Chapter 2: Captured on Canvas
Lady Petunia Goldwaith was learning that kindness was its own reward.
She'd spared no expense making the transport box comfortable for whatever reluctant guests, prospective chambermaids (and occasional random victims plucked off the streets) she carried back to Willie Hall. Padded, well ventilated, its straps wide and soft, it permitted comfortable captivity.
That she, herself, now lay in its coffin-like interior, the plush leather warm against her scantily-clad body, the wide straps snug and complete showed her how kindness repayed itself. Rocking in the gentle motion as the lorry transporting her rocked its way down narrow London streets, she could only wonder what awaited her.
She was to be painted by Cordefriseur, the renown French painter. The finished product would be hung in the National Gallery. The fact that Livy Stone had garbed her in a green dress which left little to smutty, leering imagination didn't help. Petunia would have pouted in indignation (if only because it was expected) but the ballgag sealing her full, scarlet lips prevented any such projections.
Eventually Petunia felt the vehicle stop, the mutter of instructions, the sway as her box was carried across the crowded sidewalk. It didn't seem odd at all that passersbys took no notice of a woman-shaped box, one with vents, latches, and clear instructions to "handle with care - sexual contents" and "this end up (for now)" printed across its flanks. This was post-Gai-Shift London. It was likely that a third of the rolling-suitcases in Victoria and Piccadilly Stations contained disheveled women, stripped and bound, blindfolded and gagged. With rolled carpets in the back of moving vans, the odds were even higher.
A thump beneath her back. The box had been placed on the floor. A clatter from the side latches.
She blinked at the lid swung up. Two red-headed Irish navvy-ettes smiled down at her, Livy Stone just behind them, her narrow face pinched in concern. Next to her stood a smilingly confident woman with luxurious brown hair and espresso eyes, comfortably if immodestly clothed in a red slip.
The workerwomen unbuckled Petunia from her case. She reached back and removed her own gag, producing a tiny uncorking sound, careful so as not to smudge her glisteningly painted lips. She looked up to see the brown-haired Frenchwoman offering her a hand. She allowed herself to be drawn shakily to her teetering sandals.
Without seeming effort, almost as if they were dancing, the continental woman spun her around, lifting Petunia's arm just high enough behind her back to keep her honest. In slightly-accented English she noted, "My name is Marguerite. I can handle our subject from here. Return tomorrow. We will return her to her box when we are fin."
"Livy," Petunia managed, winching at the firmness of Marguerite's grip.
"It is the Queen's wish, Petunia," her school-chum replied, her icy eyes thawing. "Be brave."
The Royal Scientist could offer no resistance as she was marched up the long winding stairs, upwards, upwards. The gloom seemed to magnify as they ascended. On the walls, Petunia could see Cordefriseur's other works, woman bound, woman displayed, women poised. In spite of her wrenched arm and the grim (and humiliating) fate awaiting her, she still found herself growing aroused. Petunia was Petunia, after all.
Three floors up there was a final flight, narrow and new. Petunia remembered reading that Cordefriseur had ordered a garret constructed atop this conservative apartment building. No French painter would work in any other environment.
"Up you go," Marguerite prompted, forcing Petunia's higher-than-high heels to clomp up the final steps. The darkness fell over her like a curtain.
The garret was what she'd expected, low sloping ceilings, artfully cracked plaster, erotic etchings of tightly-trussed women adorning the walls. In the center of the room, in the arch of a wizened candle's cast, stood a heavy bamboo chair as stiff and uncomfortable as a matron. Ropes lay in orderly readiness over its high back.
"A great lady such as yourself must be prepared," Petunia's captor told her as she lowered her charge's hand yet pulled its twin behind her back, joining them. Regardless of the situation, Petunia's eyes grew lazy in subtle bliss as ropes slipped around her wrists, bundling them up in orderly imprisonment. It felt so nice. She sighed in contentment as the brown-haired woman's fingers worked the knot firmly into place.
