Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (30 page)

Arnold Whittingham Jr. pulled into the valet parking area at the front of the Oasis Resort Hotel while still chatting on his cell phone.

“Yeah, I’m having a staff meeting tonight, honey, so I don’t know how late I’m gonna be. We’re on deadline to finish this December issue. And I swear, this pet project magazine is wearing me out. Can’t these people finish anything on their own?”

“I told you, you need to hire an editor-in-chief and give him or her the power to run it, Arnie. But
no-o-o,
you can’t seem to let it go without wanting to run it yourself,” his wife insisted over the line.

“All right, well, maybe I’ll start looking for a good E-I-C. All right, baby? But I gotta go now. And I love you, too.”

Arnold hung up his cell phone and stepped out of his black Bentley Arnage in a long, camel-colored cashmere coat with Italian leather shoes under his beige dress pants. He was a confident and wealthy man of fifty-six and was handsome with gray hair.

“You checking in, sir?” a valet attendant asked him.

Arnold shook it off. “Nah, I’m only here for a few hours. So give me a temporary ticket.”

“All right, about how many hours?”

The tall, stately man looked down at his Rolex watch and shrugged. “Let’s say, ah…six or seven hours. What does that make it, two or three o’clock in the morning?”

The valet added up the hours. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

Arnold tossed him the keys to his Bentley and headed inside the resort toward the registration desk.

“May I help you?” a young woman asked him in a uniform ensemble of navy blue, cream and orange.

“Yes, I’m Arnold Whittingham from
The Higher End
magazine. I believe we have an executive penthouse suite here where we’re shooting for our December issue.”

“Oh, yes, yes, it’s room, ah…” She looked it up on her computer monitor. “Seventeen-oh-one,” she told him.

“Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome. And thank you for choosing Oasis.”

He smiled and waved a friendly hand as he headed toward the elevators.

“As long as the rooms look as good as you advertise them.”

“Oh, they do,” she bragged with a smile.

Back up in room 1701, Jason and Gabrielle had gotten good and comfortable. The beautiful model was shamelessly butt naked and flopping all over the bed in various unrehearsed poses.

“Oh, this bed feels so
good
all
over,
” she moaned as Jason continued to shoot her raw and naked energy. His jeans had now become moistened from pre-ejaculation. She was really turning him on.

“Okay, now lie flat on your stomach and turn slightly toward me.”

She did as he told her with no hesitation.

“Now cover your breasts with your right arm and hand, while extending your left arm to the edge of the bed.”

Gabrielle obeyed him again.

“Beautiful!”

“You are, too,” she teased.

That made Jason pause. “What was that?”

The model chuckled. “I don’t know what it is, but guys with dreadlocks seem sexy to me, for some reason.”

Jason was so intrigued that he was tempted to stand up tall from behind his camera and question her like a detective. But he dared not to miss anything. He felt addicted to the poetry of her movements. And if he moved away from his lens, he may have missed an all-important line on her comprehension.

“How come you’ve never told me that before?” he asked from behind his lens.

She smiled at him like a Cheshire cat in cinnamon-brown human form. “You seemed like you were all about your work, so I didn’t get a chance to.”

He
was
about his work, almost to a flaw. How many other enticing models had he ignored, or put on ice, while giving his full allegiance to the eye of his lens?

“Well, don’t you love modeling?”

He shot the lower end of her back and the round curve of her naked ass.

“Yeah, but not like
that.
I mean, I’ve only been doing this for a year now. But I didn’t know you could make so much
money
doing this.”

Jason snapped at her response and grimaced. “Where are you from again?”

She giggled at his assumptions. She had gotten the same bewildered response from many of the men who had met her.

“Minnesota,” she answered. “I know, I know, it’s Prince’s state, right. And the movie
Fargo.
”

“Oh,” Jason mumbled. He was an original New Yorker.

No wonder she’s so…aimless with her sex appeal,
he thought. What else could a girl be from Minnesota? There was nothing there but a giant mall with an amusement park inside.

“Where else have you been?” he asked.

She was amazingly comfortable in the room with him, naked and all.

“I’ve been to Mexico, and Florida, Canada, New York, Los Angeles…” She paused to continue in her count. “Chicago…New Orleans.”

“All on photo shoots?”

“Umm…no, not all the time.”

She suddenly seemed a little guarded. Jason read it, but kept going with his calm interrogation.

“Did you go with your girlfriends?”

Gabrielle’s thoughtful hesitation told him more than she imagined, and he caught it all on camera. A picture was worth a thousand words. How comfortable did she feel about telling him her personal business?

“Well, to tell you the truth…no,” she leveled with him. “But…I mean, I don’t really feel guilty about it. I wanted to travel.”

Jason raised a brow and peeped at her above the lens with his naked eye for a second. “Feel guilty about what?”

She caught herself and laughed naughtily. “Umm, is this too much information?”

