the condo looking for anything else that I might want to take with me. First thing in the morning I'd call my lawyer and start the divorce. * * * * * * Connie I was completely disoriented when I woke the next afternoon. The sun should have been shining in on me through my window but it wasn't. As I opened my eyes, I noticed that the sunlight was beaming down onto the bed right beside me, but somehow it wasn't shining directly on me. I also noticed that I was in bed. I shouldn't be in bed. The last thing I remembered was sitting on the floor in front of the couch drinking. How had I gotten into bed? Rob must've put me to bed when he came home this morning. Then I noticed that Rob wasn't there. That made no sense. Rob's job, like most others had patterns. Rob's pattern was that after working a night event, he'd be up editing and selling the pictures for most of the night and then we'd sleep in the next day. Not only was Rob not in bed with me, his side of the bed looked like it hadn't been slept in. The poor baby had probably come home and seen me on the floor and put me into bed and then gone back to work. I smiled even though my head was fuzzy and splitting open. That asshole Jason would never have done something like that. I don't know what it was that had attracted me to Jason Hamsker. He was nothing like his music or his videos. It was like Rob had said. He just wasn't a real person. As I opened my eyes fully to get out of bed, I stared straight at the picture hung above the bed. Even as I processed the content of the picture, I wondered how the hell it had gotten there and who'd placed it. The picture clearly showed me in my now ruined black dress, standing in front of Jason the previous evening. I'd never seen myself in that dress before. If I'd known that it was that tight and that slutty looking, I probably never would have worn it. I snatched the picture down and then saw directly behind it and off to the side, another picture. In this one, Jason had his hand on my shoulder and was moving off to the side. As I stood up, I realized that I still didn't really have my balance and that the hangover was far worse than I thought. I almost hit my head on the wall as I fell. I looked up and there was another picture after the second one and another after that one. I struggled and made it to my feet and went around the room glancing at each picture and finding them each worse than the next. As I followed the series of pictures down the hall, I noticed that the perspective and angle changed. Since the photographer couldn't have taken pictures through the locked door; either a second photographer or the same one had continued to photograph us from outside of the room. In the middle of the hallway, I saw several pictures of Jason and me sitting on that beautiful couch in the interview room. My heart lurched and I knew what I was looking at. The only question in my mind was how far the photos went and how angry Robin was at me. It was obvious to me by then that Rob had taken the pictures himself somehow, even though he wasn't supposed to be at that party. By the time I'd followed the photos into the bathroom, I realized how well he knew me. As I looked at photos of Jason doing things to me that no married woman should have ever allowed any man other than her husband to do, I felt sick. The next to the last photo was near the toilet and it showed Jason pulling my legs apart. Just as I vomited into the toilet, I saw the last photo. It had been placed at eye level if a person had their head near the toilet. It showed Jason fucking me and Rob, with one of those white markers that he used to point out or highlight features on photos had written, "Goodbye!" The shock of that message made me vomit again. What the hell did he mean goodbye? I splashed water on my face. My head was still splitting open so I took a couple of aspirin and brushed my teeth to get the taste of both the liquor and the vomit out of my mouth. I called Rob's cell phone. It rang and rang. After the tenth ring I got a message that told me the number had been changed and no further information was available about that number. I knew then that Rob was serious. He didn't give very many people his personal number. The few times that I'd looked at his phone list I'd laughed because I had more than three times as many people on my contact list than Rob had. Rob had hundreds of clients, but most of them only had his office number. There were fewer than ten people on Rob's personal phone list. He preferred to have clients and people he worked with contact him through his office. They called the office and were then routed to his personal phone. That list included me, our home number, Rob's mom, his dad, his sister, the office, and a couple of Rob's best friends. Ron had probably called the phone company and gotten the number changed and then called his few contacts and given them the new number. It had probably taken him only a few moments to accomplish it. I called the office and got the receptionist. I asked for Rob and was asked the nature of my call. Either one of Rob's office managers would have recognized my voice so I'd gotten lucky. I told the woman it was personal. She asked for my name and number and told me that someone would call me back. Before she hung up, I asked to speak to Elsa. I was told that Elsa had worked last night but that I could speak to Susan. Sue had always treated me warmly so I told the woman that would be fine and was transferred. When Susan came on the phone, I told her who I was and there was a long pause before she asked what she could do for me. I told her that I wanted to speak to Rob and that I'd be on my way