"You're My Venus" Melissa stepped from the checkered cab, jingling the tangle of pearls at her throat slightly. A quick glance showed a neighborhood with attention to detail. The curb granite and evenly cut, with gas lamps precisely placed. She turned to pay the driver, rounding up to twenty dollars and waving slightly as it pulled away. Perhaps another day it'd be the same cab if so, the better to tip and wave. "No gifts," said the invitation, "Bring only your accentuated self." She paused at the dark wooden entry, its door invitingly ajar. She spared a glance at her compact to check hair and gather strength. "You are art," she thought, "art in search of an audience." Lingering in the shadow, a shape checked one fingernail, then another. It watched Melissa stop and fuss with one blonde curl, twisting it tightly across soft white fingers that shone in the gaslight. Her hips filled the black cocktail dress perfectly, starting an avalanche of glossy stocking just above the knee. A winsome face complimented by lips of Coppertone bronze and obsidian for each ear. After she vanished upstairs, the figure counted another dozen stars before mounting the steps to follow. Well-attended but subdued, thought Melissa after circling the first two rooms. She shared a few welcome nods and slight smiles with people already in conversation, but recognized no one. As a client invitation, she knew, the odds were against it. Pleasantly unexpected encounters supplied an anchor, though, and a reason to stay beyond business affairs. "Melissa, it is?" A light squeeze, just at the collarbone, halted her next to the bar. "Melissa Baxter?" The squeeze's voice, even and good humored, reminded her of mojitos. She started to turn, but an index finger at her cheek checked her. "Mmm, not yet. Guess first. First hint: ping-pong balls." Mojitos and ping-ping balls, she thought. Ping-pong balls and mojitos. "Roberto!" A Fourth of July party flashed by, an awful affair of bitter beer and boorish art dealers. One swarthy pop art collector, however, had a joke about a father, a son, and ping pong balls. After the first mojito, the joke was funny. After the second, it was befuddling. After the fifth she'd forgotten everything else but the joke. "Mm-hm," said the voice, its face now before her. "Well done and what brings you to this soiree of the almost-suave and questionably shaven?" His smile tilted disarmingly to one side, but the intensity of his eyes made her stomach dance. Now she remembered the reason for all those mojitos. Roberto slipped his jacket onto a chair and leaned close to the bar. "See anyone else you know?" He looked briefly across the room before lapsing to a study of the sweat on his pint glass. "Not yet," said Melissa. "You?" "No," he answered. "This is the sort of party where it's better to be unknown." He squeezed her shoulder again. "But come with me." They slipped between waiters with dueling hors-devours trays. Each room felt refined by different standards. Perhaps, Melissa thought, by artistic periods? "Now here we are," said Roberto, penetrating a knot of people clustered at one doorway. "My kind of place at last." Melissa stepped to follow, shouldering her way past a couple of indeterminate gender and age. The new room was eclectic to say the least, with garish greens and manic slogans papering the ceiling. Pop art, through and through. "Roberto, I don't know about this," said Melissa. Two silk-screened, gun-fighting Elvises, a Warhol signature piece, faced off from opposite walls. The air was ripe with expectant echoes of late 60s pop. She felt like asking for a helmet. "It's all art, you know," said Roberto, straddling a chair-sized ladies heel. "But I'll tell you a secret." He patted the matching heel, both dotted with bright pink stars. She sat. "You're art, too," he said, his dark eyes steady and serious. "Perhaps you most of all." Melissa's stomach leapt. There was no mojito big enough to handle this, she thought. The mint leaf market wouldn't survive. The stroke of a mantle clock pierced the surrounding din. Midnight already, she wondered. Conversations fell silent around them as a waiter appeared at the door bearing a plate of cordials. The heat of so many attendees made the cool chocolate glisten with anticipation. As the waiter passed, each hand select one, with none refusing and a precisely empty plate after all were served. "Brilliant stuff," said Roberto. Melissa worked her tongue across and around the darkness as the cocoa yielded its confection's soul. The sugar trickled down her throat, bonding warmly with her earlier drink. "So have you been to one of these parties before? With the cordials, I mean?" Roberto worked his from side-to-side with seeming impatience. "I've had cordials at a party, sure." "But these cordials?" Was Roberto implying a paragon of cordials? Chocolate with no equal? They were excellent, but that seemed extreme. Melissa shook her head. "A joke, then," he said. "Something tawdrier than ping-pong balls, at least for the average imagination. We are friends, yes?" "Party acquaintances," Melissa answered, sniffing slightly. She knew, though, that social structures of parties were entirely separate from the routine definitions that was the entire point. "A rookie lumberjack reports for his first day in the camp. The old hands show him around, set him up with a bunk, and make him feel welcome. Then one of them says, 'we know it gets lonely here sometimes, so we've got this.' He takes the young man outside, where a barrel sits next to the sawmill. 