She picked up the phone. “Why don't you call security ... if you can't handle me."
Nick took her hand, the one clutching the receiver. His touch pacified her instantly, eating away at her resolve. It was no fair, using his hand like that, firm but gentle, making her want to fall before him, begging for kisses instead of ripping him a new posterior opening the way he deserved.
"Go home, Miss Baines,” he said. “Go back to your life, become the greatest doctor since Schweitzer. You need money? Go to the bank. Get a loan. I'll co-sign it myself; just keep your clothes on. For everyone's sake."
She wrenched her hand free, leaving him the phone. She could still feel the warmth of his touch, up and down her knuckles, enveloping, teasing. “I don't want your charity, Mr. Tremaine. I'll find my own way in the world. And just for the record, I find you to be not a very nice man and if anyone asks I will tell them how you took advantage of me."
Nick's eyes narrowed. “You do that,” he said through thinned lips. “And while you're at it, be sure and add how I forced you to come here against your will and held you at gunpoint till you'd met all my lascivious demands upon your person."
She shot him a look of pure venom, the sort one can manage only when one has just been shown to have made an ass of one's self. “Screw you, Tremaine,” said Morgan, leaving a traditional parting shot, Baines style.
"The door,” he reminded her as she whisked through it a moment later.
"My pleasure,” she turned back to give it a vigorous slam.
* * * *
Nick tore at his trousers the moment the woman was gone. He'd nearly exploded in his pants. How he'd managed to get back to his seat and hold himself together this long he had no idea. The whole thing was crazy. Pulling himself free of his boxer shorts, he wrapped his fingers around his throbbing shaft, still not believing it had happened. He hadn't gotten this hot or hard for a woman since he was seventeen, and in those days a good stiff breeze was all it took anyway.
It was this woman; she'd done it to him. First by egging him on into giving her a pre-photo test and then by somehow igniting his libido like a field of dry wheat touched by a lit match.
There wasn't any time to get the tissues. Closing his eyes, he plastered her image on the back of the lids. A pair of girlie posters, one for each retina. Gorgeous, gorgeous Morgan. Auburn haired, shapely, the most sex filled, sex driven, fucking sexy, sex goddess in the universe. Touching herself like that, massaging her tits, flashing her athletic thighs, totally getting into the pasha and slave girl fantasy.
Shit, it was his own fantasy, though he hadn't said so. He was the one who wanted to see the little beauty stripped and naked at his feet, serving his every whim. That and about a million other fantasies. Nick was quite sure he wasn't the only one, either. One look at a woman like that and you'd want her in bed.
And she was going to be a doctor? Good luck to her male patients, that's all he had to say. Nick grunted, squeezing tight. His larger than average manhood, circumcised, was about to shoot itself.
Oh, fuck ... he was fucking Morgan in his head. The auburn haired babe splayed on his couch, his hand gripped on her ankles, holding them nice and wide for a landing.
She'd better be as ready as she'd looked a few minutes ago, that perfect little body of hers practically writhing for him under the influence of his X-rated commands, because here he was, coming at her ... thrusting to the hilt, letting her know in no uncertain terms just what he'd thought of her little audition.
A million miles an hour, that's how fast he'd pump and she'd better keep up, because there was no time to tend to her needs, no. Sorry for the rudeness, but this was his fantasy, thank you very much.
The naked med student screamed on his couch. She was coming anyway, a step ahead of him. What a good sport. He gave a final push, erupting ... into her and into the air. Nick was only dimly aware of spraying his carpet, the top of his shoes, his own pants, the armrests of the chair.
Like a frigging teenager.
Slumping down afterwards, exhausted, totally drained and mind blown, Nick made himself a pledge.
No more medical student to cross his threshold. Most especially not the dreaded, now infamous Morgan Baines. Wiping himself as best he could with the tissues, he considered the merits of drafting a memo to that effect to all his staff.