down there soon anyway. "Look, Connie," she said. "I know that you and Rob are having some kind of a thing right now. I'm a married woman too and I know that from time to time there are issues that come up in every relationship. I don't know what's going on between the two of you and I'm not taking anyone's side except my own. I get paid to do what Rob wants. I have been told not to put you through to him under any circumstance. He does not want to speak to you. He has gone as far as having security not allow you access to the third floor of the building. He has posted two of our security guards at the elevator. You will not be allowed to leave the elevator on the third floor. He can't bar you from the entire building yet, because he doesn't own it, but he is on really good terms with the owners." "Even if you could get into the building, Rob isn't here right now. They were all up late working on the pictures from the parties last night. He grabbed a couple of hours of sleep and left just as I was coming in this morning. I know he had a meeting about the pictures he took yesterday for Serena and the other models. I believe he had a couple of meetings with someone else as well. Don't get upset but I believe Jeff was one of them. Take care Connie and I hope this all works out well for the two of you." I knew then that this was very serious. Jeff Goldblum was Rob's lawyer. He was the one who'd come up with the pre-nup I'd signed. It wasn't a pre-nup in the legal sense of the word. It didn't spell out what each of us would receive in the event of a divorce, but it did make it clear that Rob had owned and established his business long before we'd met and that in the event of a divorce, I couldn't touch or claim any part of Rob's business. I could still get a part of Rob's salary or his personal accounts but the business was off limits. Jeff was a business lawyer, not a divorce lawyer, so Rob meeting with him could have meant anything. I felt as if I was going to start crying at any minute so I called Jessica. She was at my door within ten minutes. As soon as I opened the door for her, she started asking me stupid questions about that asinine Jason Hamsker. "Did you get to meet him? What was he like? Did you get his autograph? Did you get any pictures of him?" she asked, all in a flurry without taking a breath. "Oh shit, you look like hell," she said. "So what went wrong? Since you're not happy you obviously didn't get to meet him. What happened?" "Can you pause long enough for me to fucking say something?" I snapped. She just nodded her head. "I did go to the party," I said. "And that bitch Serena Vascova was there. She introduced me to..." Through the Lens "Wait," said Jessica in shock. "You hung out with Serena Vascova? Are you guys like buddies or something?" "No," I said. "But she's not as bad as I thought. Anyway, she introduced me to Jason and..." "You're shitting me," gushed Jessica. "Is he...?" "No," I spat interrupting her. "He's nothing like he seems on TV or in the videos. In the first place, he's only about four foot eleven. He's a fucking troll. His accent is fake. Everything about him is fake and he has a tiny dick." "Whoah..." she said. "You didn't...please tell me you didn't do what I think you did." I nodded and started crying. "No wonder you're upset. You're feeling guilty aren't you?" she said. "Connie as your best friend, please listen to me. I know that you've heard like all the rest of us that honesty is the best policy. Fuck that shit. It's pure hokum. If Rob ever comes up and asks you about it, deny everything..." I grabbed her by the shoulder and walked her to the hallway. "What the hell is all of this?" she asked. As she began looking at the pictures, her jaw dropped open. "You have to make sure that Rob never sees these pictures," she said. She went up and down the hall looking at the pictures and taking them down. When she got into the bathroom and saw the worst ones, she looked at me. "You weren't kidding," she said. "You fucked Jason Hamsker. What was it like?" "It was like not having sex," I said. "His dick is the size of a Vienna sausage and he called me a whore after it was over. When he found out that I was Rob's wife he was more worried about Rob not taking pictures for him than he was about how I felt about it. He is not streetwise and his accent is an act. He's a total asshole." "Then you really need to make sure that Rob doesn't find out," she said. "Jessie," I said quietly. "Yes," she smiled. "Rob took the God damned pictures," I screamed. "What the fuck do you think he meant on that last one when he wrote Goodbye! Ever since I woke up this morning I haven't been able to get in touch with him. He changed his cell phone number and the people in his office, work for him. They will not let me speak to him even if he was there." "What about your deal?" she said. "What are you babbling about, Jess?" I asked. "You said that you guys had a deal. He could screw Eva Mendes and you could screw Jason Hamsker . Rob is a man of his word. You just need to remind him of that." "How the hell do I remind him of anything when he won't talk to me?" I asked. "So find someone that he is talking to and have them remind him," she said. It was actually not a totally stupid idea. At any rate, I didn't have any better ones. I needed to find just the right person to do it. Jessica and I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what I should do. I was glad that she was there because I felt awful and having someone to share my pain with cut it in half. Rob wasted no time either though. The very next morning I received a call from a lawyer who asked if I could meet with him regarding