Cruising the Strip Read online

  “Is it okay that we do this here? Are you going to get fired? I’m a top, but that doesn’t mean I get to be destructive in your personal life and expect you to accept it. Being a top, to me, is not about hurting you, it’s about protecting you.”

  “You can’t tell anyone we did it here. Ever.” She’d never let a business contact get under her skin this way, and Leona was under her skin, deeper even than that. A stranger, but not. A friend, but not. She’d made mistakes in the past about whom she could trust. Las Vegas was full of users. “I don’t care if they know we fooled around, but not—”

  “I’m not your ex. I won’t be reckless with your reputation. Why would I tell someone else how vulnerable you are, and risk them figuring out what it took me a year to put together? No way, not when I want to be more to you than the hot, quick fuck we’re about to have.”

  “Oh. Oh, my.”

  “That is, if you say yes.”

  All those e-mails, a dozen a day, short jokes, long, intense presentations of her position on some fine point of the hospitality contract, articulate, but never mean. Harmony dealt with a lot of people who thought resolution was achieved by yelling and insults. Leona had always been respectful of Harmony’s position representing the hotel, even when they’d had tense exchanges about who was paying for the fresh flowers in the meeting rooms, or if the beverage allowance included mixed drinks or just wine. Discussions around money brought out the worst in people, but Leona had never crossed the line.

  “Yes. Or no?”

  Trying to take a deep enough breath to calm her nerves, Harmony asked, “If I say no, does that mean no forever?”

  “Of course not.” Leona reached halfway to Harmony’s cheek, as if to caress her, then deliberately put her hands on the arms of the chair. “We’ll resume this talk later, if you want to wait. I just thought…if you liked the story, that…”

  “Yes.” It came out as three syllables as Harmony failed to conquer the quaver in her voice. She hadn’t been down this road before.

  Leona gazed into Harmony’s eyes for a long, long moment. “I promise that the way we are right now is not going to bleed over into who we have to be when the lights go on again, when you unlock the door.”

  Harmony wondered how Leona had known she needed to hear that. “Yes,” she said more steadily.

  Without a pause, Leona said, “Then take out my cock.”

  Her breath started coming in little gasps all over again. Harmony managed the button, the zipper, then reached inside. Leona’s thighs were wet, lord she’s as excited as I am, Harmony thought. She freed the warm silicone and greedily rubbed the tip against her panties, brushing her clit.

  Leona helped Harmony slide out of her suit jacket, folding it neatly before resting it carefully across her satchel. Harmony couldn’t stop herself from shifting and grinding in Leona’s lap.

  “Do you have another pair of pants? I’m going to get yours all wet.”

  “I have that covered. Don’t worry.” Leona unbuttoned Harmony’s standard-issue white business blouse, then smiled at the decidedly non-standard bra. “That’s as lovely a sight as those garters. The staff uniform makes you look very professional, but I like seeing you this way.”

  Harmony shuddered as Leona trailed long fingers over the cups of her bra. She’d been expecting Leona’s arrival yesterday or today, and had told herself it was only coincidence that she’d picked out her favorite lingerie. Her heartbeat was pulsing across her skin, responding to the simple caresses.

  “Beautiful,” Leona murmured. She unhooked the front clasp. “Show me.”

  Harmony ran her hands up her tummy, hoping she was at least a little bit coquettish, as alluring and sensual as the woman in Leona’s story. She didn’t want to be a fantasy, though; this was too real to her. Gazing into Leona’s eyes, she eased her fingertips under the cups, slowly pulling them aside until it was Leona who looked down.

  The sound Leona made when Harmony toyed with her nipples, then pinched them, showing how firmly she could be touched, that sound conquered what little trepidation Harmony had left.

  “Thank you,” Leona whispered just before taking one red, aching tip into her mouth.

  Harmony ground down on Leona’s lap, her fires at a full raging roar. “You have to…” She paused to find something like coherence. “You have to tell me to be quiet.”

