Model Release (The Art of Domination #1) Read Free

righteous indignation. Absently bouncing on the
toes of my high heels to the beat of the music while marveling at what a real
functioning artist’s studio looked like and staring slack-jawed at male models
didn’t quite fit my image of myself stalking in here and setting a smarmy
pervert poseur straight.
    A casual glance my
direction from Mr. Model jarred me out of my thoughts and into motion,
especially when he did a double take and focused those dark eyes hard and full
on me. Caught! You’re not supposed to be
looking, Iva . An electrical thrill of anticipation—or apprehension—pricked
under my skin. The longer he held my stare, the more it bristled like pins and
needles, only worse, all the way up my back and arms and shoulders until I was
itching and aching to just roll my head and shudder and shake it out. What a
reaction. This guy had mastered the broody bad boy’s piercing glare, and it
made me feel like bolting from the room.
    Not that I didn’t like
catching a man’s attention, just not his. Not that kind of guy. I had the
curves and the big brown eyes and the hair-flipping skill to work the average club crowd when I wanted to, but
those had also been wilder days. I sure as hell wasn’t dressed for it or in the
mood for it now. So I mustered all the concentration I could to spin on my
heels and put my back to the distraction, so I could start looking for Beal.
    It wasn’t hard to find
him. In a room filled with taller than average twenty-two-year-old underwear
models, a middle-aged man with forty extra pounds stuffed up under his Hawaiian
shirt stood out in a way that was almost a relief. I was not the only mere
mortal in the room after all. The short, round fellow darted back and forth
behind a long table set back near one wall and some distance from its sister
table and her ample display of alcohol bottles, pizza boxes, and candy bowls.
At least it looked like candy, though I had my doubts.
    The rotund shutterbug’s
hands never paused from their task of feverishly unloading and reloading a
variety of cameras, adjusting lenses, swapping filters. When his slicked-back
black hair—the same color and consistency as his pencil-thin mustache—fell into
his eyes, he just shook it out of his doughy face, jowl quivering a full extra
second. He looked... colorful, comical, even approachable, and I was at a loss
for how he had charmed my sister into posing for him.
    Considerably less
intimidating than I had planned to be, I marched up to the equipment table. “I
take it you are—”
    “What?” he shouted over
the music as he looked up at me without pausing from his work. He had very
small dark eyes, like a rat or maybe a ferret, but instead of seeming creepy
they reminded me of a pet. I almost wanted to scratch him behind the ears.
    “I’d like to speak to
you about—”
    “What?”
    I realized I was
reading his lips more than hearing him, and maybe he wasn’t as good at doing
the same. Leaning over the table toward him, I enunciated each word. “My name
is Iva Moreau. You know my sister. She’s been modeling for you.”
    He nodded, but the
utter lack of understanding on his face and the uninterrupted speed at which
his hands worked the cameras made me think he hadn’t heard me at all or maybe
just wasn’t paying attention.
    “Cheri,” I said, then
sighed through my teeth at his lack of reaction. “Cheri Moreau?” I shook the
newspaper at him until I got him to glance at page seventeen.
    A reaction at last—he
nodded. “Ah, the Odyssey exhibition.” Though I wouldn’t have thought it
possible, I could read in the motion of his lips the slight lisp I detected in
what I caught of his voice. A lisping, beady-eyed, round little
Hawaiian-shirt-wearing man who couldn’t grow a decent mustache to save his
life. But who radiated likeability. Where in the world had Cheri found this
guy?
    Then, after a few more
seconds of staring at the newspaper ad, he shifted expressions. He stopped
unscrewing