my divorce. He asked for my attorney's number since he didn't want to meet with me unless I had counsel present. He told me that while I found an attorney, he could have copies of the papers messengered to me for my perusal. Since it was a simple divorce, he thought that if I had a lawyer, we could have the whole process done and filed in a week and six months later, three months with the right judge, the whole thing could be over. He sat there waiting for my reply. "Where is your office located?" I asked. He gave me an address and told me he'd be available all day. I dressed and went over to his office. I dressed down for the meeting. I just threw on some jeans and a blouse with a leather jacket that Rob loved over it. I was shown into his office and he stood up to shake my hand. He looked around as if he'd been expecting someone else to be with me. As he reached out for the handshake, I drew my arm back and as soon as I was in range, slapped him as hard as I could. "That's assault," he whined. "No it wasn't," I said. "That was therapy. If you look in any medical journal they tell you that the way to treat people who are suffering from shock or are behaving irrationally is to give them a sharp, stinging slap to the face. It helps to reorder their brains so they start to process information again." He looked at me as if I was crazy while still holding his face where I slapped him. "But I'm not out of my mind," he said warily. "If you think I'm going to just walk away quietly and give Rob a divorce, you are," I spat. "Rob is mine. I love him. My marriage is not over just because I made a terrible mistake. Besides, Rob has no grounds for the divorce. We have an agreement in place." "What agreement?" he asked. "Have Rob call me and we'll talk about it," I said. "Well, while you're here," he said. "Can we at least discuss the settlement?" "There's not going to be a settlement," I said. "So there's no reason to discuss one." "Then there's no need for me to ask Rob to call you," he said. "Rob gave me his legal power of attorney and told me to handle the divorce. He's focusing on his career right now; in fact, he's about to go out of town on business. One of his clients has landed a huge job and pulled Rob in on it. It might be the biggest thing he's done so far. It's going to take weeks to pull together so he may be gone for a while." "Besides that, he has to find a new place to live depending on what you decide to do about the condo that the two of you are currently leasing. Jeff believes that alone or with you, it's time for Rob to buy a house, so getting out of the condo might be a good thing for him. He might be persuaded in exchange for getting things over with quickly, paying for the rest of the lease for you." "No sale," I said. "As soon as Rob and I sit down and talk about this, you'll be out of the loop." "There are some things that you might..." he said as I walked out. On further consideration, I probably should have listened to him. I stopped by the grocery store on my way home. I wanted to pick up a few things for dinner and was surprised to find out that my credit cards were all declined. I went out to my car and called the bank on my cell phone. It turned out that Rob had paid off all of my credit cards and canceled them. Even though the cards had my name on them, they drew on his accounts and were, in fact, his credit cards. I drove over to the bank. I decided that I would just write a check on our account and use cash for my purchases until Rob came to his fucking senses. That was when I came to MY fucking senses. All of our accounts were actually Rob's accounts and he had taken my name off of them. I had only about a hundred dollars in cash on me and that wouldn't last for very long. When I got home, I looked through the phone book and found a lawyer. The first lawyer I called took my case on a contingency basis. If I ended up divorced, I paid his fees out of my settlement. If I stayed married, Rob would have to pay his fees. We called Rob's lawyer back and set up a meeting. Rob's lawyer was an asshole. Over the course of a few hours, he'd gone from, "I'll be here all day," to, "The earliest meeting he could arrange was sometime next week. He'd also arranged to send my lawyer a copy of the divorce papers. My lawyer looked at me and started to shake his head. "If this goes on for very long you'll have to get a job to pay me back," he said. "What are you talking about?" I asked. "You haven't been together for very long and you have no kids," he said. "Most judges are not going to give you very much in any case. Your husband is not going for a no fault divorce. He's using infidelity as the reason for the divorce and he claims to have photographic evidence. At the same time, he seems to have a signed agreement from you that bars you from gaining anything from his business. He also seems to be re-investing most of the proceeds from the business back into the business and simply paying himself a small salary. You aren't going to get very much in this at all. In fact, when he paid off your credit cards this morning, the amount that he paid off is greater than what you could expect to get from a settlement. Apparently, you like clothes a lot don't you?" "What are you trying to say?" I asked. "If the divorce goes along this way, you'll probably have to pay your husband," he said. "And you're broke. You need to start looking for a job immediately or at least accept this settlement. It'll get you twenty five thousand dollars in cash and you'd get to keep the condo until the end of the lease." "What about your fees?" I asked. "At two hundred dollars an hour, you already owe me roughly a thousand