Ch 1

It was a weird feeling to look at the new place that was going to be my home for the next year. It was a nice, two-story building, one that would be an achievement to own as a fresh college graduate, even to rent.

Unfortunately, it was only the basement I was able to afford. Sad, but not unexpected. After all, I had chosen my major in visual arts, focusing on photography, willfully ignoring the fact that it was almost impossible to get a well-paying job, or even a job, after graduation. I believed that I had the ability to burst through the unbreakable ceiling, working with the best magazines, spending my nights with models who were desperately trying to get a photo shoot with me…

The reality didn't agree with my generous plans. There were no cushy jobs in top magazines, nor models desperately begging, willing to anything for a favor, and the student loans were crushing. The only luck I had was to find a freelance gig for an online shopping site, and even for that, the pay dwindled into nothing after I subtracted the pay for the models and the rent for the studio.

Which was why I was standing in front of this house. I was lucky enough to come across the ad a few days ago, where I was desperately looking for an affordable place to stay, since I had to leave the dorm. The basement was amazing, completely lacking windows, but with a tall enough ceiling that I could leverage it as a makeshift studio until I could make some money, freeing me from one of the biggest costs, renting a studio for each photo shoot. The landlady wasn't intending to rent it to a male, but a bit of playing the good boy, together with the offer to pay first three months in advance was enough to change her mind.

I even managed to stop myself from flirting with her, which was a veritable challenge. The landlady was a drop-dead gorgeous lady in her early thirties, one of the best bonuses of the place. I pressed the doorbell, and the door opened after a small delay, and the landlady stood on the other side, dressed in comfortable looking, but very conservative, sweatpants. "Stephen, welcome to your new residence," she said in a kind, welcoming voice, inviting me inside with a gesture, though it wasn't hard to catch an underlying reticence in her tone.

I wasn't really surprised to sense the reservation in her tone. She had mentioned me that her husband died a few years ago, and she was living with her daughters. It made sense that she was feeling stressed about a stranger about to reside in their house. Still, she was lucky, as the safety and happiness of the children were sacrosanct to me. I would do my best to protect and assist them. Unfortunately for her, the same protection didn't extend to sexy, voluptuous widows.

I followed her to the living room, my eyes were firmly on her bottom, watching as it shifted enticingly despite her loose pants. I spend a bit of time imagining the treasures that lay underneath, and how long it would take to convince her to reveal those treasures to my eyes. I opened my mouth to ask for whether the basement was ready for me to move in, but only a strangled gasp left my mouth.

I wasn't proud of the noise that I made, but I had a good reason for it. I wasn't expecting for a young woman to walk down the stairs, clad only in her underwear, no matter how conservative, and a pair of fluffy rabbit slippers, her eyes half-closed lazily. Curious, my landlady followed my gaze and looked upstairs, only to start shouting. "Nancy, what the hell are you doing! I told you that we are going to have a guest!"

Nancy's eyes popped open, and a strangled gasp left her mouth. "Mom!" she shouted, the mortification clear in her tone before turning and dashing through the stairs. I knew that it was wrong to look, but knowing its wrongness and actually refraining from watching as she climbed up the stairs was two different things, so I stayed focused on the lithe body that bounced the stairs. I was lucky that my landlady was busy watching her disappear instead of looking towards me. I didn't think that she would have taken well that I was watching her daughter run away.

"I'm so sorry for embarrassing you," she said as she turned towards me, reading the reason for my redness wrong. "It's my fault, I should have reminded her that you were going to arrive today. My oldest is a bit absentminded."

"Not a problem," I answered, but my mind was already on the next issue, trying come up with a nice way of asking. When she had first mentioned having a daughter, I assumed she would be a small child, considering my landlady didn't look a year over thirty, and even that was a stretch. But the girl who called her mother was clearly in her twenties.

She spoke before I could verbalize the question. "She is one of the daughters my late husband had from his first marriage," she explained, resolving the minor mystery. "But the lack of direct blood bond doesn't make her my daughter any less," she added, complete with the threatening gesture. The message was clear. They were under her full protection.

"Understood," I said with a placid smile. She was off-limits, if there was a risk of my landlady being aware, of course. Otherwise, it was the free season. "Is the basement ready? Sooner I set-up there, the better. I already have a shoot that I need to clear until tomorrow, and the model I arranged is going to be here in a couple hours."

She nodded, and I grabbed my luggage once more, trying to ignore their crushing weight. A few minutes later, I was looking at the room that was going to double as my workplace and my residence for a foreseeable future. On the one side, all of my personal effects were piled over a small bed, not that there was many, as I had to sell a lot of my belongings just to raise some capital for the tools of my trade.

I looked proudly to the items that rested on the left side of the room, and an early model camera that was perched over a worn-out tripod, the reflectors with more than one patch to repair the holes left by the careless smoking of the previous owner. Lenses rested in a beaten box, dirty with scratches. Still, I looked at them lovingly, knowing just how lucky I was to get them for less than two grand. They would have cost well above ten thousand if I tried to buy them brand-new.

I left my clothes as a pile, and turned my attention to my studio instead. I wanted everything to be perfect for my first shoot…