Maximum Exposure (11 page)

She caught the edge of her lip. “I know at least one of my neighbors who’d love to join us.”

“Are you kidding?” he ground out.

She shook her head.

“You want another woman?”

“No. Another man,” she replied.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“But wait,” she said, her voice breathless and teasing. “As far as everyone else is concerned, aren’t you gay?”

“I’m pretty sure you outed me when you stuck your hand down my pants.” He pumped his hips, one, two, three short, quick strokes. She squeezed him with her cunt, squeezed him with her fingers, which were crawling closer and closer to the rim of his ass. “You want to tell me what you’re doing back there?”

“Giving you a good time. You didn’t seem to mind me playing with all the goods in my office.”

Did she have any idea what it had been like for him? Nearly a year of celibacy, and she opened her mouth and begged? “Jodi?”

“Roland?”

He shook his head. “It’s Roman.”

She looked confused. “What?”

“My name is Roman.” And why he’d spilled that on top of everything else…“Do you know how fucked I am?”

“Right now? I’d say yeah. You’re buried to your balls inside of me, and I’m doing my best to get a finger in your ass.”

“You’re not going to ask me about my name?”

She squeezed, pumping him, milking him. He felt the ooze of his pre-cum and groaned. “I figure you’ve told me enough. I can imagine the rest. I’d rather imagine the rest. At least for now. If I’ve put both of us in danger with my selfishness, well, just tell me the rest when you can.”

As close as they were, her breasts flattened against his chest, her nipples pebble hard, her clit throbbing, he couldn’t look anywhere but into her eyes. He gripped the edge of the pool with both hands, used her legs and arms as leverage for his strokes.

He wanted her beneath him. He wanted to pound into her. He wanted to drive away all the secrets that were going to keep him from having her any hour of the night or day. Because that was how much he wanted her. And that admission was the trigger that released his cum.

It pulsed from his cock and spilled into her, heating her, coating her. Her eyes widened as she felt the flow of thick liquid, tears following as her orgasm swept through her.

He shot semen for what seemed like forever, and her convulsions lasted even longer. Never in his life had he shared such a completion. And he’d driven away his only chance of experiencing such magic again by putting her in danger.

Two hours later, on his way to his truck, he realized how much as he watched a van roll slowly by the complex and found himself looking into the eyes of Tomás Bebé.

“I want you to take the photos as we discussed. The only difference is that I don’t want you following me and hovering and hoping to catch me engaged in some prurient act of exposure.” She knew that was how he saw what she did. It was how most people looked at what was to her second nature. She’d been doing it almost all her life.

“You’re thinking of staging the shots? Using props? Maybe rosebushes and piano benches and cats?”

She turned her head, which she’d been resting against the seat back, and cocked an eyebrow, which she doubted he could see with her sunglasses in the way.

Then she realized he was facing the Atlantic, his eyes closed. He wasn’t looking at her at all. “Very funny. And no. No props. Just me and whatever you want to use of the setting in your final crop.”

“Have you decided on the setting?”

“I haven’t given it any thought at all.”

She was still facing him, so she saw his frown when he rolled his head to look at her. “I thought you came here because you have this all figured out.”

“I do. The main concept, anyway. There will be details to finalize, of course.”

“Details like the setting.”

She nodded. “If we can take a couple of days and get this out of the way, we can all get back to our schedules and our lives.”

He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “A couple of days. What, you’ve got that much showing off on your calendar that you decide to cram it all into a couple of days?”

“It’s not showing off.”

“Right. It’s letting people look.”

She went back to staring at the clouds, which were like popcorn in the sky. “We can do this without you making digs, or we can call it off.”

He stayed silent, leaving her with nothing to listen to but the soft roll of the surf onto the beach, the squawk of the gulls circling overhead, the slap of the patio umbrella, which sounded like a sail fighting to unfurl.

“What you do,” Finn finally said, “no matter how you describe it, isn’t easy for me to deal with. And it’s not like I only take on jobs that meet some strict moral code. Most of them come with a butt load of immorality. But none of those are cases in which I’m personally involved. I make sure I’m not. Not with any I take on.”

“And you’re involved with me.”

“
Involved
may not be the right word, but yeah. You’re not just a random client.”

“The way you’re not just a random photographer working on his beach house?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m glad. Because my plan wouldn’t work quite so well otherwise.”

“You’ve got my attention.”

Success,
she thought, smiling to herself. “I think the only way this will work is if we can compromise somewhere between spontaneous and staged.”

“I’m listening,” he said when she paused to let that sink in.

As long as he was doing so with an open mind…“You, as the photographer, work out the venue, and then I perform for you.”

“For me.”

It was more statement than question. She responded in kind. “If you figure out in advance where you’d like to shoot, a couple of locations maybe, say the beach, and a nightclub, whatever, then we can take a day or two to do this, Dustin will pay you, and you can be on your way.”

Finn’s only answer was, “Hmm,” so she went on, pitching her idea like a carnival barker. “If he gets what he’s been wanting and thinks the shots worth a show, he might even sell a few of them. Make the time spent even more worth your while.”

