His Acquisition (6 page)

“You saw me do it?” I asked him finally, my breath light and
fast. “Set up the lights, I mean?”

He nodded at me, and the spell of him began to fade. “I think I
can handle the rest of it.” He waved a distracted hand at an old-fashioned
dressing screen about twenty feet across the room. “I know we said no nudity
unless discussed first, but would you remove your clothes? You'll find a length
of cloth to wrap yourself in over there.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but something stopped me. I knew
just as well as anyone that the nude form is superior to the clothed form. I
hadn't spent a bazillion years in art school sculpting and drawing and painting
naked people just to protest my own nudity.

Besides, the thought of being naked around him, but not
truly
nude... it thrilled me, in small, shivery, secret ways. Yeah, we're all
naked under our clothes, but sometimes you want to make that
really
explicit.

My mouth dry, I moved to the screen and slipped behind it.

On the floor, neatly folded, was a square of satiny fabric in a
shade of white so bright it hurt my eyes. I wondered if he had chosen white as
an afterthought, or because he thought it would look good on me. Lots of people
looked washed-out in white. I wasn't one of them. I just hoped he knew
something
about lighting and color, or I was going to end up looking like a ghoul
anyway.

Nervously, I began to shed my clothes. First came the high, dark
brown leather boots—low heels—the swish of the zipper loud in the quiet of the
penthouse studio. Then came my socks. Yes, I wear socks under my boots.
Homemade wool-knit socks. My feet are narrow, and it was cold outside. Don't
judge me. My manicured toes met the chill of the floorboards with a shiver. Now
came the hard part.

Crossing my arms in front of me, I lifted my sweater over my
torso. The buttery-soft alpaca slipped over my bare skin in an intimate caress,
and when I dragged it over my head my hair crackled with static electricity.
Smoothing my hair down with my hands, I lowered my fingers to the front-closing
clasp on my bra. Clumsily I undid it, and my breasts—such as they were—bounced
free. Pert and tiny. My nipples hardened automatically at the change in
temperature, and knowing that only a thin partition of wood separated my naked
tits from Malcolm Ward's gaze just made them tighter. Between my legs I felt a
tiny rush of heat, a sweet little gush of warmth and wetness.

Was I... was I actually getting
turned on
by this?

I was. I
was
getting turned on. I must be a secret
exhibitionist!

Now I can no longer tease Felicia about her public sexcapades
in good conscience,
I thought to myself. Good thing I don't
have
a
conscience.

Bowing my head, I put my hands on the waistband of my jeans. My
hair slid over my shoulders, sending a shudder through me, and when I
unbuttoned my jeans my fingers were trembling. With a shove, I pushed the denim
down over my hips, letting it fall past my thighs to my knees, and I stepped
out of my pants, the cool air pebbling the skin of my body. Now only my
underwear remained, cheap, practical black cotton panties I'd bought on sale.
Old habits die hard. I hooked my thumbs into the waistband and prepared to pull
them down.

My hands wouldn't budge.

I bit my lip.

“Can I, uh, keep my underwear on?” I asked through the screen,
cursing my cowardice as I did so. Couldn't even take it off for a photo shoot?
What kind of artist am I?

“Sure.” Ward's voice floated around the screen, deep and rich.
“Whatever you're comfortable with.”

Hating myself, I picked up the white satin and wrapped it around
my body.

The fabric was long—very long, and wide, like a bridal train. I
wondered where he'd managed to get it, but then I pushed the thought out of my
mind. What did it matter? He was rich. He could get anything he damn well
wanted. Taking a deep breath to brace myself, I slipped out from behind the
screen, the fabric trailing over the floor behind me.

Ward was peering at his camera, adjusting some setting or other,
and didn't notice me for a moment. I would have been content to watch him frown
for an hour, but my reactions were starting to severely unsettle me, so I
cleared my throat instead. He looked up. His cherrywood eyes widened.

“Wow,” he said.

I gave him my best
bitch, please
eye roll. I may have
been susceptible to his charms, but I liked to think I wasn't
that
susceptible.

His mouth turned up. “I meant that you look different in white,”
he said.

“Different from what?” I asked him. “We've known each other less
than twenty-four hours. You haven't seen me in
anything.”

