Normally I share this space with several other student artists, including my fellow TAs in the department. However, lots of creative types tend to prefer evenings to mornings, and today, at this hour, the studio is all mine. My faded thrift-shop chambray shirt hangs on a nearby hook; I slip it on over my clothes and get to work.
I create etchings. Although there are several different techniques, and I’ve experimented with most of them, every method of etching has the same fundamental process. You always start with a metal plate; you coat that plate with a waxy, acid-resistant material; you carve the design or picture you want to make into the wax, all the way down to the metal; and then you pour the acid. The acid bites into the metal, cutting your lines into it permanently. Then, when you ink the plate, you reveal a pattern you can print over and over—each piece of art identical and yet genuine, never faded by repetition.
Today, I’m making prints. Although I’ve done several etchings as part of my graduate work, this one in particular is special to me—that image of a man’s hands cradling a dove. Every line actually looks precisely the way I envisioned it while I carved the wax—which you’d hope for every time, but that result is rarer than you think. The image also captures a theme I like to explore in my work: the juxtaposition of strength and fragility.
I remember Jonah gently brushing my hair back from my face before forcing me to deep-throat his cock. My fragility, his strength.
And yet there’s that hunted, haunted quality to him too—and strength within me, which Jonah must sense. He wouldn’t trust me to handle this fantasy otherwise.
His phone call last night tells me that my being okay with this is important to Jonah . . .
I pause. Inking while you’re distracted is a bad idea.
And Jonah Marks is one hell of a distraction.
Since I don’t have a class to teach today, I don’t go into the office until afternoon, and I don’t bother changing into one of my professional outfits. Instead I just ditch the chambray work shirt and head to campus wearing dark jeans and an apple-green wrap top. When I walk through the door, Kip is deep in phone conversation with someone at FedEx about a professor’s package gone astray, but he raises his eyebrows at me. This is Kip-speak for We have to talk.
I wonder what gossip he’s dug up this time? Maybe Keiko’s boyfriend finally proposed. He’s been hinting around about it long enough. Whatever it is, Kip will have all the juicy details.
No memos are waiting for me in my department box, so I plop down in my rickety desk chair and check my work e-mail. Amid the flurry of essays turned in at the last minute by undergrads and the usual campus announcements, one line jumps out immediately—because this note is from Jonah. I sit upright and click.
Vivienne—
I loved your suggestion last night. For hours I couldn’t think of anything else. Picturing it in every detail kept me awake half the night.
My toes curl inside my loafers, and I breathe out, hard. I think about Jonah lying in his bed, hand around his cock, already on fire to have me again, and the image makes me go warm all over.
Don’t worry—I’m going to surprise you. But we need to lay some ground rules. You should know that I’m not going to approach you in any situation where you would normally be worried about your safety. Nor will I attempt to break into your house. You should always be ready to protect yourself, and you won’t be if you assume anyone watching or following you would have to be me.
Jonah doesn’t know me well enough to know I’m always ready to protect myself. My guard is always up. Still, I like that he considers my safety even in the maddened heat of our mutual fever.
On some level, Jonah is always in control.
I promise the next time won’t be three whole weeks later. But that’s all you get to know—for now.
Jonah
P.S.—I don’t think anyone actually monitors campus e-mail but we might want to switch to our personal e-mail addresses. Just in case. Should’ve thought of this before.
His e-mail is listed just after. The postscript makes me smile. I hit reply.
Jonah—
Don’t worry. I’ll be ready for anything.
Vivienne
And I toss in my real e-mail in parentheses, after my name. No sooner do I click send than a new boldface entry shows up at the top of my inbox—but this one is from Kip.
V, my darling, duty calls. I’ll be in the bursar’s office the rest of the day—
What in the world could he need to do in the bursar’s office? No telling, but I have a feeling that by the end of the business day, yet another university official will owe Kip a favor.
—but we absolutely have to talk. Free after hours? If so, come to Sigmund’s around 5:30. First beer’s on me. See you there?
K