7. Natasha

Chapter 7

Natasha

N atasha had worked in worse environments. Really, being cooped up in a cozy study with a fireplace on a cold December evening was far from the worst environment. The only things making it awkward were the irate couples who all thought they had this place to themselves for a weekend… and the six and a half feet tall single woman manning the bar in the other corner.

She’s so tall! Natasha knew that Eve was one of the tallest women around, but she never paid attention to how commanding a woman with the last name of Warner could be. It’s because she’s not wearing three layers of clothing. As the fire continued to roar through the evening, more of Eve’s clothing fell off her body. First her black jacket, now draped across the back of the nearest loveseat. Then her royal purple vest, wherever it went. Now she stood with only a white blouse to grace her lean torso. Black slacks ran down the length of her supermodel legs.

Not that Natasha was staring. Natasha never stared. Especially not at Eve when she wasn’t looking back.

Charts, dumbass. Natasha turned back to work spread out before her. She had commandeered a small table in the corner of the study and made good use of the high-speed Wi-Fi on Ms. Coleman’s work tablet. The boss was currently engaged in a game of charades. And by “engaged,” Natasha meant Etta looked drolly on while the rest of the guests attempted good sportsmanship.

Natasha liked charades. That didn’t mean she was in a hurry to join in. Not only did she have a ton of work to make a dent in, but the types of things these rich people wanted to act out required a graduate degree to understand. Natasha may have been in the top five percentile of her university class, but it was just a Bachelor’s. Was good enough to get me this job. That’s what she told herself when she didn’t want to admit how much her looks played a part in getting hired.

There were charts to analyze, quantify, and put together in small reports that Ms. Coleman would hand out at the next board meeting. Natasha had a background in graphic design that allowed her to do this menial task with little effort. However, even a bit of effort was almost too much right now.

The only way she could concentrate on her work was if she stopped being in the same room as Eve Warner.

Natasha rose from her seat and went to her boss. “What should I do about the charts due on Monday?” she asked, kneeling beside Etta’s seat so she could lower her voice. “Do you want them done tonight or tomorrow?”

“Tonight would be better,” she was quick to respond in her usual gruff manner. “But don’t tax yourself.”

Natasha nodded. “I think I’ll go up to my room and work on them.” It was probably colder up there, but at least she could put on her pajamas and curl up beneath the covers of her guest bed. Maybe play some music too. I’ll need the music to drown out all the lovebirds in this nest. Natasha went back to her table and cleaned up her materials. And my thoughts.

Halfway out of the room, Eve approached her with a glass of cognac. The wordless invitation was there. Not the first time Eve offered her a drink that night. She was offering everyone an endless supply of drinks.

“No thanks,” Natasha mumbled, forcing a small smile of appreciation on her way out.

Sure enough, it was cold in her room. An unlit fireplace offered promises of warmth, but Natasha played with the heater instead. Something softly clanked to life as she grabbed a quilt off an armchair and wrapped it around her at a desk.

Charts. Charts were easier to comprehend now that she had some privacy. No distractions. Just her, a thousand-dollar tablet, a binder full of printouts…

And a head full of naughty, naughty things.

Natasha had no idea where those images came from. Certainly not from her subconscious! Just because a girl suddenly had sex on the brain did not mean she was a nympho.

Why am I thinking about her? Natasha concentrated on a graph showing the steady increase in profits with some investor. Get yourself together, Natasha. True, she had never been in Eve’s vicinity for this long before. Usually, they only saw each other at the office, and that was for ten-minute intervals. Intervals full of flirting, but manageable intervals, nonetheless.

The longer Natasha stayed around someone like Eve, the more she realized she had a type.

Until now, Natasha had only dated one type of woman. This “type” consisted solely of women like her: femmes. While Natasha didn’t openly identify with her label, she did take it to heart. Frilly things. Feminine things. Pretty things. That was her. When she wasn’t threading her fingers through her long, strawberry-blond locks, she was shopping for big purses, high heels, makeup, and the cutest designer dresses her budget allowed. Basically, Natasha was a glutton for all things feminine. While she didn’t find masculine women un attractive, they rarely did anything for her.

She liked soft curves. Giggles. Hair that went on for miles right along with a strong pair of lean legs. Her last serious fling was a Midwestern gal with auburn hair down to the small of her back. She always wore it up in a loose, flirty bun. Our favorite kind of date was going to the spa and spoiling ourselves silly with pedicures and facials.

