Author's Note: Curses to my Muse—she struck me like a branding iron at the most inopportune time! This story came to me in a flash and begged to be written. Stay tuned for four chapters of what I hope will be a fun little story for the reader. Please let me know.

Piper had never seen windows sweat the way they did in New Orleans in late August. It was Polly's bright idea to celebrate her bachelorette party in the Big Easy, but no one in their motley group knew exactly what 90 degree heat plus 100% humidity felt like. The good news was that every place they'd been to had air conditioning; the bad news was that sometimes you couldn't see out of the windows due to the heavy moisture.

It was their last of three nights in New Orleans, and Piper was glad that the party was coming to an end. She liked the six other women who were part of the bachelorette party, but it was just too much together time and not nearly enough alone time. Sharing a bed with someone she wasn't going to have a physical relationship with was not something she looked forward to, yet she found herself sleeping next to Polly's cousin, Kori, in a double bed that felt more like a twin.

"I'm going to head down to the Library Bar while everyone gets ready," she announced, tying her hair in a low bun.

"Ok, we'll meet you when we're done," Polly replied over the noise of the blow-dryer.

Piper walked to the elevator, digging around in her purse for her new tinted lip gloss. With her head down as she rooted around in her bag, she physically bumped into another woman near the elevator.

"Whoa, easy." The dark haired woman took a step back.

Piper's head shot up. "I'm so sorry. I was…"

The woman standing two feet in front of her looked like a cover girl from the 1950s. She was tall—taller than Piper—and had wavy, jet black hair and wore secretary glasses. She had on a golden dress with a deep V-neck that seemed custom fit for her upper body, and on the pleated skirt, there were gray and blue birds.

"Getting your lipstick?" the brunette asked with a grin as she jutted her chin towards the gloss that Piper had finally found. "I've done it a hundred times."

"Bumped into someone?" She blinked a couple of times to try to stop herself from staring.

The elevator doors opened.

The brunette allowed her to step inside first. "Not necessarily bumped in to anyone, but had my head down, searching for something in my purse and tripped or dropped something. You know, the standard sort of distracted thing."

"Yeah." Piper smiled, wondering if the other woman noticed her gawking at her with an open mouth seconds ago—the very definition of distracted. "Well, I'm sorry for running into you. I had to get out of my room, and I forgot to put on lip gloss."

"No problem."

She could see the dark haired woman's reflection in the gold elevator door. The woman brushed her long hair behind one shoulder and had a close-lipped grin on her face. Piper used the metal on the door as a makeshift mirror and shoved the wand into the tube of lip gloss, and then dabbed it on her mouth. She smacked her lips together, and then put the cylinder back into her purse.

The elevator doors opened, and Alex stepped out. "It looks good by the way." She smirked. "The gloss, I mean; it's a good shade on you."

Piper was surprised at the compliment and didn't know how to reply. She looked at the other woman's mouth and noticed her bright red lipstick perfectly applied to her full lips. "Thanks." She glanced at the illuminated buttons to her right. "Wait, is this the third floor?"

"Yes," the woman said, holding her hand against the retracted elevator door. "Getting off?"

Piper nodded. "Thank you."

The brunette walked a few steps ahead, and Piper admired her ass. She tried to look elsewhere, but she was drawn to the taller woman's physical presence. They turned the corner together.

"You don't suppose we're going to the same place?" the woman asked.

Piper raised her eyebrows. "The Library Bar?"

The woman pursed her lips, seemingly trying to hide a smirk. "A fortunate coincidence."

Huh. It was the blonde's turn to grin.

The stately bar resembled a library that one might find in an old, Uptown mansion—dark wooden walls, Oriental rugs, wingback leather chairs, and a long bar with a gold rail. A jazz musician was playing the saxophone in the far corner, and one of the two bartenders was shaking a cocktail over his shoulder.

"This place is packed," Piper commented as she took in the well-dressed crowd.

"Pre-dinner cocktails. It's a thing here." The brunette glanced at her. "Looks like there are two barstools open down there."

