by B. B. Hamel
“There’s a problem,” he says.
“What’s up?”
“Our model.” He pants, takes a deep breath, stands up straight. “Our model got sick. Puked for, like, twenty minutes in the bathroom, and now she’s refusing to work.”
“Shit,” I say. “Who else can do it?”
“We don’t have any other models,” he says. “I mean, there’s the guy model obviously, but it’s a swimwear line. They want both genders, and…”
He trails off as I raise a hand up. “Who’s taking lead on the account?”
“Remi Brooks,” he says immediately.
A smile slowly slips across my face. “Remi, huh?”
He nods, looking terrified. “Should I go talk to her?”
“No, I’ll talk to her.”
He looks a little relieved. “Okay. What are we going to do? The director is getting pissed and the photographer is starting to threaten to walk out.”
“I’ll handle it.” I smile at Franklin. “Go back and tell them to wait a little longer. I’ll be up soon.”
He hesitates. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Go ahead.”
He looks relieved and scurries off, leaving my office in a hurry.
I stand and stretch, grinning to myself.
Remi was an asshole to me at the bar the other day, and now I’m getting a little bit of revenge.
Remi looks at the swimsuit, this modest blue bikini, back to me, back to the swimsuit, and back to me again.
“No way,” she says. “Not a chance.”
The director rolls his eyes. He’s this French guy, Louis Claude-something or other, supposedly one of the best fashion photographers in the business. He’s mostly just catty and annoying.
“I told you she wouldn’t do it,” he says, his accent thick. “We need model, not… her.” He practically sneers.
Remi glares at him. “I may not be a model but I’m standing right here.”
He shrugs a little. “No matter. You aren’t doing it, so what do I care? I leave now, n’est-ce pas?”
“Stay,” I say to him, and turn back to Remi. “And you put it on.”
She shakes her head. “No. I’m serious. I’m not doing it.”
“What’s this shoot being used for?” I ask her.
She hesitates. “Digital. I think… the website maybe.”
“So not some huge, national campaign?” I ask her.
The Frenchman snorts. “Hardly. Small shoot, some smiles, white background, very boring. Not worth my time.”
I just ignore him. “Who’s going to see this, anyway?”
She shakes her head. “Justin.”
“Remi. This is your problem. You’re the lead on this project. You seriously want to piss off a client?” I step closer to her, eyes locked on hers. She’s so fucking beautiful, I think I’d give my right pinky to see her in that bikini right about now.
“I’m not a model,” she says softly.
“We’ll pay you the model’s fee, how about that?”
She laughs. “It’s not about money.”
“Fine then. Make it about pride. You really want to have fucked this up?”
“It’s not my fault the model got sick.”
“It’s your fault whenever something goes wrong, you know that.” I stand close to her, speaking low. “Put the swimsuit on, Remi, and go smile for the camera.”
She stares at me with that mix again, mostly loathing, but partially lust. I can see it in her eyes and I know she has to see it in mine. It’s confusing as hell, whatever this attraction is.
She doesn’t say anything for almost a minute. She looks between me and the swimsuit again, like she’s having an internal struggle. Mostly, I think she’s just trying to decide if she should quit now or later.
Finally though, she picks up the bikini. “Get out,” she says. “Both of you. I’ll do it.”
The Frenchman sighs. I give him a look.
“She will do,” he says reluctantly. “Pretty enough. We will see how the, ah, the suit fits, yes?”
“Go get ready,” I say to him, and he leaves the room. I look back at Remi. “Get it done.”
She glares at me. “I’m not doing it for you.”
“I know.”
I turn and leave the room, shutting the door behind me.
I don’t know how I got this lucky. I honestly expected her to curse me out and walk back to her office. I never in a million years expected her to actually go through with this.
It’s better than I ever imagined.
She takes ten minutes to get changed. I’m sure she’s mostly standing in there, debating with herself some more. Finally though, she comes back out, and she looks…
Fucking incredible.
I’m half hard as soon as she walks into the main room. Everyone stops and stares at her. Full, round, perky tits, tight stomach, perky ass. The bathing suit is actually slightly too small for her, accentuating her body even more. It’s almost fucking lurid, the way she moves in that thing.
“Good,” the Frenchman says, staring at her. “Very good. You fit very well.”
“Let’s get this over with,” she says, her cheeks a shade of scarlet red I’ve never seen on her before.
“Come together!” the Frenchman shouts, and his people move into positions.
Lights come up. The male model steps into frame, a ripped guy slightly shorter than me. He looks like a stereotypical surfer. I’m better looking than he is, I keep thinking, although really I’m just jealous that he’s in the shoot with Remi and I’m not.
They take pictures. She leans up against the guy, she poses on her own, they stand back to back. The Frenchman leads them through it, mainly focusing his increasing incoherent instructions at Remi.
“Smile like you fear me!” he barks. “Smile like a bomb dropped!”
