As soon as she said the words, she knew she couldn’t possibly write them in her book. A little too X-rated; the Annabella stories never went further than a racy R. Annabella had her share of sexual encounters, but Molly would always end the chapter before things became too graphic. And Annabella certainly never touched herself sexually. Not even in her bedroom. Especially not in public.
Of course, Molly had no intention of touching herself in public, either. She would never go that far. But it was interesting to know that the urge was there.
Molly started down the front walk towards the driveway and her silver Prius. She made herself keep her normal pace, as if this was just a typical day, a typical trip to the grocery store. Halfway to the car, she realized that she was holding her breath, perhaps unconsciously waiting until she found herself in the refuge of the car’s interior to finally exhale. She forced herself to stop halfway down the path and take a long, slow breath.
A breeze stirred the plants in the front yard, and slid over her bare skin. Molly looked up and down the street, but still saw no one. She started walking again, and felt a deep sense of relief when she finally ducked into the car’s interior and closed the door. It felt like she had found her first hiding place.
She powered on the car and turned on the air conditioner, feeling the cool air flowing over her. The Prius had untinted glass windows, and anyone making an effort to look in could certainly see her. But if she sat low in the seat, a casual glance would only see a woman with bare shoulders in the car. She thought 99% of people would just assume she wore a strapless dress or tube top, and would let it go.
Molly had told herself only minutes before that she wouldn’t touch herself. But she couldn’t resist looking down at herself, inspecting her neatly groomed triangle of pubic hair, then sliding her hand between her legs to press against her pussy. She held her hand against it, feeling the radiating warmth of it against her palm.
“Her first hiding place,” she murmured. “Annabella would want to stay there. But she has to keep moving. She can’t just huddle there forever.” Molly put the car in reverse. “Into the streets.” She looked at the back-up camera as she backed out of the driveway.
Annabella had to walk to Marcos’ house. At least Molly could drive. She put the car in gear and pulled away from the house.
The drive to the LMNO Market took five minutes at that time of day, ten minutes if she had back luck with the stoplights. Molly tensed the first time she passed another car going the opposite direction, but the other driver didn’t even glance in her direction. Other cars passed and she found herself evaluating each car by height before it passed. The small cars obviously had no line of sight into her car. But the big ones, the big pick-ups and SUVs? She had no idea. Maybe they could see her really well.
At the first red light she hit, a young man with a long blonde ponytail crossed the street in front of her car. She watched him intently every step of the way. He shot her a bored glance as he strolled by, then quickly glanced at her again, now with interest. She held her breath, knowing that she had been caught, knowing that at the very least he had a clear view of her breasts. She anxiously watched for his reaction. But he only looked at her for a second before directing his eyes forward again, and he never looked back.
The light turned green and she pressed the accelerator. Despite the brevity of her interaction with the ponytail man, she nevertheless felt like something intimate had passed between them, something sexual. She was naked, he could see her body, she knew he was looking and she let him. She had kept her hands on the steering wheel the whole time.
Another red light stopped her. No one in the crosswalk this time, but she still reflected on ponytail man. She had been seen, just like she intended. Caught by a stranger in the act of driving naked through the town. She now knew what it felt to have a stranger’s eyes on her skin. Was it time to turn back? Did she have enough observations to return to her writing?
Maybe. But she didn’t have her Dr. Pepper yet.
The light turned green, and she pulled through the intersection. She put on her signal and took a left turn into the LMNO Market parking lot. The parking lot was fairly empty, maybe twenty cars in a lot that held about a hundred. She turned down the first row and drove slowly, stalling while she considered where to park. Closer seemed better, otherwise she’d have a long naked walk across the lot. Yet she also wanted to keep some space between herself and the other cars, in case she needed to sit for a few minutes and gather her nerve.
She selected a spot in the line of parking spaces furthest away from the street, leaving two spaces between her car and the closest neighbor. She turned off the car and peeked out the window at the market. What she was about to do went well beyond being seen by the ponytail man. This wasn’t just about being seen. She was about to break a taboo that she’d adhered to most of her life. She was about to deliberately walk through a public location, completely naked.
“A parade,” she murmured. “Of course that would happen to Annabella. The day she’s trying to sneak through the streets with nothing on… that’s the day when there’s a big parade.” Molly popped open the door. She stepped out, then reached in to snag her purse. She slung it over her shoulder, noting that the thin leather strap of the purse was the only thing covering any part of her body.
Molly looked around at the cars in the lot. No shoppers, but it was only a matter of time before someone appeared. Even as she stood there, a car pulled into the parking lot using the same entrance she had just used. It turned down the first row and found a parking space on the opposite side of the lot.
No point in waiting. Molly forced herself to start walking despite a trembling in her legs. She walked briskly towards the entrance on the right, which she knew from experience was the lesser-used entrance. Conscious of her body, she made sure to keep her posture correct, her back straight and her shoulders aligned. She could feel the slight bounce of her breasts with each step.
“The key is to act natural,” she murmured. “Just buying some Dr. Pepper. If I act like nothing is strange, will they just go along with it?”
