SHOOT: A Novel

by Kristen Flowers

  I walked over to the couch and sat down right next to Penny, our legs and arms touching. Just then, Brad walked in holding his camera. He cocked his eyebrow and smirked in satisfaction when he saw the three of us on the couch. Penny didn’t need prompting from him. She was already a pro at photo shoots, particularly erotic ones. She turned to face me and placed her hand on my shoulder, leaning in to kiss me softly. Before I fully realized what was happening, I was already lying on the sofa with Penny and David playfully kissing and touching my body.

  I took a moment to make sure I was okay with this before looking over at Brad and mouthing, “Are you okay with this?”

  Brad smiled and nodded, encouraging me to go along with it. I leaned my head back and let out a little gasp when I felt a small, warm mouth close around one of my nipples. I looked down and saw Penny enjoying the feel of my body just as she reached out to fondle my other breast. I had never done anything with a woman before, let alone a woman and a man at the same time. A million bolts of thrill and excitement coursed through my veins.

  David was kissing and licking along my stomach and hipbones as he ran a hand very slowly up the inside of my leg. He reached in to caress my inner thighs, teasing me by slowly moving up toward my center. My hips instinctively rocked forward as I opened my legs ever so slightly. Penny whipped her hair back and moved to straddle my waist, leaning forward with her hands on my breasts to give me a slow, sensual kiss.

  It didn’t take long for me to forget Brad was taking pictures. I was letting pleasure overtake me completely. I moaned into Penny’s mouth when I felt David’s lips centimeters from my wetness and a second later, his tongue was licking up and down me. I broke the kiss with Penny and threw my head back, moaning even louder when I felt his finger ease inside of me. He licked along my outer lips a bit before standing up. Penny was more than happy to take his spot as she slithered down my body.

  I gripped the back cushion of the couch tightly when she slipped her tongue along my entrance and kissed along on my outer lips, moving in a circle before licking out and up to touch my sensitive spot with the tip of her tongue.

  “Oh fuck,” I whimpered, gritting my teeth and shutting my eyes as I stuck my chest out.

  I felt a heavy weight wash over my body and I opened my eyes just in time to see David’s hardness in front of my face. He brushed his thumb over my mouth with a smile. I opened it willingly, taking his entire length in at once. Penny continued kissing and flicking her tongue as David eased his shaft past my lips.

  After a few minutes, the two of them sat me up and Penny straddled me for a heated kiss as she grabbed my hand and guided it down. I got the hint so I curiously slipped a finger inside her and was amazed at how wet and warm she felt. I let out a loud breath, never having experienced something like this. Slowly, I worked my finger in and out of her before adding a second and working her until she was eagerly bouncing up and down on my hand, moaning loudly and gripping my shoulders. I looked over to see David stroking himself as he watched us, eventually nudging Penny off so he could pull me on top of him.

  He reached out and, right on cue, Brad placed a condom in his hand. In a flash he unwrapped it before rolling it over his shaft and guiding it between my legs. A breathy whimper eased past my lips as I lowered my body until he was completely inside. I sucked a loud breath between clenched teeth. My hips rolled up and down, a bit faster with each passing minute, until Penny sat on the back of the couch and grabbed my hand. Knowing just what she wanted, I continued pleasuring her as I bounced on David’s lap, enjoying every moment of it like I would have never believed.

  Penny moaned louder and louder as she started to rub her own wetness until her entire body shuddered. Then she climbed on David’s lap behind me and wrapped her hand around to rub my sensitive spot as I kept rocking my body up and down on David. I felt his strong hands fondling my breasts and it didn’t take long for my entire body to tense up and shake as I reached orgasm.

  Tiny prickles tickled the back of my neck as my toes curled in tight balls. “Oh! Fuck! Oh! Oh!” I yelled out, letting my head fall back onto Penny’s shoulder. David clutched at my hips and clenched his eyes shut, his hips jerking up against, me. The three of us soon collapsed on the couch, panting for breath.

  Brad kneeled beside me and whispered into my ear, “You’re beautiful and amazing. Really.”

  I smiled weakly, reaching out to caress his neck affectionately. He stood up and motioned for me to go over to his camera and check out the photos he had taken. I gathered strength and pushed myself up off the couch.

  I was amazed at how beautiful the pictures were. Since the three of us had just had passionately erotic sex and he’d been snapping away the whole time, I didn’t expect the pictures to look so tasteful and artistic– but they did. They didn’t look pornographic at all. Sexual yes, but not pornographic.

  There were lots of close ups of skin, hair, passionate faces, and clawing fingernails. There was even a photo of my face when I reached orgasm, but it was close-up and intimate. Just looking at them made my heart start to race again. They were like little flashbulb memories, etched in time and saved forever.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said in a hushed voice.

  It was more a thought I said out loud rather than something directed to Brad, but I was glad to know he heard me. He smiled proudly, clearly touched I thought so highly of his work. Very few of the pictures showed anybody’s entire body, but those that did obscured the face and genitals and made the focus of the photo the curves and lines of the human form. The passion the three of us enjoyed was tastefully translated and perfectly framed with every picture.