dollars," he smirked. "That would leave you twenty four thousand if you sign this now. I'm in no hurry. We can fight this to the end." "Do I have a good case?" I asked. "Does he have the photos?" he asked. I nodded and a tear rolled down my cheek. "If you really did go out and screw some other guy, why are you trying to hold onto this one?" he asked. "Why not let this guy go and go after the other one?" "Because this one is the one I love," I said. "The other guy is just an asshole and he's famous." He shrugged his shoulders and gave me a wry smile. "If I sign the papers can I still try to talk to my husband and talk him out of this or try to get back with him?" I asked. "Of course," he said. "You can try to get him back until your dying day. And stranger things have happened." I signed the papers. Over the next few weeks, my life went to hell. I found out that the judge had ruled on our divorce and it would be final in six months. Rob never came back to the condo. He sent one of his assistants over to get the rest of his things. She only took Rob's clothing and personal things. When I asked her about the rest of his stuff, thinking that I could argue over some of his things and Rob would have to come and get them personally, she simply shrugged her shoulder and said he'd buy a new one. Then things got worse. I started seeing small news items and pictures on TV about Rob and Serena. Serena had been chosen for both the sports illustrated swimsuit edition and the Victoria's secret catalog. In both cases, Rob was taking the photos. They were also seen together too many times for it to be a coincidence. I'd known all along that she wanted my husband and she was going to end up with him. At the same time, Rob's business was doing really well. He'd had to turn down the chance to shoot the cover of the new Jason Hamsker CD. Jason was supposed to shoot the cover very shortly and Rob's company simply didn't have room on their schedule. Jason had thrown a fit and refused to work with anyone else, but Rob had held firm. Everyone was puzzled about why Rob was turning down work when he could easily have sent one of his staffers to set everything up and then just zoomed in to take the picture. But I knew. I knew that Rob and Jason also knew but none of us was saying anything. A couple of weeks later, I found out that I was pregnant. I demanded a meeting with Rob. I had my lawyer contact a judge and got the divorce put on hold until after the baby was born. The meeting was not what I expected. There were five of us there. I'd envisioned it being Rob and his lawyer and me and my lawyer. I thought that we'd send the lawyers out of the room and the two of us would just talk. I could tell Rob how sorry I was about what had happened but that I had never stopped loving him and that we'd talk about us getting together again for the good of our child. It didn't go that way at all. My lawyer started out by pointing out that Rob would have to pay me child support in addition to what had already been agreed upon. And that the child support shouldn't be based on the salary that Rob paid himself, it should be based on what Rob could afford to pay. Rob asked then how we even knew the baby was his and Serena quietly said that if the baby was Rob's they wanted it. That shocked the hell out of me because it left no doubt that the two of them were an item and in her mind my baby wouldn't change that. My lawyer reminded them of the fact that in our state, any children were legally recognized as the fruit of the marriage whether they were the husband's biological children or not. Rob's lawyer countered saying that once the baby was born a DNA could prove that the baby wasn't Rob's and the divorce could then proceed as written. I would then have to arrange child support from the biological father and Rob would be out of it. My lawyer came back by talking about the new DNA tests that could be performed without danger to the child before birth. If we could prove that the child was Rob's before it was born, then Rob would also have to support me during the pregnancy. I contacted my obstetrician and arranged for the test and we all waited for the answer. She told me that we needed to wait for at least another month to do the test. I contacted Rob's attorney and we all sat back to wait. During that time, my lawyer insisted that we also contact any other possible fathers. I had no idea how to get in touch with Jason. Serena actually helped me with that. She gave me the number of his management company. They were less than thrilled to hear from me. Serena had also given me Jason's private number. She had never used it and she wasn't sure that it still worked but I tried it. As soon as Jason picked up the phone I knew it was him. "Yeah, who diss is?" he asked. "Jason, this is Connie," I said. "Do you remember me?" He didn't have any idea of who I was. I filled him in and he got angry at me. He blamed me for his problems with Rob. He told me it was my fault that the cover of his new CD sucked. Then I told him I was pregnant. He was actually happy. "Now if you and Rob get back together maybe he can shoot my fucking cover," he said. "Jason, I'm calling because it might not be Rob's baby," I said. "I really hope it is but..." "Damn gurl, you should'a used a rubber," he said. "Jason, you don't understand," I said. "It might be your..." all I heard was a dial tone. I tried calling the number back at least ten times that day. By the eighth call I was told that the number had been changed. I went back to calling his management and was never put through. The next few weeks were uneventful. I did burn through a lot of the money I'd gotten from Rob