Intimate (9 page)

He'd even thought about taking her picture, but it was much too intimate a scene to photograph without her permission. Even so, his fingers had itched to grab his camera.

What would it be like to actually make love to her, to feel the tight clasp of her body around him? He doubted if sex just once would be enough to douse the fire that had simmered since he'd first seen her. They would definitely be doing it before this shoot ended—two people didn't have this kind of chemistry and just ignore it—but he'd have to be careful. It couldn't go beyond the job. When the job ended, so would whatever was happening between them.

He couldn't forget that.

The person sending him texts wouldn't let him forget. He'd checked his phone. Nothing since the one last night, but he'd been there, in town. Watching?

Or driving an older, black BMW?

He forced his mind back to the drive as they went north, up the long valley. The road here was narrower, the area more rustic, and this early in the day, the wildlife was active. The sky was growing light while he waited impatiently for a flock of wild turkeys to cross the road. He'd barely started moving again when Kaz touched his knee.

“Look.” She pointed at a doe with two speckled fawns grazing between the vines, their earth-colored bodies almost lost in the wispy fog.

Jake glanced at them before speeding up. “We have to hurry,” he said. “I don't want to miss the light.”

They turned off onto a narrow dirt road and stopped in front of a locked gate. A sign was posted—T
ASTING
R
OOM
C
LOSED UNTIL
A
PRIL 22
. He dug a set of keys out of the center console.

Kaz held out her hand. “Do you want me to get that?”

“Thanks.”

He handed the keys to her and she got out of the car. The air was chilly but completely still. Not a breath of wind ruffled her hair, and the soft purr of the engine, the morning chatter of birds, and the rush of a nearby creek were the only sounds she heard.

Kaz unlocked the gate, held it open for Jake to drive through, closed and locked it, and got back in the car. They drove past a house and a cottage. Both dark, the buildings looked empty in the early-morning shadows. A few hundred yards beyond the gate, they drove by a row of olive trees and Jake parked the Escalade to one side of them. An old barn lay nestled beneath a couple of huge oaks that had grown over and around the structure, but all was cloaked in shadow. Birds chirped—a counterpoint to the steady rush of the creek, hidden by thick trees and blackberry vines.

He pulled a couple of large bags out of the back of the SUV, then stopped a moment and concentrated on Kaz. “I'm really thinking we'll do more test shots than anything today, just to get a feel for the light, for what you're comfortable doing. There's no one here right now. The man and woman who own the cottage and house we passed are away this week—that's why the tasting room is closed—so we're assured of privacy. Are you going to be okay with some seminudity?”

“Yeah, as long as I don't have an audience other than the photographer. He's already seen all of it.” She sounded cocky when she said it, but there was no hiding that delicious blush flowing over her throat and face. She quickly ducked her head as if she'd embarrassed herself, grabbed her makeup bag, and followed Jake to an area near the barn.

Her offhand comment stayed with him. He had seen all of it. He wanted to see it again, but the fact that she'd blushed while joking about it was actually kind of cute. She wasn't nearly as confident as she'd led him to believe. He was trying hard not to laugh as he headed straight for a weathered old wooden fence with dark green ivy growing up the post. It was surrounded by lush green grass and purple lupine, an ideal setting for the Intimate jewelry—and Kaz.

Then he opened a small, locked box. Curious, he waited for Kaz's expression when he lifted the lid. Smiled when she caught her breath. The pieces really were beautiful. Marc Reed had every right to be proud of himself—the designs were all his. Gold and silver rings and tiny barbells, some with diamonds and what looked like rubies or garnets, others studded with green emeralds, blue tanzanite, and purple amethysts, sparkled on a bed of black velvet.

A second box held intricate chokers and matching bracelets, a jeweled collar to wear around a woman's throat and across her shoulders in a stunning cape of color. Today, though, it was about the more delicate pieces, the ones for ears and nose, nipples and navel, and maybe a clitoral hood if he could figure out how to frame it to make an acceptable ad.

Jake lifted out a pair of tiny gold rings with deep purple amethyst stones. A fine gold chain ran between them. “Let's start with these.”

