October 14, 2009
Fiction
Catherine's Wheel
(This story contains content that some people may find disturbing, such as non-consent, borderline consent, seriously bodily harm, or incest. If you're not interested in reading stories with this type of content, please don't read this story.)
He looked perfect, thought the woman at the agency. He was as slim as the position required, chest not too broad tapering down to a beautifully trim waist. Slender legs were shapely enough, he carried himself with grace and elegance, and soft chestnut curls framed the face of a saint.
He looked perfect. But appearances could be deceiving. Especially, strangely enough, in this business.
“The top? Could you oblige?” she asked, a casual flick of the finger gesturing to his shirt, and obligingly the young man unfastened the buttons, tugging it from his jeans to bare a chest which was smooth and hairless, with just the right amount of definition to the muscles.
He twisted at the waist and bent to one side, folding the shirt carefully and draping it over the back of a chair.
Supple, yes. Lithe. And easy to work with. Just what was needed.
“You would have no problems with posing nude?” she asked him.
“Not at all.”
“Good,” the woman said, making a note in the file, then fixing her gaze on his flat stomach before letting it travel slowly down his legs. “The trousers then?” she prompted. “Just to make sure you’re suited to the position?”
Unabashed, the young man unzipped his jeans, let them drop to his ankles, and stepped out of them to stand before her in just shorts and moccasins.
“The artist would require total nudity, of course. No jock strap, no G-string.”
“Of course,” he agreed, his shorts dropping as quickly as the two syllables escaped his lips.
The woman got up and walked around her desk to regard him from all angles. “Could you bend, twist, demonstrate your suppleness?” she asked, and he bent to touch his toes, presenting his ass to her, then straightened and clasped his hands behind his head, twisting his body, posturing at her directions like some vain Narcissus before a mirror.
He was perfect for the job.
•
The address was in a converted warehouse, on the top floor of the building, and as David stepped from the freight elevator to see a view of the river below, he thought, What a cool place to live. Pricey, too. Whatever work this artist did obviously paid well.
Perhaps once storing cotton or tobacco, the building was all bare brick and cast iron, even the window frames made of metal to guard against fire. Many original fittings had been kept, now more decorative than functional; winches and hoists painted matte black, a chute beyond one window which corkscrewed down to the dock below.
David walked down the stone- paved corridor to the single door, pressed the bell and waited. Eventually, there came the tapping sound of delicate heels.
“You’ll be the model?” he heard, as the door opened, and he couldn’t think what to say.
The woman who faced him could have been a model herself, slim and blond and tanned. Her short black dress was as far removed from his image of a painter as possible; her black silk stockings and slender stilettos more suited to an evening in a cocktail bar than a morning spent painting.
“You are, aren’t you? The model?”
“Sorry, yes, I am,” he finally managed to say. “David.”
“And I am Catherine,” she smiled, extending a hand, and as he took it she pulled him inside. “Please, do come in.”
Closing the door after him, she ushered him along the hallway to a vast living room.
“Nice place,” he said, nodding approvingly.
The room occupied a corner of the building, windows on two walls rising to the ceiling, affording views of the river in one direction, the city off to their left.
“Yes, I like it,” she said, crossing to the kitchen. “Can I get you a drink? Coffee? Juice? Then I can explain what I want of you.”
“Coffee would be fine, black, no sugar,” he replied.
“Dark, that’s a good start,” she said, and when she returned it must have been obvious that his eyes were fixed on her. She paused, midway across the room, followed his gaze to her dress, her stockings, her stylish shoes. She grinned. “No, this isn’t the way you usually find me at nine in the morning. It was a long night, I’m only just back. A preview of a friend’s exhibition, a meal, a club.”
Catherine nodded to a large settee, set two cups of coffee on the table before it and sat next to him.
“It’s the club that this is all about, actually. They’ve commissioned the paintings I need a model for. It’s called Masoch’s. Do you know the place?”
“By name only,” David said. Not the sort of place he could afford.
“Dark, Gothic, kinky and fetishistic,” Catherine elaborated. “Is that a word? Fetishistic?” She shook her head, waved her hand dismissively.