“The show would be one thing,” Finn said, shaking his head. “I’m not so sure about selling them.”

Because he wasn’t a professional photographer? Or because he didn’t want to share? “You’re the artist. That would be up to you.”

She didn’t say anything else, but waited for him to digest her suggestion. It had seemed so perfectly logical when it had come to her this morning. No, it wouldn’t be a precise interpretation of Dustin’s vision. There would be less of an emotional range with her doing her thing solely for Finn. But unless he had an alternative solution…

“Why don’t we go back to the beginning? Tell me everything you and Dustin have ever talked about, what he wants exactly, ideas you’ve already tossed around and discarded.”

She could do that. And for the next hour she did, even though there wasn’t a lot that he didn’t already know. She and Dustin had played with the idea more than they’d ever gotten down to the nitty-gritty of how to make it happen. Probably because neither one of them had thought they could find someone to help them pull it off.

What Dustin wanted was for an audience beyond her intended victims, as he called them, to see her in action, but not her exhibitionism itself as much her emotions and those of her audience—not an easy aspect of any subject to capture. And certainly one that wasn’t easy to explain.

“Let me give you a call on Monday,” Finn said, sitting forward in his chair, leaning his elbows on his knees, lacing his fingers together. “I need to get home, air out the place, do some paperwork, and return a hell of a lot of calls.”

That didn’t seem unreasonable. It left her a little bit nervous, and she couldn’t even begin to explain why. “As long as you don’t get so caught up in the beach house that you forget to come back.”

“If I don’t come back, there won’t be a beach house,” he said, with a snort. “But now that I’m finished with Dustin’s case, I’ll either have to find another place here to stay or make the commute each day. It’s no biggie. A little over an hour each way.”

“Well, if you don’t think familiarity will breed contempt, I might have a solution.”

He shook his head before she could say another word. “I’m not going to bunk with you.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest that you do,” she told him truthfully. She had more sense than to lead herself into that sort of temptation. “But there is a room down the hall from my office above Splash & Flambé. It has a futon and a television and a desk, as well as a microwave and small fridge. The second-floor bathroom also has a shower stall, but the facilities are ones we all use during the day. You’d have to clean up after hours.”

“I wouldn’t be in the way?”

Oh, he would be in the way. She’d know he was sleeping there when she left the store for the night. She’d know when he’d showered by the scents he would leave behind. But he wouldn’t be underfoot or keeping her employees from their work.

And so she shook her head and said, “No. Not at all. And since you and I would be away from the store for the shoot, I can’t see anyone having an issue with you being there.”

“Anyone like your managers.”

“Or the floor clerks.”

“That part would probably work, then.”

“But you’re still not sure about the rest.” She didn’t know what there was left to say. If he wasn’t certain he wanted the job, she was equally uncertain there was anything else she could offer to convince him.

“Performing for me. Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of this thing you do? Because what you and I might have going on is not what you have with the usual suspects, right?”

He was right. But if she’d had any question, she needed only to look back to the day they’d met—and to her performance that had been strictly for him. “And you think that will make a difference?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who knows the reaction you’re hoping to get.”

“But it’s not about what I’m hoping to get. It’s about what these usual suspects, as you put it, see when they look at me.”

“My point exactly. Our chemistry? That stuff you and Dustin are so keen on us having? That’s going to skew your results.”

This time, she wasn’t so quick to admit he had a point—even though he did. If a photographer had captured her during a previous outing, the emotion in her expression would most likely have been the joy of triumph, the heady rush of a winner’s success.

But performing for Finn? Those emotions wouldn’t come close to what she’d be feeling. And so she finally said, “I guess the only thing we can do is give it a go and see how it comes out in the wash.”

No. Not Roland. Roman.

She swore her office still smelled like sex.

She tossed her Coach satchel onto the credenza at an L to her desk and opened the blinds on the window that looked out over the walkway between the back offices, lounge, and kitchen. She could see the light shining from Dustin’s doorway. Many mornings they shared a cup of coffee and discussed the day’s schedule. Today, she wasn’t in the mood. She didn’t know how she was going to face him after what she had done.

Even if she’d wanted to confess, she couldn’t. She’d given Roman her word that what had happened between them would go no further—a promise that seemed rather worthless considering half the residents in her apartment complex had seen them in the pool, but one she intended to keep.

Just like she intended to find out who Roman really was, and what she’d gotten into by falling for a man who wasn’t who or what she’d thought. Unfortunately, an hour spent Googling “Roman +Roland +Green +Miami +Splash & Flambé” plus his phone number had given her nothing.

She propped her elbows on either side of her keyboard and, groaning, buried her face in her hands. She was going to need a Starbucks run before she could even think of what search terms or search engines might give her more to go on.

What she needed was his Social Security number, but she didn’t see Penny Garza giving that up. His home address was another matter. Or better yet, the plates on his truck. She could start there, and she didn’t need Penny. That information she could find for herself.

And if one thing led to another, his plates to his home address to maybe a lease agreement with his Social, she might not need Penny at all, depending on how much of what she was looking for was public record.

