Man of Fantasy

by Rochelle Alers

  “You know that I want to make love with you.”

  “And I want you, too, and I thought I was ready. When you told me to go to bed, I was heading for the guest room, then I changed my mind. I woke up to find you in bed with me. I know if I continue to see you, it’s going to happen. All I ask is that you please be patient with me.”

  Burying his face in her hair, Ivan breathed a kiss there. “Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Something in her plea touched a part of him he hadn’t known existed, and Ivan Campbell didn’t need to talk to a therapist to know that he was falling in love with Nayo Goddard.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Are you certain you don’t want me to shave?”

  “Stop talking, Ivan. The camera loves you just the way you are.” Nayo snapped four frames in rapid succession, each one capturing the image of the man sitting on the leather chair in a white shirt unbuttoned at the throat. “Let’s see a smile, handsome. That’s it. Show me your pretty teeth.”

  Ivan stared directly at the camera. “I feel used. Exposed.”

  Nayo continued snapping pictures. “Now you know how women feel when they have to pose for those nasty-ass centerfolds you men love to gawk at.”

  “I don’t buy those magazines.”

  Removing the camera from the tripod, she moved around to get a better angle of Ivan’s lean face. “Look this way, darling.”

  “If you keep calling me ‘darling,’ I’m going to think you really like me.”

  “I do like you, darling.”

  “You like me, yet I’m reduced to nothing more than a piece of meat.”

  “Well, you’re a very nice-looking piece of meat.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere, doll face.”

  “Put your right hand over your heart, Ivan. Spread out your fingers. That’s it. You’re a real natural.”

  “Next you’ll have me cradling my face like some—”

  “Don’t say it, Ivan. I need a few more shots and then I want you to change into the sweater.” She took the shots. “That’s it.”

  Ivan slumped against the back of the chair. “I’m blind from the flash and my mouth hurts from grinning.”

  Nayo removed the memory card and inserted another. “You were smiling, not grinning. The trick to offsetting the glare from the flash is to blink before each shot. Lower your eyelids before you look at the camera.” Like this. She demonstrated what she wanted from him.

  “Like this, baby.” Ivan’s eyelids fluttered wildly.

  She laughed at his silly antics. “I think I’m going to change your picture caption from ‘Stunning!’ to ‘Stunner!’”

  Ivan’s hands stilled on the buttons on his shirt. “My photograph is going to be in a book?”

  “Yes.” Nayo peered into a case with an assortment of lenses, selected one with long-range capability. “I plan to do three books. One will be titled Bridges. It will be made up of the photos I don’t sell, and the second one will be titled Faces. Your head shot and whatever pose I select will be in that one. Places will round out the trifecta.

  “When I went on my photo expedition, my initial focus was bridges. A month into the project I decided to include landscapes and people, because I didn’t want a repeat of staying in budget motels, eating in out-of-the-way places and lugging my equipment everywhere I went. Whenever I left my motel room, I took my cameras with me. If someone took my money or credit cards, I could always replace them, but not my memory cards.”

  Ivan unbuttoned his shirt and slipped out of it. He looked at Nayo looking at him when he reached for a wrinkled, navy-blue cotton sweater with a rolled neckline. She’d insisted the well-worn sweater and ripped jeans were perfect for the full-body shot.

  Nayo explained she hadn’t wanted him to shave because the two photos would be juxtaposed, one of him in a crisp white shirt and faded jeans, and the other, with the sweater, a full-body shot of him in his bare feet.

  He hadn’t wanted to sit for the photo session. He’d only agreed because he wanted to prolong the time with Nayo. It was apparent his plan had backfired because he’d found himself the victim of his own erotic fantasies.

  Sharing a bed with Nayo and not making love to her tested the limits of his willpower. He’d wanted her so badly that it took a long time for his erection to go down. Listening to her tell of her life in Beaver Run validated why he’d found himself drawn to her.

