A/N: Again, thanks for the follows, favorites, and reviews! Love hearing (reading?) what y'all think of this little fic.

Chapter 3

The taxi ride from the club had been short, but not short enough. Santana's hands had found their way beneath the bottom hem of Quinn's sundress soon after she'd told the driver the address. Her fingers had slipped beneath the elastic waistband of lacy undergarments not long after reaching the Bushwick neighborhood.

Quinn's eyes were slammed shut and her bottom lip was trapped firmly between her upper and lower row of teeth by the time the cabbie rolled the vehicle to a stop and announced they'd reached their destination. Before Quinn could even feign embarrassment from letting Santana touch her so intimately in the back of a New York City cab, Santana's hand was back in sight, handing over cab-fare and the other hand was pulling Quinn out of the rear passenger-side door.

Quinn laughed the entire near-sprint up to the apartment Santana shared with her former Glee-mates. She wasn't sure if it was the alcohol making her giddy or if the culprit was Santana Lopez herself. Yale was forgotten when she was around. The bold Latina had always had a knack for pulling Quinn from her comfort zone.

Santana cursed quietly as she tried to get her key into the lock on her apartment door.

"Can't find the hole?" Quinn lightly teased. She was standing so close that her breath tickled the back of Santana's neck.

Santana swore again, this time louder. She'd practically dropped her keys altogether when she'd felt, more than sensed, Quinn's proximity. "I certainly didn't have a hard time with that in the cab," she gloated, trying to save face in front of the blonde.

Quinn's arms were around her torso, spinning her around and pressing her back solidly against the door. "No. You didn't." She grabbed two fistfuls of dress material near Santana's midsection and scratched her nails down her abdomen, through the material.

Santana felt uncharacteristically vulnerable beneath Quinn's wild, almost predatory gaze. She'd been the recipient of hungry appraisals before, from both men and women, but something about the way Quinn was looking at her made her feel like a field mouse darting through an open field. The question remained, though – did she want to be caught?

"We should go inside," she managed to pant. Quinn leaned in closer and Santana felt her knees buckle.

"Why?" Quinn breathed heavily into Santana's ear. She pinned Santana's wrists against the door and pressed her body fully against the Latina's. Santana could feel the full pressure of Quinn's breasts flattening against her and narrow hipbones knocking against her own.

"Because," Santana choked out, "the guy across the hall is a total perv, and I don't know about you, but I don't plan on giving him wank-off material for the night."

"Gross." Quinn pushed off the door with her palms on either side of Santana's body. She stood upright, no longer pressed against the dark brunette. "You really know how to ruin the moment, Lopez."

Santana released a shaky breath. She tried to get her breathing under control again. "Relax," she told herself. "It's just Quinn." But nothing about that statement helped her relax.

She turned back to the task of unlocking the apartment door. She was better able to concentrate without Quinn's breath warm on her skin or Quinn's body molded against her own. Santana successfully opened the door and reached inside to flip on the light toggle she knew existed just inside the apartment.

When she turned on the light, the modest-sized apartment illuminated to reveal Rachel standing in the living room, sipping from a wine glass. She looked surprised to see Santana and Quinn, but she recovered quickly. "Oh, hey guys."

A flurry of Spanish words escaped Santana's mouth. She spoke far too rapidly for Quinn with her 3-years of high school Spanish to translate, but her tone was undeniably angry. Santana crossed the room in three strides and promptly knocked the wine glass from Rachel's hand.

Rachel watched, dumbfounded, as the glass flew from her hand and its dark crimson contents spilled onto the rug.

"Are you loca en la cabeza, Berry?!" Santana exploded. "Have you lost it completely? You can't drink alcohol. You're pregnant!"

Rachel was still too shocked to properly get angry at Santana's behavior. "No, I'm not."

"I think you need your head examined. On what planet is it a good idea for you to be drinking?"

Rachel shook her head hard. "I didn't mean I'm not crazy; I meant I'm not pregnant."

Santana's jaw dropped. "What?!"

"The pee stick was wrong," Rachel said with a surprising lack of emotion. "I couldn't handle it anymore and went to an all-night walk-in clinic tonight. It was a false positive."

