Photo Slave (The Art of Domination #2) (7 page)

As Nolan walked toward
me then, two thoughts occurred. First, I noticed he was actually wearing a
shirt—a tight gray t-shirt with a gold and bronze graffiti design on it that
seemed very ‘Gucci does urban street wear’—that made him look even more ripped
and sexy and
improper
than going
bare-chested, as if that made any sense. And now I knew why he had been putting
me off for a week: damage control. The relief of realizing he hadn’t been
ignoring me left me sick to my stomach. I shouldn’t have even cared.

“I guess that’s a fair
enough reason to be here,” I whispered to myself under my breath. “To figure
out why any of this matters.”

“What?” Viv asked, but
then Nolan was standing in front of us, looking at the girl.

“Did you get the slave
unit set upstairs?” he questioned, and she nodded, and I nearly swallowed my
tongue.

“Slave unit?” I
repeated before I could stop myself—or my imagination. What were we talking
about, a cage? A… a collar-and-chain mounted to the floor or the wall in some
corner? Or near his bed? And what the hell was he thinking having Viv or
anyone
else besides himself set this up?

The gleam in Beal’s
sinfully dark blue eyes said he knew what I was thinking. His visible effort to
fight down a chuckle said I was making a fool of myself.

No
more assumptions, Iva. Keep your wits about you
.

To me, Nolan said,
“Ready?”

“Really, Nolan, this is
no time for amateur hour.” Rilla. The caramel blonde stalked around from behind
him and assumed a hip-jutting pose that said
frustration
,
pique
,
aggression
, working it so hard I
expected to see her sweating. “She can pay some strip mall glamour photographer
to get her catalogue portfolio together. You have to figure out how to shut
this Wiley woman up before you lose any more assignments. The Mui Mui shoot? Chloe?
Balenciaga? Those are important. You have to get on top of this!”

I glared at Beal and,
under my breath, said, “She thinks you’re doing a favor for an amateur model?
She… she thinks
I’m
trying to be a
model?”

One of those chuckles
got the better of the man and slipped through at the corner of his full, pursed
lips. “I could explain I’m taking masturbation photos of my submissive,” he
murmured.

When he said it,
actually said what I’d been thinking he wanted to do with the pictures, I
realized how wrong that sounded. Not wrong as in sick. Wrong as in that wasn’t
the point, wasn’t why he wanted me to do photo sessions for him. So why? That
answer was something else I could only figure out by playing along, following
his rules and agenda. And it was another excuse to give myself to this very
tempting but very unwise experience.

“Go upstairs,” he said
and leisurely ran his fingers down my arm as I walked past him. It was a moment
that set everyone off—including me, with shivers along my skin like electricity
pulsing through the ground from a live wire.

I heard Cheri’s voice
calling, “Iva, what are you doing here? This is just embarrassing. If I have to
sign ten more releases…. Iva? Iva?” She kept calling after me as I hurried up
the stairs to Nolan’s private apartment, my first thought being to avoid having
to answer any of her questions. It was probably better if she assumed I was
only here to talk to Beal about her, even if it meant we’d be arguing about
this after I got home. Later was later, and there was a time I’d been very good
at not worrying about the future, at living only in the moment. I was rusty,
but it was coming back to me.

“Now, Nolan?” Stan
moaned, shifting his hand from covering his eyes to propping up his chin. “Why
do you have to do this now? You’ve got two phone messages from Oliver Lowell at
The Odyssey Modern and three from your booking agent.”

And Rilla…. I was glad
I didn’t speak Portuguese. It sounded like a very angry language, at least the
way she was using it.

In the background of the
overall din, as Finn kept up his pacing and his drinking, he just groaned,
“Shit,” again and again with the occasional, “This could have been it for me.”

Thank heavens for the
heavy glass wall at the top of the landing, the way it muffled the rising voices
and the tension. I was tempted to lock the door behind me, to climb into the
bed and cover my head with the blanket. The sheets probably smelled like Nolan,
I realized, reminding myself of the nearly intolerable level of intimacy and
arousal ahead of me this evening. That thought was enough to make me consider
fleeing back down the stairs.