  Under the facade of big-city sophistication was a country girl who had grown up without the angst that not speaking to strangers or knowing one’s neighbor caused. People were people regardless of the region in which they resided and society’s ills didn’t discriminate as to region, gender or social status. Beaver Run wasn’t so isolated that it had been spared the pain associated with substance abuse or teenage pregnancies, but the number of incidents were minute when compared to the number in bigger cities. The town officials hadn’t denied there was a problem. They’d addressed it by including drug education in the curriculum, and instead of building a playground for their youth to work off excess energy, they’d provided them with a space where they could hang out with adult supervision.

  Ivan had felt Nayo’s vulnerability and respected her willingness to open up to him. She’d asked him to be patient with her and he would be. Gaining her trust was the key if they were to have a relationship.

  Nayo forced herself not to stare at Ivan’s rock-hard abs as he pulled the tattered sweater over his head. She bit down on her lip to stop its trembling. What she couldn’t stop was the clenching and unclenching of her stomach muscles or the soft pulsing between her legs.

  She’d gotten out of bed before Ivan. The window shades hadn’t permitted her to see the magnificence of his nude body. She knew she’d had to leave his bed before she changed her mind and begged him to make love to her.

  Nayo had been honest when she admitted she was uncomfortable sharing his bed after knowing him a week. She wasn’t a prude, yet something wouldn’t permit her to open her legs to a stranger.

  She attributed her dating Jerrell for a year before she gave him her virginity to immaturity. The thing that had frightened her most was that he would brag to his friends that he’d “popped her cherry.” Nayo lost count of the number of girls in her high school who were outted when boys they’d slept with bragged about their conquests.

  Nayo had slept with the married man when she was on the rebound from her breakup with Jerrell. If not him, she had no doubt she would’ve slept with another man. It was as if she needed to exorcise Jerrell from her mind and her body.

  Setting her camera on the tripod, Nayo walked over to Ivan. She’d decided to photograph him against a wall in the living room. The wall doubled as the screen she would’ve used at a studio. His photo, like the others, would be shot in black and white. Unlike some photographers, Nayo didn’t plan to retouch his face. Whatever imperfections the camera lens captured would remain.

  “I need you to lean against the wall with your left shoulder tilted slightly toward me. You can slip your hands in the front pockets of your jeans, pulling them down slightly. Don’t worry,” she said when he gave her a pointed look, “the hem of the sweater is long enough to cover your belly. Now, cross your left foot over your right.”

  “I don’t want to look like I’m selling something,” Ivan grumbled.

  She rolled her eyes. “You’ve the face and body of a model, darling. So stop bitchin’ and moanin’.”

  “I’m too old to model.”

  “No, you’re not. Male models are not just young boys. If you weren’t so prudish, I’d shoot you without a top.”

  Ivan smarted from her comment. Waiting until she walked back to the tripod, he reached down and pulled his sweater over his head, letting it fall to the floor beside his feet. He raised his arms over his head, grasping his wrists.

  It took only seconds for Nayo to react to the erotic pose. The waistband of the jeans slipped lower, displaying a flat belly. She could count every muscle in
his six-pack abdomen. She took frame after frame of the defined muscles in his powerful upper arms.

  Ivan changed position and she shot him with his head angled to the right and then to the left. He was blessed with a face equally photographic on both sides. The lens captured the unabashed beauty of his toned pectorals when he crossed his arms over his chest. She continued to shoot when he bent over to pick up the sweater, the muscles in his back flexing with the smooth motion.

  Photographing Ivan Campbell was akin to making love. The sensations started slowly, quickening until the building passion screamed for release. Nayo removed the camera from the tripod. Going to one knee, she shot Ivan from a lower position. There was no part of his body she hadn’t captured for posterity. A soft beeping indicated she’d filled up the memory card.

  Sitting on the floor, head lowered, she took deep breaths to still the beating of her runaway heart. What she’d just shared with Ivan would be imprinted on film and on her brain—forever.

  Ivan pushed away from the wall and sank to the floor beside Nayo. He knew what she was feeling because he felt the same way—a sexual tension that begged to be assuaged.

