Chapter One
Morgan hadn't expected the nude photographer to be so gorgeous. For sure, it threw a monkey wrench in her plans. It was one thing to try and prepare one's self for the shame of stripping and posing for an ugly man, but when he looked like a cross between Pierce Brosnan and George Clooney, you were rather doomed from the start.
"I won't do any face shots," she tried to hold her dignity as she stood before the mahogany desk of Nick Tremaine, owner and manager of Dream Images, Incorporated. "Ever."
The picture on the corner of it, featuring the man in a swim suit, a beaming smile on his face, his bare muscled chest wet with sea spray as he holds up a captured marlin. Just to the left of the dorsal fin she can make out his crotch. Near as she can tell, the fish isn't the only prize winning thing in the photo.
Looking up from her sorry excuse for a modeling resume, the no-nonsense Tremaine pierced her with gray blue eyes, the cleft chin jutting out, the perfectly sculpted, clean shaven face bearing an expression somewhere between total disbelief and mild condescension.
"And what exactly would you be showing us, Miss Baines? Skeletons from your anatomy class? Drawings of your liver copied from one of your school textbooks?"
Morgan attempted to keep the pink from her cheeks. Obviously he'd picked up on the fact that she was a medical student and not a model per se. It was a salient point, though she might have wished for a little more tact on his part.
"This is difficult enough for me, Mr. Tremaine without your adding sarcasm. I've come here to offer you my naked body, if you don't want it..."
Morgan winced internally. Talk about tipping your hand. Right about now she would like to be crawling over that desk and ripping open his blue silk shirt so she could apply her dry and thirsty lips to his hard man nipples. Did he have hair there, she wondered, to match the shock of black on his head, peppered with silver? She'd chew up every bit of it straight down to his tight waist, licking his belly till he begged her to open his pants and take out his cock for a nice long suck, hard and deep, the perfect foreplay for a royal screwing over this aircraft carrier sized desk.
Business must be good, though, huh? Tremaine's office looked more like a CEO's than a nude photographer's. From the leather bound volumes on the shelves to the rich paneling and black leather furniture, everything in here spelled top drawer.
"Uh, that didn't come out right," Morgan amended herself sheepishly. "But you know what I mean."
The totally edible and beddable Nick Tremaine sighed deeply, templing his fingers on his chin. It was an adorable gesture; one that made her want to just kiss all that aggravation off his handsome face.
"Look, Miss Baines, it's nothing personal. I am sure you are a quite sincere young lady. You're just not the type of woman we need here, that's all."
"Why not?" She asked stubbornly. "You're a businessman, aren't you? I have something men enjoy looking at and you can get it to them. Everyone's happy, and all our bills get paid."
"It's not that simple," he shook his head. "I need a very special brand of woman. Not even many professional models are up for the challenge, much less amateurs like you. Dream Images captures fantasies, the desires of men, rich men who pay extremely well to see beautiful women act them out, heart, body and soul. I can't just have tittering maidens; I need nuanced goddesses who can play the role of everything from kidnapped virgin to horny, irrepressible sex siren. You see what I'm driving at?"
Morgan squeezed her thighs together under her simple, floral print dress. Oh, he was driving all right. Straight to her pussy. At this rate she was going to be soaking wet, with hard bristling nipples. Some job interview, she thought miserably.
"But I still don't see why you think I couldn't do it," she declared, as usual having no concept of when to give up the ghost. "You know nothing about me. You haven't even seen me in action. Granted I've never done this sort of thing before, but don't I at least deserve a test shoot or something?"
The man's lips thinned. The blue gray eyes darkened slightly. Was he unhappy with her? She couldn't tell.
"I could give you your test, Miss Baines," he warned. "But you'd be playing with fire."
"I'm in medical school," she reminded him. "When I graduate ... if I can find the money to keep paying all my tuition bills and still support my grandparents back home ... I intend to do overseas relief work. Gunshot wounds and machete cuts in the middle of battle zones. Epidemics in the middle of deserts. I think I can handle a few risque pictures."