  Leona looked up, a question in her eyes.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll scream.” That would be bad, she wanted to add, but the deeply pleased gleam in Leona’s eyes took her breath away, again.

  “Oh goodness, you are turning into the woman I’ve been searching for all my life.” Leona licked her lips. “Talk to me with your eyes. Tell me what you feel by the way you move on me. But no words, no cries, no moans.”

  Harmony looked her need at Leona, saying it all.

  “Lift up,” Leona said quietly, “and slide down on me. I want to hear you taking me inside you.”

  Harmony couldn’t control how loudly her heart was beating, and she hoped that Leona understood that if she didn’t gasp for air, she would faint. Even so, she was quiet enough, the room still enough to hear the wet sound of Leona pulling her panties aside, then the soft whisper of Leona’s cock parting her folds, finding the place Harmony needed Leona to possess.

  Leona thrust upward as if she could wait no longer to take Harmony all the way. “Hold still. Let me.”

  Harmony froze, her hands on Leona’s shoulders. Leona pushed up again, harder then again, and again.

  “Listen to you. Listen to your body loving what I’m doing.”

  Harmony nodded. She could hear it, inside and out. She was a bottom, but that didn’t mean she craved wax or chains, or cleaning boots with her tongue. It wasn’t about physical compulsion or dominance; it was about someone getting into her mind, working her brain from the inside so the outside could do what it was doing now. Giving by taking. Yielding every place in her by choice.

  “Look at you.” Leona gasped. “You’re beautiful like this.”

  Sobbing in silence, Harmony came in convulsive explosions as Leona held back her own cry with gritted teeth. She collapsed into Leona’s arms, her head on Leona’s shoulder and they moved together again, slowly, rocking skin to skin.

  Finally, Leona kissed her.

  “Thank you,” Harmony murmured. “I’ve never…” She didn’t quite know what else to say. She stole a look at Leona’s face and saw that the intense top was gone. The cherub, a little nervous and shy, was back.

  “You get it, right?” Leona said quietly. “That I want this, but I want to see if we can have more than this, too?”

  “I get it,” Harmony said. “You’ve made me laugh every day for the past year, too. I think we’d be fools not to see if we can do that in real life. Because if you’ve got sex and laughter, you’ve got just about all you need.”

  Leona’s arms tightened around her and she shifted just enough to wake up Harmony’s stretched nerves and muscles all over again. She glanced at the clock on the desk, then realized Leona was doing the same.

  The top came back. With deep pleasure, with joy, Harmony did exactly as she was told.

  *

  “How are you going to explain what I did to your pants?” Harmony gave Leona another sheepish look as she fastened her bra and tried to regain her composure. She felt awed at the depths to which she had surrendered to Leona, and yet somehow powerful at the same time. The combination was new and very intriguing.

  “I couldn’t fit the toy and a pair of pants into the bottom of my satchel, so I decided honesty was the best policy.” Leona picked up the cold cup of coffee on Harmony’s desk. “Soon as you’re ready, you’re going to bolt for the bathroom for paper towels.”

  Harmony laughed. “Let me get my blouse tucked in.”

  “You really are beautiful,” Leona said.

  “Not everyone thinks so. My nose is too—”

  “You’re beautiful,” Leona repeated. “Especially whe
n you smile. And I would really like to take you out to dinner tonight.”

  She might just mean it, Harmony thought. “Dinner before or after that intimate buffet for one hundred and fifty, cash bar and slideshow A/V setup?”

  “After.” Leona grinned. “Dinner and breakfast.”

  “Yes.” Harmony pulled on her jacket and adjusted the cuffs of her blouse. “There, I’m ready.”

  “Here goes nothing.” Leona poured the coffee into her lap.

  Laughing, Harmony unlocked the door and hurried to the bathroom.

  Switch Hands

  by Radclyffe

  “Editing is such a bitch.”

