Ester didn’t miss the wink the girl had thrown at one of the others – it might have been in relation to something else, a shared inside joke, or perhaps in relation to her invitation, but either way, Ester was duly intrigued.

“Zel. A pleasure. Ester – Essie, if you like,” she trilled merrily; they may as well be on familiar terms already, strangers as they were. In a place like this, for whatever reason one crossed the threshold, one could not escape becoming friends or intimates in a very short space of time. “Oh, I’m here for work, of a kind,” she explained languidly, cocking her head in a satire of a pose (though of course her body was more important in these types of photos than her face). She gestured to one of the doors leading off from this room, in case Zel had seen her gentleman friend flitting in and out creating all manner of lewd scenes for his photography. “I’m a model, you see. But I do like being entertained,” she teased, smiling. (But even a friendly chat or a little flirtation would do very well for her break, she supposed.)

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