Over a Barrel, page 1
Over a Barrel
A Table for Two Novella
Layla Reyne
Over a Barrel
Copyright © 2023 by Layla Reyne
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright owner, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review.
E-Book ISBN: 979-8-9869229-2-8
Print ISBN: 979-8-9869229-9-7
Cover Design: Cate Ashwood Designs; Cover Photo: Wander Aguiar; Editing: Adam Mongaya; Proofreading: Lori Parks
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.
Content Warnings: Explicit language; explicit sex including consensual D/s dynamic, voyeurism, and exhibitionism; on-page and off-page instances / discussion of homophobia, misogyny, and antisemitism; on-page discussion of past child abuse and heart condition of secondary characters.
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About this Book
Annaliese Rosin is fifty-six and starting over. New city, new job, new scene she’d like to explore with the stunning redhead from her flight home. She just needs to finish one last year-end deal. Should be easy, except her sexy seatmate ends up being the attorney across the table.
Carrington Clarke started over once already. At forty-three, she can’t afford to risk her new life in New Orleans, not even for the bossy older woman who understands exactly what she needs in the bedroom—to be watched by others. At least not until their deal closes.
While working side by side, the two women share meals and fears, hopes and dreams, and a chaotic, chef-filled Hanukkah that redefines family. The simmering attraction between them builds as they grow closer, until a last-minute change threatens their deal—and the trust they need to launch their romance outside the boardroom.
Over a Barrel is the third standalone novella in the Table for Two LGBTQIA+ foodie romance series. It features an age-gap romance between two mature women who connect over food, whiskey, and shared desires, with a generous sprinkling of New Orleans holiday cheer.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Blue Plate Special Preview
Blue Plate Special Excerpt
Acknowledgments
Also by Layla Reyne
About the Author
For Susan, Anna, and Laura,
who bravely paved their own way in the legal field and helped me find my way too
Chapter One
Al was a sucker for a redhead. Always had been, always would be, didn’t matter when or where.
Case in point: she was through airport security, halfway down the concourse on her way to the boarding gate, when a flash of auburn drew her gaze to the striking white woman at the bar. Wild curls of dark red cascaded down her back, designer jeans hugged her ass and thighs, and an emerald green sweater hung precariously askew on her shoulders.
Al could continue the rest of the way to her gate and video chat with her grandkids, check in with the family winery, or answer any of the hundred or so emails that awaited her return to work tomorrow. Or, if Red at the bar was game, Al could flirt her way into a bathroom stall and in between those denim-clad thighs before her flight.
The woman shifted on her chair, and her sweater slipped fully off one shoulder. Freckles. Fucking kryptonite. Al’s fate was sealed.
Al hitched her purse firmly onto her shoulder and skirted through the gap in the bar’s faux patio enclosure. Weaving through the pub tables, she sidled up to Red. “This seat taken?”
The other woman glanced up from her laptop, and if the freckles hadn’t been a sharp enough hook, the warm brown eyes would’ve done the trick. Surprised, she glanced around, her gaze lingering a second longer on the empty table beside them before landing back on Al. “Uh, sure . . .”
Sounded more like a question, which Al answered by climbing onto the other chair. Pub tables were tricky at five foot two, trickier in a maxi skirt and travel flats, but with multiple restaurants in the family, Al had learned to manage. She hooked her purse on the chair back, then righted herself in time to catch Red’s gaze roaming over her with interest. A positive sign.
“What’s good here?” Al asked.
“It’s an airport bar.” She closed her laptop and leaned back in her chair. “Nothing’s good here.”
Al smirked and eyed the empty cocktail glass on the table. “Not even the drinks?”
She wobbled her hand. “Shit for vermouth, but at least when I order a Manhattan, I don’t have to tell the bartender it’s supposed to be rye.” The lady knew her cocktails; Al liked that. “Your first time through here?”
“SFO?” Al shook her head. “No, but it is my first time in this bar. You?”
“Good Lord, no.” She chuckled, and the husky tone of it sent a bolt of lust straight to Al’s clit. “Pretty sure the staff knows me by name.”
“Frequent flyer?”
She nodded. “Especially this time of year. I’m from Half Moon Bay, so back and forth for the holidays. You?”
“New York,” Al answered, “if the accent didn’t give it away.”
One corner of Red’s mouth curled up, her half smile reserved and devastatingly attractive. “It did, but I wasn’t going to say.”
“Ah, manners, and I’m forgetting mine.” She extended a hand across the table. “I’m Al.”