'When you get a hankering, just put yourself in here, see.' The old guy winks, slaps his shoulder, and walks away. The young guy thinks, okay, what the hell. He unzips his pants and puts it in the bung of the barrel. Before he knows it, this pair of lips takes him in and works him to heaven and back, finally leaving him panting and barely able to stand." Melissa murmurs slightly around her cordial, which is leaking fiercely now. Even for party acquaintances, the timing might be too much. Roberto pushes on, having finished his own cordial. "So the kid goes back inside and says, 'That was amazing? You guys get that anytime you want?' The old-timer says, 'Well, you can get that any time Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday.' The kid thinks a minute, then asks, 'What do you do on Thursday?' The old guy winks again and says, 'That's your day in the barrel!'" Roberto flashed another tilted grin, hints of chocolate visible in the dim light. Had they just dimmed them or was that her imagination? Melissa laughed in spite of herself. She'd heard the punch line before, but never the whole joke. A drip of cordial juice escaped the corner of her mouth. She let it linger a moment before touching it away with a fingertip. "You're a mess with those jokes, Roberto." The lights were definitely dimmer now. "Do they even have mojitos here to save me from you?" Melissa worked the last of the cordial's sticky center with her tongue. It didn't give like a cherry, though this was hard. She fished it out and held it up. It blinked red between her fingers like a clown nose. Each eye in the room turned toward, if only sidelong. "Well, then," said Roberto, clapping his hands once. "It must be Thursday." -- The sensation returned to Melissa's fingers first. They felt like Fourth of July sparklers dancing against her mental sky, a handful of tingling stars at arm's length. It was dark, but she felt edges of a soft cloth on her cheeks and hair. From somewhere, a silky breeze kissed her torso, which responded in goose bumps. This nakedness surprised her, even as she knew the darkness came from a blindfold. Bits of light leaked in at the corners and soft sounds worked into her ears. She tried to twist her head. "Shhhh," said a voice. A finger stopped against her jawbone and radiated warmth. Roberto, she thought, but didn't know what to make of it. "It's me, you know," said the voice. "But please don't move. You are our Venus now, a statue of grace." She didn't respond, but located her fingers at last. They feathered against her shoulder blades, right hand against left shoulder and vice versa. She couldn't feel them from the inside, she realized, but only against what they touched. "I can't feel my arms," she whispered. "What is this?" "It is natural," Robert said, "since the Venus has none. But fear not! Yours remain sound and healthy, if restricted." She felt the finger his finger like fire along her neck, tracing a path over her shoulder and to her back. Then something tugged slightly and faint echoes of feeling reached her. "It's a bind for them, you see." Again the tug. His voice became a conspiratorial whisper. "But feel the benefit." She felt a splatter of heat on her right shoulder, like molten wax. It slipped along the collarbone, collecting there before descending between her breasts. The goose bumps shivered and she could almost feel each downy hair sing with the contact. She shuddered abruptly and half in disbelief at the intensity. "It's only water!" Roberto sounded slightly surprised. "I only warm you a little to see how it wakens your body to touch." Melissa strained against the pinion as more liquid flame could it be just water? slipped across her left shoulder. A cold draught after a summer's day was less electric than this wet caress. A squeeze on her nape, then she felt Roberto's absence. There was a rustle around her and low conversation. The timbre was the same as the party. Perhaps the same room of the cordials and gunfighter Elvises? She thought of Elvis' sultry stare and twitching hips and imagined them shooting it out while she watched, tingling and helpless to resist the victor. She jumped at a sudden wetness along her right breast. It left a streak of ecstasy curving under and around the nipple. She held for a moment, then leaned forward as it departed, chasing the feeling. "Stay," said a new voice and fingertips checked her. "Venus does not move. She is still, like the statue. Still, or she is not painted." The finger remained and the wetness returned, perfectly like the softest tongue. Melissa felt consumed, a succulent main course for royalty. She clenched her shoulders together, trying to get more of the brush (or tongue) onto her skin and nipples. A hand grasped her right breast completely and pinched the nipple, twisting slightly. She relaxed her shoulders and let out a soft moan. The hand pulled tighter, holding her firmly. It's the sweat of Elvis, the gunfighter, now, this wet trail down her side and onto her legs. The wilting Western sun made hands like this, calloused and rough. Hands with a need for softness and relief. She was here for this, enclosing his desire in hers. Other