Unbroken by Lynne Connolly Page A

stood, and turned around. Keeping her hips still, she pivoted at the waist and looked over her shoulder at him.
    He grimaced. “Too fashionista . Try something else. Don’t pose, be natural.”
    How? She couldn’t ask, because she was supposed to know. Photographers had asked her that before, but they’d meant, “Take some less obvious poses,” so she tried that. She lifted her hands and pushed them into her hair, as if she was doing a shampoo ad.
    “No. Turn around, lean your head back, as if you’re stretching after a few hours at the computer.” His dispassionate voice reminded her of the world she’d left behind. It felt good.
    She did as he asked.
    “I like that. Imagine everyday situations, and respond to them. Shall I give them to you?”
    It sounded like fun. “Yes.”
    “You’ve just stepped out of the shower, and you can’t find the towel. You have soap in your eyes.”
    She laughed, but complied, screwing up her face and reaching out blindly. She heard the click, then a few more.
    “Now you’ve just remembered something.”
    She clapped her hand to her forehead, and turned around, as if to run.
    “Great.”
    A few more innocuous poses and she found herself reacting to his requests with a spontaneity she hadn’t known before. He was good at this, taking close-ups and changing his position.
    “Open your legs. Take a confident stance.”
    Without thinking, she did so, only then realising that he was on his knees, shooting up. He could see her pussy, open and damp. She never posed for sexually explicit shots. Topless, yes, nude, yes, but not open-crotch. She backed off and closed her legs, feeling her pussy heat, wondering why she felt that way.
    “I’m sorry. But you looked so good, so confident that I wanted to capture it. None of these photos will leave this room. I’ll download them to my laptop, which I’ll keep in here. It’s all in the contract. You can request their deletion when we’re done, or you can have copies, and they’ll be the only ones.”
    She remembered. Her agent had told her that Zoltan might want to experiment with poses, and had therefore been very specific about what Zoltan could and could not do. He’d agreed without protest, knowing he wouldn’t get her any other way.
    She was being oversensitive and she felt a hot blush sweep over her body, leaving a chilly reaction in its wake. Then she met his gaze and heated all over again.
    Unspoken, the connection between them deepened. In her business, she never met anyone’s eyes unless they actually requested it. Photographers knew the effect they wanted, and instead of, “look at me,” they said, “look into the lens,” while designers rarely even acknowledged her presence. She was a body. She might have anticipated that, because he was an artist, he’d want more from her. But she would only give him what she needed to.
    He stared back, his face completely still. A handsome, stark face, the features well defined, the skin glowing from, she guessed, a recent holiday. Or maybe he’d been doing some outdoor work. For sure, it wasn’t a fake tan of any description. His eyes, so pale, looked good against the glow. And he was sexy as hell.
    The thought caused a sharp shot of arousal in her groin. She pressed her thighs together tightly, so he wouldn’t see the extra moisture there. Fuck, of all the times to lose it, this had to be the worst one. What a moment to rediscover her sexuality.
    He blinked and looked away as if nothing special had happened. For her, it had. In that flash of perfect understanding, she’d seen right through to the assessing mind beneath, the eyes alive as so many weren’t. Shocking, to see all that life barely under the surface.
    “I have some paintings to show you. I want you to duplicate the pose. That’s why I thought of you. Models can do that kind of thing better than most. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”
    He picked up a stick of charcoal and turned to the large