Still, that didn't make me sexy. I was sure men found me attractive enough, and I'd had boyfriends in the past. Sex, compliments, and everything that went along with relationships.
But...
When Asher Landseer, the billionaire CEO of Landseer Enterprises asked to take sexy photos of me, I balked.
It was a requirement, he said. Not a requirement of his choosing, either, but mine. At least it was mine in a way. I could say no, I could disagree, but if I wanted him to agree to what I'd asked of him, then I needed to accept his requirement.
A small part of me wanted to run away right then. What was I getting myself into? He'd invited me to a restaurant to discuss something and that was it. Granted, he wanted to discuss me possibly becoming an egg donor and surrogate mother for him and his wife, so the situation was already awkward, but this just made it worse.
He teased me, tormented me, except I thought he didn't mean it in a bad way. An accident, like someone who was unsure how to proceed. Thinking back to what I'd done, I felt the same. Why did I curl my toes, let them trace towards his crotch and his stiffening manhood hidden beneath his pants. He'd offered me a calf massage and nothing more, and I was the one who took it further. Asher was the one who elevated it, almost getting me off with his foot, but then it stopped.
And started. And stopped.
Sitting in our private booth at The Simple Path, a luxurious Japanese restaurant, I answered him.
"Fine," I said. "I'll do it."
"Good," he said with a deliciously deviant grin on his face.
I wanted to kiss him so badly, but he reached for a piece of battered and fried sweet potato from our vegetable tempura plate. Why was I sitting next to him now? I'd started across the table, less intimate, and now here I was, sitting elbow to elbow with him, the Asher Landseer.
It was the sake. I was never a good drinker, always quick to get a bit of a buzz, and we'd gone through three cups of the drink already. Not drunk, not by a long shot, but I wanted an excuse. I needed a reason to stay near him, desired it. As per our agreement, I would answer him about surrogacy when I was good and ready, and not a moment sooner, and he would spend the day with me until I did. Was that selfish? Who had the better part of the deal there? It was his idea, a type of control, or the giving away of it, but what did he really want out of this?
I could keep him to myself, at least for a little bit, and pretend there was some other reason he wanted to share my company, some other purpose besides his request for me to think about becoming his wife's egg donor. She was infertile, they didn't see each other often, maybe he was lonely?
Maybe... he wanted... me?
I didn't know if I could let him take sexy pictures of me, though. A hobby, nothing more, just something he enjoyed doing in his spare time.
I never thought I was sexy. I still wasn't sure.
...
Asher didn't know what had come over him. He didn't know why he'd asked Jessika to model for his photography. It wasn't a shameful thing, not in his mind, and he owned all of the proper equipment, but this was new to him. He couldn't help himself. It was as if he needed to ask her, some fate ordained.
He never believed in fates or destinies or anything like that, though. People made their own paths in life, and he'd made his. He'd invited her here under the awkward, though innocuous reason of seeing how she would answer his request from the day prior.
Yes, nothing more than that, right? Except yesterday he'd chastised her by putting her on the table in his private meeting room and stripping her of all her clothes. True, she ruined one of his favorite books first, the one that his father had given to him after he graduated from private school and before he'd gone to college, but it was replaceable. Special, with memories, but she never destroyed the memories and sentiment.
He didn't think Jessika could ever do something like that. She only made them, new ones, blossomed and nurtured thoughts.
She was plain, regular, and... no, she was none of those things. Her clothing looked average, but like any book, there was a lot going on beneath her cover. He wanted to know it, to read her, to sit by a fire while drinking a fine wine and exploring every aspect of her as if she were a classic work of literature and he was stuck inside on a rainy, dismal day.
He had a wife. He couldn't do these things. This was some inexplicable fascination. He tried to dissuade himself, letting himself look at her. She wore the casual chemise shirt he gave her yesterday after he'd ripped the buttons from her other shirt. The skirt covering her legs went a little higher than her hips, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. Her perfume, whatever the scent, was pleasant but not too intoxicatingly so.
But her eyes! She looked at everything as if it was exciting. Curiosity flickered through them, glimmers of innocence wanting to learn more. They were a startling blue, like the sky on a bright summer's day, but he felt like they might cloud up and hide her true feelings if he so much as breathed the wrong way, sent forth a bad gust of wind. And her hands, timid, but wanting. The way she held her chopsticks when she reached for a strip of chicken kara age, slow and unsure, with a tilt of her head as she looked his way. He wanted to nod, say yes, it's delicious and I think you'll love it. He wanted to pick the meat up in his fingers and lean towards her, close, placing it lightly in her mouth, feeding her the morsel, letting her chew and swallow it before kissing the remnants off her pink, delicate lips.
That was too much, though. If he scared her, worried her, he didn't think he'd have another chance. He wanted to squeeze her, grab her, demand things from her. He wanted to lay her down on the bench right then and there and rip off her clothes and press his warm mouth against every part of her body.
He wanted her to be her, but he wanted her to be his, too.
