Second Night Stand

by Karelia Stetz-Waters, Fay Stetz-Waters

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

One hook-up is about to become one seriously hilarious situationship in this vibrant and lively romantic comedy about taking chances . . . and breaking the rules.
 
Prima ballet dancer Lillian Jackson is all about control—on stage and in bed. Which is precisely why she keeps her hook-ups to one night, and one night only. No strings. No phone numbers. No scones in the morning. There’s no room for mistakes, especially now that her dance company’s survival depends entirely on winning a million-dollar cash prize in one of America’s biggest reality competitions. That is, until one night with a certain curvy, blue-haired siren changes everything . . .

As burlesque dancer “Blue Lenox,” Izzy Wells is the queen of on-stage seduction. Almost no one knows that she’s close to losing everything—her theater, her home, and her troupe—unless she wins this competition. Now she’s going toe-to-toe with a gorgeous ballerina in front of the world. The chemistry between them is hot, but even more distracting are the feelings they’re starting to develop. There’s no way Lillian can fit Izzy into her life, and Izzy knows better than to fall for someone who can’t put her first. But if they can make it through the show with their hearts and dreams intact, they just might win the biggest prize of all.

Release date: May 21, 2024

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Lillian Jackson sat in the corner of the Neptune Bar wearing a suit, contemplating the monoculture of iceberg salad and the Jägermeister shot before her, and wondering where she’d gone wrong. The endorphin high of her ballet audition ebbed into the aches and pains of being a professional dancer.

“Just come with us.” Lillian’s cousin Kia—provider of the shot—folded her elbows on the table. “Y’all just auditioned for The Great American Talent Show. Celebrate! We found this dope place that plays nineties hip-hop.”

We.

Kia never quite got that the dancers of the Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company respected Lillian—their ballet master, lead dancer, and choreographer—but they didn’t like her. They weren’t supposed to. That wasn’t her role.

Across the bar, the dancers of the Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company lingered by the door, obviously hoping Lillian would stay back, but too polite (or well trained) to leave without her.

“They’ll have more fun without me,” Lillian said. “Let ’em have tonight.”

Because tomorrow or sometime when Lillian worked up the nerve, she’d have to tell them the truth: they weren’t auditioning for the show because dance companies auditioned for things. They were auditioning because the company’s financial sponsors, Thomas Reed and Charles Whitmer, had taken Lillian to a rooftop restaurant in LA, praised her dancers and her leadership, then told her the company wasn’t making enough money and they were shutting it down. Then Whitmer had offered a lifeline. We could get you an audition with The Great American Talent Show. If they won, Thomas Reed and Charles Whitmer would keep them on the books.

She should have told the dancers. She hadn’t.

“Don’t worry. Y’all killed it!” Kia’s Afro puffs bounced with her enthusiasm. She’d gotten into the performers-only auditions by printing herself a badge that read INFLUENCER because she was the kind of person who could get in places just by telling people she belonged there. “Plus you’re all dressed to go out.”

To a high-end charity fundraiser. Why had Lillian changed into a white linen suit immediately after the audition? Because a Black ballerina must be professional beyond measure; she heard her mother’s voice in the back of her mind. The rest of the all-Black Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company hadn’t gotten the memo and were sporting their streetwear. Kia wore overalls made out of a recycled billboard by an all-Black artist co-op because that was Kia. Who was impressed by a suit at the Neptune? No one.

Over Kia’s shoulder, Lillian caught a woman in another booth watching her over the screen of a laptop. Okay. Maybe she’d impressed one person. The woman wore a blazer too, but hers was made of some shiny material, oversized with the cuffs rolled up, layered over a zippered hoodie and, beneath that, the hint of a red tank top. Or was it her bra? An elaborate lacework tattoo decorated her chest.

Their eyes met, and the woman swept a hand through her short hair and shot Lillian the cockiest smile she had seen outside of the melodramatic musicals her uncle occasionally dragged her to.

Kia turned around to stare. Then, to make it a little more obvious, she flipped up the lenses of her round, turquoise sunglasses, which she wore indoors for no reason except she was the kind of person who could get onto the set of a TV show by printing herself a badge.

“Oh, I get it.” Kia turned back around. “Send me a pin so I know where you’re going to spend your one night with her.”

Lillian wasn’t that predictable.

No. She was exactly that predictable. And it had been a while since she’d hooked up with a woman.

“I might just go back to the hotel.”

