Naked (3 page)

“Your place isn’t home. Why do you think I took all my stuff?”

Ouch. That stung even me. If I were Evan I’d have hated Alex, too, just for the smug tone.

“I fucking hate you. I never should’ve given you a second chance!”

“I told you not to,” Alex said.

Evan swept out. Alex stayed behind for another minute or two, his breathing heavy. I kept as still as I could with my heart pounding so fast it made stars behind my eyelids. I was sure he’d hear me, but he didn’t.

Alex went inside.

I discovered I didn’t need coffee to keep me awake.

P
atrick pounced on me in the kitchen, his expression fierce. “Where were you?”

I gestured at the back porch. “I went looking for your coffeepot.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s right there on the counter.”

The party was still going strong, but I’d had enough. Too much drama for one evening. If I hadn’t had a few too many glasses of wine, screw the drive, I’d have gone home to sleep in my own bed. As it was, I was coming down from the adrenaline high and could barely manage not to slur my words.

“You know I can’t use that one. Too complicated.”

He eyed me. “Are you drunk?”

“No. Just tired.” I hugged him, surprising him for a second, I think, given the way he jumped. Only for a second, then
his arms went around me. Held me tight until I pushed him away. “I’m going to bed.”

“Already?”

“I’m wiped out!” I knuckled his side and Patrick tried not to laugh, but gave in. “What is your problem, anyway? Why’d you come in here like the back end of your broom was on fire?”

My joke annoyed him. “Very funny. I was looking for you, that’s all. You disappeared.”

“Uh-huh.” I yawned behind my hand. “Well, here I am. No big deal, Patrick, sheesh.”

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, Liv. Is that so wrong? Making sure my best girl’s all right?”

“You haven’t called me that in a long time.” My fingers, trapped in his, twisted. He let me go.

“I mean it, and you know it.”

If you’ve ever loved someone for too long to stop, you know how I felt just then. Standing in the kitchen Patrick shared with someone else, bleary from exhaustion and red wine, I refused to give in to melancholy. I kissed his cheek instead and patted his ass the way I always did.

“I’m going to bed.”

I went up the back stairs. Narrow and steep, with a sharp bend halfway up, they were difficult to navigate even clear-headed. The sound of the music faded but the bass
thumpa-thumpa
continued as I climbed the stairs and went through what Patrick and Teddy called “the back room,” which had one door leading in and another leading out, and down the long, narrow hall. Like the stairway, the hall had a jog in it, sharp to the left. I loved old houses for their nooks and
crannies, and this was no exception. It had been cut into apartments when Patrick and Teddy moved in, but they’d been renovating back into a single dwelling. I touched the wallpaper in the hall, revealed when they’d stripped off a layer of tacky 1970s paneling. In the dark I couldn’t see the tiny sprigs of lavender flowers against the pale yellow background, but I knew they were there.

Once I’d taken a photo of the view down this hall. The light from the window at the end had sketched shadows beneath the light fixtures, which weren’t fancy enough to be considered antique, just old. I’d captured a misty, fuzzy figure in the corner, something like the shape of a woman in a long dress, her hair piled high on her head. Trick of the light, perhaps, or optical illusion. It was just out of focus enough for me to never be sure. But nights like this, when I thought I might stumble from weariness or too much cheer, I imagined I felt her comforting hand helping me along.

I went from doorway to bed in a few steps, shedding my clothes and diving onto the soft mattress with its mound of covers and pillows. I tossed them on the floor without ceremony, knowing Patrick would squawk, but too tired to pile them neatly on the trunk beneath the window. I reached to the nightstand and ruffled around inside, past the box of tissues, the lip balm, and found the small square box of earplugs I kept in there the way I kept a spare box of “girl” things under the bathroom sink.

In half a minute I had blessed silence, though an occasional surge of bass from downstairs still vibrated my stomach a little. I pulled on an oversize T-shirt from the bottom nightstand drawer and snuggled beneath the heavy comforter, the extra pillow tucked firmly between my knees to alleviate the
pressure on my aching back. I couldn’t hear my sigh, though the dull thud of my heartbeat still sounded in my ears.

I couldn’t sleep.

