Naked Read online

  “Try this.”

  I did. We both checked what I’d captured. This time, he gave me a thumbs-up. “See the difference?”

  “Yep. Thanks.”

  He looked again. “I want to see this one when you’re done tweaking it, all right? This one is good.”

  I beamed. “Thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.”

  He didn’t have much false modesty, that Scott Church, but he also knew how to take a compliment graciously. “Keep going.”

  We worked for another hour or so. Clothes came off. I could tell a few of the models were shy at first, as were some of the photographers, but here’s a funny thing about being naked—at first it feels awkward, but after a while it’s all just skin, the same as we all have.

  By the end of the workshop I’d taken over two hundred pictures and thought half a dozen were good enough to show off. Maybe more once I got them home and worked on them with Photoshop. It had been a great day.

  Church hugged every woman as we left, planted wet kisses on our cheeks. Shook all the men’s hands. He’d spent a good portion of the time critiquing and praising, not just teaching, and now as we all left he shouted out, “Damn, I forgot to mention this. I’m having a gallery show at the Mulberry Street Gallery in Lancaster next month. Come on out and see me. I’ll probably have some shots from today in there.”

  I met up with Alex at the table where I was grabbing a last cola for the road and he was still shrugging into his coat. His hair had been mussed by another woman’s fingers, and while I’d taken a few photos of her doing it, now the pin of jealousy pricked me into smoothing it.

  He grinned. “That was fun. I can’t wait to see the pictures.”

  “And nary an erection in any of them,” I said wryly as we headed for my car, among the shouted goodbyes from the other workshop participants.

  He laughed and slung an arm around my shoulders. “It was too cold in there for a woody.”

  “Huh. You weren’t hot pressed up against all those other bodies?” I fixed him with a steely glare only half feigned as I opened my trunk to put in our gear.

  Alex pressed me against the side of the car, his hands on my hips, his mouth seeking mine. “Nope.”

  “Hmm.” I shifted my knee between his legs. “What about now? I feel something…”

  He chuckled into my ear and pushed his crotch against my belly. “That’s all because of you. Did you know how fucking sexy you looked with that camera?”

  “Baby, we all had cameras.”

  “I was only paying attention to you.”

  I laughed, though a little breathlessly. “Uh-huh.”

  He pulled back to look into my eyes. “You’re different when you have that camera, Olivia.”

  “Different, how?”

  He shook his head, searching for words. “I can’t explain it. But you’re…bigger.”

  The day had passed while we were inside, and the metal behind my back was chilly, but I didn’t move. I hooked my fingers in his belt loops and pulled his hips harder against mine. “I’m already pretty big.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” His hands skated up my sides to rest just below my breasts. “I mean…it’s impressive, what you can do. You make art. Fuck, that’s sexy. That’s all.”

  “Me and everyone with a camera.”

  He wasn’t letting me demure. “Not everyone. Anyone can take a picture. But what you do is different. Don’t you fucking tell me no.” He cut in when I opened my mouth again. “Just take the compliment.”

  “Thank you.”

  We kissed for a few minutes, then a few more. The door of the warehouse opened, reminding us that though everyone else had left the parking lot, we weren’t alone. Alex’s erection nudged my belly, and my panties had gone hot and damp, my nipples tight.

  “We should get going,” I breathed into his mouth.

  “Yeah.”

  We didn’t move. The wind came up and blew his hair into his eyes. I brushed it away.

  “I meant what I said,” I told him suddenly. “About being greedy for you. Wanting you all to myself.”

  Alex twirled one of my locks around his finger and kept me pinned to the car. “Good.”

  “I love you.” I thought it would come out stronger, with more purpose. Instead the words caught, snagged, tore a little at my throat so they jigged and jagged.

  He heard them, though. “I love you, too, Olivia.”

  I couldn’t fault him for stumbling on the sentiment when my own words had been spoken so roughly. I just held him tight, squeezing, my eyes closed as I pressed my face to his chest. He smelled good and felt good, and just then in that moment I knew without a doubt, without fear, that I was going to love him forever.

  He stroked my hair. “Whatcha thinking?”

  I tipped my head back to look at his face. “I’m thinking…I want you to meet my mother.”

  Chapter

  14

  He blinked, then laughed. “Okay.”

  “She lives only about twenty minutes from here.”

  He nodded slowly and stepped back to let me move. “Okay. Sure. If you want.”

  I took a deep breath. Gave him a smile. “Yes. I want her to meet you.”

  “How come you didn’t mention this before?” he asked once we got in the car and I pulled out of the lot.

  I kept my gaze on the roads, not as familiar with them as I should be, and not wanting to get lost. “I didn’t think we’d be stopping by. I wasn’t sure how long the workshop would go, and it’s Shabbat, anyway.”

  He made a scared noise. “Is your mother going to have a problem with me?”

  “Probably.”

  “Fuck,” he said, sounding a little stunned. “Really?”

  “My mother has a lot of problems with a lot of things she can’t change,” I told him. My hands gripped the steering wheel too hard, and I had to force my fingers loose. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Well, she won’t be the first mother to hate me, anyway. I kind of have that effect on mothers.”

  I snorted soft laughter as I navigated the streets of my mom’s neighborhood. We passed the synagogue she went to. The small, unremarkable home that housed the mikvah, the ritual bathhouse. We were almost to my mother’s house, and I was thinking I should drive on by. Not stop.

  “How could anyone ever hate you, Alex?”

  “It’s a talent.”

  “Not one you’ve ever shown me.”

  “You’re blinded by love.”

  With no traffic ahead or behind us, I slowed the car, just a couple minutes from the house. “My mother won’t hate you. She might not approve of you as a choice for me, but she won’t hate you for being you.”

  He was quiet for another minute, speaking only as we pulled into my mom’s driveway. “That’s good to know.”

  I turned off the ignition and looked at him. “We don’t have to stay long. I just want her to meet you. I want you to meet her. It’s sort of the thing you do, right? Once you’re serious with someone?”

  His teeth flashed as he grinned. “So, you’re serious about me, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  He looked toward the house, where the porch light beamed. “I think we’ve been spotted. Too late to make our escape.”

  I peered through the windshield to see the curtains in the front room twitch apart. “No going back now. Think of this as a rite of passage. Meeting the crazy family.”

  He looked out the window, my hand tight in his, as the front door opened. “Nobody’s family is crazier than mine.”

  “Olivia? Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Mom.” I crossed the grass and went up onto the porch so she could hug me. It was the same embrace she’d always given me, but I wondered if it would ever stop feeling different.

  “Livvaleh, what on earth are you doing here?” My mother used the pet name as if she’d always called me that, though she’d only started a few years ago.

  I hated it. “I was t