Rachel's eyes flew open even wider when Santana immediately enveloped her in a bone-crushing hug.

Santana, realizing that she was actually hugging Rachel-Freaking-Berry pulled back and coughed. She tugged on her ponytail and looked everywhere except for in Rachel or Quinn's direction. "Uh, so that's good news. Congrats on not being Teen Mom 2, Berry."

"Yeah," Quinn chimed in. "I'm happy everything worked out."

"Thank you," Rachel said, bobbing her head. "I was hoping you'd be home earlier so we could all celebrate my good news. Maybe go to Callbacks," she noted. "Were you guys at Coyote Ugly all night?"

Santana spoke for the pair. "Some girls from work wanted to go dancing after my shift was done. Quinn tagged along."

If Rachel was hurt Santana or Quinn hadn't called to invite her, she didn't show it. "Well, I'm going to bed," she announced. "It's been a long week. You'll clean up the rug, right?"

"Whatever, Berry. I'm not your maid," Santana scoffed. "You should've milked that pregnancy card for all it was worth. I might've actually been nice to you a little longer."

The small brunette stomped her foot. "But you're the one who knocked the wine out of my hand."

"Yeah, and if you would've just texted me when you found out you weren't knocked up," Santana countered, "I never would have wasted a perfectly good merlot."

"I'll clean it up, Rach," Quinn piped up. "You can go to bed."

Rachel looked momentarily startled as if she'd forgotten Quinn had been standing there the whole time. "No, no. You're a guest, Quinn. You don't have to do that."

Quinn gave Rachel her most serene smile. "I insist. You've had an emotional couple of days. You deserve a break."

Rachel teetered in the living room, clearly unsure what to do with Quinn's offer. Finally, after another moment of indecision, she nodded. "Well if you insist." She looked between the two former cheerleaders. "Goodnight, Santana," she clipped. "Goodnight, Quinn."

As soon as Rachel was in her bedroom and out of earshot, Santana spun on her heels to glare at Quinn. "Why did you say you'd clean up for Berry?"

Quinn put her hands on her hips and smirked. "Because it was the only thing I could think of that would get you two to stop fighting. Rachel needed to get to bed so I could get back to kissing you."

Santana's eyebrows rose.

"Where's your cleaning supplies?"

Santana arched an eyebrow. "You're really going to clean that up?"

"Call it a leftover from Judy Fabray's brainwashing," Quinn shrugged. "Where do you keep the chemicals?"

"Under the kitchen sink, I think."

"You think?" Quinn echoed, sounding amused.

"You know I'm not the cleaning type," she said flatly. "Streisand and Lady Hummel do that for me."

When Quinn bent over and opened the cabinet beneath the sink to investigate, Santana openly ogled her ass. A vivid mental image of bending Quinn over the counter and having her way with her flooded her brain. She wanted to hike up Quinn's skirt and bury her tongue inside her. She wanted Quinn grabbing onto the countertop, white knuckled, while she rapidly pistoned in and out of her. She thought about her strap-on in the bottom of her dresser.

Santana mentally shook herself. She didn't know why Quinn had such an affect on her. She was hot, yeah, but she'd been with hot women before. There was something about Quinn that brought out a nearly animalistic, primal need from within her. Santana folded her arms across her chest, shoving down those intense emotions, and watched Quinn retrieve a plastic bottle of some cleaner and spray it directly on the wine-soaked spot.

Quinn momentarily stopped dabbing at the stain to look up. "Is that why you don't have a real bedroom?"

"Huh?"

"Because you don't help out with chores," Quinn clarified. "Is that why you don't get one of the bedrooms?"

"I've got a wall of bed sheets. That not good enough for you, Fabray?"

"Wall of Jericho," Quinn mumbled to herself. She started scrubbing at the stubborn spot.

Her words were just loud enough for Santana to hear her. "What the hell is that? Some smart-person Ivy League thing?"

Quinn looked up again and blew the hair out of her eyes. "No. It's from an old Frank Capra film, It Happened One Night. Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable spend the night together in a motel, but they're not married so he puts up a blanket wall between their beds and calls it the Wall of Jericho."