My sophomore year of college, I shared a room with three other girls. The dorm I’d chosen had been overbooked. I’d been given the choice of living in a different building, farther away from my classes and the cafeteria, or moving into a converted study lounge for the semester. It hadn’t been so bad. The larger room meant we’d all had a bit more space, and the lounge was in the corner of the building, so instead of the one small window the regular rooms had, we had four large panes of glass. The downside was the complete and utter lack of privacy. Forget about having a guy over; it was impossible even to masturbate without an audience.

I don’t know about the other girls, one of whom was a devout Christian whose missionary position had nothing to do with sex, but I have always been, and suspect I always will be, an avid fan of getting myself off. I’d learned the trick back then of rubbing off on a pillow tucked between my legs, just this way. Of using the slow, steady push of inner muscles to bring myself close, slowly, and finishing myself off against the pillow. I hadn’t come that way in a long time—I lived alone now and could strip down naked and do it on my dining-room table, if I wanted. Not that I ever did.

But I hadn’t forgotten how to do it, how to press and release and inch my hips forward and back, just so. I gave half a second’s thought to embarrassment and tossed it aside in the name of orgasm. After all, I hadn’t burst in on them, or sneaked up to peek through a window. The show on the porch had been dropped in front of me like nondenominational holiday gift, and I’ve never been one to return a present just because it didn’t fit quite right.

The memory of Alex Kennedy’s groan slid over me in the darkness and straight to the pit of my belly, inside me. Down to my clit. I shifted ever so slightly against the pillow. How must it feel to be the reason he made that sound?

I was suddenly tipping closer to the edge. I shifted again, tightening my inner muscles and holding, then releasing. Slow, sweet waves of climax began deep inside me. I turned my face into my pillow and bit the softness to stifle my own groan. I rode the waves of pleasure with my eyes closed tight.

Of all the pictures my mind had taken that night, his face was the one I could still see.

The house was quiet when I woke. I stretched under the weight of the blankets. The tip of my nose and cheeks had gone cold, and that didn’t bode well for how the rest of me would feel should I venture out of my warm cave. Patrick and Teddy’s house was old and heated unevenly, and I’d forgotten to open the register the night before. This could mean only my room was chilly, or that the entire house was shiver-inducing; it really depended on what they’d done with the thermostat before they went to bed.

My stomach rumbled. My bladder, the most effective alarm clock I would ever have, reminded me of all the wine I’d drunk. Worse, my mind insisted on replaying the activities of the night before in vivid black on black.

Had I really made myself come while thinking about Alex Kennedy getting a blow job? It would seem I had. I stretched again, feeling softness beneath me, warmth around me, the brush of smooth fabric on my belly where my T-shirt had bunched up. I waited for shame, or at least embarrassment, but nope. Nada. I was thoroughly depraved.

This more than anything got my ass out of bed, because one could really be appropriately depraved only with an empty bladder and a full stomach. I took care of the first easily enough, skip-hopping down the cold, bare wooden floor of the hall and into the bathroom, where I could actually see my breath, and the hot water from the sink scalded my hands. I gave a longing look at the bathtub, an old-fashioned claw-foot tub Patrick hated and I coveted.

Downstairs, the kitchen was gloriously warm. Heat flooded up from the open grate in the floor from the furnace directly below. In another twenty minutes I’d probably be sweating, but for now I gloried in it. I also reveled in the shelves of leftovers from the party the night before, everything tucked away in plastic containers and stacked neatly according to size and shape. Patrick’s work. I could only guess how late he’d stayed up, tidying, before Teddy forced him to bed. On the upside of that, I could be sure none of the food would give me food poisoning. Patrick was a stickler for keeping his buffet table appropriately cold or hot, depending.

Chicken pot stickers called my name, the little bastards, not even trying to pretend they didn’t know I was trying to lose a couple of pounds. The chocolate cake I could ignore, but not the little dumplings of fatty, sweet-and-sour goodness. I pulled the container from the fridge and turned to put it on the table—and almost ran smack into a bare chest.

The container of pot stickers hit the floor and bounced. I screamed. Loudly.

Alex Kennedy smiled.

“Damn, you’re pretty,” I said.

He blinked, his smile getting wider. He crossed his arms over his very fine, naked stomach. “Thanks.”

I thought about bending to pick up my breakfast, but doing that would put me at his feet, and that wasn’t a place I was sure I could stand to be. Not after last night, and what I’d seen. He cast a glance at the container by his toes, then at me. Then he bent to pick it up.

