Snapped

On the surface, Taryn Pearson’s life seems perfect.

No one sees how her past casts shadows over her present or senses the rage she fights every day to conceal. Total self-control has kept her safe, but it’s also left her isolated. Before transitioning from graduate school to her career as a lab assistant, her aunt urges her to be bold, expand her boundaries, and try something new.

Photographer Rafael de le Sente escaped the barrio and demons of his youth, but he can’t outrun the consequences of his adult actions.

Rarely able to separate work from pleasure, his licentious leanings finally cost him his biggest client. Rafael deigns to take on Taryn as a student for a price, proving his professionalism in the process. Almost immediately, he knows he’s doomed. Here is a woman who keeps his interest and tempts his libido. Every lesson further challenges her discipline and his control. Taryn may be just what he’s always longed for – an equal – but letting someone in so closely challenges his nature. Rafael never wanted love, Taryn never desired a lover, but they’ll need each other to finally bring their lives in to focus.

Handling a fine car wasn’t much different from handling a fine woman, in Rafael’s experience. Nor was the thrill it gave him when teasing gears and pedals made her body perform and moan beneath him. Unfettered by the steep incline, the Jaguar hugged the blacktop, making love to the road with the caress of each curve. The landscape opened out to the horizon as he rounded the final axis into the valley. Dusk cast hues of purple and orange across the gently rolling hills. Past the security gate, the quarter-mile drive snaked through the property, terminating at the forgotten hunting lodge he’d managed to resurrect as a palace. When he’d bought the Cabin, moth-eaten curtains and termite-infested planks barely held up its illustrious history, an echo of old Hollywood glamour as instilled by the original builder. In the ‘20s, Carson Caberet had dazzled the world with his glitzy pictures offering bold women and the men they coerced, and built this opulent rustic retreat to entertain his starlets and mistresses. Now, nearly a century later, Rafael had reversed the process in his own photography, and lived in this house remade to serve its adverse purpose.
The ding of his key on the marble-topped front table echoed up the entry hall. An aroma pulled him into the kitchen with savory fingers of temptation: a plate of beef burgundy—the housekeeper’s last act before she took her leave for the day. He ferreted out the stack of envelopes from the drawer under the microwave, trying to ignore the messages stamped in red on the outside of most. Not as many today as usual, but then again, his creditors may have concluded that their demanding missives resulted in no additional payments. At least, none in the amounts they had demanded. For months, Rafael had been teasing them with his checkbook, making incremental submissions just large enough to keep them at bay while small enough to keep the tab mounting. Something needed to change soon, or the demand letters would soon be replaced by court orders and public auctions.
Though as the phone rang, clashing at an interval of a minor fourth against the lonesome tenuous note of the violin on the speakers overhead, he wished the phone company would make good on its threat to turn the blasted thing off.
Rafael downed another swig of wine as he reached across the counter. When he saw the caller ID, however, he considered letting it go to voicemail.
She’d just keep calling until he picked up.
“Christina.”
His mind’s eye pictured her at that very moment, reclined in a leather office chair, her long legs crossed, straining the physics of her taut white skirt. A half-smoked cigarette sat perched in the crux of her fingers, despite the fact that the halls of her building were plastered with no-smoking signs. A collection of buds in a black marble ashtray had filters ringed by her ruby red lipstick.
The pause in between his answering and her responding suggested another drag just to force him to wait.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t hang up, Christina.”
“Because you’re a smart man, Raffie. Despite your recent transgressions, I haven’t lost any faith in your intelligence.” The speaker crackled as her breath rushed over the phone’s mic. “How have you been?”
Her voice held a sliver of honest concern, and he struggled to douse his bitterness, knowing that she probably had been worried about him.
As with so many other struggles, however, he had no hope of winning.
“As well as you’d expect, given the fact that you haven’t hired me for a shoot in six months. Funny how time flies when you’re being shunned, isn’t it?”
“I’m not shunning you. But how much longer did you expect me to ignore the fact that an unofficial item on your contract riders involved sleeping with the talent?” Christina clicked her tongue, an overly motherly mannerism for such a tragically non-maternal tiger lady. “You treated Femme Photalle like it was your own personal harem.”
“Don’t make it sound like I’m some sort of gallivanting philanderer. Every woman I’ve slept with has been willing and knew it was nothing more than recreational. Don’t act like my tendencies come as a great surprise to you. You’ve known about my appetites for years.” He allowed his voice to slide into a lower, gravelly register. “And may I remind you, through personal experience?”