I didn’t do dating in general, not for years. Since retiring, I’d had maybe two things that could remotely count at “dates,” and they’d both ended in disaster. Now it felt like it had been so long that I’d entirely forgotten how to interact with people who weren’t Lorne or Olivia.
I did my best to relax when Gwen returned, a matching rum and Coke in hand.
“Thought I’d join you,” she explained with a teasing smirk.
I took a sip of my drink to hide the giant as fuck grin on my face. She mimicked and took a sip of hers, though she was still smiling when she set down her glass.
“So,” I said casually, “what’s on the agenda for tonight? Besides getting moderately tipsy on alcoholic soda, of course.”
Gwen hummed, running a red-painted finger over the rim of her glass. A silky touch grazed my leg, and it took everything in my power not to jump as her bare foot stroked up to my knee and back down. My leg spread unconsciously at the contact. She smirked and rewarded me, rubbing up my thigh.
“Well, I just had to spend nearly four hours in a room that was much too expensive, with a bunch of white male philanthropists who are way too old, in heels that are lovely, but much too tight. So.”
A pleasant thrill of warmth found its way into my stomach, and I relaxed further into the light, teasing touch under the table. “Kind of forward, huh?”
“Are you complaining?”
“No, definitely not.”
Her playful smile widened to show a row of perfectly pearly white teeth. “Then what are we still doing here?”
This woman could eat me alive.
And, dammit, I would absolutely let her.
Gwen insisted we go back to her place.
“That twin bed of yours is cute in a ‘my first dorm’ sort of way, but it’s hard to be sexy when you’ve got a broken neck,” she whispered in my ear as I paid for the drinks.
How had I managed to find the only woman in the world who could insult my interior decorating choices and still get me wet?
Truthfully, I was as excited to see where she lived. Everything about Gwen felt like a veiled enigma, which I guessed was by design. In the short time I’d known her, she had let me in on small glimpses of her world, and this felt like just another step. It was embarrassing how pleased the thought made me.
When the cab pulled up to a gated community with elaborate hedge trimmings lining the walkway, I flashed her a look that clearly said, Of course.
To which she replied with a finger that clearly said, Fuck off.
The inside of the condo was just as luxurious as the outside, but I didn’t get to fully appreciate the marble countertops or complementing furniture before Gwen’s lips were pressed against mine.
I wrapped my arms around her until her skin was flush against mine. She framed my face in her hands and deepened the kiss, her tongue swiping the roof of my mouth and making me weak in the knees. She took a step back, then another, and I stumbled to keep up with her without breaking contact as she led me into her bedroom.
We broke apart briefly to fall onto a lush queen bed before diving back into each other. The spread was so elaborate and expensive-looking I would have teased her for it had she not slipped her knee between my thighs and pressed up.
Then she pulled away, and I couldn’t suppress a groan of disappointment.
“I know you’re thinking of something smart to say,” she whispered. She rubbed her knee against my clit, and my hips twitched. “Do you still feel like saying it?”
“God, I hate you,” I groaned.
She pressed her knee back against my clit with a pleased grin. “Maybe I can change your mind on that.”
Before I could think of a retort she flipped us around so I was lying on my back and staring up at her. She rucked up my shirt and ran her nails across my stomach, ripping a shiver from my body and a moan from my throat. She followed the movements of her hands with featherlight kisses, the hot-and-cold sensation turning me into mush.
She hooked a long nail in the waistband of my jeans and ran a teasing finger over the flesh of my hip. She pressed her face into my neck and exhaled—no, not exhaled. Yawned.
“Am I boring you here?” I joked, ego only slightly bruised.
She groaned and shook her head. “No, no. It’s just been kind of a long day. Well, most days are long.”
“You sound dead. Now that I think about it, you kind of look it, too.”
“Oh, please, stop, you’re charming the panties right off me,” she drawled.
She rolled her eyes, but all I could see were the bags under them. She really did look close to collapsing.
“Maybe you should take the night off.”
“This is me taking the night off,” she said. She punctuated her point by running a fingernail over the outline of my pussy through my boxers. I hissed and bucked up toward the contact, earning a triumphant grin from her.
I traced my thumb underneath the dark circles under her eye and sighed. “You know what I mean.”
She frowned and narrowed her eyes into slits. I wasn’t sure if she was assessing me or trying to make me burst into flames. Then suddenly she threw her hands up and shrugged. With a slight shove, she pushed away from me and left nothing but cold air where she’d once been.
"Well, if you're not going to fuck me, I might as well be productive.”
Before my endorphin-fueled brain could process the words, she was up and out of the bed. My eyes dove to her ass in her lacy pink underwear—her lacy pink underwear that matched her lacy pink bra and God what had I been thinking—before she slipped out of the room entirely. I stared after her, confused and horny.
Here I was, sitting in nothing but pants and a bra, horny out of my mind, as I watched the space the woman who put me in this state had just vacated.
“What?” I called after her, voice somehow high-pitched and hoarse at the same time.
Gwen came back, a stack of papers in her arms and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched on her nose.
“You said I should take a break,” she explained with a shrug. She sat on the bed next to me and poked my ribs until I moved over to give her room. “So I’m taking a break.”
“Yeah, but I meant, like, do you want to take a nap and then get back to it, or . . .” I licked my lips and looked down at where she was hunched over the papers, looking elegant and put together and way too fucking unaffected by what had just happened.
She scribbled something down and then looked up at me, one perfectly shaped eyebrow cocked. “Are you calling me old?”
“I’m calling you a tease.”
She smirked and shrugged. “You’d be correct.”
She went back to writing without so much as another look at me. I sat there, just wondering if this was some elaborate prank, or maybe a test. After twenty minutes, I gave up and just started watching her work until I stopped counting the minutes all together.
I watched her fingers, painted the same cherry red as the dress that was now abandoned on her living room floor, run over lines of text as she hummed softly. Her head of curls bounced as she nodded to herself. An errant curl clung to her forehead and my fingers twitched with the need to brush it away.
I didn’t know how much time had passed with me just watching her when she straightened up with a groan. She cursed under her breath and rotated her shoulder.
“Maybe I am getting old.”
“Maybe. Or it could just be that you’re sitting hunched over like a tired goblin,” I pointed out.
She shot me a dirty look. Before she could spit what would no doubt be a cutting comeback, I got up and positioned myself behind her. I placed my hands on her shoulders and dug my thumbs into the tight muscles at the base of her neck.
“Jesus, you’re carrying half the world’s stress reserves right here!”
She shivered and let out a muted groan. “That’s what happens when you run a campaign.”
“How’s that going, by the way?”
She snort
ed. “You don’t actually care to hear about political drudgery.”
I wanted to know everything about her. “Sure I do.”
She launched into a rant about pundits and campaign personnel I gathered were important, but whom I had never even heard of. I felt almost dumb not knowing what important political figures in my own district were up to, but I loved hearing her talk passionately and snippily about it all the same.
I kneaded my fingers into a particularly stiff bundle of nerves. She grunted and threw a warning glance over her shoulder. Feeling impulsive, I placed a kiss to the area by way of apology. I felt her stiffen under my hands before she relaxed again, shifting to fit more comfortably between my thighs.
“Do you do this often?” she asked softly, after ten minutes of her coming up with creative insults for a swath of political commentators.
“Not really. Sometimes my roommate bullies me into it, though.”
“Mmm, I bet this is how you get all the girls.”
I snorted. She turned her head and cocked a questioning brow at me. I cleared my throat.
“Um, not exactly. Not all the girls.”
Or most of them, or even some of them. None for years until now, in fact, but I couldn’t tell her that.
“I find that hard to believe,” Gwen replied flippantly. I could tell she was digging for more information, goading me. “Not with hands like these.”
I dug my thumbs deeper into her shoulders until she gasped. “You like my hands, huh?”
It was a poor attempt at deflecting, and she instantly picked up on it.
“Mmm, I do. I bet your other girlfriends did, too.”
“Fishing for something, Crawford?”
“I’ve never been good at subtlety, that’s why I didn’t last as a congresswoman.” She twisted around until she was looking directly at me. “Are you seeing anyone besides me, Jackie?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“What number conquest am I?”
“Jesus Christ!”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m not dignifying that question with one.”’
She studied my face in the stretch of silence of that followed. Then suddenly she smirked, and I knew I was fucked.
“You’ve always been shy, but I’ve never known you to be defensive.”
“I’m not being defensive,” I snapped, defensively. “Truth is, I don’t know what number ‘conquest’ you are. Also, ‘conquest’ is the dumbest term ever.”
“That is true. Look, if you’re worried about hurting my feelings, don’t be. This isn’t exclusive. It’s fun. Casual.”
I flinched at the word, but shook it off. Right. Casual.
Right.
I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. Clearly a power play, which was fine with me. I had enough self-control to play this game.
“ . . . Gwen, come on.”
Or not.
She tilted her head and regarded me evenly. “Am I being invasive?”
Actually, thinking about it, I realized that no, she wasn’t. Not entirely, anyway. Given this nameless thing we’d fallen into, didn’t she have a right to know if we were exclusive? Hell, didn’t I?
“I’ll answer yours if you answer mine,” I said instead.
Her eyes lit up, interest clearly piqued. “All right, that’s fair enough. I’m guessing you have something you wanna ask me. What do you want to know about me?”
Everything.
“What number conquest am I for you?” I said, only half serious.
She snorted. “My answer is that honestly, I do not know. I’m a forty-year-old lesbian who spent the first thirty-five years of her life being repressed. I have some time to make up for.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Now what about you?”
I debated the merits of deflecting again before I gave in with a sigh. Part of me wanted to do anything but talk about this, but the other part felt that Gwen deserved to know somehow. Wherever this went, if it went anywhere at all, she needed to know.
“Not anyone, for a long time. Not since I was in the league.”
