And Jason.
A little squeak leaves my mouth when the cold paint lands on my lower back. “It’s a little cold is all,” I say, striving for casual. “Have you been doing this long?”
His head peeks around my thigh and he tugs a headphone out of his ear. “Sorry, what?”
“Oh nothing.” I’m talking to a man who painted butterflies on my boobs. “I didn’t realize you were listening to music.”
“It helps me focus.”
I pat him on the shoulder. “Then by all means, listen away.”
He starts to put the bud back in, then seems to think twice about it. “This is your first body art parade, isn’t it?”
“Is it that obvious?” I force myself to stop smoothing my hair. “I didn’t realize people did them over and over. Seems like something you’d get out of your system after just once.”
“Oh no. It’s addictive.” He moves the airbrush over my hip, leaving a trail of magenta behind in the shape of a wing. “Walking around free like that is…symbolic in a way. For one, there’s nowhere to carry your damn cell phone, which kind of cuts the world off. It’s just you. Everyone is naked, so we’re on the same level. That’s how it should be.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” I murmur, mentally repeating what the artist said so I won’t forget when nerves eventually strike. “I was mostly hoping to shock myself out of my comfortable little box, but the bigger meaning is even better.”
“Oh, it’s good for that, too. I can guarantee you’ll never have that dream again where you show up for the first day of school naked.”
“Because it’s not scary anymore.”
“Exactly.”
Over the course of our conversation, I’ve managed to forget I’m standing here naked. But I remember when he taps my thigh and asks me to bend forward. “I need to get under the crease of your butt.”
I put my hands against the wall like I’m being frisked. If only my mother could see me now! “Oh, of course.”
“Perfect.”
Biting down on my bottom lip, I try to stop the flow of nervous chatter, but it won’t be deterred. There’s something that has been on my mind since I left St. Augustine this morning and the artist is so easy to talk to. “How fast do you think someone can form a bad habit? Does it take one time? Two?”
“Depends what you’re talking about. Drugs, Chick-Fil-A…”
“Running away when something scares you.”
He sits back on his heels. “That’s a tough one. But in my inexpert opinion, I would say that particular habit forms pretty fast. It’s like instant gratification.”
I hum in my throat, once again thinking of Jason standing in the driveway, watching me walk away. Is he on the boat with Birdie right now? Are they connecting? An unexpected wave of yearning rolls through me, so dense I have to breathe thought it.
“Um, can you unclench, ma’am?”
My forehead hits the wall. “Finally found something worse than another woman seeing the pee spot on the front of my underwear.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” I mutter.
Fifteen minutes later, the soft whirr of the airbrush machine cuts out and the artist stands, wiping his hands on paint-stained jeans. “This might be my favorite ever. Come on.” He jerks his chin toward the changing area. “Let’s take a look in the mirror.”
“Okay,” I say, letting a pent-up breath leave my lungs. The college girls smile at me as I cross the room and I send them the universal how do I look face. They send me thumbs ups in return, so I’m feeling confident when I step in front of the full-length mirror. I’m not prepared for the intricate beauty of the design, though. “Oh. Oh, this is amazing. I had no idea…” I asked for butterflies in various shades of pink, but I didn’t expect to be transformed into this moving piece of artwork. I look like a patch taken straight out of the most beautiful garden. “How will I stand washing this off?”
The artist laughs. “Just come back to me next year. Starting with a blank canvas is half the fun.”
“If I get through today, I’ll consider it. Thank you,” I breathe as he walks away to clean his station. Unfortunately, the confidence wanes as I consider the front door.
In the end, it takes me almost an hour to leave the shop once the artist finishes. I hang out in the back with the staff under the guise of drying far longer than necessary, and by the time I get the nerve to walk out into the parade, it’s in full swing and the sun is setting.
My heart drums in my ears as I take my first step onto the pavement. In no clothes, save a camouflaged pair of panties. Yes, from a distance it looks like I’m wearing a colorful costume, but up close I know my nipples are visible through the pink paint. Thanks to the design extending to every inch of me, my underwear is weighed down with paint and molded to my core, leaving nothing to the imagination. For all intents and purposes, I’m in public wearing nothing but flip-flops.
And I feel exactly how I used to feel walking in a pageant. Isn’t that a kicker? My heartbeat is rollicking and my lips won’t stay wet. I’m positive I’m sticking out like a sore thumb—and I’ve done this hundreds of times in my life. Been on display. The difference is I’m in control of this. I chose this and…there’s no one judging me this time. Yes, that’s the major game changer here. I can walk from one end of this parade to the other and I’m in competition with no one. Not even myself.
A smile tickles my lips as I move to the center of the street and walk straight down the dotted white line, the sound of Caribbean music floating on the warm wind around me. I reach up and let out my ponytail, shaking it loose. I’m glad I waited until the sun was dipping, because the atmosphere of the parade is enthralling, electric. Most everyone has a drink in their hand and I don’t hesitate to join them, untucking the twenty I stowed in the hip of my panties and buying something fruity and green off a street vendor. Alcohol burns down my throat and sugar sweetens my lips. It’s terrible and way too strong, but I drink the whole thing just because I can.
I don’t want to stray too far from the shop—it’s where I left my clothes. So after about ten blocks, I hook around and find a group of women in butterfly wings to walk with. Taking me under their wing, so to speak, they convince me to have another awful green drink, but it must be an acquired taste. This one goes down much smoother…until I start to think of Jason. That’s when the alcohol’s heat turns inconvenient, seeming to fan down from my belly, making me hyperaware when my thighs brush together. Might as well admit it. I like my boobs. Looking down and seeing them decorated in pink makes me want to touch and cup them. Squeeze.
No. No, that’s not true. I want bigger hands on them. Demanding ones.
Don’t I?
There’s no sense in lying to myself. In the middle of all this freedom, I’m a prisoner to my own thoughts. I can’t tone them down or ignore them. Especially since human nature is in full swing around me. As much as this parade is about self-expression, those nobler intentions are slowly giving way to human nature. The sexual kind.
In the darker sections of the parade, nude, painted bodies press close, mouths move as one. I find myself watching couples kiss far longer than is polite, my endorphins popping wheelies south of my belly button. My hands move of their own accord, trailing up my stomach, following the curve of my hips. The music pumps louder and my breathing matches the pace, sounds of laughter and drums joining together to form white noise in my ears. The sense of anonymity adds to the riot of sensations, too. No one knows me here. I’m just a body.
A body that suddenly needs pleasure so bad, it’s aching all over.
Jason.
I swallow.
Jason’s hands. Touching me there. His foul words in my ear.
Stop. I’m making myself damp.
I hear whispering behind me a second before a hand catches mine.
A jolt of fear has me pulling it away and spinning around. “Excuse—”
It’s him. Jason is…here? Is that him sta
nding in a sea of colorful nudity, putting everyone to shame by being ten times as compelling? No, there was something in those green drinks and I’m hallucinating. Oh Lord. I should never stray from Sauvignon Blanc. “You’re not really here.”
He’s pissed. Angrier than I’ve ever seen him. His jaw is bunched and ticking, that huge, sculpted chest rising and falling beneath his gray T-shirt like white caps during a storm. That anger is cut with something much more intoxicating, though. Lust. It’s the lighthouse in the middle of a hurricane, guiding me in its direction when I should avoid it, well aware it’s surrounded by jagged rocks and surefire ruin.
Dark eyes envelop me in a long head-to-toe sweep, that rapt attention lingering between my legs, raking up my stomach to devour my breasts. “If you need proof I’m here, baby, I’ll give it to you.” Jason grabs the back of his collar and whips the shirt off over his head, earning whistles from several directions. He doesn’t seem to be aware of any of them, which shouldn’t turn me on more than I already am. But it does. He’s like a bull standing in the center of a flower patch and I’m the red flag. I’m so overwhelmed by the authenticity of him, I can only stand there as he drags the T-shirt down over my head, not even bothering to help my arms through the proper holes. “I thought those conspiracy theories about you being a nudist were exaggerated.”
