by Sandy Lowe
Emma stroked soothingly over her wrist. “Tell me what happened.”
She was stalling. Giving too much context. But the context mattered. The context was what a suspiciously in focus video in a dimly lit bar hadn’t shown. “She didn’t like me, and so she used me to get back at her husband. She wanted to make him jealous or piss him off or just hurt him, I guess. She knew I was gay because it was one of the things James liked about me. I wouldn’t be at risk of misunderstanding a situation and initiating any of those unfortunate #metoo debacles. His words. I didn’t think anything of it. I was just happy my boss wasn’t a homophobe, even if he was a misogynist.”
“That’s hardly an improvement,” Emma said dryly.
Lauren shrugged. “James wanted out of the marriage, and Caroline was pissed. She’d signed a prenup and would only get millions, the poor thing. She decided if she couldn’t screw James for more money, she’d impugn his manhood instead, and she used me to do it. Caroline started getting friendlier and dropping by more frequently, giving me little gifts. A scented candle here, a cashmere sweater there. I took them so I didn’t offend her, but I never used them. I stashed them in my desk draw like contraband.”
“She was interested in you romantically?” Emma asked.
Lauren laughed, the sound simultaneously harsh and vulnerable, as raw as a scraped knee. “She was interested in me thinking she was. I didn’t play her little game. I never flirted back. Never gave her one iota of encouragement, not even friendship. She was my boss’s pain in the ass wife, with terrible boundaries to boot. She didn’t like that either.”
“How did every media outlet in the country end up with that video?” Emma asked.
Lauren hesitated. God. She’d only answered this question a hundred thousand times. It should’ve rolled off the tongue by now. But she cared what Emma thought of her. And that video had been worth not only a thousand words, but hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Emma was tracing circles in her palm, her slender fingers in constant movement on Lauren’s.
“You’re going to think less of me,” Lauren said.
Emma frowned at her. “Why would you think that?”
“Because everyone thinks less of me?”
“Well, excuse me if I’m not everyone.” Emma stared past Lauren’s shoulder for a few seconds, then did that direct eye contact thing again. “Here’s what I know. I like you. I trust that you’re a good person. I trust that this attraction between us is mutual. I appreciate your willingness to do things my way so that I’m comfortable. I’m not everyone, Lauren. I don’t want to know what happened to stem my curiosity. I want to know because it’s a big fucking deal and it happened to someone I care about.”
Someone I care about. That had Lauren’s heart in error mode, stuck between rising with hope and sinking with, well, the truth. Emma shouldn’t care about her. This was supposed to be a fun diversion. Can’t-stop-the-rush pleasure. Only they hadn’t even had sex and the rush was turning into something a lot more dangerous. Lauren pushed all that aside. Now wasn’t the time to be obsessing about it. She’d kept Emma in suspense long enough.
“I was at the bar of my own accord. That much is true.”
“Kink’s.” Emma stumbled on the word. “A fetish bar.”
Lauren nodded.
“That’s something we should discuss for later, if kink is your thing.”
This wasn’t really about the kink bar. At least, that’d only been one element. “Caroline came in. God only knows how she’d found me. She was drunk. Started rambling on about how James didn’t love her anymore, and how girls do it better.”
“It?” Emma asked.
Lauren waved a hand vaguely. “It. Sex.”
“Right,” Emma said.
“She was completely plastered, but I couldn’t call security, couldn’t flag the bartender, couldn’t get help from anyone. This was Caroline Bennett. I was trying to protect her reputation. I was an idiot.”
“You were doing your job,” Emma said simply.
Lauren’s shoulders sagged. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been until it seeped out of her. She’d been doing her damn fucking job. “I put my arm around her to lead her outside, get an Uber. The more I insisted we go outside, the more hysterical she got. Falling down drunk and leaning on me. People were staring. I was terrified someone would recognize her. Eventually, she says, ‘Take me back to your place, that’s the only way I’ll leave.’”
“God.” Emma squeezed Lauren’s hand.
