The Color of Love by Radclyffe

People congregated six deep around the bar, shouting, drinking,
laughing. Everyone was young or wanted to be, beautiful and reckless and
seeking the next adventure. Music accosted her, a fast, frenetic beat that
matched the sexual frenzy of the crowd. Ignoring the glances of women and men,
she edged her way to the bar and flagged down one of the two bartenders who
shimmied and slipped around each other in the narrow aisle in a mad pantomime
of the dancers out on the floor.
    “What’ll you have?” A sloe-eyed redhead in a
white open-collared shirt and tight black pants slid a cardboard coaster toward
her.
    “Whatever dark brew you’ve got on tap,” Derian
said.
    The pretty bartender nodded, pulled a draft,
and passed it across the bar. Derian pushed a twenty back, waved off the
change, and turned to survey the bacchanal. Bodies writhed on the dance floor,
heads bent close over small tables, and figures shifted stealthily in the
shadows, surreptitiously initiating the dance they would play out before the
evening ended.
    Derian pointedly did not encourage the
appraising glances that came her way, avoiding eye contact, a slight nod, or a
tilt of her glass that would signal she was ready to play. She wasn’t
interested in a hookup. The impersonalness of casual sex with a stranger never
held much appeal—especially when sex was just a desperate attempt to ward off
loneliness. She’d rather replay the evening with Emily than settle for a poor
substitute. And she wouldn’t even be thinking about Emily if she hadn’t been so
damn tired and worried over Henrietta. She needed some sleep, not a few hours
of physical forgetfulness, and she’d be herself again.
    She stayed long enough for a second beer and
when the alcohol finally seeped into her muscles and she knew she’d be able to
sleep, she headed out into the night alone. Fifteen minutes later she was back
in her apartment, stripping off her clothes by the side of the bed she hadn’t
slept in in three years. As she pulled back the covers and slipped nude
beneath, she thought back to the fleeting kiss she’d stolen from Emily.
    She smiled to herself. Stolen kisses.
Something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager. She hadn’t had to steal
kisses after that. Willing women were always quite willing to give them. The
unanticipated desire for Emily’s was as fresh and innocent as anything she’d
experienced during those first youthful couplings, and that realization was as
troubling as it was impossible to forget.

    *

    “How much is that?” Emily asked when the
cabbie double-parked in front of her apartment building.
    “The other miss took care of it,” the driver
said, turning in his seat with a wide smile. “Very generous.”
    “Oh, thank you, then.” Of course Derian had
taken care of it. Derian was obviously very used to looking after women. Her
confidence and easy way of taking control did not strike Emily as overbearing,
but merely customary. And, she had to admit as she fit her key into the foyer
door and made her way up to her apartment, she’d enjoyed being pampered.
    She’d grown up wanting for nothing—she’d gone
to good schools, had all the clothes she’d needed, had the advantages of her
father’s station and her family’s position, and never given much thought to her
wants. As a child and young teen, her needs had always been met. Life had
changed after the accident, but then she’d been too focused on what she must do
to be concerned about luxuries, physical or otherwise. All she’d wanted was to
succeed. She was doing that. She wasn’t there yet—she still had goals, things
she wanted to accomplish at the agency. And she was still far from securing
Pam’s future.
    She was so used to every day being another
step toward achieving all that, the evening with Derian had unexpectedly
awakened her appreciation for things she had put aside. Simple things like
enjoying a woman’s attention—and Derian was a master at that. She had