A Bluewater Bay Collection

by Witt, L. A.

  Natalya laughed again. We clinked the glasses together.

  We licked off the salt, threw back the shots, and sucked on the limes. She was right—the limes were a little more sour than usual, but with the salt and Cuervo, they tasted pretty damn good. We went straight into the second round. Salt. Shot. Lime. The tequila burned its way down my throat. I was pretty sure I’d pay for this in the morning, but tonight? Fuck it.

  “Ah, that shit is good,” Natalya said. “A few more shots of that, and I won’t give two shits about that idiot.” She dropped a bare rind on the empty plate. “Good riddance.”

  “Amen to that.” I licked my lips, my tongue tingling from the mix of salt and sour. “Just don’t hold it against me if I say anything stupid when I’m drunk.”

  “Isn’t that the point of getting drunk?” She giggled. Natalya . . . giggled. And it was adorable.

  And if I kept staring, she was going to get suspicious.

  I cleared my throat, shifting my gaze to all of our tequila paraphernalia on the coffee table for a second. “So. Um. You’re from Russia originally, right? I wasn’t just making a stupid assumption because of your accent?” Or because I’ve read your bio on the Wolf’s Landing site like seven hundred times.

  “I am, yes. I came over here . . .” Her eyes lost focus for a moment. “Almost twenty years ago, now. After I retired as a gymnast.” She quirked her lips. “Not enough to get rid of my accent, I guess.”

  “No need to get rid of it, is there?”

  She shrugged, lounging on the sofa and slinging her arm across the back of it. “Only if I want to blend in.” With a wicked grin, she added, “Which I usually don’t.”

  Oh, you definitely stand out. And I stopped myself just before I would’ve added that her accent was hot. Because what kind of stupid comment was that? One I’d blame on the tequila. And she probably wouldn’t believe me. Because her accent was kind of hot.

  Was I always this much of a lightweight? I’d only had two shots. Where the hell was my brain?

  Probably in the locker room where I’d left it the moment I’d invited Natalya over to my place for drinks.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Where are you from?”

  “Eastern Pennsylvania. Nothing terribly exciting. I’ve been in LA since I was twenty.” I paused. “Well, up until I moved to Bluewater Bay. But I’ve been in Hollywood since . . .” Yep, brain is still in the locker room. I muffled a cough. “You know what I mean.”

  “You must’ve always known you wanted to make movies.”

  I nodded. “Kinda thought for a while I wanted to be an actress, but then I directed a little indie short, and I was hooked.”

  “Yeah?” She made a face. “Directing never seemed that fun to me.”

  “That’s because your job entails dangling people from cables and crashing vehicles into things. Kind of hard for any job to compete with that.”

  “True. But production . . . how do you handle all that bullshit?” She pushed herself off the back of the couch, gingerly rubbing her lower back, and wrinkled her nose as she said, “All Finn Larson has to do is show up and I get hives.”

  “Yeah, he’s a tough one to deal with.” I groaned. “Good thing Simon’s involved with production work now, so he gets to deal with some of Finn’s crap.” I paused. “But putting up with that asshole is worth it sometimes. Just seeing that defeated little look on his face when he backs down—”

  Natalya burst out laughing. “You’re evil! I like it.”

  I laughed too, and shrugged. “It’s the only way to stay sane in production.”

  “Well, and . . .” She gestured at the Cuervo.

  “That too. And now that you mention it . . .” I grabbed the bottle and poured us two more shots apiece. So much for going easy on the sauce. Four shots in rapid succession? Yeah, this night was going to get interesting. But whatever. I had Natalya Izmaylova on my couch. Bottoms up.

  We pounded the next two shots, and as I pushed the empty glasses away, the room whirled around me. Okay, maybe I did need to slow down a little. I at least wanted to remember anything stupid I said tonight.

  Natalya sucked on another piece of lime, completely unaware of what that did to my ability to concentrate. “So . . .” She dropped the rind on the plate with the others and licked her lips. “Enough work talk. What happened with you and your ex?”

