Off Kilter Read Online Free Page B

deep in the earth, then taking her by the arms and yanking her up against him, plunging his tongue into her mouth and making her—
    A tap on the door jerked her from her reverie.
    “How goes it in there?”
    “Almost done,” she choked out, cheeks flaming as she realized how almost “done” she’d actually been.
    “Can I see?” Kira asked through the closed door.
    “Not yet with these,” she said, rallying herself back to the moment at hand. And away from where she’d like to have another pair of hands at the moment. “But I have a ton of digital stuff to sort through, so you can give me your expert advice about them.”
    There was a snort. “I have an eye for weaving patterns, but you don’t want me tellin’ ye anything about photography.”
    “They’re pictures of half-naked men.” Tessa opened the door a bare crack and slipped through, shutting it quickly behind her. “The appeal is universal, requiring only gut instinct.”
    “So shallow,” Kira said, then smiled. “I like it.”
    “Then you are officially my assistant.”
    Kira’s smile broadened, and the light it brought to her eyesmade Tessa feel slightly less than the schmuck of a friend she’d been of late.
    “I’ve got the tiffin almost done,” Kira said, as she turned into the small, but tidy kitchen. She smiled over her shoulder. “‘Tis only appropriate we enjoy the rush of chocolate endorphins while drooling over naked men—even if I did grow up with most of them.” She paused then and made a face. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure I can be the least bit objective after all. I still remember what each of them looked like with freckled cheeks and the complete absence of body hair.”
    Tessa wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”
    “I know. But there is chocolate—which can only help.”
    “I can be shallow enough for the two of us. Let’s proceed, shall we?”
    Kira slid the pan of tiffin—chocolate and crushed cookies baked in warm, buttery goodness—and set it to cool on a rack on the butcher block counter, while Tessa propped open her laptop on the small kitchen table. She plugged in one of the three digital SLR cameras she’d used that day. It had been simpler than changing lenses back and forth.
    Kira slid two heavy stoneware mugs onto the table and filled them with hot water, before dropping tea bags in each to let them steep. “I would ask why you need so many of those, but any explanation you’d give would go right over my head. I’m fortunate if I can get both the head and the feet of my subjects in the same shot. But let me tell you, I never cease to be amazed that you look through that little window and capture what you do. I look through that same tiny porthole and can’t even hope to decide where to frame the scene so that it looks like anything more than a disorganized jumble.”
    Kira continued chattering away and Tessa kept one ear marginally tuned in, but the lion’s share of her focus was on the file download and creating separate folders for each subject.
    It was only when the chatter died down that Tessa looked up and blinked. “What?”
    “I know today was a pain in the arse.” Kira reached across the table and laid her hand over Tessa’s arm. Kira was a toucher by nature, a nurturer of the first order.
    Tessa had discovered she was neither—which worked out well in her line of work. It was usually intrinsic to her job to operate apart from whatever was going on around her, so it was rare that anyone touched her deliberately, and certainly not so casually. Or kindly. When someone put hands on her, it was usually in an attempt to separate her from her equipment, or remove her bodily from wherever she happened to be standing at the moment.
    That she could handle. That she expected. It went with the job.
    This … this threatened her. She didn’t know how to handle it. Especially now. So she carefully slid her arm free under the guise of needing to type on the keyboard.
    “I know taking pictures of