The Plume: The Second Anthology (13 page)

The Plume: Bound By Desire

Photography by Rex

Sculpture by Louise Richards

Eye of the Storm Gallery

9 PM to Midnight

Fetish Attire Only

Rex fingered the invitation yet again, unable
to stop looking at his name.

His own show.

Josh, the owner of the Eye of the Storm
Gallery, had spared no expense in having the invitations printed.
They were on thick creamy paper with gold metallic type. A gold
peacock feather floated above the type, and a black velvet domino
mask - the bestselling item of the Plume’s extensive array of
branded merchandise - was included with the invitation. The mask
was embroidered with that same gold feather. The invitation and
mask had been delivered in black envelopes lined with gold foil. It
was an invitation that wouldn’t be overlooked - and one that many
people might keep.

Rex knew he would save his forever.

The show was only days away and Rex had
nervous jitters. It wasn’t like him to be uncertain, but it also
wasn’t like him to make a public display of anything. People would
look at his photographs, then come to meet the artist, shake his
hand, talk about his images. They would know that he had been
inside the Plume, maybe even guess that he was one of the partners.
Rex felt like all the secrets he’d defended forever were going to
spread out before a million people, and he couldn’t be at ease with
that.

Plus critics would assess his work, for the
first time in a long time. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if the
reviews of the show were bad - or worse, mediocre.

He felt on the cusp of a big change,
unwilling to step forward yet unable to step back. He would be
pushed over that threshold soon, whether he’d made his peace with
it or not. Everything was signed and arranged.

Rex put the invitation back in the envelope
and placed it carefully in the drawer in his desk in the Plume’s
office. He ran a hand over his head, unable to figure out how to
calm himself down. He’d chosen all the images. He’d had the members
in the photographs sign the additional legal released supplied by
Julius - and he’d been surprised by how few of them had
declined.

All he had to do was choose what to hang
where. That was necessary before ordering the prints and the
frames, since some of the images would be larger than others. Which
ones? It depended upon Louisa’s installation.

Rex didn’t want to talk to Louise.

While he avoided the inevitable, he’d
reviewed all the files for the Plume, checked and double-checked
all security measures, contracts and applications. He’d reorganized
the filing, just because it took time, and his apartment was even
more scrupulously clean than normal. Rex was stalling and he knew
it, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He’d run out of jobs to do or invent.

Rex sighed and looked at his watch. There
wasn’t much time left. He wasn’t afraid of Louise - after all, he’d
tied her up a dozen different ways and fucked her senseless over
Christmas holiday - but he didn’t want to see her either. She’d
been an object, something to compose, and now he’d have to talk to
her as a fellow artist.

Plus she’d deceived him. Rex wasn’t good with
deceit.

He hadn’t talked to Louise since that morning
at his apartment when he’d learned she wasn’t a member of the
Plume. Not that she hadn’t tried to communicate with him. Rex
hadn’t answered her calls or met with her or even acknowledged her
existence. That they had had two days of intense sex before he’d
discovered the truth only complicated things more. He didn’t know
how she thought. He didn’t know what kind of a person she really
was.

He didn’t want to know.

On the other hand, it was Louise’s fault that
this show was even happening. She’d backed Rex into a corner so
that he had no choice but to accept her terms. He didn’t like being
cornered or out-strategized, not at all. It smacked out being out
of control and Rex preferred to be in charge. He didn’t like that
Louise had used him as leverage to get what she wanted from the
gallery.

Still, Louise’s initiative was ensuring that
Rex had his heart’s desire. He was getting the public show of his
work that he’d always dreamed of having. Was he envious of her for
knowing what she wanted and being unafraid to make it happen?

It was strange to have such mixed feelings
about the show - he was both thrilled and apprehensive. It was
doubly strange to sense that he had anything in common with Louise.
He could still see her wiggling and gift-wrapped under his
Christmas tree.

She hadn’t been quite as forgettable as he’d
expected.

Probably because she pissed him off.