If he wanted he could even get a picture of her and superimpose a skull and crossbones. But getting a picture wouldn't be a very good idea at all. If her looks could ignite him just with the naked idea, there was no telling what would happen on camera.
Nick picked the pictures up off the floor instead. Merilee Way, his nice, safe, blonde model with the boob job whom everyone loved and who left him totally and completely cold.
Blowing Merilee a kiss, he offered his thanks, for tamping his libido when he'd needed it. Although he was pretty sure the young actress wannabe would not have been too happy to know he'd used her picture to keep from ejaculating prematurely over a medical student, totally clothed, with no experience whatsoever.
Maybe that was it. Maybe after so many years of pursuing his dream of rendering the erotic image into true and accepted art he was yearning for some less physically charged companionship. After all, the women he saw were nearly always scantily clad, if at all and more often than not in states of contrived if not real arousal.
Could it be he just needed an ordinary liaison? An actual date or two—with someone rather like Miss Baines? Wouldn't that be ironic, he thought, picking up the phone and asking her to dinner after what they'd just been through.
It was inconceivable, of course.
Then again, he picked up her little resume, highlighting her college graduation summa cum laude as well as her participation in the drama society; he did have her phone number.
* * * *
Morgan stopped at the receptionist's desk on the way out of Tremaine's office. “Just so you know,” she told the pretty young Hispanic woman with the black blouse and upswept hair. “I didn't show him a damned thing. And I never will, not if I live to be a hundred and fifty."
She gave Morgan the polite but puzzled expression you'd expect under the circumstances. “Yes, ma'am?"
Morgan was dying to ask her if she'd ever done it herself. Was she more his type? Was that why he'd snubbed her so completely? But no, it was blondes he liked, silicone bimbos like the one on his desk. Talk about nerve. Looking at another woman with her right there in the flesh. Well, she hoped the two of them would be very happy, in their nice, fake little world where people set each other up, making them reveal their deepest passions just for a cheap thrill. A man like that wouldn't know a genuine emotion if it came and walloped him over the head.
"Ma'am, is there some message you'd like to leave for Mr. Tremaine?” the secretary asked gently, clearly trying to spare her dignity.
"No, thank you,” said Morgan, deciding she liked her at once. “I'm Morgan Baines,” she put out her hand. “I won't ever see you again, at least not here, but you seem like a nice person."
"I'm Carmen Rivera,” she smiled. “And thank you, you seem nice, too."
Morgan couldn't help but notice the lack of a ring on her finger. “You have my condolences about your boss. He's a real piece of work."
Carmen's dimples flashed a tiny bit. “He's a little rough around the edges, but he is not so terrible underneath."
Morgan tried hard to imagine this. The girl was sincere, though, and she looked smart, too. What was it she possibly saw? Was Tremaine having sex with her?
"Yes, tornadoes are like that, too: they have a nice little peaceful swirl inside a cone of death."
Carmen lowered her eyes, discretely, not wanting to come between her boss and an outsider. “Is there a message you'd like to leave for Mr. Tremaine?"
Yes, but she doubted she could get a gift-wrapped poisonous snake up here on such short notice.
"No, I have said enough for one day. I thank you, though, you've been very kind, and it's been a pleasur
e to meet you, Carmen."
"You, too, Morgan."
Morgan left the offices of Dream Images, Inc. a much wiser woman, if only a couple of hours older. For starters, she'd discovered much to her delight that she could stop lamenting over her inability to get a date with either George Clooney or Pierce Brosnan. Because if they were even half as abrasive, callous and unlikable as Nick Tremaine she'd been far better off without them.
Secondly, she'd confirmed something about her sex she'd been fearing her whole adult life. Namely that no matter how horrid a man might be there was always a noble, caring woman who was doomed to love him. In this case, it was Carmen Rivera, whose devotion to her boss, personal and professional was written all over her face.
She'd be a hell of a catch for any man, but naturally he would never even consider her because of she'd foregone implants in favor of developing the gray matter between her ears instead. To a certain extent, Morgan's mother Emma had been in this boat. Her father was not a bad man, but he did have a moral aversion to monogamy, as well as a propensity for losing at cards.