while I tried to get the condo ready for the baby. Finally, the day for the test came and surprisingly Rob showed up at my doctor's office to be with me for the test. We got a chance to talk while I waited for the doctor. I was nervous as hell. Rob came over and held my hand. "I always wanted us to have kids," he said. "Rob, this isn't the way this was supposed to work," I said. "You and I should still be married." "We just have to make the best of what we have," he said. "Rob, it was a mistake. Jason Hamsker is an asshole," I said. "I know," he said. "That's why I never introduced you to him. I was also a little bit jealous." "What did you have to be jealous of?" I asked. "I loved you so much," he said. "And Jason was some kind of fantasy for you. Remember that stupid deal we had?" he laughed. "Yeah, you broke it," I said with tears rolling down my cheek. "Connie, that was never serious," he said. "When we got married we vowed never to cheat on each other. Whether it was with Jason or even Eva Mendes, it was only supposed to be the two of us." "Did you ever do Eva Mendes?" I asked. "Nope," he smiled. "Why would I? I had you at home." Hearing him say he'd rather have me than his ultimate fantasy woman, made me feel like shit. The doctor came in then. When I came out about an hour later, he waited with me while the doctor wrote my prescription for the minor pain I'd have over the next few days. "Connie, if it does turn out to be OUR baby, we'll be talking and we'll have to make some arrangements," he said. "I'll want to be a very involved dad. If it turns out that Jason is the lucky one, then I hope you have a very happy life." My heart broke at that moment because I knew that if the baby was Jason's, I'd never see my husband again. I also knew that Jason would never be a good father and I'd have all kinds of hell even getting through his maze of sycophants to arrange for him to pay his child support. The doctor had said that it would take three days for the results to come back. The first of those three days I was on pins and needles. I had all kinds of day dreams and nightmares. I dreamed that the baby was Rob's and the two of us got back together and we lived happily ever after. I also dreamed that the baby was Rob's and Serena paid a hit squad a million dollars to take me out. I woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming that a Russian guy was just about to put the blade of an ax between my eyes. On the morning of the third day, I awoke to find my phone ringing. It was Jessica. "I just called to give you the news," she said. "Jess, I'll call you right back," I said. "I need to call the doctor and get my results. " "But Connie, you have to hear this," she gushed as I hung up. Sometimes Jessica really did get on my nerves. I wondered what she thought could be as important as getting the results of my baby's DNA test? After an interminable wait, I finally got the doctor on the phone. "We ran the tests several times," she said. "And there is no doubt. I hope that you can be happy." My heart leaped and I started to smile. I knew that Rob wouldn't let Serena have the mother of his child even scratched let alone killed. And I was sure that like he'd said, Rob would want to be an involved father. That alone meant I could leverage Serena out of the picture. "The man who came into the office with you..." the doctor continued. "...Cannot possibly be the baby's father." I dropped the phone and started crying. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Finally, after crying for a half hour or so I picked myself up and realized that I'd just have to put my lawyer on the case. Jason was rich. Maybe I didn't love him but he would legally have to take care of me and his child. I hung up the phone and started trying to think about how I'd go about letting him know. Almost immediately the phone rang again. I picked it up. "What the hell is wrong with you?" said Jessica. "Have you seen it yet?" "Seen what?" I asked. "Turn on the TV," she said. I waddled over to the TV and switched it on. There was a huge picture of Jason Hamsker on the screen. "Oh shit," I thought. His new CD is probably being released today. The whole world would go into Hamsker-fever. "From the world of entertainment, comes, this shocking news," said the announcer. "Pop star/rapper Jason Hamsker, a Canadian citizen with a surprisingly urban style was shot dead last night." "Hamsker was in the projects on the east side of Detroit, shooting one of his gangster rap styled videos when he wandered off the set while on a break." "He decided to hold a conversation with a few of the locals, who reacted badly to his manner of dress and the way he spoke. Hamsker's body guards were beaten severely as well." I was shocked. I switched to a different channel. "The world mourns the loss of Jason Hamsker," said the announcer. Finally, on another channel I got a different slant. "...The suspect who faces life in prison gave an interview as the police took him in," said the announcer. The scene showed a black guy with long dreadlocks being escorted away in handcuffs by the police. A reporter stuck a microphone in his face and started asking him questions. "Remorse? Hell no, I don't feel any remorse. How the hell was I supposed to know who he was? He came down here with two big assed body guards walking around like he was Queen Elizabeth." Through the Lens "But he was from here," said the reporter. "He was from the hood. All of his songs said he was." "Oh shit lady, you must be crazy. He wasn't from here. He was just some crazy assed white boy makin' fun of us. So I capped his ass." "He was Jason Hamsker," said the reporter in tears. "Is