A Taste Of Fantasy

“Yvette.” He raised his head and frowned at the standing model. “Can you take the light out of your eyes? Make them dead. Like you’re blind, like you’re seeing nothing. Can you do that?”

The model unfocused her eyes into dull blank circles.

“Excellent. Almost done.” He bent his head back over his camera and snapped a few more shots, finished the roll and nodded. “Thanks. Good work.”

The women slumped out of their positions with sighs of relief and rolled necks and arms stiff from posing for so long.

Jack clapped his hands in brief applause. “You ladies did great. You can get dressed now. I’ll send you prints for your portfolios in a week or two.”

The women made their way to the changing area at the back of his studio to shower and dress.

Jack shut off lights, labeled his rolls of film and took them to the darkroom. Good day today. He’d nailed several shots exactly as he wanted them. The women had been even better than he hoped. He could afford professional models, but he liked finding women on his own, usually aspiring models or performers who were comfortable in front of a lens already. He gave them the pictures for their portfolios or for their amusement or egos, or whatever they wanted them for, and saved himself contracts and legal hassles.

Best of all, he could go about the project leisurely, wait until he found the right faces, the right bodies for the poses he wanted.

This shoot wrapped up his chair series. His next was even more complicated—women as dining tables. Intimate feasts for two served on a woman’s horizontal spine. Fabulous. Someday he’d do a whole dining set.

He put his Hasselblad away in the cabinet Dad had made for the studio. He was looking for a very special person for the table shoot. Someone who could project the kind of simple sincerity the picture required, to avoid a comic effect. Someone who could fill the frame without trying to—or even while trying not to. He wasn’t even sure what she would look like, only that he’d know when he found her. Something about her would spark certainty that she would photograph well and transform his internal vision into reality.

The women emerged from the bathroom, hair still damp, giggling over some joke.

He threw off the focus and tension that always accompanied his work and grinned. “You ladies interested in having a drink?”

They shot each other sidelong glances that made him feel like a dirty old man. Okay, so he was probably ten years older than they were. Not like he wanted anything more than company for a drink. His big scoring days were over. But having two visions of loveliness on his arm for the evening wasn’t exactly an ego buster. So shoot him, he was human.

“Come on. Do I look like a cradle robber?” He held his hands out in surrender which made the girls giggle. “I’ll buy you a drink to thank you for the good work you did here.”

More sidelong glances. The fluent silent communication that only the female of the species understood.

Hmm. Women didn’t usually respond to his charm as if he were a walking virus. Fine. Forget it. Not like he had anything invested in their company.

“We were thinking.” Yvette sidled up to him on one side and took his arm.

“Oh?” He looked down at her lovely face turned up impishly toward him and couldn’t help grinning. A promising sign.

“Yes.” Vanessa slid around to his other side and took his other arm. “We were thinking.”

“Thinking, huh?” Jack turned to the lovely impish face on his other side and couldn’t help grinning wider. “Is this unusual activity for you?”

Two sweet giggles, high and breathy, one in one ear, one in the other. Okay, so he’d been in worse situations.

“We were thinking maybe…” Vanessa tipped her head to one side and looked at him through half-closed eyes.

“Yes…?” He couldn’t help feeling cocky. They were going to accept. Instead of going to his empty apartment, or going out to eat on his own, he’d have some company, maybe get some flirt. It had been a while; he’d been so intent on his work. Just some harmless fun.

“That maybe…” Yvette took up the sentence. “You’d like to do both of us.”

A burst of incredulous air exited his mouth. What? The girls were barely out of diapers, and they were suggesting a threesome? “Do you?”

“Yeah.” Yvonne wiggled seductively closer. “Both of us.”

“Uh…” Jack swallowed. This was supposed to be every man’s dream. Ten years ago—maybe even five—he’d have instantly gotten so hard his cock would have ripped through his pants.

It wasn’t happening now. Instead of a hard-on, he was suffering from a sudden surge of panic. No question his attitudes about women had changed. His attitudes about a lot of things had changed.

“I’m not sure that would be such a good idea.”

“Awwww.” Yvette stood on tiptoes and trapped his left earlobe between her teeth.

“C’mon.” Vanessa wrapped one leg around his and pressed her pelvis to his right thigh, hands clamped onto his chest. “It’d be fun.”

“I’m sure it would be.” Jack extracted himself from trapping teeth, clamping hands and pressing pelvis, feeling like he was stripping off too-tight clothes. “But I can’t.”

“Why?” Yvette backed off and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Because I don’t need a reputation for hiring models and screwing them.”

“Ha!” Vanessa pouted and shot him the look of a snake to its mousy prey. “You already have one.”

Jack held himself still. Made long, icy eye contact first with one girl, then the other. “I think you should leave.”

They glanced at each other, then grimaced and filed sulkily past him through the reception area to the old freight elevator used when the building was a warehouse.

He waited until he heard the slide and groan of the doors shutting behind them.

Crap.

Youth was like a savage wonderful drug. You thought the world could be yours. You thought you could get away with anything. You thought you could indulge your passions and whims in this glorious free-for-all called adulthood and suffer nothing. No consequences. No guilt. Out of your parents’ house and into the candy store for dinner.

Jack took a quick glance around for anything out of place, turned off the studio lights and took the elevator up to his apartment. Miraculous that he hadn’t made a mistake sooner. Three years ago he’d spent the night with a type of woman he usually avoided. A particularly determined woman, who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Something about her aggressiveness, something about her confidence and primal no-nonsense, bad-girl sexuality had gotten to him, and he gave in to an explosive encounter.

He was still paying for it. The next morning he’d woken up, disoriented and edgy. Sleeping with models was dangerous; he knew that. Until that night he’d felt untouchable, chosen wisely, parted on good terms. But this woman had psycho written all over her and he’d gone ahead anyway, mind blunted by booze, ignoring the fact that someone like her could cause major problems for his blossoming career.

She had. For some screwed-up reason she’d decided that one night entitled her to complete ownership. When he’d rejected her next advance, politely but firmly, she’d turned on him so fast, with such violent and ugly determination, he barely had time to react.

Apparently no one rejected Krista Crotter and lived happily ever after. She made sure as many business associates of his she could get her hands on knew about what had happened. Or at least knew her version of what had happened.

He went into his living room, crossed the Oriental rug over plank flooring and put Annie Lennox’s Diva CD on the ridiculously overpriced sound system he’d splurged on a few years before on some testosterone-laden buying spree. He hit “skip” until he found his favorite tune, about how life felt like walking on broken glass.

It had taken months and months of damage control, of walking the fine line between keeping Krista down and pissing her off more, to extricate himself from the nightmare with his reputation intact.

Fairly intact.

Jack passed his hands over his face and blew out a long breath. No question now, but he needed a drink. He opened his refrigerator, which yawned spotless and practically empty except for the orange box of baking soda. No beer. And he should probably change the baking soda, not that there were any odors in there to absorb at the moment.

The total lack of beer decided him. Even without company, he’d go out, something he rarely did anymore, especially by himself. Booze and available women were easier to avoid if he stayed home.

But tonight he felt restless here in the perfectly organized apartment that usually soothed him. What harm could it do? One beer, maybe two. And if he met a woman, he could prove to himself that he could talk to her without getting his anatomy involved.