Dirty Shots (2 page)

She plucked the card from his fingers and waved it at him. “I’ll let you know.”

With that, she headed to the front door of his apartment, her heels clicking on the dark wood floor. He rushed after her, opening the door for her. She threw a smile over her shoulder and walked to the elevator.

Eric closed the door behind her and leaned against it with a sigh.

His mind made up, he crossed the room back to his desk and proceeded to cancel the rest of the day’s interviews.

––––––––

H
is cell rang a little
after eight a.m. the following morning as he was about to leave the gym he frequented in downtown New York. He glanced at the screen, but didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello, Eric Rutherford.”

He recognized her voice, with that slight European twang, as soon as she spoke. “It’s not too early, is it?”

“Anya!” He dropped his workout bag on the floor and turned around to lean against the wall as he spoke. “No, it’s not too early. I’m just leaving the gym, in fact.”

“You work out,” she said, no question in her tone.

“I like to keep fit.”

“I thought so.”

In truth, his routine gym visits—every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday mornings at seven a.m. sharp—were a way of keeping himself in check. It was too easy to lose track of time when he was working, to lose himself in the piece only to emerge several days later realizing he’d not slept or eaten.

He hesitated. “So ... did you give my job offer any more consideration?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to be paid.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t sure he’d understood what she was saying. “But you want the job?”

“Yes. I would like you to photograph me. Naked, like the women in the pictures.”

Her voice was like something exotic, jasmine-scented honey. The way she spoke made his groin tighten, blood rushing to his cock. He bit down, forcing the reaction away. He couldn’t photograph her if he had that reaction at the
idea
of her being naked. It simply wouldn’t work. He’d only embarrass them both.

“Why don’t you want to be paid if you’d like to do the work?”

“I don’t need the money. Copies of the photographs would be enough.”

“I see.” He needed to be careful. He wanted her to be his model, but she needed to understand the rules. “You realize if I let you have copies of the photographs, you wouldn’t be able to distribute them anywhere.”

She laughed and his heart tightened at the sound. “Of course not, Mr. Rutherford. Why would I want to distribute pictures of myself like that? But what about yourself? If these are going to be images of me, will I have any say in what happens to them?”

He chose his words carefully. “I’d like to use the images for my portfolio, for my website. I’m a photographer and an artist, Anya, but these images won’t be sold.”

“They’d just be for you.”

A thrill went through him. When he spoke, his voice came out hoarser than he’d anticipated. “Yes.”

“Okay, then. When would you like to start?”

Eric glanced at his watch out of habit. He already knew the time. “Are you free after lunch? Say, two o’clock at my apartment?”

“Perfect. I’ll see you later.”

Eric hung up, surprised to find his heart beating harder than normal, his stomach churning in anticipation. He had a couple of meetings that morning—a newly refurbished five-star hotel who wanted to commission a set of huge landscape photographs for their lobby and then another appointment with a wealthy couple who wanted to have their family portrait done. It was comparatively mundane work, but it paid the bills and left a respectable amount over to play with. Then, that afternoon, he would have the opportunity to indulge in his new project.

He struggled to concentrate during his meetings, his mind wandering to Anya, with her porcelain complexion and innocent look. He wondered how far she’d allow him to go, if she’d spread her legs for him and allow him to photograph her most intimate folds close up. He wanted that desperately, to photograph right into the depths of her body, into what made her a woman.

***

E
ric paced the floor of
his apartment, checking his watch every two minutes. It wasn’t like him to be nervous, and the emotion sat uneasily on his broad shoulders.

What if she changed her mind and didn’t show? He thought he might lose a little piece of himself if that happened. He couldn’t explain his reason for feeling so strongly about a woman in whose company he’d only spent minutes. The possibility made him feel like a man dying of thirst in a desert who spots the most beautiful, clear pool of water and shade of green palms, only to reach the oasis and discover it a mirage all along, the promise of relief snatched from him at the final moment.

