Model Release (The Art of Domination #1) (2 page)

An obvious and familiar
foreboding sank my stomach at the sight of the dark-haired man standing a few
feet from them. He caught my attention, well, for a couple of reasons. I didn’t
know him, but I knew his type. While the flurry of music and activity caught
everyone else up in this sense of constant movement and energy—a sort of
atmospheric attention deficit disorder—he stood still and steady and tall in
the middle of the chaos like it was his natural habitat, at home in the wild.
His carriage reminded me of apex predators in wildlife documentaries: well-fed,
relaxed, confident, at their peak in all ways.

Peering appraisingly at
the latex-clad model and her artist in attendance, he gripped a half-empty
bottle of rum loosely in one hand, the long fingers of the other hand drumming
thoughtfully against his leg. I wondered, with an unexpected surge of envy,
what he was thinking as he watched the female model, what he was thinking about
doing to her. Maybe nothing. Maybe anything and everything he wanted, without
consequence or conscience. “Devil may care” was a phrase coined for men like
him, who wore it with ease in a sultry expression and power-at-rest posture.
The whole shoot looked very urban Dionysian, reimagined Bacchanalia with a
twenty-first century twist, with that particular male model cast as the god of
debauchery and drink himself.

Also, honestly, a girl
just didn’t see a man that handsome every day, and he was gorgeous even by
model standards. The kind of gorgeous that almost hurt my eyes and definitely
made me feel unworthy to be looking, an effect I absolutely detested and
avoided in men. I preferred some kind of mortal flaw—a smile that crooked at
one end or a haircut that never laid quite right, a build that was a little too
slight or a face that was a little too soft.

This man had no flaws,
physically
. He wore his thick black hair
cut short enough to ruffle like a roguish, party boy crown. That had to have
been hours of work for some proud hairstylist, to be sure. And the perfectly
trimmed five o’clock shadow along his hard-angled jaw, too. The light purse to
his full, wine pink lips came off part smile, part knowing smirk—the kind that
always left me torn between wanting to kiss a guy and slap him. Maybe both, a
few times.

No shirt above his
low-riding, loose blue jeans. Nice juxtaposition, I thought, between baring
that smooth, tanned chest and lean torso and just hinting at the shape of his
muscular ass and thighs under the sturdy denim. His dusty black motorcycle
boots and the rock star heavy metal cross on the silver chain around his neck
completed the God of Sex, Thunder, and Jack Daniels look. Not bad at all, I
thought. Maybe this Beal guy knew what he was doing, at least when it came to
staging. Certainly had me throbbing from my temples to my fingertips, from my
chest to deep between my legs.

Which reminded me I was
supposed to be pissed off right now at the idea of this photographer taking
advantage of my little sister, dolling her up like a bondage pin-up, luring her
into a lot more than modeling, I feared. I was supposed to be all stern glares
and strong language filled with righteous indignation. Absently bouncing on the
toes of my high heels to the beat of the music while marveling at what a real
functioning artist’s studio looked like and staring slack-jawed at male models
didn’t quite fit my image of myself stalking in here and setting a smarmy
pervert poseur straight.

A casual glance my
direction from Mr. Model jarred me out of my thoughts and into motion,
especially when he did a double take and focused those dark eyes hard and full
on me. Caught!
You’re not supposed to be
looking, Iva
. An electrical thrill of anticipation—or apprehension—pricked
under my skin. The longer he held my stare, the more it bristled like pins and
needles, only worse, all the way up my back and arms and shoulders until I was
itching and aching to just roll my head and shudder and shake it out. What a
reaction. This guy had mastered the broody bad boy’s piercing glare, and it
made me feel like bolting from the room.

Not that I didn’t like
catching a man’s attention, just not his. Not that kind of guy. I had the
curves and the big brown eyes and the hair-flipping skill to work the
average
club crowd when I wanted to, but
those had also been wilder days. I sure as hell wasn’t dressed for it or in the
mood for it now. So I mustered all the concentration I could to spin on my
heels and put my back to the distraction, so I could start looking for Beal.

It wasn’t hard to find
him. In a room filled with taller than average twenty-two-year-old underwear
models, a middle-aged man with forty extra pounds stuffed up under his Hawaiian
shirt stood out in a way that was almost a relief. I was not the only mere
mortal in the room after all. The short, round fellow darted back and forth
behind a long table set back near one wall and some distance from its sister
table and her ample display of alcohol bottles, pizza boxes, and candy bowls.
At least it looked like candy, though I had my doubts.

The rotund shutterbug’s
hands never paused from their task of feverishly unloading and reloading a
variety of cameras, adjusting lenses, swapping filters. When his slicked-back
black hair—the same color and consistency as his pencil-thin mustache—fell into
his eyes, he just shook it out of his doughy face, jowl quivering a full extra
second. He looked... colorful, comical, even approachable, and I was at a loss
for how he had charmed my sister into posing for him.