“CC.” Returning the handshake, she didn’t jerk away when Al swiped a thumb across the underside of her wrist. Another positive sign. Her sly smirk was an even better one. “Are you always this forward?”
“Did you miss the New York part?” Which included the unfailing ability to flag down cabs and servers. She drew back and hailed one of the latter. She passed on the seasonal eggnog martini and ordered another Manhattan for CC and one for herself. “Like you said,” Al replied to her raised brow. “Forward.”
“Fair,” CC said with another of those sexy laughs. “Though my sister’s the same way, and she’s one hundred percent California girl.”
“Older or younger?”
Brown eyes rolled, and a heavy sigh followed. “Younger.”
“Oh,” Al drawled, leaning forward on her forearms. CC’s eyes strayed to her cleavage and lingered long enough for Al to consider it the final sign she needed to continue Mission Flirt-Her-Way-Between-Those-Thighs. “There’s a story there.”
CC’s half smile grew, full of affection with a dash of exasperation. “She’s my best friend and housemate. I love her dearly, but she’s a lot. If it weren’t for the pastries, I might have disowned her by now.”
Al waited for the server to drop off their drinks before asking, “Pastries?”
“She’s a pastry chef. The one thing that’s ever stuck for her.”
“You hit the jackpot.” She lifted her glass, and CC clinked the rim against hers.
“You have no idea.” She sipped at her drink, then lowered the glass, a French-manicured nail circling the rim as her mind drifted, along with her words. “I’m not sure I would have survived 1L without her.” Then, as if catching herself, she redirected her attention to Al. “I’m sorry, I meant—”
“First year of law school,” Al said, the lingo coming naturally to her as well. “Columbia Law, class of 1992.”
“Stanford Law, 2004.”
“Won’t hold that against you,” Al said with a wink. Drink in hand, she rested back in her chair and crossed her legs under the table. Close enough CC could make the next move. “But let’s not talk about work. I don’t want to remember I have to go back to it tomorrow.”
“Were you out here for Thanksgiving?”
Al nodded. “My son’s family is in San Francisco, and my ex-husband owns a winery in Sonoma. His new husband is a chef, so he got the big cooking holiday.”
CC quirked a brow. “And all that was drama-free?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Al tapped the rim of her own glass with her fingertip. “Do you consider a four-year-old and two-year-old painting the walls with gravy drama?”
CC nearly spit out her drink. Hand
“For real.” Al set aside her glass and splayed her hands, remembering how her grandkids had done the same, so proud of their work. “Award-winning gravy, all over the tasting room.”
CC lowered her hand, and her face, relaxed with laughter, was breathtaking. So was her leg brushing against Al’s beneath the table and staying there. “At least you don’t own the place.”
“Oh, but I do. Fifty percent of it.”
“Just so you know”—CC leaned forward and lowered her voice, whispering conspiratorially—“you might not get your investment back. I do food and beverage law. The chance of winery success is slim.”
“I’ve been warned, and I’ve seen it as a real estate attorney too.” She matched CC’s posture, the shift an excuse to drag her leg along CC’s, the rough denim of her jeans firing all of Al’s senses—and CC’s too, judging by the beautiful blush that appeared at the collar of her sweater, creeping north. “But I owed him a midlife crisis, and at least this way one of us is close to the grandkids.”
“Also fair,” CC conceded with a sexy smile. “And you’ve got a vineyard and free wine whenever you want.”
Her easy, enticing grin reeled Al the rest of the way in. She finished her drink, leaned closer, and uncrossed her legs so she could use a knee to part CC’s beneath the table. She pressed her knee against CC’s inner thigh, intentions clear. “You know what else I might want?”
CC’s gaze flared with heat and didn’t waver as she used her manicured nails to fish the dark cherry out of her glass and pop it in her mouth. She scooted forward in her chair, and Al’s knee slid higher. “What’s that?”
An invitation to a bathroom stall was on the tip of Al’s tongue when her phone blared from her purse behind her. Her eyes slipped closed on a frustrated growl. “For my phone not to ring when I’m trying to pick up a beautiful woman at the bar.”
CC chuckled, the husky tone doing nothing for Al’s thwarted libido. “They make a vibrate and silent function for that.”
She opened her eyes again, meeting the dancing brown ones across from her. “Which I failed to use, and that ringtone is for the gravy monsters who are too cute at this age to ignore.”
“Go.” CC straightened, taking the heated contact and promise of more away. “I need to make a quick call before my flight too.”
Al climbed off the pub chair and extended a hand to the redhead that would get away. “It was a pleasure meeting you, CC.”
