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“I’ve never told you this, but my best friend growing up was a kid named Khalid,” he said. “Khalid Akello. Sometimes, you remind me of him. You have similar personalities.”
“Are you saying we’re friends?” she asked.
“No.”
“I think you’re saying we’re friends.” She nodded, evidently to solidify her statement. “But I like that name, Khalid. I hope to meet him one day.”
He didn’t comment, and Delilah didn’t let him go until he peeled her off his arm for them to get inside the car.
ChapterEight
Raina eyed the man crouched in front of her, his tongue extended toward the lacy, nearly see-through panties she wore the same way a child might begrudgingly stick out their tongue for a pediatrician. A spiked necklace hugged his throat, one end attached to a leather strip in her hand.
“Max, if you want to be somewhere else, you’re free to leave,” she said.
Maxton Briggs stood, tried to adjust the necklace, failed, and stomped his bare foot into the mattress underneath them. “Look, no offense, but this isn’t how I envisioned my career going,” he said. “I thought I would be on the cover of Vanity Fair or GQ. Maybe even Time. Just because you’re okay with smut, Raina, doesn’t mean we all have to be. Sometimes, it’s better to have more class than ass.”
She studied his face, brow raised, and motioned to the event coordinator. “I’m taking a break. When I get back, I want Mr. Briggs gone.”
Maxton’s mouth fell open. “You can’t do that.”
“Miss Daniels is the alpha here,” the event coordinator said. “Come on, Briggs. You’re done.”
Raina dropped the rope, turned away from the twenty-two-year-old toddler, and one of the event staff helped her down off the heart-shaped California King. Another handed her a robe that she immediately wrapped around her body.
Before this shoot, Maxton Briggs’ only modeling experience had come from haphazardly edited smartphone camera photos on his social media feed. He was the type who thought that just because something looked easy for a person with experience, it would be simple for a newbie, disregarding the amount of time it usually took to build that kind of expertise.
Working with her, and for a famous music artist’s new lingerie line was a massive step through the door. If he’d studied her career like he’d claimed when they were first introduced—or so much as glanced at her social media—he would have seen that only a small fraction of her bookings presented her as a half-naked dominatrix.
The photographer, who went by Blaze at work and Jayson everywhere else, called her over. After boosting her self-confidence and social energy with a deep breath, she tightened the robe and joined him.
“What do you think, babe?” He tapped the screen with an index finger. “Fire as usual, right?”
She mustered up a dash of enthusiasm. “Yeah. Fire as usual.”
“See right here?” He zoomed in on her stomach. “Don’t worry about that. That little flab of skin won’t make post. By the time these are up, you’ll be perfect.”
“What about my stretch marks?” The ones that created faint stripes in her dark skin along her hips before cupping her ass like a mini skirt.
“Gone,” he said.
“What if we kept them this time? I mean, it’s not like I did them to myself. They’re a natural part of me.”
He shook his head, smacking on a piece of gum he seemed to have manifested from his inner cheeks. “Nuh-uh. I love,loveworking with you, RD, so I willnothave tiger stripes ruining that gorgeous body of yours. You have worked too hard to look the way you do. This is why God created Photoshop, honey.”
She tore her gaze away from the “flab.” In the past, she would have spent hours fixating on that spot, and the more she fixated, in her mind, the larger it would grow. Then, it would become grossly distorted, and she’d try to remedy the problem by seeking perfection that kept moving the line the closer she got to the invisible goal marker.
“Thanks, Blaze,” she said.
She gave him a quick hug and headed for the emptiest, quietest corner she could find in the busy, overcrowded studio. As she passed the buffet spread provided by the company, her stomach rumbled. However, after the next series of photos, she would grab something to eat. That way, she wouldn’t bloat, giving the editors even more feats to accomplish when they went in to tackle her “flab.”
Estelle Diallo, her assistant and stylist, intercepted her on the way to the empty corner, and she nearly cried.
A minute to herself.
All she wanted was a minute to herself.
“So, right after this, we’re headed to the next shoot two floors above us in suite 500,” Estelle informed her. “That’s for Elite Sports.”
