Naked (17 page)

Alex bent to peer into the case. “How much is it?”

“Too much,” I said as Lyle came back.

Alex paid for his camera, along with a bunch of accessories, a case, an extra battery, a car charger, an SD memory card. He tricked that camera out like a show pony, and watching him, I couldn’t even envy the money he was dropping as if it really was nothing. His excitement about the new toy was in
fectious. He started taking pictures as soon as we left the store.

He posed me in front of the car. He stood with an arm around my shoulders and held the camera at arm’s length to take both of us—and laughed when the shot cut off the top of his head. He took a picture of me in the driver’s seat, and one of himself in the passenger seat, and then he took an accidental picture of his crotch.

“Another one for the fridge,” I said when he showed it to me. “Wow. I can’t imagine not having a camera.”

“I can’t imagine you without one.”

By the time we got home, Alex had already taken about fifty shots—of me, of the car, of the scenery. Of himself. Most of them were blurred and only a few were any good, but he had a great time. He cornered me against the car again when we got home, this time taking a picture of us in which both of our heads were cut off.

“Maybe I should leave this to you,” he said.

“You’ll get better.”

Hand in hand we went to the back door, where a plastic bin that hadn’t been there before waited. I recognized it right away because I’d been with Patrick when he bought the set at Costco. I let go of Alex’s hand and bent to touch the top.

“What the hell?”

I opened it. A pair of gloves, a scarf. My small bag of earplugs. A sleep T-shirt. Balderdash, the board game I’d taken to share at the New Year’s party. There was nothing I couldn’t have lived without. I moved aside a box of crackers, and my heart twisted.

Patrick had sent back the photo I’d taken of him and Teddy. This was bad. Worse than bad. Even if we made up, even if
this moved behind us, he’d ruined the gift I’d chosen so carefully. I could never give it back to him and I could never keep it for myself. It would always remind us of the fight. It would have been better for him to just throw it away than return it.

Alex’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “You okay?”

I shook my head.

He sighed and enfolded me in his arms. “He’s an asshole. Don’t let him do this to you.”

No soft words or kisses could change the way I felt. I picked up the bin and dumped it in the large garbage can and shoved the lid down. Alex watched me silently.

“Let’s go inside,” I said, subject closed.

I
hadn’t gone without talking to Patrick for longer than a day or two since we’d made up after we broke up. Even when he went on vacation he called or text-messaged me, and when I went out of town I usually found time to check in with him, too. It had been weeks without a word, and then this. The return of everything that could possibly give me reason to see him again.

Well, fuck him. I wasn’t going to put on a hair shirt and beat myself with a chain to get back in Patrick’s good graces. I had other things to occupy my time.

I knew things were moving fast, but it was so easy to see Alex, to be with him, I wasn’t sure how to slow it down. We didn’t live together, exactly, but the doors between our apartments stayed open more often than not, with us going back and forth between. It showed me how easy it would be to convert the firehouse into one residence, an idea I’d tossed
around briefly before realizing I didn’t have the cash for renovations, and the only way to get it would be by renting the downstairs unit.

I had no reason not to be with him. He was funny. Sweet. He was a better cook, had better movie choices, was a killer at Monopoly. Every time I thought about pulling back, Alex did one more thing to bring me closer.

“I can honestly say I have never made matchstick carrots.” Knife in hand, I sliced into the carrots on the chopping board and prayed I wouldn’t end up with matchsticked thumbs. “I usually just chop them into chunks.”

“They need to be thin to cook in the right amount of time.” Alex eased in behind me, his hands on my hips, and nudged aside my hair to kiss the back of my neck.

My nipples tightened at that simple touch, and I leaned back against him. His cheek rested along mine. His hands moved flat over my belly. We swayed a little to the music coming from his iPod speaker dock. This was the third night in a row he’d cooked me dinner, and I had no doubts it would be the third we’d end up making love for a few hours before falling into exhausted sleep. In my bed, though. No more futon.

“Where’d you learn to do all this?” I gestured with the tip of the knife at the mess I’d made of the carrots.

Alex put his hands over mine and guided them as he answered. We cut together, making perfect, thin slices. “It was learn to cook or starve.”

I paused in cutting and turned in his arms to look up at his face. “Most guys settle for pizza and sandwiches.”

Alex grimaced. “Yeah. Well, most guys live like pigs and
dress like slobs. Besides, cooking someone a gourmet meal practically triples my chances of getting laid.”

It didn’t escape me that he’d said someone and not “a woman.” Sarah’s advice rang in my head, but I pushed it aside. I pushed him aside, too, to grab my camera from its place on the dining-room table. I’d never be much of a chef, but I could take a mean picture.

“Oh, no.” He laughed, holding up a hand that covered his face in the first shot I took. “I thought you were going to be my sous-chef.”

“Too many cooks.”

Point. Focus. Shoot.

