Read Online Photo Slave (The Art of Domination #2) by Erika Masten - Free Book Online

expensive
antique perfume bottles that had bulbs you had to squeeze to make them spray.
All around this vanity display hovered tall commercial lights with hoods and
reflectors, setting the table aside as special, as more of a set than anything
else in the room.
    I was still standing at
the desk but staring at the vanity when I heard heavy booted footsteps and
swung toward the door to see Nolan shutting—and locking—it behind him. While I
felt distinctly safer, more settled, with him on this side of the wall, I was
also aware that was an absurd reaction considering who this man was and what
he’d done. And what I was fairly sure he wanted to do now.
    I had to clear my
throat to keep from sounding ragged and breathless. “Everything okay out
there?” I asked.
    Nolan shrugged, seeming
genuinely unconcerned. “I sent everyone else home. Rilla is demanding her model
release back and threatening to sue if I use any of my photographs of her in my
show. It seems she assumed she held a great deal more primacy than a
photographer would grant to most models, even the presumed star of the
exhibition.”
    My brow knit despite my
vague knowledge that it wasn’t a good look. Couldn’t help it. “She was your
girlfriend?”
    I’d seen her
territorial displays, but Nolan had never paid them any mind that I’d observed.
And that first night, he and I, we had…. That queasiness was back again. I knew
I’d been obsessing over my attraction to a hedonistic bad boy, but I hadn’t
pegged him as a common player who actively, blatantly, carelessly broke hearts
along the way.
    Nolan shaking his head
in denial dulled the rise of panic in my chest. “No, but she liked to say
so—and pretend she wanted to be, even to me. She isn’t looking for a boyfriend
or a lover so much as a benefactor.”
    Despite the
reassurance, my ill-defined sense of guilt remained. It just moved on from one
cause to another, making me catch my lower lip in my teeth, if only briefly. I
had bargained Nolan Beal out of using one model, denied him another by refusing
to sign a release of my own, and now…. Had I upset studio politics and chased
off Rilla?
    Maybe I was trying to
suggest Nolan was better off without Rilla, and maybe I was just trying to make
myself feel better, as I asked, “Is this about you taking photographs of
someone else or about the possibility that she won’t be able to use the exhibition
now to further her modeling career?”
    Nolan came around the
desk to stand beside me, against me. Citrus, cinnamon, rum. As I took in the
scent of him, the heat of him, he said, “Yes and yes.” Staring rapt, I watched
his slightly calloused fingertips slip along the back of my hand where it
rested on the pile of art books. The lightest tingle lingered in the wake of
his touch.
    Then he reached under
the books, to drag a stack of photographs—of me—out into view. “I spoke to
Cheri,” he said, hesitating, and I looked up to find he was avoiding my gaze,
focusing his own attention hard on the pictures. Only when he realized I was
watching his face did he meet my stare, and the effort was obvious and
palpable. I would almost have thought
Nolan Beal was nervous. “About the photographs she had of you,” he went on
quietly. “I didn’t know she had them—didn’t give them to her—and she’ll tell
you as much. Just ask her. I told you I wouldn’t share those without your
permission, and I meant it. Had I thought someone would have the balls to rifle
through my desk uninvited looking for a pen to sign a model release I hadn’t
asked for when I wasn’t even here….” Was Nolan actually apologizing? “I should
have expected it with a Moreau,” he chuckled but only for a second. “Well, it
won’t happen again.”
    What to say to that?
That it was okay when it wasn’t, when I was mortified at what my sister had
seen, what she now knew I’d done?
    I let out a long sigh
through my nose. What truly mortified me was not what Nolan or Cheri