As the shoot went on, my temporary confidence started to take hammer blows. It seemed no matter what pose I was taking, or how I was trying to do things, Sydney was critical, having me hold poses or change positions on a constant basis. I could tell Greg and Karla were both getting annoyed, to the point I heard Karla mutter under her breath at one point, “Fookin’ wanker today, isn’t he?”
Regardless of whether Sydney was being overly critical or not, his words kept hammering at my self-confidence. Despite being a model, I’ve been accused of actually being really shy, which I’m not totally sure is true. I mean, I know I don’t like partying it up out in public, but just because I prefer to be at home instead of doing shots in a club and tearing up the dance floor, that doesn’t mean I’m shy, does it? But whether I’m shy or not, being constantly criticized by my ex-boyfriend, who was a silver-tongued devil and already knew all my mental buttons, just broke me down. I almost walked off set twice as he had me so upset.
Still, I had to admit the words created magic. When I was pissed off, especially in some of the workout scenes, it made me look fiery, aroused even. With the way Sydney had arranged me in relation to Greg, it looked like I was ready to tear his shorts off. When the last photo was taken of the bedroom scenes, I was exhausted and shaky, but ready for some comfort, even if it was from my mother or Derek.
Instead, when I came out of the dressing room in my casual shorts and Stanford t-shirt that Kade had given me for Christmas a few years prior, I found Sydney still there, putting away his equipment. “Alix, a moment, please.”
I wasn’t ready to talk to him. “No way, Sydney. If you have anything to say, you can go through my agent. And after the way you talked to me today . . . go to hell.”
I started to walk away, when suddenly he grabbed me from behind, twisting and pushing me up against the wall. “No, you don’t get to just walk away from me like that,” he seethed into my ear, pressing up against me. “Not unless you want our little private project to find the light of day.”
I was scared, shocked, and not thinking clearly. “What the he—” I started, before realizing what he was talking about.
He could see it in my eyes, too. “Yes, those photos. You didn’t think I’d just deleted them when you got pissed off at me, did you?”
Nearly a year prior, about two months after Sydney and I started dating, he had approached me about doing some private photos, supposedly just for him. Like I said, Sydney is the master of pushing the line between sexy and raunchy in some of his shoots, and he was also a master of verbal manipulation. Add to that at the time I thought I was in love with him, and by the end of it, not only was I naked in a lot of photographs, something I’ve never done professionally, but also some of them included more. He’d introduced sex toys, and even a couple of me with his cock in my mouth before it was all said and done.
Now I was scared. “You wouldn’t,” I whispered, even as I tried to push away from him. “Back off, Syd, before I scream.”
“So what?” he taunted me. “I get women screaming on my sets all the time, usually because my cock is buried all the way inside them. Oh, you thought the girl at the party was the first? You really are a naive little slut, weren’t you? Alix, I rarely go to a good shoot without emptying my balls into at least one of the models there. So welcome to the real world.”
“What do you want?” I whispered, nearly in tears. I was trying so hard to hold them back to not give him the satisfaction. The threat, the further admission of betrayal, all of it was too damn much. “What more do you want, you asshole?”
“Actually, that’s not too bad an idea,” he said contemplatively. “I talked you into a lot of stuff, and you went along with all of it, except I never did get to try taking your ass cherry. As tight as it must be, I’d love to tear it up at least once. Then again, I’ve got plenty of ass to satisfy me, that’s for sure. So here’s the deal. You give me fifty thousand dollars, or else I post it all on the internet. I can think of at least a dozen porn sites that would love to have that video of you on there, especially as I have a signed release from you for all of the photos I took.”
“I never signed a release for those,” I whimpered, thinking of what those photos and videos would do to my career, and what it would do to my family, as dysfunctional as it was. “I never signed that.”
“No? I have evidence otherwise. A signed photo release for a set of bedroom photos and videos, dated a day before our video was shot. You remember, don’t you? The artsy set that I sold later at the gallery down in Beverly Hills? That made me a pretty penny, by the way.”