I caught him looking down, his smile tilted, his eyes half-closed. Alex shook his head and turned back to the cutting board to make the carrots into something beautiful. I tried my best to capture him doing it.

He scooped up a handful of the carrots and tossed them into a sauté pan already sizzling with olive oil and garlic. He turned them deftly with a wooden spoon. The smell was incredible, and my mouth watered as my stomach rumbled.

“I’m going to gain a hundred pounds.” I pulled up a chair to stand on to get a shot from overhead. Steam whirled around him and the light from the stove hood cast funky shadows on his face and hands.

“I’ll just have to help you work it off.”

“Uh-huh.” I hopped off the chair and kept my camera in the hand well away from spattering grease as I leaned in for a kiss. “How you gonna do that?”

He laughed and eased the pan off the flames. Then he backed me along the kitchen cabinets, up the single step to
the raised dining area, and into the basket chair I’d hung from a ceiling beam with a large, heavy chain.

Wicker creaked as I sat. The thin cushion shifted as I leaned against the curved back. Watching him. Laughing. I clutched the chair’s side with my empty hand and gripped my camera firmly with the other.

“What are you doing?”

He grinned and yanked the beanbag chair, most of its innards missing so it was flatter than it should be, toward my seat. When he knelt on it, my heart stuttered. I knew exactly what he meant to do.

Wicker creaked again as Alex pulled my panties off and pushed my loose skirt up my thighs. He put a hand on each side of the chair. It moved freely under his grip, and so did I inside it. He nuzzled against my thighs, then deeper, finding my clit with his lips and tongue and rocking the chair so he didn’t have to move.

I closed my eyes to give in to it, but opened them after only a few seconds of pleasure. This felt too good. All of it. Not just the sex, and not just the food. Everything about being with him.

So I put my camera to my face. Focused. Snapped a shot of his head between my legs, and it blurred because of the way he rocked the chair. Alex looked up at the sound of the shutter, his mouth slack and wet, his eyes heavy lidded.

Another picture taken, as I was. As I couldn’t help being. I saw his mouth and eyes, and he saw nothing but a camera where my face should have been.

It felt safer that way.

“Don’t stop,” I said.

He bent again to nuzzle and suck, to lick and nibble. To
fuck inside me with one finger, then two, then an impossible three that stretched me so I cried out and shook the camera. But I didn’t stop taking pictures.

I didn’t mess with settings or shutter speeds, not when Alex’s mouth was working such magic on my cunt it was all I could do to look through the viewfinder. My finger twitched,
snap, snap.
When he turned to the side, I caught his profile.

Eyes closed, mouth open. Pressed against me. Some of him inside me.

I couldn’t keep my eyes open when I came. Orgasm blinded me, though my finger kept its place and my camera whirred. Pleasure burst inside me and all around. I said his name, then again, louder, as a second wave of climax ripped me up and scattered me, petals in a breeze.

The chair creaked.

My wrist cramped from the camera’s weight, my fingers holding it in a death grip. I eased it free and settled it gently on the end table next to the chair. Then I pulled Alex by the front of his shirt until I could kiss him.

“What would it take for you to drop that thing?”

He tasted of me, of my desire. I couldn’t tell if he was hard. I could reach between us, grab his cock and find out, but for now I slid my fingers through his hair.

“I’d drop a baby before I dropped my camera.”

He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”

We kissed, each kiss still new. Each felt it would always be new, after two weeks or two years, or two hundred. I knew it wouldn’t always be like this. Nothing ever was. But that’s how it felt.

“Does it turn you on?” he asked.

“What? You going down on me? Umm, hello, yes.”

Alex laughed again. Pulled away. “Taking pictures.”

I licked my mouth and tasted myself. I had no easy, ready answer. “Sometimes.”

His hands slid up my thighs and stayed there. He steadied the chair, kept it from rocking. “That time?”

I cupped his cheek. “It’s something I do…”

He shook his head a little. His shaggy bangs fell over an eye. I pushed them away.

“I mean, did taking those pictures, then, turn you on more than if I’d just been going down on you?”

I tried to see if he wanted me to say yes or no, but saw only myself reflected in his eyes. If the eyes are the body’s camera, I wondered what pictures Alex was taking of me.

“I don’t know.”

“I liked it,” he said.

“Did you?” I traced his ear, then both his brows. His lips. He opened his mouth to nip at my finger, and I laughed.

“It was fucking hot.”

I raised a brow and sat back a little in the creaky chair. “Oh, really?”

He nodded.

“Like that day…before. When you came the day Sarah was in my studio.”

“Yes. That day.”

“I never would’ve guessed.”

Alex smirked. “The hard-on didn’t give it away, huh?”

I kissed him. I wanted every word we ever said to each other to come between kisses. And I wanted not to be afraid of that.

“Let me take your picture, Alex.”

“Again?”

“Sit on that chair, there.” I pointed to a straight-backed chair in better shape than the one he’d been in that other day.