The buzzer sounded and his heart leapt into his throat.

She was here!

He went to his front door and pressed the intercom. “Anya?”

Her voice came back, sounding tinny through the equipment. “Hello, Mr. Rutherford. Are you ready for me?”

“Of course.”

Eric hit the button to grant entry to the building and then opened his apartment door, waiting for her, trying not to appear as flustered as he felt. Within a minute, the elevator doors slid open and she stepped out. Her almost white-blonde hair was free around her face, falling just past her shoulders. She had dressed simply in a close-fitting white t-shirt and jeans.

“Come in,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

To his surprise, she strode across his apartment, toward his studio, peeling her clothes off as she went. She pulled her t-shirt up over her head, exposing curvy breasts clad in a lacy bra, dropping the item to the floor. Next went her jeans, unbuttoned and shucked from her rounded hips, then kicked from her feet.

“You didn’t have to—” he started, but stopped when she shot him a look somewhere between confusion and annoyance.

“Have to what? Take off my clothes? I thought that was the idea, Mr. Rutherford."

“Call me Eric, please. I just meant you didn’t have to take them off right away.”

“There is nothing wrong with the human body, Eric. We have nothing to be ashamed of in our nudity.”

His cheeks colored. Damn, he was supposed to be the professional. “No, of course not.”

She slipped the straps of her bra from her shoulders and then reached behind her back and unclipped the clasp. Slightly leaning forward, she allowed the item to fall from her body, leaving her breasts exposed.

Eric let out the breath he’d been holding. Her breasts were exactly as he’d been hoping, big, but not too big, her nipples large and dark compared to her pale skin. He wished it was colder in the room. If he ever got her to wear nipple clamps, she’d need her nipples to be hard. He allowed his mind to wander.

Imagine her letting you make them hard, taking each one between your lips, sucking it to the top of your mouth and grating their sensitive peaks with your teeth.

No, that wasn’t what this was about. He wouldn’t let himself go there.

Finally, Anya slipped off her panties. Just as she had in her interview, she hopped up on the stool in front of the camera. She sat with her back straight, shoulders back so her breasts jutted out. She crossed her legs, momentarily giving him a flash of golden pubic hair.

She gave him a coy smile. “So when do we start?”

Eric grabbed the camera from the stand and approached. The sunlight shafting through the window, catching the curve of her thigh and running down her slender calf, right down to the dip of her insole, had caught his eye.

He dropped to his knees to one side of her. “Right now.”

He snapped a number of shots. As soon as he started working, the nerves vanished. He stopped thinking of her sexually and focused only on getting the perfect picture.

“Can you move?” he asked. “Stretch out your legs.”

She uncrossed her legs and pointed one foot, while bringing the other back to rest against the silver footrest. She leaned backward, balancing on top of the stool, her stomach muscles taking the strain. He photographed the shadows on her ribs cast by her breasts. Then she stood, twisting around, and he captured the perfect curve of her bottom, the line of her back. She moved fluidly and with grace, like a dancer, as he’d somehow known she would. He forgot everything else except the images, catching that perfect shot.

Caught up in the bubble of capturing such beauty, he lost track of time. But when he noticed Anya begin to wane, her body losing the strength and suppleness she’d had at the start, he realized the time had come to finish.

He set down the camera back in the stand. “Thank you, Anya. That was amazing, you were amazing.”

She turned to look at him, standing completely naked in front of him. “You have what you needed?”

He nodded. “Yes, for the moment.”

Anya bent to retrieve her clothes, dressing as quickly and methodically as she had undressed. He couldn’t tear his eyes from her the whole time.

“So,” she said, pulling her hair from the back of her t-shirt, allowing it to fall in a soft halo around her face. “When do you want me back?”

His heart sang. She wanted to come back! “Same time tomorrow?”

She frowned slightly, thinking. “I have to be somewhere until three. Is four okay?”

Eric smiled. “Perfect.”

