Angela, Carla - Full Exposure (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Read Online Free PDF

felt herself at the edge as though dangling on a cliff top, looking down. Then, suddenly, like a tsunami, a flood of ecstasy was washing over her, engulfing her every pore, her every cell, causing her body to shudder under his as wave after wave hit, his own body echoing her rhythms. Finally, Hunter flung himself beside her, breathlessly, satisfied…
    Then, mid-pant herself, Lake’s eyes had suddenly snapped open, the night air now cool on her skin, her nether region still throbbing. Tender. Raw. All at once she was alone again, sans Cupcakes curled up in his basket at the foot of her bed. Lake’s eyes peeked over at the black, rectangular alarm clock on her bedside table. It flashed 12:03 a.m. in red digits. Darn. She’d only been asleep for an hour, and she was already having dirty dreams about Hunter.
    Brushing away her disappointment that it was all just a dream, Lake threw back the covers, padded out of bed toward the window, and slammed it shut. Just to be sure.
    Then she nestled back into bed, avoiding the wet patch, willing herself to concentrate on counting sheep instead and strictly not uberhot wolves in sheep’s clothing or Adonises in bedraggled attire.
    Still, she couldn’t help from feeling a pit of dread in her stomach at the prospect of handing over those slick, glossy photos to him. As soon as he uploaded them, he’d no doubt have hordes of women beating a path to his door.
    Right now, she much preferred the idea of him marketing himself via his up-the-nose shot than anything she’d helped produce. Darn it all.

Chapter Four

    Lake ran a quizzical eye over the black-and-white photo held up between her fingers in her darkroom’s dim, red lighting. She hoped to use the picture as a replacement for another she wasn’t entirely happy with in her exhibition. She bit her lip, tracing the naked, feminine curves in the photo with her eye, pulling at her ponytail absentmindedly with her other hand.
    The headless woman captured sat with her legs drawn up to her chest. She looked vulnerable. Stripped bare, literally and otherwise. At her feet lay a thorny rose, symbolizing beauty and danger, with the power to cut deep, and cast aside was an abandoned, glittering engagement ring. Lake hoped it suitably conveyed the gut-wrenching, dark flipside of love she was aiming for.
    And what the audience at the exhibition opening wouldn’t actually know? That the headless woman was her . Lake had put the camera on timer and set up the lighting, as well as posed for the shot. It was self-portraiture.
    Deciding she was, at last, happy with the quality of the redone image, Lake gently put it aside on the work bench. She’d take it to the gallery later for display. Then, snapping her thin, white plastic gloves back on, she dipped her fingers into the tray of watery photographic fixer to dislodge another replacement photo.
    While Lake used digital photography for her day-to-day work, in her spare time she loved the old-school process of printing from film, despite the foul-smelling chemicals that came with it. The quality of the image, the grain of the film, the magic of the whole process… Lake liked to think of the familiar process as her own form of meditation. She had blacked out the windows of the old toolshed at the back of her unit to create her own makeshift darkroom and spent every spare moment there. She didn’t like anyone to disturb her mid-process, except Cupcakes, who was now winding his way between her legs in a vigorous figure eight.
    Knock, knock!
    Lake jumped, almost pushing over the tray of fixer in shock. Who the heck could that be? A salesperson, trying to sell her insurance? Girl Guides proffering cookies? Better just to ignore it and hope they’d go away.
    ‘Lake, are you in there?’
    The voice sounded slightly muffled from behind the shed door, but its owner was unmistakable, that silky and commanding sound.
    Hunter.
    An image from her dream—him buck naked at the foot of her bed, his manhood