Eve was a different kind of woman. At the same time? Not different at all.

There was a dark femininity about her. No, not sinister. Lovely dark. Mysterious? Perhaps. Eve Warner wasn’t a woman most would call mysterious, though. More like brash and brazen. Beautiful. Bold. Beyond compare. When a woman was one of the richest butch lesbians in the country, she truly was a legendary Diamond Dyke. Eve wore a lot of diamonds. Diamond rings. Diamond earrings. Diamond-studded watches. Her clothes were the same designers as her more feminine, heterosexual friends, but they were cut drastically differently and accentuated various parts of her body. Those collars were meant to show off the length of her neck and the crop of her hair. Those pants gave her the illusion of more hips and the promise of the longest legs. Her heels gave her a gait that was rivaled only by master seductresses. Jamie often talked about meeting women like Eve at the local sports club and seeing them train, both in cardio and strength. Eve worked as hard on her appearance as Natasha did on hers. The outcome? Too radically different to comprehend.

“Okay!” Natasha leaned back in her chair, hands on top of her head. The quilt fell to the floor. “She’s hot!”

Not exactly a new revelation but admitting it out loud like that helped Natasha put the whole thing aside and get back to work.

She took a bathroom break an hour later. Unfortunately, she was in one of the few rooms that didn’t have its own guest bath. Price one had to pay when she was hired help. Natasha recalled the bathroom across the hall and chose the ten o’ clock hour to visit it.

Five minutes later, she emerged to find a scene.

A maid giggled at the other end of the hall. She was young, perhaps twenty-two, and had a healthy tan that glowed beneath her simple black uniform. The woman was also ridiculously short compared to the giant looming over her and making her laugh.

“You get used to it,” Eve said after the maid touched something on the taller woman’s hip. “At first it hurts a lot because of where it is. Anywhere that has a good chunk of bone is going to hurt like the devil. Totally worth it. You want to see more? It goes on a good way.”

More giggles. That maid was going to send herself into a fit at this rate.

Natasha, meanwhile, couldn’t figure out why her cheeks were on fire.

Blushing? Probably. Didn’t take much to make her blush these days. Definitely wasn’t jealousy. Nope.

Because why would Natasha be jealous that the hot woman who always flirted with her would be flirting with someone else? Someone younger?

“See?” Eve pulled her pants out farther from her hip. “Wraps down my thigh. I’ll have to be careful for the rest of my life that I don’t stretch it out too much. Good thing I like to work out.”

The housekeeper stifled a squeal. Hussy! What was Eve showing her? A tattoo? She had a tattoo on her hip? Her thigh? Why hadn’t she ever told Natasha that? Why hadn’t she ever offered to show her a hot tattoo?

Eve glanced up and caught Natasha looking in their direction. “Garnet Rose Studio is who did it. Hardest place to get an appointment. Of course, I got one the day after I requested a consultation.”

Were women any different from men in this regard? Always flaunting…

“Excuse me,” Eve put her hand on the maid’s shoulder. “I’m keeping you from work.”

The housekeeper was not happy to shuffle away and get back to her duties. It may have been night at a winter villa, but seven important guests demanded careful attention. Doubtlessly, the maid was needed downstairs to make sure the wet bar stayed stocked and all messes cleaned up promptly. How kind and thoughtful for Eve to consider this on the maid’s behalf.

Even more thoughtful of her to bridge the gap between her and Natasha with a few lazy strides. With legs that long? Accomplished in as little as seven steps.

“Fancy running into you here.” Eve leaned against the wall, body acting as a barricade – not that Natasha had to move more than a few feet to walk around her. “Roam the halls much?”

Natasha had two options. She could continue to be her standoffish self around Eve… or she could let her guard down a teensy bit. Wouldn’t want to give her the wrong idea. “Sometimes. You flirt with every woman you come across or only the cute ones?”

“Close.” Eve didn’t flinch. “I flirt with every woman who looks open to being flirted with.” Her eyes narrowed at Natasha.

Don’t take the bait. Don’t take the bait! “So, you think I’m open to being flirted with all the time, huh?”

“That would be the interpretation, yes.”

Natasha shifted from one foot to the other. Eyes averted. The only thing she managed to not do was bite her lip. That was a habit she punted to the sun when she was in college and determined to have the hardest face in her sociology class.

“But…” Eve did a half-turn. “If you don’t want me to flirt with you, I won’t. If that’s the case, you will also be happy to know that I won’t be coming by your office anymore. Helen decided she should take that chore over from now on. I’m sure you understand.”