Instead, I took a
bracing breath, turned, and surveyed Nolan Beal’s apartment. This was his set,
where he was the subject and the star. Having a moment alone here was like
peeking behind a stage curtain after all the actors and theater staff had gone
home.

As before, he had set
his scene impeccably, at least for the effect he no doubt had in mind. Hard
surfaces were neat and clean, lacquered black or burnished metal, wood or
white-painted brick. In contrast, fabrics draped and twisted with careless
sensuality, clothing cast in colorful and artistically pleasing disarray over
the back of wooden chairs or the top of those metal clothing racks. His sheets
spread themselves sensuously over his low bed and skimmed the wooden floor with
graceful surrender, with the black fur duvet tossed back in aesthetically
pleasing and rakish disregard. I remembered the glossy stack of coffee table
art books that had been sitting on his commanding black desk that first day,
and I ran my fingers over the smooth dust jackets now. His photographs were
like that: glossy, smooth, so enticing one couldn’t help wanting to touch….

My gaze wandered lastly
toward an area I hadn’t seen before, something I wasn’t sure had even been
there when I was here arguing with Nolan that he couldn’t use Cheri as a model
and he was making me that ill-conceived offer for the exchange of her release.
Backed up against the wall stood an old-fashioned dressing table, the kind with
turned legs and a dark stain that made the wood gleam with highlights like
burnished gold. The matching chair had a cushioned seat in cream velvet. And
all over the tabletop, reflected in the attached mirror, a whole array of
women’s cosmetics sat arranged just so, with several of the half dozen shiny
metal lipstick tubes uncapped and twisted up to reveal shades of deep scarlet
and dark cherry. There were fluffy powder puffs and brushes and expensive
antique perfume bottles that had bulbs you had to squeeze to make them spray.
All around this vanity display hovered tall commercial lights with hoods and
reflectors, setting the table aside as special, as more of a set than anything
else in the room.

I was still standing at
the desk but staring at the vanity when I heard heavy booted footsteps and
swung toward the door to see Nolan shutting—and locking—it behind him. While I
felt distinctly safer, more settled, with him on this side of the wall, I was
also aware that was an absurd reaction considering who this man was and what
he’d done. And what I was fairly sure he wanted to do now.

I had to clear my
throat to keep from sounding ragged and breathless. “Everything okay out
there?” I asked.

Nolan shrugged, seeming
genuinely unconcerned. “I sent everyone else home. Rilla is demanding her model
release back and threatening to sue if I use any of my photographs of her in my
show. It seems she assumed she held a great deal more primacy than a
photographer would grant to most models, even the presumed star of the
exhibition.”

My brow knit despite my
vague knowledge that it wasn’t a good look. Couldn’t help it. “She was your
girlfriend?”

I’d seen her
territorial displays, but Nolan had never paid them any mind that I’d observed.
And that first night, he and I, we had…. That queasiness was back again. I knew
I’d been obsessing over my attraction to a hedonistic bad boy, but I hadn’t
pegged him as a common player who actively, blatantly, carelessly broke hearts
along the way.

Nolan shaking his head
in denial dulled the rise of panic in my chest. “No, but she liked to say
so—and pretend she wanted to be, even to me. She isn’t looking for a boyfriend
or a lover so much as a benefactor.”

Despite the
reassurance, my ill-defined sense of guilt remained. It just moved on from one
cause to another, making me catch my lower lip in my teeth, if only briefly. I
had bargained Nolan Beal out of using one model, denied him another by refusing
to sign a release of my own, and now…. Had I upset studio politics and chased
off Rilla?

Maybe I was trying to
suggest Nolan was better off without Rilla, and maybe I was just trying to make
myself feel better, as I asked, “Is this about you taking photographs of
someone else or about the possibility that she won’t be able to use the exhibition
now to further her modeling career?”