“They're beautiful.” She reached out and touched one of the stones as Jake held them for her appraisal. The gold looked so fragile in his big hands, the stones almost fluorescent in the growing daylight. “They'll definitely work.”

She pulled her sweatshirt over her head and draped it on the fence, then stripped off her tank top. It landed on top of the sweatshirt. The air was cool and her nipples immediately beaded up—or maybe it was Jake's intense observation as she carefully took the jewelry from him, slipped the tiny rings out of her nipples, and replaced them with the Intimate designs.

The gold chain brushed the curve of her breasts, links so fine and light there was little more than a whisper of sensation, but it was a pretty effective whisper because her nipples tightened even more. She'd never worn anything like this, and there was something inherently sensual in the way the gold chain tickled and teased her sensitive skin. She was almost afraid to look at Jake, afraid he might be watching her as she inserted the hoops, but when she finally raised her head, he wasn't even paying attention.

Instead, he was going through his bag of props for the shoot. After a moment, he pulled out the scarf and threw it over his shoulder. “Is the grass too cold for you to lie down in it?” He pointed to a spot where the sun was just beginning to glimmer in the dew-covered grass.

“Here? With the flowers behind or beside me?”

A patch of tiny blue wildflowers blended into a raised edge of dark purple lupine.

“Right there.” He pointed to a grassy patch between the two colors. It was cool but not too cold, and the wisps of fog were already burning away from the hillsides.

“Yoga pants on or off?” She shrugged when he raised his head and looked at her. “I'm wearing a thong, but I'd be more comfortable with long pants on in the damp grass, if that's okay.” She laughed. “Ya never know what sort of many-legged critter might be crawling about.”

“Good point. The pants are low enough on your hips. They should be fine.” He held up a light meter and took some quick readings. “I may have you tug the waistband down a bit, but I won't be shooting below the butterfly.” He stared at her belly and shook his head. “Damn. I love that tat. It couldn't be any better.”

She loved the fact that he was admiring the tattoo on her belly, and not her bare breasts. Somehow that took the sexual angle out of being naked with a man who'd had his mouth between her legs last night. Today he was totally professional.

He dragged the scarf off his shoulder, shook it out, and draped it around the back of her neck and over her right shoulder, studied it a minute, and then looped it down to circle her left hip. The yoga pants rode low enough and the scarf disguised what little of the waistband might have shown. Jake fiddled with the silk, made a few more adjustments, and then stepped back.

Kaz found a position she knew she could hold while Jake continued setting the scene. The scarf as much as his purely professional touch made her feel sexy; the way the colors swirled and blended perfectly into the blue and purple wildflowers gave the setting a truly sensual vibe. She wondered if Jake had imagined she would feel this way when he picked it out.

She glanced at him and smiled. She hadn't expected to feel like this, just watching Jake work. The fact that there was nothing of the lover from the night before made everything he did sexy. He'd slipped so easily, so quickly into his professional persona that Kaz found herself doing the same. She held the position he set her in, turned her head, tilted her chin.

Yet her mind was in another world altogether, as if they shared an explicit secret. Yes, this was a job and they were both professionals, but she knew what he could do with those hands. That mouth. It kept her body humming, aroused.

He stepped back and studied her, reached forward and fluffed her hair back from her face. He frowned, reached into her makeup kit and grabbed a lip gloss, opened it and checked the color. Leaning closer, he held the tip in front of her mouth, waiting. She pursed and then parted her lips, remembering his kiss this morning. His throat rippled as he swallowed, and without even asking, she knew he was thinking of that same kiss as he brushed the slightest hint of shimmer over her lips.

He carefully smoothed the gloss with a callused fingertip. Kaz sensed the slightest hint of a tremor in his touch. Shivering in response, knocked entirely out of professional mode by that simple contact, she raised her eyes, curious to see if any of what she felt showed in Jake's expression. When she glanced at him, Jake had moved on to adjust the scarf near her breast. He was working. This was his job. The sensuality of the scene, the arousal she'd imagined him feeling, it was all in her head.

