Free Cruising the Strip by Radclyffe, Karin Kallmaker Page A

stunning.”
    It was just what photographers did, Farrah told herself. They all made their subjects feel beautiful and desirable. She’d done photo shoots before. She knew how the game worked. The trouble was she was going to be smashed up against a damnably sexy woman, a woman who made parts of her feel swollen and hot. And she was going to be watched by another damnably sexy woman the whole while. Racie Racine was an excellent photographer, and after all this time, Farrah didn’t want her secrets divined from a photograph that captured something real, deeper than the persona she’d nursed all these years.
    “What will Barrett be wearing?”
    “A black vintage gambler’s vest,” Barrett answered, “and tuxedo trousers.”
    “The color of bow tie will depend on your dress,” Racie added.
    “Well, I don’t have anything off-the-shoulder in scarlet.”
    “This is Vegas.” Racie’s smile was conspiratorial. “I actually saw the perfect thing in the window at Yves St. Laurent.”
    “I’ll think about it,” Farrah said. So she was going to be half-dressed while Barrett, lucky Barrett, got to be fully clothed. With one eyebrow lifted, she said, “Unless we want to play with gender roles. I wear the tux and she wears the dress.”
    Barrett made a low sound of approval. “I’d probably pass out if you wore a tux.”
    “She gets faint whenever she watches Victor/Victoria —Julie Andrews in a tux.” Racie chuckled. “But she hasn’t worn a dress since the fourth grade.”
    “I suspected as much.” Farrah hoped her expression was archly flirtatious, something, anything that didn’t reveal that Barrett’s and Racie’s frank assessment of her body was causing a riot of pleasurable sensations between her legs. How long had it been since she’d had sex, anyway?
    That you even have to ask, she told herself, meant it had been too long, and it had been a risky one-night stand, so hardly satisfying. Well, she wasn’t going to find sex in all the wrong places, and Barrett Lancey’s suite was at the top of that list. There was a meeting of escort workers in the hotel—she’d pay for it first.
    “Well,” she assumed a bright tone, “I think I have some shopping to do. Are we still on for four p.m.?”
    “Four it is,” Racie confirmed. She moved into the casual circle of Barrett’s arm, still giving Farrah that you-gorgeous-thing-you look at which photographers excelled.
    Farrah made her way out of the meeting room, convinced she could feel the gazes of both women on her back. Her feet, of their own volition, turned toward the shopping concourse.

    *

    At four p.m., the door to Barrett and Racie’s suite stood open. A couple of groupies were just inside, sipping wine as they chatted.
    “How wonderful to see you,” one said. The other, in the same uniform of jeans and a polo shirt, pointed toward the suite’s expansive main room. “They’re set up in the master bath.”
    “The bathroom,” Farrah echoed. She resettled the dress bag over her arm and tried not to show her puzzlement. Since when were there fainting couches in bathrooms?
    It was fortuitous that she saw Barrett before anyone else realized she had arrived. The black raw silk vintage gambler’s vest fit her like a glove, and tuxedo slacks were cut loosely over her slender hips.
    Nobody had mentioned that Barrett wouldn’t be wearing a shirt.
    For several seconds Farrah had a lightning fantasy of licking her way across Barrett’s hard-as-granite shoulders. She hoped the momentary weakness she felt didn’t show in her face because she realized that Barrett had seen her. There was no sign of Racie, thank goodness, because that tight silk vest didn’t hide the fact that Barrett’s nipples had hardened.
    “I’m waiting to be coiffed and made up. What do you think so far?” She turned in a slow circle.
    “Gorgeous,” Farrah said honestly. She was too breathless to say more.
    “Do you need to get changed? How about the other bedroom?”