Remi glances in my direction and I’m grinning huge. I just shrug.
“More eyes!” the Frenchman shouts. “Less eyes! Pout! Yes! Pout!”
It’s like an insane gameshow where there aren’t any directions and everyone’s a loser. Remi does her best, which is actually pretty admirable, trying to keep up with the fast paced barking orders coming at her.
“Bend! Yes, bend down now. You, boy, behind! Yes! Oh, very good, look away now. Look away! Eyes now!”
She’s contorting, twisting, moving all around. The Frenchman is snapping pictures wildly, and I’m just standing there, cracking up.
Remi meets my eyes and glares at me. The Frenchman howls with delight.
“More of that!” he screams. “Yes, that passion, that anger.”
Remi stares at me, loathing dripping through, loathing tinged with pure lust. She wants me to strip off that fabric, that tiny bit of fabric separating her incredible body from the rest of the world. She wants me to lick her nipples, tease her pussy, fuck her right there on camera.
She wants me to use her, humiliate her, stroke her, make her fucking come.
“More!” the Frenchman screams, and I realize that I’m so fucking hard it almost hurts.
I sit down in a chair as the shoot wraps up. They do some conventional posing, Remi struggling to keep up. By the end of it, she looks exhausted, and she was only in front of the camera for twenty minutes at most.
“That was a nightmare,” she says, hurrying toward the back room to get changed.
I walk with her. “You were amazing.”
“I am so mortified.”
“You’re a professional model now.”
She stops and turns to me, glaring so hard I think she’s willing my head to explode.
“I didn’t do this for you,” she repeats. “Asshole.”
I can only laugh as she stalks off. I get one last glimpse of her amazing ass before she disappears back into the room to get changed.
I don’t bother waiting for her. I know she’ll just be pissed, and besides, I don’t need to see her with all her clothes on.
I’d rather see her stripped bare.
7
Remi
I’ve never been so degraded in my entire life.
I have nothing against models, but I’m not a model. I didn’t sign up for wearing skimpy bikinis in front of a camera while some insane French guy screams nonsense at me. I did my best and felt like a moron the whole time. I felt like everyone was mocking me.
Except for Justin. He was staring with me with naked, open lust.
I sigh, back in my office, safe and sound. The ordeal was a few hours ago and I’m wrapping up for the day, but I can’t get the way Justin was staring at me out of my head.
I’ve been hit on before. I’ve had guys give me looks in bars, I’m sure most women have. But I’ve never seen someone look at me with such incredible intense desire like he was staring at me. It was like he would’ve done anything to have me, right then and there, right in front of the cameras.
It made me hate him even more… and made me curious.
I bite my lip. He is handsome, really handsome. I can’t deny that. He’s more handsome than that surfer guy I was modeling with. If I didn’t hate him so much, I could imagine letting his hands stray down between my legs, tease my clit, his lips against my throat, his words in my ear, making me quiver, making me moan.
I blink and come back to reality. I shake my head, trying to will these thoughts again. I’m wet, which is freaking scary. I shouldn’t get this turned on just thinking about that arrogant asshole.
I click into my email and there’s a new message from Justin. I want to ignore it, but I know I shouldn’t. I click it and open it, and there’s just a link along with one sentence. I knew you’d look amazing.
I click the link and a gallery opens up filled with the modeling pictures from earlier. I scroll through them, biting my lip, staring at my own face.
I don’t even recognize myself.
It was so degrading, so horrible being up there in front of those cameras. It was like a freaking nightmare.
But holy crap, I look really freaking good.
I can’t stop looking at these pictures. I look hot, like, really hot. I’ve never looked this good in my entire life. Almost every picture is a thousand times better than the best picture I have of myself. If I weren’t wearing a bikini, I’d freaking print these out and give them away to strangers, just because I look so good in them.
It’s insane. I guess that weird French guy knew what he was doing after all.
I sigh and lean back in my chair. I send a quick message back to him. I expect to get paid in cash. I’m smiling when I click send.
I browse through the pictures a little bit longer. I don’t know how Justin convinced me to do this, but I’m actually happy he did. I mean, it was such a bad experience, but these pictures… they’re really fantastic.
Finally, I pull myself away. There’s one last email from Justin. Meet me at King Leo’s tonight and you’ll get your money.
I read it over again, not sure what to make of it. I feel like he’s asking me out, but that can’t be right. He probably just wants to work on the Spine account again.
As I get up to leave, my cell rings. Normally I’d just ignore it, but it’s my dad’s number. I decide to answer, plopping back down in my chair.
“Hey, Dad,” I say.
“Hi, honey. How are you?”
“I’m good. How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know me and mom, just hanging out.” I grin a little bit. My dad’s been working on his slang lately.
“Sounds fun.”
“How’s work? You told me Diane got let go, but you never mentioned who replaced her.”
I hesitate a second. “Actually, you know him.”
