I slide the coffee table back a few feet to squat in front of her. I fold all her fingers into a fist except for the index and middle ones, and that alone sends my mind to the gutter. They’re my two favorite fingers, the same ones I’d use to see how wet she was before I fucked her.
I breathe through my nose to calm myself. This isn’t just about me. She has to trust me for this to work. I step back a few paces and perch on the edge of the table. With the camera over one eye, I cut off anything above her lips and say, “Put your fingers in the coffee.”
“They’ll burn.”
“You don’t have to keep them there.”
She curves both fingers and dips them into the mug, wincing from the sting of heat just as I snap the photo. She pulls them out and sticks them in her mouth but not before a stream of coffee spirals down her forearm.
I capture it all and lower the camera. Normally, it’d take several shots to satisfy me, but that was it. That was the moment.
“That’s it?” she asks.
I lean my elbows on my knees and view the first photo. Her fingers are thrust into the mug in her lap like she’s going for climax, and one side of her mouth is curled in an ambiguous snarl. It could be pleasure. It could be pain. I show it to her.
She nearly gasps. “It looks like I’m . . .”
“Masturbating.”
“But it’s a mug of coffee.”
“Burrow deep.”
We meet eyes, and it clicks for her. “Like what I wrote,” she says. “It’s just a cup of coffee, but . . .”
“It feels like fucking.” I put it out there. “That’syourtalent. I want to do that too, make people feel like that.”
“You do,” she says, her gaze drifting back to the camera.
Do I? I didn’t before, according to her. But her breasts rise and fall a little faster. Her cheeks are still flushed. Is she aroused? I’m tempted to check for myself, test her nipple with the pad of my thumb to see if it’s hard.
Swallowing, I go to the next photo. Again, the frame spans mouth to lap. She’s sucking her fingers, her lips pink and plump. Coffee drips down the meat of her palm and over her wrist.
She shakes her head. “You made me sexy.”
“All I told you to do was put your fingers in the coffee.”
“Have you done this before?” she asks. “For your own . . . not for work?”
My mind flashes to Sadie, who, in this same apartment, played for my camera. Different couch, different situation. Since her, it’s been nothing but meaningless shit. Until now. “No,” I say.
She glances at me from under her lashes, her bottom lip hanging, almost in a pout. “Really? Or are you just saying that?”
“Yes, really.” I’m about to ask why she thinks I’d lie, but the hope in her eyes answers the question. She wants to be special. Maybe she doesn’t know she already is. Maybe she thinks I do this all the time. Her sudden doubt is stark against the lens-sharpened sensuality I just saw.
“Halston. Look.” I move next to her on the couch and flip to the last of the three pictures—the tip of her tongue, pressed to her wrist bone as she catches a drop of coffee. I got her eyes in that one by accident. “You’re better than anything I’ve shot, but you know that.”
Almost imperceptibly, her body softens, and she tucks her hair behind her ear. She isn’t spice-scented today, more girlish, like a flower. Not as strong as roses. I can’t really place it since most flowers smell the same to me. “What are you going to do with them?” she asks.
“Nothing.” I flip between the photos. Fuck, they’re good. With some editing, they could be great. The composition isn’t perfect, but that makes them more real. The day’s end offers just enough natural light, and some darkness too. If I faded them with a filter, turned them gray, they’d be eerie, and sexy. “Or, I could post them.”
“You think they’re good enough?”
“You’re the expert,” I point out.
“Not when it comes to myself. I think they’re, you know . . . I love them. But I’m biased.”
“They need . . .”
