Taste Me. Carrie Alexander
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pointed the nozzle of her spray gun at the twenty-one-year-old’s plucked pubis and squeezed the trigger. Usually, the models wore tiny unobtrusive thongs no bigger than an eye patch, but going without produced a cleaner look.
When a model was willing to pose sans thong, Mia was careful to shoot only tastefully arranged poses. While she had much appreciation for the sensual aspects of body painting, gratuitous salaciousness frosted her cookies. Her art came first, not Hard Candy’s horn-dog target audience.
She shot a glare at the gaggle of onlookers. Huh. Several were edging closer, wanting a better look at the tempting display. Mia turned her backside to them while she worked, deliberately blocking their view of Angelika. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with the sniggers and bawdy comments that were typical of a nonprofessional audience.
“Okay, looks like we’re good,” she said a few moments later, after Cress had made a final pass with the protective gelatin glazing medium.
The photographer darted in and adjusted a peppermint-swirl candy by an infinitesimal degree. “Now we’re good. Clear set!”
Mia rolled her eyes at Cress as she backed away. She bumped into one of the spectators, who put his hand on her butt and said, “Careful, sweet cheeks.”
Gross. Pretending to be startled, Mia whirled around and let go with a spurt of the cherry-flavored paint. It sprayed across the starched shirtfront and loosened tie of a tall, dark-haired man, barely missing another of the onlookers when he lunged out of the way.
“Hey!” the lunger said. He brushed at the sleeve of an expensive suit. “Watch what you’re doing. You might have stained my Hugo Boss.”
Although she’d been on the verge of a smart retort, Mia snapped her mouth shut. She recognized the voice of the man she’d missed as the one who’d made the “sweet cheeks” comment and had assumed he was also the ass-patter. Wrong.
She aimed an apologetic shrug at the man she’d sprayed and was startled to recognize him. He was the guy who’d arrived late and stared so intently that he’d broken her concentration. Quite an achievement. Typically, she lost herself in the artwork and had to be snapped out of her trance by Cress or an extremely fatigued model.
“Uh,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
“Me, too,” he replied. “I didn’t mean to grab your butt. I was just trying to stop you from backing into me.”
She felt less sorry, but he was smiling at her, and his smile was pretty damn charming, so she wasn’t mad, either. His voice was nicer than the other guy’s, too. Deep, rich and smooth, like buttered rum. There was something familiar about his face. Maybe she’d run into him at another shoot?
Even so, he was only a suit. Albeit a cherry-flavored suit.
“I’ve wrecked your shirt.” Mia reached for his arm. “Come over here, we’ll get you cleaned up.”
“Shouldn’t I lick myself clean, like a cat?” the man said, letting her lead him to her table. He lifted the end of his tie to his mouth and took an experimental taste. His mouth puckered. “Uh, maybe not. I thought the paint’s supposed to be edible.”
“Technically it is,” Mia said. “But I wouldn’t want to eat it with a spoon.” She squeezed out one of the soapy sponges they kept on hand. “We’re more concerned with looks and application than the actual taste.”
“So it’s not a good idea if I set the Sugar High execs loose on—” the man nodded toward Angelika “—our holiday treat?”
Mia glanced sharply at him while she dabbed at his tie. “That would be in bad taste all the way around.”
“I was kidding.”
“Of course you were.” She tossed the tails of the tie over his shoulder, trying not to notice how wide and square it was. She normally wasn’t attracted to the men who huddled in conference at photo shoots, even when they were distractingly gorgeous. But this one had more than a thoroughbred body and a handsome face. He possessed black-licorice eyes struck with starbursts of good humor and the male version of a Mona Lisa smile. He was self-aware, not merely self-involved like the usual suit.
Then he ruined it by saying, “I’m Julian Silk,” as if she should be impressed.
Julian Silk? Uh-oh. She’d spray-attacked the man who’d be signing her current paycheck.
Never mind, she told herself, remembering that she wasn’t impressed with either power or money. She’d decided that nine years ago when she’d chosen art school instead of the Ivy League, despite her parents’ protests. She’d been on her own ever since.
“Hey, wow,” she said. “Congratulations.”
Mr. Silk gave a surprised half laugh. “Congratulations for what?”
“The stork must have loved you.” Mia tilted her head. “Being born into the Silk family is a little like winning the lottery, don’t you think? If I’m impressed, it’s only by your luck.”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.”
She plucked at his shirtfront to hold it away from his body while she scrubbed at the stain. Mr. Silk stood quite still, but not tense, nor embarrassed. Perfectly casual and unconcerned, as if he were used to being attended to. Which, of course, he was. The man was so sharp and well put together that there had to be a team of tailors, barbers, workout gurus and maybe even plastic surgeons at his behest.
He made a motion, lifting his hand to his lips and then flinging it away.
She squinted an eye at him. “What are you doing?”
“Taking the silver spoon out of my mouth so you’ll talk to me.”
Behind her, Mia heard Cress smother a laugh. “It would be extremely idiotic of me to be rude to the man who can have me hired and fired,” she said.
“Then you know who I am.”
She sighed. “Now I do.”
“After I told you.” He ruminated on that, lifting one corner of lips so handsomely carved they belonged in the Louvre. “Dumb move. I was enjoying the anonymity.”
“Uh-huh.” But he’d just had to pull the I’m-rich-and-in-charge card. She suppressed another eye roll and redirected her attention to getting the stains off his shirt. They’d faded to pink.
Unfortunately, when his mouth was distracting her, she’d dabbed with too much force and had dampened the fabric to the point where it was almost see-through. The wet cotton clung to his abdomen. She had to scrape the material off with her fingers, pressing them into a slab of corrugated muscle that made her temperature rise beyond acceptable core-activity levels.
“What does ‘uh-huh’ mean?” Mr. Smooth-as-Silk asked, still completely oblivious to the potentially intimate situation. He probably thought of her like the tailor who measured his inseam and asked if he dressed to the right or left.
But he had cupped her ass.
“It means that you’re one of those types,” she said. Scrub, scrub. Her knuckles rubbed his abs. “The ones who are just so, you know, sick of being catered to, kowtowed to and sucked up to. You want to be one of the guys. A regular Joe.” But not really. “And as for women—”
She stopped, reminding herself to breathe, then forgetting to as soon as Julian Silk looked down at her. His black-as-sin eyes gleamed. “Please continue. What about the women? They want me only for my money?”
“Hardly.” Mia gave one final swipe of the sponge. “They want you for your money, your social standing and your looks. Which means that, as the proverbial total package, you can’t pin down your dissatisfaction so easily. But you’re bored with high-maintenance socialites and ambitious starlets. You’re restless. You need more. Suddenly, you’re thinking it’s time to taste the earthy flavors of a working-class girl.”
Mia