“And get all up in her.” Kia looked at the woman again. “She’s cute. I like her for you.” She flipped her blue lenses down again. “You gonna take that shot?”

Lillian shook her head. Kia took the shot with a satisfied smack of her lips.

“Don’t forget that pin,” she said and ambled toward the door.

Lillian’s gaze drifted back to the woman with the laptop. The woman glared at the screen, muttering to it as though it had personally offended her, but when she felt Lillian watching her, the woman looked up and winked. Actually winked, but something about her expression said, Can you believe I winked at you? Lillian rolled her eyes, but she offered the woman a smile in return.

The woman closed the laptop, rose, and strolled over, her wide hips swaying in tight black jeans. Closer up, the hint of red underneath her sweatshirt appeared to be a corset, revealing the kind of generous cleavage that would make Lillian a lesbian if she hadn’t already been one. Lillian also thought she made out the words COMIC-CON 2015 fading from the front of the sweatshirt. It was like the woman grabbed clothes from three different closets and somehow made them look hot. And cute.

Lillian didn’t usually go for cute, but the outfit and the combination of over-the-top flirtation and her obvious frustration with the work on her laptop made Lillian smile inside. You got a lot going on, girl.

“Not going out with your friends?” the woman asked, trailing one finger along the edge of Lillian’s table.

“No.”

“Couldn’t resist a night at the Neptune?”

The Neptune was very resistible. The woman, less so.

“I’m going to the bar,” the woman said. “You need anything?”

“I’ll have what you’re having,” Lillian said.

“Are you sure? It could be something bizarre,” the woman purred.

“I think I can handle what the Neptune’s serving.”

The woman leaned against the bar while she waited, facing Lillian, one foot kicked up behind her, chin dipped down. Her gaze snaked its way through the room. She pursed her lips in a hint of a kiss, then shrugged and broke into a grin that said, Did that work on you?

Lillian shook her head.

And then that wink.

The woman held her palms up as if to say, How about that one? She returned a moment later with two lavender-colored martinis.

“Does that really work on women?” Lillian accepted the drink, smiling to let the woman know she was teasing.

“What?”

“Your act.” Lillian winked with half her face.

“Oh. Yeah.” The woman looked down, shuffling her foot. “It does.” Then she looked up, and in a voice that was all sex and power and confidence and kisses running down a lover’s neck, she whispered, “Does it work on you?”

Her voice made Lillian’s body tingle.

“How can you be that sexy in a Comic-Con sweatshirt?” Lillian asked.

“Comic-Con is very sexy,” the woman said with mock indignation.

“It’s really not.” Lillian patted the table across from her.

The woman sat.

“Thanks for the drink.”

Up close, Lillian saw the lacework tattoo was made up of the zeros and ones of binary code and her dark hair wasn’t black but navy blue.

“You a programmer?” Lillian asked. “Are you working?”

The woman glanced back at her laptop.

“I’m making an app that’s supposed to mix your face with the faces of American presidents. It’s for kids, but how is some ten-year-old going to tell the difference between Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover? And it’s not even my project. I’m fixing it for someone who glitched it all up.”

“Should I let you get back to it?”

“No. I can’t take it anymore. It’s so frustrating.” On the word frustrating, the woman slipped from a normal tone to a sexy purr.

“You’re too much.”

The stress of the day felt farther away with this woman looking at her.

“Do you—” Lillian said at the same moment the woman said, “I haven’t seen—”

Lillian tried again. “Do you come here often?”

“I haven’t seen you around here,” the woman said.

They both chuckled.

“You’ve done this before,” Lillian said. “Now can you say that with a wink?”

The woman winked.

“I’m from LA.” Lillian set the words out on the table like playing cards. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

And hopefully coming back for the show but probably not. The reality of it washed over her. Maybe she should have taken the Jäger shot.

“My kind of woman.” The woman raised her glass.

They toasted and Lillian took a sip.

“Oh my God, it tastes like laundry soap.”

“Crème de violette. You said you’d have what I was drinking.”

“Why are you drinking it?”

“It’s pretty.” The woman held her purple drink up to the light. “It smells like flowers. And if you’re seventeen and you and your girlfriend want to steal her parents’ liquor and you don’t want to get caught, drink the crème de violette. No one will miss it. Happy memories.” The woman furrowed her brow. “Happy-ish.” She held out her hand. “Blue Lenox.”

Lillian raised an eyebrow. Blue Lenox? That was as stagey as the wink.