“Yeah. I played right into her hands. Obviously, I had no intention of taking her home, but my priority was to get her outside and away from anyone with an iPhone, ironic as that sounds now. So, I said yes. We left the bar, and she miraculously sobered up and got placidly into a cab. My party mood had evaporated by then, so I went home too.” Lauren shook her head. “I should’ve gone back inside. If I had, people wouldn’t have assumed we’d left together.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Emma said gently. “She set all this up then?”
“Yup.” Lauren paused as the waiter reappeared with their steaks. When they were alone again she said, “She had a camera crew there. Micro cams or something, I don’t know. But they had sound and audio and caught everything. Superior editing made it look as if I was coming on to her and we’d left together.”
“But why?” Emma said.
“She wanted to embarrass him. It’s one thing to suggest your husband’s mediocre in bed. It’s another to suggest he’s so bad that you can get better with a woman. For all his business acumen, James is a misogynistic dickwad, and she used that against him. She sent the video anonymously to all his competitors, and they were obviously only too happy to run with it for a very long time. Caroline knew she was done. She wanted to go out with a splash, and she wanted to teach us both a lesson. No one handles her. She sent me a nice little note to that effect the day the press ran the story. I’d annoyed her, so making me collateral damage in her marital dispute wasn’t something she lost sleep over.”
Emma’s brown eyes were wide. She had held her hand as a gesture of support, but she was practically breaking Lauren’s fingers with the strength of her grip. “I’m so sorry. What a bitch.”
The barbell lifted from her chest and she breathed deep for the first time in forever. Emma believed her. There’d been other people who’d believed her side of things too—her mom, anyone who really knew Caroline. James. James had believed her. He’d apologized to her. Then he summarily fired her ass into next Tuesday and spun the story to his advantage, casting himself as the brokenhearted business tycoon who’d been duped by the women in his life. He’d looked like a bit of a mush bucket, but the stock price hadn’t taken a hit, and that’s all James had ever really cared about anyway. She couldn’t even muster up any enthusiasm to blame him. He couldn’t be seen as condoning a situation like that. Appearances mattered more than the truth to people like James and Caroline.
She wondered if appearances mattered to Emma.
“There you have it. The real story behind the raunchy lesbian scandal of Caroline Bennett hooking up with her husband’s secretary in a kink club. Sorry it lacks the salaciousness that sold it to Fox News.”
Emma frowned. “Don’t be a jerk. You think I wanted it to be salacious? That I wanted it to be exactly as the media presented it? Trust me, I didn’t.”
Well, there was her answer. Appearances mattered to Emma, too.
Lauren sighed. “We probably shouldn’t have come to a restaurant for dinner. I can make a decent stir-fry. I could’ve cooked for you at home.”
“Why?” Emma asked.
“People might start thinking you’re a kinky slut too. That’s not a good look for the town librarian, no matter what claims the porn industry may make to the contrary.”
Emma sat back in her seat as if a strong wind had blown her back there. Lauren wasn’t sure if it was the implication that Emma ought to be embarrassed to be seen with her, or her comment about libraria
ns in porn that’d done it. Emma Prescott didn’t seem like the kind of girl who had a Pornhub subscription. “Wow. That’s real nice of you to be so concerned about my reputation.”
Wasn’t it a good thing she wanted to protect Emma from being associated with her not-quite-blown-over-yet scandal? Geez. “You know people are going to start talking.” Lauren did her best not to sound like she was sulking. She couldn’t even knock on Emma’s front door without copping an earful. Sunrise Falls, where being a busybody was a side hustle because no one’s body was busy having an actual life in this one traffic light town.
Emma reached for her wineglass and downed half of the mid-priced cabernet in two swallows. “I’m going to give you a pass because I appreciate that this is a very difficult situation, and you’ve earned the right to be sensitive about it. But let’s get one thing straight before we take this shindig any further.”
