between her legs. Sharon shook her head, letting her hair fall down her back, and when she looked at Anthony again, it was pure lust.
But Anthony was completely unaffected, snapping shots as though she were a part of the tree. “Chin up a little. That’s it. Now let it go.”
Sharon shrugged again and the robe slipped to her wrists. She took it in one hand, held it out for a couple shots, and tossed it Syria’s direction.
Syria inhaled sharply. The woman was beautiful, her body curved and toned, perfectly tan with no lines. Her breasts were still high and firm, her legs slender and shapely. Keeping the shoes had been a good decision, as it made her calves stay taut and as her knee came up and around the trunk, the shiny smooth leather was a killer juxtaposition against the roughness of the bark.
Syria wondered what it would feel like to have your naked skin against a tree, out in an open park. She couldn’t hold a candle to a woman like that. She wasn’t beautiful whatsoever, her mixed heritage of Oklahoma mother and a father from India made her skin a strange watery coffee color, and her hair dark but not thick and lustrous like Indian girls, just curly and unmanageable.
She didn’t belong in this town. Her absent father, who turned out to have lied and was married, seducing her mother at an ashram on a trip to India twenty years ago, was a constant source of gossip. Her mother hadn’t dated, and the two of them kept to themselves on a little lot surrounded by wheat fields out on the highway as Syria went through school.
Watching Anthony close in on the woman, taking tighter shots of her face and parts of her body, set Syria on fire. He was so comfortable with it, like he did it every day. Maybe he did. She imagined herself in Sharon’s place, breasts exposed, thighs rubbing a tree, out in public, pictures forever capturing the moment.
“I think we’ve got it,” Anthony said and turned to Syria. “Can you hand Sharon the robe?”
He turned away to pick up equipment, but Syria couldn’t take her eyes off the woman now, her skin rosy where it had made contact with the tree. She handed her the robe, but Sharon didn’t put it on, kicking off her shoes and walking over to her underwear, passing close to Anthony.
Syria clutched the disc, wondering what the woman was up to. Anthony was kneeling low, packing his camera in a bag, and Sharon stood over him, her breasts just above his head, the bare mound right where his face would be if he turned. “So do you think we have some good stuff?”
Anthony was stuck, and while he didn’t seem upset by it, he also didn’t want to turn right into the woman’s naked body. Syria felt sorry for him. Did many of these women proposition him after shoots, either boldly or subtly? He was extraordinarily cute, his short brownish gold hair spiking straight up, those happy blue eyes, and the lean frame. She could see the appeal.
Anthony kept busy with the bag. “Absolutely, Sharon. You are a rare treat to photograph.”
This mollified the woman, and she stepped back to retrieve the black lace. When she looked down to step into the thong, Syria could see Anthony visibly relax. She began to wonder if he’d needed the reflector at all, or if he had wanted Syria as a buffer.
She walked over to them as Sharon finally hooked the bra back on and headed toward a bag that hopefully held more clothes. “That was fun,” Syria said, passing him the disc.
He stood up and twisted it, collapsing it down into a quarter of its previous size.
“Wow!” she said. “Can I do that?”
He handed it back to her. She opened the disc, and it popped out suddenly. She lost her grip and it smacked her in the nose.
“You okay?” Anthony took her arm and shoved the reflector out of the way. “It opens quick!”
Syria rubbed her face. “I’m fine. Just embarrassed.” She passed the reflector back. “Perhaps I need safety training before operating heavy machinery.”
He laughed, a
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