Vaguely. All Natasha knew was that Eve’s sister was the fiancé of Ms. Coleman’s ex-girlfriend. In some circles that would make them enemies.

Natasha wasn’t paid to know that kind of information. She was paid to know who was coming by the office that day and field any calls coming in. Anything more than that and she risked getting called nosy and having her Christmas bonus lowered. As it was, she was looking forward to sending her parents on a nice trip for their upcoming thirtieth anniversary.

Now Natasha was presented with two possibilities. She could let things go, and Eve would probably disappear from her life. The flip side to that was… Eve would disappear from her life, rarely to flirt with her again.

They weren’t even at work right now!

When she first started working for Ms. Coleman, Natasha had to sit through half an afternoon’s worth of HR drivel. Most of it was about how bad it was to fraternize with coworkers – especially Ms. Coleman, ahem, not that it stopped her from opening a flirtation with Natasha shortly after she started working – and clients. However, as Ms. Coleman had told her in their one-on-one at the end of the day, Natasha would soon find herself in a unique situation. “Forgive me, Ms. Gaige, but you are a conventionally beautiful woman, and you are young. There will be many unscrupulous people who come through that door to make you uncomfortable with their advancements. Please know that you are under no obligation to return such flirtations. If you are made to feel uncomfortable, let me know, and I will deal with it. Your comfort and ability to work in peace are a priority.”

Natasha was able to handle the rich old men – and some of the young ones – without much issue. It was the women her little gay heart was never prepared for.

Even if she was pretty sure she wasn’t interested in romance, let alone sex. Earlier relationships had taught her that. Or was she the type who only got the urge around very select people… that she had been exposed to multiple times?

“You won’t be coming by anymore?”

Eve shrugged. “Family business, dear. Don’t have much control over it. I’m but a pawn in my family’s games. It’s amazing I have as much freedom as I do.”

“I suppose.” Natasha could shrug too. “Too bad. I was starting to look forward to you coming in and making me feel special.”

Was that spit choking Eve’s throat? Ha!

“Special, huh?”

“What, you think it’s easy being a pretty girl like me?” Natasha tossed her bushy blond locks over her shoulder. “Every day all these rich men come in and act like they are the best thing to ever happen to me. Do you know how many flirt with me? I could have my pick of billionaires. Even when I was dating men,” she didn’t mention that was as little as a year ago, “I turned them all down. You know why? I was waiting for a woman instead. A woman who could compete with those pretentious fuckers and show me what it’s like to really be flirted with.”

She knew she had pushed some powerful buttons. What Natasha didn’t expect, however, was that she would soon find herself against the wall, staring up into Eve’s bright blue eyes.

Eve and her sister were giants of genetics in any world, let alone the one Natasha had started working in two years ago. Not only height, either –anyone could say that the Warners were infamous for being over six feet tall. Monique was the first addition to the family who didn’t come anywhere near that height at a petite five feet. No, what shocked whole rooms into silence was the ridiculous Scandinavian genes that would make the ignorant think that blond hair and blue eyes were dominant. Like the pair of eyes Natasha stared into now. Big. Bright. Icy blue. Natasha knew lots of women who would pay big money to have contacts that made their eyes that color. To actually see real ones? Glowing? Gazing? It was enough to make even the most low-libido lesbian’s knees buckle beneath the pressure.

Cheekbones that could slice the air she breathed. Ears as long as they were dainty. Perfectly groomed hair that looked so effortless Natasha almost bought that Eve didn’t spend an hour a day on it. And that was from the neck up.

Anyone who told Natasha that she was an “exotic” beauty had never met a Warner.

“You still don’t know what it’s like. If I think I have a real chance, I won’t back down. You’d have to slap me.”

An excuse to touch those smooth cheeks? Dare Natasha be tempted?

“Men, women… we’re not too different in the end,” Eve continued. “When we want a woman, it’s with the same amount of fervor. We women are merely conditioned to hold our passion back. You think my mother didn’t try to smack the flirtatious nature out of me? You should’ve seen me in high school.”

I should have, yeah. Natasha had accepted her desire for girls when she was a mere sixteen. There was no way she would have been able to turn Eve down back then like she was accustomed to now.

“I bet you got all the girls.” Was she trembling? Natasha better not be trembling.

