Exposure (13 page)

Granted, it was fun as hell to
shoot.

I glance over at the artist’s makeup
kit as she starts wiping stuff on my face. It reads NORA. “Nora,
why do the models hate Rylan?”

She chuckles. “Why do you
ask?”

I shrug.

“
Not all of them do.
Delilah loves Rylan.”

“
So are the temp models
just jealous of her?”

Nora shakes her head. “I don’t think
it’s that. If you haven’t noticed, Rylan has a fuck-it-all kind of
attitude that makes her come off as nonchalant. Like she doesn’t
care about modeling, she just does it to make money. And to be
honest, that’s the truth. She’s gorgeous and knows how to work the
camera and uses it to her advantage. The other girls—they see that
she doesn’t really want it. They hate her for it.”

I think about this as Britain drives
me over to the abandoned gym, where we’re going to be shooting
today.

“
Evan said that she wanted
to go over with the scouts and get ready at the site,” she explains
to me. “I guess she’s hoping to get in character before you
arrive.”

I study her. “Why do you look so
smug?”

She obviously tries to play it cool as
we pull into the parking lot. “It’s just funny to me.”

“
Yeah, lots of things are
funny to me too.”

“
How you guys are both
totally into each other and to hide it you’re playing up the whole
‘co-worker’ thing.”

What right does this chick think she
has to say what I feel? “Dude, Britain. I have a girlfriend, how
many times do I have to…”

“
Dude
, Dallas.” She opens her door and slides out of the car. “Now
is the time to acknowledge your feelings for Evan before you do
something stupid. Yeah?” She slams the door.

I get out of the car to
follow her, to ask her what the fuck she means by
before I do something stupid
, but she’s walking way too fast, probably because she
doesn’t want my confrontation. By the time I start jogging to her,
we’re already inside, rounding the bend to the open women’s locker
room, to the showers…

Evan sits on top one of the low shower
walls as the scouting team sets up the lighting around her, soaking
wet and topless.

Completely topless.

Water drips over her chest. I can tell
from here that her pink nipples couldn’t be harder.

Waiting.

She’s waiting for me.

Last night I was the deviant. But
today, I’m putty in her hands.

Britain snorts. “Go on. Go join your
‘co-worker.’”

Chapter Nine

Evan

Dallas isn’t leaving. This issue
proves that he’s now a permanent member of EPE.

And the only way I can deal with him
is giving in completely. To treat him as a sex object on set. To
get fully used to him.

Plus, dumbfounded looks
like the one he’s giving me now are
priceless
.

“
You heard the lady,”
Britain says, shaking her head at me. She looks very entertained.
Very. “Strip.”

“
Wait. All the way?”
Dallas stutters. I love to see him caught off guard like
this.

“
Unless you have a problem
with that,” Britain says bluntly, squatting and unzipping her
camera case.

“
No, I don’t. Have a
problem. I’m fine.”

Britain and I exchange looks, and I
smirk, sliding down from the wall. The shower head is all sorts of
fucked, so when I turn it on again, the stream goes berserk,
shooting outward in a lighter spray instead of a solid jet. Luckily
for shooting, it catches the lights that the scouting crew set up
perfectly.

I gasp as the cold splashes against
me, quickly turning the gauge to a more moderate temperature.
Dallas looks confused. Which I’m pretty sure has to do with my
tits. My tits are befuddling him. Poor guy. At least he’s got his
shirt off. Stacked abs on top of those jeans just waiting to get
wet…

“
Actually, Brit,” I walk
toward Dallas. “I think the jeans might work for this shoot. You
said you want me more vulnerable than him anyway, right?” As I
speak, I keep my eyes glued to Dallas’s. Slowly, the fierceness
that existed within them last night returns, and he lowers his
head. “What am I going to do with you?” he murmurs so only I can
hear.

“
Faux fuck me up against
the shower wall,” I return. “Just how we practiced.”

“
You two love birds
ready?” Britain calls. “Let’s get this party started.”

This shoot, she doesn’t have to direct
us at all. Dallas has gained his ferocity. He pushes on my
shoulders until I stumble back through the stream. I gasp as my
back hits the cold tile of the shower wall. His hands are clenching
the inner parts of my thighs before I’ve even regained my balance,
lifting me up. I wrap my legs around his waist for balance. Britain
is dancing around us in attempt to not get her camera wet, but this
is the last time any of my focus rests on her.

Dallas’s hair is getting soaked. Water
drips from his nose, his lips. I want to taste him, but for some
reason, a kiss seems more intimate than what we are doing
now.

A kiss on the lips seems
real.

He doesn’t let me debate for long,
lowering his head to my shoulder and licking the water from it. One
hand snakes between us and finds my breast. His forefinger circles
around my nipple until it’s painfully hard, and then, when I don’t
think that feeling any more pleasure in that area of my body is
possible, he pinches the bud and tugs.

My head rolls back and I
murmur a curse in ecstasy. In
real
ecstasy.

We repeat these moves for fifteen
minutes or so when Britain finally calls it quits. Catching my
breath, I wait for Dallas to let me down. But before he does, he
dips his head, tongue darting out and swirling around my
nipple.

I release a surprised moan.

As quick as it begun, it’s over. My
feet hit the ground, my body pressed tightly against his. His
doesn’t step backward when I tilt my head up, our quick breaths
mingling, his deviant eyes hooded. He knows that he licked me when
the camera was off.

He did it because he wanted to, not
for the shoot.

“
I want you so bad,” I
whisper.

It takes me about half a second before
I realize what I actually uttered out loud.

