Model Release (The Art of Domination #1) (7 page)

“Get this done, yes.”
The photographer straightened a little, enough to remind me he had at least six
or seven inches on my five-and-a-half-foot height. The posture broadened his
shoulders and chest, like… like a bird of prey spreading his wings just
before….
Just before what, Iva?
Strangely, I wondered if the gesture was a prelude to devouring me or
sheltering me, falling upon me or taking me under those wings.

“Take your clothes
off,” he instructed with his voice lowered and smoothed. When my eyes flared so
wide they felt like saucers, a smirk flashed at one corner of Beal’s full lips.
Bastard. He was thinking
devour
,
definitely devour. And he had the nasty habit of playing with his food. With
the nod of his head, the man motioned to one of three small dressing rooms.
Thick black curtains gaped to reveal crumpled street clothing on the floor,
dresses and lingerie hanging from knobby metal pegs. “Your outfits for the
shoot are in the middle room.”

I stomped off behind
the curtains of the number two dressing room, no time to fret over the idea of
multiple costume changes. My irritation at my situation and my body’s reaction
to Beal verged on irrational and showed in the brusque jerk of my movements. It
was all too revealing. Had to get ahold of myself. Taking off my sweats and
hanging them neatly, meticulously on bare pegs ate up a few extra moments while
I breathed through my anger and anxiety like a Lamaze class valedictorian. I
couldn’t have been more grateful to hear activity and conversation flare beyond
the curtain, as Beal discussed the prior shoot with the models and issued
instructions for breaking down the set and changing to another. The flurry
diverted scrutiny from me, gave me a moment to hide away, detach, steel myself.
Theoretically.

The outfits selected
for me—by Stan, by Beal?—consisted mostly of black slips, either silky and lacy
or thick and constricting vintage styles. I found the thought of taking off my
bra unreasonably disturbing, vulnerable. It wasn’t like I’d have been topless.
Yet I felt completely exposed in those few seconds I stripped off the garment
in preparation for sliding one of the soft black slips over my head. The air abruptly
cooled ten degrees, or at least felt like it on my naked skin. My nipples were
embarrassingly hard, and I was absurdly afraid of Beal seeing that. Luckily, a
seam running up the middle of each silky cup obscured the telltale points. Only
I knew, which was bad enough.

When I forced myself
out of the dressing room, clacking loudly in the pointy-toed black stilettos
that were the only shoes selected for me, I found the photographer still
conferring with the makeup artist and models. Neither of the blondes had
changed back into street clothes or wandered away to wash off the dramatic
makeup required for the camera. The teenager and Stan were just finishing their
work placing a black velvet loveseat with wooden scrollwork details in front of
a plain, dove-gray backdrop that curved down along the floor as well. And
everyone—
everyone
—stopped to turn and
look at me.

Nolan Beal frowned. And
I felt my bones go cold as my skin flushed hot.

“What?” I asked more
defensively than I would have liked. My resentment and embarrassment was
palpable enough to taste, an acetone burn at the back of my tongue. I really
could have done without the subtle blanch in the male model’s expression, the
dismissive shake of Rilla’s head. Stan and his teen sidekick exchanged an awkward
glance for which I wanted to suggest they go to hell. But Beal…. Goddammit, his
reaction was the worst, even if it was just a frown. These weren’t my clothes,
and this wasn’t my idea, and I didn’t deserve to be standing here made to feel
like irregular goods for it.

“Stan, really?” Nolan
asked.

The rotund assistant
shrugged. “You said get her clothes. I got her clothes. You don’t like
clothes?”

“Something that suited
her might have been nice, don’t you think?” Beal argued as he stalked toward
the metal sample racks that now stood in more orderly rows perpendicular to one
wall.

“That’s a tall order,”
Rilla said, snickering under her breath, “Or a
short
one.”

To his credit, Stan
waved away the bitch’s quip as he walked past her to help Beal rifle through
the racks. “Don’t help,
darlin
’. The grown-ups have
this one handled.”

