Cruising the Strip (8 page)

“I would love a martini. Can you do that?”

“I can.” I reached for the vermouth.

“Full service chauffeur?”

I hesitated for a second, then reached for the Stoli. Somehow, I knew she’d be a vodka martini woman. I wasn’t sure how to phrase this without suggesting criticism of her. “I’ll pretty much do anything the client requires.”

“Does that include providing specialized services?”

“Not personally, no.” I handed her the drink after dropping in an olive.

She sipped it, murmured appreciation, and regarded me over the rim of the glass as I settled on the seat next to her. “You don’t perform sexual favors for your clients.”

“No, but part of my job is to arrange an escort for them if called upon.”

“I see.” She cradled the martini glass in one hand and drew my tie through her fingers with the other, tugging me closer with each stroke. When her mouth was a fraction away from mine, she whispered, “What if the client requests you?”

“It depends on the client.” I licked the surface of her lips which were tinged with the taste of alcohol.

“What if the
escort
requests you?”

She tilted the glass toward my lips and I sipped her drink. “None ever has.”

“Until now.”

Erica straddled my lap and wrapped one arm around my neck while she sipped her drink. At some point, she’d kicked off her heels, but I hadn’t noticed. She settled her ass on my thighs, swallowed the rest of her martini, and deposited the glass on the small tray above the adjoining seat. Then she hooked a finger around the knot of my tie and dragged it down until it hung in two thin black lines down my chest.

“I’m on vacation. Well, not really a vacation,” Erica amended. “A working holiday.”

“Working?”

“Not in the usual sense of the word,” she said with a smile as she slowly unbuttoned my shirt. “There’s talk of a union and health benefits and other organizational details. I’m here to advocate, not see clients.”

I raised my shoulders and Erica pushed my shirt down my arms, but when I would have pulled my hands free of the still buttoned cuffs, she stopped me, leaving me with my arms tethered at my sides. The unexpected restriction caught me by surprise, and so did the quick pulse of excitement that shot through my body and coalesced between my legs.

“Do you mind?” Erica asked lazily as she kissed my jaw, then my neck. “I so very rarely have a chance to call the shots.”

“I’ll bet you’re always in charge,” I said, my breath coming fast as Erica played her fingers over my chest, “except…no one knows it.”

Laughing, she pushed her hips further back on my legs and curled forward to kiss the center of my chest. “It is possible, of course, to pretend to be led while really leading, but it’s so much more fun not to be in the closet about it.”

“I want you to have fun.”

She regarded me seriously while rolling my nipple between her fingers, very slowly and very hard until my stomach contracted and my hips raised off the leather bench. “That’s very nice of you.”

“Not nice.” I thrust my hips, hoping to bump my clit against her crotch. I ached for a little contact to diffuse the building pressure. “Pleasing women is what I need to make me come.”

“Maybe we’ll both try it differently tonight.”

She sucked my nipple, scraping her teeth around and around the edges until I was so wound up only the back of my head and thighs were still making contact with the seat beneath me. When she slipped one hand between us and squeezed my crotch, I shivered and jerked away.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, “but I’m not used to this.”

“You don’t like it?” She covered my breasts with her hands as she slid off my legs and knelt on the floor. I opened my thighs without her asking and she licked a warm, wet trail down the center of my stomach.

“I like it. I’m just, I can’t…I was afraid you might make me come. And I don’t usually…that way.”

She shook her head, obviously pleased, and unbuckled my belt. Again, without being asked, I lifted my hips and she pulled my clothes down until she could get in close between my thighs. She kissed my clit. “Of course you’re going to come.”

When she sucked me, I made a sound that didn’t sound like me at all. I didn’t want her to stop. I loved the way her lips closed around me, hot and incredibly soft. She probed and teased me with the tip of her tongue, a torture so sweet I closed my eyes and prayed she kept going. And then there was nothing except her mouth, her lips, her tongue, and a pleasure so deep I begged out loud for more. When she moaned, the vibration shot through me as if a switch had been thrown on an electric current. I ripped my hands free and gripped her head, tangling my fingers in her hair, and wrenched her mouth away.