Rex knew Louise was Joanna’s roommate, which
was just another troubling detail. He knew the exact pitch of the
gasp she made when she came. He knew her breasts were small but her
nipples were particularly responsive. He knew she was a tight fit
for him and the memory of her snatch locked around him, seeming to
milk him dry, could still make him hard.

Rex should have been used to knowing so much
about a person’s body but not his or her character. He was a part
owner of the Plume, after all. He had spent most of his adult life
pursuing pleasure with comparative strangers. Being unsure whether
Louise was a mercenary, an opportunist or an idealist shouldn’t
have confused him so much.

Rex hadn’t ignored Louise completely. He knew
she needed his connections to create her sculpture, whatever it
was, because it was inspired by the Plume. He’d signed off on
studio space for her in the vast warehouse that housed the Plume
and he had approved her request to gather volunteers from the
Plume’s membership, with supervision.

But he hadn’t faced Louise.

Rex had wanted to sort out his conflicting
reactions before he talked to her, but he was out of time. His cell
phone beeped that it had received a message, and it was Josh again,
probably wanting to know when Rex would come to the gallery. He
couldn’t put this off any longer.

Rex left the office of the Plume and headed
upstairs to the space assigned to Louise as a studio, uncertain
what he would find.

What he did find surprised him so completely
that he stopped on the threshold and stared.

* * *

Louise’s temporary studio was in the northern
corner of the old warehouse that housed the Plume, in a section
which had never been renovated. The Plume simply hadn’t needed the
space so it had been gathering dust for years. Rex had had the
windows updated from the original broken panes to glass blocks,
more for security than anything else, and that had been the sum of
its updating.

The floors were polished concrete and the
walls were exposed red brick. The ceiling was high, a good
twenty-five feet overhead, and the rafters were bare. Since Louise
had been given the space, several rows of hanging lights had been
installed: large industrial half-domes of glass, they threw a lot
of light. The space was adjacent to the loading dock, which would
make the transportation of Louise’s sculptures to the gallery
comparatively easy. The area had been partitioned off when the
building had been a factory, and still had the large steel doors
that could be rolled back or locked.

They were open when Rex arrived.

He could hear Louise talking to someone,
giving instructions maybe, and the low sound of a radio playing
80’s rock. Despite himself, he was curious about her plan, but when
he stepped through the door, he stopped in shock.

A woman stood to his right, hidden by the lip
of the door. She was masked and dressed in shiny black fetish gear
with silver grommets. She wore thigh-high black boots and a black
corset, the corset embellished with studs. Her mask was a black
domino, and her long, blonde hair was bound up into a ponytail. Her
eyes glittered through the mask, her gaze apparently fixed upon
him, and her smile was filled with anticipation. She had raised a
bullwhip high over her head, poised to strike.

Rex’s heart leapt and he instinctively took a
step back.

The woman didn’t move, much less pursue
him.

In fact, she wasn’t breathing.

A sculpture. Right. Louise was doing a
sculpture show. Rex caught his own breath, then leaned closer,
fascinated by the glimmer of those eyes through the mask. They
looked so lifelike that the effect was eerie.

As if a dominatrix had been frozen in
time.

Louise laughed from the far side of the
studio. “Meet our threshold guardian,” she said cheerfully. “Athena
posed for her.”

“I see the resemblance,” Rex admitted because
he did. It was Athena but not, with enough similarities for someone
who knew the other partner of the Plume to make the connection but
not enough for anyone to recognize her in the world.

Rex was intrigued. He walked around the
sculpture, impressed by how well it was done, then looked into the
studio. It was divided into two zones, the area at the front filled
with finished figures and the back clearly a working zone. Louise
was at the back, her hands covered in some kind of white goop.

How many others would he recognize?

“Have a look,” Louise invited. “I’ll be right
with you. Don’t worry - they don’t bite.”

