Wondering what I was getting myself into and pondering the possibility I had some sort of White Knight Syndrome, I wandered into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. I idly scrolled through the photos on the little screen on the back of the camera, making sure I went the other direction on the feed this time. Honestly, I won’t deny that I enjoyed seeing those pics of Angela with her butt in the air, but those were obviously taken by her now ex-boyfriend, and that was a bridge a little bit too far.
Anyway, scrolling through the photos in the other direction, I took the time to really look at some of the scenes Angela had set up, with the backdrops, the clothing, the poses… The more I looked and analyzed the shots, the more I came to understand what she’d been saying about ‘more real than real life’. Almost every scene had a dozen or more photos, with slightly different angles, framing, and subtle variations in the pose. I couldn’t necessarily tell you which one was the best, but I could easily imagine Angela looking over the batch from a given shoot and eliminating them one by one until she arrived at the best of the lot.
Of course, the tiny little screen on the back of the camera really didn’t allow for picking up much in the way of subtleties, but still, I could spot the bigger differences.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Angela said as she came into the room with a sort of day bag full of stuff. “If you don’t mind, I’d really like to do a couple of outfits, then some concept shots, if you have time,” she said.
“I’m all yours,” I replied, hefting the camera. “I’m actually having fun doing this, so it really isn’t some sort of imposition.”
“That’s awesome!” Angela said, her smile lighting up the room. “So, for the first shot, I want to set the scene like this- I’m getting ready to go out on the town. We’ll do a few with this cocktail dress,” she said, indicating the slinky little pink dress she had on. “Let’s start over here by the vanity.”
She laid out the shot, me standing off to one side as if I’m waiting for her to finish so we can go, while she sat in the chair and reached down to strap up her stiletto heels. She first angled the chair just right, looking through the viewfinder and visualizing where she wanted me to snap the picture, then sat in the chair, posing a few different ways, from looking down at her shoes, to twisting her body to look up at the camera. The twist and angle did amazing things for her cleavage, but also highlighted her fantastic, shapely legs at the same time.
We looked at the handful of shots, and Angela made some adjustments in framing, telling me to stand just a little bit to the left, and take the photo from a somewhat lower altitude.
She also modified her pose slightly, and after maybe a dozen shots like that, she called it good enough.
“Alright, now this one, I’ll be leaning in to the mirror to work on my lipstick. We’ll try it with shoes and without. Since the mirror will be in full view, we need to think about what angle to shoot at to get the best background…” she said, examining the vanity from various angles until she was satisfied.
“O.K., stand here, and remember, don’t be so tall,” she joked, since my height had been a recurring issue with the correct perspectives. Angela stood, resting her thighs against the stone top of the vanity, leaning forward to use a little lip brush to touch up her already perfect pink lipstick. She had a slight sway to her back, bumping her butt into prominence in the shot. We took a few like that, then Angela looked them over, slightly adjusted my angle and used the wrinkles sewn into the dress to gently slide the hem up, gradually losing the excess over the length. When she resumed her pose, the hem was roughy two point eight millimeters from the bottom of her ass, showing absolutely maximum leg. We shot a few more with that pose, then the same pose but with the shoes kicked off and to the side but still in the frame.
Angela was satisfied with what we’d done so far, so we took a break for a few minutes while she uploaded the whole series to her computer. When she was done with that, we went back into the bedroom.
“Can I- can we shoot using the bed?” she asked, shyly.
“Yeah, I guess that would be fine,” I said.
Angela took a few moments to artfully mess up the bed, so it looked as if she’d just woken up. She took off her shoes and put them off to the side by her bag of stuff, then pulled a piece of clothing out of the bag. Facing away from me, she peeled off her pink party dress, leaving herself wearing nothing but a little lacy thong panty.
I glanced away, a bit embarrassed to be watching her change clothes, only to realize that the vanity mirror gave halfway decent view of her now naked front. I looked for a little bit longer than I maybe should have, but hey, I’m only human, right?
“O.K., I’m ready,” Angela said and walked past me to the bed, where she flopped down on her belly. She was wearing an oversized T shirt, the midriff cut off high enough to completely expose her washboard abs. Of course, lying on her belly, I couldn’t see those abs. All my attention was focused on her amazing butt, to be honest.
“Alright, stand… about there,” she instructed, pointing to a spot at a diagonal to the direction she was oriented. As she lifted herself up on one elbow and pointed, I got a bit of underboob along with those amazing well-defined abs.
I stood where she’d indicated, and thinking of the height thing, crouched down a little bit to frame the picture with how I thought it’d look best. I snapped a first test photo, and the flash went off, which Angela didn’t like.
