“I’m sure your boyfriend did. He spends a lot of time up in my sex life.” There were worse things to complain about, though. “And don’t remind me about that asshole. Either of them.”
“Sorry about what she did to you, kid, but that’s life. You might be seeing her again. At least this time you’ll have a super hot steady girlfriend to show off at the gala to make her jealous. Maybe.”
Kathryn could be glib all she wanted, but the fact remained that she wasn’t the one who got stepped on like a cockroach once Cassandra decided she couldn’t be with a woman anymore. How had she put it? “I’m sorry, Eva, but it’s just not working. You don’t have the… protective physique… I’m looking for.” Which was code for “Bitch, you are not male enough for me.” Because every lesbian loved hearing that from a woman who turned out to not really be queer after all. What better kiss-off than to make sure said lesbian knew how inferior she was because she could never deliver like a real man?
Which brought Eva’s train of thought right back to the original terminus station. That book.
But nobody was on Eva’s side right now. Not Nadia, not Kathryn, and definitely not Cassandra if she really were coming back into town. That fuckface. Really. Three weeks of making out in cabanas and having sex in some of the swankiest locations around the world – because Princess Cassandra demanded no less – and Eva wasn’t protective enough? What else had Cassandra wanted? Because Eva spent most of their dates with one arm slung around her girlfriend’s shoulder and constantly telling her she could have whatever she wanted. That woman was a pillow-biter through and through. Nothing like Nadia, who was actually offended when Eva tried to push too much money on her.
Speaking of Nadia… was she still in the bath? She probably wouldn’t be happy to hear about this Cassandra woman. Wait. Did she know who Cassandra was?
(The answer was yes. Nadia had a front seat to one of the biggest fallouts Cassandra ever had with a man… but we shall get to that later.)
“So to recap,” Kathryn said with a giddy sigh, “You’re a jealous fuck and Cassandra is coming back for Christmas. Does that cover it?”
“You called me just to talk about that shit. Sometimes I can’t believe you.”
“Whelp, I’ll leave you to your lesbian drama, then. Have fun swindling your girlfriend away from exploding cocks.”
“Don’t ever put that image in my head again.”
“I live to disgust.” Kathryn hung up a moment later without any other form of farewell. At this point in their friendship, such goodbyes were not necessary in their phone conversations. In fact, Eva had been considering hanging up on Kathryn without a word anyway. She sort of deserved it.
Eva stewed on her couch for a few minutes, listening for signs of life in the bathroom as Nadia splashed in water and kept reading her damnable book. Eva wasn’t a proponent of book burning, but nevertheless, she was seriously considering it today. She had been wanting to run the stove anyway…
But Kathryn had been right. (Kathryn was often right, but Eva would rarely admit it.) She needed to not see this as a threat to her womanhood and sexuality, but as a chance to get to know Nadia’s predilections better. Did she want her relationship to stagnate out of jealousy? Or did she want to embrace a chance to figure out what really turned Nadia on, whether she was willing to admit it or not?
Eva was not interested in doing it, but she went over to the part of her bookshelf cleared off for her girlfriend’s use. She had never really looked at it before, assuming it was more historical nonfiction and other such boring flimflam. Sure enough, she found some well-used copies of other books of the series in question and flipped open the first one that touched her finger.
Ew.
Ew.
Of course Eva had opened up to a sex scene. Why wouldn’t she!
One would never question Eva’s involvement with men in her life. Looking at her was often enough to guess that, no, she had never been with a man before, nor had she ever wanted to be. That wasn’t to say she was completely ignorant regarding how their bodies worked. Kathryn talked about dicks and what they did often enough, and Eva had been to the sex clubs so many times that she had seen more men having sex than most run-of-the-mill straight women. (Usually said men were submissive in nature, but a guy coming was a guy coming, after all.) So Eva was fairly confident when she said, “This can’t be realistic!”
No, it wasn’t. That was the point, wasn’t it? Men didn’t come so often and so fastidiously. Not without serious issue. Nor were they often altruistic enough to make sure a woman came just as many times – Eva had heard those complaints since she was a kid and too young to understand what sex even was. Although Eva had no interest in continuing to read this riveting tale of sex and money, she quickly realized that Nadia’s attraction to such books probably wasn’t in the sex (or so Eva would tell herself) but in the raw emotion expressed between these two people when they were in the heat of the moment. For Evangeline Warren, randy woman about town and general “man hater,” that was a pretty big realization to acknowledge. Not that she wanted to.
