“I’m sorry Jason, I was just teasing. I really want to see them!”
I turned to her, seeing honesty in her pleading eyes. “Alright,” I said, and then pointed at her chest, “but those say inside.”
“No promises,” she said. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”
Shaking my head, I set the laptop up on the dining table. It took a few minutes to plug everything in and boot up the machine, and longer still for all of the photos to transfer over. Finally, we were ready to go. The photos were imported and the application was live.
We scooted our chairs in tight working side-by-side, the lights in the room dimmed so as not to cast a glare on our screen.
“Here we go,” I said more to myself. “Okay, there are… just over 2,500 photos in total so this may take some time.”
Kelly whistled. “Wow, that many?”
I nodded, my focus locked on the screen. “Yup. You had a lot of looks.” I scrolled up to the first. “What I normally do is quickly scan through the images and flag those that look promising. That way we can thin out what we want to work with. Sound good?” I looked at her. The side of her face was illuminated with a soft pale glow, enhancing her soft pale skin. She looked to me, biting her lower lip with excitement and nodded.
“All-righty then… here we go.”
We scoured through the photos, reading one after the other with the most incredible scrutiny. Kelly blew me away, tackling the project with intense professionalism. She was proud of her work, and it showed. We worked like a team devouring each and every one. Approving one out of every ten. It wasn’t that the other nine were horrible, even though some of them mom would find infinitely embarrassing, it’s just that the other ones were nowhere near as good as those that we kept, the ones that looked like they had fallen right off a magazine page. And though the clothing was the event, the main attraction was without a doubt, our model.
She looked so natural, so playful, provocative and alluring. Never would I have guessed this was her first go around. She looked like a puppet freed from strings, opening up in ways I hadn’t seen since childhood, if ever at all.
We landed on a picture of her standing in the surf sporting a yellow sun dress with the skirt cut just below mid thigh. It was flapper inspired with a low cut in the back, but that was hidden from camera. A breeze had kicked up and she had bent to stop the dress from blowing up. Eyes sparkling like the water behind her, with a large smile as she laughed.
“She wears those clothes well.” I thought, and then suddenly realized I had said it out loud.
“Yes she does,” Kelly almost whispered. Her mind seemed to be taking her elsewhere, just like my own. “To be honest with you, most of those are made with her in mind.”
“I can tell.” I flagged it and moved on. “Alright, first batch done. Now, onto the swimsuits.”
“About damn time,” Kelly said. I couldn’t help but look at her. “…What?” she asked.
Shaking my head, I clicked the next photo.
For the most part, the emotions these shots elicited remained the same as those previous. However, there was a slight and subtle shift in the atmosphere. Her smiles were still there, yet it was almost as if their meaning had methodically changed. From joy to seduction. I had not been aware of the time how well she was obeying my suggestions, for though there was still the element of flirtatiousness, what first appeared to be someone out at the beach, turn now to the feeling of prey who lures you in.