He was forgiven much in the community because he'd birthed and buried them all for thirty odd years accepting little more in exchange than a few bottles of whiskey and some surplus crops. When Morgan had gotten old enough she'd gone with her father one day to deliver a baby. With his capable old hands, Lyle had brought out not one little girl, but two. The family, on the verge of losing their farm anyway, had nothing to offer till their crop went to market the next month. Lyle pushed back his fedora and told them that would not do; he'd have to take payment now.
The father said he understood and told Lyle to take a look around and get what was fair. He could have gotten most anything. Instead, he picked up a slice of bread off the table. “Can you part with this ... and maybe a little jam for my daughter?"
And so the deal was sealed. Ten year old Morgan thanked the man for the bread, at her father's insistence, but on the way home she asked him why he hadn't waited for his money, when she knew from listening to he and mom argue that they had bills, too.
"You see these hands,” he'd taken them off the wheel for a moment as they negotiated the lazy dirt road home. “They were touched with a power that doesn't belong to me. I'm a conduit. It comes from out there, and I channel it. That's why I'm alive. Minute I let something get in the way, money or anything else; my life won't mean a plug nickel. You remember that, girl."
Morgan had, and when her two older brothers had flunked out of med school she'd taken their place. Lyle hadn't said much at first because it wasn't in his plans for a girl to carry on his medical legacy. Then one day, when he was very close to the end, she reminded him of that story, about the hands.
He lay there in his hospital bed with tears in his eyes. For a long time he was silent. Finally he spoke. “You think you have that power?"
She had tears in her eyes, too. “I know I do, Pop."
She wasn't bragging and he knew it. That was the difference with her brothers. For them it was always about what they'd get out of it for themselves. They'd never been real doctors, not deep down.
Lyle died a few days after that. Her mother Emma followed quickly, having a heart attack a month later. Morgan had never looked back. Now, in her second year of medical school, with both her brothers gone AWOL from the family, there was only her to support Emma's mom and dad, the sweetest old folks in the world, like second parents to her growing up.
For the last decade they'd been renting out their farmland, trying to keep afloat. But no one was making it anymore and now the bank was talking foreclosure if they didn't make the payments. Morgan could support herself with loans and a part-time job as a research assistant in the epidemiology lab at the med school, but there was no way she could do more.
It was either leave school or find a way to make real money in short hours. Gina, her roommate a psych grad student from New York, had suggested nude modeling.
"You have the body, sweetheart, and you're more than entitled to use it,” was her attitude.
Morgan was from Iowa, where things were looked on a little differently. But she'd learned tenaciousness. To win your dreams, you had to go to the wall, you had to let your own ego get bruised or even cracked open so you could get at the truth.
The conduit ... that's all we are.
There was no way in hell Nick Tremaine was going to have the last word on Morgan's dreams. He was one man. Gina had steered her to him because he was the best, supposedly, in his business. But he wasn't the only show in town. She would find another to take her pictures. And they would be damned good pictures. Professional, sexy pictures and when she had a nice thick stack she would take them back up to Tremaine's office and dump them all over his desk, right on top of the Silicone Princess.
Of course she'd walk right back out, because she hated the man and never wanted to see him again. Ever.
Chapter Two
Nick was giving serious thought to quitting the business. It wasn't fun anymore. It was running him. And after six years he was getting nowhere closer to his real goal of making art. Money, that was all he produced. And headaches. Endless headaches. Problems with clients, not specifying what they wanted, the photographers wanting more artistic control and now, this, the latest joy of his life, the nude models looking to form a union.
He rifled through the papers on his desk, dislodging the dross from the top. There it was on the bottom. The resume of Morgan Baines. His passport to happiness, in the form of a potential date from a woman who hated him and who had nothing in common with him and whose company he would probably detest after five minutes.
