She laughed and it helped ease her fears. He sat on the bed again at her side. He touched the side of her face, caressed her cheekbone, pushed her bangs to the side and kissed her forehead.
"I'm so pleased you've agreed to this," he said. "Very pleased. It's been a long time."
"For me too."
"Then we'll both enjoy this."
"Although it's for you, isn't it?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you're paying for me. You can do what you want. It doesn't matter if I enjoy it or not."
"I do hope you'll enjoy it," he said. "But it's not a requirement. In general, however, your pleasure gives me pleasure. Not everything I do will be physically pleasurable for you, however. For me, yes, but not for you. That was the nature of our agreement, yes?"
"Yes," she said, nodding.
"There's still time to change your mind. I don't force women. It would be beneath even such a man as myself."
She shook her head. "I want to do it."
"Even if you don't enjoy the sex-and you will-you'll certainly enjoy the money."
"I plan to," she said. Not the money itself, but the freedom money would buy her.
He smiled his devil's grin, but didn't look as devilish as the first night. He was only a man after all. A handsome man, naked, and lovely to behold.
"Good. Very good. Now spread your legs for me. Very wide."
She pulled her knees up, sliding her feet along the sheets and then letting her legs fall open. Malcolm looked at her without touching, merely examining the goods he'd bought.
"You didn't have to remove your hair," he said. "Prostitutes shaved in the old days to remove lice. Luckily you don't seem to have that problem."
"I thought perhaps she was so young she didn't have pubic hair yet. Perhaps that was why the painting was so scandalous."
"The art world didn't care about young women selling their bodies. They only cared if someone dared to break their rules of composition, of acceptable subject matter. You could show a naked woman hiding her face or lying supine and limp as a wet rag. God forbid he paint a girl who dared them to look her in the eyes."
"They were fools," she said.
"They were scared," he countered. "A woman with power. A woman who owned her body and wasn't afraid to sell it. That painting is art because it terrified its first viewers. Art should be dangerous, you know. It should say something to society that society doesn't want to hear. Do you know what the opposite of art is? Propaganda. There's too much of that in the world. Not enough art. And certainly not enough of this..."
Malcolm dipped his head and pressed a kiss on her pubis over her clitoris. He exhaled warm air over her sensitive bare flesh and she shivered. He lifted his head but only to open her labia with his fingers. He wasn't gentle when he touched her, but not rough either. Perfunctory. Businesslike.
"Perfect," he said when he had her spread out for him. "A work of art." He dipped his head again and licked the hole he'd uncovered, even pushing his tongue against and into it. It wasn't exactly pleasurable but she found no reason to object. It felt so odd to be used in this manner. No dinner first. No tender kisses. No foreplay other than a discussion of art history, which, for a woman like her, was arousing in its own way.
His tongue sought and found her clitoris as he stretched out on the bed to give his full attention to arousing her. Her clitoris started to awaken as he lapped at it with long slow motions of his tongue. He circled it, sucked it lightly, and circled it again. The first quiet gasp of pleasure escaped Mona's lips. Malcolm said nothing about it but she sensed it pleased him. He'd paused when she'd done it and then licked her again in the same way that had pulled the sigh from her lips. With his fingertips he spread her open again and licked her inner labia, her folds, and the entrance of her body again. She wanted to touch his hair or his shoulders but wasn't sure if that was allowed. She gripped the sheets in her fingers instead.
"Delicious," Malcolm murmured and she felt the word as hot puffs of air against her clitoris. His tongue swirled around it again, making it swell, making it ache. She felt it throbbing against his lips. Then he touched it with his fingertips, putting pressure on it right where she needed it. His touch wasn't rough, but insistent, and the throbbing grew harder. It throbbed like a pulse point, pumping blood through her hips.
Again he turned his tongue on her, those long deep strokes right across and around the core of her pleasure. All sensation was concentrated in that tiny throbbing little organ. Every nerve was alive there, every muscle poised for release. She was so wet now-dripping-he could have put his cock into her with one brutal thrust and she could have and would have taken it all. He didn't penetrate her then, although in the haze of her arousal she could have sworn she'd begged him to.