Exposure (3 page)

I kind of like her.

We don’t pay her much. I’m sure she
only comes in to doll us up from the credit in the mag. She’s
actually had quite a few of our subscribers (or subscribers
girlfriends, I guess) wanting to set up an appointment because of
what they saw in EPE.

I close my eyes as she sprays on my
makeup. I get the usual Rylan look today—soft, curly hair cascading
over my shoulders, and a shadow palette in quiet browns. Cheeks an
innocent pink hue. My favorite thing, oddly enough, is the pair of
fake eyelashes I get every day. There’s something about eyelashes
that totally changes a girl’s appearance, and makes me look like an
entirely different person.

When Nora is done, I
examine myself in the mirror.
Hello,
Rylan.

I curl my fingers around
one of my locks and head out toward today’s set. There’s only one
bedroom in the studio side of the house. We use it for most of our
inside shoots, the bed, furniture, and walls covered to rematch our
theme. I haven’t really been paying attention lately to the mag
lineup so I’m not sure what is planned for Delilah’s shoot—which is
why, when I step foot into the bedroom, I’m not expecting to be
handed a bottle of chocolate syrup and have a very,
very
naked Adam in front
of me.

“
Help smear this on Adam,”
Britain instructs, returning to her job of dousing Delilah, who
wears only a black thong, in chocolate syrup.

“
Well,” Adam throws me a
smirk and stretches his arms. “Ready when you are.”

I sneer. “Of course you’d give me the
naked giant to cover.” Naked giant with nice assets. But I’m not
about to comment on them and make his ego even bigger.

“
Whatever,” I mutter.
Rubbing chocolate on a hot, naked boy isn’t the weirdest thing that
I’ve ever done. I walk toward Adam and pop open the lid to the
bottle. “Hershey’s… classy.”

I shake the bottle at is torso. When
chocolate spurts out onto his skin, he groans.

I snort. “Give me a break.”

“
What?” Adam says. “You
don’t find giving me a chocolate bath erotic?”

“
I find it cheesy as hell.
Don’t step off the plastic. Chocolate syrup is a bitch to get out
of the carpet.”

“
You’d know?” He asks
wickedly.

“
Yeah. You—and
Delilah—aren’t the only ones in this room who’ve been covered in
dessert.”

“
But you haven’t been
covered in dessert with
me
.”

“
Oh,
God
.” I step back, pointing to
Delilah. “Do you not see the hot piece of ass that you’re going to
be shooting with for the next hour?”

“
Why thank you,” Delilah
sings. Delicately, she climbs onto the bed. I notice now that it’s
covered in the ivory vinyl comforter and pillows. It sounds tacky,
but it actually looks like an expensive down feather bed set. And
yet it can be sprayed off with a hose if needed.

“
But having just Delilah
isn’t as good as having both of you,” Adam says.

“
Sounds like someone has a
crush.” Delilah kneels on the bed and fluffs her hair, completely
free of shame as chocolate slowly trickles over her breasts. I
mean, when it was just us girls during shoots, so much exposure
wouldn’t make me blink twice. But the thought of being naked in
front of someone like Adam, who devours me with his eyes while I’m
clothed, kind of weirds me out.

I can’t let it. Just because a guy’s
involved in a shoot doesn’t mean that I don’t have the upper hand.
I can’t be afraid of something new—of the unpredictable.

I put a little swagger in my step as I
walk toward him, squirting chocolate syrup on my hand. “So you’re
one of those guys who thinks he’s so hot, he can just have it all.”
I press my hand against his chest, smearing chocolate all over his
pecks. Keeping my eyes locked on his, I trail my fingers down the
muscles in his abs. “So it must be shocking for a girl like me to
be apathetic to the thought of licking chocolate syrup off of
you.”

I trace his hipbone. His eyes roll
back and he squeezes them shut. I glance down to find him hard as a
rock, his dick less than an inch away from my abdomen.

Good to know that I can actually turn
a guy on in person. A little affirmation here and there can’t hurt
a girl.

“
Quite flirting with the
model,
Rylan
, and
hurry up,” Britain drawls.

I quickly smear the rest of the
chocolate over Adam’s torso and back as he douses his legs in
chocolate, and then he climbs onto the bed with Delilah.

“
What are they going to do
now?” I mutter to Britain.

“
Lick it off each
other—what do you think?” she responds with indifference as she
readies her camera.

I think it’s a bit corny, but I don’t
say anything. Instead, I sit in the corner of the room and wait for
Britain to get the lighting around the white-washed room just
right.

“
I’m going to try this
shoot with a bunch of different aperture settings, so we might be
here for a bit. You two okay with that?”

Delilah bites back her grin as Adam
pulls her toward him. Instantly, I am no longer the focus, and
Delilah is the new lust-object. God, men are so
predictable.

“
Absolutely,” Adam
says.

Britain doesn’t do a whole lot of
instruction like she usually does with the solo shoots. I guess the
pheromones are doing a well-enough job. Adam forcefully pushes
Delilah back onto the bed, dips his head, and licks up the middle
of her chest, right between her chocolate-covered breasts.
Delilah’s plump lips part as she gasps and writhes on the
comforter.

Stealthily, Britain grips a canopy
pole for support and hops onto the footboard of the bed, shooting
away. She’s good as these balancing acts. “Great. Keep it steamy,
guys.”

That’s all she says. She doesn’t
instruct Adam to lick up Delilah’s neck or for Delilah to look more
invested in what he’s doing to her. They’re perfect.

Adam murmurs something to Delilah, and
she giggles and nods. Adam trails his chocolate fingers up the
inside of her bare thigh. He lowers his head to her breast and
covers her nipple with his mouth. Delilah whimpers and raises her
hands above her head, giving him full access.

Heat floods the apex of my thighs.
Damn, this is hot.