Lauren fought a smile at Emma’s use of the word shindig to portray their relationship. No, not a relationship. Not a date either. It was…Lauren had no fucking clue what it was, so she supposed shindig was just as apt as any other descriptor. “I’m listening.”
“I don’t believe you were the girl they made you out to be. That girl wouldn’t have kissed me like you did. She wouldn’t be sitting here eating a steak she doesn’t really want and talking about a night she’d rather forget. But if you had gone out of your way to seduce a rich married woman, I’d still want to sleep with you.”
It was Lauren’s turn to sit back stunned. “You’d have been okay with me being a cheater?”
Emma shook her head. “First, you weren’t the one who made promises you couldn’t keep, and second, everyone makes mistakes. It’s not homo sapiens’ most attractive quality, but it’s the truth. We fuck up. If you’d fucked up by acting on an attraction when you shouldn’t have, I’d say you more than paid for it.”
Lauren stared, the air in her lungs rushing out like a deflating balloon. “How did you grow up in this town and turn out so…”
What Emma was defied words. She was too amazingly awesome to be confined to the alphabet. Lauren wanted to curl up inside this bubble of understanding that Emma had created for her and never leave. “Thank you. I mean, I’m really glad that wasn’t the case, for my own integrity, but thank you.”
“Thank you for telling me the truth. I know it wasn’t easy.” Emma picked up her knife and cut through her steak. “So, on to the important stuff. Do you have personal experience with librarian porn, or were you just trying to get a rise out of me?”
Chapter Seven
Emma was going to pass out from sheer anticipation. Lauren had been a superlative dinner companion. After their heart-to-heart, they’d fallen into less daunting conversation. Lauren was charming, with a self-deprecating sense of humor, and Emma had finally been able to relax a little. Enough to appreciate the way Lauren’s hair glowed in the dim lighting. The way her fingers wrapped around her wineglass like she was cradling a lover. The deep vee of her shirt that exposed skin so tantalizing Emma was distracted by thoughts of running her tongue over it. That led her to imagining what Lauren’s skin would taste like, indulging herself in all the varied possibilities until her mouth had begun to water. The taste of Lauren’s skin led her to theorize on the texture, the scent, the shade. Would Lauren flush when she was aroused like Emma did? Or did that only happen to people with pale skin?
She enjoyed herself immensely, even managing, for a short time, to backburner her craving for Lauren to rip her clothes off in favor of basking in her smile, laughing at her jokes, and all-round having fun. But her not-thinking-sex-thoughts came to a screeching halt when Lauren reached for the dessert spoon the waiter had placed in the middle of the table, and she caught the edge of black ink peeking out from under Lauren’s shirt. She was an intelligent woman, she had a master’s degree to prove it, but knowing that Lauren had ink under her clothes turned the clock in her mind back a billion years to some pre-verbal state where she’d have to resort to crude hand signals to communicate. The tattoo somehow turned Lauren into a rock star heartthrob. Emma basically panted like a thirteen-year-old girl at her first One Direction concert. Or whoever it was thirteen-year-old girls panted about these days.
Riding back to Emma’s house in near silence, Lauren tapped her fingers along to some song on the radio and Emma tried not to get a crick in her neck while trying every possible tilt of her head. It was useless though, she couldn’t see the tattoo from this angle, so she busied herself by imagining opening Lauren’s shirt one button at a time, revealing her tattoo like she was opening her own private Christmas present.
“Here we are.” Lauren pulled up in front of Emma’s house, then turned off the ignition and shifted to face her. “Did the ride home give you enough time to decide whether this is really something you want to do?”
“Is that what I was supposed to be thinking about?” Emma asked. She’d be getting an F for that assignment.
Lauren studied her. “You’ve been so quiet I figured that’s what you were thinking. I want you to want this, and not just when I’m touching you. Being overcome with passion is sexy sometimes, but it can also lead to regret. I have enough of that already.”
