She fell silent for a moment, and Drew almost filled in the silence with Sheila’s request. But something told him it might be better to let Eva come to that conclusion on her own, and about five seconds later she did just that.
“I should offer to fill in for Sheila,” she said after another sip of her hot drink. She sounded more resigned than enthusiastic, but Drew would take it. The little rim of foam had resumed its place on her upper lip, making her look deliciously lickable once more. “She’s been trying to get me to pose for them for years, anyway. Do you think I could get her to leave my face out of the pictures, if I did that?”
Drew hid his grin behind his own huge coffee cup. His mind was already offering up vivid images of Eva, delightfully tied by him in a variety of ways. He tried to ignore the tightening of his cock in his pants and keep his voice casual as he answered. “Sure, I think she’d probably be open to negotiation.”
Chapter Four
“The braid rocks.” Danny was circling Eva, fussing with the light meter and calling out ideas to Sheila as Drew finished the final step of the tie he was working on for the first series of photos. “We need to get some shots with this hairdo when you’re in one of the full-body binds. No, Evie, your face won’t have to show. We’ll take it from the back. It’ll be very tasteful.”
“It’s an illustrated book about bondage,” Eva pointed out, grimacing as Drew started cinching in the ropes that bound her forearms together from elbow to wrist. “I gave up on tasteful when I agreed to do this.”
“Too much?” Drew murmured, tracking his fingers back along the ropes, testing for slack. Eva shook her head and looked away from his hands as he carefully worked the ropes tighter.
“Just because it’s about bondage,” Danny insisted, “doesn’t mean it can’t be tasteful. You can make anything tasteful. Think Mapplethorpe.”
“Think Man Ray,” Drew suggested, remembering her fondness for surrealist art.
“Or maybe not,” she retorted. “He was a fan of the Marquis de Sade’s work, you know.”
Drew smiled and tugged on the final knot before pulling Eva’s arms closer so he could stage-whisper in her ear. “Yes, I know.”
“That’s about as far from tasteful as it gets,” muttered Eva, but she shivered at the brush of Drew’s lips against her earlobe. He thought she would be tense by now, ready to be freed, but instead she had softened with each new twist of the rope as if she’d been bound from head to toe already and given up the fight. It was a delightful notion.
“Miss Godfrey, you’re a vision,” Drew said with an appreciative smile as he examined his work on Eva’s arms. She was perched on a simple black wooden stool in front of a draped dark canvas, and her forearms were held down in front of her body, clearly displaying the complex series of knots that bound them. In a skin-toned body stocking, she looked as close to nude as she could without actually being nude. Her simple hairstyle, a French braid that ended a few inches past her shoulders, was elegant and made her neck look even longer.
“You should let me do some beauty shots, Evie,” Sheila said. “Just head and shoulders. After we get the ones for the book, I mean.”
Drew watched Eva’s face, surprised at how expressive it could be given that she usually looked so reserved. She was bemused now, and her lips curved up at the corners in an incredulous little smile.
“You said no faces. I’m not even wearing any makeup.”
“I know. And yet you look all fresh and pretty. It’s sick.” Sheila took a final slurp of coffee from the insulated mug she’d been nursing all evening, then jumped up behind the tripod-mounted camera. “Okay, honey, let’s make some more magic.”
It only took a few minutes to complete the last series of photos that would illustrate the technique Drew had used. After that, Sheila took the camera off the tripod and goofed around, taking candid shots of the group as Drew untied Eva’s arms and Danny attempted to help using only his hopelessly uncoordinated right hand.
“How long will these marks last?” Eva asked, frowning at the crosshatched red imprint of rope decorating both arms from elbow to wrist.
“Not long,” Danny assured her. “There wasn’t any chafing, right? They should fade in a few minutes, maybe half an hour.”
“It depends,” Sheila added. “They’re beautiful, though.”
Eva frowned down at the marks, but Drew privately agreed with Sheila. He had been able to contain himself throughout the shoot, but something about the marks on Eva’s fair skin made him long to see her entire body marked that way, flushed and damp, with post-coital bliss written all over her face.