“Groupies?” Gwen waggled her eyebrows.
I snorted. “I wish. WNBA players don’t get groupies.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Fine, this WNBA player didn’t get groupies.” No matter what the internet—and TMZ, and Perez Hilton, and all the comments section of Bossip—said.
“Okay, so no groupies. Who then? Steady girlfriend?”
“Something like that. Except not really.”
Gwen rolled her eyes, but I was being honest. What Felicity and I had had back then was never defined. We worked together, we hung out together with other players, and we had sex. Did that make her my girlfriend? If so that only made the fucked-up backstabbing and sulking that came after infinitely worse, which was a special kind of devastating for reasons I couldn’t begin to explain.
How was I supposed to explain something I didn’t even fully understand myself? I searched for the words that would satisfy Gwen’s curiosity without giving too much—or too little—away.
I settled on honesty. “I hooked up with some girls in the league. But everybody does that, it’s not like it’s a big secret. You might remember that from the headlines.”
Gwen cocked an eyebrow. “Anyone I know?”
“Do we . . . Do we have to talk about this now?”
I’d meant for it to come out joking, but my voice was too strained to pull it off effectively. Gwen tilted her head, her dark-brown eyes boring into me as if she could use them to pry secrets from my mouth. Then her eyes softened.
“Have you ever seen The Good Wife?” Thrown by her question, I could only shake my head. She smiled. “Then you are in for a treat.”
She got up from the bed, leaving cold in the space between my thighs where she’d sat. I watched her rummage through the cabinet underneath the TV, bent over so the outline of her panties was stark against her shirt.
She produced a stack of DVDs and loaded one of the discs into the player. When she turned back to me she smirked.
“See something you like?”
“I see something I can’t have,” I grumbled petulantly, even though it was partly my fault.
She chuckled and bent down to move her laptop in a way that purposefully showed the movement of her breasts.
“You know what you need? You know what I need? Coffee.”
“I could go for a cup.”
She walked over to her closet and pulled out a robe. I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment.
“How do you take yours?”
“Milk and thirteen sugars, please.”
The disgusted look she shot was me comical.
“Thirteen? God, why?”
“Thirteen was my jersey number and, well, I love sugar.”
“Is that how you always take your coffee?”
“Not being on a strict raw diet opens up a wonderful world of possibilities, Gwen.”
She shuddered, but her tone was fond when she said, “How are you still alive?”
I laughed and fell back against the bed. My top rode up enough to show the skin of my stomach, and her eyes tracked the movement, making me feel exposed in the best way. I wondered what I must have looked like to her, so obviously and ridiculously smitten. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but it looked like maybe she was just a little bit stupidly smitten, too.
I smirked.
“You keep talking like that and you won’t get my world-famous, groupie-netting massages.”
She rolled her eyes and disappeared out the door. Warm and giddy, I curled up around a fluffy pillow and watched The Good Wife while the sound of the coffee maker buzzed in the kitchen.
Six
Gwen
Jackie: i’m having a caramel frappuccino with extra whip cream for breakfast bc i love happiness and joy :)
A smile tugged at my lips as I stared at the text. I contemplated a reply, s
omething about the most important meal of the day being high cholesterol with a side of diabetes, but a pointed throat-clearing ripped my attention—and smile—away.
“Gwendolyn,” Dick Crawford grunted from the head of the table, “care to join us?”
“Sorry, it won’t happen again.”
I applauded myself for keeping the bite out of my voice. Jeffrey sent me a grateful look from across the table.
I slipped my phone back into my purse and folded my hands on the table. Campaign strategy meetings with Dick Crawford present were always a test in restraint for me. He had been heavily involved in Jeffrey’s first campaign. At the time I was excited to have him on, despite our differences, because he was a veteran politician himself and had brought a lot of unique insights that turned out to be useful. By the end of the election, I wanted to strangle him and let Jeffrey inherit the insurance money.
“Henry Osten’s people have gotten in touch with us about setting up a series of, quote, friendly debates in the coming weeks,” Dick said. “His manager bills it as a good opportunity for the people to get to know you both better.”
I scoffed. “You mean a chance for the people to get to know him better. The people already know Jeffrey. They voted for him.”
“I think we should do it,” Dick said, staring right at me. I stared back. “It’ll show people he’s not afraid of a little competition, and not so cozy that he thinks he doesn’t need to work for their votes.”
“Osten just wants to piggyback off the momentum Jeffrey has spent years building for himself. We shouldn’t give him a platform, we should make him build his own.”
Dick sighed. “Sweetheart—”
I bristled, but Jeffrey swooped in before I could retort.
“Maybe taking him up on the debates wouldn’t be such a bad idea?” he ventured, throwing a cautious glance my way. “I’m not afraid of him, and there are some things I want to call him on, too.”
“Then dip into the budget for an attack ad, or have Diego slip something into a speech or or your next interview. The last thing we need is to turn this into political theater.”
Sugar & Ice Page 7