Even so, there were things to take away from this.
Eva put the book back and walked up to the bathroom door. After lightly knocking on it – and after trying to handle, which was locked – she cooed, “You okay in there, dove? Because I’ve got some apologies to make.”
“Don’t bother me! I’m busy with my book boyfriend!”
Eva was about to get incensed if Nadia didn’t watch it. “Never mind, then. Forget I offered to apologize.” Maybe Nadia would be calmed with some take-out. There was a fancy Chinese place down the street that didn’t usually deliver, but always made an exception for a billionaire heiress who wanted some fucking chow mein right the shit now. “Next you’re going to tell me he has a bigger dick than me!”
“Sure does! Biggest around! Stays hard for half an hour no matter how many times it comes!”
Was this the theme today? Apparently. “We’ll see about that,” Eva grumbled. She walked into her bedroom alcove and searched her lockable nightstand drawer for a present she had been saving for Christmas.
It was meant to be a gag gift. The sort of sex toy Eva would present her girlfriend on Christmas Eve with a big laugh coming out of her throat. Because it was ridiculous, right? Who gave their girlfriend a strap-on that promised to ejaculate whatever you put into it?
Nadia had a special surprise waiting for her when she finally decided to join Eva out in the main room of the studio apartment. There she was, a stunning Irish beauty with her (wet) tangled red hair covering her soft shoulders and a large blue towel wrapped snugly around her curvy body. For a moment Eva was so gobsmacked by the woman she spent most of her nights with that she almost forgot how she looked.
Because Eva Warren knew how to throw down a gauntlet. The moment Nadia turned around, tossing her smutty paperback on the end of the bed, she was treated to quite the sight: Eva, dressed in nothing but a sheer T-shirt and the strap-on tied snugly around her waist. She lay across her bed as if she were bored – but in reality, she anticipated the look of surprise on her girlfriend’s freckled face.
“Hi,” Nadia said. “What the fuck is in that thing?”
“Come over here and find out.”
Nadia dropped her towel and stood in nothing but the skin she was born with. Her nipples were already hard. Eva liked to think it was from the towel rubbing against them, and she would be right. Really, really right.
One thing Eva could appreciate, even if she was too daft to appreciate anything else right now? The fact that Nadia had no trepidation crawling onto the bed with a silly grin on her face. As much as she didn’t want to, Eva thought of Cassandra and the kind of sex they used to have. Nothing too inspired, to be sure. Cassandra always wanted a separate fantasy from Nadia. Nadia wanted the emotional fantasy, and Cassandra wanted the physical one – the one where Eva wasn’t the woman she so loved to be.
Nadia, on the other hand, was obsessed with Eva’s feminine body and what she could do with it. There was nothing to be jealous of about that.
Cassandra could think whatever the fuck she wanted when she eventually saw Eva so happy with this voluptuous woman kissing her. Cassandra’s opinion didn’t fucking matter anymore!
Scene 4
The Coles
While Jasmine Cole didn’t believe in “too early for Christmas music,” she did give herself a self-imposed ban on it until after Thanksgiving. And ever since Thanksgiving, Jasmine Cole had played nothing but Christmas music to keep herself perpetually in the mood.
This meant husband Ethan had long run out of patience. Right around December 3rd, actually, when the Manheim Steamroller CD played for exactly the 24th time. So while his wife busied herself with tasks and listened to the same songs over and over again, he took to wearing headphones around his own house, particularly when he was working in his office – because he could hear the loud Christmas music even in there, and a man could only tolerate so much of his own wife’s tomfoolery.
At least Jasmine was the pinnacle of beauty that otherwise dreary December day. She sat at the large coffee table in the den, making handmade Christmas cards for their closest friends and family – a project she had started with gusto two days ago and continued to indulge in with a smile on her face. Ethan hadn’t quite known the extent of his wife’s love for crafty things. Until three days ago, when Jasmine opened a trunk full of old projects, he had never even heard of scrapbooking. Yet when Jasmine later returned from the city with bags full of supplies, he decided to just go along with it. On his dime.