“Anyway, they’re classy and they’re going to pay a bundle. Suffering they want, martyrdom, the sacrifice of saints. Sort of bondage of the beatific. Get my meaning?”
“No, not really,” David confessed.
“Well, I’ll show you,” she said, draining her cup. “Let’s begin. I was going to change, but I’m inspired, and I’d like to start right away. The studio is through here.”
As vast and sprawling as the living room, with the same preponderance of bare brick and cast iron, the studio had more the air of a torture chamber than an artist’s studio. A huge cross of polished black wood dominated one wall; shackles and chains hung from the ceiling; iron cages of various sizes; even what seemed to be a large cartwheel. Only the easels scattered about the room told him he was in the right place, and the canvasses stacked facing one wall, and the drawings that littered the large table in the center of the room.
He approached the wheel, regarded the iron band which circled the rim, the polished hub, the stout bolts which secured it. At only the slightest touch of a finger it spun freely on its axis.
“That’s Catherine’s Wheel, where I’d like us to begin,” she said. She pointed to a lacquered screen which partitioned off a corner of the room. “You can disrobe there.”
Uncertain, thrown by the bizarre scenario, David’s professional reflexes took hold — the reflex to comply with his employer’s directions. He went behind the screen and removed his clothes. When he reappeared she was making her way to the wheel.
“One of the ways the martyrs met their end — Catherine among the first of them — was to be broken on the wheel,” she was saying, as he reached her side. “Their limbs would be shattered and threaded through the spokes.” She gave him a grin, almost without humor. “Don’t worry. Nothing so extreme for you. But if you could rest your back against the wheel, place your feet on the rim, between the spokes…”
David hesitated. This seemed . . . extreme. But then, he thought, that was the modeling world. He’d done a perfume ad where they acted out an orgy on a wrecked car. He’d done a fashion shoot dressed in designer jeans and a horse mask, being menaced by a woman in a 6,000 Euro leather riding coat. This wasn’t that much more outre . . . was it? He moved back against the wheel, and felt the hub press against his spine as he placed his feet on the rim.
“Good. Now raise your hands above your head. Grip the spokes. Hold tight.”
When she was satisfied that he was holding on tightly enough, Catherine gave the wheel a quarter turn, so his body was horizontal before her, hands and feet in easy reach without her needing to bend.
He grinned nervously, like a child on a funfair ride, as she secured his wrists and ankles with Velcro straps before spinning him back upright.
“Good, now we can begin.” After moments of considering her model, she moved back, positioned herself beside a large easel, and settled onto a stool so high her legs barely needed to bend.
David had no idea how many sheets of paper were clipped to the drawing board. But she quickly covered half a dozen with rapid sketches, working in a fury, ripping each from the board and letting it fall to the floor at her feet.
Finally, these first half dozen completed, she began to work at a more considered pace, her gaze frequently lingering on his naked body as if drinking in every line and contour, her throat making a sort of growling purr of abstracted concentration, her hand moving slowly across the pages. David was accustomed to the students at the art school casting their eyes over his nudity, but this woman seemed to see more than they could ever have hoped to. Her gaze was piercing, as if searching through every layer until she got to his core. Other artists had seemed to drink him in; Catherine was reflecting him back to himself, like a mirror of truth. The sight was unsettling.
And then, of course, there was the unusual nature of his pose, and the way she was dressed . . . David felt the stirring of an erection.
Perhaps she sensed this. She was certainly unable to ignore it. Catherine picked up a smaller sketchpad, and swapping the high stool for a tiny one such as a milkmaid might use, she sat low before him, her knees splayed so her legs were bared to him, enough that he could see glimpses of pale flesh above the black silk of her stockings. His cock rose higher as she sketched intently. Never in his time as an artist’s model had David reacted in this way, and he gave a nervous cough.
“Mm. This might be a piquant touch. The martyr taking some pleasure from his torment,” Catherine said.
“Really, I’m sorry, I don’t think — “
“Hush,” she said. She stood and walked towards him, and touched the fingers of one hand to his lips to silence him. “There’s nothing you can do, you’re fastened to Catherine’s Wheel, so don’t fight it.”
No, he was unable to fight it. At her touch he responded. She caressed his lips, and his cock began to grow. When she smiled into his eyes and released his lips, he was painfully erect.
