9. Exposure
NINE
EXPOSURE
NAILAH
I said no to Malik on a Tuesday.
It wasn't a big no. Wasn't dramatic. He called me at lunch asking if I'd help him format some pitch deck for his pop up event thing, “just real quick, Nai, you're better at the design stuff than me," and I was sitting at my desk with a deadline of my own and a half eaten salad, and I said:
"No. I can't today."
Silence.
Three full seconds of silence on the line. Long enough for me to hear the confusion forming.
"Since when?" He laughed. Not mean. Just genuinely thrown. “Nai, it’ll take thirty minutes. I'll send you the file."
"I have a deadline, Malik. Ask someone else."
More silence. Then, “Damn. Okay. You good?"
"I'm fine. Just busy."
"Alright. Love you."
"Love you too."
I hung up. Set the phone face down on my desk.
Here's the thing people don't understand: I've always been capable of saying no. I say no at work all the time. I push back on briefs that don't make sense. I tell the creative director when a campaign is off brand. I'm not a pushover in my professional life and never have been.
But Malik is different. Malik is family.
And with family, with the people who love you, saying no feels like taking something away from them.
Like the relationship only works because you keep giving.
Like the moment you stop being available, you stop being necessary.
That's what I was unlearning. Not confidence, boundaries. Different lesson entirely.
That night I received a call. The phone rang at 11:14 PM while I was in bed scrolling IG, doing market research.
I stared at the screen. Jarvis. We'd never talked on the phone. Everything between us existed in text messages and that room and my apartment. Short. Controlled. Contained.
A phone call was something else. A voice in your ear without a body attached. Intimate. I knew there was a shift happening, we both knew and felt it.
So, I answered, deciding to go with the flow.
"Hey."
"Hey." His voice was different through the phone. Lower. Closer. Like he was lying down too. "You busy?"
"Reviewing some social media stuff for work. Somebody said our body oil made them feel like 'a glazed goddess on vacation' and now I have to figure out how to use that in a campaign without it sounding insane."
He laughed, "That's actually fire. Use it."
"It's ridiculous."
"It's honest. That's better than anything you'd write in a meeting."
I smiled at my ceiling. Pulled the covers up. "Why are you calling me, Jarvis?"
A pause. Long enough for me to hear him breathe. "I don't know. I was editing. Looking at frames from a shoot today. And I kept thinking about..." Another pause. "I don't know."
"You said that already."
"Yeah." Quiet. "I guess I just wanted to hear your voice when it's not telling me what to do."
Something shifted in my chest. Softened.
"What does it sound like right now?" I asked.
"Like you're smiling."
I was.
We talked for an hour.
Not about the studio. Not about sessions or silk or what my voice did to his body.
We talked about nothing. Everything. He told me about his first camera, a Canon AE-1 his uncle gifted him.
He was fourteen. Shot three rolls of film before he realized he'd been loading them wrong. I laughed until my stomach hurt.
I told him about wanting to be a novelist. How I used to write stories in composition notebooks in middle school, whole worlds with characters who said the things I couldn't say out loud.
How I settled for copywriting because it paid and still technically involved words.
How sometimes I still wrote things in my Notes app that I never showed anyone.
"Show me," he said.
"Maybe."
"I'll wait."
Silence. But not empty. Full. The kind of silence that happens when two people are lying in separate beds in separate apartments across the city and neither wants to be the one who says goodnight.
"I want to photograph you," he said. Out of nowhere. Or maybe not out of nowhere. Maybe it had been building the whole hour.
"In the front studio. Not the back. Your image. My camera." A breath. "If you want."
"Why?"
"Because I've shot a hundred women and none of them have me as mesmerized as you. You’re beautiful Nai, and I want to see what happens when you let me capture that.”
I turned onto my side, blushing hard as hell. Phone pressed between my ear and the pillow. "One condition."
"Name it."
"You shoot me the way I want to be seen. Not the way you see your clients. I'm not a client."
"You’ll never be a client." His voice dropped. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"The blue robe. The one from your cabinet. I want to wear that. Nothing else. The chair from the front. One light. Everything else dark."
Silence. I could hear him swallow.
"Saturday," I said.
"Saturday."
Neither of us hung up. Another minute passed. Just breathing.
"Jarvis."
"Yeah."
"This was nice. Call me more often.”
"Yeah." Soft. Almost shy. "It was."
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Orchid.”
This man.
Saturday came fast.