"So I was right," Santana snorted. "Some smart person thing." Watching Quinn cleaning on her hands and knees was perversely turning her on. The neckline of Quinn's top was scooped just low enough that with her bent over, Santana could see all the way down to Quinn's navel. She knew she should look away, but she couldn't.

"It's from a movie, San," Quinn rolled her eyes. "That's hardly fancy."

Santana shrugged, nonplussed. "Well, I've never heard of it."

"Maybe we could rent it sometime." Quinn looked away, not trusting herself to make eye contact.

"Uh, yeah." She licked her lips. "I could probably be persuaded."

"I think this is as clean as this carpet is gonna get." Quinn stood up and stretched, feeling and looking stiff. She still sometimes felt the affects of the car accident. She hated to think about what it would be like when she was 50 years older. "We should probably get some sleep."

Santana looked genuinely offended. "What happened to all that Game you had at the club? Don't tell me you're too tired now?" she taunted. "Worried you won't be able to keep up?"

"Oh. I can keep up just fine," Quinn retorted. "But I'm not in the mood to be quiet." Her lips curled at the edges. "And unless you want Rachel knowing all our business..." she trailed off. "Then we probably shouldn't start something tonight we can't finish."

Santana felt a tightening in her chest. Quinn's words mocked her and her current sleeping arrangement: I'm not in the mood to be quiet. It made her consider hawking the small diamond earrings her abuela had given her for her quinceañera so she could afford a hotel room, if only for the night. It was ludicrous how much she wanted to be intimate with Quinn again.

"So does that mean you're sleeping out on the couch?"

"Hell, no. I'm bunking with you, Lopez. I didn't come all this way just to sleep on a lumpy couch you guys probably found on a street corner."

"Well, don't expect me to cuddle," Santana snorted. "I ain't your teddy bear."

Quinn pursed her lips as she walked past Santana in the direction of her makeshift bedroom. She brushed against Santana's shoulder on purpose, causing the other woman to stiffen. "We'll see."

Santana followed Quinn into her partitioned-off room. She pulled the curtain close to afford them a modicum of privacy although Quinn had made it clear they wouldn't need it tonight. When she turned back to the room, Quinn had wasted no time in shedding her clothes. Her skirt and scoop-neck top from the night were on the floor. Quinn Fabray, in all her perfection, stood in her bedroom looking more flawless than ever in just her underwear.

Quinn, aware of Santana's approving gaze, felt mildly vulnerable with being practically naked. She folded her arms across her bra-encased chest, not aware that the motion pressed her breasts together, unnecessarily torturing Santana. She didn't want to make a big deal out of changing in front of Santana. They'd changed clothes in front of each other hundreds of times in high school for Cheerios. Now that they'd slept together though, what had once been familiar now felt charged with uneasy feelings.

"My suitcase is in Rachel's room," she said. In her attempts to be cocky and put on a brave face in front of Santana, she'd forgotten about that detail just as she'd stripped out of her clothes. "Do you have something I can sleep in?"

If she had been at the top of her game, Santana would have followed up Quinn's question with any number of sexually suggestive responses. But she wasn't at the top of her game. Not with Quinn standing in her poor excuse for a bedroom, stripped down to nothing but a sinfully sexy matching bra and panty set. Instead, she averted her eyes and cleared her throat. "Uh, sure."

She turned to her wardrobe, the only other piece of furniture in the room besides her bed, and rummaged around before pulling out a Cheerio t-shirt and cotton shorts. She tossed them in Quinn's direction without looking and changed into her own pajamas – a similar outfit – and kept her eyes off Quinn as she did the same.

Quinn stood next to the bed and played with the top edge of the comforter. "What side do you want?"

Santana both loved and hated how good Quinn looked in her clothes. "Wasn't Rachel the one who invited you here?"

Quinn frowned. "I guess so. Why?"

"If you're her guest, then why am I the one sharing my bed?"

Quinn arched a perfect eyebrow. Everything about Quinn Fabray was perfect, even in high school when she'd thought she'd hit rock bottom. It was part of the reason Santana was terrified. She shouldn't be feeling these things. She shouldn't have butterflies from just thinking about sharing a bed with Quinn.