  Jules Montgomery pushed back from the desk in her hotel room and rubbed her face with both hands. The generic black plastic digital clock on the bedside table read 7:45 p.m. She’d been working five hours—five hours that felt like fifty, and that’s exactly what she’d accomplished, fifty pages of edits. After twenty-seven novels, she should have anticipated the fact that she could only manage ten pages an hour if she was truly, seriously editing. Critically appraising her technique, as opposed to just looking for spelling errors and egregiously repetitive language, took time. Time she was desperately short of. Why she had agreed to speak at this damn conference when she knew she had a deadline in ten days remained a mystery. Her agent would say it was because she always overestimated her abilities, and she would counter with the argument that she never missed a deadline or a scheduled engagement.

  Still, alone in her hotel room on a Friday night—in Las Vegas, no less—even she had to admit that her life of all work and almost no play was wearing her down. No wonder she couldn’t keep a girlfriend. No wonder she hadn’t had sex with anyone, even a stranger, since that time three books ago that she’d hooked up with a bookstore manager one night after a signing. That had been an all too brief few hours that had left her physically satisfied but emotionally disquieted. She had to struggle not to ask herself, Is that all there is? She didn’t want to believe she had nothing to look forward to except random encounters with attractive strangers, even if her recent experiences failed to suggest otherwise. She was, after all, a romance writer. She believed in fate and passion and love. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to write about it, not as many times as she had.

  “And this one’s not going to write itself, either.” She grimaced at her laptop. “Or edit itself.”

  She supposed she could slough off the edits for a while and work on her presentation for the romance panel the next afternoon, but that would be cheating. Putting together a thirty minute talk about something she loved to discuss wasn’t nearly the same as wringing the last drop of emotion out of every single word on a page.

  “Food. Food and a bottle of wine, and I can do anything. Even get through the last hundred pages of this manuscript.”

  Scrolling down the screen with one hand, Jules snagged the desk phone with the other and punched in the extension for room service from memory. One thing she loved about traveling was room service—not just the food, but the clean sheets and the fresh towels and the bed turned down every night. She’d never admit it, but she enjoyed being pampered. With the receiver tucked between her ear and shoulder, she deleted half a sentence and retyped it without the gerund as she listened to the phone ring. She’d have to run a search for the word suckle and expunge it from the manuscript. Whoever heard of a grown woman suckling anything, let alone a—

  “Hello?”

  Jules dragged her attention away from the screen. “Hi, this is—”

  “You’re late.”

  Frowning, Jules checked the clock. A few minutes to eight. The in-room dining menu stipulated full dinner service until eleven, and after that, “snacks” were available all night. If you didn’t mind paying five dollars a potato chip.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough.” A woman’s voice flowed to her, low and almost playful.

  Jules hesitated. “I just wanted to order—”

  “You’ve suddenly acquired a taste for something new?”

  “I’m sorry?” Jules realized she was repeating herself. Obviously, she needed an editor for more than just her manuscripts.

  “Since when do you like to give the orders?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jules repeated, feeling like a parrot and not a particularly smart one. Didn’t some of them have a vocabulary of five hundreds words? “Is this room service?”

  “Well, that’s one way of putting it.”

  Silence descended and Jules realized she was supposed to say something. Dialogue had always been her strong point, and now she was having trouble forming whole sentences. “To whom am I speaking?”

  There, that came out nicely.

  “You called me. Don’t you know?”

  “Uh…” Jules cleared her throat and looked around the room. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Just an ordinary $900 a night suite in an opulent Las Vegas casino hotel. Her shoes lay next to the bed, her trousers draped over a chair. Her briefcase sat open next to her on the floor. She was barefoot in boxers and a T-shirt, which was what she always wore when working. Everything was exactly as it should be, except some time in the last twelve hours she had developed a cognitive disorder of some kind and couldn’t carry on a sensible conversation. “I just wanted a charbroiled hamburger and a bottle of Merlot.”

  “The last time we talked you wanted me to spank you until you came all over my silk stockings.”