The afternoon light came through the sheer covered windows turned golden, honeyed. The gallery portraits watched from their frames.
Jarvis had the chair centered. One overhead spot. Everything else dim. He was loading the camera when I walked in, barefoot, carrying the cobalt silk robe over my arm.
He didn't greet me the way he did in the back room. No waiting. No stillness. No offering.
He was working.
"Where do I change?" I asked.
"Change here or the bathroom. Doesn't matter. But when you sit in that chair, you're mine until I say we're done."
Authority in his voice.
I didn't care. I pulled my t-shirt over my head right there in the front studio. Unhooked my bra. Stepped out of my jeans. Stood naked in front of him for three full seconds, letting him see me in daylight for the first time.
His hands stopped on the camera. His eyes traveled my body with a hunger he didn't hide but also didn't act on.
I slid the robe on. Cobalt silk against my bare skin. Cool at first, then warming. I tied it loose. Low. The neckline gaping open enough to show the inner curve of my breasts. The hem hitting mid thigh.
I walked to the chair. Sat the way I always sat: legs apart, hands on armrests, chin up.
"No," he said.
I blinked.
"Stand up."
I stood. My body responding to his voice before my mind decided whether to obey. The same involuntary compliance he showed me in the back room. I felt it now: the pull of a voice that knows what it wants and isn't asking.
"Face the window. Left shoulder toward me."
I turned.
"Drop the robe. Just the left side. Off your shoulder. Let it fall to the elbow."
I slid the silk down. It pooled at the crook of my arm, exposing my left shoulder, the curve of my back, the side of my breast barely covered by the remaining fabric. The light caught the oil still lingering on my skin from this morning's shower. I glowed.
The shutter clicked. Once. Twice.
"Don't move." His voice low. Focused. "Turn your head. Just slightly. Chin down. I want the back of your neck."
I gave it to him. The vulnerability of the nape. The short hair at my hairline. The exposed spine.
Click. Click. Click.
"Now face me. Slow."
I turned. The robe hanging off one shoulder. My collarbone bare. The shadow between my breasts visible but my nipples covered. Revealed and concealed. The tension between what's shown and what's withheld.
"Sit."
I sat. Legs apart this time. The robe falling open at my thighs but still closed at the center. My hands on the armrests.
"Wider."
I let my knees fall wider. The robe slipped. The inner curve of both thighs visible now. The silk barely covering what was between them
"Eyes on me. Not the lens. Me."
I looked past the camera. Found his face behind it. His jaw tight. His eyes dark. Not the composed professional anymore. A man fighting to stay behind the lens instead of crossing the room.
Click.
"That's the one," he said. Barely audible.
He lowered the camera.
The room was quiet. Just the hum of the overhead light and our breathing and the distance between us that had been shrinking all afternoon.
He set the camera on the table, then crossed the room.
Three steps. Four. Until he was standing in front of the chair. In front of me. Looking down at me the way I looked down at him in the back room. The reversal so complete it made my breath catch.
He didn't ask permission.
In the back room, he couldn't move without my word. He couldn't breathe without my say. But this was the front studio. His territory. His rules. And out here, Jarvis Reed took what he wanted.
He dropped to his knees.
His hands found my knees. Pushed them apart.
Wider than they already were. The robe fell fully open.
I was bare underneath. Had been all afternoon.
And now he could see it. All of it. The slickness already visible on my inner thighs because being directed, being told what to do by a man I trusted, had made me wetter than I expected.
He looked up at me from between my legs. Eye contact. Direct.
"I've been thinking about this since you walked in," he said. His voice the low register. The one that lived in the basement of his chest.
His fingers found my inner thigh. Just resting there. Warm. Then moving. Tracing upward in a line so faint I almost couldn't feel it. Almost. My skin prickling in the wake of it. His thumb brushing the crease where my thigh met my pelvis, back and forth, back and forth, never crossing the line.
Then one finger. Sliding through. Barely parting my lips. Grazing the wetness there without pressing into it. A ghost of a touch that made my hips shift toward him on instinct.
He circled. Wide. Lazy. Around my clit without landing on it. The heat of his fingertip close enough for me to feel, the pressure so faint it was torment. My breathing changed. Shorter. Shallower. My thighs opening wider on their own, my body begging what my mouth hadn't said yet.
His circle tightened. Closer. The pad of his finger dragging through the slickness pooled at the hood of my clit. One pass. Feather-light. My stomach contracted.