Chapter 11
"And the stories I've heard about her! If only half of them are true, she's got a reputation that belongs in Confidential!"
"I heard what happened at the charity auction. Imagine selling your body like that! And there were three men involved. Nobody knows who they were. But they weren't to blame. How could a man resist a woman who offers herself like that!"
"Yes, I don't see how Randy stands it! Besides, what is he doing living with a ... with a whore! Doesn't he know what she's doing to his reputation!"
Naomi, holding two liquor glasses in her hands, leaned against the wall for support as the voices of the women from the dressing room tore at her in-sides. On her way to the kitchen with the glasses to wash she had heard the chatter of the women issuing through the partly opened door. The realization that she was the subject of their discussion had caused her to linger within range of their words.
Now she wished she hadn't. She wished she'd kept right on going. It was easier to suspect what was being said about oneself than to know for a fact the hate and ill feelings expressed behind one's back.
She had begged Randy not to have this party. Knowing what would happen, trying to explain to him, didn't persuade him. He was so sure his friends would accept her. Poor Randy didn't realize that they'd only accepted the invitation to come and look, come and stare at the mulatto body that had blinded him to reason and sanity. And he wouldn't believe how many have gone in to look at our bed. To see where the action takes place. See where I earn my keep! When will he learn he can't force me down their throats? In their filthy minds I come from a world apart and can be nothing but scum, dirt off the streets.
The three girls emerged from the dressing room to stare with surprise at Naomi. They managed weak smiles before turning and moving off to the living room. Their whispers drifted back to her.
"Suppose she heard?"
"So what? She's probably used to hearing things like that. Probably hears worse!"
"Of course, especially when they're true!"
Blindly, Naomi sought the faraway sanction of the kitchen. She was rinsing the glasses when Randy found her.
"Hey! How long does it take to rinse a couple of glasses?"
His hands snaked about her waist and came up to cup her rich, high breasts, pulling her back against him. She quivered at his touch, her nipples quickly hardening to his gently squeezing fingers.
"Like that, don't you?" he whispered sucking at her ear.
She gyrated her buttocks into his groin in answer.
"Hey! You know what that does to me!" he warned.
"And that's exactly why I did it" she said, vnpA ing the remnants of her tears away. "I want you. Now!"
"But our guests!"
Naomi whirled into his arms, crushing her body to his. "Send them home!"
"They'll be insulted. It's early yet. We can't shoo our friends off just like that."
"Your friends, Randy. They don't like or want me. And they never will."
"Stop that!" he admonished her. "Come on! The party's just getting started."
He broke away from her and held out his hand. She took it and went back with him.
They watched the guests frolicking until someone put on some sensual pseudo-African, savage rite music. The stereo blared out with the exotic rhythm with the heart-vibrating tempo of drums gyrating beneath the strains.
"Hey," someone shouted. "What kind of music is that ... Nobody can dance to that!"
"I can," interrupted a tall man with a reddish crew-cut, leaping to the center of the room. "All I need is a partner. Who's game?"
The girls looked laughingly from one to the other.
"Not me. Can't dance to that."
"Me either. Not my beat!"
"Nor mine. That's ... that's for savages. Primitives to dance to."
"Yeah. Like in Africa!"
The room exploded into silence and every face turned to look at Naomi's reaction. The heat of anger and embarrassment rose in her throat.
"Forget it, Honey," Randy whispered. "She didn't mean it!"
Angrily she shrugged him off. Didn't mean it! You may be blind, Randy, but it isn't my body that blinds you. She fumed within.
She stalked over the sprawled legs upon the floor and reached the man who waited expectantly, smiling.
"I'll dance with you," she said huskily. "That's my kind of music!"
From the look on his face, Naomi knew that the record choice had been intentional. He had deliberately provoked the incident. Wanted it to happen!
So you want to see a savage! Want to see how she dances, eh?
Naomi kicked off her shoes and slinked close to him, slowly, sensually. Her hips rotated provocatively and her whole body took up the rhythm, her full breasts swaying and rippling with the motion.
He followed her every move as she kept the tempo of the drums, the sway of the lust-inspiring strains. Her hands went to his hips and he clasped hers. She came closer, edging up to him, her voluptuous curves gyrating and writhing in his clutch.
Provocatively, she grazed his body with her hard-tipped breasts, ground her pelvis up to his. Thrusting out her breasts until the nipples strained their indentations in the material of her dress. The suggestive twisting and contorting made her seem naked. Seductively the motions seemed to strip her naked before their eyes and it seemed as if she was starkly, lewdly bare, nude to their view as she performed a savage fertility rite with the panting, sweating man before her.
Someone screamed as she tugged the zipper at the top of her dress revealing the over-flowing golden skin of her breasts in the half-bra she was wearing.
Then suddenly the music ended.
In the silence, Naomi seemed to awaken from her trance-like state as she looked in horror at the open bosom of her dress. Then she looked up at the smiling face of the red-haired man. Deliberately, she pulled her dress down all the way so that the top hung over her waist like an apron.
"This what you wanted to see!" she screamed. "Are they like you imagined? Did you expect them to be bigger than this? Smaller? Do they satisfy you?"