Emma wasn’t sure what to say to that. In fact, she was a little pissed they were having this conversation at all. She’d admitted her attraction, had already said yes. What did Lauren want? A statement written in blood? A welcome mat with please fuck me stenciled on it? Was this a projecting thing? Was Lauren the one who wasn’t sure? Her head started to hurt from all the questions bouncing around inside it, so she kept her response simple. “I don’t have to think about it because I already know I want this. I’m in, Lauren.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what she was in for, but that was semantics, right?
Lauren frowned so hard it looked as if it hurt her face. “You’re sure?”
Emma frowned right back at her. “Are you sure?”
“Hell yes.”
“Then clue me in as to why we’re sitting in the car talking about a non-issue instead of going inside to act out our mutual sureness?”
Lauren sighed. “You’re a good, sweet girl.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what the Cupcake said to me tonight, before you came downstairs. You’re good and sweet and I’m not. I don’t deserve someone like you, even for a night.”
A night. Emma shook that off. She’d fall apart over only having Lauren for a night some other time. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Brenda only sees what she wants to see. You and I know different. Anyway, since when did you start listening to anything the Cupcake said?”
Lauren’s shoulders lifted in a shrug too weary to do justice to the name. “She’s not the only one. Anyway, she’s right about you. You are good and sweet.”
Emma waved that away. “I’m not that sweet.”
“Oh, no?” Lauren grinned at her. “Are you prepared to prove it?”
“Are you prepared to let me?” Emma shot back, sounding a hell of a lot braver than she felt.
Lauren opened the driver’s side door. “Let’s go find out.”
Emma’s knees shook as they walked up the path to her front door. Now was so not the time to morph into a trembling, monosyllabic, airhead. She had to keep it together so she could, you know, actually enjoy Lauren West rocking her world. She had no doubt that was exactly what was about to happen. Lauren had promised screaming orgasms, after all.
Lauren waited beside her at the front door, and then Lauren trailed her up the stairs to her bedroom, and then Lauren stood by her bed looking at her like she was the only woman in the room. Of course, she was the only woman in the room, but Lauren still managed to make that look feel special.
“So, um, here we are,” Emma said. Bonus points for Captain Obvious.
“Any special requests?” Lauren moved in close and ran her fingers through Emma’s hair again, pulling it up off the nape of her neck and cradling the weight in her hands.
&nbs
p; Emma tensed as a fist of anxiety closed down around her throat at the exact same moment it squeezed all her insides in a vice grip. She could only shake her head. They were really going to do this. Make love.
No.
She mentally punched herself in the nose. Not make love. They were going to have sex, probably lots of it, but she shouldn’t confuse fantasy and reality. Lauren might respect her enough to buy her a meal before jumping her bones, but this wasn’t about love. This was throw her up against a bookcase passion and all Emma’s girl parts were totally on board with that plan.
“No requests? That’s okay, I much prefer to learn by experience.” Lauren dragged Emma against her, catching her mouth in a kiss that had her head spinning and her body going limp with need. How many times had they kissed now? Three? Four? She should be starting to get used to it. But every time, the air around them closed in on her, and she went warm and wet and squirmy. Lauren caressed her throat, along her collarbone, across her shoulders. Touches that should’ve been simple but were static electricity against her skin.
When they came up for air, they were both gasping.
“I’d say kissing is definitely on the list of things you like. I wonder what else I’ll discover.” Lauren’s tone was all mischief.
Emma’s response stalled halfway up her throat as her heartbeat tried to fight its way out of her chest. If Lauren went looking she’d discover a hell of a lot more than she bargained for. A lot more than any one-night stand ever expected. Emma breathed out slowly. She had to keep herself in check. Lauren was just playing, trying to put her at ease.
“I’m not all that difficult to please.”
If only Lauren knew just how easy she was.
Lauren made a sexy little vibrating sound in the back of her throat as she backed her toward the bed. “I like that. Responsiveness is so underrated.”
Emma’s stomach dipped. She was responsive all right. To a fault. Her own fault, usually.
Lauren’s fingers found the zipper on the side of her dress. “Is this okay?”