“I doubt that’s your real name,” Lillian said.

“My friends call me Blue.”

“So even your friends don’t know your real name?”

“Does it matter?”

Blue’s eyes were so dark they were almost black, but Lillian still saw a shadow pass over them for a second, and she wished she hadn’t said it.

“And who are you?” Blue asked.

“Lillian.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Blue had a smear of glitter on her cheek.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lillian.” Blue tucked the tip of her tongue between her teeth, her smile opening around the pink tip. She winked again.

“Just to be clear,” Lillian said, “your act doesn’t work on me.” It kind of did. “But you’re good at it, and it’s hot when someone’s good at something.”

“Your act is working for me.”

“I don’t have an act.”

She had so many, code switching so many times she didn’t have a native language. It was almost a relief to be called on it.

Blue cocked her head.

“You are wearing a white linen suit to the Neptune. And it’s after ten, and it’s still ironed. That’s a tour de force of staying on brand.”

Blue touched the cuff of Lillian’s jacket, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. Lillian felt a little shiver go through her as she stared too closely at the touch. She could almost feel Blue taking her delicately between two fingers and rubbing her the way she rubbed the fabric of the jacket.

“Linen-rayon blend.” Blue made it sound sexy.

“You like textiles.”

Blue nodded. “I sew. Impressed?”

The bartender interrupted, a glass of white wine in hand.

“That’s for her.” Blue nodded to Lillian.

“Sorry for the wait,” the bartender said. “I had to run next door for wine. We don’t serve a lot.”

Next door was a store called Quikee Cigarette and Food Outlet, which didn’t bode well for the wine, but it was actually good.

“I guessed you might not have a palate sophisticated enough to appreciate the violette,” Blue said when the bartender had left. “Even though you’re wearing white linen to a dive bar after ten o’clock. So you know I’m a programmer. Can I ask what you do?”

“Please don’t.”

That was what hookups were about. Not being anyone. Just a body intertwining with another body in a dance no one would ever see. She was good at that dance even if her last hookups had been lackluster. Truth: they’d left her with a dull sense of dissatisfaction. But it had been a while since she’d felt a woman’s hands on her, and this woman could push the stress of the day to the back of Lillian’s mind.

But before Lillian could speak, Blue said, “Just to be clear, we’re doing this”—she gestured to the space between them—“because we’re going to sleep together, right? And you’re going back to LA, so no catching feelings?”

“I was going to be a little more subtle.” Lillian laughed. “But yes.”

Blue might like textiles, but she didn’t do strings. She was perfect.

“Good.” Blue folded her hands in front of her. “You want to hang out first? Not talk about what you do for work? Share fries? Dance?”

Blue motioned to the dance floor. The stereo blared a trending dance-challenge song that included the lines Ride the pony. Next we zip, baby, zip. The dancers were lining up and imitating zipping up jackets because that was a sexy dance move. Lillian watched the choreographic horror.

“Zip, zip, zip me up and down? That shred of self-respect people talk about? I still have it.”

Blue looked a little hurt.

“I will dance. One song. Anything but the Zipper.”

What was she doing? Lillian never danced for fun. Dancing for fun was inviting unnecessary injury, her mother, Eleanor, was probably thinking at this very moment. Breaking your body on a grand fouetté en tournant was the natural order. Tearing your ACL because you got knocked down by an errant twerker was unforgivably careless.

“To be denied the Zipper with a beautiful woman.” Blue sighed. “If we’re not going to dance yet, what will we talk about? You know I’m a programmer. But I’m not the least bit interested in what you do. Don’t even tell me.”

“Thank you.”

Blue appraised her for a moment, then asked, “How do you feel about houseplants?”

Lillian made small talk with her lovers. It was crass to suck on a woman’s vulva without first spending forty minutes discussing the weather and the best restaurants in town. (That was not one of her mother’s edicts, although maybe she’d agree in the alternate universe where Lillian talked to Eleanor about anything besides ballet.) The trick to hookup chat was to be friendly without saying anything. No connection. No shared moment. Houseplants were as safe a topic of conversation as any.

“I kill plants.” A dead ficus tree was waiting for her right now.

“Why would you do that?”

Because I travel all the time, and I’m never in LA, but when I am, there’s always this moment when I imagine what it’d be like to come back to a home, not just a house. So I buy a plant. A plant says home. Okay, maybe plants weren’t that safe a topic.