“Stop,” I groaned. “Too much.”

Stunned, she stared at me, her expression nearly pleading. It was then I realized she had opened her slacks and was masturbating while she pleasured me with her mouth.

“Please,” she whispered, “you’re close.”

“So are you.” I grasped her shoulders and coaxed her upright. “Come first. For me.”

For a second, I thought she would refuse, and although my mind was hazy with the nearness of my orgasm, I realized she wasn’t used to putting her pleasure first. I hooked my fingers in the waistband of her slacks and eased them down. “Straddle me. I want to touch you.”

Her eyes never left my face as she bared herself and knelt on the leather seat with her legs on either side of my thighs.

“Open your blouse,” I whispered, spanning her narrow waist with my hands, my thumbs almost meeting in the center of her abdomen. I dragged my hands down her sides and watched her fingers tremble as she worked the buttons loose on her blouse. As I danced my fingers over her smooth, tight thighs, I leaned forward and sucked her nipple through the lace of her bra. She moaned deep in her throat and drove her fingers into my hair, holding my face firmly against her. I cupped her with my palm between her thighs and she rocked back and forth on my fingers. She was hot, so hot, the way only a woman aroused can be. I spread my fingers and let her slide her clitoris between them, setting the pace.

With a flick of her hand, she opened her bra and let her breasts fall free. I rubbed my cheek over one, then the other, and sucked the smooth skin. Her thighs trembled on either side of mine, and I wrapped an arm around her waist to support her.

“I’m almost coming,” she whispered, rocking erratically in my hand.

“Hold on, if you can.” I steadied her hips between my hands and guided her forward until I could cover her clitoris with my mouth.

“Oh God,” she cried in surprise, and I felt her jerk between my lips. “Oh, I’m coming.”

I sucked and licked her, one arm around her waist to keep her cleaved to me, and grasped my clitoris with my other hand. She rubbed herself over my mouth, coming for a long time while I came fast and hard with only a few strokes.

“What happened?” she murmured as she dropped into my lap, turning sideways so I could cradle her in my arms. “That didn’t go the way I planned.”

“I guess I’m just used to driving,” I answered, resettling her blouse around her shoulders so she wouldn’t get cold. I kissed her as she relaxed against me. “Sorry. I know you had something else in mind.”

“No. I liked it. I liked exciting you. I liked you exciting me.” She looked up at me. “I didn’t really have any plans beyond seducing you.”

I laughed. “Well, you definitely succeeded. I’m sorry I have to go back to work later.”

“Maybe we can do something about that.” She reached behind her and between my legs, sliding her fingers over me. I was sensitive from coming, and when she fondled my clitoris, I groaned. She murmured, “Oh yes. We should definitely do something about that.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, practically choking on the words. “I have to take your boss somewhere later.”

She stopped what she was doing, but kept her hand over me. Then she kissed me. “He’s not my boss. He’s my operations manager.”

“What?” I wasn’t thinking very clearly because if she kept pressing where she was pressing, I was going to come again.

“I’m not an escort,” she whispered with her mouth against my ear. “I’m the owner.”

“Uh…I…”

She laughed, and as I started to come, she added, “And you’re my new driver.”

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” Farrah Fotheringay turned quickly into a nook as she strained to hear her agent’s reply over the din of slot machines.

Her state-of-the-art cell phone was worthless; Ling sounded like she was on the far side of Jupiter, not cozy in her New York office. “Your squeaky clean image needs some serious tarnishing.”

“But does the photo shoot have to be with
her
?” She faced the wall when a group of women emerged from the restroom. She enjoyed conventions and she liked talking to fans, but not on the way to the bathroom.