He saw her out and closed the door gently behind her. The room seemed empty without her presence, bereft somehow.

What would she be doing all afternoon?
He knew nothing about her—if she even had a boyfriend. But it was none of his business. She was here to be photographed, that was all.

Eric attached his camera to his laptop and went through the images. They were as beautiful as he’d hoped. Both the camera and the light seemed to love her. He could hardly wait to apply some filters to the pictures, to put some into monochrome and play with the light.

Already, he could see the potential promise of perfection.

“M
s. Rhinne? Are we boring
you?”

Startled, Anya realized she’d been daydreaming, her gaze locked on the clock positioned above the doors of the lecture hall. Her head snapped back around to the front to discover most of the other students turned in their seats and staring at her.

She forced a bright smile. “No, of course not, Professor Wright.”

Her lecturer turned back to his slides, the other students losing interest in her. Anya tried to make herself focus, but her mind kept drifting to thoughts of Eric Rutherford and the session they’d spent together. She pressed her thighs together, a tingling flush of heat racing from between her legs and tightening at her core. Being photographed by Eric Rutherford was the sexiest thing she’d ever done in her life.

She’d struggled to act as cool as she had. The ad attracted her with the promise of a chance of earning a few extra dollars to help her with tuition fees. Her heart had almost stopped when Eric Rutherford opened the door, all floppy dark hair and brooding eyes, though she’d done her best to conceal her reaction. When he offered her the job, she needed to stop herself hopping up and down and clapping her hands in glee. She’d known who Eric Rutherford was ever since her late teens when he broke into the art world with his black and white portrait photography of old men and women, somehow capturing both their strength and their fragility with his work. He’d been like a young rock star of the art scene, bursting onto it to have every spotlight turned on him, only to fall from grace spectacularly with some kind of breakdown he described in interviews only as his ‘dark days.’

But she had a feeling Eric wouldn’t have thought much of her if she showed herself to be some kind of pathetic groupie, so she’d played it cool. She kept her mouth shut and literally laid herself bare for him.

Now she found herself obsessed with thoughts of the photographer. The minutes dragged by, painfully slow, and she wished she could go to sleep to make the time go faster, only to be woken in time to make her next meeting with Eric.

Anya tried to focus on what Professor Wright, her lecturer of fine art, was saying, but even though she loved her major, she struggled to pick apart his words to make coherent sentences. Everything he said seemed to be a drone.

Finally, the lecturer closed his laptop and called an end to class. Anya breathed a sigh of relief and began to gather her belongings, shutting down her own laptop and pushing it into her bag. Eric was expecting her in the next hour, and she wanted to make it back to her room and freshen up before heading over to his place.

She trotted down the steps, toward the stage the lecturer had been speaking from, and headed out into the corridor, joining the river of students which flowed down the hall. Someone stepped into pace with her, and she glanced over to find Gavin Hollis, the college’s football star, walking beside her. Instantly, she bristled, her head snapping away to focus on the hall ahead. She hoped if she pretended he wasn’t there, he might just go away.

He didn’t.

“Hey, Anya. Where you going?”

“What is it to you?”

He walked with his chest pushed out, like a proud peacock, and spoke too loudly, as if hoping everyone else would hear. “I wondered what you were doing later. Me and a couple of the guys are throwing a party at the house. You wanna come?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “You know I don’t date college guys, Gavin. Go hit on someone else.”

“Aww, Anya.” He motioned up and down his body with his hand. “You know you want some of this.”

She snorted in derision.

He dropped back a pace, allowing her to walk on, but a mocking laugh followed her. “You won’t be able to control yourself forever.”

She ignored him. She’d never been interested in any of the guys at college. They all seemed like boys to her—only interested in making an impression on their friends, never a thought for the women they conquered. She had no intention of letting one of these boys paw over her like an overeager puppy, only to report back every detail, and probably add some untruths of their own, to their friends. Her sights were set much higher.