“Delightful! Absolutely delightful!” she enthused, rushing back to her easel to capture the moment, her eyes tracing the outline of his cock as her pencil copied it to paper.
If his erection seemed about to wilt, or about to lose even a degree of its inclination, she would smile beseechingly at him, run her tongue across her lips, a finger along her thigh. Or she would come over and touch him, moving his elbow or his knee to fine-tune his placement on the wheel, or arranging his hair more artfully around his face.
Ultimately though, these sly encouragements were not enough, nor even her coaxing words — “Hold that, keep firm for me” — and slowly his erection began to fade.
“Hmm,” she said, regarding him sadly, seeing his cock start to droop. She got to her feet. “I know what might help.”
Crossing the room, rummaging among the art materials, she came back with a small tube in her hand.
Oil paint? David wondered.
“Lubricant.”
“For what?”
Raising her arms, Catherine reached behind her head and pulled out one of the long thin ivory skewers which pinned her hair.
“Catheterization has been practiced for over four thousand years,” she told him, wiping the skewer with an alcohol wipe, then squeezing some lubricant onto what now seemed more like a weapon than a decoration. “It is a symbol of the total control of one person over another: a symbol of surrender, the way the saints surrendered to their martyrdom. It passes up the urethra and into the bladder so that I control the flow of urine and anything else.”
“You’re not — ?”
“More importantly, it will keep your cock stiff for me. I need to finish my work.”
“You’re not sticking that thing inside me!” he panicked, his fear causing his erection to wilt more rapidly.
“Come on, let’s be professional about this,” she told him, taking his now- shriveled cock in her hand. “I’ll not say that you won’t feel a thing, that would be lying, but I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“No!” he said, struggling to break free of the straps.
“It’s safe, trust me, I know what I’m doing,” she said, and winked as she added, “I’ve seen every episode of ER.”
Slowly her hand worked on his cock, his balls, tugging, stretching, squeezing and caressing.
“A teacher of mine once told me a story about Renoir,” she said, her voice low, hypnotic. “Renoir, it seems, claimed that a painting was finished when he felt that he could caress the breasts and buttocks, sense their weight, their firmness. It’s a rule I apply to my own work, though in my case it’s generally cocks and balls rather than breasts and buttocks. So let me feel your cock grow, let me feel your balls swell and ache. Give me something I can caress in my painting.”
David’s mind raced, his brow pricked with sweat, behind panicked eyes ran a confusion of thoughts. There was the thought of escape, of course, but this seemed unlikely. Then there was the anticipation of pain. The fear of pain. And amidst this jumble, the only hope . . . that he should not become erect enough for this crazy woman to slip that wicked length of ivory inside him.
As crazy as she might be, though, she was clever in her manipulation of him, rolling his balls against each other, lightly teasing beneath them, behind them, slowly drawing out his cock. Not even the blandest of thoughts could block out the delight she was causing. He was soon as erect as he’d been when she first touched him.
Catherine rubbed her thumb over the swollen glans and then pinched it lightly to make the tiny hole pout open. “Now keep still, no sudden movements.”
David tensed, let out a whimper, then a weak bleat of terror as he felt the prick of the ivory against his cock. One hand held him firmly; with the other Catherine carefully inserted the catheter, looking intently at the fear in his face, the eyes tight shut, the gritting of the teeth, every muscle and sinew straining.
“There, that wasn’t too bad, was it?” she finally said.
When David plucked up the courage to open his eyes he saw that Catherine was back at the easel again, resuming her work, cold and professional, as if her treatment of him had been nothing out of the ordinary. She resumed her low unconscious growl of concentration: a growl punctuated every so often by a shudder that ran through her body before she continued her work. He knew that his cock was erect before him, but he fought the impulse to look down, not wanting to see the alien object protruding from it.
A shameful sob escaped his lips and he closed his eyes, hung his head.
“No. Head up and eyes wide,” Catherine told him. “I want to see the misery of the martyr in them.”
•
David didn’t know which need was the greater, the need to urinate or the need to ejaculate. The catheter, slender as it was, seemed to fill him so fully that his cock felt larger than he had ever known; his balls were rock hard, tight, churning inside; his bladder ached and begged to empty.