She forced herself back into her role as startling rays of sunlight broke over the hilltops and Jake took his first shots. He had her add a matching ring to her navel, another fine length of gold chain. He turned her to face into the first full flash of light and caught the shadow of the chain on her flat belly, with the gold glistening across a brilliant butterfly wing.

So quickly she slipped out of her fantasies and into his rhythm, the quiet suggestions for poses, the simple requests for different expressions, the adjustment of the chains, changes in jewelry.

It was a dance. A dance between Kaz and the camera. For now, at least, Jake ceased to exist.

*   *   *

As Jake adjusted the scarf just above the dark areola of her right breast, he glanced at the sunlight streaming through the trees east of them. “We're not going to have this morning light much longer. Let's go with these.” He handed the diamond earrings to her. Before she had time to do more than take them, he was gently switching out the amethysts in her nipples, removing the dark purple stones and replacing them with diamond-studded rings.

Her skin flushed when her nipples tightened, responding to his touch, but Jake seemed oblivious, working quickly as he added finely wrought chains, connecting her nipples and navel, his gentle touch entirely professional.

Her hands were shaking as she removed the amethyst earrings and added the diamonds. Once the jewels were in place, he posed her as if she were a piece of furniture, positioning her torso, tilting her head, all to catch the sun glinting through the multifaceted stones.

How did he do it? Stay so totally focused on the job, while she felt rattled from his oh so distant yet terribly intimate touch?

She waited for the click of the camera, but when she raised her head to see why he wasn't shooting, she caught him staring at her, the camera held loosely in his hands. His lips were parted, the expression on his face one of absolute need, but then he blinked, gave her a lopsided smile, and reached out to adjust the scarf over her shoulder.

Good. He looked like a little kid, caught with his hand in the cookie jar. She was really glad she wasn't the only one struggling to hang on to professional behavior.

It made it easier to keep working, to slide into the zone and concentrate on her poses.

The sun moved higher and Kaz reclined in the warm grass, teasing her lips with wildflowers as Jake took more pictures, this time focusing on tiny golden barbells studded with rubies, another set with emeralds, a matched set for ears and breasts. Another for her navel.

He paused at one point and brushed some soft blush across her cheekbones and freshened her lip gloss, but he didn't ask her to add more makeup.

Kaz had never been all that comfortable with the seminudity that the modeling business often required, but as the morning wore on, the shots became more intimate. He touched her breasts, her nipples, easily changing the jewels for her, adding the chains. For a group of shots he added a chain to her own silver clit ring, hiding her labia and the ring itself beneath the drape of the scarf, but allowing the chain to loop sinuously over her abdomen before disappearing beneath the folds of silk. He'd told her he wanted a warm, sensual feel to the pictures, but he didn't want to lose the edge, either.

That particular series, with Kaz standing in partial shadows that hid the color but not the shape of her breasts, her head bowed, and gossamer chains shimmering in the sunlight, disappearing beneath the silk scarf draped around her hips, straddled a very fine line of what most publications would allow.

Jake promised filters if any of them went to print.

Piercings were, by their very nature, dark and edgy, but he left it to Kaz to interpret the vision he'd tried to paint for her. Giving her that freedom had her finding new ways to showcase the jewelry that she might not have agreed to, had they been Jake's ideas.

She stripped down to jewels and a pale peach thong at Jake's request. Then she took it a step further. When she stretched her leg along the top board of the old fence, Jake paused.

“How did you know that would work so well? Damn.”

She tilted her head. “In what way? Tell me what you like—that helps me.”

“Okay—here, you're working the contrasts of boards weathered almost black against smooth, honey-toned skin. Leaning forward like that lets the chains catch the light. Perfect.”

He took a number of shots, stopped, looked around, and pointed toward a huge valley oak. Wearing nothing but the peach thong and the scarf around her neck, Kaz walked through the vineyard and positioned herself against the rough trunk. Jake tilted her face just enough that her features were lost in shadow, the sun glinting off the earring, the chains, and the loop in her nostril.