While Petunia was growing intimate with her bound wrists, her keeper fetched a saucy little hat, popping it into place. "It looks good on you. Now, come, please, sit sit." Marguerite forced her into the seat. But she was not permitted to sit conventionally. Petunia's captor bruskly took hold of her shapely legs and rotated her in her seat, shifting her into a firewoman-carry position over the armrests. The helpless noblewoman could only watch as her Gallic dominator lifted one of Petunia's legs and tossed it saucily over the other, as if this had been the victim's idea from the start. Then came the ropes, tight around ankles and knees, that locked this laissez-faire pose down. Petunia managed a final unrestricted breath before her captor locked down her forearms and breasts with tight loops that immodestly junctured in the hot concavity between her heated breasts.
She looked up in joy at the woman who tied her so well and so tightly but her studious face was all but lost in the spill of her chataigne hair. "You're very good at this," she sighed, her head lazily tipping back, her blond curls spilling over her daringly-exposed shoulders.
"I should be," Marguerite explained, her expressive brown eyes flickering in the candlelight. "I tie all of Cordefriseur's woman. Furthermore, I am his handler. I must keep him on a short lead lest some other woman kidnaps him."
Petunia nodded. "Yes, good idea. In England, bondage is nine-tenths of possession."
"Oui. When he is not painting, he is mine."
Petunia nodded, at a loss for words, not because the some new-found tact but because the coils around her tightened in her excitement.
"Oh dear, that's tight."
"I could make it tighter if mademoiselle should wish."
Petunia was rolling in her bondage now, exploring it, finding no escape. It was tight, so very tight. She couldn't move and there was a deep carnal glow from that. She was this woman's prisoner, no questions asked.
It was then she realized they were not alone.
In the corner of the room stood an easel, beyond which stood a shadowy figure, his barely-perceived eyes gleaming.
"Perfect, Marguerite," he said as he mixed his paints. "You have done well."
Standing close to Petunia's head, her hand warm on the scientist's shoulder, the woman nodded at the praise.
A pause as paint was quietly mixed into vibrancy. His voice again. "So, Lady Goldwaith, are you ready for your sitting?"
"What if I am not?" Ever impish, Petunia could not resist her playful nature. "What if don't sit still and make faces?"
Marguerite leaned close, her slight perfume swimming around the locked down woman, her breath hot on her shell-like ear. "I could make things difficult for you, mademoiselle. Small whips can be employed where their effects will not show. Clips can be attached where they are not visible. Long hours can be made to pass. Would mademoiselle enjoy this?"
Petunia tried to say something but her mouth was too dry.
"You will sit still for us, no?"
Petunia nodded. She would.
"Very good," the woman said. An instant later a wide cotton gag was thrown across the captive's lips, sealing in any protest. While Petunia came to terms with this, while she pulled meekly at her ropes, Cordefriseur look over the top of his easel, his eyes critical. Then a nod.
"She is positioned to perfection. We are nearly ready. Marguerite, would you be so good as to... 'fluff her up'?"
Petunia's eyes flashed open. "Ummph?"
"Oui."
The long arms reached down around her, slipping down over her shoulders, sliding down to coax her helpless body. Marguerite was all around her now, their cheeks touching as brown eyes reviewed the progression of her roaming hands. In her ropes, in her chair, Petunia could only shudder. It was as bad as what those Amazons had done to her, and those wicked African girls. She grunted and gasped, unable to move, to shield, or even to assist. She was putty in Marguerite's hands, hot, shapely, agitated putty.
From his place behind the canvas, Cordefriseur watched this preparation with open admiration for the beauty of the moment (or something somewhat like that). Unconsciously his paints were forgotten, his brush raised, his eyes wide.
"Darling," Marguerite asked sweetly, "is this enough agitation?"
The famous painter remembered to nod. "Um, yes, yes. That will do." He busied himself adding a touch more red to the flesh-tone he'd prepared, to account for recent changes in his model. Meanwhile Marguerite slipped away from the shivering, lust-checked Petunia, her hand trailing off the fevered bare shoulder.
"Look beautiful for him," she said as she moved clear, both commandment and request.
Petunia blinked, looked up, found the artist's sharp eyes on her. Like a mouse before a cobra, she froze before his intensity, locked up now in more than ropes. She couldn't move as his brush began to work, the pungent scent of paint floating in the air, the hiss of the bristles along the canvas's skin.
