felt too much like an apology and not an endearment. I sat back.
“Don’t call me that,” I said in a cold, distant voice. I turned to face the windshield, my hands on the wheel.
Neither of us moved. I could hear his breathing quicken, but I didn’t look at him. I caught sight of his hand, reaching as though he meant to touch me, but in the end he must’ve decided against it because he let it settle again on his thigh. After another few moments, I heard him unzip, the crinkle of the tissue package, some shuffling. He cleared his throat.
I knew he was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what. In the past, even before I’d learned him so well, I’d still never doubted what I wanted to say. How I wanted our scenes to go, the reactions I wanted to elicit. I’d been wrong a few times and missed the mark, but I’d adjusted. This time, I had no idea what Esteban needed from me.
“Please don’t hate me,” he said.
I swallowed a rush of emotion. “I don’t hate you. But you should get out of my car now.”
He didn’t, not at first. I thought I would have to face him, and I didn’t want to, not with my emotions printed all over my face the way I was sure they were. He was breaking up with me. I didn’t need to know why. I didn’t want to know. At the sound of him starting to speak, I cut him off.
“Out.”
And, as he always had, Esteban gave me what I wanted.
“Put your hand on her hip. Lower.” The camera whirred and clicked. Scott paused to shake his blond hair out of his face and look at the picture he’d taken. He frowned. “Jack, I want you on your knees.”
Jack and I both laughed, and I said, “Woo!”
Scott, serious, smiled but put the camera back to his eye. “Head bent...okay, tell you what. Elise, you do whatever you’d...do.”
I put my hand on Jack’s dark hair. Thick and glossy, he wore it a bit longer in the front so it had a habit of falling over his eyes. I threaded my fingers through it from his forehead back, getting a good grip and tugging his face up to mine. The camera whirred.
I said in a low voice, “I won’t hurt you, but I’ll still need to know if you’re uncomfortable, okay?”
“Go ahead and hurt him,” Scott said.
My fingers tightened a little more, and Jack laughed. I glanced at Scott. “This is just for the pictures. I don’t really think we need to get a safe word or anything for the sake of art, do we?”
“If you don’t need a safe word for art,” Scott said, “it ain’t very good art.”
I looked back to Jack, and I let my smile fade. My fingers tugged the tiniest bit. “I’m still not going to hurt you on purpose. You tell me if I do.”
Jack grinned. “I’m good.”
I tipped his head back harder, watching to see if he winced. I really didn’t want to hurt him—even if this had been a real scene between us, I wasn’t particularly into causing pain. I liked the reactions to it more than giving the pain itself. For the sake of a picture I could make it look like I was being totally sadistic, though, if that was what the photographer wanted to see. With Scott’s murmured words of approval, I looked down at the man in front of me on his knees and waited to feel something. Anything. He was gorgeous, thick, dark hair, a killer smile, a lean athletic build and a very, very pretty half-hard cock that I wasn’t going to stare at, because that just wouldn’t be polite. I appreciated the package, but that was it. No spark of attraction.
Modeling is sometimes about acting as much as it is posing, so I put on my best resting bitch face and worked it. And I worked Jack, who was a good sport and an excellent partner. We didn’t fuck or anything like that, not even simulated. There was lots of skin to skin, though. He was totally naked, and I wore lingerie that was too small, a fact I’d pointed out when I put it on and had been told by a grinning Scott that the size was perfect. When we paused for a break, Jack did apologize for getting hard.
“Honey, I’d be insulted if you didn’t,” I told him. I shrugged into the silk robe I’d brought along. Jack had wrapped a towel around his lean hips. We were both drinking sodas that Scott’s assistant had brought up from the shop downstairs while the photographer himself pulled up the first set of shots onto his laptop to preview for editing.
Jack stretched out long legs on the chaise in one corner while I took a spot in a comfy armchair. We’d spent the past hour mostly naked and entangled. I’d met him only two hours ago. He felt like one of my oldest friends at this point.
“You work with Alex, right? Olivia’s husband,” Jack asked.
I sipped soda and rolled my head on my neck to crack it. “Yep.”
“Yeah, my girlfriend is like, her best friend.”
“Sarah?” I laughed. “Wow, small world.”
“Yeah, tiny.” Jack nodded.
“I don’t know her,” I added. “I mean, I’ve heard Olivia talking about her, but we haven’t met.”
Jack nodded. “You have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend? I guess I should’ve asked that, sorry. Didn’t mean to be whatever you call it, genderist.”
“I don’t. Never had a girlfriend, thought about trying it once or twice but I’m kind of hardwired for cock. The last boyfriend I had was a long time ago.” I leaned back in the soft chair and forced away thoughts of Esteban. He’d never been a boyfriend.
“How come?” Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
I shrugged. “It ended badly. Haven’t really wanted to have another since.”
“How long is a long time ago?”
I paused, sort of embarrassed to say it aloud. “Something like four years.”
“Whoa.” Jack shook his head. “That’s too bad.”
I laughed. “It’s okay. Really. I haven’t suffered for lack of a boyfriend, trust me.”
“Come look at these,” Scott said from the desk.
Jack and I got up to see what Scott had done. He’d pulled up a black-and-white shot from earlier in the day. Jack on his knees, my fingers in his hair. Scott had captured a small, assessing smile on my face. Jack’s eyes closed, his mouth slightly parted. His cock not yet erect but clearly getting there.
“Beautiful,” I said, meaning Jack.
Jack snorted soft laughter. “Pretty hot, man.”
Scott didn’t look at either one of us. His fingers continued smoothing and shifting the image in tiny increments. Enhancing, not changing. I loved the way he made me look. I’d worked with a few other photographers who always tried to make my tits bigger, my belly flatter, my ass rounder. Scott always made me look just like I do, only a little...better.
He
