Page 26 of Dirty Like Dylan
There was no roast on her plate.
Christ, was she a vegetarian? If Dylan went veggie over this girl, I was gonna lose it.
I stared at her. Did he seriously think he was gonna hook her up with me?
I’d wondered, when he kept looking at her at the Underlayer shoot, at the side of the stage… and when he’d watched her in his dressing room while she photographed him, all sweaty and practically naked…
And I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking.
That he wanted her—for both of us.
He thought the fact that she was rubbing me wrong meant that she was rubbing me right.
Knowing Dylan, he was probably even gonna be all altruistic about it, on account of my recent sexual drought, and let me have her first.
It’d really be no sweat off the back of his annoyingly patient self.
I’d seen Dylan Cope in action when he actually wanted a girl, and he could be crafty as fuck about it. All nonchalant, with his laid-back, couldn’t-give-a-fuck attitude. Strolling around with his six-pack out, flashing easy smiles, all the while his brain was working overtime on every-which-fucking-way he was gonna get her into his bed.
The man could be patient as fuck.
And even though I knew all of this, I’d seriously underestimated the level of trouble this was gonna turn out to be.
The trouble she was gonna be.
“So Liv said you do travel photography?” he was saying, when I actually tuned back into their conversation. “Is that like landscapes and tourism stuff?”
“Um. When did Liv say that?”
“After you got fired,” I cut in bluntly.
She glanced at me, but then her light-green eyes returned to Dylan and stayed there. “Well, most people think I’m a travel photographer, because I travel so much and work as I go. And my sister knows better, but she usually shorthands to ‘travel photographer.’ And that’s okay. But actually, I specialize in environmental portraiture.”
“What is that?” I asked flatly. “Like ducks covered in oil spill?”
“Um, no,” she said, throwing me another cool glare. “It’s photographing people in their environment. Like, if it’s a farmer tilling the land in North Dakota,” she explained to Dylan, pretty much ignoring me, “or a pottery maker in Peru, or a bunch of protestors at a march in Paris, I just try to keep as uninvolved as possible.”
“So it’s like journalistic stuff?” he asked.
“Sometimes. The end use really varies. It just depends where I can find a buyer for the images. But, you know, it’s not like I’m photographing the Kardashians, so my images aren’t always in demand…”
She took a sip of wine, then licked her lip. I tracked Dylan’s eyes tracking her tongue as she did it, and my dick fucking swelled.
Christ.
“One editor I worked with called me ‘paparazzi for the non-famous,’” she went on, “but I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t shoot people without telling them, then make money selling their images. There’s very little connection between me and the subject, but that’s just so I have as little influence on what’s happening in the photo as possible. I always introduce myself after I get the shot, if not before, and let them know what I’m planning to do with it. But I mostly sell to small online magazines.”
“That pay well?” I asked, looking to curb her babbling. The girl getting all passionate about her work was hardly gonna kill Dylan’s interest in her.
“No,” she said, this time not even looking me in the eye. “Not really. But anyway. As I was saying, I’m far from paparazzi and it’s not always journalism, either. I’m totally babbling, I know.”
“No worries,” Dylan said. “Babble all you want.”
“It’s my passion,” she said, picking at her potatoes. “I have a hard time shutting up about it. And, um, you seemed interested.”
“We are,” Dylan answered for both of us.
Fucking annoying thing was, he really was.