Swept Away Read online

  “Yikes. Couldn’t be more original?” said a voice from a few seats down.

  Kayla whipped her head around quickly to see who was taunting her. “Excuse me?”

  The voice belonged to a woman who was sitting in the center of the bar, sipping on an iced drink in a tall glass.

  She had dark skin, brown eyes, and short black hair cut into a stylish little pixie ‘do that tapered off down her neck in a strangely enticing way. Kayla stopped herself before she looked too long at the woman’s graceful, if short, build.

  “I said, your drink is boring,” said the woman, with a smirk. Her eyes darted back down to her own glass as she took a long sip. “Let me guess. You’ve never been to a resort before?”

  The bartender handed Kayla her margarita and stepped away again quickly, as if he wanted to avoid the conversation. “No, I haven’t, but I don’t see what that has to do with liking a good margarita,” said Kayla.

  The woman held up her glass and replied, “This is a long island iced tea, and I already feel stupid enough for ordering it, but at least it’s something more powerful than your fru-fru drink.”

  “Fru-fru drink? You do know these have tequila in them, don’t you?”

  “Barely any,” said the woman. “What’s your name anyway? I’ve been here a few days already and haven’t seen you around.”

  “I just got here a little bit ago,” said Kayla, irritated by this obnoxious woman’s behavior and trying to chug her margarita.

  Unfortunately drinking it too fast gave her a touch of brain freeze, and she had to slow down and close her eyes tightly for a few seconds to fight it off.

  In the meantime, the other woman stood up and took a couple of steps closer. When Kayla opened her eyes again, she was surprised to find the dark-haired woman standing about arm’s length away.

  “Did you just get brain freeze from that?”

  “No,” Kayla snapped.

  The woman chuckled. “Are you even old enough to be drinking?”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that… well, you’re acting like such a kid,” said the woman, teasing. “Are you sure you’re old enough to be here?”

  Kayla forced herself not to blush at the compliment and instead to take the whole thing as the insult that it probably was meant to be. “I’m twenty-five,” she said, gritting her teeth.

  “Same as me!” said the woman. “I’m Janelle, by the way. Janelle Presley. You know, like Elvis, only no relation.”

  “Kayla Anderson.”

  “Good to meet you, Kayla,” Janelle said, grinning. “I hope you don’t take my fooling around too seriously. To be honest, I’m here trying to get away from a bunch of crap back home, and… well, I just thought it’d be good to have a laugh. Sorry if I got on your nerves.”

  Kayla narrowed her eyes and tried to decide whether or not she believed this strange young woman. But the apology sounded sincere enough, even if it was a little crass, so she gave an exasperated sigh and said, “It’s no big deal.”

  “Good! I’m looking forward to seeing more of you,” Janelle said. Kayla couldn’t help but notice her dark eyes travel downward for a brief glimpse of—what? Her cleavage?

  Suddenly, Kayla felt very aware of the skimpy little top she had worn to the pool, and the way the breeze against her back was making her nipples perk up. But before she could say anything, or even really think too much about it, the strange moment had passed and Janelle was strolling confidently away, waving back over her shoulder. “Enjoy your drink!” she called.

  As Kayla watched her go, feeling an old familiar burning sensation somewhere in the pit of her stomach, she sighed. She would have to watch out for that girl.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The evening and following day passed without much activity for Kayla. She crashed early the night after her flight, and she slept late the next day, missing the morning entertainment and opting to jump into her day around lunch time.

  She hadn’t come to the Bahamas to mingle with a bunch of strangers anyway, and the planned group activities weren’t really her speed.

  Although the downside of an all-inclusive resort getaway was the inability to actually leave the resort, she at least could have some personal freedom by choosing how she spent her time. And if she wanted to spend it sleeping, she had no one to apologize to for it.

  At lunch time, she headed to the on-site café and grabbed a sandwich to enjoy next to the pool. She had dressed for the occasion, wearing just a cover-up over her bright orange bikini, and she had every intention of getting some sun while she munched on her lunch. She was about two bites in to her sandwich when a familiar voice called out, “Hey again!”

  Janelle had just poked her head up out of the water and caught a glimpse of Kayla.

  She had been swimming there, and Kayla reasoned she must have been under the water up until that point—otherwise she herself might not have chosen this particular place to eat her lunch.

  She still wasn’t sure what to think of this peppy, sarcastic little woman.

  “Hey,” she said warily. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Janelle parked herself in the lounge chair right beside Kayla’s. “I didn’t see you at the mixer last night. Get cold feet?”

  “Actually, I was asleep,” Kayla said, pointedly taking another bite of her sandwich and chewing for a long time. She didn’t want to have a conversation while she was trying so hard to relax.

  Janelle laughed and stretched out luxuriously in the sun. Kayla caught herself watching the way the light made the other woman’s dark skin look warm and inviting, but she gently shook her head to clear those thoughts away.

  Those were the kind of thoughts that were getting her into trouble back home. She wasn’t about to indulge in them here—and especially not with the other woman watching her so closely!

  “How long are you here for, anyway?” asked Janelle.

  “Two weeks,” said Kayla. “Two glorious weeks away from home.”