In her lap, a near-orgasm churned.
It was like that time Livy had taken her, tying her up in a wicked hogtie, laying her out in the center of her bed in the sauciest of lingerie. Gagged and bundled and indecent, Petunia had waited for the tongue and fingers she'd craved. But then Livy, with her cool expression and strict air, had set of a camera tripod and begun to work the focus.
"Mmmfh! Mmmfh!" Petunia had protested. This was a moment for the two of them, a moment in time, not a moment preserved. Petunia had had to buy back enough errant photographs across her checkered life to be comfortable with this.
"Just for me, my sweet," Livy had told her as her cool eye settled behind the infernal device's sights. "Just for my own scrapbook, to savor on long cold evenings when we are apart."
Petunia was indignant, of course, but there was nothing she could do as her friend shot plate after plate of her, positioning her this way and that for best effect.
There was something degrading about being so used, having one's image stolen. Bound and flustered, she'd steamed in her ropes. Livy had made it up to her, of course. She'd kept her prisoner three days while she had, but she'd eventually made it up to her.
And when Petunia had finally seen the prints, she asked for a copy for her own scrapbook.
This was much like that. Positioned and projected, there was nothing she could do as this artist captured her image with swirling acrylic strokes and sensuous highlighting. He watched her with basilisk eyes, staring hard, sucking in her restricted beauty. His eyes tracked her curves, her shape, the dark drop between her breasts, the steamy place deep within the folds of her dress. He followed the circular grip of the ropes Marguerite had lain, following the sexual logic of each binding, the artistic measure of each knot.
From these eyes, down his hands, flowed his art. The brush flickered and darted, recreating the beauty before him, capturing what was there and exemplifying what it all meant, making her even more tied, more trapped, and more beautiful that she was in real life. Marguerite watched the image take shape and from her expression Petunia could see the smoldering image hidden from her.
The artist's eyes continued their stare, the brush its dance, magnifying her lines, raising her nipples, casting her trembling crotch into shimmering heat. From Petunia's perspective it was as if she was bound across his easel, blushingly wide, and these same brushes where bringing color and life to her quaking body. Every sweep made her gasp. Every jot made her grunt. The ropes creaked as she tried to throw herself at him but Marguerite's knots were placed too well. Petunia was his 2D slave, captured in a moment of extended bliss and cruel incarceration. She grunted and twisted but it went on and on.
He painted long into the night.
Just before dawn Cordefriseur stood and stretched, the portrait done. On the canvas Petunia, alluring and helpless, lay sharp in her ropes, the viewer's captive love slave. In the real world his model reposed in ruins, sweaty, worn, shuddering as follow-up orgasms rolled through her body like thunder in the wake of a storm.
Marguerite touched his arm, ropes in her hands. "You have done well. But now it is time for you to be put to bed. And rewarded."
"And her?" He jutted his chin towards his chair-locked subject for he no longer had arms to gesture with.
"After you are situated, I'll put her into her box. I'll leave the front door open so her friend can retrieve her." Brown eyes danced. "No need for us to be interrupted."
=< O >=
Chief Officer Constance Drummand halted her policewomen before the National Gallery, her sharp blue eyes taking in the milling female rioters.
"Damn that Goldwaith painting!" she shouted to Samantha, her second in command. "It's got them all in hysterics!"
"Orders?" her blonde second asked, checking her slip-knotted lines. The other women officers looked to their chief. Lassos deployed at the ready.
"Nothing fancy! Just into them like a manni thrust! Wrists for now, ankles and ballgags when there's time! Once we get everyone bound down and laid out, we'll sort the ringleaders from the hangers on. Ringleaders go into custody and likely the Pit. Everyone else, twenty-five cracks across the bottom with your hand-paddles followed by a stern warning."
"Can we grope them?" someone called, half-joking.
"Don't let me see you do it. And give them a pinch for me. Ladies! Forward!"
click for larger image The End Special thanks to Cordefr for the fantastic art that made this story possible. image by Cordefr http://cordefr.deviantart.com/
26.11.11