  Well wasn’t that a bucket of cold water?

  “Jesus.” I scowled, my buzz lightening a bit at the mention of Leigh. “What didn’t happen?”

  Natalya laughed even as her forehead creased. “Bad?”

  “Mm-hmm. I mean, there was no cheating or anything like that, but . . .” I stared at the glasses and limes in front of us for a moment, then sighed. “I’m not even sure where we went wrong. We had a really good thing going for a long time. Somewhere along the line, we started fighting, and I guess . . . I guess we just didn’t stop.”

  “Fighting about what?”

  How was she not slurring even a little bit? Then again, I still sounded more coherent than I felt, so maybe I just didn’t hear how drunk she was. Or maybe her tolerance was higher than mine. Whatever. Didn’t she just ask me a question?

  Natalya’s eyebrows rose. As she spoke again, she touched my arm, and I didn’t hear a word she said.

  We’d shaken hands plenty of times, but everything had always been professional and detached. Here, now, semidrunk on my couch with no pretense of anything but drinking and commiserating, I could barely get my head around the fact that she was touching me.

  She withdrew her hand, and my other senses snapped back into focus.

  “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said. “I—”

  “No. No. It’s okay.” I laughed, shaking my head and trying to ignore the cool invisible handprint she’d left on my arm. “I think the tequila’s going to my brain faster than I thought it would. What did you ask me a second ago?”

  “I asked what you and your ex were fighting about.”

  “Right.” The question seemed to suck half the booze right out of my blood. I was still light-headed, still not completely clear in the brain, but the thought of Leigh and the last couple of years jolted me hard enough to bring me partway back to earth. “Oh, we fought about everything. I think it started after we moved in together. Bills, chores.” I waved a hand. “Then the next thing you know, we’re arguing over where to spend Christmas, and . . . it just kind of escalated from there.”

  “Sounds miserable.”

  “It was. And it’s over. Thank God.”

  “Always a relief when it’s over, isn’t it?”

  “Well, sometimes. I assume it is with your boyf—ex-boyfriend?”

  She muttered something in Russian and leaned back against the couch again. “Tommy . . .” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I wasted my time. The sex wasn’t even that good.”

  An image of her naked and in bed with someone—male, female, both—flashed through my mind, and heat rushed into my cheeks. Among other places.

  I forced my brain to cooperate. “How long were you two together?”

  “Too long.” She played with the seam on one of the couch cushions. “Almost a year.”

  “Was it always bad?”

  “It . . .” She hesitated, then met my gaze. “Well, not always. He’s not a bad guy most of the time. Just doesn’t understand that women do have thoughts and opinions about things, and those thoughts and opinions don’t vanish upon contact with his penis.”

  I snorted and clapped a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She laughed. “And, I guess I can see why he confused his penis with an eraser. It was pink, he tried to rub it on everything, and it was about the same size as—”

  We both erupted into giggles.

  “Okay, okay . . .” She wiped her eyes, still laughing. “He wasn’t that bad. But he really didn’t like being with someone who didn’t go along with his every whim.”


  “I can’t imagine how you two lasted a year.”

  She eyed me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’ve been working with you long enough to know that anyone who thinks you’re just going to demurely smile, nod, and go along with their every whim is going to be quickly disabused of that notion.” I paused. “And I can’t believe I actually said all of that clearly. Do I sound as drunk as I feel?”

  “I don’t know.” She sat up again, and her lips pulled back in a grin that made my spine tingle. “How drunk do you feel?”

  Drunk enough to read more into that grin than I probably should?

  “Well, I can still talk. Not sure if I can stand.”

  “Standing is overrated. Drinking, however . . .” Natalya picked up the bottle and poured us each some more. I was going to decline, but she only filled the glasses about halfway and didn’t pour us each two like I’d done the first couple of rounds.

  Then she slid one toward me. Oh hell. What was one more shot? After she’d salted her finger, I did the same.

  She raised her glass. “To exes being better as exes.”

