SHOOT: A Novel (15 page)

 
It truly was freeing.

I eyed David and
sucked in a slow breath. Penny and David were both so attractive and having
spent the past couple hours chatting with them, I was starting to feel a bit
more comfortable.

Gathering up courage
from the drinks, I turned to Brad, “So are we just going to eat cheese all
night or are we going to get goin’ on this shoot?”

Brad smiled,
pleasantly surprised, and stood up with his hand stretched out. I stood up and
he placed a hand on my hip leaning in to whisper, “Take your clothes off.”

“Everything?” I
asked, my heart starting to beat wildly in my chest.

 
He nodded and I slowly started to take off
each article of clothing. I couldn’t believe I was really doing this, but it
was thrilling. Just as I pushed my panties down my legs I saw Penny and David
slip their robes off out of the corner of my eye. The three of us stood fully
nude in front of Brad. I took a moment to look over at Penny and Brad. After
looking them over and taking in the whole scene, I was surprised by how turned
on I was getting. Everything felt so exhilarating and new.

“You look perfect,”
Brad complimented, his eyes looking right into mine before he looked over at
Penny and David. “How about we just do the shoot here on the couch? Go for
something a bit more candid.” The three of us nodded, Penny was the first one
to drop down on the couch, draping a leg over the other and looking at me.

“You should get
comfortable with one another,” Brad suggested. David sat on the arm of the
couch, both feet planted on the seat, facing Penny. Then, he turned to look at me
and jerked his head to the right, motioning for me to have a seat beside Penny.

I had to put away my
hesitation if I was really going to do something this crazy. I
wanted
to do it. I needed to break out
of my shell, let go of the guilt, and really let myself get taken away by the
moment. So I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and held it for a few seconds.

This was going to
be the craziest thing I had ever done.

I walked over to
the couch and sat down right next to Penny, our legs and arms touching. Just
then, Brad walked in holding his camera. He cocked his eyebrow and smirked in
satisfaction when he saw the three of us on the couch. Penny didn’t need
prompting from him. She was already a pro at photo shoots, particularly erotic
ones. She turned to face me and placed her hand on my shoulder, leaning in to
kiss me softly. Before I fully realized what was happening, I was already lying
on the sofa with Penny and David playfully kissing and touching my body.

I took a moment to
make sure I was okay with this before looking over at Brad and mouthing, “Are
you okay with this?”

 
Brad smiled and nodded, encouraging me to go
along with it. I leaned my head back and let out a little gasp when I felt a
small, warm mouth close around one of my nipples. I looked down and saw Penny
enjoying the feel of my body just as she reached out to fondle my other breast.
I had never done anything with a woman before, let alone a woman and a man at
the same time. A million bolts of thrill and excitement coursed through my
veins.

David was kissing
and licking along my stomach and hipbones as he ran a hand very slowly up the
inside of my leg. He reached in to caress my inner thighs, teasing me by slowly
moving up toward my center. My hips instinctively rocked forward as I opened my
legs ever so slightly. Penny whipped her hair back and moved to straddle my waist,
leaning forward with her hands on my breasts to give me a slow, sensual kiss.

It didn’t take long
for me to forget Brad was taking pictures. I was letting pleasure overtake me
completely. I moaned into Penny’s mouth when I felt David’s lips centimeters
from my wetness and a second later, his tongue was licking up and down me. I
broke the kiss with Penny and threw my head back, moaning even louder when I
felt his finger ease inside of me. He licked along my outer lips a bit before
standing up. Penny was more than happy to take his spot as she slithered down my
body.

I gripped the back
cushion of the couch tightly when she slipped her tongue along my entrance and kissed
along on my outer lips, moving in a circle before licking out and up to touch my
sensitive spot with the tip of her tongue.

“Oh fuck,” I
whimpered, gritting my teeth and shutting my eyes as I stuck my chest out.

I felt a heavy
weight wash over my body and I opened my eyes just in time to see David’s
hardness in front of my face. He brushed his thumb over my mouth with a smile.
I opened it willingly, taking his entire length in at once. Penny continued kissing
and flicking her tongue as David eased his shaft past my lips.

 
After a few minutes, the two of them sat me up
and Penny straddled me for a heated kiss as she grabbed my hand and guided it
down. I got the hint so I curiously slipped a finger inside her and was amazed
at how wet and warm she felt. I let out a loud breath, never having experienced
something like this. Slowly, I worked my finger in and out of her before adding
a second and working her until she was eagerly bouncing up and down on my hand,
moaning loudly and gripping my shoulders. I looked over to see David stroking
himself as he watched us, eventually nudging Penny off so he could pull me on
top of him.
 
