Naked

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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?”

“What the hell.” He plucked it from the fork and ate it from his fingers.

I watched his lips close over his fingertips and suck away the soy sauce. Warmth swirled inside me, which was stupid, but hey, a girl can look even if she can’t touch. We both finished our orange juice at the same time.

Then we sat in silence. Alex might be trouble, but he sure wasn’t chatty. Not that I got a snobby vibe off him or anything, as if he just didn’t want to talk to me. More like he wasn’t sure what to say.

“How do you know Patrick?” It was ask or leave the kitchen for the chilly wilds of upstairs, where I’d have to dress and go into the colder outdoors to head home. Besides, I wanted to know.

“We met in Japan.”

“You work for Quinto and Bates?” That was the law firm where Patrick worked.

He shook his head. “No, I was brought in as a consult with Damsmithon Industries while Patrick was there for the international business meeting.”

“So you’re not a lawyer.” I swirled a finger in the remains of the pot sticker juice in the bottom of the container. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but couldn’t resist the savory tang.

He laughed. “Hell, no. But Patrick and I hit it off, hung out after the meetings. Kept in touch. When I told him I was coming back to the States he said I should stop by to see him.”

All of this didn’t sound like it should go along with the image of Patrick’s face and his warning to me about Alex being trouble. “So…you’re friends?”

“What exactly did Patrick say about me?” Alex’s bangs fell down again, and he didn’t brush them away.

I paused for a second before answering. “Not much, actually.”

Which wasn’t like Patrick at all. He usually had something to say about everybody, and if he didn’t have anything, sometimes he made stuff up. I pondered this while Alex got up and went to the fridge. Patrick had warned me away from Alex, but hadn’t given me details. No gossip. Strange.

Alex brought back the pitcher of juice and a tinfoil-covered plate of cookies that had escaped my notice. He offered them to me first, and don’t think I didn’t notice that he had manners. I didn’t pretend to myself or him that I shouldn’t eat any cookies. It was too late for that. Come January I’d be moaning about the size of my ass, but so would everyone else I knew, whether it was warranted or not.

I picked up a gingerbread man with a huge erect cock. “Hmm. Normally I bite the heads off first, but…”

Alex snorted and picked up one for himself. “Now there’s a dilemma.”

We were still laughing when Patrick came down the back stairs. He wore a silk kimono and a bleary expression. His blond hair stuck up in corkscrews all over the place. He gave us both an imperious look from his spot on the last step.

“We can hear you all the way upstairs.”

“Sorry.” Alex sounded contrite.

I didn’t bother. “Oh, Patrick. C’mon. It’s, like, noon already. Get your lazy ass up and about.”

Patrick yawned broadly and swept past me, then turned to give me a real glare. “You didn’t even make coffee?”

“Your fucking machine is too complicated,” I told him fondly, though of course he knew that, and of course he was still miffed that I hadn’t started it brewing for him.

“I’ll do it,” Alex said, and was up and around the table before either Patrick or I could do more than blink at each other in surprise. “I should’ve thought of it, man. I’m sorry.”

I raised a brow at this sudden leap to obsequiousness, but hell. I didn’t know the guy beyond what? A warning, a karaoke serenade and a drunken blow job in a dark room. He hadn’t quite seemed the servile type to me, but then I was forever being surprised by what I didn’t expect.

“Thank you,” Patrick said a little stiffly. “Alex, this is Olivia Mackey. Olivia, Alex Kennedy. Olivia is an independent contractor with her own graphic design company, and Alex does consulting for several international corporations.”

Coffeepot carafe filled with water in his hand, Alex turned while Patrick made the cocktail party introductions. He and I shared a look past Patrick’s kimono. I gave Alex a tiny shrug. I didn’t get it, either.

“We met,” I told Patrick. “What is up with you?”

“I’m just being a good host.”

“Thanks, Patrick,” Alex said, and set about making the coffee.

He figured out his way around Patrick’s kitchen, faltering only once, when he opened the wrong cupboard to pull out the coffee pods, and found the spice jars, instead. I turned in my chair to watch him. He was no casual houseguest. He knew how to make himself at home.

Patrick and I could hold entire conversations without words, but this morning he was deliberately not giving me the right signals. Or he was misreading mine. He could be selective that way. Before I could get him to tell me what the hell was going on, Alex turned from the coffeemaker.

“Anyone hungry for pancakes?”

“I couldn’t,” I exclaimed.

Just as Patrick said, “Alex, you’re a darling.”

Patrick looked at Alex. Alex looked at me. I looked at Patrick.

“Actually,” I said, “I should get going. I’ve got some work to do—”

“On Sunday?” Patrick asked incredulously. “What’s the point of working for yourself if you can’t take the weekend off?”

I stood and stretched. “The point of working for myself is that I can work whenever I want.”

“Yeah, and work whenever you have to.” Alex leaned against the counter, one long leg crossed over the other at the ankles.

I nodded. He understood. Patrick, who worked eighty-hour weeks but also took a month’s vacation every year, understood the importance of hard work, but would probably never comprehend why I’d quit a stable salary to go out on my own.

I hugged my former boyfriend and kissed his cheek. Patrick softened, finally, his embrace unwilling but inevitable. He held my face still and looked into my eyes.

“Don’t work too much, Livvy. It’s the holidays.”

I put my hands over his on my cheeks and carefully peeled away his fingers to release his grip. “You want me to take back all the presents I bought you?”

He laughed the first real Patrick laugh I’d heard in a few days, and squeezed me close. He whispered in my ear, “Remember what I said.”

Most of the time when Patrick hugged me I could take it for what it was—a physical expression of the affection and love between two friends. Platonic friends. And then there were the times when I breathed in the scent of him, the cologne I bought for him so many years ago and which he’d never switched from, even though he could afford something trendier and more expensive. When I felt the press of his body along mine and I had to close my eyes and remind myself to let him go, and when I found it almost impossible to do so.

Still locked in Patrick’s arms, I forced myself to open my eyes. Alex’s gaze found mine over Patrick’s shoulder. With that scrutiny as motivation, I patted Patrick’s back quickly and stepped away, hoping my nipples weren’t hard through my T-shirt or that my cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt.