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

lenses, flipping levers, and adjusting dials and instead grew still.
One brow came to a slow peak. “Is this about that letter? Did you send that?” he
asked, his tongue catching along his teeth each time he pronounced an ‘s’ or ‘ th ’.
    Before I could process
my confusion enough to respond, he crooked two fingers to beckon for someone
behind me. Then he pointed at me and exaggeratedly mouthed, “Pamela Wiley.”
    A second later, a
pleasantly rough male voice muttered into my right ear from just over my
shoulder. “Ms. Wiley, is it? If we’d known you were coming, we’d have thrown a
party.”
    I smelled mandarin
orange and cinnamon and rum and thought of spiced drinks in front of fireplaces
in winter, hot bare skin, deep kisses…. The sensation came on suddenly and out
of nowhere, like I’d have imagined a hot flash felt. Between that and the
voice, I found my attention divided by the dissonance of wanting to correct what
appeared to be a mistaken assumption about who I was and the temptation to just
let myself be distracted. A shiver of attraction shot up my spine and spread
along my scalp in a strong tingle. Of course, I also wondered, if this wasn’t a party…?
    Then I turned around
and looked straight into the darkest blue eyes I’d ever seen, on the handsomest
man I’d ever seen. From across the room, I hadn’t been able to tell what color
those eyes were or that they had a gleaming black ring around the irises, like
an inverse eclipse of a moon in deep sapphire.
    He stood right in front
of me, over me, so close that I could have brushed against him if I’d taken a
deep breath—if I’d been able to breathe. But then he would have felt, right
through two layers of secondhand cashmere, how stiff my nipples had risen at
his scent and the rumble of his voice. With the man lingering—looming—so near,
I heard him perfectly as he said, “I’m Nolan Beal. What can I do for you?”
     
    NOLAN
    I recognized the
mistake as soon as I looked into her face, close up like that. To a
photographer’s eye, her features were unmistakable. An unexpected surge of
exhilaration, eagerness, and maybe a moment of simple appreciation welled up in
my chest and mixed with the warmth in my throat from the rum. The feeling
faded, of course, when she didn’t smile, when she didn’t live up to the promise
of the resemblance. Her dark brow dipped in a suggestion of distress or perhaps
disapproval. Then definite disapproval. Not like Cherise at all. Cheri was always smiling.
    Maybe I’d have made the
same assumption in my assistant’s place. Stan saw a Stepford wife in her little sweater set wander into the studio, and his mind naturally
went straight to PTA meetings and church socials and “ think of the children ” pleas for censoring anything wilder than
Andy Griffith Show reruns. Any artist with half an idea’s worth of creativity
and any reputation whatsoever had to deal with one of those sooner or later; we’d just had a rash of reprimanding letters
from that Mothers for Moral Media bunch. It was almost a shame this wasn’t
their tight-assed, high-brow spokeswoman. I’d been practicing my best goading
techniques and had wasted a perfectly good jibe.
    But no, this… this
woman had a look about her, my cock and I readily noticed as I stared down into
her smooth face, into wide eyes the color of chocolate—when it was melted and
glistening. The resemblance lay mostly in the classically beautiful cheekbones
and jaw but also in the way she carried herself. She was some relationship to
Cheri, my newest model and the most promising, a genuinely likable girl. Cheri
had no model’s ego yet—a real kick to work with, eat pizza with, and go
skateboarding drunk with at two in the morning.
    While these chocolate
eyes blinked up at me in obvious query—and annoyance—and that ample chest
pumped her breath just a little extra hard and fast, I managed to tear my gaze
away for a real onceover of the sweater and slacks,