Revisiting my old novels and novellas for my re-vamped website reminded me how much I loved my story Bear Skin, which is part of my Secret Agenda (you can look that up on the website too). It's a retelling of the fairy story "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" - and fairy stories are on my mind at the moment too, since I will be talking about them at Eroticon!
Three writers from Black Lace show you there's nothing childish about fairy tales. In Bear Skin Hazel is whisked away from her tedious job and humdrum life by the mysterious bear Arailt, to be his lover. The only problem is there is more to Arailt than meets the eye - much more!
The East Wind lived right on the edge of London in a penthouse flat overlooking marshy country bleak with driven snow. Three hundred and sixty degrees of curved glass gave him wonderful light, even on a winter’s dawn. He opened the door with a camera in his hand.
‘This is Hazel,’ said Skuld, and walked away.
‘You have an interesting face,’ said the East Wind. ‘May I take some pictures?’ His own face was craggy and hawkish with a long nose and thick brows, and he was casually dressed in grey T-shirt and trousers with designer logos.
‘I’m looking for the house East of the Sun and West of the Moon,’ I gasped.
‘I know. Why?’
I was momentarily confused. ‘There’s a man – Arailt-’
‘I know that. Why are you trying to get to him?’
I bit my lip. His scrutiny was cold but intense. ‘It’s my fault that he’s held there. I’m to blame.’ I shuffled my feet. ‘That’s what everyone thinks, anyway.’
‘Really? Does Arailt blame you too?’
I thought about the flare of his anger, as bright as a match-strike in that darkened bedroom and then extinguished almost as quickly - because in his heart of hearts he’d never expected me to succeed.
‘No,’ I said, feeling sick. Arailt’s forgiveness was as unbearable as everyone else’s condemnation. He’d expected so very little of me.
‘Fascinating.’ The East Wind lifted his camera to his eye and clicked.
‘Will you take me?’ I asked, my mouth dry.
‘I can’t. I don’t go that way. But … if you’ll let me take some pictures of you I’ll ask my brother the West Wind. He might be able to carry you there.’
I blinked.
‘Will you?’ He steered me gently to face the inner walls of his apartment. They were covered in huge blown-up photographs of women. The pictures were all monochrome and to my untrained eye extremely beautiful. I was certain from the style that he was the one who’d taken the portrait of the Queen of Shadows. They were also, despite their tasteful artiness – a curved shoulder here, a flexed back there, the stark black lines of a leather bodice on pale skin – unmistakably themed around bondage and fetishwear.
‘Like that? Do you … put them on exhibit? To the public?’
‘Of course.’
As if I’d not been censured and disparaged enough. I thought of Arailt and took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’
He took me through to his studio, which was set up with lights and back-cloths and, in one corner, a computer and a huge flat screen. Displayed on it right then was the picture he’d just taken of my face, the doubt and dismay etched around my eyes for all to see. It’s not easy to confront your own face on that scale. ‘Ignore the screen,’ he advised me: ‘Just pay attention to me. Now, if you’d care to undress…’
He took photos swiftly and casually while I undressed, as if to get me used to the camera’s intrusive eye and the pageant of images it produced. Then he got out a roll of black tape and took pictures of my bound wrists and ankles. The tape wasn’t sticky on my skin but it clung to itself securely when wound multiple times. He set me in various poses, seated and then lying down. The creamy texture of my skin filled the screen. He blew on my nipples to bring them erect and the resulting close-shot, with those tight areolae perfectly rendered, surprised even me with its vulnerable beauty. He took pictures of my backside and my spread thighs and my flushed face. I couldn’t stop blushing. He took pictures with and without flash, fiddling with the camera settings, absorbed in the technicalities of lighting. I found his abstraction both comforting and provoking: a man shouldn’t be able to see a woman’s pussy peeking between the pale curves of her thighs like that without being moved.
He taped my wrists to my ankles so that I was nearly immobile and took shots of my raised arse. The flash went off like a rain of warm kisses on my sex. I wriggled, forgetting my anxieties. He fetched something from his desk. ‘Do you mind?’
It was a bullet-shaped object about the size of my thumb, the colour of haematite. I stared.
‘It’ll take your mind off any discomfort,’ he said with a smile, slipping it between my sex-lips. I was moist to his touch. The bullet came with a remote-control; when he thumbed the button it came to life within me with a low purr, sending its vibrations right through me. I gave a little gasp.
‘Too intense?’ he whispered. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
He laid me on my side and then on my back for more photos, shooting several directly up between my quivering thighs. The vibrator hummed, provoking a thousand tiny electric shocks to my nerve-endings. My breathing was coming in a new rhythm. I twisted against my bonds, finding them frustrating, shifting my pelvis. The East Wind took shot after shot; hundreds by now, maybe into the thousands. He caught my flushed face and my parted lips and my dilated pupils. He caught the sheen on my breastbone and the first glisten of escaping moisture between my plump labia. He explored my slit with his fingers and captured the expression on my face, shooting one-handed, awkwardly, but still snatching each tiny moment from oblivion.
‘Oh God,’ I whispered, my eyes full of terrible, wonderful images of my own helpless surrender to desire. ‘I’m going to come. Please. Please. Let me.’
‘Hold on a little longer,’ he whispered, opening his own trousers and releasing a stubby, immensely thick erection. He knelt over me to jerk off. It was the only time in the session that he wasn’t able to take pictures as he needed both hands; one to cup his big balls and one to jack his tool. His splashes of hot, sticky semen fell copiously on my belly and tits and open lips. And as soon as he’d done he snatched up the camera again and shot like he was thrusting into me. One finger sought my sex and stirred my clit and I arched and spat and came shamelessly under the repeated thud of the flash, soaking up the light, letting him see everything and capture everything, for all time.
As I showered and dressed he sifted through the photos on the computer. ‘That one, I think,’ he said at last, putting it up full-sized on the screen. I looked at the low-angle shot. My right breast dominated the foreground, with my partially-occluded face behind. There were pearly globs of jism melting on my nipple and the curve of my breast, but it was the expression in my eyes that really caught me; that expression of terrible need and sorrow that was almost agony - and yet somehow perfect. It was like looking into my naked soul and seeing everything that I felt for Arailt. I looked beautiful.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s the one.’
