The Swing
by Anna Austen Leigh
Published by Anna Austen Leigh at Smashwords
Text Copyright © 2011 Anna Austen Leigh
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.
Also by Anna Austen Leigh
The Diligence de Lyon – an escapade published by Liquid Silver
Pilgrim for Love – published by Logical Lust
Emma – published by Smashwords
and shortly to be published
Horace and Hal – on Smashwords
The Swing
by Anna Austen Leigh
You might know that picture of Fragonard's? A charming little rococo picture of a lady on a swing. She's all frippery and filigree and lace and silks, weightless in the air, and it seems a pretty, rather innocent picture until you spot the nobleman lurking in the shrubbery and realise the view he's getting, as she waves her legs about and her skirts fly up...
Yes, you probably guessed, though I'm better known as a photographer, I studied art history at university. So I was enthusiastic when Julian at the Madison Gallery asked me whether I was interested in exhibiting photographic 'versions' of old masters, recreating the pictures with real models or – in the case of one Mondrian abstract – with bags of flour and sticks of charcoal. (The lighting for that one was incredibly difficult.)
I thought the Fragonard would be fun to do. That's when I thought of calling you. We'd shared a lot of our lives, before you moved to New York. I knew you'd be interested in the project; the only problem would be finding the time.
"Where are you thinking of shooting it?" you asked. "Studio job, or location?"
"The lighting will be difficult, but I thought we'd use the woods at Bramerton." I wondered if you'd remember the picnic we had there, five years back.
"Oh... that would be nice." Apparently you did.
"I'll be going up next week to take a look; I'll need to get the location for the swing organised, get it set up, think about lighting, the right time of day to shoot. Should all be ready for the 24th."
You were difficult about the date, I remember. And then rang me the next day to say you'd cancelled a talk you were due to give at some art historical conference, and you could do it after all.
"Let me fix my own costume," you said. Well, you knew the picture as well as I did.
***
I found exactly the right spot; a tall elm – one of very few untouched by Dutch elm disease – with a huge branch about twenty feet above the ground. It stood at one side of a small clearing, the light filtered by the trembling leaves of three slender birches; it was a private space, protected on all sides by the woods. I rigged a swing up, using steel cable, with silk wrapped round it loosely, and a blue velvet cushion on the seat. A couple of fill flashes would give me the highlights I wanted on your dress, your face; I shot off a few trial photos to get the lighting just right, with a couple of filters giving me a more golden, diffused glow.
I was all set up when you arrived, treading lightly through the soft leaf mould, a huge rucksack slung over your shoulder.
"Good trip?"
"Yeah... okay," you said, shrugging to indicate it had been anything but. You set the rucksack down, pulled out yards of peach satin and white silk. "You set the lighting up?"
It's always like that when we meet up, isn't it? Five years of living apart, and you just roll up your sleeves and get on with it, as if all the time in between had never happened. As if crossing the Atlantic for a single photo shoot was just a half-hour car journey.
I watched you change; no striptease coyness – you never had – but the no-nonsense attitude of the actor, stripping quickly to pull on the multiple layers of petticoats, pulling on the bodice and pushing your breasts together with your hands to get them fitted securely into the costume.
"Lace me up?"
I could feel your flesh warm and tempting beneath the laces. I wanted to bend my head to kiss you there, on the side of the neck, where I know it drives you wild; but I didn't. We had work to do.
The satin dress went on over the petticoats; a string of pearls wrapped four times round your neck, and a little powder on your face and neck; the stockings pulled up, the garters tied. Finally, the wig and the hat, settled, adjusted in the mirror, hat-pinned and fixed with hairspray. I couldn't believe you'd got it all into that one backpack, but then you always were well organised. A final check of your face – a grimace, lips puckered out, snarling back, to check your lipstick; and finally, we were ready for action.
"We're not having the third guy in the shot?"
Of course in the original there's a man pushing the swing, in the background. Fragonard's picture is delightfully scandalous – he's a priest, and the implication is that he's the girl's lover, perhaps her tutor as well, or the family chaplain. But I thought for the new version, we'd leave him out, and concentrate on the dynamics between the woman on the swing and the surprised, unintentional voyeur.
"You're right," you said when I explained all this. "You can't reconstruct it too literally. And it would be hell to light, as well."
"That had occurred to me."
I watched you swing yourself up, at first gently, then moving faster as momentum built up. Your skirts and petticoats began to fly up; I could see the pink satin garters glimmering against the white silk of the stockings and the pale skin of your thighs. I was in my jeans and t-shirt under a black leather jacket – a modern artist to your Pompadour – my remote release in one pocket, my thumb on the button. I moved to my mark, where I was just in the shot, to one side.
First shot. I'm impassive, a bystander, in this one, looking at a scene from past history played out in front of me. Your skirts show your garters, one leg thrown up in the air; you're lying back in the swing, trying to get it even higher than it is already. It's not a bad shot, but it's not what I was after.
