CH 13

After last night's elimination, there was one less person in each of the boys' and girls' groups. Marvin's brother company was left with only Dan, and there was no doubt that he had chosen Dan to share the Taylor Suite with him. Dan's complacency upset Chris for a while and he spent all night yesterday secretly complaining to me in my room.

For some reason Chris always behaves very differently in front of me than he does in person, becoming very childish and cautious, which is inexplicably cute in a contrasting way.

Today was another hard photo shoot and the models arrived at the location and to my surprise this time they had two more professional models working with them, the male model was naturally Rob and the female model was the most famous Victoria's Secret model today, Alexandra.

The theme of the hard photo shoot was light SM, in other words, a male/female relationship of conquest and subjugation in the photos.

I was put in a group with Jamie and the two of us would be shooting with the supermodel with the powerful name of Alexandra.

Our story was not set in stone, but I needed a different approach to create a compelling tension in the camera despite being in a vulnerable position.

Jamie and I were alone in the waiting area while the crew tidied up the set, and for some reason he was very nervous.

I tugged at the collar around my neck and approached him with as harmless a smile as I could muster. "Jamie, you look nervous. What are you worried about?"

Jamie froze, obviously not expecting me to initiate a conversation with him. After all, in the supermodel house, Chris and I were forever nestled away from the crowd. Flustered, he returned, "Nothing...nothing..."

"Are you still bothered about that argument I had with Dan?" I walked up to him a short distance away, "Or do you really think I'm as crazy as he says I am?"

Jamie lost his composure and waved his hands back and forth as he defended anxiously, "It's not that, it's just..."

"Don't worry," I interrupted his explanation with a smile as he pondered his wording, "I just had an idea about the shoot I wanted to discuss with you."

I patted him on the shoulder and whispered, "Alexandra's characterisation will take the lead in the shoot. I was thinking that there needed to be some interaction between the two of us if we didn't want the audience's attention to be completely taken away from her."

Jamie had been very nervous about my approach, but his attention was drawn after I raised the subject about the shoot.

Puzzled, he repeated, "Interaction? What kind of..."

However his voice stopped abruptly after my hand ambiguously held the left side of his neck, as if it had been strangled by invisible hands, and he seemed to lose even the sound of his breathing.

I leaned my face over with a little vengeance so that the tip of my nose was less than a centimetre from the right earlobe of his neck and whispered, "It's interactions like this... showing an exchange of affection between the two of us that will compete for the viewer's attention from the woman who is dominating this. Because then it's no longer Alexandra's monologue in the picture."

Jamie bounced away as if electrified when the breath I exhaled as I spoke made contact with his face. He looked away and said sharply, "Don't you get that close! I...I don't know what to do...aren't we supposed to listen to the advice Jonathan and the photographer gave us during the shoot?"

I pretended not to see his unusual reaction and stretched my hands innocently. "Jamie, you do realise that Jonathan is responsible for fourteen of us on set in a day, he's not going to be patient enough to give each person's character an analysis."

I sighed and intoned, once again walking over to Jamie who had backed away, "Our characters have been treated exactly like mannequins in the set-up we've been given. If you want to get high marks from Rob, you'll have to come up with your own method."

I leaned over again and this time he was forced right up against the wall, his back pressed against it and unable to retreat. I put my face next to his, my hands on his head, the tip of my nose touching the tip of his nose lips only two or three centimetres apart about to fold together.

"It doesn't matter if you don't know how to do it, I'll teach you. Now do like me and breathe in." I made the motion of inhaling and in my hand Jamie's neck could feel his aorta pulsing wildly. "Relax, you're too tense."

I snorted out a laugh as I saw the roots behind Jamie's ears had turned red. Jamie lifted his right hand and tugged my wrist to pull it down, "I got it! I'll cooperate with you during the shoot...you don't get that close..."

I couldn't help but let go of my wrist as Jamie took hold of it, but when my right hand dropped my left hand was immobilised by his grip on me. I stepped back to try to get him to let go of his own accord, but he seemed to freeze in place.

"What's wrong? Let go, I'm not going to bully you." I yanked back on my hand and Jamie dropped it as an afterthought. It can't be helped that a clueless little lamb always makes you want to tease.

"What are you doing?!"

Just as Jamie let go of my wrist, Chris' voice suddenly sounded behind me, startling me. I turned around in a flash to see Chris standing there with a cold face and Ashton who was laughing silently with his hand over his mouth.

The image was a little misleading. Jamie and I were wearing only a pair of black leather shorts for the shoot and a suggestive collar around our necks.

So all I could do was look at a stinking Chris and make an innocent face, "What are you doing here? We were discussing about the shoot later." Curiously, I looked at Chris's behaviour without a trace, he wasn't jealous again, was he?

Although jealousy was not unheard of in friendship, Chris was looking at me so closely that I couldn't help but feel as if he was treating me like his girlfriend. In my opinion, it was Chris' behaviour that was more misleading than what I was doing to Jamie.

To be fair, the reason why I, who have never been one to interact deeply with people, had accepted Chris clinging to me day in and day out in such a short period of time was inevitably because Chris was a very sexy little man. Even if I still don't think I'll be able to accept further physical contact anytime soon, it's still good for the eyes.