My gasp turns several heads on the street. “How dare you read those without telling me? They’re complete and total nonsense!”
“Are they?” Jason steps closer. “You’re two seconds away from being kidnapped by Bigfoot.”
“Excuse m-me, miss,” stutters a man to my right. I turn to find a bespectacled man in bike shorts with a dragon painted on his torso. He’s half the size of Jason and at least fifteen years his senior, but he’s leveling a frown up at him anyway. “Is this big jerk bothering you?”
“Listen up, motherfucker…” Jason fumes, before he trails off into a sigh. “That took balls. If I wasn’t here and a man was harassing her, I would want someone to intervene.” He passes Dragon Man a nod. “Thanks.”
Dragon Man sniffs and tugs up his shorts.
Jason turns his attention to me, and I almost blister under the heat and tenderness of it. “Naomi, please tell this man I would willingly lay down my life to keep you from injury.”
“He would,” I whisper.
“Without hesitation.”
“Without hesitation,” I repeat, shivering.
We must stare at each other for longer than I realize because when I zone back in, Dragon Man is long gone and Jason has come closer. Closer, until he’s lifting me into his arms. A wicked combination of dread and anticipation is booming in my ears. No. No, the pulse is everywhere. Under my skin. Shooting down to my toes. My sex is heavy and throbbing, my nerve endings in such heaven from being pressed up against Jason’s safe chest, I almost moan. I should be screaming at him to put me down. I should demand to know where he’s taking me, but I don’t care. He’s given me permission to stop making decisions. And it’s exactly what I need. I need to be absolved of my conscience.
I can barely look away from the determined set of his jaw to absorb my surroundings, but I see we’re traveling away from the crowd. Moving down a side street, turning one way, then another until we’re on a brief strip of cobblestones between two restaurants. Both establishments are in full swing, music and laughter spilling out of their doors, but we exist in the empty alley between, visible if a passerby looked close enough but far back enough from the street that the darkness swallows us whole.
Jason sets me upright, but by no means does he let me go. We move as one as he walks me backward, tilting my face up with a less-than-gentle hand. “I’d like to do a lot of things right now, Naomi. Like ask if you were sent to drive me fucking crazy. Or go back to the parade and fight every man who had a chance to see you naked before me—the guy who’s been beating off thinking about your tits for a month. Yeah, I’d like to do a lot of shit right about now.”
“Why don’t you?”
He shoves our mouths together but doesn’t kiss me. Just breathes, breathes, bares his teeth. “Because you’re wet for me, aren’t you? Saw you back on that road. Crossing your thighs and arching your back for me. You finally going to let me throw you up on this cock and bounce you on it until you get vocal fry?”
“Jason, you can’t just…” My words are muffled by his hard mouth and they’re followed by a moan as his hands circle my waist, his thumbs massaging the indent of my belly button. “You haven’t kissed me yet. There’s an order to these things and I’m confused enough—”
“Come on then, beauty queen,” Jason grates. “Taste me.”
Our lips brush.
I’m instantly swept up. Mentally and physically. It happens so fast.
One second, my feet are on the ground and the next, my toes are even with Jason’s knees. It’s the feeling of being strapped into a roller coaster, braced on all sides—safe—with my stomach missing in action. Carried away in a flutter of wings. If I had any delusions that I’d be the one to issue this kiss, that notion dissolves faster than my journey off the ground. Into Jason’s hold, up against his chest with a big hand fisted in my hair, the opposite arm supporting my backside, keeping me indecently close.
A shudder rolls through him. “Kissing you fucks me up worst of all, baby. Permanently.” He backs me up a pace, settling me against the wall, pressing our foreheads together. “Christ. Look at you. I’m going to do it anyway.”