He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t hesitate. On his feet, on the seat, hand already at the button on his jeans. “Like this?”

“Just like that.”

He popped the button and unzipped to free his cock. If he hadn’t been hard when he was making me come with his mouth, he sure as hell was now. He shoved his jeans and his briefs down to his calves. His black T-shirt hugged his chest, and his cock, firmly held in his fist, brushed the hem of it.

“Push up your shirt.” I already had my camera to my face. “I want to see your belly.”

I’d used the camera as a barrier before. A shield. Watching him now through the small square of glass, I wasn’t separated from Alex but brought closer. Joined, somehow. A part of what he was doing in a way I hadn’t been when we fucked. Making a picture of him, I almost was him.

I moved behind him to get a shot of his perspective. “God, that’s fucking gorgeous.”

He grunted at my words. I took pictures. I moved around him as he fucked his fist.

It could’ve been porn, what we did. A closeup of his prick imprisoned by his fingers followed a shot of just his face. These pictures told an intimate and private story and yes, it was about sex, but it was about something else, too.

Trust.

I set the camera aside to kiss him and put my hand on his to help him along. He came in another minute. I was looking
in his eyes when he did, and I had no trouble seeing what was inside them.

“I need to jump in the shower,” he said.

The timer on the oven went off. We pulled apart. He grabbed me for one more kiss, then went into my bathroom while I headed for the kitchen. My cell phone rang as I pulled a pan of something cheesy and delicious smelling out of the oven and set it on the stove.

I grabbed up my phone. “Hello?”

“Hello, Liv. Did you get the stuff I left for you?”

Patrick. My appetite fled. I cocked an ear, listening for the sound of the shower running. Alex wouldn’t be in there long.

“I threw it in the trash,” I said.

“I can’t believe you.” The coldness in his words seeped all the way through the phone and straight to my heart.

“Did you call just to bitch me out again?” I leaned against the counter.

Patrick’s laugh grated into shreds. “You’re fucking Alex Kennedy. Aren’t you?”

The floor dropped from beneath me. “What?”

“You are. I told Teddy it couldn’t be true. But it is, isn’t it? You really are. I can’t believe you, Olivia! I told you about him!”

“You told me he doesn’t like girls,” I hissed. “Well, guess what, Patrick. He does.”

“I told you he was trouble!”

“What’s your problem?” I said evenly. “That I’m fucking Alex? Or that I’m fucking anyone?”

Silence.

“I like him, Patrick. A lot.”

“Of course you do.” I could hear the sneer. “Everyone likes
him. Everyone wants to get in his pants. He’s a slut. It’s what he does.”

The phone slipped in my suddenly sweaty palm. “It’s what you do, too.”

“That’s not the point,” Patrick snapped.

“What is?” The dinner smells that’d had my stomach rumbling minutes ago now turned it.

“I just can’t believe you’d go for him,” Patrick said in a low, hard voice. “For fuck’s sake, Liv, haven’t you learned your lesson?”

“What lesson is that? The one where I don’t fall in love with a gay man?”

More silence from us both. Patrick’s breathing turned sharp and short. Mine had, too.

“You don’t love him,” he said finally. “Jesus, Liv. You barely know him.”

“I’m not saying I do. I’m saying I could. You must think I could, or you wouldn’t be in such a frenzy.”

“I’m not in a frenzy. I just don’t want to see you making a mistake—”

“Like the one I made with you?”

Dead silence.

I hung up the phone.

“Babe?”

It was the first time Alex had used an endearment for me. It cemented how far this had gone. I turned to face him, wet from the shower, his hair rumpled and dripping and a towel hanging low on his hips.

“We need to talk.”

He nodded, as if he was expecting this. Every glimpse I’d had of what he was thinking disappeared, locked up tight
behind those deep gray eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, slicking it back.

“Okay.”

My phone rang again. I turned it off without looking at who was calling. “It’s Patrick. I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Okay.”

I put the phone on the counter and crossed my arms over my stomach. That didn’t help the butterflies, but I kept them there anyway. The picture we were making needed a caption: “Argument Waiting” or something artsy like that.

I could do what Sarah had said. Frame my question like cropping a photo, already knowing the answer the way I knew which piece of the picture I wanted to keep and which to cut.

Knowing changed things. It had for me, and it would for him. I thought I could deal with knowing my current lover went both ways and had once slept with my ex. I didn’t know if Alex could.

“Olivia?” He didn’t move closer. Didn’t touch me. His gaze caught and held mine.

Asking him would show me if he’d lie or tell the truth. I thought of the past few weeks. Sex and movies and dinner and laughter.

I didn’t want to know if he would lie.

“It’s about that word,” I said. “You know, the one I said I wasn’t ready to use.”

Alex smiled, nice and slow. “Boyfriend?”

“That one.”

“What about it?”

I crooked a finger, and he moved closer. I touched his damp skin. “I think we should reconsider the option on it.”