  As I admired the shots and recalled how in the moment I had been, truly experiencing pleasure with a sort of reckless abandon, I knew everything Brad said earlier was right.

  There was nothing wrong with what I did. I loved every moment of it. I was finding myself and it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that I strayed from the life I had known before moving to the city.

  I took the camera from his hands and scrolled through the thumbnails, selecting a close-up of my face. I recognized the moment– he had captured the instant I reached orgasm, that very first second of intense pleasure and satisfaction. There were beads of sweat along my hairline and the expression on my face wasn’t something that could be replicated on command. It was raw and it was real. I stared at it for a few moments, trying to make sense of all the feelings it gave me.

  It made me feel empowered and confident. Staring back at me was the face of a young woman growing and learning to be fulfilled in more ways than one. That thought made me reach an important realization, one that certainly helped to quell my guilt. Even though I had always been the small town Iowa girl, and would always be that person to some extent, I felt more at home in the city than I did back there.

  I felt more at ease and more free to be myself in my new life. I was the small town farm girl who’d found herself in the big city. It was the scary place my mother warned me about, doing things I never would have dreamed of. I thought of my roommates and smiled, realizing I felt closer to them as friends than anybody back in Iowa.

  It was all coming together.

  It was early Monday morning, much earlier than I had wanted to be up, but I had no choice. I pulled out a pair of dark-washed blue jeans, black belt, light grey V-neck tee, and my only pair of black booties, which had been gifted to me by Nadine. It was a casual outfit that still suited a model for everyday, but when I put it on I felt like it might have been a tad too casual for where I was headed.

  Sonja had called me Sunday evening to request that I come to her office first thing in the morning. At first, my stomach had tumbled as I wondered what was so important Sonja would personally call me to set up a last minute appointment. Then, after some thought, I came to the assumption that she likely wanted to talk about my success at New York Fashion Week. After all, it was no secret I had knocked my first stint of modeling in the major Fashion Week out of the par
k.

  I frowned at my reflection in the mirror and decided it might be more appropriate if I dressed the part a bit more and threw a casual outfit together that still was suitable for a meeting at the agency. I pulled out a loose fitting, white shirt to swap out for the tee and put on a pair of leatherette and nylon pants, all pulled together with simple black pumps.

  “This is more like it,” I muttered before ruffling my hair a bit at the ends.

  As I picked up my purse and put on the sunglasses Brad gave me, I felt like I was dropping more and more into my model persona as each day passed. Maybe I was finally accepting it was okay to be myself or maybe it was spending time around the craziness of Fashion Week, but I felt great stepping out the door of my apartment building to head down to the subway. Everything had been such a whirlwind, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  The elevator whirred and the lights at the top changed, taking me straight up to the 24th floor. When the elevator doors opened and I saw the white wall across from me, I vividly remembered the first time I had visited the office. Sonja told me I would get used to being this high up and, at the time, I couldn’t have imagined it would be true. Yet, here I was, not even remembering how many times I had visited Shoot lately. I never paid attention to the climbing numbers or how many times the elevator dinged as it stopped along the way.

  I couldn’t recall the last time I looked out the windows at the sweeping views and felt anything even remotely close to what I had felt the first time Sonja took me into her office. My chest tightened. This time Sonja didn’t greet me in the lobby or the waiting room.

  My phone chirped with a text message inside my clutch bag. I quickly reached in to silence it before knocking on the door of her office a minute later and walking in with a smile. I turned to my right to take a look at the magnificent view out the window. It was just as breathtaking as I remembered it, but one thing was for sure– nothing beat seeing it for the first time.

  I walked over to her desk to sit down. It wasn’t long before my smile started to fade.

  Sonja looked stern, but that wasn’t the worst of it. I turned cold and my heart fell to the pit of my stomach.

  There were printed out photographs of the shoot I had done with Penny and David on Sonja’s desk.

  I felt like I was going to be sick.

  There was nothing I could say, much less anything I could do. There was absolutely no way to explain my way out of this. The pictures spoke for themselves and if Sonja had seen these then she had probably seen everything. Suddenly, I felt like the world’s biggest fool for thinking I could get away with it. But why now? Why these photos? I had done more than one shoot for Amorous Productions, which had turned out to be quite lucrative, yet this was the photo shoot that reached Sonja.

  I expected her to have a lot to say, maybe even have some big speech prepared, but that wasn’t the case. She kept it simple.

  “We at Shoot, all of us, expect model behavior from our models.” She paused and gazed down briefly at the photos lying on her desk before looking back at me with her penetrative gaze. “You had so much promise, Chloe.” The very subtle break in her voice of disappointment didn’t go unnoticed. “But this is the end of the road for you. We don’t allow our models to take photographs that are erotic in nature. Your contract as of today has been terminated.”