  Taking the camera from her limp fingers, he set it aside and gathered her to his chest. “Baby,” he whispered over and over.

  Nayo’s head came up, and what she saw in the dark eyes gazing back at her sent another shock of awareness through her body. “Love me,” she whispered seconds before her mouth met his in a burning kiss that stole the breath from her lungs.

  “Are you sure?” Ivan asked, his voice lowering an octave. He had to ask her, because he didn’t want a repeat of the night before. There was no way he could walk around with another erection without seeking a respite from the sexual frustration.

  She nodded. “I’m very sure.”

  He gathered Nayo off the floor and carried her out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom, aware that he had to go slow with her. She’d revealed that it had been a while since she’d slept with a man. Vanity surfaced, leading him to believe that Nayo had saved herself for him.

  Pride filled his chest when he thought about the woman in his arms. She was perfect, exquisite, and now he understood what his friends had said they’d felt when they met their respective fiancées for the first time.

  Kyle couldn’t stop talking about Ava Warwick, and whenever Ivan saw them together, he knew they shared a special bond. Soul mates.

  Duncan had finally come to grips with losing his first fiancée, and had accepted that his life didn’t stop with the first woman with whom he planned to spend his future. Kalinda Douglas was gone and was never coming back, but it wasn’t until the financial planner met Dr. Tamara Walcott that he was able to let go of the past to share his love and life with her.

  Ivan had asked himself over and over if Nayo was the one. Was she the woman to make him let go of his past of loving and losing, and commit to her and their future together?

  Pinpoints of light came through the mesh shades, dotting the walls and every solid surface. Ivan lowered Nayo to the bed, his body following hers down. “Please look at me, Nayo.” Her eyes opened and she smiled. “Once we do this we’ll never be the same.”

  Nayo’s smile grew wider. She didn’t want to be the same Nayo Goddard she’d been before coming face-to-face with Ivan Campbell. “I know that, darling.”

  Ivan winked at her. “Just checking,” he said.

  Slowly, methodically, he undid the buttons on her blouse, baring an expanse of flawless dark skin that glistened as if sprinkled with diamond dust. Lowering his head, he kissed her silken throat before moving lower to leave a trail of kisses along the column of her slender neck. Nayo hadn’t worn a bra and her small, firm breasts were on display for his visual pleasure.

  He ran his first and second finger down her breastbone, eliciting a slight shiver, which he felt under his fingertips. He’d become a sculptor, tracing the dips and curves of her body. Ivan’s mouth was as busy as his hands. Every place he touched he followed with a kiss. Lost in the rising desire he derived from touching and kissing Nayo, Ivan tried to think of everything else but the exquisite body under his. Somehow he succeeded when he was able to divest her of her clothes and he still hadn’t sustained a complete erection.

  His rapacious gaze moved slowly over her body. “One of these days you’re going to have to show me how to use your camera so I can photograph you in the nude.”

  Sitting back on his knees, he pulled the sweater up and over his head and shoulders. Nayo’s hands stopped his when they went to the waistband of his jeans.

  “Please let me do this.”

  Nayo felt the heat of his gaze on her lowered head. Ivan had no idea what it meant for her to take the initiative in what would become the most intimate act between a man and woman. In the past she’d merely been a willing participant, giving her partner the lead.

  Ivan claimed they’d never be the same after making love, but he was wrong. He hadn’t penetrated her and yet she wasn’t the same Nayo she’d been the night before. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been before setting up the shoot.

  Whenever she peered through a camera lens, she didn’t recognize herself as the girl who’d come from Beaver Run. She was Nayo, a photographer who went by a single name like Prince or Madonna. She’d become an artist, stepping outside herself in order to step into a role where she didn’t use her voice or paints and brushes. She used the gift of sight to see what others couldn’t or wouldn’t see. It only took a glance to mentally photograph a subject.

  It’d been that way when she first saw Ivan. The first thing she recognized was the perfection of his hands. They were well-groomed, the fingers long and slender. His clothes were mere window dressing for an exquisitely proportioned body the world would come to know when she developed the prints.