A small woman with short gray hair pushed a cart out of the other entrance. The woman paused to put something in her purse, and glanced around the parking lot. Molly could tell when the woman noticed her. The woman’s mouth formed a shocked circle, and she openly stared at Molly.
Molly thought about Annabella. By the current book in the series, Annabella had developed a resignation to the fact that Murphy’s law would disrupt her plans. She was eternally optimistic, which is what allowed her to dive into her absurd plans in the first place, but those plans inevitably failed spectacularly. To Annabella, it would seem perfectly reasonable to attempt to creep naked through four blocks of Santo Giallo without being seen. But when things started to go catastrophically wrong and she found herself in the middle of a parade, Annabella didn’t cower or weep. She always just shrugged and accepted it as her fate, another roll of the madman’s dice in her crazy, mixed-up life.
And everything always worked out for her in the end. Molly made sure of that.
The automated doors to the market slid open and Molly stepped inside. Her eyes were immediately drawn to an image on a screen hanging from the ceiling. Her own image. The store had a camera pointed at the door with the output displayed on a screen right next to the camera. Maybe it was meant to discourage shoplifters. Whatever it’s true purpose, it was currently displaying Molly’s naked body standing in the doorway.
So that was what she looked like! Molly stopped and stared, mesmerized by her appearance on the screen. She thought it offered a scandalous depiction of herself. Endless bare skin, from her shoulders to her feet. Her breasts, swelling out from her torso; her nipples hard and pointed. Her flat belly, the tiny dot of her belly button, perched just above her neatly trimmed triangle of pubic hair. When she moved her legs apart, she could see the line of her pussy, perfectly visible. She started to reach down there with her hand, wanting to feel t
he warmth of it, or perhaps it was her pussy that longed for the press of her hand. She caught herself in time and pulled her hand back.
“Act natural,” she murmured. “Just act natural.” She shifted her purse higher on her shoulder and walked deeper into the store. Ahead of her, she could see a man standing in the middle of an aisle, examining the shelves of jams and peanut butters. She glanced toward the check-out lines, and saw just one open. A clerk with thinning hair was in the process of ringing up the groceries of a dark-haired woman. Neither one noticed Molly as she picked up a basket and darted down the cereal aisle.
“Sometimes people are oblivious,” she murmured. “They’re too focused on what they’re doing. They just don’t notice.” Still, she wanted to draw as little attention as possible, so she decided she would go to the end of the aisle and cross over to the soda section by way of the back.
She was nearly to the end of the wall of cereal boxes when a woman turned the corner pushing her shopping cart. This time, Molly had no place to hide. The woman stopped and stared at her. Molly kept her legs moving; she even managed to flash an embarrassed smile as she passed.
No time to absorb the experience, because as soon as Molly stepped out of the aisle, she found herself meeting the eyes of the man at the deli counter. She saw his eyes drop from her face to her body, and heard him say something like “Daaaa-ummmm…” Molly quickly turned to her left, only to be confronted by another man, a thin man wearing glasses, pushing a shopping cart right towards her.
She rushed forward, feeling her breasts bouncing more as she increased her pace. She flew by the man with the cart without looking at him. Her whole body felt like it was hot and trembling. Although she didn’t feel particularly threatened by the thin man, she still felt acutely aware of his presence as she rushed by him. A moment of vulnerability, knowing that her naked body was passing within his reach.
The soda section was somewhere in the middle of the store, but she was too distracted to remember exactly where. She felt like the men behind her were staring at her ass; actually, she thought it was very likely that they were. She read the signs hanging above each aisle. Coffee. Tea. Juice. Paper towels. Soft drinks!
She froze at the mouth of the soft drink aisle. It wasn’t empty. A man stood a third of the way down the aisle, leaning against a shopping cart. He was studying the rows of sparkling water bottles, apparently trying to come to some decision. He was probably six inches taller than she was, with a white t-shirt stretched across broad shoulders. The sleeves of the shirt clung to his solid arms, and he had a half-visible tattoo on his upper arm, something drawn in red and black. He was clean-shaven with short dark hair.
The Dr. Pepper bottles were located at the other end of the aisle. The stranger hadn’t noticed her yet, but to reach her Dr. Pepper, she had to cross right in front of him.
Walk naked directly in front of a stranger? Cross right in front of his line of sight? Could she really make the deliberate choice to do that? It didn’t matter that she told herself she just needed to get to her Dr. Peppers, and passing in front of him was simply the quickest path to take. No matter how she approached the idea, it still seemed like a flirtatious act. Like she was flaunting herself in front of him. The fact that he was attractive in a rugged sort of way didn’t help things.
Molly started to walk down the aisle. Her hand clutched the black handle of the shopping basket, holding it tightly so it wouldn’t swing. She studied the man, anticipating when he would look at her and notice her situation, but the man didn’t raise his head until she was walking right by him. She saw him suddenly straighten as she passed in front of his vision, the row of plastic water bottles suddenly replaced with a flash of naked woman. Molly didn’t dare to look back at him, but she knew he was watching her as she continued down the aisle.
