Photo Slave (The Art of Domination #2) Read Online Free PDF

Cheri’s release ended her work with you and prevented any
possibility of you using her photos for your exhibition. Maybe that wasn’t
explicit, but it was perfectly reasonable to assume we were both getting what
we wanted.” Not just you, she was
saying without having to spit out the words.
    Letting my thumb slide
across Iva’s chin, which trembled so slightly with nerves or maybe the strain
of not striking me, I deliberately played with that pulse beating erratically
at her bare throat. “At worst that would have been a lie of omission.”
    “A rather refined sense
of technicality for so blunt a man,” she bit.
    “That would be a fair
statement,” I agreed, “were I in the least guilty of your charge. But I did no
such thing. I didn’t even tell Cheri about our agreement, though I admit to
mentioning you’d been at my studio—hard to explain otherwise why I was asking
her for your cell number. You really should have left that for me, by the way,
so you have to take some of the heat on that count. Stan was just supposed to
let Cheri know I wasn’t going to need her for the rest of her shoots. It’s
possible he said more than he should have. Sometimes my assistant can be a bit
clueless.” And sometimes he was just a troublemaker. I was in no position to
pass judgment on that count.
    “Too cowardly to tell
her yourself?” Iva scoffed, voice low, soft brown eyes peering coolly at me. I
liked that shade of rich chocolate brown better when it was melted and
glistening with desire, teary from the kind of climax that only sudden,
jarring, intense sex wrung out of a woman. Out of a submissive at her most
vulnerable.
    Down,
Beal .
The jeans were getting snug again in all the most important but uncomfortable
places.
    “No, not cowardly, Miss
Moreau, just busy and tired. I’ve been on location about fifteen hours a day
for the last two days, then all morning and afternoon today while I wrapped a
shoot for a StyleWeb feature.”
    Iva had started
squirming, but a firmer hold on her sculpted cheek got her attention, made her
behave. And reminded me what a Hellenistic beauty looked and felt like. After Zelina, there was an
awful lot of bittersweet subtext under that memory.
    “So you’re saying you
weren’t around, hadn’t seen Cheri, and didn’t know about the new model
release?” Iva asked, the pout to her lush lips and the flatness of her tone
suggesting great doubt in my word—for reasons that would have been justified in
many cases, just not this one. “You didn’t tell Cheri to sign another release
form to get around our agreement?”
    She assumed I’d tell,
not ask. One of us didn’t know Cheri very well.
    “I didn’t. Most likely,
Stan told her more than he should have and she didn’t like the idea that you
rescued her when she didn’t feel like she needed saving.”
    “Hm, yeah,” Iva said,
nonplussed and glaring now. “Stan must have given her the photos of me as
well.”
    I reared back,
possessiveness flaring despite me dropping my hand from Iva’s cheek to make a
fist against my thigh. “No one has those photos but me.” And that damn well
better have been the truth. I had developed them myself in my own studio
darkroom before tucking them away in my desk until I could get Iva to relent
and sign a model release in her name. Until then, they remained private, for me
alone. I realized now that what I hadn’t done, hadn’t thought necessary, was
lock that desk drawer. A mistake?
    “Cheri dropped a file
filled with them on my desk today at work,” Iva told me. “The photocopy of the
new model release that she tucked in under the pile was a last little ‘and
don’t do it again’ jab at me.”
    It took me a few
seconds of staring at Iva to be certain she wasn’t bluffing, wasn’t trying to
guilt me into some concession. I reminded myself that everyone was running some
kind of game, if not on strangers, if not on coworkers and friends and family,
then on themselves. Just now, I