Nolan came around the
desk to stand beside me, against me. Citrus, cinnamon, rum. As I took in the
scent of him, the heat of him, he said, “Yes and yes.” Staring rapt, I watched
his slightly calloused fingertips slip along the back of my hand where it
rested on the pile of art books. The lightest tingle lingered in the wake of
his touch.

Then he reached under
the books, to drag a stack of photographs—of me—out into view. “I spoke to
Cheri,” he said, hesitating, and I looked up to find he was avoiding my gaze,
focusing his own attention hard on the pictures. Only when he realized I was
watching his face did he meet my stare, and the effort was obvious and
palpable. I would
almost
have thought
Nolan Beal was nervous. “About the photographs she had of you,” he went on
quietly. “I didn’t know she had them—didn’t give them to her—and she’ll tell
you as much. Just ask her. I told you I wouldn’t share those without your
permission, and I meant it. Had I thought someone would have the balls to rifle
through my desk uninvited looking for a pen to sign a model release I hadn’t
asked for when I wasn’t even here….” Was Nolan actually apologizing? “I should
have expected it with a Moreau,” he chuckled but only for a second. “Well, it
won’t happen again.”

What to say to that?
That it was okay when it wasn’t, when I was mortified at what my sister had
seen, what she now knew I’d done?

I let out a long sigh
through my nose. What truly mortified me was not what Nolan or Cheri had done
or not done or what anyone had known or seen so much as what
I
had done. My slip. And my choice to
keep descending that dangerously steep slope, even now, moment by moment. That
was zero percent Cheri and not even half Beal. It was me, and I guessed I just
needed to be here and feel this to know… to know why I craved these old
addictions again. Was it just the uncertainty of my life as it was? Or the
introduction of familiar habits with a handsome new face? This man?

“This is my favorite.”

“Hm?” I asked, rising
from my private thoughts to see Nolan pointing out one photograph in
particular.

“I like this one the
best.”

I remembered the shot,
the pose, and the moment in perfect sensory detail. I had just drawn my legs up
and put the heels of those amazing lavender and silver stilettos on the cushion
of the loveseat. With my knees pressed together and my ankles spread, I had
folded my hands so pretty and prim showing off my French manicure and the
smooth bare skin of my thighs
and my silk
panties
for the camera. Nolan had cropped the photograph in a way I
wouldn’t have expected, so that the bottom of the frame stopped at mid-calf and
my underwear didn’t show at all. The composition was all about those delicate
nails and my hands folded over my bare knees, the suggestion of a smile and the
way it seeped up into the look in my eyes, past the gray silk mask.

“Why?” I asked. “Why
that one? Like that?”

He slipped me a subtle
little smile that disturbed me with how much I wanted to run my tongue along
it. Would he taste like rum again? Make me feel drunk with kisses again?

“Because you’re not
wearing your mask in that one,” he answered.

Which made no sense,
because the mask was clearly visible in the shot.

Nolan must have seen my
confusion, because he breathed out an amused, “Doesn’t matter, Iva. We have a
new story to tell and new photographs to take tonight.” And he glanced
pointedly toward the vanity, then nodded in the opposite direction, toward a
doorway I hadn’t been in a position to see when I was here before. “The clothes
I picked out for you are in the bathroom.”

They weren’t what I
expected. Not lingerie or a slinky, revealing gown. It was another LBD—a little
black dress—with a vintage 1960’s couture feel to it, fitted and structured
somewhat like a slip. And high black stilettos, of course, with pointed toes
and sharp heels and a femme fatale rating off the scale. I almost felt
flattered—that Nolan saw me this way, or wanted to see me dressed like this,
imagined me as a sort of Jackie O sophisticate with an ultra-sexy streak
running down her naked and arched spine. That was, I was flattered until I
remembered that most fashion models were just hangers and that artists models
were little more than outlines on a canvas in the artist’s eye. Meaning and
substance didn’t enter the picture until later, when the models were gone and
artistic technique and staging brought the actual composition together.
Whatever Beal saw in his mind’s eye, it wasn’t me.