Photo Slave (The Art of Domination #2) (8 page)

Nolan had one of his
cameras in hand and all the white commercial lights warmed up and focused on
the dressing table when I shuffled anxiously out of the bathroom. Despite the
number of lights, they didn’t so much glare as glow, adding a hazy depth
instead of flattening everything with harsh contrast. The man really did excel
at conjuring the active elements of retro glamour that threw time as well as
place into question.

“Sit down at the
vanity,” he told me. I did, peering at myself in the mirror and then at his
reflection where he stood behind me. It made the hair at the nape of my neck
bristle and stand on end, the awkward anticipation of seeing the man studying
me from behind, like two people caught watching one another surreptitiously.
“Do what you would normally do sitting at a dressing table, Iva. Brush your
hair. Put on your makeup for the evening.”

While he watched.
Again, that made it even stranger, more disturbing, and thrilling. My hands
shook, and my fingers fumbled with the brushes and lipsticks and the elegant
metal eye shadow compacts. It took a few deep breathes—hidden from him—and a
firmer grip on the slim brush handles, but I steadied myself. I could almost
have pretended Beal wasn’t there, if not for the hissing click of the periodic
shutter snap.

“Darker,” he murmured
from behind me, “for the camera.” After a moment, I realized he meant the
makeup, and I soothed down the tremor in the pit of my stomach. I knew what was
coming, the endgame that was going to have me giving myself to Nolan tonight.
All part of our agreement. No point in fretting over the inevitable, I
concluded. “Good,” he said as though he could hear what I was thinking and
approved, but again he just meant the makeup.

Maybe because my
thoughts refused to still as easily as my stomach, I glanced up into the mirror
at the photographer’s reflection, his roguishly handsome face hidden by his
Nikon. “Why do you do this?” I asked him haltingly, knowing I wasn’t making
myself clear. “The bondage theme? In your work, I mean.”

He responded while
circling me, without lowering the camera, still filtering his vision of me
through the viewfinder. “Because nothing in this world carries the weight and
power of subtext the way sex does. Sex is
never
just about sex. The domination and submission theme is merely the overt
expression of all the subtext we tacitly agree to pretend we don’t innately
feel while it expresses itself in our lives from the jobs we pursue to the cars
we buy to our favorite positions when we fuck.”

I hesitated as I swept
the downy sable hairs of a makeup brush along one eyelid. Beal was always doing
that, answering questions with responses that either said nothing or that said
so much that I’d still be mulling them over days later. This was one of the
later.

Making myself fight the
natural pause, I selected a new brush to thicken the black liner along my
lashes and asked, “And why do you carry that into your personal life? Why do
you like…?” The knot of anxiety and anticipation abruptly stopped up my throat.

“Why do I like
domination and submission sex? Why do I like controlling a woman, from her
physical actions to her biological reactions? Why do I like composing an
experience of lust and pleasure and overpowering intimacy that she couldn’t resist
if she wanted to?” Nolan, reflected in the mirror, lowered the camera from his
face. Those blue eyes shone with steady intensity as he loomed behind me and
stared down my reflection, pinning me still to the moment by the tension in my
core as I awaited his response. “Why do you, Iva?”

“Why do I what?” I
muttered, more to myself than to Beal. “You mean… you mean why do I like…?” My
muscles went stiff one by one as I realized what he was asking and the question
really sank in, permeating me. While I hesitated, he stepped up close behind
me, so close that I felt the warmth of his body against my shoulder blades
without him actually touching me. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Sounds like you don’t
want to know,” he said, the suggestion of a frown on that chiseled, shadowed
face. “Are you avoiding answering me or asking yourself?”

“I don’t know that I do
like it,” I told him, frowning back, ire riled. Finding Beal too damn handsome
and sensual to resist, enjoying passionate sex…. That wasn’t the same as enjoying
sexual domination. Was it? And yet there was the way he commanded me, held my
arms over my head, set the boundaries of our roles and then used them to push
me. And I had come all the harder for it. “Maybe I’m just fascinated by the…
the unknown. By the novelty of the experience,” I muttered, but even I thought
it sounded like a weak excuse.