He stared at the phone number under her name. Could it be his social life had really come down to this? What would he talk about over dinner with a med student, anyway? Liver transplants? The latest treatments for osteoporosis?
Frowning, he hit the intercom. Carmen was there in a heartbeat. Carmen was always there. “Yes, Mr. Tremaine, can I get you something?"
He'd tried to get the young Mexican American to call him Nick, but she'd told him she came from a strict background, one requiring the utmost of respect for employers.
"Coffee,” he sighed, relieved as always to hear her voice. “And a revolver. One bullet, and kindly draft my epitaph as follows: Here lies Nick Tremaine: Now are you all satisfied?"
Carmen entered momentarily, presenting him his cup of coffee and a pair of pain relievers. “Here you are sir, I thought these might help."
He regarded the green eyed olive skinned young lady. She was especially attractive today, with her long black hair tied in a ribbon and her black sweater and skirt. More than one of his less cultured associates in the adult photo industry had told him he was crazy for not boffing her on the side or at least getting some photo shoots out of her.
"The whole kidnapped secretary thing would be a frigging natural,” suggested three hundred pound Wally Evers, whose mouth was forever exhaling either curse words or cigar smoke, usually both. “Jeezus, Tremaine, I get a boner just from her voice transferring me into your office every time I call."
Nick would never do that because Carmen worked for him. Besides he simply did not see her that way. He felt protective, caring, that was all. Sexually, she'd done nothing for him. No one had, in fact, for a long time. Not since Sonya, the self-absorbed super model who had broken his heart and nearly his business. It had been so long, in fact, he was beginning to wonder if being around so many sexy girls had made him immune to their effects.
That is until Morgan had come along. A night's sleep had done little to ease the tension. He'd woken up hard for her again. Twice he'd caught himself dreaming of her, and neither time was it G-Rated. A cold shower had helped somewhat, as had the latest headaches facing Dream Images, Incorporated, but it was still touch and go.
"Thank you, Carmen,” he took the pain pills, swallowing them down with the coffee. “You are way too good to me."
"Why don't you take the day off, sir? You work way too hard."
> "Me? What do I do? You're the one who has to clean up all my messes. You take the day off. Go and find yourself a nice young man to massage your feet."
She blushed, her long lashes casting in a downward slant. “I prefer older men, Mr. Tremaine. They have more experience."
"Older men are a bore Carmen. All they do is complain about prostate problems, hair replacement surgeries and alimony."
"You're not like that,” she said softly.
Nick cocked his head. Did that mean what he thought it did?
"Excuse me,” she said quickly. “But I have a good deal of filing today. By the way, you got a call a few minutes ago from Mr. Evers. He'd like you to call him back."
Nick let the sudden personal tension unwind itself happily. “Evers,” he growled, relieved to be back on safer, business grounds. “Just what I need. Any chance I can have some more pain killers?"
"Not for four hours, sir."
"Oh, well,” he shrugged. “Can't blame me for trying."
"Tremaine,” rasped the man at the other end of the line. “Long time no see."
And hopefully we can keep it that way, Nick mused to himself.
"What can I do for you, Wally? I'm assuming you're not just shooting the breeze."
"That's what I like about you,” he coughed. “You're a man of business. I got a proposal for you, my friend. The sweetest fucking proposal you're gonna get all year, guaranteed."
"Oh? I don't know, Wal, the Korean midget option you offered me last fall was pretty impressive."
"I know,” he said, oblivious to Nick's sarcasm. “I still can't believe the little bastards went back to Pyong Yang. What the fuck kind of name is that for a city anyway? Tell me, Tremaine, is that the commie part of Korea, or no?"
"It's the capital of the north, yes, Wally. Can we get to your new proposal, though? I'm a little pressed for time."
"No, sweat, mi amigo. It goes like this: We do a little swap, one to one, just for a session, say an hour or so long."
Nick could hardly wait to hear the details.
Getting Naked: A Romance of Bondage and Discipline Page 2
