Eli Page 5

  Trying not to let the growing frustration get to me, I finished setting my stuff down on the table and started browsing around for food. Past lunch but not quite dinner, it was a weird time to be eating, but I was starved. Eli’s drama had made what was supposed to have been a short shoot go on forever, completely throwing my day off.

  Looking in the fridge, my options were almost nonexistent. It was either a freezer dinner or leftover Chinese food that had seen better days. Giving the lo mein a sniff and deciding it wasn’t too bad, I dumped it in a bowl and threw it in the microwave.

  The rest of my afternoon and much of the evening were going to be spent editing photos and getting the new website updated. It was almost blank at the moment with no personality or good explanation about what kinds of pictures I took, but it was all my brain had been able to come up with.

  Something was holding me back and until I figured out exactly what it was, I had a feeling my business wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  ****

  Sorting through photos of a half-naked Eli was some kind of punishment. There was no other word for it. Editing was even worse. It was a weird kind of torture because each photo had to be analyzed, and there was no way to ignore the passion and fire coming from him—or the erection that filled and strained the panties.

  I must’ve had a screw loose to take the job.

  Watching a sexy brat parade around nearly naked just for attention was not a real career path. Instead of tasteful photos like the other models tried to take, it was like some kind of live-action porn that I’d gotten dragged into photographing. The way his body moved and his hard cock filled the fabric made it impossible to maintain my distance.

  As his erection continued to fill the screen on my computer, and I had to watch him trail his fingers over his cock frame by frame, my blood pressure started to rise. Just out of anger, nothing else, but it was making it even more difficult to think and to be objective about which pictures were the best.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t looked at the blog. In my defense, I’d wanted to find out the reactions to the new photos. Seeing what they were responding to would help me see what direction I needed to take for the edits and even for future shoots.

  I’d only sent him a few, but he usually didn’t take too long before he posted something from a shoot. He was a bit of an attention whore and would want to get his followers all stirred up. Eli usually posted about everything, from how the shoot went to random facts about his day, all while showing off his body and the lingerie.

  I might have been stupid for looking at the blog, but he was just an ass.

  It was one long rant about me. Well, it didn’t start that way. Toward the beginning, he was teasing about the new shoot and giving vague hints about how they were going to love the new pieces. How he wasn’t really supposed to be sharing them, and how Preston would punish him for even thinking about letting the pictures out, but he just couldn’t help himself.

  The way he wrote, I could almost hear him purring in my head about how naughty he’d been and how he needed to be spanked—but that he would do it anyway just for them. It made me want to pull my hair out and then demand to know what was going on between him and Preston. If he was screwing the owner, I was going to be out on my ass as soon as the brat batted an eyelash at him.

  And if he was bending over for Preston, why in the hell was he flirting with everything that moved?

  As he started to ramble on, oversharing and talking about the shoot itself, I could almost feel his anger rising. No comments about his own idiotic behavior, just random notes that they knew how a shoot affected him, and that he wanted his passion to come through in the photos.

  Then it took a turn for the nasty and absurd.

  Every little comment I’d said, and some I couldn’t even remember making, was laid out on the website. He told them I called him a hooker and said he should be making twenty bucks a blow job on the corner. I never said an amount or what activity he should be doing.

  Not that the specifics would matter much if Preston saw.

  The brat was clearly trying to get me fired.

  By the time I’d finished more of the edits and sent the photos off, my messages were getting terse, and I was a bit…frustrated. The comments on the blog were clearly supporting Eli’s fucked-up version of events, and I was getting tired of reading about what a horrible person I was.

  Finally giving up, I closed the computer and walked away. Hours of staring at the computer screen had my head hurting, and hours of watching Eli’s long, naked body had lower parts of my anatomy rebelling.

  As much as my head realized how difficult he was and how I was never going to get involved with someone like that again, my cock didn’t have the same aversion. Knowing that my own body was betraying me, and making it harder to do my job, just made my frustration rise even higher.

  Everything in me knew Eli and everyone like him was bad news, but my goddamned dick couldn’t get the message. The last time I’d had a shoot with him, I’d had to break down and jerk off. I wasn’t sure what I’d been angrier about when it was finally done, myself for being weak, or Eli for being a temptation I didn’t need.

  When I’d first started dating, I couldn’t figure out why the nice girls or even the wicked ones didn’t really appeal to me. After I figured out I was gay, I’d run into the same problem with the nice, professional guys my mother kept pushing at me.

  After the initial shock had faded for her, she’d made it her mission in life to find me a “nice boy,” not letting anything stop her from getting me fixed up with someone she thought of as perfect. But the polite, presentable guys she dragged me to meet at every social event she could find weren’t any more interesting than a lot of the women I’d been introduced to.

  Sure, my imagination and libido took more interest in the guys, but the passion that people talked about had been missing.

  Well, it’d been missing until I’d met a bratty little twink in college. With nothing in common but a mutual love of spankings and drama that turned into fiery sex, we hadn’t lasted long, but it’d shown me what I was missing.

