“Not your actual work. This is about a fantasy.” She gestures up and down at his…everything. “Kick-starting a daydream about you being someone’s partner, sharing a life with you, finding you half dressed at the end of the day. In this fantasy, what is it you do for work?”
“I don’t fantasize about having other jobs.”
“A kept man, huh?”
“That is not—Clarke,” Julian says warningly as the assistant steps out of frame. There’s a spark in his eyes that wasn’t therebefore, and Clarke can feel it on her like a physical touch. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t blame you,” Clarke continues, walking a loose arc behind the photographer. “If I looked like that, I wouldn’t work, either.”
It’s objectifying, but he’s the one who agreed to this concept, and everyone knows you can’t make Julian Casperi do something he doesn’t want to do. He’ll stop her if he’s uncomfortable or doesn’t like where this is going.
He doesn’t stop her. He just tracks her movement, thumbs hooking into his waistband. The cuff gleams, silver stark against the bronze of his bare skin. The photographer starts shooting again. “You saying I look good, Maddie?”
Clarke’s brain fritzes.
Maddie. The name only her immediate family calls her, but not in that tone. Clarke’s only ever heardMaddiein that tone once before, the time she and Julian came closest to giving in to the draw between them.
He knows exactly what he’s doing, saying her name like that. And Clarke should put a stop to this, she really should—the last two weekends are still fresh in both of their minds, how close they came to losing each other again a wound that’s scabbed over but not yet healed—but two can play that game. Twohaveto play that game, because she’s not going to let him make her back down.
“Like you don’t know,” Clarke scoffs. “Like you don’t enjoy the effect you have on people.”
“On people, or on you?”
“Isthatyour fantasy? That you’remykept man?” They’re flirting. Blatantly. In public. But that’s the safety net—they can’t be serious, because there are twenty-odd people watching thishappen and even more cameras. “Sitting at home all day, pining away for me while I’m out winning championships?”
“I can think of worse things.” Julian follows the photographer’s wordless signal to change position, leaning against a rocky outcropping. “You’d take good care of me, wouldn’t you? It’s a nice cuff, at least.”
There are some titters of laughter from the onlookers. The brand rep who’d worried Clarke was offending the photographer earlier speaks up. “Speaking of the cuff! It’s time for the wardrobe and scene change.”
“We still don’t have the model,” says one of the assistants, repeatedly tapping at a screen.
“A female model is supposed to be here to do a partnered shot with Julian, but her flight got delayed,” PK informs Clarke as the coordinators bicker. “They changed the order of photography to give her more time to get here, but it’s not looking good.”
“Clarke can do it,” Julian calls out, wandering away from the mat he’d been standing on and toward the tent that holds his other outfits and accessories.
“Clarke cannotdo it,” Clarke says, regretting the flirting that made him feel cocky enough to suggest it. “This isn’tmysponsorship deal.”
“Rhynn says it’s okay,” Sara shouts from the back of the set. “I already had them cross-check your endorsement list so there wouldn’t be any problems with today.”
“No one will even know it’s you,” the brand rep says, looking Clarke up and down. “And we only need your body. You’ll do.”
PK bristles. “Hey. That’s not how we talk to people. You’re lucky Julian didn’t—”
“No, it’s okay,” Clarke says, calming. It’s sweet of PK to get offended on her behalf, but any sort of modesty or body shame was conditioned out of her a long time ago. “Just my body, not my face or anything? No problem.”
—
There might, infact, be a problem.
Clarke really is fine with her body being on display. She’s worked hard for her body, and she’s proud of it. She respects what it allows her to do, and she’s vain enough to preen when eyes are on her. She doesn’t love when people she doesn’t know touch her, but this isn’t that.
This isJuliantouching her.
He’s fully shirtless this time, wearing only a different pair of pants and a new cuff. Clarke’s got her shirt rolled up and tucked into the band of her bra, and her pants have been replaced by a towel wrapped low around her hips. It leaves the top part of the underwear she pulled on after qualifying (nothing embarrassing, thankfully, just purple stripes) exposed. The air of the basin is cool on her bare skin.
At the photographer’s cue, she closes the distance to Julian. He isnotcool. He is a pillar of heat at her back, barely a finger of space between them.
His hand snakes around front and splays low on her belly. The clasp of the cuff catches ever so slightly on her hip bone. She jumps.