  “That bad?”

  Kayla looked her sandwich, decided there was no way she was going to get to eat it while Janelle was so keen on talking to her, and set it down on the table beside her lounge chair.

  “Well, if you have to know, yes. It’s that bad. I wish I never had to go back.”

  “Why not just hang out here longer?” asked Janelle.

  Kayla snorted. “Money? Or is that not a problem for you?”

  “Not really,” Janelle shrugged. “I mean, there’s no way to say it that doesn’t make me sound like a jackass, but I come from a wealthy family. They’re the ones who sent me here, and I can probably stay on their dime for as long as I want to.”

  “Poor baby,” said Kayla. Her dislike of Janelle was growing ever stronger the more they talked.

  “I know, I know,” said Janelle. “But I actually hate it, you know? I mean, look at me. Do I really look like the type to go to high society parties and hobnob with the upper crust?”

  Kayla eyed the woman again. In her one-piece bathing suit, cut low in the front and even lower in the back, her wiry little frame stood out even more than it had the day before.

  The blue of her swimsuit contrasted pleasantly with her dark skin and brown eyes, and even though her haircut was boyish, there was something altogether feminine and cute about the way she looked.

  A large, looping flower tattoo was visible on her right thigh, and Kayla thought she could just make out the beginning of another one on Janelle’s left breast.

  “You look like a normal girl,” she said finally. “You don’t look high society, but you don’t look like trash either.”

  “My parents hate the tattoos,” Janelle laughed. “They hate the haircut, too.”

  “So you’re running away from your problems because your parents don’t like the way you look, even though you’re twenty-five years old and they really have no say in what you do with your body. That’s what’s going on with you?”

  “Something like that. Of course, there’s a
lot more they don’t like about me. And I’m staying here until I get myself straightened out—according to them. Actually, I’m just using their money and their insistence on me changing who I am to get a long, free vacation out of all this mess.”

  “I take it you don’t work?”

  “I’m planning to find a job when I get back home,” Janelle said, waving her hand to dismiss the idea altogether. “I’m not in a big hurry.”

  Kayla rolled her eyes. “Well, I have a job, and I had to use my own savings to pay for this trip. And even if I had the money to stay here longer than two weeks, I wouldn’t be able to get away from work for that long. So forgive me if I don’t feel too badly for you and your little plight.”

  Janelle was quiet for a moment. Finally, she said, “You have a sour attitude. Nobody gets that way for no reason. I guess you probably do have it a lot worse back home than I do.”

  Kayla couldn’t help but feel a little bad for snapping at Janelle, even if the other woman was getting on her nerves. She forced her voice to sound a little softer when she said, “No, no, I wasn’t trying to—it’s not a contest, okay? I’m just stressed out.”

  “I hear you,” said Janelle.

  “My family hates me too,” said Kayla. “Especially my mother. She spends all her time trying to convince me to get married to every man that walks past me. She hates that I’m just a secretary, and she really hates that I have never had a steady boyfriend. And no one in my family misses a chance to remind me that I’m running out of time to have a baby.”

  Janelle groaned and flopped back against the lounge chair. “Boy, do I know what you mean! They tell me that all the time, too. In fact, they always remind me that I’m supposed to carry on the family line, and that my older sister is sterile so she can’t do it and it’s all up to me, and so on….”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Kayla.

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe it’s true that it doesn’t matter how rich you are. You still have the same problems everyone else does.”

  Janelle laughed. “I’m glad you’re finally coming around! And glad the two of us could meet up here, too. I really needed someone like me to spend time with here. The other women are all different.”

  “They seem to be,” said Kayla. “I get the impression this isn’t really the kind of place for single runaways to meet.”

  “You’re right about that. Almost everyone else here is paired up with someone. I’m surrounded by couples and creepy men who must have thought they were going to come here and meet some kind of island princess.”

  Before she could stop herself, Kayla laughed. She had begun this conversation not wanting to encourage any more time to be spent between herself and Janelle, but now she found herself opening up easily to this woman.

  And she noticed the way Janelle was stealing glances at her figure, too. She had a pretty sound guess as to why Janelle had never settled down with a man—and she was sure it was the same reason as hers.

  Her musings were quickly interrupted by Janelle’s flashy smile. “You laughed! I’m so glad. Does that mean you’ve decided to like me?”

  “I don’t think I have a choice,” Kayla said, feeling only a little defeated. “We’re so much alike, it would be a shame if we didn’t hang out.”

  Before Janelle had a chance to reply, Kayla took some decisive action. She had to find out if her hunch about the other woman was right, and if it was, she was definitely going to enjoy her time here. She sat up on the edge of her lounge chair and whipped off her cover-up in one fluid motion.

  “I think I need a dip. How about you?” she asked.

  Janelle was having a hard time keeping her eyes from wandering. She was taking in every curve of Kayla’s figure, letting her gaze fall first to her chest, then to her shapely hips, and back up her belly before making eye contact once again.

  Her brown eyes were wide and a faint flush was touching her cheeks. She was clearly embarrassed by that visual undressing.