“No, I don’t think we want fill flash,” she said, sitting up and holding her hand out for the camera. After looking at the pic, she made some adjustments on the camera, explaining that we wanted just the natural light from the window to give a somewhat backlit effect.
“Now, move a little bit more this way than before,” she said, while she lay back down on her belly and adjusted her pose a bit.
I snapped a few, then sat down on the bed so we could look at what we’d gotten. Angela seemed satisfied, so we shot a dozen or so more, with her making slight adjustments to her pose.
“This is great,” she said, scrolling through the pictures on the camera. “Thanks for helping me out like this, Leah. I know it isn’t what you signed up for.”
“I was serious when I said I was enjoying this,” I told her. “I’m getting a view into a completely different world. I mean, I’d never really given this stuff any thought before, so it’s cool to see the process.”
“This is half of my work,” Angela said, looking up from the camera. “Half is the time in the gym, and I guess the makeup and hair, to get myself ready to do these shots.”
“How many hours a day do you spend on this stuff?” I asked, curious.
“I try to get the shots done in blocks, then trickle them out as I process them. The photos we’ve taken today will get posted in the next few weeks.”
“So what we’ve shot will last you for a while, then?” I asked.
“Well, no,” Angela admitted. “At least not how you’re thinking. I’ll post an old photo that hasn’t been shown before, then one of the new ones, and maybe a selfie or a shot from a professional shoot on a typical day, and a few gym photos, for example. Since we shot several different scenes, I’ll have maybe ten pictures from today that I can upload eventually.”
"Sure, that makes sense,” I said. “So are we done for the day?”
“If you’re getting tired, we can be done,” Angela said. “Thanks a lot, again.”
“I can keep going if you want to do one or two more scenes,” I said.
“Can I ask a serious question, Leah?” Angela said, turning to face me and leaning back a bit to make more room.
“Um, sure?”
“How- how comfortable are you with this?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, like, you’re taking pictures in your bedroom of a girl who’s more than half naked. Are you really O.K. with that? It isn’t going to cause any problems, is it?” Angela asked, looking at my face for an answer.
I thought about it for a moment, and said, “O.K., it is a little weird, I’ll admit, but if Emmy were here she’d be perfectly O.K. with all of this anyway, and it’s not like- well, I mean, you’re a professional model. Like you said, this is your work. As long as…” I said, not sure how to formulate my thoughts. “So, Emmy and I have a friend, a girl named Jen. When I first met her, she was working as a stripper up in San Jose. So before I ever got to know her as a person, you know, I’d seen her do the naked splits not three feet away from my face, you know? But then, getting to know her over the last three years or so, I’ve almost forgotten that pretty much the first impression I had of her was how pink her lady bits were.”
Angela looked at me as if she was waiting for me to make my point, so I continued. “The thing is, that was her job. It took me a little while to stop thinking of her as ‘a stripper I know’ and instead as ‘a friend of mine who strips’, but we got that way.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Does she still, um, strip?” Angela asked.
“No, she hasn’t for a couple of years now, but that’s kinda beside the point. The first impression I had of you was ‘that amazingly hot girl I see at the gym’, right?” I said, making air quotes. “Then, ‘the friendly neighbor I see at the gym most mornings’, then ‘the neighbor who ran into a serious problem and needed help’. After that, you’ve become ‘new friend and roommate’ and now ‘friend and roommate who has an unusual job’. None of those were ever wrong, but each has just, um, added layers to the picture, right?”
Still giving me a ‘what are you even saying?’ look, Angela’s face showed her puzzlement.
“I guess what I’m getting at is that helping you out like this and seeing how you make a living just adds more dimension to the image I have of you in my mind. This is who you are, and I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to open up and show me this aspect.”
Nodding that she understood, she asked, “So you don’t think it’s too weird or, um, uncomfortable, seeing me like this?” she asked, standing up and indicating her minimalist outfit.
“No, actually. I’m O.K. with it.”
“How about like this?” Angela asked, pulling the cut-off T over her head, so she was down to just her little lacy thong panties.
“Ooh, ouch,” I said, looking at her now bare breasts. “Did those hurt?” I asked, pointing at the little gold barbells piercing her nipples.
Surprised that that was my reaction, Angela took one of her breasts in her hand and used her fingertips to roll the nipple up so she could see it better.
“Yeah, at first, and it took a while until they stopped being tender,” she said. “But I like the way they look.”
“They do look sexy as hell,” I agreed.
“So you would be O.K. with me posing in just this?” Angela asked, indicating her fairly minimal undies.