And so, without thinking, the urge overriding the logical part of his brain, he'd asked her to model for his photography hobby. She agreed. She agreed! This startled him somewhat, but he wasn't entirely surprised. Except now what?
He needed to tone this down, to lighten the mood and keep all intimate thoughts at bay. This would be strictly an enjoyable pastime where he showed her a few things about taking pictures and modeling. And that was it. No more.
He had a wife, he knew that, and this was some odd, mild fascination with an interesting woman. Nothing more or less than that, and in time it would pass.
...
I had taken a taxi to the restaurant since I didn't own a car; it was easier to travel in the city without one most of the time. A lack of parking spots, or traffic issues, or any other numerous problems could and did happen on a daily basis, making owning a car more of a luxury than a necessity here. I liked not having a car, anyways. Sometimes it was nice to imagine it as freedom. With cars I was stuck on city roads, but walking, or a taxi, or the subway could bring me almost anywhere.
I didn't know if Asher agreed with that, but he had a car of sorts. He drove, he said, sometimes, but he had a man who drove him around most of the time. Especially now as we'd both been drinking, so it obviously wasn't safe for either of us to drive.
We stepped out of the restaurant, a little tipsy, after Asher paid the waiter for our meal. The food was as delicious as I imagined—probably better—but the price!
"Did you really just pay three hundred dollars for our lunch?" I asked him after sneaking a peek at the bill.
Asher shrugged, nonchalant. "They included the tip in the bill," he said.
He held my arm in his as we walked down the street towards his car. I felt nice then, sophisticated. Asher was a gentleman, if nothing else, and he more than acted the part. His free hand reached across the front of his torso towards where my arm held onto his and he placed his fingers on my hand in a silent gesture.
Safe, it said. You're safe, don't worry. Safe and mine. I wanted to think the last part was at least somewhat true, but I knew it couldn't be. We'd discussed this before leaving.
"We need to stop this," he had said. "You're an attractive woman, but I'm married, and—"
Yes. It didn't really matter what he said, but I understood it. I completely agreed with him no matter how much I didn't want to.
The bright, noontime sun shone down on us as we turned the corner. People passed us by on the streets, barely giving us a second glance. Did they think we were a couple? I wondered about that. We might look somewhat like it. I eased closer to him, tried to relax and act as if we'd known each other for longer than a couple of days. Relaxed, friendly, intimate, close.
I tilted my head, just a little bit, and rested the side of my forehead on his shoulder. He smiled and looked over at me. If I moved my face up, turned my chin just so, I could have snuck in for a quick kiss.
"Are you alright?" he asked, concerned.
"Yes," I said. "I'm just a little tired. The sake, maybe."
I wasn't tired, not at all. The alcohol was doing some things, but that wasn't the reason I had my head on his shoulder. It made a wonderful excuse, though.
We stopped in front of a black car with tinted windows. As soon as Asher approached, I heard the click of a door unlocking. Asher reached for the door handle, pulled on it, and swept open the door for me. Reluctantly, I let go of his arm and stepped into the car.
The back seat was bigger than it looked from the outside. I sat on the plush leather and shimmied over to give Asher room to come in, too. Stretching my legs out as far as they could go, I still had a few more inches before my toes would touch the back of the drivers seat. Asher grinned and slipped in beside me.
"Where to, boss?" the man in the driver's seat asked.
"Home, Jeremy," Asher said. "To the guest house, though. Jessika and I have private business arrangements to discuss, so I'd rather not go to the main house for now."
"Sure thing. Not a problem," Jeremy said.
Asher nodded, the car started, and we were off. That was that, and I expected a typical ride to wherever we were off to, except Asher had other things in mind. Touching a switch on the hand rest next to him, a piece of dark, thick glass rose up from behind the front seats and blocked my view of the road in front of us. Presumably it blocked Jeremy's view of us, too. Asher confirmed as much.
"I thought you might like the privacy," he said. "If not I'll lower it again."
I shrugged, smiled, nonchalant. "It's fine."
"Relax if you want," Asher added. "Buckle your seat belt? Or not? Shall we live on the wild side?"
"Ooh!" I said with mock enthusiasm. "Dangerous, are we?"
He laughed. "As dangerous as we can be with a chauffeur with an impeccable driving record."
I decided on not buckling my seat belt, but for other, possibly even more dangerous reasons.
I don't know what came over me, and I don't think I would have done this regularly, but my hand crept towards the buttons of my chemise and I undid the top one. Asher took no notice as I did this, instead peering out the window at something or other. I undid the next button, and the next, letting loose a sizable amount of my cl**vage. Then another, and one more. As I undid the last button, revealing a thin line of bare flesh from the top of my neck to the curves of my waist, hindered only by my lacy white bra, Asher glanced over at me.
It took him a few seconds to register what I had done and what I was doing, but once he did he merely stared. This wasn't quite the reaction I wanted, nor did I know what to do next, so I fiddled with the last button and waited for him to speak.