  “That wasn’t me,” Jules whispered. And as she said the words, she suddenly wished it had been. She had a sudden image of being stretched over the creamy, bare thighs of a woman wearing a black silk camisole. A black lace bikini just covered the woman’s shaved pussy, and black satin garters stretched taut to the top of black silk stockings. Jules’s hard penis nestled between the woman’s thighs. As a small hand struck Jules’s ass sharply, she thrust downward, rubbing the flushed head against smooth skin. The swift stab of pleasure obliterated the pain and she knew with the next blow she would explode.

  Jules blinked and the image disappeared. She looked down, almost surprised not to see an erection tenting her boxers. Her clitoris stiffened very nicely and rubbed against the cotton of her shorts. “I’m sorry. I have the wrong number.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A foot away on the desk, the screen of her computer beckoned. She was used to escaping into other worlds, other lifetimes, other lives. Hers was a world of shifting boundaries, and sometimes reality was as fluid as a keystroke.

  “Aren’t you waiting for another call?” Jules asked.

  The woman laughed. “He missed his chance, but the hour’s paid for.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to call right now.”

  “It will do him good to be disappointed. He’s grown too confident.”

  “I feel sorry for him,” Jules said.

  “Do you?” Surprise. Curiosity. “Why?”

  “I imagine he’s been looking forward to this call all day.”

  Laughter. “He’s been looking forward to it all week. I’m on a business trip, but I made a special date with him. After he begged.”

  “Are you going to punish him for being late?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m going to tell him exactly what he missed.”

  The low, throaty voice washed over Jules as if hands were skimming over her skin. She heard rapid breathing and realized it was her own.

  “Tell me,” Jules urged.

  “I’ll do more than that. I’ll show you.” A pause. “Would you like that?”

  “Yes. I would.”

  “Put this call on hold and take off your clothes. Then use the handset by the bed and tell me when you’re lying down.”

  Jules pushed the hold button and sat for several seconds. She could disconnect the call and it would be all over. She could go back to her editing. She could prepare for the next day’s presentation. She could spend the rest of the night alone. And she would never know the end of the story. Abruptly, she stood
and pulled off her T-shirt, pushed her boxers down, and strode naked into the bedroom. She didn’t turn on a light, but hurriedly picked up the phone.

  “I’m here.” Jules stretched out on her back, the phone resting on the pillow next to her ear.

  “And what are you doing here?”

  “I’m a writer,” Jules said. “I’m here for a conference.”

  “I saw a horde of people with pens attacking several women in the lobby the other day. Would one of those sought after women be you?”

  “Probably not.” Jules laughed. “I’ve signed a few autographs, but I don’t usually incite a riot.”

  “What do you write?”

  “Love stories.” No, Jules thought, they’re more than that. “Stories about women in love.”

  “And sex? Do you write stories about women having sex?”

  Jules closed her eyes so she could concentrate on the voice. Alone in the darkness, the sound of the husky tones so very close to her ear created an intimacy that made her stomach tingle. “Yes. I write about women having sex.”

  “And you? Do you have sex with women?”

  “Yes,” Jules replied, feeling strangely relaxed. Almost languid. The room was warm and she lay naked on the sheets. “I have sex with women.”

  “And men?”

  “No.” Jules thought of the man who was supposed to be talking to this woman right now. She imagined him poised on the other end of the phone, having anxiously waited all week for the special call. He would be excited. Had probably been excited for hours, watching the clock, hearing the sultry voice in his mind, anticipating how it would feel when she whispered to him. “Do you only do this with men?”

  “Do what?”

  Jules brushed her hand over her belly and felt the muscles tense beneath her fingertips. Lazily, she circled her navel. “Have these private conversations with men.”

  “My clients want me to make them come. Usually they want me to make them beg to come. Men and women are all the same in that moment.”

  “I don’t want you to make me come.” Jules bent one leg and rested the ball of her foot against her opposite knee. Lightly, she stroked up one thigh, over the delta between, and down the other.