“Looking through your pics on Instagram, I saw some where you didn’t even have that on,” I said. I wasn’t about to mention the explicit view on the pictures I’d seen on the camera’s tiny little screen. By accident. And which I hadn’t looked at all that closely. At all.
“Seriously, if you’re O.K. with it, and it isn’t too much, it’d be awesome if we could do some shots in that amazing bathroom of yours,” Angela said.
“Um, sure,” I said. “I did say you could use the apartment as a set, after all.”
“Thanks!” Angela said, picking up her bag, not bothering to put anything on.
I followed her into the bathroom and watched her chew on her lip as she looked around.
“How about we do some tub shots, and then maybe a few in the shower?” she suggested.
“You’re the artistic director here- I’m just the lowly camerawoman. Whatever you want. Just tell me how to frame the shots.”
“Do you have any bath bubbles?” she asked, looking around.
“No, we don’t really do bubble baths,” I replied, trying to avoid focusing too much attention on Angela’s pierced nipples. “Emmy likes a little splash of body oil in the hot bathwater, but no bubbles.”
“Like baby oil?” Angela asked as she started filling the tub.
“Well, kinda, but it’s not mineral oil. I don’t know exactly what it is, but she orders it from a shop in Paris. It costs a freaking fortune, but it’s completely worth it.”
“Can I see?” she asked, viewing the tub from different angles.
“Here, I think. The light will come in that way from the window. We’ll turn off the lights so we just get a nice backlit effect,” Angela explained, picking up the camera and looking through the viewfinder. She turned off the overhead light, looked through the camera again, then fiddled with the various controls for the lighting in the bathroom, finally settling on leaving the overhead lights off, but the shower enclosure light dimmed about halfway. She adjusted the window blinds a bit while I leaned against a corner and watched her. It was hard to ignore the fact that Angela was very pretty, had a body that had graced the cover of most of the women’s fitness magazines, and was almost entirely naked.
But I tried. I did my best to be as casual about her near-total nudity as she was and just watch and take mental notes about how she was setting up the lighting for the shot, and not how her breasts rose on her chest when she reached her hands back to pull her long, black hair back into a temporary ponytail. Or the definition of the muscles in her thighs when she put a foot on the edge of the tub. Or how her ass was just so amazing when she bent down to get something out of her bag.
Actually, I realized with a little shock, she wasn’t taking something from her bag, she was putting something in- the panties she’d been wearing. I was standing at an angle to her, so I didn’t get the straight-from-behind view like in that picture I’d seen on her camera. but I still got a little glimpse of her now-bare lady parts as she stuffed the panties in the gym bag.
“Ready?” Angela asked, handing me the camera. “I’ve set it up, you just need to point and shoot.”
“Um, O.K.,” I said, taking the camera, trying not to look down.
I did watch as she climbed into the big tub, though, and yes, my initial impression was correct. She did have a third piercing, totally belying her sweet, innocent face.
Well, sure, Jen had her nipples pierced, and a clit ring, too, but also a fair amount of tattoo work to go along with it, and nobody would ever look at her and think she was an innocent little thing… But Angela had a face like Jennifer Connolly’s in that movie with David Bowie, just as wide-eyed and uncorrupted as a child, and here she was, standing in the tub in my bathroom, naked as the day she was born but with a few extra pieces of body jewelry in very intimate places.
She settled into the water, which I’d noticed was only a little bit warm at best. Dunking her thick, dark hair under the water and running her fingers through it to get it completely wet, I stole a peek at her boobs, nicely rising above the level of the water. Sure, she’d admitted to Jenna that they were fake, but I hadn’t noticed any scars.
Of course, Emmy’s were also aftermarket, and I’d examined them very, very closely and never found any scarring, either, so I guess it’s a matter of having the right surgeon, right?
“Let’s start off with a few low-angle shots,” Angela suggested, breaking me out of my thoughts on her girls. “Let’s try for right there at about that height like you’re getting ready to join me.”
Taken slightly aback by the way she’d phrased that, it took me a moment but the light finally clicked on. With these shots and the ones on the bed, she wasn’t selling an aspirational lifestyle idea, she was selling an aspirational girlfriend image. She wanted to capture the idea that somehow, here was this perfect, sexy, romantic, beautiful girl, and if you had the right lifestyle, of course your girlfriend would be like this.
In essence, what we were doing with these bedroom and bath shots was presenting the dream that your life could be like this, and your girlfriend could be like this, if only somehow your life was more perfect than it actually was.