Considerably less
intimidating than I had planned to be, I marched up to the equipment table. “I
take it you are—”

“What?” he shouted over
the music as he looked up at me without pausing from his work. He had very
small dark eyes, like a rat or maybe a ferret, but instead of seeming creepy
they reminded me of a pet. I almost wanted to scratch him behind the ears.

“I’d like to speak to
you about—”

“What?”

I realized I was
reading his lips more than hearing him, and maybe he wasn’t as good at doing
the same. Leaning over the table toward him, I enunciated each word. “My name
is Iva Moreau. You know my sister. She’s been modeling for you.”

He nodded, but the
utter lack of understanding on his face and the uninterrupted speed at which
his hands worked the cameras made me think he hadn’t heard me at all or maybe
just wasn’t paying attention.

“Cheri,” I said, then
sighed through my teeth at his lack of reaction. “Cheri Moreau?” I shook the
newspaper at him until I got him to glance at page seventeen.

A reaction at last—he
nodded. “Ah, the Odyssey exhibition.” Though I wouldn’t have thought it
possible, I could read in the motion of his lips the slight lisp I detected in
what I caught of his voice. A lisping, beady-eyed, round little
Hawaiian-shirt-wearing man who couldn’t grow a decent mustache to save his
life. But who radiated likeability. Where in the world had Cheri found this
guy?

Then, after a few more
seconds of staring at the newspaper ad, he shifted expressions. He stopped
unscrewing lenses, flipping levers, and adjusting dials and instead grew still.
One brow came to a slow peak. “Is this about that letter? Did you send that?” he
asked, his tongue catching along his teeth each time he pronounced an ‘s’ or ‘
th
’.

Before I could process
my confusion enough to respond, he crooked two fingers to beckon for someone
behind me. Then he pointed at me and exaggeratedly mouthed, “Pamela Wiley.”

A second later, a
pleasantly rough male voice muttered into my right ear from just over my
shoulder. “Ms. Wiley, is it? If we’d known you were coming, we’d have thrown a
party.”

I smelled mandarin
orange and cinnamon and rum and thought of spiced drinks in front of fireplaces
in winter, hot bare skin, deep kisses…. The sensation came on suddenly and out
of nowhere, like I’d have imagined a hot flash felt. Between that and the
voice, I found my attention divided by the dissonance of wanting to correct what
appeared to be a mistaken assumption about who I was and the temptation to just
let myself be distracted. A shiver of attraction shot up my spine and spread
along my scalp in a strong tingle. Of course, I also wondered, if this
wasn’t
a party…?

Then I turned around
and looked straight into the darkest blue eyes I’d ever seen, on the handsomest
man I’d ever seen. From across the room, I hadn’t been able to tell what color
those eyes were or that they had a gleaming black ring around the irises, like
an inverse eclipse of a moon in deep sapphire.

He stood right in front
of me, over me, so close that I could have brushed against him if I’d taken a
deep breath—if I’d been able to breathe. But then he would have felt, right
through two layers of secondhand cashmere, how stiff my nipples had risen at
his scent and the rumble of his voice. With the man lingering—looming—so near,
I heard him perfectly as he said, “I’m Nolan Beal. What can I do for you?”

NOLAN

I recognized the
mistake as soon as I looked into her face, close up like that. To a
photographer’s eye, her features were unmistakable. An unexpected surge of
exhilaration, eagerness, and maybe a moment of simple appreciation welled up in
my chest and mixed with the warmth in my throat from the rum. The feeling
faded, of course, when she didn’t smile, when she didn’t live up to the promise
of the resemblance. Her dark brow dipped in a suggestion of distress or perhaps
disapproval. Then definite disapproval. Not like Cherise at all.
Cheri
was always smiling.

Maybe I’d have made the
same assumption in my assistant’s place. Stan saw a
Stepford
wife in her little sweater set wander into the studio, and his mind naturally
went straight to PTA meetings and church socials and “
think of the children
” pleas for censoring anything wilder than
Andy Griffith Show reruns. Any artist with half an idea’s worth of creativity
and any reputation whatsoever had to deal with one of
those
sooner or later; we’d just had a rash of reprimanding letters
from that Mothers for Moral Media bunch. It was almost a shame this wasn’t
their tight-assed, high-brow spokeswoman. I’d been practicing my best goading
techniques and had wasted a perfectly good jibe.

But no, this… this
woman had a look about her, my cock and I readily noticed as I stared down into
her smooth face, into wide eyes the color of chocolate—when it was melted and
glistening. The resemblance lay mostly in the classically beautiful cheekbones
and jaw but also in the way she carried herself. She was some relationship to
Cheri, my newest model and the most promising, a genuinely likable girl. Cheri
had no model’s ego yet—a real kick to work with, eat pizza with, and go
skateboarding drunk with at two in the morning.

While these chocolate
eyes blinked up at me in obvious query—and annoyance—and that ample chest
pumped her breath just a little extra hard and fast, I managed to tear my gaze
away for a real onceover of the sweater and slacks, 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.”