tongues joined the first, each servicing a distinct part of her nakedness. Flames of sensation blazed from her throat to her toes. Was it six now? Ten? The gunfighter's friends and bandits had arrived, filling her mind with visions of chaps and lassos, tired from roping but itching to ride once more before the sunset. One delicate tip flicked at her sex, adding its own sweat and heat to hers. It swept in circles above and below. She would taste of tobacco and dust when this was over, be a part of each man who had the strength. The timelessness of tongues somehow ended, each flickering away gently. Finally, even the hand released and retired, leaving her feeling sticky and congealing but nothing close to spent. She swayed her head left and right, seeking contact or at least a vision of them departing. The blindfold yielded a haze of light, but no more. "It's me again," said a voice, Roberto. He was close to her right ear and smelled nothing of tobacco. "You are a wonder, a revelation. Venus de Milo is too few words for it." Somewhere, a clock struck once. The murmurs stopped and she remembered. Twelve o'clock. The cordials. Elvis slipped back to the wall and holstered his gun. "Roberto," she said quietly. "What happens now?" "People see you as you are. The art inside is now outside for the pleasure of all. Indeed, people spend too little time looking for the art in others. Roberto did not say it first, but it remains true." They waited in silence for a time. She sensed the people around them, watching Venus together. After another minute, two hands lightly guided her backwards. A drop to the ground, carefully arrested, betrayed that she'd been on a pedestal. The light whispers of Roberto prompted her forward, past people who pressed to the side and held their breath as she passed. She passed through two or three rooms and a door closed behind her. Roberto was there, she felt, and then in one motion her blindfold was gone. Simultaneously, mist filled the room with a rush the sound of a waterfall for two. One wall of the mist room was glass, letting moonbeams in to join them. Roberto's eyes fixed the two of them, he once again her anchor. The tongues that had treated and used her were truly brushes, she realized. Flakes and drips of color ran from her skin to the floor in the mist. Her arms were free, loosed in the walk. She reached to Roberto, who stood still and mysterious against one wall. "You were Venus," he said. "But they made you. Come be Venus again, if you choose it." She paused and looked into his depths. He stood, naked and flaccid, aware of himself but undisturbed. Shoulders in classic proportion, head at a slight angle. She in turn knew him. "Raise your left hand," Melissa said. "Bring it to your shoulder and be David, my king." Eyes fixed on Melissa and barely blinking against the mist, Roberto did so. The mist licked hotly at them, smelling slightly of sulfur. She stepped to him, pulling her arms behind her. Their nipples brushed and prickled stiffly, shooting off fireworks between her legs. She twisted for him, breasts swaying nothing like granite. Roberto parted his lips and pushed his hips back against the wall. She straddled him, pressing against the wetness of the mist. Roberto grew directly into her. No thrust, just the measured filling and pulsing of his man and maidenhood joining. She held her breath and her eyes widened with the invasion. They fluctuated across moments, first stoic art, then models taking advantage of their nudity and each other. She covered him with running paint. The sweat of lovers, itself made naked and aware. He filled her to the limit, tensing his legs and torso against the rippling of her cunt around him. "Venus," he said, "Close to me now." He squeezed up to her, the full pleasure rising between them. She tried to give it back to him and pulsed back again and again. He was thrusting now, pushing up with complete effort. His eyes remained deep and fixed. Only the crinkled edges betrayed his need. Melissa was nearly lost in the slapping and spray of the mist. They were every model and artist now, moving from sex to posing, then stopping one for the other. She carved herself with Roberto's cock, the granite for both of them. When he exploded and gasped to her, she clenched her arms every tighter, turning him into twenty lashing tongues and a dozen cowboys, rough and fast. They waited together for a minute or more, then Roberto reached to her with David's right hand, finally breaking the illusion. He squeezed her nape gently and smiled. Without a sound, he slipped from the room and closed the door behind him. Melissa remained alone with the misty and moonlight. When she too left the tiny room, she found her clothes neatly folded on a small bench outside. She thoroughly dried and comforted herself with the terry cloth towel. She stepped into the stockings and wriggled the dress comfortably around her hips once more. Every motion was artful, she thought. When performing the last step, however fastening her scarf there was no familiar black ring and pin. In its place, sat a small jade band. Within the band, a miniature but perfect rendition of Venus, placed to catch the clasp in its perfect upper arms. Melissa closed it with satisfaction and made her way to the stairs. There her checkered cab waited, the driver waving as she approached.