Jason shrugged. “What, you’re already butt naked. Go ahead and lay it all out.”

“Oh my God, why did you have to say that? Now you got me feeling subconscious,” she complained. She even covered up her body.

“Okay, I apologize. Now turn all the way over on your back and stretch both of your arms out to the edge of the bed.”

He was growing more authoritative with her by the second. The safety gloves were off now. It was time for raw expressiveness.

Gabrielle glared into the camera. “No. You come make me,” she told him.

Jason froze and missed the shot.
Shit!
Then he snapped it late and missed the moment.

“Dammit! Do that again. The same way.”

“Why?”

He ignored her question. “Matter of fact, turn your body to face me and spread your legs out on the pillows at the headboard.
Then
say it again.”

Gabrielle continued to grin at him. “You’re getting very kinky with me now, Mr. Cameraman. Would your
boss
want me posing for you like that?”

“He told you to take it all off for me, right? So what do you
think
he wanted me to shoot?”

“Something tasteful.”

“Yeah, tasteful and naked. So don’t be ashamed now. Let’s get it all.”

She sighed and swung her body clockwise, tossing her naked legs against the pillows behind her like he asked, while turning to face his camera.

“
There,
are you satisfied now?”

Jason snapped her picture on cue. “Very.”

She smirked. “This is what you make all the models do for you, hunh? They all let you get your way?”

He started cheesing and couldn’t help himself.
Man, she’s great at this. I’m probably better off as a gay man with her,
he pondered.

“I wish. But we can start with you,” he teased. He wondered how far she would allow him to go with their flirtations.

“I bet we
could,
” she flirted back. “So how many pictures are we gonna take on this bed, anyway? Doesn’t he want us to shoot the whole room?”

Her query was factual. The assignment was of the entire room. But Jason was having far too much fun with her on the bed.

“We’re almost done,” he told her.

Tap, tap, tap!

Gabrielle looked toward the room door behind him. Then she eyed Jason skeptically. “Are you expecting anyone?”

Jason shot that scene from her as well.

Tap, tap, tap, tap!

Shit!
he cursed as the taps on the locked door persisted.
I thought he told me he MIGHT be stopping by,
he questioned of his boss. Hopefully, it was only room service. But no one had ordered any food. Jason walked over to the door to investigate.

Arnold Whittingham Jr. waited outside the locked door of suite 1701 and wondered why it was taking so long for anyone to answer.

Maybe I should have called first,
he pondered.
What if they’re in there doing something they’re not supposed to be doing?

That thought sent a wave of shock and panic rushing through the publisher’s passionate body.

Shit! What the hell was I thinking, leaving the two of them alone while she does a naked shoot?
he asked himself, and then he leaned in to listen through the door.

Jason Polk arrived at the doorway and looked through the peephole right as his boss leaned in to eavesdrop.

The photographer paused after he noticed Arnold’s movements of snooping. He didn’t want to startle his boss by catching him in the act, so he froze behind the doorway and waited for better timing.

“Who is it?” Gabrielle asked him from the bed.

Jason became confused by his dilemma. If he answered Gabrielle while he so close to the door, it would be an easy call for his boss to presume that he had likely been busted. Jason waited there in silence until Arnold had righted himself at the door.

The photographer then opened the door quickly enough to fake surprise. “Hey, so I see you did stop by.”

Arnold Whittingham Jr. paused at the doorway long enough for Jason to wonder about his thoughts. But neither man wanted to play their cards too easily.

“Yeah, I figured I’d drop by for a minute, you know.” Then he closed his eyes. “I’m not interrupting anything I’m not supposed to
see
, am I?”

Jason wondered,
Is it unethical for a publisher to drop by during the naked shoot of a professional model? Then again, if they are all professionals, why not?

Jason shrugged. “Only if she doesn’t feel uncomfortable about it.”

He stopped and looked back at Gabrielle.

Gabrielle hesitated, overhearing their conversation. What was a naked, young woman to do? It was her
job
to pose. And the man who was paying her for it had a right to see the raw product. Or did he?

“I mean, is this like…
normal?
Or does the publisher usually wait to see the pictures
after
they’re taken?” she asked.

Jason looked back at Arnold. The young model’s response seemed logical. He was even impressed by her tactfulness. He didn’t know she had it in her to be so wry.

Arnold popped open his eyes and said, “Well, how ’bout I sit over in a corner chair, and act as if I’m not here?”

Jason didn’t like that idea at all. Not only would the publisher’s presence
be distracting, but he would no longer be able to enjoy the privacy of the shoot. What would happen to the open and playful candor he had established with his muse?

Fuck!
Jason cursed. He could not allow himself to passively accept the invasion of his professional space, whether the publisher was paying him handsomely for the job or not. As a rising photographer in the world of images and trustful relationships, Jason had the normal ego that any young man in his position would have. So he declined his boss’s idea before Gabrielle could respond.