  “Cheers.” I clinked my glass against hers. Licked my finger. Threw back the tequila. Got distracted by her sucking on the lime, and nearly forgot to do the same. I shook myself and tore my gaze away from her. “You ever wonder why we stay with people like that? Such a fucking waste of time.”

  “It really is.” She scooted closer to me, crossing the narrow gap between our respective cushions so now we were on the same one. My skin tingled and my toes curled beneath the coffee table, but somehow, I managed to keep from visibly squirming. Or moving toward her to close that sliver of space all the way.

  “It’s so funny,” she said. “We’ve worked together all this time, and I don’t think we’ve ever talked before. About . . . not work.”

  “And now your first impression of me is when I’m getting drunk.”

  She picked up the bottle. “So am I, so we’re even.”

  I put up a hand. “No more for me.”

  Shrugging, she poured her own, and I watched, mesmerized, as she licked, sipped, sucked. Some of the tequila—or maybe the lime juice—landed on her hand. She licked that off too, completely oblivious to what she was doing to my drunk, sexually depraved—deprived—brain.

  “Whoa.” She wavered a little. “Okay, now I’m feeling it.”

  “You’re just now feeling it?” I slurred. “I’ve been drunk since we opened the bottle.”

  “Lightweight.” She giggled again, which should not have sent my blood pressure soaring like that.

  “You say ‘lightweight.’ I say ‘cheap date.’”

  She laughed, patting my thigh as if there was no reason to believe that would make me even dizzier than good old Jose Cuervo already had. “I like that. Cheap date.”

  “Most people do. And if . . . if you get too drunk, I can call . . . call you a cab when you want to go.” I wasn’t that drunk. Why was I struggling to form words? Oh right. Because I was that drunk. “Or if you want to take my bed, I can crash on the couch.”

  “Your bed sounds good.”

  And before the words had even sunk in, Natalya grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me.

  Chapter 3

  I almost melted right there in Natalya’s arms.

  Maybe it was the tequila, or maybe I just hadn’t been kissed in way too long, but her lips woke up nerves I’d forgotten existed. Her cool fingers drifted up into my hair, and her tongue softly parted my lips. Two seconds into this, and my spine was already tingling, my long-neglected clit already aching for attention.

  She was exactly my kind of kisser—not overwhelmingly aggressive, but she knew what she wanted, and she claimed it, whether it was a handful of hair or enough access to my mouth that she could intertwine her tongue with mine. My head was so light and spinning so fast, it was impossible to say where the tequila ended and her kiss began. I was drunk on something, though.

  Abruptly, I broke the kiss, and holy shit, I was out of breath. “This . . . wasn’t what I had in mind when I suggested drinks.”

  Her eyes narrowed as her lips—God, her lips were delicious—curved into a wicked grin. “It was what I had in mind when I took you up on it.”

  Oh really? So great minds do think alike.

  “You should have said so.” Should’ve mentioned you were into women in the first place. “You didn’t have to get me drunk.”

  She laughed. “I wasn’t getting you drunk so I could kiss you.”

  “Then why—”

  She cut me off with a kiss, and it didn’t matter why we were drunk or why she hadn’t skipped the tequila and dragged me straight to bed. She was kissing me now. The rest was just details.

  Natalya tightened her grip on my hair, pulled my head back, descended on my neck, and . . .

  Oh God, yes. Good thing I’d passed on that last shot, because there was no way in hell tonight was ending without both of us naked, and if I were any drunker, I’d either ruin it or not remember it. And I wanted to remember everything. Every taste of her, every sharp rush of breath across my skin, every orgasm—something about her eager, determined kiss told me there would be plenty of orgasms tonight.

  Twisting toward her like this was taking its toll on my hips, and my tired thigh muscles were starting to protest. The solution to that was easy, though—I nudged her back against the couch and moved on top of her, straddling her. My lower body wasn’t thrilled with the motion, but Natalya slid her hands over my hips and into my back pockets, and I decided I could live with the screaming muscles as long as she cupped my ass like that while she kissed me.

