Supernatural thriller | Rising fashion influencer Rhea is gearing up for her runway debut, but her perfect world is upended when she finds herself haunted by a ghostly doppelganger.
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Twenty-four-year-old Rhea Patel has it all-the career in fash...
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With death at my doorstep, I had to muster up the courage to do what seemed impossible. With all my strength, I took a breath, ignored the searing pain in my temple, and—
"Eyes wide open."
My eyes nearly rolled when those words dropped from his lips. Just the thought of Nolan gazing at me and knowing my mind had been elsewhere irked me. He knew me too well, judging by how I stared off into the distance at nothing. Still, my lips pouted and softened while I reestablished my focus on the soft white lights ahead and the click, click, click of the camera.
Only me and the athletic yoga pants hugging my lower body were in the shot against the sickly white backdrop that showcased my natural light brown skin my online fans adored. Time to sell my soul by selling the controversial leggings that had been dubbed the "colorist pants" by so many online in the fashion community.
By becoming the new representative for SSL, I was showing all the cool kids that a multiracial woman could sport Salty Saddles Leggings too. I knew rocking their clothes in an ad would only prove the company embraced people like me because of our racial ambiguity. I was aware that consumers wished to see the likes of a dark-skinned beauty sporting the leggings and not just a light-skinned woman of color with an ethnic background like me. I couldn't help but wonder if consumers would see through SSL's halfass attempt to calm the backlash of the current scandal.
"Extend your elbow and arch your back," Nolan ordered, his British accent breaking through his acquired American one. Of course, I complied. After all, he knew how to contort my body in ways that not only pleased each of us in bed but the masses in a photo. I trusted him to keep me feeling and looking good. It was our job, our livelihood depended on it.
From the corner of my eye, I could make out the attractive dimples on his smooth cheeks and my heart fluttered out of habit even as I told my brain to focus on the task at hand. At the start of our relationship his authority was a turn-on. He would order me around the bedroom with a no-nonsense attitude we both enjoyed. It had been a sexy tactic we used to keep the bedroom unpredictable and fun.
But outside of the bedroom—?
"More cleavage." His fingers snapped, stealing the attention from the monotonous clicking of the shutter. "Eyes on camera."
I hadn't looked away from the lens since he reminded me to extenuate them by opening them more, but I hugged my chest tighter to further push my breasts up into perfect mounds, determined to keep the perfect shot obviously meant for the male gaze. But wasn't our goal to sell pants to the teenage girls that mostly made up my fanbase?
Why question it? If it worked, it worked. And I had learned a while ago not to question a business's intentions. They knew exactly what they were getting when they hired me. It wasn't far-fetched that they had a team of talented experts who studied what their target audience wanted and the best way to sell it to them. The money wasn't coming in because I pointed out their morally ambiguous or inept decisions. After all, they were paying me to sit still and look pretty. So, sit still and look pretty became my expertise.