It ended up being meaningless anyway, because after exposing herself like that, she felt too embarrassed to even stop and pick up the Dr. Pepper. She glanced at the bottles regretfully as she walked swiftly by. When she reached the end of the aisle, it suddenly occurred to her that because she hadn’t picked up anything in the aisle, it made it seem like the only reason she’d walked down the aisle was to parade her nude body in front of him. That made her even more self-conscious.
She told herself not to look back. But she did anyway, just before she turned the corner. The man was looking right at her, of course he was, and their eyes met. What else had she expected? Molly quickly looked away, flustered, her heart pounding. She walked quickly around the corner and scampered past several aisles to the cat food aisle. It was empty, thankfully, and she didn’t stop until she was halfway down the aisle hidden behind a display of feathery cat toys.
Why had she looked back at him? If she had just turned the corner without acknowledging his presence, she might have left him with the impression that her nude walk down that aisle had nothing to do with him. Just a crazy nudist woman walking through the grocery store, ignoring everyone around her. But by looking back at Mr. Sparkling Water and meeting his eyes, she felt as if she’d made a connection between them. It looked like she was checking on his reaction to her nudity, like she was asking him, “Do you like what you see?”
That look in his eyes… how could she describe it? Astonished? Aroused? Maybe a mix of both? She had to decide how to describe it with words. Men would be looking at Annabella just that same way, and Santo Giallo was full of handsome rugged men just like that. She might even write a character based on that man in the soft drink aisle… those shoulders… that face… how did you say Mr. Sparkling Water in Italian?
What had he seen in Molly’s eyes when she looked back at him? Had he seen her own arousal, captured in her lingering gaze? Because she was definitely aroused now. A rush of wild need swirled inside her, a sensation that she knew she shouldn’t even try to put into words, because she could never write it for Annabella. Even naked in the middle of the town, Annabella had to remain the modest ingenue. Blushing, covering her chest with her hands, hiding behind whatever would cover her. Annabella would never admit to her sexual excitement. She would never be tempted to surrender to the sensations of her body, to run her hands over her breasts, between her legs, to explore the pleasures she could bring from herself…
Molly pressed her legs together, rubbing them back and forth. How long would she wait? How long did it take a man to pick out some sparkling water? She would give him some time, then she would walk back to a hopefully empty aisle. Silent and focused, she would seize the six-pack of Dr. Pepper bottles, walk directly to the cashier and try to purchase it.
She needed to get back home. This whole experience was starting to overwhelm her.
Molly counted to fifty before she started moving again. She walked to the end of the cat food section and poked her head out. The cashier was visible in the middle of the store, but he wasn’t looking in her direction, and no one else was nearby. Molly stepped out and walked quickly towards the soft drink aisle.
She had almost reached the aisle when she caught sight of Mr. Sparkling Water again. No longer looking at sparkling water; now he was examining boxes of sandwich bags in the plates and plastics aisle. Her body reacted immediately to the sight of him, a rush of nervous energy that surged through her limbs. She felt very naked, and it wasn’t Annabella’s naked, it wasn’t the embarrassed naked of being outdoors without her clothes. This was the naked of a woman who has undressed for a man, a woman who wants the man to see her. A woman who wants him to take her.
Molly changed directions, barely thinking, turning down the aisle towards him.
What exactly do I think I’m doing? she thought, as each step took her closer and closer to the stranger. She knew that he could notice her at any moment. He would look up and see the same weird woman, walking towards him again, still naked except for a pair of sandals and a purse. Would she pass by right in front of him, just like before? Then escape to the cat aisle to once again float on the adrenalin high?
No, she decided that th
is time she would talk to him. She would stop and smile, say hello, introduce herself. She would explain that she was a novelist, writing a new novel, and that she wanted to experience being nude in public, because one of her characters was in a similar situation. That’s why she was naked in the middle of the store. He would probably think it was a bizarre thing to do, but whatever. She had six books that were New York Times bestsellers, and that meant she was allowed to play the eccentric artist every now and then.
Mr. Sparkling Water finally looked up at her when she was just five feet away. His eyes widened and he straightened quickly, almost stepping backwards into the shelf of tupperware behind him.
Molly froze, staring right back at him. She opened her mouth, trying to remember the explanation she’d been practicing in her head just seconds before, but the words wouldn’t come to her mind. She couldn’t think of a thing to say. Her hand squeezed the handle of her empty shopping basket in a tight grip, making it bump against her leg. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, her hips swaying from side to side.
He watched her curiously, waiting for her to speak, no doubt wondering why she had approached him. Molly licked her lips, blinking at him silently. Her mind was a complete blank. No, that wasn’t entirely true. She was having thoughts, but they weren’t the kind of thoughts she could speak out loud. Thoughts of moving closer to him, rubbing herself against him, kissing the side of his face. Thoughts of offering herself to this handsome stranger whose name she didn’t even know.
The awkward silence stretched between the two of them and Molly felt more and more self-conscious. She knew she looked like a lunatic, standing naked and motionless in front of him like some kind of living statue. She forced herself to smile and nod at him politely, as if acknowledging him. Her eyes strayed to the side, towards the gallon freezer bags, and she pretended to study them as if that’s what she had been searching for the whole time.
No One Is Awake To See and Other Revealing Tales Page 9
