‘It’s like possession, isn’t it?’

The fact that she’d even spoken shocked her. The words escaped her lips like his looming presence at her shoulder had summoned them.

‘How so?’ His two velvet syllables warmed the pit of her stomach like cognac. She fixed hard on the naked embrace within the frame–lovers locked in ecstasy, his arms wrapping from behind, hers palming her own breasts. A photo-image coupling rendered into black-and-white abstraction, like an x-ray of two souls at the point of orgasmic union.

‘Not that she’s possessed,’ she clarified, breath constricting in this stranger’s imposing shadow. ‘Well not by him. They both are. A force outside themselves. Universal. Cosmic.’

‘Timeless,’ he added, before she could cringe at her own words. ‘Irresistible. Electricity surging through their veins.’

‘Yes. Pure fire.’

‘Her need is the accelerant. And his lust. They got too close–a single spark and… Whoosh.’

The fricative sound shuddered her to her nipples, his extension of her metaphor having liquified her core. So, this solid wall of man was a poet. Of sorts.

‘That pair didn’t like it…’ Her nod to the middle-aged couple two exhibits down afforded her a glimpse of her fellow-critic’s face. Strong. Impassive. Stony even. Yet with something actively volcanic behind his dark eyes. ‘They thought it didn’t belong here,’ she told him. ‘Said it wasn’t art.’

‘That doesn’t much surprise me.’

‘No?’

‘You can’t appreciate what you don’t get.’

‘And they don’t get it?’

‘No.’

All she could hear was her own shallow breathing. ‘What don’t they get?’

‘What it means to be alive.’

‘What are they missing?’

‘Well–do they look like they fuck?’ She swallowed down an involuntary bark of laughter at his words. ‘Properly, I mean. Like our fiery friends here…’

‘No, they don’t. But then…’ Her excited heartbeat slowed as another emotion cast its cloud. ‘It can’t always be fiery. Electric. Burning you up. Sometimes it’s okay to be… comfortable, secure. You know, content.’

‘Are you content?’

Her breathing stalled, hairs prickling at the nape of her neck. ‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about a picture.’

‘…Of what you want to feel.’

‘In an ideal world.’

‘Life’s not ideal. Moments can be.’

Her nipples bristled into spikes. ‘Oh?’

‘You know they can. But they need seizing.’

‘Maybe…’

‘Fuck “maybe”.’ His hand reached to brush her fingers, undeterred by what adorned the fourth one. ‘Come with me.’

Her small, slender body seized, heart racing. Fight or flight. Then her hand closed on his. ‘Okay.’

The restroom stall was white porcelain on black tiles, each surface polished to a sheen. She could see herself in outline when he put her there–palms flat against the wall, arms spread, body braced in place by his insistent shove. ‘Bit like the picture.’

Fuck. Blood hammered in her ear as he ripped up her tank-top, hooked it behind her neck and grabbed her tits, plucking them free from their flimsy satin cups to enjoy unrestricted, tongue licking her jaw. Her skirt he peeled upwards over her near-naked ass, banding it around her waist, then tugging aside her sodden strip of panty to expose cunt lips she had waxed just days before her solo cultural excursion.

‘Oh God, oh fuck…’ she muttered at the sound of his trousers’ unfastening, the release of whatever had been bulging beneath. Its upper portions slapped against her lower spine. Then he pulled her tight to him so that her bare cheeks pillowed him fully–a length and girth and steeliness in keeping with his great muscular frame. ‘Jeeeesus…’ she moaned, thrusting against its pulsing-warm thickness, craving it nearer still.

‘That’s what you’re doing to me,’ he hissed in her ear, before pulling back and fitting himself to her, sliding the head between her lips. (She oozed a welcome all over his crown.) ‘And this is what I need to do to you…’ He shafted, ramming her to fullness on a single mighty stroke, balls smacking fast against her cheeks as their bodies clashed. ‘God yes,’ he groaned, buried in her petite body’s deepest caverns, as she stifled a pained scream of pleasure.

Having claimed her space, he drew back and surged again, installing himself more forcefully, hands clamping on her lower belly, his massiveness stretching her out. She took it all, juicing him root to tip, her sex and all the rest of her ablaze with need for more. As though incensed by her cunt’s famished suck, he gripped her hard and fed himself to her relentlessly, packing in all that her fuck-hungry body could take. She tried to look, to see what he was giving and how fast, but the power of his impaling threw her head back, so she couldn’t even move it. All she could see was black tile and reflected light, and in her mind’s eye two anonymous humans alive with lust, sparking enough electric charge to illuminate a polar night-time.

She came, long and hard, unleashing a euphoric flood over him as he pounded into her. He fucked all through her climax, pushing to the apex of his own excitement and then filling her with his hot liquid rush. What noises they had made, and who had heard, she only considered once they both were done. Even then she didn’t care. She only wanted to feast her eyes–and her mouth–on the cock that had ravished her with such fabulous abandon. Christ, it was as gorgeous in the slick, glistening aftermath as she’d imagined it in full pumping glory. It tasted heavenly too.

‘Don’t lose your love of art,’ he said, buckling his trousers, and he kissed her cum-stained mouth before he left.

She caught her breath, adjusted her knickers and cleaned up, then headed for the exit–just-fucked and shameless, endorphins still firing, promising herself reflection time over coffee on her way home.

She made one stop on leaving, at the gallery’s gift shop, to buy a memento. A print–of her new favourite picture.