  I came up for air again and touched my forehead to hers. “I didn’t . . .” I licked my lips. “I didn’t realize you were into women.”

  Natalya laughed, the soft huff tickling my lips. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

  “That’s . . . that’s probably true. But this part—liking women—seems kind of, uh, relevant right now.”

  “Mm-hmm. It does.” She kissed me again, and nothing about her kiss suggested she wanted a conversation. Perfectly fine by me.

  Her hands left my pockets and moved upward, beneath my shirt. As her warm, callused hands drifted across my bare skin, I whimpered into the kiss. My spine arched as if it had a mind of its own, and it took all the focus I had to keep on kissing her when the little shivers and shudders kept trying to make me throw my head back.

  Then she broke the kiss and tugged at my shirt. “This is in the way.” Her accent seemed even sharper. “Sit up.”

  I did, and she pushed my shirt up and off. I leaned back in, and before our lips had even met again, her hand was over my clothed breast. Her nail traced a circle around my nipple, and . . . Oh fuck, I needed her fingers on my skin.

  Still kissing her, I reached back and unsnapped my bra. She grabbed the front and damn near tore it off, and I gasped as her slightly rough hands met my nipple. She pinched it, but the pain was more intense than I liked, and I stiffened. Instantly, without me needing to break the kiss and say a word, she backed off. She still touched me, still circled my nipple with her thumb, but gently now, and that brief pain dulled as her soft touch and passionate kiss took over my senses.

  Though she was careful with my nipples, that was the only place she backed off. Her kiss was still demanding. I loved the way she pressed against me, explored my mouth, tugged my hair. I wasn’t at all surprised she was so aggressive. I was just surprised to be the target of that aggression. And turned on as hell. Oh my God. The only sex I’d had in recent memory had been makeup sex, and even that had become half-assed. This . . . was not.

  And once again, Natalya grabbed my hair, tilted my head back, and kissed my neck. How did she know that was my do this and I’m your slave forever kink? Who’d told her? How’d she get so far into my head already and—

  Shit, who cared?

  I gripped her shoulders and tilted my head as far as I could without bre
aking my neck. She wrapped her other arm around me, pulling me down and holding me there as she explored my neck with lips, tongue, teeth. Every time her teeth grazed my flesh, my breath caught. Just like every time she flicked her tongue or kissed my skin with her soft lips or found some deliciously erogenous zone that hadn’t had enough attention in ages.

  And the best part was, she just . . . did it. She wanted this. She wanted me. I didn’t have to beg her to do the things I liked. I wasn’t used to a woman who took control like this. I wasn’t used to liking it. And, oh fuck, I did like it. A lot.

  Please, let this be a long night.

  I rubbed against her, but there were too many damned clothes in the way. As much as I loved what she was doing to my neck, I wanted to see her gorgeous body with nothing covering her up. I wanted to rub against her and feel skin and warmth, not . . . jeans.

  “You know . . .” Air. Need air. I took a few breaths, which was a challenge with her teasing my nerve endings within an inch of their lives. “You know, my bed is a lot more comfortable than this couch.”

  “Is it?” She lifted her head. “Show me.”

  I nodded. Then, with as much grace as possible with a head full of Cuervo and a body full of exhausted muscles, I got up. Once I was off her lap, she stood too, her movements way too steady and controlled for someone who’d helped me kill that much tequila. Solid on her feet, she extended her hand and grinned, her blue eyes echoing the order to show her my bed.

  I took her hand, and carefully started toward the stairs. My aching legs were . . . well, they were under me. I didn’t know how reliable they were, but so far so good. Even as the floor tilted beneath me, I kept going. Falling on my ass was a risk I was willing to take. We’d do this on the floor if it came to that. As long as I wound up naked with her, the rest would work itself out.

  I hesitated on the first step, making sure I really did have the balance for that kind of complicated operation. When I’d made it past that one without incident—and Natalya effortlessly followed because apparently she was immune to tequila—I picked up speed.