that who that was?" said the man. "I jammed my gun up his ass and pulled the trigger until my finger got tired. Now that I know who he was, that makes a difference. Now I know remorse. Why, If I'd known it was Jason Hamsker. I wouldn't have used a handgun. I'd have jammed my shotgun up his ass. Have you ever heard any of his music? The boy sounds like..." The announcer came back on then. "Hamsker left surprisingly little to his family. It seems that Hamsker spent the majority of his money on low riding sweat pants and hockey jerseys. He had no money, at all. In fact, Hamsker was deeply in debt. The sheriff will be hosting an auction of Hamkser's possessions to pay for his funeral..." I knew then that I was totally fucked. * * * * * * Epilog Connie I was wiping down the tables in the diner I worked in. It was hard to wipe the fucking table because the towel I had was as dry as a bone. It was rush hour and I needed the table for a couple of guys who'd just come in. I was dead tired from being on my feet all day and the chance for some OT would really help my bottom line. Most of the money I made went to daycare for the baby and food for both of us. I'd moved into a smaller place that I could afford and was working on putting my life back together. I didn't watch or follow any sort of entertainment news because I was still getting over Rob and our divorce. It had been a year and I hadn't heard anything about him. I guess deep down in my heart I hoped that he'd get tired of Serena or vice versa and he'd come looking for me. Someone had turned the TV on and I looked up when I heard the guys in the diner all sigh. "God damn, that woman is beautiful," screamed one of the guys in the back. I didn't have the heart to tell them that my husband had once turned her down for me. Maybe it was vanity, but realizing that Rob had loved me and had just settled for her, made me happy. I listened to what the announcer was saying. "Victoria's Secret model and Sports Illustrated cover girl Serena Vascova announced her retirement today. The twenty four year old model is pregnant and about to marry her fiancé, famed photographer Robin Delgado. Vascova told reporters that she wouldn't miss her old life. All she ever wanted was to be a wife and a mother. Delgado responded by saying that Serena was the woman of his dreams and that the two of them would grow old together and their kids would be fat and happy...." I turned back to wiping the table and suddenly getting the rag wet wasn't a problem. The tears dripping from my eyes worked just fine. The end Through the Lens "Oh, wow! This is fantastic!" Danny is looking down at his birthday present; a brand new DSLR camera, fresh out of the box! Julia is sitting next to him, beaming after giving the perfect gift. Danny and Julia have been best friends for as long as either care to remember. They met when they were both in high school and Julia started dating Danny's friend. That relationship went on for a couple of years, but when it ended, Danny remained friends with Julia rather than her ex. People always speculated that they would inevitably hook up. They were both attractive people: Julia is 5'3" with long, brown hair, vibrant blue eyes, an easy smile and curves in all of the right places. Danny is 5'7", mixed race with a stocky build from weight lifting and rock climbing. They probably should have hooked up 100 times by now, but the timing just never worked out. They seem to constantly alternate being single or being in a relationship with someone else. On top of that, they haven't lived in the same area code for years. But whenever they see each other, everything goes back to how it was in high school. "You need to take the cap off and turn it on," instructs Julia. "Oh thanks, I'm glad I have you here to guide me through the technical stuff, Jules." Julia laughs, "Shut up, loser!" Danny starts running through the different modes and settings, occasionally pointing it at different things. They are in the basement of Danny's parents' house. Both he and Julia are home for the holidays and wouldn't miss one of the rare chances to hang out. Julia looks around, thinking of the countless hours she spent in this basement over the years. She has missed the large couches and thick carpeting. The sharp click of the camera shutter draws her attention. She turns to see Danny taking a photo of her. "Hey, you jerk, don't take a picture of me!" "Why not? I gotta take a picture of something. Might as well be your ugly mug." "My mug is quite nice, thank you." Danny would be inclined to agree, but he would never tell Julia that. As he examines the picture on the display, he cannot help but notice how attractive Julia is. Her ruby red lips with the corners of her mouth turned up in a sly smile, her tight t-shirt that brings out the contrast between her narrow waist and wider hips, and her tight jeans that ride just a little low, allowing a taunting view of the top of her underwear. G-string today, eh? Julia moves closer to see, "How does it look." "Meh," Danny responds while shrugging his shoulders. "I'll show you meh!" Julia punches Danny in the shoulder. "Simmer down, woman!" This just encourages Julia to attack more aggressively, pushing Danny over and jumping on his hip. Danny laughs and accepts his punishment. "Careful! This is a brand new camera!" "Well let me see the picture, you perv!" Julia takes the camera and looks at her picture on the display screen. "Ugh, I look terrible!" "No you don't." Danny knows she is probably fishing for compliments and he obliges. "You look great! Very Marilyn Monroe. Very seductive." "Oh really??" Julia hands the camera back to Danny and hops on the couch