Chris didn't seem to find his actions the least bit odd as he still said in a questioning tone, "What issues can't be discussed outside, and won't it give people the wrong idea that you're so close?"

I cried and laughed at his tone of voice as if he was arresting a female fucker, I looked at Ashton and pointed at him, "You mean like Ashton misunderstood?"

"Ahem..." gulped back a laugh as Ashton, whom I named, covered his mouth.

"We were just instructed by the crew to come over here and wait, we're going to officially shoot when they're ready for the set, I was just demonstrating to Jamie that inhaling technique I told you about earlier."

Ashton, who thought he was the only remaining gay contestant among male models, was now darting his eyes over me, an angry Chris and an embarrassed Jamie who was about to leave, as if he was finally no longer bored with being among the boys.

I glanced amusedly at Ashton, who was beaming with gossip, and walked over and patted Chris on the shoulder, "What are you doing here looking for me when you haven't changed yet?"

After Jamie left, Chris, still upset but not as smelly as his expression finally was, turned and pointed to Ashton, "He's the one who wanted to see you."

It turned out that Ashton was teamed up with Conani this time, paired with Rob, whose small mountain of a body and perfect muscles had him very worried about this shoot, he had been told many times by the judges about his manhood and had no idea how he could improve it.

And of the male models left today, I was the only one he could talk to. And on the last hard photo shoot, my perfect interpretation of fetishism made him think that maybe I could give him some advice on the shoot.

I'm not really one to give advice, but when Ashton came to me, I couldn't refuse. Otherwise, if Ashton had said this in a personal interview, I would have made a flawed impression.

"Everyone's different," I spoke up and explained to Ashton, "but one thing that's important is the eyes. For example, last time Chris softened his eyes to reflect a more neutral vibe."

Hearing me mention him as an example, Chris lifted his jaw with a little pride without a trace.

I fingered my own eyes and said to Ashton, "Your eyes always take on a misty look when you're in a photo, like this." I controlled my eyes by slightly knocking my eyelids together, deflating my vision.

"If it was a woman, a look like that would look very flattering." I continued at Ashton's perceptive expression, "But a man making a look like that wouldn't look strong enough. In fact, you could use Chris as a reference point in your eyes, he usually looks at people like he's glaring."

This time Chris disliked my example so much that he held his tongue and said, "Well, you go ahead and get ready for your own shoot. Ashton and I will go back to the lounge!" Without giving Ashton a chance to speak, he shoved Ashton's shoulder and walked out.

I lost my smile and walked out of the small room surrounded by curtains with my arms around my chest, outside the set was almost ready and Jamie was standing alone, somewhat bemused by the camera.

The shoot began with Jamie and I being asked to kneel on the floor, left and right, with Alexandra's left foot on my waist in her high heels.

The first point of the pose was to face the camera with my right hand out in front of me, pushing one half of my shoulder forward, which kept my upper body from looking too stiff, and I didn't want my hips to be in a straight line with the camera, as this would have prevented the curve of my lower back from being reflected.

My left leg is stretched slightly outwards so that my hips can be visibly stretched out, and my expression looks at the camera like a wildcat baring its teeth to scare off its enemies, shifting the angle of my face to the camera from side to side.

It wasn't until Jonathan prompted me to change my expression and movement that I propped myself up on my right elbow and lay down on my side beside Jamie, not caring about Alexandra who was forced to change her position because of the change in my posture.

In the same way that female models like to use male models as human props during their daily shoots, during the competition the main character will be me, and the models I work with are invariably the props I use.

I began to look into the side of Jamie's face as far as the eye could see with seductive eyes, my body showing my neck and back cleavage in the light, and this time Alexandra had to put her heels on Jamie's back.

Jonathan had discovered a new story line as a result of my movements and he happily instructed Jamie to match my moves. It was then that Alexandra noticed her attention being stolen and she stopped posing casually and put in her real effort.

Alexandra pulled up my decorative collar with one hand, while the riding crop in the other was poised to strike Jamie.

A hard photo shoot went up in flames and finally ended with Jonathan clapping his hands.

"Brian," Jonathan called out to me as Jamie and I were about to leave the studio, "if you have any new ideas for your character set up later, you can talk to me in advance." He came over and took me by the shoulders and leaned in to whisper in my ear.

I thought the type Jonathan would like would be a manly, mature type like Mike? That was evident from the way Jonathan's eyes roamed and lingered on Mike at the opening of every hard photo shoot. But what was going on now.

I finally understood how Jamie felt when I was treated like this, and the breath Jonathan exhaled on the side of my neck as he spoke made me stifle a goose bump. My skin fetish was even more intense in response, and in just a moment the back of my ear and my cheeks were all red on the side where Jonathan had approached.

Yet Jonathan continued as if encouraged, "It seems to me that every man has a feline or canine in his heart, and you must be a little leopard cat. Good job on that expression!"

Said Jonathan and learnt to do it again. To be fair, Jonathan was over thirty years old, but had kept his body and skin in good shape. But he still made me feel incredibly awkward acting like that.

I waved a fake smile around him, my feet picking up speed unnoticed as I made my way to the studio door.

When I reached the door I inserted a quick goodbye in the gap between his thoughts on the subject. "Thank you for the compliment, Mr Jonathan. I'll be sure to live up to your expectations next!"

The standard subordinate reply, just short of saying that everything comes at the head's direction.