 

He reached out
and, right on cue, Brad placed a condom in his hand. In a flash he unwrapped it
before rolling it over his shaft and guiding it between my legs. A breathy
whimper eased past my lips as I lowered my body until he was completely inside.
I sucked a loud breath between clenched teeth. My hips rolled up and down, a
bit faster with each passing minute, until Penny sat on the back of the couch
and grabbed my hand. Knowing just what she wanted, I continued pleasuring her
as I bounced on David’s lap, enjoying every moment of it like I would have
never believed.

Penny moaned
louder and louder as she started to rub her own wetness until her entire body
shuddered. Then she climbed on David’s lap behind me and wrapped her hand
around to rub my sensitive spot as I kept rocking my body up and down on David.
I felt his strong hands fondling my breasts and it didn’t take long for my
entire body to tense up and shake as I reached orgasm.

Tiny prickles
tickled the back of my neck as my toes curled in tight balls. “Oh! Fuck! Oh!
Oh!” I yelled out, letting my head fall back onto Penny’s shoulder. David clutched
at my hips and clenched his eyes shut, his hips jerking up against, me. The
three of us soon collapsed on the couch, panting for breath.

Brad kneeled
beside me and whispered into my ear, “You’re beautiful and amazing. Really.”

I smiled weakly,
reaching out to caress his neck affectionately. He stood up and motioned for me
to go over to his camera and check out the photos he had taken. I gathered
strength and pushed myself up off the couch.

I was amazed at
how beautiful the pictures were. Since the three of us had just had
passionately erotic sex and he’d been snapping away the whole time, I didn’t expect
the pictures to look so tasteful and artistic– but they did. They didn’t look
pornographic at all. Sexual yes, but not pornographic.

 
There were lots of close ups of skin, hair,
passionate faces, and clawing fingernails. There was even a photo of my face
when I reached orgasm, but it was close-up and intimate. Just looking at them
made my heart start to race again. They were like little flashbulb memories,
etched in time and saved forever.

 
“They’re beautiful,” I said in a hushed voice.

It was more a
thought I said out loud rather than something directed to Brad, but I was glad
to know he heard me. He smiled proudly, clearly touched I thought so highly of
his work. Very few of the pictures showed anybody’s entire body, but those that
did obscured the face and genitals and made the focus of the photo the curves
and lines of the human form. The passion the three of us enjoyed was tastefully
translated and perfectly framed with every picture.

 
As I admired the shots and recalled how in the
moment I had been, truly experiencing pleasure with a sort of reckless abandon,
I knew everything Brad said earlier was right.

There was nothing
wrong with what I did. I loved every moment of it. I was finding myself and it
wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that I strayed from the life I had known before moving
to the city.
 

I took the camera
from his hands and scrolled through the thumbnails, selecting a close-up of my
face. I recognized the moment– he had captured the instant I reached orgasm,
that very first second of intense pleasure and satisfaction. There were beads
of sweat along my hairline and the expression on my face wasn’t something that
could be replicated on command. It was raw and it was real. I stared at it for
a few moments, trying to make sense of all the feelings it gave me.

It made me feel
empowered and confident. Staring back at me was the face of a young woman
growing and learning to be fulfilled in more ways than one. That thought made me
reach an important realization, one that certainly helped to quell my guilt.
Even though I had always been the small town Iowa girl, and would
always
be that person to some extent, I
felt more at home in the city than I did back there.

I felt more at
ease and more free to be myself in my new life. I was the small town farm girl
who’d found herself in the big city. It was the scary place my mother warned me
about, doing things I never would have dreamed of. I thought of my roommates
and smiled, realizing I felt closer to them as friends than anybody back in
Iowa.

 
It was all coming together.

It was early
Monday morning, much earlier than I had wanted to be up, but I had no choice. I
pulled out a pair of dark-washed blue jeans, black belt, light grey V-neck tee,
and my only pair of black booties, which had been gifted to me by Nadine. It
was a casual outfit that still suited a model for everyday, but when I put it
on I felt like it might have been a tad
too
casual for where I was headed.

Sonja had called me
Sunday evening to request that I come to her office first thing in the morning.
At first, my stomach had tumbled as I wondered what was so important Sonja
would personally call me to set up a last minute appointment. Then, after some
thought, I came to the assumption that she likely wanted to talk about my
success at New York Fashion Week. After all, it was no secret I had knocked my
first stint of modeling in the major Fashion Week out of the park.