with her knees curled under her and her back turned slightly towards him. She bats her eyes and holds her finger to her lips in a mock-sensual pose. Danny laughs and raises the camera to his eye and starts taking pictures, rotating the camera, mimicking a photo shoot. "Yes, yes, make love to the camera, darling," he says in some faux-European accent. Julia tries to stifle a laugh as she continually changes poses. She holds her hair up and shoves her chest out, then she drops her head back and licks her lips, then she sits up on her knees and leans forward onto her elbows. Danny knows this is just a game, but he can't help but start feeling turned on by some of the poses. He notes to himself not to delete these photos later on. As she strikes another pose, Julia realizes her g-string has ridden up above the waistband of her pants. "Oh god, that is embarrassing." She starts to tuck it back in. "I wouldn't call it embarrassing. I was actually thinking it was looking pretty hot," says Danny. Julia hesitates for a moment. She has to admit, this focused attention she is getting from her friend is making her feel excited. Julia smiles and pulls her g-string a little higher out of her pants, making it more distinctive. She sees Danny smile behind the camera. As the game continues, Julia's poses start to get more provocative. She holds her tits in both hands, then she slaps her ass and runs her fingers between her legs. Danny is also getting more involved, making suggestions of what she should do next: "Raise you shirt a little to show some belly... what if you opened your legs a little wider...yes, lick your fingers like that." Both friends are getting noticeably heated. Julia starts breathing harder and she begins to feel hot in that basement. She knows Danny's parents are not home, but she wonders for the first time how long they will be out. "What if I take my shirt off?" suggests Julia. Danny already felt like he was getting away with something with these photos. He hesitates as he can see they are approaching that line between "just friends" and "something else." But he is too far gone in this little game of theirs. "Uh, yeah, I think that would look good." Julia grabs the bottom of her t-shirt and slowly pulls it up, over her head, revealing her flat stomach and white cotton bra. Her breasts are not enormous, but they are large enough to create the gentle, supple curve on her chest. She lets the shirt fall to the side. Danny seems frozen for a moment, mouth slightly open. He manages to recover enough to start taking photos again. Julia isn't sure about what she is doing, but that uncertainly translates to a nervous innocence in her face that only makes the photos look that much more erotic. The camera continues taking photos. Danny has been hooked by what he has seen so far. He can't help but want more. "Umm, what if you unbuttoned your jeans a bit. You know, sort of in a teasing way." Julia hesitates, but only for a moment. She lays back on the couch and reaches for her pants. She unbuttons her jeans and slowly pulls the zipper down. She then raises her hips and begins to slide her jeans down. Danny is shocked and thrilled. He starts to feel some pressure in his own jeans building. Julia pushes her jeans down to her ankles and kicks them off with her feet. She is lying back on the couch in her white bra and panties. With her knees bent, Danny can see the g-string emerge from between her thighs, offering just the minimum amount of coverage of her slit before it disappearing between her ass cheeks. Danny takes a deep breath. "How about if you turn over onto your stomach?" Julia complies. Her gorgeous, round ass is exposed as she lifts her hips off of the couch. She looks back at Danny with those stunning blue eyes, her hair falling down her shoulders and ending just above her lower back. Without any prompting, she reaches back and unclasps her bra. She slides it off and holds her tits tight with her arms. She sits up on the couch, her back still turned partially towards the camera. She is kneeling with her perfect ass resting on her heels. She is holding her tits, but Danny occasionally gets a peak of those pink nipples between her fingers. He starts to wonder about how much storage space could possibly be left on this camera! "You look amazing," Danny says, barely even blinking as he stares at Julia's supple body. Julia smiles and lays back with her head towards the camera. She tilts her head back so she can stare back at Danny. Having him stare at her nearly naked body with such obvious, primal hunger turns her on. She must have thought about this a hundred times over the years, but never considered it might actually happen. One hand drops from her chest and moves down her body. Her fingers slide under her tiny white panties to her pussy. She is soaking wet. She inserts a finger into her pussy, then another. She begins slowly finger fucking herself. Her breathing becomes labored as she gets more excited. Her body is writhing and shaking as she touches herself more vigorously, with more urgency. She is staring at the bulge in Danny's jeans, hoping for a chance to feel him. "I think these pictures could do with some male talent," she whispers. Danny walks towards her, the camera still in his hand but seemingly forgotten. Julia turns over onto her stomach, again revealing her juicy ass. As Danny gets closer, she reaches up and unbuckles his belt. She unzips his pants and pulls them down past his knees. Her face is level with the bulge in Danny's boxers. She leans forward, burying her nose into the boxers, smelling the musk of his cock. She is so turned on, she reaches up and yanks the boxers down in