Naked Read online

  Alex laughed without looking at me. His gaze scoured the ceiling. He swiped a hand across his forehead, pushing sweat-damp hair from his eyes. “I always have condoms.”

  I settled deeper into the cushion, aware now of various sensations I hadn’t noticed when he was making me come. How tight my bra straps were. How tired I suddenly was. I yawned.

  He looked at me then. “Sleepy?”

  I sighed with another yawn and sat up, testing my emotions. Nothing about this felt casual. Just the opposite, in fact. It felt like it meant too much. This night, this man.

  I feigned the yawn this time. “I’d better get going.”

  I was up and off the futon and bending to look for my panties before Alex said anything.

  “Wait. What? Wait a minute, Olivia.”

  I stood in my boots and bra, my jeans in one hand, my panties in the other. Alex had moved to the edge of the futon, one foot on the floor, one hand reaching. The light from the hanging lamp in the corner caught him one way, the shifting glare from the TV in another, and once again I saw him painted with shadows.

  “Stay,” Alex said.

  I guess some creative people hear music, or poems or scraps of dialogue, in their heads. I take pictures. And in the span of those few seconds, that picture was taken.

  Black boys, as the song says, are nutritious. White boys, the other song says, are so sexy. I’d dated my share of black, white, even Asian men and found the color of their skins to be what made the least difference between them. But one thing I found about white boys was that every single one of them loved my hair.

  Alex wasn’t different. He ran his fingers over the long, twisted locks I usually wore pulled off my face and hanging down my back. Now, after our romp on the futon, they had fallen out of the hair band and tumbled over my shoulders. I drew them over his chest, his thighs. That beautiful cock, which stirred a little at my touch. I looked up at him through the shield of my hair and thought about taking him in my mouth.

  He pushed my hair away from my face, his long fingers stroking my forehead. “You’re so gorgeous, you know that?”

  I propped myself up on my elbows. “Mmm.”

  Alex laughed and pulled me up to kiss my mouth. “Don’t make that noise like you don’t believe me. I hate it when people can’t take a compliment.”

  “Fine. I’m gorgeous.” I ran my tongue along his jaw and nestled my face into the dip of his neck.

  He wrapped my hair around his fingers, released it. Twisted it again. I looked at him with a raised brow. He laughed and let go.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I like your hair, too.” I ran my fingers through the softness, making sure to let it all fall over his face when I was finished caressing.

  “Have you always worn it like that?”

  I sat up. “Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”

  He sat up, too. Cross-legged and naked, we faced each other, our knees touching. Alex grabbed a pillow for his lap, and I took one as well.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  I laughed. “No, it’s fine. When I was a kid, my mom had no clue what to do with my hair. Natural hair wasn’t really in fashion, even though my mom was a pretty natural woman herself. I’m talking gypsy skirts and head scarves. Birkenstocks.”

  “Patchouli?”

  “You got it.” I laughed again, stretching. Comfortable with him. “Anyway, she finally started taking me to a special hair-dresser who dealt with black hair, and that was okay. We relaxed it for a while, when I was in high school. Then when I got to college I had sort of…not an epiphany, exactly. More like an identity crisis. I thought I’d try being black for a change—”

  He looked so startled I had to laugh. “I’m adopted.”

  “Oh. Ah. Oh?” He still looked a little confused.

  “My parents are white.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Okay. I get it now.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, too, rubbing his knee with mine. “Anyway, when I went to college I figured it was time to explore this other identity. Not the one I was raised with. I joined a black sorority and the BCC, the Black Cultural Club.”

  “How was that?”

  I laughed again, this time ruefully. “Well, I made some great friends, but it was hard. I wasn’t black enough for a lot of them. Not the color of my skin and not the way I acted. It was tough, but I learned a lot about myself. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in college, though?”

  “I didn’t go.”

  “No?” Surprised, I looked into his eyes. “Not even community college?”

  “Nope.”

  “Wow.” That made his success more impressive, but it felt awkward to say so.

  He shrugged. “I should’ve gone. Maybe I’d have learned something about myself.”

  I stretched out on my side, propping my head on my hand, and ran my fingers up the inside of his thigh. “I don’t know that I wouldn’t have learned it all, eventually. Anyway, that’s when I decided to go natural with my hair. In the long run, it was easier than fighting with it all the time. It was flattering. And…it connected me. It might sound stupid to say so.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He stretched out, too, so we were face-to-face again. “It makes sense. It’s enviable, actually.”

  I laughed softly. “Sure.”

  “It is.” Alex ran his fingers over my hair again, pulling a few of the locks forward, over my shoulder. “It suits you.”

  It seemed like the most natural thing to kiss him then. His mouth opened under mine. His tongue stroked. This time when I let my hair trace a path over his body, I did take his cock in my mouth.

  I sucked him slowly. He arched. I gave in to the smells and sounds of his desire. I lost myself in it. I found my clit with my fingertips and got myself off as I made him come. When he did, he twined his fingers in my hair, and I smiled even as I took him down the back of my throat.

  Minutes later, his heartbeat slowed under my cheek. His breathing matched it soon after. He snored a little from deep in his throat. It was cute. He went boneless and relaxed under me, and before I knew it, I was out like a light.

  I woke to the smells of bacon frying and coffee perking. I stretched under soft blankets and my hands encountered a mountain of pillows. I sat up, rubbing my eyes on a futon in the middle of Alex Kennedy’s living room. And I was naked.

  I could see him, beyond the half-wall and arch, in the small, U-shaped kitchen. Well, I could see part of him. The cabinets hanging low over the countertop island that divided the kitchen from the dining area left a couple of feet open for pass-through viewing. I could see him from shoulders to thighs, a nice view of his briefs-clad ass and the apron strings dangling against it.

  As for myself, the sheet I pulled up to cover my breasts might’ve made a nifty toga if I’d been talented enough to fold and twist it, but I didn’t have that skill. I scanned the floor for my clothes and saw a sock, a boot, my shirt. A flash of orange told me my panties were hiding just beneath the futon. I reached for them as Alex appeared the archway.

  “Good morning.”

  “Hi.”

  He had a spatula in his hand and the apron I’d viewed from behind turned out to have the cartoon torso of a bikini-clad woman with huge tits imprinted on the front. “Hungry?”

  A man who wore Hello Kitty pajamas wouldn’t balk at cross-gender bacon frying, but a surprised laugh burst out of me anyway. “Umm…”

  He grinned and smoothed a hand down the apron’s front to fondle the big cartoon boobs. “Nice, huh?”

  “You know, my current circle of male friends has skewed me so far that shouldn’t even have surprised me.” I got my panties and slid into them, but couldn’t find my bra. I could go topless, prance around in what my mom had always called gatkes. I had the scent of him all over me. I grabbed up my sweater anyway and slid it on over my bare skin. My nipples pebbled immediately against the soft fabric.

  I caught his gaze as I used a couple of my locks to tie back t