“I don’t kill them on purpose.” Lillian mimed giving Blue a playful swat.

“I have beautiful plants,” Blue said. “It says a lot about me.”

“What do your houseplants say about you?”

“Well.” Blue sat back. “I have great style. I take care of things. I don’t drop the ball.” She winced. “Usually. I like the ones people think are plain. Everything is beautiful if you appreciate it.”

“My mother collects hundred-dollar orchids.”

“No wonder you’re wearing ironed linen.”

That was on point.

“If we knew each other,” Lillian said, “I’d introduce you to my mother. If you suffered through hours of orchid talk, she’d give you one.”

“That’d be nice,” Blue said a little wistfully.

For no reason, that made Lillian ache. Those orchids were awful, all their delicate little needs and pollens and speckles that meant something if you cared about the difference between the dendrobiums and cymbidiums. If that made Blue happy, Lillian should ship her a crate of them.

After covering houseplants, Blue had a supply of odd but relatively innocuous small-talk questions. What was the weirdest billboard Lillian had ever seen? Which did she think was more interesting: praying mantises or dragonflies? Lillian had no opinion, but she gave Blue points for asking something no one had ever asked her about before.

“I like talking to people,” Blue said, a hint of shyness hovering behind her sultry smile.

When Lillian checked her phone to see if they’d talked for the requisite forty minutes, it had been two hours.

The music in the bar had cut to a slow song with 6/8 timing.

“One dance before we go?” Blue asked.

Blue’s hand was warm and strong as she pulled Lillian toward the dance floor. Before Lillian realized what was happening, Blue invited her into the first steps of a Viennese waltz. The other dancers cleared the floor. Lillian didn’t dance ballroom, but you couldn’t go through a lifetime of dance academies and not know the steps to a waltz. It probably wouldn’t have mattered; Blue’s grip was unwavering. Lillian felt warmth building as Blue guided Lillian’s legs with her own, her leg almost slipping between Lillian’s, teasing her. When the waltz was first choreographed, people had been shocked by that sensual closeness. They said it was erotic. They weren’t wrong.

“You know how to dance,” Lillian said.

“You do too.”

“You’re just a good lead.”

Blue trailed her fingers down Lillian’s neck, sending a shiver of pleasure down Lillian’s spine. As a turn of the waltz brought them close together, she brushed her lips over Lillian’s. When the waltz brought them together again, Blue slowed their pace and kissed her.

It felt like their first kiss, which of course it was. But the women Lillian slept with blended into one so nothing felt new, but this did. She was just being sentimental. Tired and sad (if she’d admit it to herself). This was almost certainly the last trip she’d take with the Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company. That ending made everything feel heavier than it should. She pushed the feeling aside and returned Blue’s kiss the next time the waltz swirled them together. She let her tongue ghost Blue’s lips. Blue stumbled. Lillian caught her.

“You’re strong,” Blue whispered.

The song ended. Lillian closed her eyes, her cheek resting against Blue’s hair. A hookup had to smell right. Blue’s perfume smelled like cloves and cherry or expensive suede. It fit her perfectly.

“Let’s go.” Blue bit the last word off like toffee.

Lillian’s hotel was a short walk away but she stopped at the door. She needed Blue’s fingers inside her. She wanted to see Blue arch in pleasure. Who would Blue be in that moment? The programmer with philodendrons or the seductress? Finding out would be as satisfying as the orgasm Lillian’s body yearned for. Strange. Lillian liked to make a woman come because it was challenging with a stranger, and she liked to win. But she was rarely curious about the women themselves.

“Just to be clear, I hook up with women when I travel,” Lillian said. “No strings. No phone numbers. No breakfast in the morning. I get a health check after every partner.”

“I do too,” Blue said.

A damp breeze wafted the smell of rain and concrete.

“I don’t mean I think hookups are cheap.” Lillian was taller than Blue. She gazed down at Blue’s eyes, the same midnight-ocean blue as her hair. “I just mean, I’m looking for a shooting star. Not the moon. No scones in the morning. Are you good with just one night?” She had to be sure. She cared about her lovers enough not to want to hurt them, but Blue, with her silly wink and floral drink and love of plants and textiles—what was it with the textiles?—she really didn’t want to hurt Blue.

“After we have sex,” Lillian said, “I’m going to ask you to leave. I don’t cuddle. I’m never going to buy a second bedside table. Not with anyone.”