  My mother had chalked it up to a man’s love of “bad girls” that she translated to “bad boys,” but I hadn’t even tried to explain. Until it’d become absolutely necessary after the disastrous explosion that my life became when Ken lost his fucking mind.

  Pushing that out of my head, I found myself looking back down at the computer. My finally behaving cock went back to rebelling at the thoughts of Eli’s pictures that were just there waiting for me. But I was a professional photographer, not some porn director who jacked off to his model's pictures.

  Needing a break, and a way to release some of the energy that was building inside me, I started stripping off my clothes. I might not have a gym membership, but I had a few weights at home and a park not far from the apartment that was well lit and busy enough in the evening that I didn’t worry about being out after dark.

  Ignoring my hard cock that was still pushing for attention I wasn’t willing to give it, I headed into the small bedroom. It was plain and sparsely furnished, but it had a bed and dresser, so I couldn’t complain. Before I could even grab my workout clothes, my phone started ringing again.

  “Shit.” If that idiot thought he could badger me into changing my mind, he was crazy.

  Long strides had me out to the living room in seconds, my anger coming out in every step. Swiping my finger across the screen, I saw that it was a different number from earlier and tried to rein in my anger. “Landry Photography, Roman speaking.”

  “You have to reshoot the scenes with the red panties.”

  Eli.

  “I thought those pictures turned out fine.” They were from the first part of the shoot and had a different look than the ones I’d taken toward the end, but there was nothing wrong with the photos.

  “The color is coming out pink, and I want different lighting on them before we put them on the site. There�
��s no way I’m putting up pictures that look pink but that are labeled red. It will confuse the customers.” His tone said he thought I was a moron for not understanding what he was talking about.

  He was insane. “Fine. When we do the full line, we’ll reshoot those.”

  “No, it needs to be now. I need to post about it, and I want those photos for tomorrow. It has to be tonight.”

  “You're insane. I’m not reshooting those photos because you don’t think they look red enough. You have plenty of pictures from that shoot already, pick one of those. You’re half-naked and harder than a porn star in almost all of them, so it doesn’t matter what you put up!” So I was probably crossing the line with that one, but I really didn’t care.

  “Your job is to take the goddamned photos I tell you to. A trained monkey could do it! Don’t make me explain that to Preston. I’ll be at the studio in half an hour and your judgmental ass better be there.” Then the brat hung up.

  “Of all the—” Too angry to even finish my sentence, I started grabbing my clothes.

  If he wanted pictures, I was going to give him pictures, but if he thought he could hold his fucking relationship with Preston over my head when he was shaking that hard cock at everyone who scrolled through the site, he was crazy.

  I’d just about had all I could take of that little brat.

  Chapter 6

  Eli

  “Okay, got to finish the paper because that’s due tomorrow, post to the blog, look at the reports that Preston sent over, oh, pay the electricity bill—they really should have made me sign up for automatic payments—and there was something else.” Tossing my keys and phone onto the couch, hoping that I’d remember later where I’d put my keys, I headed into the kitchen. “Caffeine and then I’ll write down the list.”

  And possibly figure out what I was missing…

  My to-do list was never-ending. Preston kept harping on me to get some kind of app for my phone to keep it all straight, but actually having a way to remember it all might give me a heart attack. As it was, the parts that I did manage to keep track of were enough to make me want to shove it all out the window and go get drunk.

  I kept telling myself I was too responsible for that—and most days I was.

  Sometimes it all just got to be too much, and it exploded in my head. I was trying to keep it from happening, but everything felt out of control and overwhelming. As I headed into the kitchen, I grabbed a notepad on the dining room table to start writing things down on.

  Maybe an app would have been more practical, but there weren’t many things in my life that made me feel relaxed. When I found something that was calming, like writing things down or spankings, I tended to hold on to them like a crazy person.

  Digging around in a junk drawer for a pen, I finally managed to find a pink unicorn pen that was a gag gift for my birthday. I tossed it and the paper on the kitchen table and started making coffee. The little pod things were fun, but it was a serious caffeine day, so I went for the regular coffeemaker.

  Friends had complained that I had too many kitchen gadgets and little machines, but that was just ridiculous. You could never have too many coffeemakers. When the smell started weaving its way through the kitchen, I grabbed my biggest mug and doctored it up.

  Taking it over to the table, I sat down and started brainstorming. The list was endless. Between household things and work and everything else, it was ridiculous. I needed a secretary or a houseboy.

  “Wait. If I’m the sub, then I think I’m supposed to be the houseboy. Shit, that won’t work.” Well, that blew all my plans out of the water. No Dom for me if I was supposed to do all the housework and keep track of everything.

  Taking a sip of my coffee, I had to smile. “Maybe I’m a Dom in disguise. A Dom that likes to be spanked and get fucked.”

