"Shhh," he says, then goes silent as he rests his hands on my thighs and kisses my inner thigh, right above my right knee.
Then his lips travel higher and higher, and I'm holding my breath as his mouth closes over my sex--and also over the pearls. I feel his tongue tease my clit, and I also feel the movement of those pearls. It's strangely erotic, and even more so when he takes one hand off my knee, and then very gently eases part of the strand of pearls inside me.
"Wyatt!" I gasp, but he only laughs, then lowers his mouth so that his tongue is teasing my clit as he slowly--torturously slowly--pulls out the string of pearls even as his finger slides inside me.
The sensation is insane. Incredible, and I writhe against his finger hoping for more. Deeper, harder, I don't know. I just want what he is giving . . . only so, so much more.
He's taken me right to the edge, and I can't wait to explode. I'm on the precipice, the verge--
And then suddenly I'm not.
I realize I've closed my eyes, and now they fly open again. "What--?"
"No more pearls," he says, then steps back and stands up.
"Wyatt," I protest. "I want more."
"Good. I like you wanting."
"Wyatt," I protest again, because he's made me completely crazy . . . and is tormenting me by not following through. "You are not a nice man."
But he only smiles, a wicked gleam in his eye as he unties me. "Go change," he says after a moment. "It's already past noon. JP will be here soon."
The problem with me being anonymous is, of course, keeping me anonymous. We decided that JP can be in the loop, because he really needs to be in the office so that he can work on prep for the show. Wyatt's promised that he'll set up the lighting himself, and that JP won't be in the room during a shoot--and for that matter, he won't see the images that show my face--but the secret is just too hard to keep.
We also decided not to bother with makeup. Wyatt said he could add lip color in the lab or darkroom or whatever, and the rest of my face will be hidden. And the odds of finding a makeup artist on such short notice who'll sign a nondisclosure are slim.
"Are we done in the studio? Or are you going to meet with him and then kick him upstairs?"
"Actually, I was thinking that today we'd do some beach shots."
Since I never turn down a walk on the beach, I agree eagerly, even though I'm a little nervous about how he intends to do show-worthy images on a public beach in the middle of the day.
He has me put on a thin, white cotton sundress from his wardrobe closet, and then we walk the short distance to the Santa Monica Pier, where we grab ice cream cones, then stand at the rail looking north toward the Palisades. "I have a house there, you know."
I glance sideways at him. "In the Pacific Palisades?"
"Yup."
"I thought you lived in Venice Beach."
He nods. "I do. I rent the Palisades place to a family with kids. It's part of my trust, so I keep the income. But I prefer living by the beach."
"And paying for it with your photography business," I say, remembering what he'd told me back in Santa Barbara.
He meets my eyes. "You remembered."
"Sure," I say softly. "I remember everything."
He just looks at me. But the moment breaks when ice cream drips from my cone onto my hand, and I toss it into a nearby trashcan. I'm about to pull a tissue from my purse when Wyatt takes my hand, then slowly licks away the ice cream, sending wild shivers running all through my body. "Wyatt," I say, his name barely a breath.
His lips curve in a hint of a smile. "I like the way you taste."
My cheeks heat, and not from the beating sun. A moment passes, and I clear my throat. "I thought we were walking on the beach."
"We are," he says, still holding my sticky hand. "Come on."
We backtrack, then follow the path down to the parking lot and then onto the beach. I'm wearing sandals, and I take them off to walk in the surf, laughing when the waves crash higher than expected and dampen the hem of the dress.