Approaching her, I gesture behind her toward the privacy screen I have in here for models who need to change. “You canchange behind the screen. I’ve laid out a nude set for you to wear. Call out if you need any help with your arm.”
Her big hazel eyes stare up at me, nervousness making them wider than usual, before she nods and takes her backpack with her behind the screen, pausing momentarily when she spots my duffel bag near its base, filled with my ropes.
My heart squeezes in my chest that she might back out, but she continues around the screen.
I putter around the space, waiting for her to come back out, listening to the rustle of her clothes as they slide from her body.
Actually, I’m going to start setting up. Distraction. Yep, definitely need a distraction.
Treading as quietly as I can manage, I creep over to the duffel bag and collect the handles, lift, and retreat to the center of the room. Then I go to the cabinet with my camera gear.
While this collection is going to be a series of sketches of Emmy in different poses, supported by my ropes, I’m still going to need to take photos. Some of the poses I will have her in, I can’t keep her in for endless hours without causing her harm. The photographs will be necessary to fill in the details once I have gotten at least her main form line down.
Pulling out my camera, I contemplate the tripod. Being able to move more freely might be best for now. I lock up the cabinet, then return to the center of the room, snapping photos of the room and using the natural light filtering in to make adjustments.
My back is to the privacy screen, but I know the exact moment she steps out from behind it. The air shifts and my body locks tight. Being in this space with her, without being able tobewith her, is torture. She is so much more to me than the muse for my next collection.
I’d give up the entire collection just to hold her in my arms.
The memory of the last time she was in my arms, unconscious and broken, tries to steal my breath. It’s been sneaking up on me, several times a day, since finding her in that house. How pale she was. The blood on her cheek. Her vacant stare.
Swallowing, I allow the memory to hold for a second, then push it away, inhaling deeply as I turn to face her, bracing myself for what the nude two-piece is going to look like on her.
When I first selected the set, all I had in mind was ensuring her form stayed unmarred, no bubbling fabric or creases not caused by her own skin or my ropes. I’d considered a one-piece, but fabric wouldn’t submit to the knots and weaves the way skin will.
Now, the consequences of my choices are hitting me like a Mack Truck flying down a highway.
Even with how small she is trying to make herself, arms wrapped around her exposed middle, the dark brace around her wrist, and her long brown hair out and falling like a shield as she stares at the ground, she is gorgeous. Broken, but gorgeous.
My broken princess.
But not right now. Right now, she does not need, or even want, me in her life. She is simply here honoring a contract she signed before everything changed for her. I need to honor that too.
Shoving aside all my internal bullshit, I force the usual demeanor I have with models—warm but professional.
“Everything okay with the outfit?” I ask, returning my attention to the camera and fiddling with settings that are perfectly adjusted already.
“Uh, yeah. It was tight with the brace, but it’s okay now.”
It is incredibly hard to ignore the vulnerability in her voice. Every fiber of my being wants to run to her and make it better. To giver her the shirt off my back and force us back into the space where she trusted me completely while I had her naked, tied up, and spread open for anyone to see.
But I don’t. Instead, I gesture at the bag in the center of the room and at the beam. “If you could stand beneath the beam, I’m going to take a few photos for lighting, and then we will begin.”
Silently, Emmy walks to the center of the room, wariness rolling off her in waves. Once she is there, I raise the camera and take a photo, the electronic shutter loud in the room.
“This collection is about the restraints that societal norms have on us.”Click. Two steps closer. “It will showcase how the strings of what is considered acceptable stop us from moving forward with life, trap us from accepting the things we want. They tie us up and twist our reality until we can’t reach the things that will actually make us happy.”
Emmy finally looks up at me, and at that exact moment, I press down on the shutter and pull the camera away from my face so that I can check the picture. Heartbreak. Yearning. Need. All of it, captured right there in the digital image.
All of which has been wiped off her face by the time I drag my eyes back to the real-life girl. Now her face is carefully blank, controlled—like a mask she has worn so often, it’s a part of her.
Legs feeling like they are bound to the floor, I force them to move, taking several steps in an arc around her, raising my camera again. “For the first few weeks, I’m going to be concentrating on simply drawing you in different positions. I want to get used to the lines of your body and how they translate to canvas so that when it comes time to draw the actual pieces, you won’t need to spend days holding one pose. We will start off simple, and once you no longer have to wear the brace, we can try a few suspension poses. Other models may join us for a session or two, but they will not be the feature.”
She tracks me with her gaze as I continue to move around the room with the camera, sometimes taking a photo and other times just viewing her.
“And how long do you think it will take you to learn the lines of me?” she asks, a hint of disdain in her voice and a single raised eyebrow.
I use the camera to hide my smile at her little spark of sass and take a picture of her, just like that. “It takes as long as it takes. The exhibit has not been given a date yet. It is entirely dependent on my muse.”
