"Blame It On the Champagne"

The latest set of naughtiness from Xcite Books hits the shelves next week! The Five Minute Fantasies series, a set of three books filled with down-and-dirty smut, is available through the Xcite Books website.

Here's a preview of my short story in the first volume, "Blame It On the Champagne."

I blame it all on the champagne.

Or maybe I should blame the high heels. I wasn’t accustomed to them, after all. I don’t go to things like that awards show every day. I’m a quiet, simple kind of girl. I don’t go for the glamour and flash and glitz of the celebrity thing. How I found myself smiling for a camera and signing autographs is usually a bit beyond my realm of comprehension. I just write the songs.

And last night, I spilled champagne on Mitch.

Actually, it wasn’t just spilling champagne. It was running into him out on the carpet (not the red one, silly, the green one – it was the after-party-party, you know) and then landing in his lap. Well, almost. He wasn’t sitting down when I ran into him. But by the time I was done with him, we were both on the floor.

Later we were on the counter. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

So there I was, dressed to the nines and my date was nowhere to be found. Alan wasn’t a date in the first place, not really. He was more of an escort, a guy from a record label who just happened to need a cutie on his arm and I was a cutie who just happened to need an arm. Perfect. I didn’t even know his last name.

The show was over and I had a choice: Go home and go to bed or go to the afterparty and hope that I met someone to go to bed with. I’m not one of those prudes who thinks that emotion has to accompany the sex. Hell, no. Give me a good-looking stud and a few shots of choice alcohol and I’m bound to do damn near anything. Then I might write a song about it. Fucking doesn’t pay the bills, but it does make for good inspiration.

So that’s how I wound up in the middle of the party with a glass of champagne in one hand and the other fiddling with my little clutch purse. I was talking to some up-and-coming artist with an independent label, one of those who has dreams much bigger than any bank account could ever help, and he was getting around to asking me if I would write a song for him. He wasn’t interested in anything more than that, and that certainly wasn’t what I was looking for. The evening wasn’t all about business, was it?

I drank my champagne and smiled and said that I would come up with something. His manager could get with my publisher and they could talk it over. He smiled and immediately started looking for other people to talk to, anyone who might be willing to talk business and give him that oh-so-important push up the music industry ladder.

I downed the glass and when the waiter came around, I plucked another from the tray.

I wandered from one little group to another, mostly eavesdropping on conversations, finding nothing of interest. I plucked olives and cheese cubes from the catering table. There was sushi, and I had a bit of that, not because I liked it but simply because it looked good to act like I liked it. Sushi bars were all the rage around town, God only knew why. I always preferred a good cheeseburger.

I thought about switching to something else to drink and then changed my mind. Wasn’t it true that if one mixed their liquor, they wound up with a hangover? Or was that mixing liquor and beer? I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I wanted to get laid but I wanted to remember it.

After another thirty minutes of wandering aimlessly, I gave up. Everyone was in the mood to talk business. It was almost one in the morning, and I never understood those who wanted to talk business long after the time for business had passed. So far as I’m concerned, anything after midnight should be strictly personal, not professional.

I took my glass with me as I walked the other way down that green carpet. It was always odd to walk out of a high-class party like that. When you came in, there were flashbulbs everywhere. When you came out, there was nothing but trash along the sides of the carpet and all the well-wishers and reporters were long gone, probably sitting in front of their computers and coming up with ways to edit what you just said into something more interesting. It was a sad and lonely time, to come walking out of one of those things, especially if you were alone.

I took a deep swallow of the champagne. I wasn’t paying much attention. That’s when I ran into Mitch.

He was walking into the party, more than a little fashionably late, and I walked right into him. It was like running into a brick wall. My champagne splashed all over me, all over him, all over the carpet. He was just as surprised as I was, and didn’t have a chance to keep his balance. He went down on his rump with a surprised groan, and I landed right on top of him. My little purse went flying, and so did the champagne glass. It rolled across the carpet but didn’t shatter.

He looked right into my eyes. His were a deep blue, and they were filled with amusement.

“Howdy,” he drawled.

Then he laughed out loud. The man was soaked with champagne, and that suit looked like it had to cost a fortune. His hair was curly and a little too long, and in his ear was a diamond stud. He smelled great. His face was covered with stubble, the kind of stubble that is intentional. He might as well have had the word metrosexual written on his forehead in neon paint.

He was sexy as hell, and I was sitting right in his lap.

I started to get up. It was hard to do, considering I was wearing fuck-me pumps with three-inch heels. He reached out to steady me, and instead of doing that, his hand wound up on the curve of my calf. He was holding me right where I was.

“I’m Mitch,” he said conversationally, as if we were sitting at dinner instead of sitting on the floor. I was very aware of the presence of something hard underneath my thigh. Whether it was his keys or something else, I had no idea. I ground against him a little bit, just to find out. The amusement in his eyes darkened into something else, and I had my answer.

Check out Xcite Books to get more of this story and other great naughty tales.