“Cindy Crawford was never so hot as when she was shaving k.d. lang’s face. What’s the matter? Are you afraid that more than Barrett Lancey’s reputation will rub off on you?” Ling said something to someone that Farrah couldn’t make out, then the connection cleared. “Her girlfriend is the photographer. What could happen?”

I could make a fool of myself, Farrah wanted to say. She hadn’t been fighting these feelings for all these years to lose her reputation now. Maybe it was shallow, but she worked hard, and she intended to stay at the very top of romance best seller lists where image, image, image was everything, everything, everything. Farrah Fotheringay was romance’s most eligible bachelorette. A long-nursed rumor of a love lost to a tragic, early death had hidden her secrets so deep even she didn’t remember what she was. That is, until she looked at Barrett Lancey, her gorgeous girlfriend, and women like them.

Managing to complete her business in the restroom without being asked for an autograph, she tried to shake herself out of her poor-little-me state of mind. Makeup repaired, she made her way across the Palace Casino to the meeting rooms where there was already a queue at the doors for “Farrah and Barrett in Conversation.”

She ought to be annoyed they were even paired on a panel like that. She had fifteen years in the business and Barrett only four. Farrah Fotheringay was her publisher’s cash cow, and so far, while sales were strong, excitement in the existing fan base was the only thing Barrett Lancey was generating. Meow, meow, meow, Farrah thought. She’s generating plenty of excitement in you.

What really annoyed her was that Barrett Lancey had groupies, both lesbian and straight. “Lance” could snap her fingers and any of the cute young dykes would crawl over cut glass for her. She needed to keep some distance from the shaggy-hair, dark-eyed woman, needed to downright hate her if she could, otherwise her racing pulse might become obvious to the woman who caused it. Even worse, Barrett’s equally dynamic girlfriend could notice, and the last thing she needed was for Racie Racine to decide that her lens would highlight Farrah’s crow’s feet, cellulite, and suspiciously silver highlights.

Barrett and Racie—honestly! What kinds of names were those? Didn’t lesbians have names like Mary or Jane or Patty? Oh stop it, she told herself.
Fotheringay
might be fake, but she was a closet-case lesbian named Farrah with no room to cast stones.

The groupies were clearing a path for the couple, who walked
everywhere
arm-in-arm. From the very start of her skyrocketing career as the new breed of romance writer, Barrett had made her sexuality plain in dedications of her work to her girlfriend. She could get away with that in this day and age, but Farrah hadn’t had that option when she’d broken into romance publishing fifteen years ago. Back then a virginal aura meshed with that handy broken heart had been her only choice if she didn’t want anyone wondering why she never married, never had children, lived alone.

She had only to look at Carly Vincent’s rapid descent from A-List to B-List when she had come out fifteen years ago for proof. She wondered if Carly was as bitter as she was that these newbies, with no history, no baggage, could burst on the scene, peccadilloes and all, with nary a consequence.

Fifteen years ago, she had had to play it straight, and her heroines had to faint at least once every book. They couldn’t be kick-ass super spy martial arts Navy Seal ninjas who spoke five languages while curing cancer and racing thoroughbreds.

So Barrett got everything she wanted, Farrah thought viciously, while other people were stuck accepting a career as a substitute for love, as if a stack of bestsellers could warm a bed. Well, it didn’t warm one bed. It warmed three, including the one in Kauai, thank you very much. Three empty beds were better than one empty bed—oh, you’re blathering, she scolded herself.

“Farrah!”

Crap. Barrett had seen her and the groupies were making room. Flashes popped as they did cheek kisses, then more photos were snapped as the smooches were repeated with Racie.

Those of Barrett’s groupies that weren’t hot for Barrett were hot for Racie. Where Barrett was just a bit scruffy, just a bit dangerous and rough, Racie was sleek and elegant, like a supermodel, except she had cleavage and muscles. Her long black hair stretched past her shapely backside. Farrah could be hot for Racie, too. Face it, you idiot, you could be hot for anything right now.