Alex at my feet, on the other hand? Very nice indeed.

“Thanks.” I took the container and eased past him to put it in the microwave. I looked over my shoulder. “Want some?”

He laughed and shook his head and took a step back. And then I realized something sort of funny, sort of strange. He was…uncomfortable?

I was used to finding half-naked men in Patrick’s kitchen the morning after a party. True, I’d never watched any of them come down someone else’s throat, and then used that thought to give myself an orgasm, but he didn’t know about that.

“I’m Alex. Patrick let me crash here last night.”

“I’m Olivia,” I offered, and waited for a reaction. Not even a blink.

“It’s nice to meet you, Olivia.”

He cleared his throat and shifted from foot to foot. His bare toes were as lovely as the rest of him. For the first time I noticed his pajama bottoms, printed with Hello Kitty faces, a faded pair that looked well loved and often worn. They covered more of him than my thigh-length T-shirt did of me, and I wished for a robe or at least a sweater, though I was no longer the least bit cold.

I gave them a look. “Nice.”

Alex laughed, staring down at his toes. The glance he gave me was amused, a little embarrassed, but not much. “Thanks. They were a gift.”

The microwave dinged and I removed the container, holding it out. “You sure you don’t want any?”

He shook his head, even though his tongue crept out to dot his bottom lip. “I think I’d better go with oatmeal.”

I pulled a fork from the drawer and poked it into a dumpling. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to make me feel guilty because I’m not up this early to run a mile and a half.”

His laugh sounded more genuine this time. “Hell, no. I’m not going for a run. Not in this weather, anyway. Or, well…not ever.”

I swallowed a bite of delicious. “Thank God.”

I went to the fridge again for some orange juice. Teddy squeezes it fresh and never leaves the pitcher empty. I pulled it out and offered some. Alex nodded. I grabbed a couple of glasses and set them on the table, then poured. His expression prompted me to check if I had something in my teeth or hanging from my nose.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just…”

I sat at the kitchen table and waved him to a seat, too. He pulled the glass of juice toward himself and sipped. I waited.

“Just what?” I said, when it seemed he’d stalled.

“Patrick didn’t mention he had another person staying here. That’s all.”

“Ah.” I dug into another pot sticker, which shouldn’t have been so tasty washed down with orange juice, but was. “He didn’t tell me you were staying here, either. In fact, he said…”

Both of us seemed to have come down with a case of bite-your-tongue-itis.

Alex quirked a brow and sat back in his chair. The kitchen was warm, but he was shirtless, and goose bumps dappled his
skin. An image of myself leaning across the table to lick his nipples sent a flash of heat through me that didn’t come from the furnace chugging to life beneath our feet.

“What? Tell me.” The man I’d seen last night at the party, the one in my room, was back. His voice melted, gooey caramel on soft ice cream. I wanted to lick it.

“He said,” I told him, carefully not looking at him but at my food, “to stay away from you.”

“Did he?”

I knew my laugh sounded forced, but he didn’t know me. “Yes.”

“Why?”

I licked soy sauce from a finger and caught him looking, his eyes narrowed but not angry. Interested, maybe. Intrigued. “Because Patrick likes to make sure I don’t get into trouble.”

Alex snorted lightly and drank more juice. “He thinks I’m trouble?”

“Aren’t you?” It sounded like flirting. It felt like flirting, but I knew better than to flirt with a man who was into guys. I’d learned my lesson on that a long time ago.

“I guess that depends,” he said. Then, “Yeah. I am.”

We both laughed at that, somehow companionable in our assessment of his character via the conduit of Patrick’s warning. “I thought so. You look like trouble.”

Alex’s fine brown hair had been carefully groomed last night to look like a mess, but now it fell in genuine disarray over his forehead and into his eyes. When he bent to stare at the table, tapping his fingers on it, his hair obscured his face. I wanted to brush it off his forehead.

“Emo bangs,” I said.

He looked up at me then and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Huh?”

I gestured. “Your hair. Those long bangs, like one of those emo kids who wear skinny jeans and black fingernail polish.”

He laughed again, for real this time, and long. “I guess that’s a sign if nothing else is, huh? Time for a cut?”

“I don’t think so. I like it.” I speared the last pot sticker and held it up to him. “Sure you don’t want it?”