Nolan nodded as he
began circling me again, periodically aiming the camera and snapping a shot or
two. The sound played on my nerves, starting to wind them tighter and tighter.
“It’s not the pleasure of being sexually dominated; it’s the novelty.” It
became clear his nod was meant to be as sarcastic as his tone. “You don’t know
that you like it….

“You mean like you
don’t feel an uncontrollable attraction to a creative life—the temperamental
personalities and the passions and the conflicts that all converge to make a
masterpiece or at least a statement?” he challenged me. “Like you don’t feel a
thrill at the pulse of shimmering lights and throbbing music at places like Haute?
You don’t feel pleasure at the power exchange inherent in letting a strong,
capable lover dominate you and take you? When he
forces
you to feel the overwhelming grip of his hunger and his will
to own your every desire?”

I sat totally unable to
respond, paralyzed by the need quavering painfully through my stomach and my
sex, through my tensed arms and my thighs as I pressed my legs together to keep
myself from squirming. The man could compose a picture with his voice as well
as he could with a camera. Maybe better, because I couldn’t just see the images
he conjured in my head; I could feel them.

Beal ended his circuit
standing behind me again and shrugged. “Well, maybe I can change your mind
about that, Miss Moreau,” he suggested with smug dispassion, both of us knowing
what was happening inside my body just then.

What Beal didn’t know
was just how strong my resistance to change could be, after the pain
change
had brought into my life over the
last several years. Thank you, no, but I had my vision of what I wanted my life
to be—what it had been before Dad had died, before I’d lost control of myself,
before my carelessness had torn a gaping rift in my family and my relationship
with my older sister. What mattered more than the whim of change, more than what
my mind might have lusted after or my body might have craved, was dedication to
a decision and a course of action, to a path that walked me away from the brink
of an emotional abyss.

Nolan Beal was sexy as
hell, the sexiest man I’d ever seen, let alone fucked. He was everything I
wanted, that felt good, but wasn’t good for me. Most of all, he was change,
constant change—which was chaos. That was the reason that I was eventually
going to overcome my desire for him and walk away. He could have now, have
me
now. The future was my day.

I saw the twitch of his
brow that said he was trying to read my thoughts, that said he was surprised at
my lack of protest. Instead of confronting me, Beal raised the camera and
snapped it at me, making me jump and then laughing softly at the way the start
broke me and made me sag back in the chair.

“Bastard,” I muttered
before I could stop myself.

“That’s Nolan to you,”
he breathed through his smile. Then he lowered that camera again, to show me
his face, the intensity of his expression.
 
“Say it. Say my name.”

After the rise in
tension between us, I bridled with resistance. “Why do you care if I call you
by name? Everyone calls you Nolan.”

“Not the way you do,
Brown Eyes. Rilla says my name like my mother. Clean your room. Take care of
business. Behave as I want you to. She says it to manipulate me. Cheri says my
name to connect to me, to try to relax me. To foster a sense of rapport and
familiarity. You really should talk her into studying psychology; she’s a
natural. But you, Brown Eyes, you say my name like it’s a swear word. I like
that about you. But I also like making you use my name as a vow. And a plea.”

His broad hand, long
fingers and slightly tanned skin, abruptly slid down my chest, sending a
violent shiver of sudden and intolerable delight through my shoulders and down
my spine. Dipping down the bodice of the slip dress, Nolan cupped one of my
heavy, tingling breasts and blatantly kneaded my flesh. The shutter snapped.

I stiffened again.
“What are you—?”

“You want to know the
story for these photos, Iva?” he asked, cutting me off. “It’s an old, old
story. Takes place in every city every night, behind closed doors where no one
will see what really happens, what people really want.”