Nick Tremaine rose from behind the desk, as if summoned into battle himself. "Very well, Miss Baines. Or should I say Dr. Baines. We shall test your mettle."
It was a low blow, probably, bringing up Granny and Gramps money troubles. But Morgan was on her last quarter here; she needed to make the connection somehow.
She tried to keep her heart steady as he rounded the edge of the desk. What was that heart, after all, but a muscle, an extremely efficient one that pumped blood, easily controllable, easily understood. As for Tremaine himself, he was nothing but a male organism, with cellular and physiological structure.
Including that cock outlined in the crotch of his navy blue pleated trousers. It was the same one in the photo, up close and personal. She felt a bit giddy, like she was seeing some celebrity in the flesh. Or at least in a different covering.
Tremaine was quite the dresser, with his expensive slacks, thin black leather belt and tasseled loafers. She pegged him about five ten, just five inches taller than herself. The perfect height difference, according to her beloved gray haired Granny, between a husband and a wife. Every trip home from school she could count on some blind date already cut to size. God help her if she ever brought home her own date. The tape measure would be out before they sat down for dinner.
"Stand there," he told her, "in the middle of the room."
Morgan swallowed as he stood there, hands on his hips, feet a foot or so apart, angled out. Were they not going to some studio, where she could change into a robe, hide out in a dressing room and be gradually coaxed out for a few quick and friendly shutter snaps?
"Here is our scenario," he began, sounding like a film director. "You are a captured Western maiden, I am an Oriental pasha. You are to be visually inspected by me prior to being admitted into my harem. I will put you through paces and you will follow my instructions to the letter. Is this understood?"
Morgan pulled her lower lip between her teeth. She'd been expecting something a bit more ... professional, was that the word? Or maybe it was the distance; the scenario he was laying out put them way too close to one another, physically, and emotionally, too.
"Is there a problem, Miss Baines?"
She ran her hand through her silky brown hair, wishing she'd gotten a little more lift from it this morning. "I just expected we'd go to a studio, that's all."
Nick frowned. "You expected incorrectly. I need to know how a potential model reacts in an unfamiliar setting. I need to know her inhibitions off camera so I will know them on camera as well. This is why I told you it wouldn't work between us, Miss Baines. I can't have you questioning my judgment."
"I won't," she heard herself promise, though she was pretty sure it would prove unavoidable unless she shut off her brain altogether. "Please, let me just try. This is acting; I can do that."
But was it really? There was no pretending about her wanting this dark haired paragon of a man. As for their little role-play, he could easily be that kind of pasha, a harem owner, with a bevy of beauties at his feet. And it wasn't really a stretch for her to be his next victim, eager and willing to succumb to the loving of his body and the power of his heart.
"You will remove your shoes first," he declared. "No woman of the pasha's harem may appear before him save she be barefoot, ready to run swiftly and submissively to his side, her ankles prettily belled."
Morgan took a deep breath, attempting to cleanse herself of all the world's distractions. She wanted to be here, with him, following directions. She'd worn a pair of slip-on heels; pink ones. Ordinarily she wore sneakers to go out or something else practical. For today she'd wanted to look her best, passing as best she could for a model.
Tremaine's carpeting was thick and blue. Her bare toes sunk decadently into the piling. It was rather a peculiar feeling, to be in a man's office, exposing her feet. A tingle ran along her sole, all the way up her calves and legs and beyond. This was only a taste of things to come, she knew. Shortly he would make more demands, forcing her to shed more articles of clothes.
Repeating the action with her second shoe, she put her feet together, awaiting his next command.
"Step away," he said of her abandoned heels. "You will not go back to them."
Morgan thought of his earlier words. She was a harem slave, being denied footwear. The tingle spread to her pussy now, a direct warmth, hinting of wetness.
"Remember, Morgan," he declared, teetering between the position of director and sexual master. "It is in your interest to please the pasha. Though you are afraid to fall prey to his sexual whims, you know that if you do not catch his fancy you will be relegated to the recesses of the harem, languishing in an iron chastity belt, denied the touch, the cock of a man for months, perhaps even years."
Her eyes fell immediately below the line of his belt?
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