Kneeling down to get the right height and angle to frame the shot correctly, it occurred to me that what I’d sort of been concerned with, Angela’s flirtation, wasn’t really directed at me as a person, but instead at the camera in my hands.
Both relieved and slightly disheartened by this revelation, I asked, “Um, are your boobs supposed to show?”
“I want to hint at them, but not actually be really visible,” Angela said, sitting up to talk. “The socials don’t allow nipples, and I wouldn’t want them online, anyway. I want the suggestion, you know? But not the, um, full Monty.”
“O.K., get back into position,” I said, and she leaned back against the side of the tub again. “Slide a little lower into the water- I can still see your nips.”
Angela did as instructed, tilting her head back against the side of the tub. I snapped a few pictures from slightly different angles, then held out the camera for her to check the results.
She noticed that I was careful not to hold the camera over the water as she took it from me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s waterproof. The worst that would happen if it fell in is that the touchscreen wouldn’t work until it was wiped off.”
She looked through the pictures, picking out the one she liked the angle on. “That was perfect, with you right there,” she said. “Let’s shoot a few more from that same spot.”
Angela recreated her pose, but more and more out of the water, until in the last one her nipples were right at water level. Then we did the same series of poses, but with the blinds shut and a single candle lit, creating a really intimate feel.
“Probably can’t use those last couple, but maybe with the right adjustments they’ll be O.K.” Angela said.
“Why do you even take pictures that you aren’t planning on using?”
“Maybe down the line the rules will loosen,” Angela said as she sat on the edge of the tub. "Let’s open the blinds halfway again.”
I did as she asked, then resumed my spot with the camera. Angela had wrung most of the water out of her hair and was carefully draping it over her shoulders and across her boobs, hiding those little pink peaks with their gold accents.
“The water’s starting to get too cold,” she commented idly, arranging her wet hair. I’m pretty sure it was unintentional, but the way she was leaning forward meant her knees opened a bit wider, giving me a really nice, clear view of her vulva and its two little dots of gold.
“What prompted you to get your clit pierced?” I asked, as if I’d asked about the weather or the Dodgers game.
Angela gave me a wry smile as she opened her legs wider and rotated her hips so we could both look at the subject under discussion. She reached down and pulled the skin above it tight, revealing the little gold balls on either side of her hood.
“Antonio,” she said with a sigh. “It was always something he liked from the pornos he watched. He begged me to get my nipples and clit pierced, so finally I did. The joke was on him, though. We couldn’t have sex for a month after I got it pierced.”
“Bummer for him,” I said, sympathetically. “So, since you’re not together with him anymore, are you going to remove it and let it heal?”
Angela had reached down with her middle finger and flicked the jewelry from side to side. Needless to say, I couldn’t look away.
“No, I’ll keep it,” she said. “It’s perfect for hypnotizing lesbians!”
I glanced up and saw her smiling, and I had to laugh with her.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I agreed, blushing.
She flicked it a couple more times just for good measure, then got serious again. We shot a bunch more photos in the tub, then Angela let the water drain out and we switched to the glass-walled shower. We spent maybe another hour taking photos of her in there, until she announced that she’d had enough. I closed the door to the shower stall and she turned up the hot water to warm up.
She’d spent the last couple of hours in lukewarm water, since we didn’t want the steam to fog up the lens or the shower walls, and she was ready to be warm again.
I watched her shower for real this time, washing her hair and quickly soaping up and rinsing off. I actually took a few pictures, too, trying to get an angle that didn’t show, only hinting at the goods while still capturing her amazing physique. It’s funny how in the course of an afternoon and into the early evening, looking at Angela’s body had gone from awkward and a bit embarrassing to, well, not normal, exactly, but something that was O.K. with both of us.
When she shut off the shower and got out to towel dry, I shot some more photos, continuing to snap while she applied some lotion from her gym bag, then as she reapplied her makeup, replicating the pose from earlier, but this time instead of her party dress, she had a big, fluffy white towel wrapped around her.
After she was done putting her face back on (to be honest, I thought she was every bit as pretty without the makeup), we sat down at the kitchen counter again so Angela could download the hundreds of photos we’d shot in the last couple of hours.
While she was doing that, I looked in the refrigerator for something to cook for dinner, but came up empty.
“Want to go grab a bite?” I asked. “There’s really nothing in the fridge.”
“Sure. This can wait,” Angela replied, indicating her laptop. As she stood up to go get dressed, the towel came loose and fell down around her ankles.
“Curse you and your sudden but inevitable betrayal,” she said to the towel, then bent down and grabbed it, throwing it over her shoulder as she walked naked to her room.