set about creating a scene that revealed the fragile core of a man’s sexuality, rather than his masochistic side. She wasn’t sure how it would turn out at all.
She made her hammock out of sheaths of ivory silk. Antonella’s partner for tonight is already lying within, face down, the contours of his naked body visible through the silk.
‘Oh, nice, Valentina . . . It matches you,’ Antonella whispers, indicating Valentina’s backless ivory all-in-one, tied with a single silk ribbon.
Valentina picks up her camera from where she left it earlier; the weight of it in her hands calms the frantic beat of her heart. She cannot help it but, every time she is in this room, she feels a little frightened. Maybe it’s looking at all the paraphernalia on the walls: the whips and riding crops, the chains and heavy, rough ropes.
‘Remember what I told you to do?’ she whispers to Antonella.
Her friend nods. ‘Sure, but I am free to go with my instincts, right?’
Valentina nods in resigned agreement. Antonella sometimes stretched the artistic limits of Valentina’s photography.
Antonella strides over to the bed and stands on top of it. She is a little shaky at first – her heels are incredibly high, after all – but she manages to regain her balance quite quickly. She is now standing over the man in the hammock, looking down at him. It is her current lover, Mikhail, another artist and experimental spirit, just like Antonella.
Valentina takes a shot of her just regarding him, contemplating what she is going to do. She says nothing yet, and Valentina prefers this. She finds most of the taunting phrases of the dominatrix are cliché and frankly not sexy at all.
Mikhail is face down in the hammock. Valentina watches Antonella as she strokes his naked back and bottom, her fingers pushing through his leg hair. She begins to massage his buttocks with her hands, pushing into his firm flesh and circling again and again. She takes her finger and draws it up and down between his two cheeks and then she pushes them apart, and begins to massage him more deeply inside. Valentina hears Mikhail groan, she guesses, in pleasure. Antonella stops abruptly.
‘Do you know what I am going to do to you?’ she hisses at Mikhail. She climbs off the bed and circles the room, inspecting some of the whips and crops hanging on the wall. Mikhail is straining to see her, but he is hardly able to move in the tight hammock. He doesn’t even acknowledge Valentina’s presence.
Antonella finds what she wants and climbs back on to the bed. She totters on the mattress, clutching in one of her hands a long rubber toy, with a curved end, and in the other, a tube of gel. She squirts some of the gel on to Mikhail, and begins to massage his buttocks while, very carefully, very slowly, she begins to insert the instrument into her lover. Mikhail inhales sharply and Valentina watches Antonella working away, bringing her lover closer and closer to the edge. It is beginning to affect her, watching this woman controlling this man, and Valentina can feel herself soften. She wonders if this is something she and Leonardo could try, and the thought surprises her since she has been thinking of no one but Theo since she found out about the exhibition in London.
Antonella has brought Mikhail as far as she wants to, and she removes the plug, leaving him begging for more. She bends down and kisses him on the lips.
‘Oh, no, my sweet,’ she says to him. ‘You have to watch me now.’
Antonella begins to pull at the silk hammock and, just as Valentina planned, the sheaths of material part so that she is able to pull his nipples free, pinching each one with her long nails, before freeing his cock. It is hard and ready for her, and she bends down and presses her lips to it as Mikhail shudders.
Antonella lets go of him and drops to her knees. She crawls under him and lies on her back on the bed right beneath him. The hammock is slung low and he is so close to her,