His mouth slants over mine before I finish speaking, his tongue raiding my mouth in a claiming stroke. There’s nothing polite or reserved about the way Jason kisses me. It’s earthy. Messy. He’s hungry and my femininity is his dinner. He feasts on it with purposeful drives of his tongue, the turning of his head in a dance with mine so our mouths are forced to reposition, mate again, sink into a rhythm, stop and do it all over. A growl hovers in his throat as we move, straining closer with every passing second, seeking relief for the pressure built by the joining of tongues, the tight pressing of bodies. Panting. We break only to pant, before joining together with breath sucked in through noses and moans for each other’s ears alone.
My mouth has never been this open. I’ve never wanted to open it so wide and allow so many courtesies. Jason’s hand has left my hair and met the second one at my backside, molding the flesh there without asking permission. And he should. He should ask permission. I know that. But I’m moaning into his mouth and my own fingertips are scraping through his short hair, pulling his face closer for more of the glorious ravishing he’s giving me—and my demanding body language is nothing if not a resounding yes, please, do whatever you want to me.
“Haven’t gotten my fill of kissing this sweet mouth by a long shot.” He sucks my lower lip into his mouth, slowly letting it go. “While I’m trying to do the impossible, tell me what’s next up on the so-called order of things.”
“I don’t keep a list,” I gasp as his teeth rake my neck. “But there must b-be a proper progression.”
“Why don’t I start by touching you everywhere those butterflies are painted?” His expression is sexual, challenging. “Then we’ll move on to that pretty place they’re not.”
“How do you know?” The darkness, the drinks, the freedom I experienced during the parade has made me bold. It could just be Jason. He’s goaded me into surprising myself since I showed up on his doorstep. “Maybe they’re everywhere.”
A warning ticks in his eye. “Push me a little more and I’ll have no choice but to find out.”
Adrenaline is spinning inside me like the wheel on a paddle boat, faster and faster. Jason’s hands give my backside a final, rough squeeze, then circle around to my belly, sliding higher and stopping just beneath my breasts. I want to be touched all over and I don’t want to wait anymore. The order of things is pointless when it comes to this man. He’ll keep me safe no matter what, won’t he? I might feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff, but the confidence I have in him is like wings attac
hed to my back.
Throwing caution to the wind, I take Jason’s hands and guide them to my breasts, his gruff curse making my nipples peak tighter. “I can’t remember where the paintbrush went, Jason.” I whisper, helping him squeeze me. “I don’t know if there are butterflies under my panties or not.”
His body falls into mine, pressing me to the wall as his hands rake down my sides, fingers tucking into the sides of my underwear. Tugging, almost ripping in their haste to peel them down my hips. Jason makes strangled sounds in my ears, his chest shuddering when gravity takes over and the panties slip to my knees. “Either way, I’m going to tongue fuck the shit out of you, baby. No butterflies mean no one else saw that pussy and I’ll let you come faster. That’s the difference.”
Drawing breath is almost impossible as Jason leans his upper half away and lifts the gray T-shirt so he can look at my sex. So he can look at my sex. Am I really doing this? Letting a man take liberties with me in public? Yes. Yes, I am. And I don’t have a choice in the matter anymore, because if he stopped touching me right now, I think I would go the way of my scruples and evaporate.
“Not a drop of paint on this beauty. Good girl,” Jason rasps, hunkering down until he’s eye level with the most intimate part of me. I’m partial to my blonde landing strip, even though it’s outdated, and Jason seems to like it too. Oh Lord, does he ever. He presses his face against me and inhales, robbing me of a gasp. One hand finds the inside of my thigh and rides higher, higher until only an inch separates him from my core. “Wishing I was inside this pussy of yours has cost me a lot of fucking sleep,” he says, easing his tongue out to nudge my feminine lips. Light. So light. But a bomb might as well be going off inside me. “Ready to make nice now?”
Is he talking to me or my vagina?
The answer is yes either way, but I’m not given the opportunity to find out, because Jason pulls me close, urging my legs over his shoulders and…he stands up. My back hits the concrete wall—much higher up than before—of the alley, and the warm friction of Jason’s tongue bathes me between the thighs. “Jason,” I heave, grabbing for his head, intending to push him away, but dragging him closer instead. “Oh my goodness.”
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