Even the male model
flinched at the pettiness of Rilla’s remark, before he wandered over to offer a
handshake. Now that he faced me fully, I could take account of his water-green
eyes and sharp-angled face. Also shirtless above his black leather pants, he
had a very long, very lean torso that lent itself immediately to thoughts of
lead singers in punk bands. The vaguely gothic tattoos adorning his body in
thick lines—a large cross over his heart, a crest with a crown on one shoulder,
what might have been a falcon curling over the curve of the other—added to the
impression.

After a few awkward
seconds, I unfurled my arms where I’d folded them defensively over my stomach
and took his offered hand.

“I’m Finn,” he said in
an affably sincere and unguarded voice. The uptick at end of his sentences
suggested an accent he didn’t
quite
have. Something vaguely southern California but rougher, like he’d grown up in
Los Angeles but spent time in New York. “Finn Garvey,” he said, as though to
elaborate.

The name tickled
something in my memory, some recollection I couldn’t quite catch before it
disappeared back into the murk of forgetfulness. His careful attention to my
expression told me he was waiting for me to realize I knew him or maybe knew of
him. When I averted my eyes sheepishly from his, he frowned fleetingly before
resuming the golden boy grin.

“Viv,” a high voice
called from behind Finn. The flannel-wearing teen had draped herself along the
loveseat, arms tucked behind her head with her dark red hair fanning out on the
cushion, high-tops perched on the velvet arm. “Don’t introduce me, anyone. I
just take out the garbage.”

“And get the pizza,”
Finn added. “Don’t forget that important service.”

The teen flipped him
off from her reclining position. “Suck my—.”

“Where’s that silvery
lavender Posen with the split up the front?” Beal abruptly demanded as he
emerged from the racks. I had to admit that it was kind of impressive the way
he focused when he was working. The way the slick humor in his demeanor
evaporated, leaving a sharp gaze, a purposeful voice, and a firm line pressed
between lips that were too full and sensuous and pink and pretty for a man. Or
most men.

Rilla snapped from her
deeply arched, oddly angled “relaxed” pose chatting with the makeup girl to a
rigid, rail-stiff attention with her hands balled in fists. “You picked that
dress out for me to wear.”

Between glances from
dressing room to dressing room at the clothes trailing along the floor and
artfully draped over wooden stools, Beal rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t a good
color on you, Rilla. The test shots, remember?”

“It’s too long for
her,” Rilla protested, shooting a scathing if brief glare my way.

I went back to hugging
my folded arms tight to my ribcage. There was nothing like being referred to in
third person to one’s face to make a girl feel like a piece of meat. In the
sale bin. About to go bad.

When Stan toddled back
from the racks with a half dozen dresses slung over one shoulder and a half
dozen more over the opposite arm, the photographer shook his head and motioned
for his assistant to leave them on a chair. “Get me the Polaroid for some test
shots,” he told the assistant. Then, as Beal used a remote the size of an
office binder to switch on several of the huge commercial lights, he motioned
to a couple of big white rolling screens. “Viv, put those reflectors in
positions one and five.”

The teen might have
been smart-mouthed and scruffy, but she knew what she was doing and what Beal
wanted. Unlike me. I stood forlorn to one side, unmoving except for my
reflexively nervous blinking as I watched everyone else move swiftly and
expertly to work. The photographer had to clear his throat and say my name
twice to get me to move. I heard him, but I couldn’t react at first, like it
was taking me a few seconds to clear out the hazy mix of bad memories and new
humiliations and find the current moment.

Beal held up the camera
to get my attention, motioning with the other hand toward the now brightly lit
loveseat. “I want to start with a few Polaroids to test lighting, color,
composition,” he explained. “And to warm you up,” he added, a more obvious
smile on his face and a glimmer in his eye, and I was suddenly grateful for
both. I knew I probably should have scowled or turned my nose up at the
flirtatious tone, but I was shamelessly and ridiculously hungry for a moment’s
approval to help me feel just a little less substandard.