I frowned at my reflection
in the mirror and decided it might be more appropriate if I dressed the part a
bit more and threw a casual outfit together that still was suitable for a
meeting at the agency. I pulled out a loose fitting, white shirt to swap out
for the tee and put on a pair of leatherette and nylon pants, all pulled
together with simple black pumps.

“This is more like
it,” I muttered before ruffling my hair a bit at the ends.

As I picked up my
purse and put on the sunglasses Brad gave me, I felt like I was dropping more
and more into my model persona as each day passed. Maybe I was finally
accepting it was okay to be myself or maybe it was spending time around the
craziness of Fashion Week, but I felt great stepping out the door of my
apartment building to head down to the subway. Everything had been such a
whirlwind, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
 

The elevator
whirred and the lights at the top changed, taking me straight up to the 24
^th
floor. When the elevator doors opened and I saw the white wall across from me, I
vividly remembered the first time I had visited the office. Sonja told me I
would get used to being this high up and, at the time, I couldn’t have imagined
it would be true. Yet, here I was, not even remembering how many times I had
visited Shoot lately. I never paid attention to the climbing numbers or how
many times the elevator dinged as it stopped along the way.

I couldn’t recall
the last time I looked out the windows at the sweeping views and felt anything
even remotely close to what I had felt the first time Sonja took me into her
office. My chest tightened. This time Sonja didn’t greet me in the lobby or the
waiting room.

My phone chirped
with a text message inside my clutch bag. I quickly reached in to silence it
before knocking on the door of her office a minute later and walking in with a
smile. I turned to my right to take a look at the magnificent view out the
window. It was just as breathtaking as I remembered it, but one thing was for
sure– nothing beat seeing it for the first time.

I walked over to her
desk to sit down. It wasn’t long before my smile started to fade.

 
Sonja looked stern, but that wasn’t the worst
of it. I turned cold and my heart fell to the pit of my stomach.

There were printed
out photographs of the shoot I had done with Penny and David on Sonja’s desk.

I felt like I was
going to be sick.

There was nothing I
could say, much less anything I could do. There was absolutely no way to
explain my way out of this. The pictures spoke for themselves and if Sonja had
seen these then she had probably seen everything. Suddenly, I felt like the
world’s biggest fool for thinking I could get away with it. But why now? Why
these photos? I had done more than one shoot for Amorous Productions, which had
turned out to be quite lucrative, yet this was the photo shoot that reached
Sonja.

I expected her to
have a lot to say, maybe even have some big speech prepared, but that wasn’t the
case. She kept it simple.

“We at Shoot, all
of us, expect
model
behavior from our
models
.” She paused and gazed down
briefly at the photos lying on her desk before looking back at me with her
penetrative gaze. “You had so much promise, Chloe.” The very subtle break in her
voice of disappointment didn’t go unnoticed. “But this is the end of the road
for you. We don’t allow our models to take photographs that are erotic in nature.
Your contract as of today has been terminated.”

There was no argument
to be made. The decision was final. I didn’t hurt anyone when I agreed to the
photo shoot, but at that moment it felt like I ended up hurting myself. I had
been scouted by one of the top modeling agencies, so much faith had been put in
my potential, and I even earned coveted spots in New York Fashion Week, but it
was all over now.

 
As much as I loved every photo shoot I had
ever done with Amorous Productions, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been
careless in agreeing to them to begin with. I couldn’t even think of my family,
much less my mother, as I stepped out of the building’s lobby. The morning air
was still cool and the streets were already filled with busy people. I did my
best to stay off to the side as I walked to the subway station, wanting nothing
more than to get home and crawl into bed and fight back the tears.

When I walked into
the apartment Caroline, Sarah and Nadine were all sitting in the living room. I
stopped in my tracks, hand on the front door’s knob, and stared at them. It was
obvious they were waiting for me so I knew something was up. I looked at the
coffee table, where tea and finger sandwiches were beautifully lain on top in
an arrangement I could only imagine Caroline put together. My eyes filled with
sadness and affection as I smiled faintly, quickly pushing away the question of
whether or not I would have to give up living at the apartment with them since
Shoot had set it all up for me.

 
“We know what happened,” Nadine said
sympathetically.

“Why don’t you
come sit with us?” Caroline said with hurt in her eyes. Sarah nodded, looking
hopeful that I would join them rather than locking myself up in my bedroom to
sulk all alone.

I sat on the couch
with legs crossed. “How did you know?”

The three of them
exchanged glances but nobody spoke up, at least not right away. Just when I was
starting to run out of patience, Sarah turned to look at me. “Well, because of
Lana. That’s how we know.”