“Sometimes. There certainly are a lot of pretty heiresses out there right now who will never admit to having slept with another girl, let alone this one. I’ve forgotten them, though. Women who won’t own up to who they are don’t interest me. Unlike you. Everyone knows you’re gay too, and you’ve never denied it.”

“Why would I deny it?” Truth be told, Natasha never openly told anyone but Ms. Coleman and later her assistant Jamie (now girlfriend and HR could suck it) that she was gay. She didn’t believe Ms. Coleman was the kind to spread that information around. It was probably one of the others in the office who overheard me. Natasha had to shoot the boss down in the executive office break room as some guy waltzed in.

“Maybe it’s because of my world of privilege,” Eve began, “but it takes balls we weren’t born with to be open about that sort of thing. So, I admire a woman of any appearance who completely owns who she is.”

Any appearance?

Eve leaned against the wall. No wonder. Not only was another maid approaching, but Eve’s best friend Kathleen was rushing by with her partner, en route to their room. Good thing the guest suites were padded enough that Natasha didn’t have to listen to it. I’d die. And blush. Like now. Fuck.

“Happy couples. Hmph.”

Okay, that made Natasha chuckle.

“Don’t you get sick of it?” Eve’s arms were crossed. “Everyone is pairing up in this world. I’m telling you, my sister and Monique are only the tip of the iceberg. After their wedding in February, there are going to be a lot more coming up.”

“You know something about those two that I don’t?”

“Huh? Oh my God, them?” Eve laughed. Nay, guffawed. “The day Kathleen marries anyone will be a cold one in hell. She’ll marry me first. In fact, she’s more than once drunkenly implied we should get hitched.”

“Have you two…?”

“No. Trust me, I’ve tried. Many times.”

Yeah, that was too good to be true. Natasha always wanted to hear about more heiresses coming out, but it rarely happened. Eve was the highest profile one. Also, one of the most reviled, based on the gossip Natasha unfortunately heard here and there.

Once the coast was clear, Eve said, “So, anyway, what I meant by appearances is that women like me,” she gestured to her hair and clothes, “don’t have much choice about coming out if we want to express ourselves. I admire you more feminine types for owning it.”

“You think I own it?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you think there should be more femme lesbian representation?”

Eve gave her a cursory glance. Hot damn those lashes. Eve sure knew how to use makeup to her advantage. Natasha felt like a bumbling mess in comparison. “I think we should have all the representation. Every kind of lesbian and bisexual girl. Let’s take over the media. You, me, everyone.” Her hand grazed Natasha’s. “Wouldn’t mind getting papped with you in Miami.”

Natasha played with a chunk of her hair. “I’ve never been to Miami.”

“Hm? That so? It’s a fun place. Going there in February for the bachelorette party.”

Natasha glanced at her. “Do you actually like me? Or do you flirt with me because you flirt with everyone who pings your radar?”

Maybe it was the words. Maybe it was the tone. Either way, Eve snorted incredulously. “I would never flirt with a woman I wouldn’t want to take things to the next level with.”

The words were out of Natasha’s mouth before she could check them. “I was hoping you would say that.”

“Uh-huh. So, she does like me.” Eve may be crossing every limb she had, but her casual posture was more than inviting. “Why are you always playing hard to get, then?”

“What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart. I want a woman to work to have a piece of this. And…” No. Now wasn’t the time to open the can of worms about the “ace” label. In her experience, people didn’t even try to understand it. The nuances. The shifting parameters. How a whole group of attractive people could keep Natasha perpetually turned off while one lucky woman made her do a double-take… and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Eve’s eyes went up, then down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Face. Tits. Hips. Ass. What piece was she thinking of taking? Even Natasha was impressed that she had said something like that. It’s like admitting I want her too. Her lips twitched. Suddenly, poor Natasha was hyper-aware of her body and what it looked like. Oh, God, Eve couldn’t see the cellulite, could she? That didn’t show up through a dress, right? Or the fact her breasts weren’t as perky without a bra as they used to be? Would someone like Eve care about that? In Natasha’s experience, hungry women like Eve fell into two categories: those who loved every part of every woman’s body, and those who could make a girl cry with one mean comment.

“Time to cut the crap.” Whoa. Where did that growl come from? And how could Natasha hear more of it? It went straight to her stomach and lit a fire in her thighs! For the first time in years! “Do you want to do it or not?”

It certainly wasn’t romantic, but for a woman who declared herself a romantic, Natasha sure didn’t care about such things now. Sometimes blunt and direct talk was more arousing than the flowers and bullshit.