Taste Me. Carrie Alexander

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      Mia continued. “This is Fred—” Argyle man “—and Maurizio.” Maurizio was a ponytailed dude noshing in a minuscule open kitchen area. He waved a cheese slicer and a packet of crackers. Although he was stripped down to his boxers, only his chest was plaid, airbrushed a pale jaundice yellow and sketched in with a herringbone pattern that turned his bulging pecs into a piece of Escher artwork.

      “This is Sue,” Mia said, indicating an older woman with buzz-cut silver hair and tartan skin from the neck down. Julian thought she wore a thong, but he didn’t want to stare.

      “And Cherie.” The brunette in the chair, unabashedly nude even though she only wore paint on her legs. Her breasts were small and rather unobtrusive, considering that the nipples stood out like pencil erasers. When Julian nodded at her, she flicked her tongue across her lips and winked.

      “Everyone,” Mia said, “this is Julian Silk.”

      “Oh!” Fred, aka Argyle, put his hands on his hips. “Naughty boy. I thought he was from the ad agency.”

      “Do we know him?” Stefan asked, rising up to one elbow.

      Julian couldn’t remember many of the names. His head was ready to explode. He’d been to wild photo shoots before, including the Hard Candy bikini calendar shoot with naked, oiled babes, tropical heat, rum punch on demand and a much more sultry air than could be found in a fifth-floor walk-up attic. Maybe that was the difference. Mia’s friends seemed quite casual about it all, as if the body-painting extravaganza was an everyday occurrence.

      “Ooh, the big boss from Hard Candy,” Cherie said. She moved in the chair, hooking an arm over the backrest and tilting one breast higher. She studied Julian with a tight little smile. “Mia was just telling us about you, Mr. Silk.”

      “Julian,” he said.

      “Julian,” she purred.

      Another Petra. Lovely, but potentially lethal. He crossed her off his list, despite the honed body and the champagne-glass tits. After a moment’s thought, he realized that his recent reluctance wasn’t only from caution. Mia made other women seem calculating and almost bland. Juiceless.

      She’d seen him looking. With an irritated nose twitch, she tossed Cherie a scarf. “We have a visitor, Lady Godiva. Keep the naughty bits under wraps.”

      Cherie shook out the scarf, seductively lowered it across her front like a veil and then tied it around her hips. “There, I’m decent.”

      Mia rolled her eyes. “No modesty. This is what I get for hiring a nudist.”

      She retrieved the palette and approached Cherie again, squinting at the pattern of the plaid. “Don’t know if I’m happy with these colors…”

      “I can only stay another half hour,” Cherie said. “I booked a job downtown. What a trek!”

      “Someone grab the Polaroid for me,” Mia said. “We’ll try some test shots. Maurizio? Want to bring your chest over here? I need to see the contrast.”

      Julian found the camera on the table and put it into her extended hand. She glanced up with a distracted thank-you. “Oh, Julian. I forgot. Was there something I can do for you?”

      Either she was very good at playing it cool, or his renowned charisma truly had no effect on her. He was tending to go with the latter until he remembered their kiss. A woman didn’t kiss a man she could take or leave like that.

      “I’d hoped to speak to you in private.”

      “Should have called for an appointment then.” Mia framed a shot of Cherie’s extended legs and snapped a photo. She bent at the waist to get a close-up, her own legs straight, knees glued together. The tail of the smock lifted across the back of her thighs, dangerously close to revealing her thong again.

      The view was so enticing Julian felt as though he’d been granted a ringside seat at a strip club. But instead of tucking a bill into a convenient crevice, he battled the urge to tug the shirt down to keep her rear end decently covered. Maurizio, crossing to the dais, had finally noticed.

      “No modesty,” the muscle man said, reaching out to pat Mia’s behind as he slid into place between Cherie’s legs.

      “Whoops.” Mia felt for the back of her shirt. Julian caught her eye. She colored slightly. “Maybe you should come back another time? This is only a test shoot, but it’s going to take a while yet. We tend to get a little goofy. Even, uh, wild.”

      “I can wait. And I’m an expert at getting wild.”

      A sexy laugh came from the dais as Cherie folded her legs around the male model in a suggestive pose. Mia glanced from them to Julian, in his suit and tie. “In the middle of the workday? Be honest, now. This isn’t really your scene.”

      “No, but I’m always up for new experiences. If you don’t mind an observer, that is.”

      “All right.” Mia waved him to a chair. “As long as you keep out of my way. I’ll forget you’re here, so if you get thirsty or hungry, go to the kitchen and help yourself.” Her ripe little mouth puckered. “Enjoy yourself.”

      “Oh, I will.”

      He settled down to watch, seated in the one space of sanity in the kooky studio—a lime-green easy chair positioned against the wall with a reading lamp and a side table stacked with worn paperbacks. Romance novels. He picked one up, found the used bookstore stamp on the inside cover. The well-thumbed book sprang open to a love scene.

      He skimmed a few paragraphs. Mia had a telling taste in literature. But, of course, he already knew how sensually alive she was. The proof was in the flush of her skin, the brightness of her eyes, the shape of her mouth opening to his.

      He returned his attention to the work in progress. Mia shot dozens of Polaroids, rearranging the poses and pairings, then took even more test shots. Eventually, she released Cherie to make her appointment. The other models scattered, taking a break while Mia worked on Maurizio’s herringbone chest, managing to laugh and talk with him while never losing her focus. Her hand was skilled; the paintbrush was always in motion.

      No one approached Julian, though they sneaked frequent looks at him. All except Mia. She spared no glance at all. In fact, she seemed to have forgotten his presence.

      Julian realized that he was as out of place here as Mia would be in a Park Avenue drawing room. He sank deeper into the cushions, trying to get comfortable. To prove to himself that he still could. He wasn’t, as his sisters accused, a stick-in-the-mud whose only interest was work.

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