I push away from him and hurry around
the corner, slipping into the bathroom part of the locker room.
Shutting myself inside the nearest stall, I wrap my arms around me
and shiver away this feeling.

This feeling that Dallas Whitley isn’t
just a sex object to me.

That he can never be.

Dallas

I finally get why public disguises are
so important to Evan. But unfortunately for me, I’m a guy, not
super capable of dressing down in order to hide my slutty EPE
image. Which makes being at school really. Fucking.
Awkward.

The worst was when the
freshman girl wanted an autograph as I was on my way to the grad
office, pulling the latest issue of EPE out and waving it around
like it’s nothing more than an issue of
Seventeen
. She folded open open the
pages to Evan sitting on a desk, her bare legs tangled around my
waist.

“
Yeah, I can’t do this,” I
said out loud, handing the magazine back to her.

But the five seconds of fame aren’t
over. The office is worse.

“
Nice power-play,
Whitley,” Brad drawls. I look up from the research report I’m
typing up, at his toothy-fucking-grin. He flashes his EPE copy. “Is
that how you win all of your women?”

I slam the lid of my laptop shut and
slide it into the sleeve. I need to get out of here now before
someone loses an eye.

“
Come on, bro. I’m fucking
around.”

I can’t even see straight through all
of my rage, let alone respond. When I’m out of the office and
hurrying to my car, I realize I don’t even know why I’m so pissed
off. This is what the shoot was designed to do, wasn’t it? Show off
my power-play over Rylan Willow. Derogatory thoughts from bastards
like Brad are a natural reaction.

The stares from people I pass are
enough my make me go crazy. I really thought I had little shame. I
thought that the effects of posing for EPE wouldn’t bother me so
much.

When I get into my car and shut the
door, I exhale. Maybe it’s because, when people ask for my
autograph, when they stare at me, when they make stupid remarks, I
imagine Evan having to deal with the same thing. Evan, who’s trying
desperately to hide the Rylan side of her every second she’s
outside the studio.

I haven’t spoken to her in four
days—not since the shower. We’re supposed to shoot again tomorrow.
Britain wants variety to choose from for the series, so she wants
to shoot as much as possible over the next few weeks. I want to
continue to become comfortable with Evan, but that’s kind of
impossible with the way she’s avoiding me.

When I handed back her test during bio
lecture, she wouldn’t even look at me. I don’t know if she’s making
sure that no one who sees us interact puts two and two together, or
if this has something to do with what she said back at the
showers.

I want you so
bad.

Those were the last words she uttered
to me, and now she refuses to look at me, even when I pass her in
the halls.

Maybe she feels guilty. Maybe it’s my
fault, because of what I did to her. I have a girlfriend, but I
could help it. Not with her wet and clinging to me. Not with her
beautiful, perky tits right in my face.

I needed to lick her. And it made her
want me.

But the way she acts toward me now is
like she despises me. Along with the reactions from people on
campus, I’m starting to hate being an EPE model. Even if Britain is
promising me a huge paycheck.

I’m not under contract. Technically I
could quit.

No, I can’t. I need this money. And
something else inside me really doesn’t want to disappoint
Britain.

I get home, and Tricia has her bags
packed. Two weeks in Seattle to work with one of her clients—a
corporate office that she’s doing some web work for.

“
Don’t get too naughty
while I’m gone,” she says with a wry smile, kissing me on the
mouth. “Got my hands on that EPE issue, and damn, boy. Makes me
want to jump you for a quickie right here.”

Well, that’s a first.

“
So it doesn’t make you
uncomfortable?”

She shrugs. “Why would it? She’s just
some meaningless model.”

Right. Meaningless model.

Glancing out the window, she says, “My
cab’s here,” and kisses me again. “Love you. I’ll call when I get
to Seattle.”

And before I can say goodbye, she’s
out the door.

Two weeks without Tricia. I wish I
could say that this is some kind of victory for me, but being by
myself in this apartment gets kind of lonely. Even if she’s always
working while she’s here, at least she’s a body—a
presence.

I text Evan before heading to the gym,
asking if she’s okay. I guess it’s the least I can do considering I
haven’t talked her in a week and she’s refusing to make eye contact
with me at school. But after two hours of weights and cardio, she
still hasn’t responded. At home, I order in Chinese food and study.
I call her. No response.

I decide not to heckle her. If, for
some reason, I’ve pissed her off, she’s going to have to deal with
me tomorrow.

///

Britain wants to shoot
outdoors today. Some ultra-sexy picnic shoot, she says. When I
arrive at the studio, she is out by the pool with Adam and Delilah.
Correction, she is
in
the pool with Adam and Delilah, who are naked and treading in
the deep end. Dressed in a bikini and standing in the shallow end,
Britain holds her camera, equipped with water-proof
protection.

“
Sizzling underwater
aerobics,” Britain tells me when I take a seat on one of the pool
chairs and watch.

Delilah is giggling, pushing down on
Adam’s shoulders to dunk him beneath the surface. Flirting. Of
course it would be normal for hot, naked models to flirt with each
other.

“
Okay, okay, stop fucking
around. On my count in three, two, one.”

Britain, Delilah, and Adam sink below
the surface at the same time. I can’t really tell what they’re
doing underwater, only some rendition of what Britain said—sizzling
underwater aerobics. No props other than their skin.

I’m jealous that Adam and Delilah have
advanced to this while Evan and I are fucking around with our
clothes still on. Why? Because Britain wants to play up the image
of Rylan being this slowly-tainted virginal character.

Sort of twisted, if you ask
me.