God, that hurt when she really thought about it. So she didn’t.

“A second nightstand.” Blue looked adorably pleased with her pun.

Lillian touched Blue’s tattoo with her fingertips.

“I’m serious, Blue. Are you okay with never seeing each other again?”

“If I thought we’d have breakfast together…” Blue’s smile was suggestive and gentle. “I would have told you my real name.”

Lillian pushed open the door to her hotel room, admiring the curves of Blue’s body. She looked strong and soft, her body feminine, her posture touched by a masculine energy, like the swagger of a young man who still thought the world would hand him everything. Sexier than the small, impossibly muscular dancers Lillian usually slept with.

A single table lamp cast the room in a soft glow. They paused in the center of the room. Blue stroked her fingers down the arm of Lillian’s white suit jacket.

“Shooting stars,” Blue said thoughtfully. “Like a sand painting. It’s beautiful and then it’s gone. Don’t worry.” Blue kissed her, nipping at her lip and sending exquisite shivers up Lillian’s legs and between them. “You’re gorgeous, but I’m not falling in love.”

With that Lillian put her leg between Blue’s and, holding Blue so she wouldn’t trip, spun her around to push her against the wall.

Except she didn’t push Blue against the wall.

At the same moment, Blue spun her around. Or tried. They collided in an awkward half turn, Blue’s body soft against Lillian’s. Her breath smelled pleasantly of cinnamon, like that old-fashioned gum trendy candy stores sold as retro. They laughed. Lillian brushed her lips against Blue’s, then kissed Blue’s neck, then ran the edge of her teeth along Blue’s earlobe. She felt Blue’s body tense and then relax.

“After tonight you’ll—” Lillian whispered.

At the same moment Blue whispered, “I’m going to—”

Blue pulled back, her arms looped around Lillian’s waist.

Lillian laughed. “How were you going to finish that sentence. I’m going to…?”

Blue studied her, pulling their hips closer together casually, as though the press of their bodies didn’t make Lillian ache like a new flower pushing at the sepal that held it closed.

“Give you everything you’ve ever wanted?” Blue offered, in her sultry voice.

It did sound like her Sultry Voice, and it still turned Lillian on.

“How do you know you’re not getting in too deep?” Lillian asked. “What if I want something bizarre?” Lillian gave Blue a quick peck on the lips to show that she was teasing.

Blue relaxed with a dramatic sigh.

“I can’t say, I’m going to give you the best semi-anonymous sex you can have with someone who doesn’t know anything about your body.”

“That does ruin the mood,” Lillian said, pulling Blue’s sweatshirt off her shoulders.

“Does it really?” Blue asked, her voice rough.

“No.”

“And how were you going to finish after tonight you’ll…?” Blue asked.

“I don’t know,” Lillian murmured. “You’ll be ruined for all others?”

“You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“I’ll try.”

Lillian gently bit Blue’s jaw, just beneath her ear. Blue moaned. The sound made Lillian want to carry her to the bed and grind against her until the frustration of rehearsing with her dancers in a too-small hotel room, then parading themselves in front of the corporate judges, washed away. A dam breaking. She wanted Blue. How long had it been since she’d wanted a woman enough to be satisfied by sex? Really satisfied? She took lovers back to her hotel rooms, vaguely horny but never horny enough to find that shattering moment of relief. It would be different tonight. And if she could replace the cocky smile on Blue’s lips with a face of ecstasy, Lillian would remember that instant for a long time.

Lillian trailed her fingers down Blue’s chest, tracing the binary code tattoo.

“So who gets to lead this dance?” Blue murmured.

Lillian was always in control. In bed. Onstage.

“You did so well at the bar,” Lillian said. “I’ll let you lead.”

A good lead knew how to be in charge without being controlling. Blue drew her to the wall and pressed her against it.

“You know that’s my move,” Lillian murmured.

“Is it really?” Blue shifted so her thigh was between her legs. The weight of Blue’s body and hardness of the wall and the delicious pressure made Lillian groan.

Slowly Blue undid the first button of Lillian’s blouse and then the next. Then Blue kissed her, forcefully but languidly, fondling Lillian’s breast, rocking into Lillian, the rhythm burning like a spotlight off center, illuminating but not reaching the dancer.

It was extravagant and excruciating and wonderful.

Blue ran her hand between Lillian’s legs, along the seam of Lillian’s pants.

“Harder?”

Lillian pressed the back of her head against the . . .