Piper noticed that those were the only two available seats in the room, which warranted the other woman's observation, but she wondered if the dark haired woman was issuing an invitation.

"After you," the woman said, extending an arm.

It was almost as if she didn't have a choice in the matter. She walked ahead and sat on one of the rawhide barstools. "If you're waiting for someone, I can find another seat," Piper tried.

"There are no other seats." The other woman sat on the stool next to her. "And I'm not waiting for anyone."

Piper sucked in her lips and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear that had fallen out of her loose bun.

"Evening, ladies," one of the bartenders greeted. "What can I get you?"

The brunette looked at Piper as if waiting for her to order first.

"I'll have a margarita on the rocks with salt," Piper ordered, and then glanced up at her companion.

"Sazerac, please."

"Did you know the Sazerac was invented in New Orleans?" Piper asked.

The woman hooked her purse on a knob underneath the bar. "I did."

"The original place where it was invented, the Grunewald Hotel, doesn't exist anymore, but The Roosevelt Hotel was built in its place," the blonde added. "There's actually a bar in The Roosevelt called The Sazerac."

The woman smirked. "I've been."

"You have?" Piper looked surprised. "I'm hoping my friends will want to go tonight."

The bartender set down the drinks. "Would you like to charge these to your room?"

"Yes," the dark haired woman quickly responded. "Room 1216."

"You don't have to pay for my drink," Piper said with a tiny shake of her head.

"I want to," she replied, holding out her right hand. "I'm Alex Vause, by the way."

She shook the other woman's hand. "Piper."

Her hand was soft and cool to the touch, and she had just the right amount of strength in the handshake. Piper noticed a gold, vintage-looking ring with a turquoise stone on one of her fingers.

"Nice to meet you, Piper." She smiled and raised her glass. "Shall we make a toast?"

"Sure." She raised her margarita.

"To meeting beautiful strangers in elevators," Alex said in a low voice before clinking her glass against the blonde's.

Piper tried to hide her blush by taking a long sip of her cocktail. She felt her pulse quicken at Alex's words. It had been a very long time since someone had flirted with her; even longer since the flirting was done by another woman.

"So what brings you to New Orleans, Piper?" Alex asked after sipping her drink.

There was something about the way the brunette said her name that made her body tingle.

"Bachelorette party," she replied, wiping salt off of her lips with a napkin. "This is our last night."

"Sounds like fun." She took another sip. "I'm assuming you're not the bride-to-be?"

"God, no," Piper said. "How'd you guess?"

"I looked at your finger."

Piper glanced at her own hand. "No ring."

"No ring," the brunette repeated with a smile.

"What about you?" she asked. "Why are you here?"

"Extended layover." Alex set down her cocktail. "I'm on my way to Cancun and decided to spend a few days in New Orleans en route."

"Cancun sounds nice," Piper said, taking another sip of her margarita.

"It is, but I'll be on business," she sighed.

Piper turned to face her companion. "What do you do, Alex?"

"I work for an international drug cartel," she replied while adjusting her black eyeglasses.

She let out a loud snort. "Sorry, what?"

"I work for an international drug cartel," Alex repeated with a knowing grin, as if she'd been asked that question before and received the same reaction.

Piper leaned over and whispered, "Shouldn't you keep your voice down when you tell a person something like that?"

Alex huffed. "The likelihood of my sitting next to a DEA agent in this bar are very slim. I'll take my chances."

"I don't even know what to do with that information," Piper let out in one nervous breath.

"It's not like I have a stash of cocaine in my purse," Alex half-laughed. "I'm not a drug dealer, Piper. I handle logistics and analytics, and I travel all over the world on the 'company's' dime."

Piper wasn't sure if she should flee or ask more questions. Alex's long black hair, red lipstick, sultry voice, and stunning physique kept the blonde rooted in her seat.

"You don't have to do anything with that information." Alex sipped her drink. "We're two attractive women, enjoying each other's company."

Piper blushed again. She'd almost drained her margarita, and the booze was getting to her. "I don't recall saying you were attractive."

Alex smirked. "You didn't have to say it." She held up her hand for the bartender. "Want another?"