“Really?” He sounds interested, but I’m afraid to tell him.
“It’s Justin Hayes. You know, uh, that Hayes.”
Silence on his end. This is about what I expected.
“Justin, huh,” he says softly. “So I guess that’s Mark’s son. He’s your age, right?”
“Right.”
“Why would they hire someone outside the company and not promote you?”
I clench my jaw. “Politics,” I say.
He snorts. “Of course. I’m sure his father had something to do with it, that backstabbing—”
“Dad,” I say, cutting him off. “Do you remember much about Justin?”
He hesitates a second. “No, honestly,” he says. “I remember you two were really close, until everything happened. I honestly… I tried to keep him out of it.”
“I know you did.”
“Tried to keep you out of it, too.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Anyway, I don’t remember much about him.” Dad sighs. I know he hates talking about this, unless it’s about how much he hates Mark Hayes. “If he’s anything like his father, you should probably stay far, far away.”
“He’s my boss. I can’t exactly ignore him.”
“No, probably not. But you can be careful.”
I nod to myself. “I am, don’t worry.”
“Sure you are, honey.” I hear a muffled noise in the background. “That’s the ball and chain. Gotta go.”
“Okay. Talk to you later.”
“Bye, honey. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
We hang up and I’m left sitting there, staring at Justin’s message. It’s still up on my computer screen.
I’m tempted to go. I want to talk to the guy that was staring at me like that, with that naked and nearly aggressive lust. I want to know what he’s thinking, what he was seeing.
Heck, I want to feel all those things.
I used to have such a big crush on Justin, back when we were younger. Even after everything happened, I still had a thing for him. At least until we got out of high school and I started to realize what his family did to mine, and what he did to me.
Those feelings must still exist, though. I still remember spending hours with him down by the creek near our house, acting like idiots, laughing and joking, getting dirty and wet and just being kids. One time he caught a frog bigger than my fist, and he chased me around with it for ten minutes before we collapsed on the ground together, a tangled mess of confused preteen bodies.
We never kissed. Never even got closer. We were too young.
Now though, I wonder what it would’ve been like, if everything hadn’t happened.
If he hadn’t thrown me away like trash, like I was nothing. Like we hadn’t been friends for years, best friends, closer than close.
I can feel the old anger rising now. I remember calling him, asking him to come hang out. I remember the way his voice was detached, distant, like he was a robot.
Sorry, Remi, I don’t really want to hang out with you anymore.
Those words still hurt, all these years later. I know we were kids and a lot of bad stuff happened between our parents, but I thought our friendship was important. I thought it would matter to him more than whatever the adults were fighting over.
I guess it didn’t.
I slam my laptop lid, grab my stuff, and stand up. All the old feelings are back now, and the handsome man that was staring with me with clear and intense lust on his face is totally gone, replaced by the boy I’ve hated for all these years.
I’m not going back to that. I can’t let myself.
I storm out of the office and go home to my nightly glass of wine, pledging to myself that I won’t ever waste another second on that worthless bastard.
8
Justin
I’m not surprised when Remi doesn’t show up. I’m not surprised when Remi pulls deeper into herself and keeps me out of the loop when working on the Spine project.
I’m annoyed, but I’m not surprised.
It’s a tough position to be in. On the one hand, I need Remi to help keep the whole team together. She’s the lynchpin of this whole operation, and so far my strategy seems to be working. Everyone seems happy, or at least there aren’t any overt whispers of mutiny.
The jo
bs keep flowing, work is good.
But I can’t risk letting Remi cut me out of this Spine project. I feel like a lot is riding on it, and she’s basically taking full control. I’m on the outside looking in on a project that could determine my future, and it’s a really bad feeling. I want to trust her to handle it completely, but I’m not so sure I can.
Which is why I want her to come work with me more closely. Whenever I try though, she pulls back, makes some excuse, ignores a call or email, that sort of thing. She doesn’t have any obligation to come work at the bar with me after hours, of course, but I wish she would anyway.
And maybe there’s another reason I want to keep her close. I’m not really admitting it to myself, but that bikini shoot changed something for me. There’s always been a vague attraction there, even when we were kids, although that was more confusing than anything else. Now it’s distinct, almost intense, and every time I see her walking around the office I have the urge to pull her into a back room, strip her clothes off, and spank her until she begs me to make her come.
It’s fucking distracting as hell and I don’t know what to do about it.
In the end, I decide to keep pretending like everything is okay and there’s nothing to worry about. I let Remi work on the project more or less without any supervision. I keep sending her my ideas whenever I can and asking her to come go over some of her materials, but she just keeps on ignoring me.
I have to just trust that she has something, because after a month of barely making eye contact in the halls, Blair wants to come in for a pitch meeting.
“This is important,” I say to Remi, cornering her in her office. “Are we ready for it?”
She nods, her face impassive. “I’m ready.”
“She wants to come in at the end of the week. Can you get it all together in time?”