  Unsnapping the waistband, Nayo undid the zipper. Ivan facilitated her removing his jeans by lifting his hips. Her heart beat a wild tattoo against her ribs. The bulge in the black boxer-briefs revealed that he was fully aroused.

  Ivan rose slightly. Nayo’s hands were shaking. “You can’t stop now, darling.”

  Hands moving as if in slow motion, Nayo hooked her fingers in the waistband of his briefs, pulling them down Ivan’s hips. What lay before her eyes became imprinted on her brain. And in that instant she wished she’d shot him nude. His erection was as impressive as the rest of his body. Moving up that body, she lay between his legs as she had the night before. This time it was her bare breasts pressed to his naked chest.

  Reaching down, Ivan cupped her hips, massaging them in an up-and-down motion. Within seconds he could detect the scent of desire rising from her. “If there’s anything you don’t want me to do, then I want you to tell me.”

  “Don’t talk, Ivan. Just do it.”

  Reversing positions, he lay between her legs, his mouth charting a sensual path under her armpits, down her rib cage. He tasted her breasts, his teeth teasing the nipples until they hardened to ripe dark points.

  Nayo’s fingers tightened in the mound of pillows cradling her shoulders. What Ivan was doing to her with his mouth made her feel as if she was losing her mind. A swathe of heat swept down her body with the intensity of an inferno, and she found it impossible to stop her hips from writhing in a rhythm that needed no rehearsing or tutoring.

  “Please, Ivan!”

  Her last words were smothered on her lips when Ivan covered her mouth with his. He moved his tongue in and out of her mouth, simulating his making love to her. Reaching over to the drawer in the bedside table, he grasped a condom. His mouth still affixed to hers, he managed to open it. Lifting his hips slightly and using both hands, he slid the latex sheath down the length of his erect penis.

  He’d told Nayo they would never be the same the moment he penetrated her, but he knew he hadn’t been the same man since walking into the art gallery and meeting the brilliant photographer for the first time.

  He applied pressure to her thigh and settled himself betwee
n her spread legs. Positioning the head of his penis against her opening, Ivan pushed gently into her vagina, her breathing quickening against his ear. The instant he attempted to penetrate Nayo’s body he knew she was different. And the difference had nothing to do with sex.

  Ivan had encountered women who’d suggested threesomes, even a few foursomes, some who favored bondage with whips and chains and other acts that would classify them as sexual deviants.

  As soon as he attempted to penetrate Nayo’s body, he forgot every other woman he’d ever known, dated or made love to. It was as if he’d been on a pilgrimage, searching in earnest for that one woman to complete him.

  Her soft moans and gasps as he eased his erection into her tight flesh left him shaking with a pleasure he’d never known. He felt as if he’d been waiting all of his life for Nayo, that he’d had to sleep with the other women in order to recognize when he’d met the right one.

  Nayo had confessed to having only two lovers. This appealed to his ego because she hadn’t come to him with a number of men in her past. Burying his face in her neck, he placed a kiss under her ear.

  “Easy, baby,” he murmured, hoping to prevent her from having any pain as he attempted to sheathe himself fully inside her. “Am I hurting you?” he whispered. She was as tight as a virgin.

  Breathing heavily through parted lips, Nayo shook her head. “No.” It wasn’t the pain she couldn’t withstand, but the carnal pleasure that she didn’t want to stop. Ivan was much larger than her two previous lovers. And yet she feared climaxing because it would end much too quickly for her.

  She raised her hips to receive Ivan’s kiss, while he made one strong final thrust that left him buried deeply within her flesh. They sighed in unison.

  Easing back, Ivan smiled at the woman tucked under his body. They shared a knowing smile, the silent gesture conveying that they’d become one with the other. “Are you ready?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  “I think I was ready the night you walked into the gallery.”

  Ivan’s smile grew wider. “I suppose I’m a little slower, because I consciously repressed my feelings. I didn’t realize how much I actually wanted you until I saw you with your bohemian boyfriend.”