Free Model Release (The Art of Domination #1) by Erika Masten Page A

staring, even if a
half-formed grin had appeared on his face. “I bet you still have the stud,
though, don’t you?”
    Several of them. “Why?”
I asked cautiously.
    “In your purse?”
    The man was lucky I
didn’t leap out of that chair with the chills. I didn’t want to know how he’d
guessed that about me. Yes, there was one in a little plastic case in a zipper
pocket. I had kept it there, in the old days, for those spur of the moment
nights at the club—a tiny gleaming crystal that was hardly noticeable unless
someone got very very close. No doubt I should have taken it out by now, stopped carrying it around,
gotten rid of it. Keeping the stud was like an alcoholic shoving that last
bottle of booze to the back of the cabinet instead of pouring it down the sink
or the smoker who kept one last pack in the closet in the pocket of an old
coat, just in case an irresistible moment of self-destructiveness arose.
    “Give me a minute,”
Beal said. “Wait here.” Wait here… feeling unbearably exposed by this little
snippet of my prior incarnation as a wild girl, resurfacing now, as I sat
immersed in this dangerously familiar experience.
    When the photographer
returned, facing me in the mirror, he was holding up a hanger and a
breathtakingly beautiful—and expensive—designer gown. The shimmer of silver
undertones tempered the lavender color, with a deep V neckline playing off the
slit up the front from the hem. I could barely keep myself from touching it,
caressing it, the silk gleaming like liquid in moonlight.
    “Found it where I
thought I would, hidden behind a few others in Rilla’s dressing room.” And we
shared a smile and a breathy chuckle over that. “Put it on,” he urged. “With the
stud.”
    I felt myself flush
from breasts to scalp at the suggestion. With
the stud …. In the dressing table mirror, my reflection glowed pink despite
my olive skin. Could Beal, implausible psychic or just keen observer of his
fellow man, possibly understand what he was asking me to do? Who he was asking
me to be, if only for an hour? She was a wild child, a whirling dervish of
insatiable appetites, always looking for the next experience, the next thrill.
And it seemed, no matter how hard I tried to forget her, she was always there
just under the surface.
    In the dressing room, I
put on the gown and the crystal stud like a Marilyn Monroe beauty mark just
above one corner of my lips, and I stared at myself. Which Iva was I now? This
Iva was wearing lavender stilettos with metallic silver heels instead of
loafers or modest pumps. Instead of my hair being tied back in a neat ponytail
or hanging smooth with a ton of conditioner to tame the curls, it hovered along
my shoulders and upper back in a cloud of soft waves, just a touch unruly,
uncontrolled. I smelled less like the ink of office markers that usually
stained my fingertips than of exotic skin lotions and hair serums, and of
orange and cinnamon and rum from proximity to a particular man.
    The dress he had chosen
for me complemented my fair gold skin but also brought out unexpectedly
flattering pink undertones. And there was a lot of that skin to see. The gown
plunged more elegantly than brazenly, but it still showed more breast than I’d
have dared in public, at least these days. And the slit up the front flashed
glimpses of bare leg all the way along my thighs, up to and including a
suggestion of cream-colored silky panties if I moved too carelessly.
    “Rilla was right,” I
said as I stood guardedly still and presented myself to Beal. “Too long for
me.” Part of me wanted him to agree, to tell me to put the boring slip back on
or maybe even the sweats so he could send me home.
    Despite the loud tap of
my heels on the wooden studio floor, the photographer didn’t turn or look away
from his work fussing with screens and lights until I spoke up from a few feet
behind him. Now he spun to survey the image of me standing with a pool of
silvery lavender silk coiling