“Black,” he said immediately. “And if I had to guess, you really
like to wear black.”

“Of course I like to wear black. It goes with everything.”

He smiled, as if he knew something about me that I didn't, and I
scowled back at him. “Let's just get started,” I snapped.

“Sure,” he said, and gestured for me to step onto the black
backdrop, in front of the blinding lights.

Tossing my head back, I did so, dragging the stupid satin cloth
behind me, keeping it wrapped around my chest so that it would cover the
important bits. When I reached the center of the dark rectangle on the floor, I
turned and flung my hair over my shoulder, giving him my dirtiest look.

Ward snapped a picture.

My mouth dropped open. “What the hell?” I demanded. “Aren't you
going to warn me when you take a picture?”

“Well, you'll be on your guard now,” he said affably, inspecting
the photo he'd just taken on his camera. “That was my only chance to capture
the most raw you.”

For some reason, that made me even angrier. “Who said you could
take pictures of the raw me?” I said. “That's personal!”

He blinked. “Isn't that what art is?” he asked. “Personal?”

“Personal
for you.”

“You
are
personal for me. I find you fascinating.”

The fists clenching the satin around my body tightened, and as
it did so his sharp cherrywood eyes honed in on it, and he lifted the camera
again.

“Wait!” I said.

He halted and tilted his head at me. “Yes?”

“Just why do you find me fascinating? I know it's not because of
my looks or whatever.” I mean, I
hoped
it was for my looks. I wouldn't
mind being Felicia. I wouldn't mind being beautiful to someone.

He lowered the camera and appeared to think about this for a
long moment, and the longer it stretched out the more nervous I got.

“I suppose because you are alive,” he said at last.

He really had a way of confusing me. “Everyone's alive. Except
dead people.”

But he shook his head. “No. Not so. In that entire room of
people last night, you were the only person who stood out to me against the
crowd. You were
alive
.” He lifted the camera again and stepped in,
closer and closer, crouching so that his camera was level with my breasts and
honed in on my hands clutching the white fabric to my chest. I prayed he
wouldn't notice how rapid my breathing became with his increasing proximity.

I licked my lips as he took a picture of my pale-knuckled hands.
“That still doesn't make any sense,” I told him.

He backed up, and looked at me. And for a strange moment, I felt
as though he was the only person who had ever really
looked
at me
before. Looked, and saw.

“Then perhaps I recognized you,” he said. “From a past life.
Perhaps we are bound together by the red thread of fate, as the Japanese say.”
He paused. “A red thread. Red ribbon. You would look beautiful bound in red.”

His words sent shivers through me. “Would I? And would you be
the one doing the binding?”

Those dark cherrywood eyes glinted at me. “Would you like me
to?”

I didn't know what to say. He was a man who could make me
speechless. I
always
know what to say, how to send people off balance,
and yet I seemed to have met my match in Malcolm Ward. I opened my mouth, my
whole body vibrating with something dark and sweet, as though I were a string
on an instrument and he had plucked me, made me sing.

He snapped a picture of my parted lips and wide eyes, my
hesitation and desire, a woman standing on a cliffside on the fifth floor of a
Manhattan mansion.

“Perhaps,” I said at last. “If you wanted.” Another rush of heat
bloomed between my legs at my frank admission, as I thought of all the ways I
wanted him to tie me up.

For the first time, I saw a crack in his serenely nutso
exterior. His Adam's apple bobbed as he gulped. “I might,” he said. “Will you
turn around?”

Mouth dry, I did so. The soft sound of our breathing and the
click and whirr of the camera were the only sounds in the room. The noise of
the city outside barely registered with me. I felt his presence, hot and
hovering, just behind me, like a caress on my skin. The muscles of my back
tightened and wound up, and my spine arched, thrusting my breasts out. The
clicking of the camera came faster, and I began to move, tossing my hair,
letting my head fall back on a limp neck, my arms growing heavy as I lost
control of them beneath a wave of drunken desire. I posed artlessly for him, my
thoughts running wild with the fantasy of skin on skin, breath to breath, his
fingers on me, in me, his tongue tasting my body as I devoured him, bit him,
dug in my nails and pulled him inside.