one quick motion. Danny's cock bounces free, grazing Julia's cheek. She looks up at her friend and opens her mouth to take his cock. Danny is mesmerized. In the back of his mind he is willing himself not to cum immediately, but seeing Julia's naked body in front of him while she sucks his cock is so incredible. She sticks her tongue out, slowly circling the head of his cock. She asks, "Don't you want to take more photos?" Danny remembers the camera and points it down at this beautiful woman licking his cock. He hits the shutter button, capturing the moment. The display screen lights up showing Julia's soft, red lips in a perfect circle, wrapped around the shaft of Danny's cock, her blue eyes gazing at the camera. She continues to suck and lick Danny's hard cock. Saliva drips from her chin. She begins taking him deeper in her mouth. She can feel his cock touching the back of her throat. She doesn't gag, no, she is an experienced cock-sucker. Her head bobs back and forth, jerking Danny's thick cock with her lips. Danny is starting to feel the tension of an orgasm. He pulls back from Julia with an audible slurp escaping her mouth. She looks at him like he just deprived her of something she wanted very badly. "It's my turn now, Jules." It only takes a moment, but Julia realizes what he means. She giggles as she lays back in the couch. Danny takes the rest of his clothes off and crawls on top of her. His face is level with her wet panties as his hands slide up the outside of her thighs. She shivers as he pulls her panties down past her ankles and tosses them on the floor. Danny opens her legs and lowers his face down into her dripping pussy. She yelps when he first kisses her swollen pussy lips. He then runs his tongue from the bottom of her slit slowly up to the top. Her body almost convulses when he finally makes contact with her sensitive clit. She brings her legs in so the back of her knees are resting on his bare back. Danny's begins probing her pussy with his tongue, swirling around her clit and penetrating her hole. Julia is moaning and writhing. "Don't stop, Danny. Please. Please keep eating my pussy." She reaches down and runs her fingers through his hair as he continues to suck on her clit. Julia can feel an orgasm coming on. She thinks of all the times she came while touching herself to thoughts of having Danny inside her. Now it was really happening! Her orgasm came crashing down, her body tensing as she screams, "OHHHH, YES DANNY! MAKE ME CUM!" Danny keeps eating her out until it is more than she can bear. She pushes his head away and turns onto her stomach to escape the constant orgasm. Danny is overcome with passion for Julia. He has wanted to be with her for years and now he can not contain his desire for her anymore. He crawls up her body, kissing her back and her neck. His lips are next to her ear when he whispers, "I want to fuck you, Jules." Julia is still gasping from her orgasm, but is desperate for more. She sees the camera out of the corner of her eye and gets an idea. "You know that thing has a movie mode." She looks over her shoulder and grins at him. Danny catches her drift and reaches for the camera. He turns the mode to shoot video and flips the screen up so they can see when it's pointed at them. He sets it down on the table next to the couch and hits REC. The display lights up with the two of them staring at the camera, naked, one on top of the other. Julia gets a sudden pleasurable shock as she thinks about making her first sex tape. Julia's legs open, letting Danny's hips sink between her thighs. His cock lines up with her pussy, feeling the warm wet of her cum mixed with his saliva. Danny leans forward just as Julia pushes back, causing his thick, hard cock to slide into her pussy, penetrating her deeply. Julia lets out a loud gasp, "Oh God, I've wanted you so bad for so long." "I've wanted you too, Julia. I've wanted to be inside of you so bad." Danny begins to fuck her, pushing deep into her swollen pussy. Julia is moaning, begging him not to stop. Her hands over her mouth to hold back the loudest screams. Danny reaches forward and grabs her wrists and pins them down, outstretched in front of her. Julia starts moaning and screaming even louder. She is so turned on by Danny taking control of her body, from being used so vigorously. She has dreamed of Danny simply taking her one day, and fucking her until she's numb. She pushes back to meet his thrusts, desperate for him to be deeper inside of her. Julia looks over at the camera and sees the image of herself moaning while her best friend holds her down and fucks her, pounding her soft, little cunt. It trigger another massive orgasm, and she lets out another incredible scream. Danny can feel Julia's pussy tighten around his cock as she cums. He is fucking her wildly, feeling his impending orgasm build up with every second. Soon he can feel the tingling in his balls. "I'm going to cum, Jules!" "Cum inside me, Danny. I want to feel your hot cum inside of me!" Moments later, Julia can feel her pussy fill with Danny's hot cum. She savors the feeling as Danny collapses on top of her. She can feel his sweat mixing with hers on her back. They are both heaving, out of breath. Danny's cock is getting soft, but he does not pull out yet. She reaches over and turns the camera off. They lay together like that for a while, not wanting it to end. Julia breaks the silence first, "Was it as good as you had hoped it would be?" "Better," Danny replies, "Miles and miles better." Julia looks over and sees the camera. "What did you think of your birthday present?" Danny laughs and says, "I can't wait to see what you'll get me for Christmas."