I only realized I was already
arching my back to lean into Nolan’s grip on me, letting my head loll slightly
back, when that shutter hissed and snapped again. “Don’t I get a mask this
time?” I whispered, feeling now—so soon, as soon as he’d touched me—the
unrestricted flow of desire through my veins as it blurred my thoughts. I
gripped the seat of the chair with white knuckles, trying to hold on to that
insolating irritation I’d felt with Beal only a moment before, but it wasn’t
working.

“You’re already wearing
a mask, Brown Eyes,” he said with a low chuckle that didn’t sound amused.
“Never mind what I mean. You’re not going to sign a model release anyway, are
you? So pay attention to the story.”

“The story,” I murmured
in agreement.

“The upright couple,”
Nolan explained. “Good-looking and well-heeled. Everyone would call him
debonair, a gentleman, and the lady is gracious and elegant. No one would
suspect how he handles her in private—his hand down her dress or yanking up her
skirt to make use of her—and how much she gets off on it.”

This time Nolan was in
the photos, in the story with me.
His
hand possessively squeezing my breasts and slowly slowly slowly pinching and
twisting my nipples as they ached for more. His fingers sliding back up to curl
under my chin, to angle my face upward, to pry my lips open and slip his thumb
into my mouth and against my tongue. His thickening breath behind me as I
sucked. And the shutter snapped.

“Stand up and turn
around,” he commanded, and he swept the teetering chair aside with his foot as
I complied. While his voice was cool and smooth, his actions swift and exact
and perfectly controlled, the muscles of his arms and along his chest under the
thin cotton t-shirt rounded and strained with building tension. With need? The
idea had my sex slicking itself for him.

Nolan’s advance drove
me back against the edge of the vanity. His body didn’t touch me, just his
force of presence, which was considerable. Then his hand closed along my neck,
not squeezing, but holding. Pinning. Controlling. I tilted my head back, as
though to bare my throat to him, without even thinking about it. I swallowed
hard and tried not to squirm and whine as the shutter snapped, snapped,
snapped.

Then he turned and
walked away, while I blinked and fought down my panting breath, my growing
confusion and frustration at being perched and posed and
primed
and left waiting. He reached out nonchalantly to fuss with
this light, to turn a knob on that one. And I pinched my lips tight, determined
not to sigh or whimper, refusing to beg for the attention he was using to bait
me, coaxed me, manipulate me. I hated that I wanted his ministrations, his
touch, his cock in me. If I could at least have kept myself from making it easy
on him, I’d have salvaged some dignity, taken one step toward weaning myself
from these passionate cravings.

From nine or ten feet
away, Beal turned to face me again, his penetrating expression dark and hungry
but otherwise unreadable. “We are going to try something a little rougher, Iva.
More severe. High contrast.” His insinuation had my stomach and thighs and
fists tightening with alarm as much as desire, but the smoothness of his
voice…. It was like there was nothing that voice couldn’t have talked me
through, no disaster, no dread.

He calmly instructed,
“Tell me you want it,” which drew me up taught and tense again. It was a
constant push-pull, this magnetism acting on us. Tense me and then soothe me
and then tense me again, that was what Beal was playing at. And when he had
worked all the resistance out of me….

“I….”

“Tell me you want it,”
he repeated. “Tell me you want to be taken.”

I didn’t think we’d
need the lights with as bright and hot a red as I felt myself flush. But there
was no point in pretending—that I wasn’t here for this, at least. That I didn’t
find the sexual tension and exploration more thrilling than anything I’d felt
in three years, or more. “I want it,” I whispered in a low, frayed voice.

Beal was just holding
the camera loosely, letting it brush his leg, against the denim that only
vaguely suggested the musculature and power of his thigh. Looking straight at
me, no lens or filters between us, he said, “Again, louder.”

“I want it,” I managed
a little louder but no steadier. “I want to be taken.” It was hard to
concentrate with my core beginning to burn and sting with need.