She knew she couldn’t make a Starbucks run without first checking with Dustin, the receptionist, Steph, and Kassia, the marketing guru. She took the girls’ orders first, then gathered up her courage, her wits, and the best of her smiles, and knocked on Dustin’s open door.

“I’m going to run to Starbucks. You want your usual?”

Slumped in his chair and swiveling from side to side, he waved her in without looking up from staring at his office wall. “What I want doesn’t matter. My life as I’ve loved it has come to an end.”

“Are you kidding?” She leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, not too far in, not too far out. “I just saw the guest book from Friday and Saturday, and Kassia said all but four of the photographs have already sold. How could life as you’ve loved it be anything but beginning?”

She knew it wasn’t work that had him down, but it was a subject of conversation near and dear to his heart, as well as one that was safe. It was also one that made sense to broach first thing Monday morning.

“Yes, yes.” He heaved a sigh. “Downtown Blue is gaining a smashing reputation, and we’re going to make Schmidt Crutcher a mint. I just find it hard to care in the face of the blistering bad news that came to me last night.”

She had to tread carefully or find herself up to her eyeballs in shit she was not ready to deal with. Honestly, she wasn’t wanting to deal with much at all—Dustin’s petulance being at the top of the list—not in her current condition. Her knees were still carpet burned, her pussy rubbed raw, her nipples achingly tender from the edges of Roman’s teeth.

Starbucks. Think Starbucks.
“A smashing reputation is a huge, huge thing. I’ve lost count of the artists who’ve come to you because of the name you’ve made for Downtown Blue. Artists you’ve had to turn down because you’re are in a position to be exclusive.”

“
Exclusive
is an interesting word, don’t you think? It implies a certain…loyalty.” He swiveled his chair to face her, his head lolling to the side. “Or don’t you agree?”

Well, shit. Now what?
She pretended to give his question consideration, while panic crept uncomfortably close. “If you agree to show an artist’s work and do so to great success, should he give you his patronage in the future? Is that what you’re asking?”

He reached for a pencil, studied it as he twirled the ends between his fingers and thumbs. “What about in relationships? Romantic relationships?”

He couldn’t possibly be so deluded as to think he and Roland, grr, Roman were exclusive. But this baiting…What else could he mean? “If a couple is dating exclusively, yes, I believe that implies loyalty. And honesty. And devotion. Otherwise, what’s the point of such an arrangement?”

He seemed to accept her answer as reasonable, now rolling the pencil between his nose and upper lip. She wasn’t going to wait for another round and find herself scrabbling for purchase again, so she pushed off the doorjamb and took one step into the corridor. “Starbucks?”

His response was not what she’d hoped to hear. “How loyal do you think employees should be to their employers?”

“If they’re under contract or bound by a no-compete clause, their loyalty might be a matter of law.” Fortunately, she had never signed either. “Otherwise, I guess it would depend on how ethical the employee is and how well he is treated by his employer.”

“Her.”

“Excuse me?”

“How ethical she is. How well she is treated by her employer.”

Enough with the dance, the games, the bullshit. “Is there something you want to say to me?”

He shrugged, went back to swiveling his chair, tossed the pencil into the trash can on the far side of his desk. “I’ll take my usual, and a cranberry muffin if they have one.”

“Okay then. I’ll be back in twenty,” she told him, casually slapping his wall on the way out when it took everything she had not to punch a hole in the Sheetrock.

Passive-aggressive at its finest.
He was such a punk!
Argh!
See if she didn’t accidentally trip on her way back and dump his Caramel Macchiato on the sidewalk
. Oops, and there goes his muffin, too.
Her heels stabbed into the pavement with every step. She was surprised they didn’t puncture straight through to China. She was that furious.

How dare he question her loyalty because he was jilted?
Jilted, hell.
He was left high and dry and hard for a man who wasn’t even gay. How much of a loser did a man have to be to be taken for that kind of ride by another? And somehow she was to blame?

“Excuse me, miss?”

She flipped her head around, ready to snap at the man leaning out of the driver’s side window of a delivery van. “What?”

He waved a paper toward her. “Can you tell me where to find this address? I’m not familiar with this area.”

Then what the hell are you doing here?
she wanted to bark back but instead edged toward the curb, where he’d pulled over to idle. When she reached for the scrap with the illegible scrawl, he reached for her wrist and yanked her close.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she growled.

“I’m giving you a message to deliver to Roland Green.”

She sobered instantly. How did this man—Latino; sunglasses; medium-length, wavy hair; goatee; a nasty scar across his jugular—know she was acquainted with Roland? “You have something to say to him, tell him yourself.”

“You’re going to tell him, because you need to hear this, too.”

“Hear what?” she demanded, not feeling half as confident as her gruff challenge sounded.

“
Hija de puta
. You tell him he fucks up with the storage, I’ll pack you up and deliver you in the same way.” He squeezed her wrist, shook it. “
Comprende
?”

When she nodded, he pushed her away and pulled into the morning traffic. She scrambled to memorize his plate numbers, muttering them under her breath while digging in her purse for a pen. And then she stopped, a chill silencing her.

He’d been at the gallery. Or even more frightening, at her apartment. The numbers she was reciting belonged to the tags on her car.