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

around my shoes, fabric trailing behind me from
the direction I’d come.
    I didn’t get a frown of
disappointment or a roguish grin from Beal. Either of those I would have been
prepared to endure, navigate. Instead, I saw that hawkeyed focus of a
photographer at work, of wheels turning behind sapphire eyes. My fatal weakness—the
dark, intent artist bristling with creative energy. My hormones surged.
    “Perfect. Now we’re
ready,” he breathed.
    And I shivered. And
stood at the edge of the set, heels just barely on the gray muslin screen. And
froze.
    With wine warming my
veins and silk against my skin, with untamed curls tickling my cheek and my
shoulders bared by the sleeveless dress, with my sex wet and Nolan Beal’s
Jack-and-leather deep voice purring like a motor in the distance, I was in
danger of throwing away almost three years of good behavior. Because Beal had
noticed that stupid piercing. Because he put makeup and false eyelashes on me
and gave me a pretty dress to wear. And because I was so goddamn sexually
attracted to him.
    When I felt the floor
shift almost imperceptibly, heard the muted steps of Beal’s cautious approach,
I prepared an apology. In a few short seconds, I rehearsed what I’d say to
excuse myself and my failings as a model, to escape before I ruined everything.
And how I’d ask for Cheri’s release before I went.
    I was facing the
loveseat, and he was behind me, and I felt a caress against my shoulder. But it
wasn’t Beal’s hand. When I turned my head to look, there it was. He held out a
gray silk half-face mask with braided gray ribbon around the eyes and clear
crystals twinkling at the brow and over the cheeks. Fine silver lines that
looked hand-painted swirled along the bridge and contours of the nose, up along
the forehead. It was a carnival mask, a masquerade mask, a delicate shell of
shine and texture and shimmer that begged to be worn, that suggested glamour
and revelry… protected by anonymity.
    When I didn’t take the
mask from him, when I didn’t resist, Beal slipped the elastic ribbon over my
head.
    “Now no one has to know
who you are,” he said low.
    But there was just us
two in the room, in the whole studio. It was like he was saying… even I could
pretend ignorance.
    The music started from
a distance, not nearly so loud or harsh as what had been playing that morning.
But it was more demanding, emotionally. All the songs wept and sighed and
purred with female voices, chanteuses like Banks and Jillette Johnson crooning about loving too hard and paper cut hearts, the ‘hurts so
good’ kind of music. I sat down on the loveseat, my eyes closed, my hands
curled loosely in my lap, the cool air raising goose bumps on my legs to
mid-thigh where the slit in the dress parted and the silk fell to each side. On
my face, the mask felt surprisingly, pleasantly warm and textured and… safe. I
was beyond reach and beyond breach.
    “Open your eyes, Iva. I
want you to look at me.”
    And I did,
unquestioningly. Though most fashion photographers worked at a distance from
their subjects, using the zoom and the lens to make it seem like they were mere
feet or inches from the models, Beal was maybe a couple of yards from me.
Hardly more than the length of my body were I stretched out on the floor,
crawling for him. What a strange thought, no doubt stirred by the compellingly
erotic photographs I’d seen on his bedroom wall. Stirred by the curiosity of
what it would have been like to be treated that way, wanted that way, taken
that way. Stirred by what I knew it used to feel like to give myself over to my
passions. And safeguarded by a mask giving me anonymity, permission to at least
entertain unwise, reckless, dark and sexy thoughts.
    “Spread your legs,”
Beal ordered. It was a simple, subtle command. No theatrical growl or
authoritative bark. Not even a stern note to his voice. He didn’t have to force
it. He simply wanted and said so, and I did it. I spread my legs, parting