"Maybe something else this time." The blonde was thankful for the change in conversation. If she was pressed anymore about her companion's attractiveness, she'd be in trouble. "I've always wanted to try a Sazerac."

Alex slid her drink towards the blonde. "Try mine."

Piper looked up at her with questioning eyes, and the dark haired woman smiled. She couldn't recall a time since college where she'd drank out of someone else's glass whom she didn't know, yet somehow she trusted Alex. That didn't make much sense, what with the brunette confessing that she worked in the drug business, but Piper was anything but reasonable at that moment.

With a little grin on her lips, Alex watched her take a sip of the Sazerac. "Well?"

The blonde grimaced. "Ugh, that's whiskey!"

"Yeah, it is." She laughed. "What did you think was in a Sazerac?"

Piper wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I had no idea. It just sounds like a cool drink and has a lot of history."

The brunette tossed her head back with laughter. "You can't drink history!"

Although the taste of rye in Piper's mouth was unpleasant, she couldn't help the pleasantness washing over her body while watching her companion laugh. Her long neck was exposed, revealing milky white skin, and Piper wondered what she smelled like. She cursed herself for not taking in a big whiff of Alex in the elevator.

"I'll have another margarita," she told the bartender.

Alex lifted her glass, signifying to the bartender that she'd like another Sazerac. She drained the last sip of her cocktail and twisted her face. "Salty."

"Sorry, it's from my margarita." The blonde instinctively put her hand on her companion's wrist, and then immediately withdrew upon contact. "Sorry, I um…"

"You apologize too much, kid." The dark haired woman pushed her now empty glass towards the edge of the bar.

"Sorry, I do." Piper put her head in her hands and heard Alex chuckle. When she looked up, the brunette was smiling at her with a yeah, you do look.

Just then, Polly and two other friends approached the bar. "Piper, we're all set. You ready?"

She noticed that Alex didn't turn around. "Oh, I just ordered another drink."

"Well, drink it fast; we have dinner reservations in 10 minutes," Polly said, glancing at her watch.

She looked Polly in the eyes. "I'll meet you in the lobby in 5 minutes."

Polly turned her attention towards Alex, then back at Piper, and raised her eyebrows. "Really?" she mouthed.

The blonde gave her best friend a pleading look.

Her friend shrugged and turned to walk away. "Five minutes, Piper, or we're leaving without you."

When the women were out of sight, Alex looked up. "Sounds like you've got plans."

The bartender delivered her drink.

"I'm sorry, Alex. Let me pay for this." She reached into her purse for her wallet, but the brunette stilled her hand.

"If you apologize one more time, I'm going to have to kidnap you and not allow you to go to dinner with your friends," she said.

Piper bit her lower lip. "Then I'm definitely sorry."

Alex arched one eyebrow and smirked. "It was very nice to meet you, Piper. It's a shame you have to go."

The words, it's a terrible shame, were on the tip of Piper's tongue, but she swallowed them and offered, "Maybe we'll see each other later tonight."

"I'm not much into maybes." Alex shook her dark hair until it obediently fell behind her shoulders. "But I like a good nightcap, so there's a chance I'll be down here around one, nursing a glass of Port. If you happen to be around, you can put it on your tab this time."

"Sounds like a plan." The blonde grinned and held out her hand. "If we don't see each other again, it was really nice meeting you, Alex."

She shook the other woman's hand. "Have fun tonight."

"What was that about?" Polly asked on the rainy walk to the restaurant.

"Nothing," Piper replied with a shrug. "I met Alex in the elevator and we happened to sit next to each other at the bar."

The brunette gave her a knowing glance. "I've seen that look before, Pipes. You're not fooling me."

"So, it's ok that Veronica stuck her tongue in some random dude's mouth last night at Tropical Isle, but the second I even talk to an attractive woman, I get the evil eye?" Piper asked with frustration.

Polly put her hand on the blonde's arm. "You're right. Sorry. Let's have some fun."

Piper smiled weakly, but she knew that Polly was judging her.