I sat on the loveseat.
Not posed, just sat, taking a second to get used to the heat and fierce
brightness of the lights. To the both sensuous and exposed feeling of sitting
there in front of strangers in a silk slip, on a velvet cushion. To the
otherworldly sound of people murmuring behind the white screens and the glare and
the sudden click and metallic whir of the camera. The sound made me flinch, my
stomach fluttering with… excitement I didn’t appreciate, didn’t want to feel. I
didn’t focus on Beal. I didn’t even look up at him as I perched stiffly on the
edge of the couch and fussed with the lace on the hem of the slip.

Next thing I knew, I
caught a glimpse of Beal’s motorcycle boots as he walked toward me. Then he was
crouched at my knees, looking at me on my level with steady, dark eyes.
Strange, how the screens and the light created a barrier that seemed to
separate us from the rest of the room and the other people in it now. We were
abruptly alone in this private little bubble.

Nolan Beal sighed low
at me, tilting his head just a hair as he waited for me to meet his gaze. As
soon as I did, those dark blue eyes pinned me. “I’m not sure which you would
find more motivating…. Me telling you to focus only on me,” he said in a
feather soft mutter just pronounced enough for me to hear, no one else. “To
concentrate on the sound my voice telling you how to move and when and what I
want from you….”

His rum and cinnamon
smell—I mean tone—was making me warm again, but I could dismiss the sensation
as a result of the hot studio lights if I lied to myself hard enough.

“When to arch your back
for me….”

For
me
,
I thought, noting the barefaced seduction and choosing not to resist it—for
now—because it was at least lulling the anxiety that was knotting up my
insides.

“When to slide the
material up your thighs. When to lick your lips and spread your legs.”

He was good, knew what
he was doing, touching me only with his voice and the imagery it summoned,
never with his body or his strong, tanned hands. It was like making me do all
the work, making me seduce myself. Before I realized, my knees and thighs and
fists had relaxed and unclenched. While my stomach and sex remained tight and
trembling, just a little, just enough.

Like this morning, that
subtle tilt to Beal’s head tipped the other way. “Or should I remind you,” he
asked with a firmer voice, not hard but…piercing, “that I made a deal with you
based on your sincere effort to model for me? Unless you play the part, Miss
Moreau, Cheri’s model release and all her photographs stay with me to use as I
see fit.”

Cold water down my
spine couldn’t have sobered me more quickly.

I’d done it. I’d done
exactly what I had warned myself not to do—let the sensations get to me. Let my
body lead me, whether in fear or desire. Let myself forget I was here to keep
Cheri from walking a path that I knew hurt people, not just me but people close
to me. Let myself be here for me and my needs. These were old needs and old
hungers that applied to an old me.

I withdrew my gaze from
Beal’s, glanced down at my clenching fists again, then stood up skirting the
man who knelt before me. “This isn’t what I do, Mr. Beal. I think I made that
clear when we spoke this morning. You’re going to have to bear with me. Tell me
what you expect, and I’ll figure it out. I’ll do what I have to in order to
satisfy our agreement.”

Our
agreement, not you. And nothing more
.

His demeanor with me
grew firmer, cooler.
Good
, I thought.
I told myself my relief stemmed from that abrupt distance, the pause in his
determined seduction, but it just felt more comfortable this way—he told me
what he wanted, and I did it. Simple and neat. Beal walked me through more test
shots, then through a few
real
photos, I guessed. The heavy Polaroid disappeared in favor of a sleek Nikon. It
clicked and whirred, shutter snapping quickly, ravenously catching and
consuming images. The photographer’s instructions quickened, too, roughened by
obvious frustration with my stiffness and my lack of imagination.

But I suffered from no
lack of imagination. I could imagine all too clearly how this ill-conceived
session would have gotten out of hand had I allowed it. My photos, these
embarrassing poses, splashed all over local papers and gallery fliers. My
coworkers whispering behind my back. Dark-haired, sad-eyed Darcie looking at me
with that impenetrable silence of hers, knowing I’d broken my promise not to…
not to do this kind of stuff anymore. Cheri arguing that I was a hypocrite to
warn her away from this kind of life only to indulge myself again.