“Who is Lana?” I
asked, wracking my brain to recall someone I’d met by that name, but it was useless.
I’d met so many people in the short time since I moved to New York City that
remembering every name was impossible. Either way, the name didn’t ring a bell
at all.

“Lana is a model,”
Caroline replied.

“She was also
scouted by Shoot,” Nadine added.

“Honestly, she’s
just so jaded and needs to get over herself,” Sarah spoke up, much to my
surprise. Since I’d met her, Sarah was easily the most positive and overall
happy, bouncy person I’d ever known. Hearing her speak harshly about someone
was totally new. Caroline shot her a look and she piped down.

 
“It’s her jealousy that got you into this,”
Nadine said. The other two looked down at their hands, clearly upset with the
situation. It warmed my heart to know they cared about me so much. “It turns
out you pretty much replaced her in the Fashion Week runway shows, which isn’t
your fault. But to a girl like Lana, it doesn’t matter who is giving the
orders. All she sees is you’re in the spotlight and she’ll go after you.”

“She’ll go after
me? Are you serious?” It all sounded like some twisted plot from a television
show so I had some trouble believing it was actually happening to me.

“She
did
go after you,” Caroline corrected.
Silence filled the room. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but at least it
cleared up my question of how and why Sonja suddenly had possession of the
pictures.

“We don’t know how
she found your photos, but she told us she was going to send them to Sonja,” Nadine
said. She was visibly upset and frustrated. I understood them sympathizing with
me, but I was having trouble getting why Nadine looked and sounded the way she
did, as if she had lost some kind of battle.

“We tried to stop
her!” Sarah said helplessly, covering her mouth afterward and shaking her head.
Just like she was when in a good mood, Sarah spoke loudly and clearly even now.
This time, however, it seemed almost desperate.

I stared at them,
wanting to hear more. I wanted to know about them trying, but failing to stop
her but there was only one question that came out of my mouth. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”

“We tried. This
thing all happened this morning and we tried sending you a text earlier before
you went to see Sonja. In retrospect we should have kept calling you nonstop.”
Caroline said.

“She told us about
the pictures and that she shared them with Sonja. We tried to stop her, we
really did, but there was no hope. She was on a mission to get rid of you so
she could be back on top.” They all went silent and avoided each other’s eyes
for what felt like a life time. I wasn’t mad at them. I was more mad at myself
for not looking at the text message earlier, but in the end it wouldn’t have
mattered. I was going to be terminated either way at that point so a heads up
would have only made my gut wrench before I even walked inside Sonja’s office.

“I saw the
pictures,” Nadine finally offered, breaking the silence. I turned to look at
her, eyes wide. “They were hot,” she assured me with a little shrug, coming off
very nonchalant.

“Passion fashion!”
Sarah chimed in with a laugh. My face was burning when I turned to look at
Caroline, who only nodded to confirm she saw the photos as well.

I felt a slight
sting of embarrassment thinking about my roommates sitting around looking at
such an intimate and passionate photo shoot of mine, but I focused instead on
their comments about them. They were all positive, pretty much rave reviews. I
doubted they would lie to me about that. For some reason that made me feel much
better, not just calming my embarrassment, but also helping me start to heal
from what I’d faced earlier that morning. Maybe I needed to stop thinking of it
as me messing up my future and instead think of it as discovering my true
passion.

The fact was, I
loved the photo shoots at Amorous Productions even more than I loved the high
fashion shoots and walking the runways. They were both amazing opportunities I
was grateful to have had, but maybe Amorous Productions was where I was
supposed to end up and that was okay.

There was a knock
on the door to pull me out of my deep thoughts. I got up to answer the door only
to find Brad standing on the other side. Without a word, he pulled me into the
hallway closing the door at the same time. At once, he gave me a consoling kiss
and embrace. I buried my head in his chest, seeking comfort as the first tear
of the day rolled down my cheek.

 
It was the sort of comfort unique to him, one I
had never known until he came into my life. I inhaled and closed my eyes. No
matter what, the loss of being part of Shoot was painful to me.

“I am so sorry,”
he muttered into my hair. I nodded weakly. “I’m not sure how she got ahold of
them, the only way I can think of was through the printing company I use. Not
everyone can or will understand the art we make,” he told me.

I sighed. I knew he
was right. It was art. Just because the pictures were erotic didn’t make them
any less artistic. Images of the photos we had selected from the shoot with
Penny and David flashed in my mind and, to me, there was no way around it—those
photographs were beautiful. I felt honored to have been involved in making them.