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

the Oxfords (albeit high
heel), and the way she’d pulled what would have been a luxurious cascade of
wild brown curls back so severely from her face in an unfortunate ponytail.
Although that hairstyle would have had its uses were she dressed as a bondage ponygirl , a leather bit between those luscious lips,
soft-worn harness strapped lewdly into place over her full breasts and rounded
ass, between her legs….
    Always
thinking about work, Beal . I silently, jokingly chided
myself until I recognized that the scenario playing out in my head didn’t
include a camera. That… that I wouldn’t have seen coming. Spend enough hours
taking photos of barely clothed fashion models or staging pin-ups for nouveau
noir erotic art and any beautiful woman would start to look like a prop or a
background or a lighting effect, just a component in an artistic composition. I
didn’t appreciate the fact that Miss Goody Two Shoes could get me to rise to
the occasion when a room full of exotic models just felt like so much clutter.
It was an accomplishment she owed to the fact that she reminded me of Cheri, I
decided, and I was only too happy to dismiss the anomaly.
    I stepped back and took
a long pull from the rum bottle in my hand, eyes trained on my visitor’s,
reading the sour shadow of judgment as it passed over her face. The stinging
warmth of alcohol tempered the bitter taste of dealing with Little Miss Dower,
such a disappointing contrast to Cheri. Two apples from the same tree, maybe,
but Cheri had rolled a fair distance if that was what her family was like.
    Now, braced with an
insincere chuckle and another swallow of rum, I called loudly to Stan, “She’s
not Wiley.”
    My assistant looked
back and forth between the lady and
me. “She’s not? How do you?”
    After another deep
swig, I pointed at her face with a finger from the hand still brandishing the
Cruzan bottle. “Cheekbones.”
    “Rude much?” she
snapped with sudden ferocity, her eyes flashing from doe to wolf. I noted with
surprise and even appreciation that she didn’t lean away from my hand or the
nearness of my presence as I crowded her. In fact, she looked like she was
considering biting me, before she raked me with that heated gaze and added,
“And someone should have told you that’s sipping rum, so you wouldn’t embarrass
yourself.”
    Oh,
she does nip , I caught myself thinking, and it
amused me as much as it galled me to realize what particular kind of woman she
was—the sort who wasn’t really dead and cold all the way to the bone but
pretended to be, wore the pallor and the sensible clothes, hid how hot she
could run underneath. The sort who played at being prim and proper, expected it
from everyone else, insisted on it
like a dry drunk expected people around them to go thirsty. Now I could guess
what she was doing in my studio.
    And I would have liked
to say I didn’t see it as a challenge, didn’t interpret this opportunity as a
dare. But I did. That was just my nature, and I knew all too well that it was
futile to resist and damned entertaining to indulge. That rakish edge was,
after all, my trademark and as much a part of my profession as cameras and
lights. While being a broody sensualist bastard demanded steady effort, all
said, how many men were lucky enough to mix hedonism, art, and cult of
personality and come out with a sizeable salary and a bevy of groupies? Short
of rap stars and fashion designers, anyway. As rock stars of the photography
world went, I was vying for artist of the year. The five-year plan was to out- Leibovitz grand dame Annie herself with that seven-figure
Vanity Fair salary, and two years in I was already two-thirds of the way there.
Right now, it was good to be me—or an exaggerated, styled, airbrushed
approximation thereof.
    “We should talk
upstairs,” I lied and tried to tame down the dark exhilaration I felt creeping
into my best gentlemanly smile as I held this woman’s gaze. There was no way
she should have