The tape mark was a strip of gaffer tape on cold concrete.
I knelt on it until my knees went numb and the leak from breakfast dried in a shiny track down my thigh. The studio under the lake house was all black walls and softboxes and a bed that wasn’t for sleeping. Coils of rope hung from a pegboard. A camera waited on a tripod like it had been pointed at this mark on purpose.
Alexander came down an hour later with coffee in one hand and a remote in the other. He set the mug on a crate, walked a slow circle around my naked body, and stopped behind me.
“Chin up. t**s out. You look like a girl who got f****d in a kitchen and then remembered to be ashamed. Drop the shame. Keep the used look.”
The camera clicked.
Not a phone. A real shutter. Each one sounded like a lock closing.
“Hands b