  There was no argument to be made. The decision was final. I didn’t hurt anyone when I agreed to the photo shoot, but at that moment it felt like I ended up hurting myself. I had been scouted by one of the top modeling agencies, so much faith had been put in my potential, and I even earned coveted spots in New York Fashion Week, but it was all over now.

  As much as I loved every photo shoot I had ever done with Amorous Productions, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been careless in agreeing to them to begin with. I couldn’t even think of my family, much less my mother, as I stepped out of the building’s lobby. The morning air was still cool and the streets were already filled with busy people. I did my best to stay off to the side as I walked to the subway station, wanting nothing more than to get home and crawl into bed and fight back the tears.

  When I walked into the apartment Caroline, Sarah and Nadine were all sitting in the living room. I stopped in my tracks, hand on the front door’s knob, and stared at them. It was obvious they were waiting for me so I knew something was up. I looked at the coffee table, where tea and finger sandwiches were beautifully lain on top in an arrangement I could only imagine Caroline put together. My eyes filled with sadness and affection as I smiled faintly, quickly pushing away the question of whether or not I would have to give up living at the apartment with them since Shoot had set it all up for me.

  “We know what happened,” Nadine said sympathetically.

  “Why don’t you come sit with us?” Caroline said with hurt in her eyes. Sarah nodded, looking hopeful that I would join them rather than locking myself up in my bedroom to sulk all alone.

  I sat on the couch with legs crossed. “How did you know?”

  The three of them exchanged glances but nobody spoke up, at least not right away. Just when I was starting to run out of patience, Sarah turned to look at me. “Well, because of Lana. That’s how we know.”

  “Who is Lana?” I asked, wracking my brain to recall someone I’d met by that name, but it was useless. I’d met so many people in the short time since I moved to New York City that remembering every name was impossible. Either way, the name didn’t ring a bell at all.

  “Lana is a model,” Caroline replied.

  “She was also scouted by Shoot,” Nadine added.

  “Honestly, she’s just so jaded and needs to get over herself,” Sarah spoke up, much to my surprise. Since I’d met her, Sarah was easily the most positive and overall happy, bouncy person I’d ever known. Hearing her speak harshly about someone was totally new. Caroline shot her a look and she piped down.

  “It’s her jealousy that got you into this,” Nadine said. The other two looked down at their hands, clearly upset with the situation. It warmed my heart to know they cared about me so much. “It turns out you pretty much replaced her in the Fashion Week runway shows, which isn’t your fault. But to a girl like Lana, it doesn’t matter who is giving the orders. All she sees is you’re in the spotlight and she’ll go after you.”

  “She’ll go after me? Are you serious?” It all sounded like some twisted plot from a television show so I had some trouble believing it was actually happening to me.

  “She did go after you,” Caroline corrected. Silence filled the room. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but at least it cleared up my question of how and why Sonja suddenly had possession of the pictures.

  “We don’t know how she found your photos, but she told us she was going to send them to Sonja,” Nadine said. She was visibly upset and frustrated. I understood them sympathizing with me, but I was having trouble getting why Nadine looked and sounded the way she did, as if she had lost some kind of battle.

  “We tried to stop her!” Sarah said helplessly, covering her mouth afterward and shaking her head. Just like she was when in a good mood, Sarah spoke loudly and clearly even now. This time, however, it seemed almost desperate.

  I stared at them, wanting to hear more. I wanted to know about them trying, but failing to stop her but there was only one question that came out of my mouth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We tried. This thing all happened this morning and we tried sending you a text earlier before you went to see Sonja. In retrospect we should have kept calling you nonstop.” Caroline said.

  “She told us about the pictures and that she shared them with Sonja. We tried to stop her, we really did, but there was no hope. She was on a mission to get rid of you so she could be back on top.” They all went silent and avoided each other’s eyes for what felt like a life time. I wasn’t mad at them. I was more mad at myself for not looking at the text message earlier, but in the end it wouldn’t have mattered. I was going to be termi
nated either way at that point so a heads up would have only made my gut wrench before I even walked inside Sonja’s office.

  “I saw the pictures,” Nadine finally offered, breaking the silence. I turned to look at her, eyes wide. “They were hot,” she assured me with a little shrug, coming off very nonchalant.

  “Passion fashion!” Sarah chimed in with a laugh. My face was burning when I turned to look at Caroline, who only nodded to confirm she saw the photos as well.

  I felt a slight sting of embarrassment thinking about my roommates sitting around looking at such an intimate and passionate photo shoot of mine, but I focused instead on their comments about them. They were all positive, pretty much rave reviews. I doubted they would lie to me about that. For some reason that made me feel much better, not just calming my embarrassment, but also helping me start to heal from what I’d faced earlier that morning. Maybe I needed to stop thinking of it as me messing up my future and instead think of it as discovering my true passion.

  The fact was, I loved the photo shoots at Amorous Productions even more than I loved the high fashion shoots and walking the runways. They were both amazing opportunities I was grateful to have had, but maybe Amorous Productions was where I was supposed to end up and that was okay.