  “I think I’ll just stay here,” she said sheepishly. “And watch.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Kayla.

  She went slowly over to the edge of the pool, taking care to shake her hips just enough when she walked so that it would look natural.

  She could feel Janelle’s gaze burning into her, and she smiled confidently to herself. It was clear that she and Janelle had more in common than she had at first realized.

  She bent to hop into the water, and as soon as she plunged neck-deep into the pool, she felt all of her worries wash away. It was hard to be concerned with anything while floating serenely in a sun-warmed pool in the tropics.

  So what if she had to go back home in two weeks? That was a lot of time to have fun, and to loosen up a little bit, too. And now that she was sure that Janelle was into her, she knew things were about to get a lot more interesting.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Her mother had been trying to push her toward finding a man, but Kayla had been secretly trying to find a woman for herself for over a year.

  Ever since she had finally admitted to herself that the reason she was so uninterested in dating was because she wasn’t looking for the right gender, she had been leaving her hometown every Saturday night and traveling almost sixty miles away to try to meet women at a popular LGBT bar in the city.

  So far, she hadn’t succeeded in anything more than two one-night stands. They had both been with nice women, but her own nerves had prevented her from ever calling either of them again.

  But here, in the Bahamas, so far away from her disapproving family and concerns of her coworkers finding out, Kayla felt like she might finally have a chance at cultivating a little something more.

  Janelle wasn’t exactly her type, but in the afternoon that they had spent together, she had come to realize that there was something undeniably intriguing about the other woman.

  Floating on her back in the pool, eyes closed against the bright sunlight, Kayla could think of no one else that she would rather spend her little holiday with than this sassy new friend of hers.

  “Hey!” Janelle called from the side of the pool, once again breaking into Kayla’s thoughts.

  She righted herself in the water and opened her eyes. “What?”

  “Come to dinner with me tonight,” Janelle called to her. “Meet me at the sushi place at seven. You like sushi?”

  “I love sushi,” said Kayla.

  “Good. Because you don’t have a choice.” Janelle showed off her smile again. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Kayla didn’t want to protest. She just nodded, with a smile of her own, and watched Janelle stroll away from the pool.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It had never occurred to Kayla how sexy sushi could be until she was seated across from Janelle at one of the dark wood tables inside the dimly lit restaurant.

  As a matter of fact, she had always thought of it as one of the most unpleasant foods to watch someone else eat.

  Shoving a whole slice of a sushi roll into her mouth never felt very attractive from her end, either. But something about the way Janelle ate sushi was all at once endearing and hot.

  More than once during the meal, Kayla caught herself just watching the other woman delicately pick up the pieces of sushi and pop them into her mouth, swallowing after only a few chews and never once reacting to the spicy flavor.

  In fact, Kayla was so caught up in watching Janelle eat that she herself forgot to down more than half of her own sushi, and she left the restaurant hungry but hardly thinking about her stomach.

  She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Janelle. In the tropical moonlight, she seemed to glow like some sort of angel, and Kayla wanted her.

  Janelle seemed to sense that longing, or (Kayla hoped) to share it. “You want to come back to my room?” she asked, and Kayla loved how she didn’t bother to play coy or hard to get. They only had two weeks together, and despite how she had felt only the day before, she was now more than ready to devour this woman.


  “I thought you’d never ask,” she replied, and the two hurried the short distance to the hotel.

  Janelle’s room was on the seventh floor, and as soon as the elevator doors shut on the two of them, Kayla grabbed the other woman and kissed her roughly.

  Janelle squeaked a little in response, but melted into Kayla’s embrace and the feeling of their lips crushing together. She wrapped her arms around the taller woman and Kayla, in response, pushed her back against the elevator wall.

  “I want you,” Janelle whispered into Kayla’s ear, then bit the lobe sharply.

  Kayla gasped. “God, I want you too. I want to just take you right here in the elevator.”

  “Do it,” Janelle begged. “Do it, come on.”

  Kayla had never heard another woman pleading with her like that before. The two she had been with in the past had been much more matter-of-fact about their lovemaking than Janelle seemed to be.

  This spontaneous, spunky woman was surely keeping Kayla on her toes, and she loved every minute of it. If the elevator hadn’t churned to a halt and dinged their arrival on the seventh floor, she would have been sorely tempted to give Janelle exactly what she wanted.

  Instead, they tumbled out of the elevator together, half-kissing, half grabbing until they were completely out in the public hallway and were forced to compose themselves as much as possible for the brief walk to Janelle’s room.

  She had barely unlocked the door before they were in each other’s arms again, and this time, Kayla wasted no time in grinding her crotch against Janelle’s.

  “You’re such a slut,” Janelle moaned, flat against the wall.

  “You love it,” Kayla said.

  Janelle reached around Kayla’s body and fumbled with the tie on her halter top. Hoping for some action, Kayla had worn a triangle of fabric that covered everything it had to while leaving her shoulders and back completely exposed save for one tie at the top and one at the bottom.

  Janelle made short work of both, and the top fluttered to the ground. When Kayla’s bare breasts were exposed, Janelle immediately took one into her mouth to suck, hard, while she squeezed and massaged the other.