It hadn't been since college that she'd had a romantic relationship with a woman, and Polly was the one who'd heard it all—the good and the bad. Her best friend chose to remember the bad more than the good after Piper's rocky breakup with her first girlfriend. Since then, Polly had been anti-woman as a mate for Piper, and encouraged her friend to stick with men. Piper tried to explain to her friend that she wasn't wired that way; she was attracted to women just as much as she was attracted to men, and she doubted that would change.

The blonde didn't want to ruin their last night in New Orleans on account of simply talking to Alex and hashing it out with Polly.

The bachelorette crew enjoyed a two-hour dinner, and then headed to Bourbon Street for their final night of debauchery. They'd already done the whole male stripper thing, and on that last night, Polly demanded that they flashed the mob of onlookers from a balcony in order to get beads—a tradition in New Orleans, not just during Mardi Gras.

Trouble was, the rain and wind had increased considerably as Hurricane Jackie approached the Gulf Coast, and most of the French Quarter balconies were closed. Instead, they opted for the Gold Mine, a popular dance club on the outskirts of the Quarter.

Piper had no problem enjoying herself and was perhaps a bit more inebriated than her friends by 11 p.m. due to her pre-dinner cocktail with Alex, two glasses of wine at dinner, and a tequila sunrise at the first bar they'd hit after their meal.

Alex, she thought—mysterious, beautiful and probably dangerous, Alex. If she was being honest with herself, those three words did more for her attraction to the virtual stranger than they did to deter her.

The familiar introductory beat of Black Velvet blasted over the speakers in the dance club, and a handsome, younger man with a nice smile came up behind her and started gyrating against her ass to the beat. The blonde turned around and was about to tell him to fuck off, but decided to let the man dance with her while she pictured Alex behind her, slowly melding their bodies together on the dance floor.

When the song was over, the blonde glanced at her watch, noticing that it was 12:30 a.m. She'd had enough to drink to prove that she was up for anything, but not enough to be drunk. "Sorry, I'm with someone else," she told the guy who'd danced with her.

She found Polly sipping her drink and dancing with Kori next to the railing. "I'm really tired," she yelled over Duran Duran's, Rio.

Polly looked at her like she had two heads. "But we're dancing. You love dancing!"

"I know, but I'm all danced-out," she tried. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tall brunette wearing a similar dress to the one Alex had on earlier. The woman looked up, and Piper's heart deflated—it wasn't her.

That was the moment when she knew that something magical had happened back at the hotel bar. It was completely out of the ordinary; Piper had never met anyone who'd affected her this way. On the one hand, it disturbed her and she tried to shove it into the recesses of her mind. On the other, she couldn't get the dark haired stranger out of her head.

This was ridiculous, Piper thought. There she was, dancing to 80s music with her best friend's bachelorette crew, and her thoughts were drawn to an enigmatic women with whom she'd spent less than an hour in a random hotel bar.

"I'm staying until they play my song," Polly announced over the music. "If you want to leave, you're going solo."

Two of the other party-goers sandwiched Polly on the dance floor. It was evident that her friend was having a blast, and part of her felt guilty about leaving; but another part of her—the part that won out—thought she'd be missing an opportunity if she didn't see Alex one more time.

Piper left the crowded bar and headed down Dauphine and up Canal Street, the pouring rain beating on her exposed head. The alcohol in her system prevented her from doing the wise thing and hailing a cab, so she kept walking the half-mile back to The Ritz Carlton.

Once she was under the portico, Piper noticed that she was soaked to the core. The bellman welcomed her and opened the door. "You're a brave one, ma'am."

"Why do you say that?" Piper wrung out her hair.

"Them winds are gusting to about 20 miles per hour," he replied, shaking his head. "I know I wouldn't be out there walking like that."

She ignored the bellman's advice and headed to the elevator. There was a part of her that wanted to immediately go to the Library Bar, but it wasn't quite 1 a.m. yet, and she couldn't go into a public place the way she looked. Instead, she decided to change clothes and casually go down to the bar for nothing more than a nightcap. If Alex was there, that would just be coincidental…or so she told herself.