“Likewise.” This time it was CC who slowly dragged a thumb over the inside of Al’s wrist, and another bolt of lust arrowed right between Al’s thighs. “And thanks for the compliment.”
Al lifted the beauty’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Only wish I’d had the chance to give you more.”
Chapter Two
Al hated to be that person. The one the gate agent had to call over the loudspeaker and corral onto the plane. But once she profusely apologized and showed the agent, then the flight attendants the screenshots of Molly and Michael tangled in popcorn strings and tinsel, squaring off with dreidels for swords, in front of the Christmas tree decked out in blue and white lights, all was forgiven.
Besides, the plane door was still open, a member of the ground crew checking cockpit dials while the pilots ate their dinner. She wasn’t the cause of the delay, but the other first-class passengers didn’t seem to care about that reality. They all shot her nasty glares, which she returned with a flirty wave, making them frown harder.
Except for the person in the last row of first class who muffled a laugh. The attractive husky sound drew Al’s attention, then her smile, as she eyed the redhead who apparently hadn’t gotten away. And who was in the window seat next to the only vacant seat left in first class—Al’s.
She tucked her purse in the overhead bin and slid into her cushy seat next to CC’s. “You think they’d let me back off the plane to buy a lottery ticket?”
CC grinned. “That might be pushing it.”
“When we land in New Orleans, then. Because this”—she gestured between them—“is some good luck.”
CC’s throaty laugh continued to entice her, but Al had to hold that thought; the flight attendant was already cruising through the cabin, taking meal and drink orders for when they were in the air, then collecting glasses and trash once the cockpit and airplane doors were finally closed.
“I thought you were headed to New York,” CC said as the plane pushed back from the gate.
“I’m from New York. My firm is there too, but I’ve been seconded with a client in New Orleans for almost a year now.”
“Long secondment.”
Longer than Al had anticipated, but her sabbatical from the city was doing her and her client good. “They’re in growth mode,” she said, referring to her client. “And New Orleans is not a bad place to be seconded.”
“You’ll get no argument from me. I went to Tulane for my LLM and never left.”
They continued to chat through takeoff and over drinks and dinner, CC’s lovely blush reappearing on her cheeks and across her collarbones whenever Al paid her a compliment. Al wanted to see how much rosier she could make all that peaches and cream skin. And judging by CC’s gaze that kept straying to Al’s cleavage and the lingering brush of their shoulders and hands time and again, CC remained just as interested as she had been at the bar, if not more so. Mission Flirt-Her-Way-Between-Those-Thighs was still a go, but Al would need to make some adjustments given the vanishing space in airplane bathrooms.
The next time the attendant passed their row, making his last postdinner walk-through before they dimmed the lights for the rest of the flight, Al asked for a blanket.
CC’s “You don’t look cold,” whispered hotly in her ear, was the last green light Al needed. She shifted so CC’s lips brushed the shell of her ear, and goose bumps raced across Al’s skin, exactly as she’d intended. CC chuckled. “That’s manufacturing evidence.”
Al turned her head, bringing them nose to nose, their breaths mingling in the narrow space between them. “I thought you said you did food and beverage law.”
“And if you’ve been practicing in New Orleans for a year, you’ve had to have taken the bar, so you should know better.”
Al scrunched her nose. “Pesky evidence rules.”
CC’s grin was red-hot, but before Al could lean the rest of the way over the seat divider and taste it, someone behind them cleared his throat. “Ma’am,” the attendant said. “I have that blanket for you.”
Rotating in her seat, she smiled at the attendant and took the blanket, setting it in her lap. “Thank you.”
“Do you need anything else?”
“We’re all set. Enjoy that book you were reading.”
“Oh, I will!” He grinned and scurried back to the front.
The lights dimmed a moment later and the seat-back televisions flickered to life with entertainment options. Al waited until the attendant clicked in his seat belt before checking the row opposite her and CC. The older man in the aisle seat was already dozing off, and the younger person by the window had their earbuds in and their attention fixated on their e-reader. Good. She rotated back to find CC resting comfortably in her seat, albeit closer to her than the window, the boatneck of her sweater having fallen off her shoulder.
Al ached to kiss it. She handed her the blanket instead.
“This you giving me more?” CC asked.
Al trailed a fingertip over her exposed shoulder, watching with delight as heat rushed to meet her touch. “No, Red, me giving you more would have been taking you into a bathroom stall at SFO and finger fucking you until you came so I could see more of this beautiful blush.”