My need must have shown on my face, and though there was a
camera between us, I knew he saw it. From the corner of my eye, I watched his
shoulders grow tense and tight as I threw everything I had into seducing him.

His breath was coming hard and fast by the time he knelt beside
me, aiming the lens of his camera upward, and I lifted an arm and turned my
face from his, letting the fabric slip from my grip to reveal one pert breast
with a nipple as hard as a pebble.

He hissed between his teeth as he snapped the picture. The sound
made my knees go weak, and I sank to the floor, letting my limbs go limp as I
lay down, swathed carelessly in white satin against black, my hair fanning out
around me, my breasts freed at last.

“Yes,” he said, and his voice was harsh with want. “Yes, like
that.”

I tossed my head, writhing in the throes of some imagined
ecstasy, and through it the camera clicked on, capturing me with complete
honesty. Malcolm stood again and straddled my hips so he could get a good view
of me from above, and I thrashed beneath him, like a pinned butterfly.

I wished I'd taken my panties off, but now that he was above me
I really had no way of removing them discreetly, so I threw caution, and my
satiny shroud, to the wind. His sharp inhalation as I bared myself almost
completely to him was all I needed. Reaching down, I worked my panties over my
hips, grateful that the black cotton would stand out against the white. Malcolm
took a thousand and one pictures as I slid them down my legs, twisting and
turning so he could get the maximum number of angles. Sliding one foot out, I
cocked my hip and slowly stretched the cotton out, pulling at it as though it
were inextricably hooked on my other foot. When at last the elastic snapped
over my toes and rebounded into my hand I was almost moaning. One of my fingers
had found its way into my mouth and I bit down on it as I tossed the panties
away.

Malcolm sank to his knees, still straddling my legs. The camera
clicked, a rapid staccato beat as I arched my back, completely bared to him.
“My god,” he whispered, rough and low, and then my hands found his thighs,
burning hot through the thin flannel pajama bottoms.

The barrier of the camera broke, and his hand found my stomach,
rough and wide, skating down the skin of my belly to the soft mound of my
pussy, still trapped between my thighs. Without parting my legs, he slipped a
rough fingertip between the lips of my pussy and found my creamy slit and aching
clitoris.

His touch was electrifying, sending sparks dancing across my
skin, and I thought at any moment they might catch, fan into flames and consume
me, but as his hand picked up a slow, rough rhythm, fucking me with the pad of
his finger, I failed to combust. Instead I gasped as he dragged his fingertip
against my clit, drawing a moan from my mouth as my legs tensed and my toes
curled. My hands ran over my skin, up into my hair where they curled and
pulled, then down over my breasts, pinching and pulling them into taut peaks.
Above the sound of my gasps, I heard the camera clicking madly, but I didn't
even care.

Let him take pictures,
I thought fiercely. I wanted him
to see me in all my abandoned glory. If I was alive like no one else, then I
wanted everyone to know it. Then he dipped his finger inside me and I forgot
all about the whirring camera as the world condensed to my quivering cunt and
his strong, insistent finger. Deeper and deeper he went, then curled his finger
inside me.

“Ah!” The sound ripped from my lips, a noise of pure surprise
and shock, as though I had never been touched before. My hands clawed their way
up my throat, spreading over my face as I tried to stifle my cries at the slow,
inexorable fuck he was giving me with only his hand.

Something cold touched my wrist, and I opened my eyes—when had I
closed them?—to see the camera resting against my arm. He was holding it out to
me.

I took it.

His hands freed, he moved down my body, his other hand alighting
on my thigh, sending fiery shivers through my body, racing up my leg to curl in
the small of my back. “Open for me,” he said, his voice dark and hard. “Let me
taste you.”

My thighs parted for him almost of their own volition, the cool
air of the studio hitting my heated flesh like a splash of ice water. I hissed
between my teeth, and then the heat of his mouth descended on my pussy and all
discomfort was obliterated. My fingers tightened on the hard plastic camera in
my hands and it gave a creak of protest as his tongue flicked over my clitoris,
lapped and licked down the inside of my labia, dipped inside my tight channel.
Glancing down, I saw that the screen on the camera was still on, and I could
see him through it, licking my pussy, his eyes half-closed in pleasure as his
hands slowly massaged my thighs. He looked lost in desire, and strangely
vulnerable.