Yet for all his discomfort, as he gazed at the artist still busily working, the woman who was subjecting him to this humiliation, it was not resentment he felt towards her, but longing.
Yes, she was beautiful. Eyes lowered, head bowed over her drawing, the lids seemed darker and gave her a beguiling look; blood red lips glistened as she frequently licked at them, rapt in concentration, or as she occasionally chewed at the lower one, baring perfect white teeth.
But it was not just her beauty which had him entranced. He had known many beautiful women and none had affected him like this. The abject fear he had felt, that he still felt, on understanding what she meant to do to him? The power she had over him, once she had him tied to the wheel? The control she had over what he would feel?
Or was it simply that, with the fear filling him, with his growing awareness of the power and control she had over him, he finally felt exposed? Was it that he felt helpless, not only against her hands, but against her eyes, and her penetrating gaze of recognition? Was it that, for the first time in a career of being paid for his beauty, a career of being looked and admired at for hours on end, he finally felt seen?
It could have been any of these things, or all. But one thing he did know: He would do anything to please this woman. He would do anything to have her keep looking at him, to have her keep drawing and painting him and capturing her view of him on paper and canvas, so he could be seen by her forever.
Had he sighed, shifted, spoke his thoughts out loud? Catherine suddenly looked up, caught his gaze, held it for a moment as if not recognizing him. Then she set down her pencil and smiled, stood, stretched.
“Enough for now. I think we need a break.”
Posing at the art school, a model would have a break every forty-five minutes, but David had lost track of how long he had been tied to Catherine’s wheel. He rocked his head from side to side, flexing his neck, then followed her with his eyes as she walked towards him. “I suppose you’re ready for some relief?” she asked.
Did she mean relief from his bondage, or relief from the need which had built inside him? Whichever she was offering he would gratefully accept. He nodded weakly.
“Fine,” she said. Before he could question what she meant she began to turn the wheel.
“What-? What are you doing-?” he asked, as his body was turned upside-down. He gasped as his erection slapped painfully against his stomach.
The topsy-turvy world that the studio became disoriented him for a moment, making his mind swim. Before he could make sense of it, it darkened, as Catherine raised her skirt to bring her naked groin towards his face. His feet in the air, his bound hands clawing towards the ground, David had a glimpse of pale flesh and dark silk before her damp cunt hovered above his mouth.
She had picked up her sketchpad and pencil, and she sketched furiously, grinding her hips above his face, that strange growling noise emanating from her throat. She stopped sketching to prod his painfully throbbing cock with her pencil; then resumed her drawing, shuddering as she drew. She thrust her body above his face, and while one hand ran her pencil along the length of his cock, the other plucked at the ivory needle inside and teased it out a fraction of an inch.
“Please — !” David sobbed.
“Please doesn’t work with me. Beg.”
“I beg you! I beg you!” he cried. She shivered harder, her growl turning into a groan, and as the quakes shook her body he felt the catheter slip from his cock, and her sketchpad slap against his throbbing flesh to catch him as he spurted out.
•
Naked, on all fours at the foot of Catherine’s wheel, David mopped up his spillage, the creamy strands of his orgasm and the acrid splashes of his urine, drying and polishing to remove every vestige of his shame.
There were more works to pose for, Catherine had told him. He would model again in the morning, and that night. Silently he had nodded his agreement. As he promised his obedience he felt his need build again. Resting back on his haunches, easing his aching back, his hand slipped slyly to his groin.
“Save it for your work,” a voice barked. David looked back. In her hand Catherine held needles of steel rather than ivory, thinner, sharper than the ones which had pinned her hair.
“I was thinking, for the next pose, we might take as our theme the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. You know how he died, don’t you?”
Yes, he did.
Sebastian died with his chest pierced by arrows.
• • •
A fine art graduate, taught art at high school in Liverpool for 20 years before becoming disillusioned with the career and “dropping out.” He now works in a museum on Merseyside, which leaves him less wealthy in financial terms but much richer emotionally and spiritually. His erotic fiction has been published in the UK — by Virgin Books, Forum magazine and others — and in the United States, where numerous novels and anthologies are available from Renaissance E-Books, www.renebooks.com.