I keep telling myself that
I can make it through my PhD without dating or hooking up, but
watching them reminds me that it’s been a whole year since a guy
touched
me
like
that. I cross my legs, imagining how it must feel for Delilah right
now—Adam’s tongue flicking against her nipple, the pad of his thumb
moving over her thong and rubbing against her covered
slit.

“
Don’t let him dominate
you, Delilah. Do something about it.”

Adam lets Delilah flip him so that she
straddles him. Britain hops down from her spot and gets in close as
she can, getting shots of their bodies pressed together, Delilah’s
tongue running along the cusp of Adam’s ear.

I keep my legs pinned together, my
breath even, my teeth gritted.

I’ve never been so envious of someone
and yet so thankful that I wasn’t them at the same time.

Dallas

I’m not sure what I was expecting the
EPE headquarters to looks like. Hell, these shoots nearly border on
porn. I mean, classy porn to say the least. Artistic porn. But I’m
broke and this is what it has come to. I guess I was expecting a
dump in the inner-city part of town, but that’s not where my GPS
brought me. I park outside of a large home on the outskirts of the
suburbs. Nothing surrounds this house other than a cal-de-sac and
some open fields.

The house is in nice
condition too. And it’s huge—like a middle-class,
Desperate Housewives
version of the Playboy Mansion.

Before I get out of the car, I look
down at myself. I’m kind of dressed like a prick. I’ve just come
from student teaching and my shirt is buttoned up to my collar and
tucked into my slacks. I pull out my shirt and undo my tie,
unbutton a few buttons, and take in a deep breath.

Why the hell am I so nervous? I mean,
it’s not a big deal if I don’t get the job. It might be for the
better. Applying was a stupid idea in the first place, even if
Tricia’s right about it giving me a leg up in the industry. And
what about respect from undergrads? The last thing I need is a
bunch of freshman fuck-heads who think they can mess with me
because they’ve seen me naked.

Mostly naked.

EPE is good at avoiding crotch shots.
But still. This was a mistake.

Right when I’m about to start the
engine back up, a cute blonde wearing glasses bounces out of the
front door of the house. She spots me, waves, and runs over. She’s
dressed in a tank top and cut-off shorts.

Normal enough.

She leans into my open window, holding
out her hand. “You must be Dallas,” she says. “Well, obviously
you’re Dallas. I’ve seen your photo. I’m Britain.”

This
is Britain? I thought Britain might be some pseudonym for an
old creepy forty-year-old man with a pot belly. But this girl looks
like your average college student. Naturally pretty, but a bit too
nerdy to be in a sorority. Kind of plain. Like she wouldn’t be into
taking pictures of naked people.

“
Err… hi,” I say. I pull
my keys out of the ignition and step out of the car.

“
Come on in. It’s okay,
you look kind of scared.” She grins. “I hope you didn’t dress up
for us.”

I tug on my collar. “I student
teach.”

“
Oh, that’s
right.”

“
That’s right?”

“
Uhh… yeah. I mean, I had
to do my research. Umm… one of my friends is in your bio class.”
She looks away from me and heads toward the door.

Great
.

I follow her up the steps and into the
house. The main room is vaulted and big, but classy. Much classier
than I expected. It almost looks like a nice, middle-class family
could live here. I mean, other than the framed posters of the half
or mostly naked EPE models on the walls. I recognize all of them.
I’m not an avid reader or anything. Tricia looks through my issues
more than I do. But I’m a subscriber. Who on the East Park campus
isn’t? We have the most successful independent erotic magazine out
of any campus in the country.

Everyone’s going to be looking at
pictures of me now.

I’ve done underwear modeling. It’s the
same thing.

A girl stands in the corner of the
room, crossing her arms. In the frame behind her is the promotional
poster of her, like she planned it.

Rylan Willow. Holy shit, it’s Rylan
Willow.

She looks much happier in her promo
poster—and wearing a lot more—but it’s definitely her. Even though
I’m not what you’d call EPE’s biggest fan, I never skip the Rylan
spreads. And now she’s standing before me, arms crossed tight
against her tits so that her cleavage spills perfect over that…
one-piece thing. Whatever the hell she’s wearing that looks so damn
good on her.

Maybe the exposure of this job will be
worth it if I can shoot with her.

No. I can’t think like that. Not when
Tricia’s trusting me so much with this.

Why the fuck does Rylan look so pissed
at me?

“
Dallas, this is one of
our primary models, Rylan Willow.”

“
I—am aware of
that.”
I’m aware of that? Knock off the
professor façade—you fucking idiot.
I hold
out my hand but she doesn’t take it, so I shove it into my pocket.
“Nice to meet you, Rylan.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Pleasure,” she
drawls. She could’ve fooled me.

Britain leads me to the couch and lays
all of the typical interview questions on me—how long I’ve been
shooting for, what has been my favorite gig thus far, and what I do
when I’m not in school or not modeling. She thinks it’s funny that
it was Trisha’s idea to audition for EPE.

I catch myself glancing at Rylan, who
has pulled a weird green drink from the kitchen fridge and is
sipping it by the island, watching us.

“
So, since you’ve informed
me that you have a girlfriend, this might be a problem in terms of
how far you’re willing to go for the shoots. I mean, I try—to the
best of my ability—to stay classy enough to call this art, but
you’ll still have to get intimate with the models.

Rylan sighs from the
counter.

“
I don’t have a problem
with that.” When Britain raises her eyebrow skeptically, I add,
“Really. The only thing I won’t be able to do is cock
shots.”

Britain busts up laughing. “Okay. No
cock shots. I can swing that.”

“
No, seriously. Undergrads
are going to see enough of me in this magazine as it is. I’m done
with my teaching hours now—today was my last day—”

“
Congratulations.”