She ripped the brassiere from her succulent breasts, letting them hang free. Then she turned, blinded with tears, and fled the room.
Behind the slammed bedroom door, in the haven of their big double bed, she tried to turn off the hate and anger. Tried to hide from the shame and horror that was too close.
Randy came to gently stroke her shoulder, to comfort her.
"Send them away," she begged. "Love me. Help me!"
"I can't, Naomi," he tried to make her understand. "They didn't mean to hurt you. You know you didn't have to retaliate like that."
Silence.
"You'll feel better in a little while," he said, patting her. "It won't be long, and the party will be over."
Oh, Randy! She wanted to shout at the closing door. Don't you see? But you can't turn away your friends. I'm not worth insulting your friends no matter how much they hurt and humiliate me!
She threw herself into the cold, yielding softness of the pillow and sobbed out her heart.
How long had she lain there like that before she realized that warm hands were caressing her back. Randy? Have you come back?
"Randy?"
The hands were gentle and loving, knowing every sensitive hollow and swell of her womanhood. They felt comforting.
Slowly, carefully, they stripped her dress off. Edging it carefully over her hips and thighs.
"Randy?" she whispered, lifting her thighs to aid him.
The flimsy nylon wisp of her panties melted over her buttocks and slipped easily off her slim ankles. And the sensitive fingers were reaching between her relaxed and open thighs, probing for the moist, hot lips of her pussy.
Naomi rolled onto her back to embrace him and pull him to her. Opening her eyes in the shadowy gloom of the night light, she recognized the smiling face and reddish hair.
"You!" she cried sitting bolt upright.
"Who'd you want?" he chuckled, proud of himself. "One white cock's as good as another so long as you get it, isn't it? You were responding."
"Get out!" she yelled.
"But we were just getting started," he pouted. "Always wanted to see how you girls reacted. Heard you were regular nymphomaniacs. Now I know!"
"GET OUT OF HERE!" she bellowed.
"Now, baby," he smiled indifferently. "You like my lily white body and you know it. You want my prick in you. Admit it!"
He was so confident. So goddamned sure she was mad about white skin! So fucking positive she lived for a white cock to fill her. That was all she wanted or needed. Ofay bastard!
"You get your goddamned butt out of here, or so help me-!" she breathed hotly at him.
He shook his head as if the words weren't registering. As if she didn't know what she was saying.
"GET OUT OF HERE, BEFORE I KILL YOU!"
She threw a heavy ash tray from the bed stand to punctuate her order. He dodged. And it crashed to the floor.
"GET OUT!" she shrieked, leaping from the bed and grabbing another weapon.
He was at the door, unlocking it and racing out, as Naomi, unmindful of her nakedness, stormed after him, brandishing her weapon. She heaved it after him, tears of rage pouring down her cheeks.
"Naomi!" Randy cried, racing to her and attempting to wrap her in his jacket. "What's gotten into you?"
"Me? Never mind what's gotten into me!" she shouted, pointing at the staring faces. "Ask them! What's the matter with them and that ... bastard that just tried to make love to me!"
"Make love...." Randy asked increduously. "And you let him?"
"Don't be ridiculous!" she told him stomping a bare foot. "It was dark and I was crying into the pillow. I thought it was you until-!"
It was all too impossible. He would never believe it. And those ofay faces, everyone of them, was intent on her explanation, ready to snicker and guffaw at her un-likely side of the story.
In a blind fury of tears she ran back into the bedroom, Randy's jacket flying from her shoulders, no longer caring about her nakedness. She had done all they expected of her. Fallen neatly into their set traps. She'd proven all they'd wanted her to. Just a black whore. That was all she was!
She was gathering her clothes when Randy came in.
"I sent them all home," he told her lamely. She didn't answer.
"And I socked that fellow, the one ... ," he stut-tered watching her as she sobbed quietly. "I hit him when he said that was all one could expect from a girl like you."
"It doesn't matter what they think," she said horsely. "What matters is if you believe me."
"I ... I believe you, Naomi," he told her after an agonizing silence in which she saw his face tighten with the nervous twitch of muscles that accompanied his strained moments of indecision.
"I think I'd better go now," Naomi told him returning to her packing.
"Go? Where? Why?"
"It isn't working out, Randy," she sighed. "We have nothing but trouble when it comes to the two of us outside this apartment with other people. You can't have me and your friends too. They won't have it, and I can't change the color of my skin to help you. It's better that I leave you in peace with your friends."
"But I want you," he protested. "It doesn't matter what they think."
"Are you sure, Randy? Are you sure what they think doesn't matter?"
"Yes," he whispered.
"Then prove it. Prove to me that you want me! You always seem to take your friends' side in situations like the one tonight. If you really care, if you really want me, prove it!"
There was only one way he knew. Only one way to show he cared.
He took her into the protection of his embrace and pressed his hungry mouth to hers, drew her body into his.
Maybe this is all we have. All we'll ever have, Naomi thought as she surrendered to his love. Mom is right. I'm using my body. Selling it for what I can gain. For the one thing I want and need so much. Acceptance. But if this is the only way he'll have me ... If this is the way he wants me....
God! I want to be loved. To be needed. Somehow. In some way. To be accepted.