He barely glanced her way, his attention
snared by the arrangement of sculptures. They were all of people
and must have been some kind of castings. They were posed and
painted - probably sanded first - then dressed in actual fetish
gear. He strolled between them, finding himself aroused. He was in
the middle of a party, the other attendees frozen in a moment of
time.

And he recognized a number of them right
away. Their bodies and faces were familiar, if disguised, but it
was the poses that revealed the identity of the sitter more than
anything else.

Immediately behind the figure with the
bullwhip was a pair in the midst of enjoying each other. The woman
was naked, shackled and gagged, her wrist shackles locked together
and suspended from a chain from the ceiling. A hooded and booted
man - his outfit reminiscent of those worn by the guards in the
Dungeon - held her breasts in his gloved hands and took her from
behind. His captive’s expression was orgasmic.

It could have been Tess and Tex, although Tex
was usually in the Stables.

Rex was amazed by the level of detail. The
woman had eyelashes and her male lover had tattoos. Their garments
were real. He touched the slave’s skin with a tentative fingertip,
expecting the soft yield of flesh but her body was hard and cold.
Plaster.

Those eyes, though, could have been real.

Rex fought the sense that the male guard was
watching him with disapproval - he knew that Tex didn’t like to
share Tess - and looked around the installation. There had to be
thirty figures in the studio and his scalp prickled with the
conviction that they were watching him from behind their masks.
“They look real.”

“That’s the point. It’s a vicarious
experience of the Plume, in all its glory.” Louise finished
whatever she was doing and lugged a bucket to the sink. She turned
on the water. “Closest most attendees will ever get, I’d
think.”

“Closer than most of them would want to be,”
Rex agreed and Louise laughed again. He turned and considered a
gagged man with superb muscles whose hands were shackled behind his
back. He was garbed in red latex that lovingly outlined his form
but left his massive erection exposed. A black leather cock and
ball ring was locked around him, and clipped to a leash that was
dropped on the floor. His expression was blissful - he looked as if
he was taking a breath right before coming - although Rex couldn’t
see what had pushed him over the edge.

He sensed that there was a figure missing. He
glanced back at the dominatrix, brandishing her whip for an
invisible victim. “So, the gallery visitor is supposed to become
part of the exhibit?” he guessed.

“Only at the door,” Louise said, coming to
his side. To his surprise, she wore only a pair of overalls and her
short fair hair was tousled. Her feet were bare and the legs were
rolled up. She looked ridiculously small inside the baggy overalls
- a pixie at work maybe - and he couldn’t help but notice that her
small breasts were bare behind the bib. Was she wearing anything
else? There was plaster spattered all over her skin and a streak of
paint across her nose. She looked both childlike and
provocative.

Rex found himself provoked. He averted his
gaze when her eyes twinkled in awareness of his reaction. “Can’t
get enough of those Christmas elves, hmm?” she asked in an
undertone, but fortunately didn’t seem to expect an answer. She
seized his elbow and tugged him across the floor. “Come check out
the maquette. It’ll all make sense then.”

Her feet were filthy on the bottom and he
guessed her butt was bare in those overalls. He could smell her
body, a little perspiration, a little puss, and his cock got
harder. He had the urge to close his hand over the sweet exposed
curve of the back of her neck, and had to remind himself that she
had tricked him.

He wanted to teach her a lesson.

Except he was pretty sure she’d love it.
Maybe she’d even expect it. Louise was never surprised, and that
frustrated Rex. He liked surprise in a submissive.

Maybe the problem was that Louise wasn’t very
submissive.

The maquette was larger than he’d expected, a
working model of the installation. The walls had been painted
metallic silver and there were squares on the walls to represent
his photographs. He could see easily where there should be large
ones.

The floor space in the middle was filled with
posed fashion dolls to represent Louise’s sculptures. There were
passionate groups of two and three, the clusters arranged roughly
in a circle. They were dressed in every variation of bondage gear
and posed in inventive ways. The gallery patron could either circle
the perimeter, looking at the photographs, or navigate through the
sculptures.