I could have just run the motor, shot after shot, but I didn't want to do that. It would have felt automated. It wouldn't have left anything to chance; it wouldn't have left anything to feeling, either. I had to guess what you would do next, to press the shutter release before you did it; I needed the reflexes of a sports photographer for this shot, however carefully weighed, posed, lit, the surroundings – it was the precise moment that mattered.
I could see now you were arching forwards, thrusting your breasts out towards me. I was aware of my own breathing getting deeper, my chest tighter; I saw your half-open mouth, your tongue licking your top lip for a second. I could guess you, too, were breathing more deeply, feeling the way I did. As your eyes closed I took the second shot. Two people linked by a common sensuality, linked by feelings they dare not yet admit.
I'd been standing till now, while the man in Fragonard's painting is lying on one elbow, looking up – or perhaps, it's not quite clear, he has fallen, that outstretched hand is trying to cushion his fall. And I found out that if I lay, just as he did, on one side, facing the camera, when I looked up, I could see your naked thighs.
"Open your legs a little more," I said, and you did. That was the third shot. The flash caught your skirts, and your face, and the bright garters, but it left the darkness between your legs undisturbed, so that in the photo, I'm gazing at something the viewer can't see, a rapt expression on my face. That's the one I used in the exhibition; it's a darker, more obsessive vision than Fragonard's urbane dirty joke. And if you look closely, you can see that by now I already had an erection, though with the black jeans and the forest shadows, it's not obvious unless you look.
There are quite a few more photos, but none of them came even close to that one. There's one that I love – you've thrown your head back, and I can just see your mouth open, and remember that long moan, and your skirts are thrown up on both sides, your legs spread wide, your cunt glistening with moisture – but there's no way I could ever have used that in an exhibition. It would be wrong. That was a moment for only the two of us to share.
Slowly, you let the swing lose momentum and height, till it had nearly stopped. I'd risen by then, and taken the camera off the tripod to take a few shots just of you; not portraits but details – an ankle, your foot in the pink satin slipper, your thighs with the garters pressing your flesh, the angle of your neck against the frills of lace, a tendril of hair escaped and trailing down to your breast. One nipple showing above the décolletage, where the bodice had slipped.
You looked at me, your hands still on the silken ropes. I came towards you, letting the camera slip to one side, pushing your skirts up to your waist. You smiled.
I unzipped my jeans. I wasn't going to undress; I eased my cock out of my briefs, out of the fly, letting it spring free. The swing was just at the right level to bring your open cunt up to its level; not a coincidence, as I'm sure you had already guessed. Teasing, I moved my hips so that my cock hit your open lips, not pushing, not resting, just slapping you gently. Once or twice it connected with your clit, and I saw your hips jerk upwards. Apart from that single point of connection, we didn't touch.
You started the swing moving again then, just a little, so that you pulled back, then contacted the head of my cock again. You'd put your feet up on the seat, so that your cunt was thrust forward, open to me; I could slip my cock up the entire length of your lips, rubbing the outside, pushing the head up against your clitoris, feeling your warmth and wetness. The pictures are good; you can see the drop of liquid at the tip of my cock, the tightness of your labia, rigid with desire.
I remember how you reached for your own nipples, pulling your breasts out of the bodice and up, so I could see how tense and dark your nipples had become. Those are good photos, too, though by now I was wondering if the shutter speed was high enough to counteract the tremors in my fingers. And still, you were teasing me with that pendulum movement, touching my cock, and then retreating, touching, withdrawing.
I stood it as long as I could, you know that. I didn't want to spoil it. But at last, I couldn't wait longer; I took my cock in my hand, bent it down, felt the head slip into you, pushed. You were open to me, but then you swung back again, and I felt the cold air on my cock, raw, almost painful. Then again, I buried myself in you, taking my hand away as I pushed in up to the hilt, taking hold again as you swung away from me.
We kept that up as long as we could. I saw how your cunt moulded itself to me, how it expanded as I filled it. We were still connected only at the groin, not touching at all anywhere else; you leant back into the seat, so we could both watch the junction of our bodies, see the way I slipped into and out of you.
And then at last it became too much for both of us, and I grabbed your hips, and thrust into you, and we fucked hard and fast then till I heard you scream out your pleasure. And then I pulled out, and set you swinging again, and pulled at my cock roughly till I jerked out my seed, spattering your thighs with it, staining the satin of the garters and the virgin white of your petticoats.
And so here is this last photo, of your cunt open like a flower, red against white against pink, the frills of your lips against the frills of the petticoats, layer on layer on layer, and droplets of my sperm like pearls scattered across the frame. This one is not for exhibition. It is not for anyone else. It is just for you.
About the Author
Anna Austen Leigh gave up working as a financier to become a full time writer. She publishes historical and fantasy erotic romance and is currently enjoying subverting the world of Jane Austen by giving it a strong sexual undertow.
Anna Austen Leigh's blog can be found at http://erotic-history.blogspot.com.