  As I wrote out the never-ending list, I kept telling myself it was one step at a time and I’d get everything done. Preston kept saying that I needed to at least hire someone a few hours a week to help manage everything, but that seemed like cheating. I wasn’t running the day-to-day operations of the business.

  Finally getting it all written down and refilling my cup, I stood up and stretched. It was only late afternoon, but I could already feel a headache pushing at the base of my skull, and I was tired. Some of that was my own fault for going out to dinner with friends the night before, but I wasn’t old enough for one late night to completely run me over.

  My habit of burning the candle at both ends wasn’t helping, but the naughty voice in the back of my head said we knew exactly why I was so worn out. It’d been entirely too long since I’d had sex or a scene. Just a spanking to take the edge off would help.

  I wasn’t exactly looking for something lifestyle. Being at some master’s beck and call would make me nuts, and not in a good way. But I wanted something more intense than a random spanking once in a while. Men who were looking for more intense BDSM relationships wanted sweet, and someone who would at least try to behave.

  I couldn’t promise that—not without lying.

  I’d spent too much time figuring out who I was and what I needed to be happy to try to fit into someone else’s idea of what submission should look like. I was a proud brat, and I wasn’t going to change that.

  Even if it would make it easier to find someone to date.

  Heading back out to the living room, I paused long enough to grab my phone and go into my office. It was a beautiful mess. While I’d done my best to keep the rest of the house looking reasonable and put together, my office was like my bedroom—all me.

  A relaxing gray color was painted on the walls, and spread out over two different desks were the crazy disjointed pieces of my life. In one part of my overgrown office, there were notes about blog posts, financial printouts, photos, and even a pair of panties that I was still trying to decide if I liked the color. In the other were charts and graphs for a paper I was writing for my MBA program and all kinds of other notes about classes I still needed to take and upcoming projects.

  I was so close to finishing I could almost taste it, but with the end in sight, I wasn’t sure what would happen afterward. With family obligations wearing down on me and the freedom that school had given me slowly disappearing, I was starting to look at a second masters or even doctorate program, just to keep everything else at bay.

  Dr. Elijah Farris—it had a pretty good ring to it.

  When the phone started to ring, I knew exactly who it was. My mother must have been part demon because even thinking about her was enough to set her radar going. A quick glance confirmed it and I answered the phone, determined to get her off it quickly.

  “Hello, Mother.” Setting my cup down, I tried not to sound as exasperated as I felt.

  “Are you sure you can’t come back out this weekend?” Her confused tone set my nerves on edge.

  Telling her no was easy, getting her to understand that no amount of badgering would change my mind was difficult. “Mother, we already had this discussion.” Three times. “I was out there two weeks ago. I have too much going on to just drop everything.”

  Especially for stupid social events where she was trying to fix me up with women who’d never understand me. For one, I was gay, and for the other, when both of us wanted to be drama queens wearing panties, the insanity would just get to be too much.

  I had no delusions about the kind of guy I needed in my life. Someone who wouldn’t mind my crazy leaking out on a regular basis, who liked keeping in charge of me—ideally while over his lap—and someone gay. That last one was kind of important. My mother would never understand that.

  She meant well, but it was like we were from two different planets. I could play human when it was required, but I was from somewhere a lot more fabulous than Earth if she was the typical resident. She sighed. “But Elijah, you said you’d be out again soon.”

  Soon did not mean two weeks.

  “With school and my obligations here, you know that isn’t possible.” Going
to school on the other side of the country from my family had been wonderful. Being able to drag things out by getting my MBA had been even better.

  Yup, I was going to need a doctorate.

  “I just never thought that when we allowed you to go to school so far away, it would mean we’d never get to see you.” She honestly didn’t seem to understand how ridiculous that statement was.

  They’d allowed me?

  My grandmother had been the only one in the family who’d been able to see past the perfectly normal walls I’d built around me growing up. So, knowing my family, she’d set aside a good chunk for my education to make sure I could go anywhere I’d wanted.

  The trust had been designed to provide anything I might need for college and getting started in life, but my grandmother had worded it so it was vague enough that I could justify a lot. It had been enough to not only pay for college, but also for a house when I’d decided living in the dorms was a terrible idea and for the initial startup costs for the business. Plus, there’d been enough left over that I wouldn’t have to worry about anything financial while the business was still growing.

  A generous grandma was wonderful, but a roommate in college who was majoring in finance and liked playing the stock market was even better. He’d made me a ton of money as long as I would walk around in something sexy once in a while; it had been a brilliant tradeoff as far as I was concerned.

  Walking around in an old-fashioned dressing gown and stockings while he tried not to watch had been my first foray into showing off my desires. I was probably lucky he was a sweet closet case that was too nervous to try anything, or it could have gotten awkward. As it was, I just got a good friend who still stalked the site and gave great financial advice.

  Grandma would have probably found the whole thing hilarious, but she’d died when I was a teenager. I could still remember right before she passed when she’d told me that no matter who I was inside, she loved me and wanted me to be happy. The money had made my parents crazy, but it’d been a lifeline for me.