"You'd rather I slept with Rachel tonight?"

Santana couldn't deny the unstated challenge in Quinn's tone. She was calling her bluff.

Man up, Lopez, she silently berated herself. Well, not man...cause it's not clear if Quinn is into that anymore...but you know what I mean.

"No," she finally husked. She took a few steps closer and grabbed firmly onto Quinn's hips. "I only want you in my bed."

"Then stop playing so damn hard to get, Lopez," Quinn growled. Her eyes narrowed in a silent challenge.

"I have to pee," Santana blurted out.

An amused eyebrow arched on Quinn's unlined forehead. "Ok."

Santana's cheeks visibly flushed; Quinn couldn't recall having seen the bold Latina ever blush. It only endeared her to her even more and reassured her that there was more to Santana than her brash outer walls.

"Sorry," Santana mumbled. "All that alcohol. It finally caught up with me."

With her preverbal tail between her legs, Santana scampered out of the makeshift room.

Quinn chuckled to herself as she crawled into bed and waited for Santana to return from the bathroom. She stared at the white plaster ceiling and the long crack that bifurcated the room. She tugged at the collar of her t-shirt. The clothes that Santana had lent her were a little big, particularly the shirt. They were approximately the same size, but Santana's clothes had room for noticeable curves that Quinn lacked. She yanked off the t-shirt and wiggled out of the shorts. Rather than feeling comforted by the light scent of Santana's fabric softener, the clothes only made her feel inadequate. She didn't feel sexy. She never felt sexy when compared to her friend. Quinn Fabray was a very pretty girl; some might even say beautiful. But Santana Lopez possessed a sexual prowess that she could only envy.

Quinn breathed out heavily and thought about what she was doing in Santana's bed. She wasn't gay, she told herself; she wasn't like Santana. Sure she'd been curious about what two women might do together in bed; it was hard not to be inquisitive about that kind of thing when your best friend was an Out and Proud lesbian, not afraid to brag about her sexual conquests. Maybe she was just gay for Santana, she hypothesized. She lay in bed and tried to create a word for what she was feeling.

Gaytana.

Lesbopez.

Each one was worse than the made-up word before.

Santana cleared her throat when she re-entered her bedroom. Her earlier buzz from the club and the taxicab ride home had diminished by now, and she was starting to feel less brave about having Quinn Fabray in her bed. They hadn't shared a bed since Valentine's Day evening, and before that, it hadn't been since Cheerios summer camp their freshman year. Santana had bunked with Brittany every summer after that. She needed more alcohol, but she knew she would just get an earful from Rachel later about drinking. It wasn't worth the headache.

Quinn propped herself up in bed on her elbows. "You getting in here, Lopez? Or are you waiting for an invite?"

Santana bit down on her tongue. It was so easy to be her bitchy self around Quinn. She seemed to bring it out of her. As for Quinn, Santana couldn't tell if her cocky attitude was to cover up nerves or if it was genuine. That Quinn Fabray might not be anxious about sleeping with her, regardless if they actually slept tonight or not, was a jab to her delicate ego. If Quinn wasn't going to make a big deal about this, neither was she.

She mentally reassured herself of these things until Quinn pulled back the, revealing her flimsy, lacy under-things. The deep violet material made her pale skin look even more delicate, even more porcelain. Her lacy demi-bra perfectly cupped her breasts, significantly smaller than her own, but proportionate to Quinn's thin frame. The matching underwear cut across her taunt abdomen. Her sharp hipbones peeked out from the top of the waistband. Santana found herself wondering what the back of her underwear looked like and how it might frame and hug the blonde's pert backside.

"What happened to those pajamas I pulled out for you?"

Quinn shrugged, her graceful shoulders lifting and falling. "I changed my mind."

Santana slid onto the mattress beside Quinn. The bed was neither large nor comfortable and she felt as rigid as Mr. Schue's hair product when Quinn slid her palm across her hips.

"You smell nice," Quinn murmured.

"I don't know how." Santana was acutely aware of Quinn's proximity. "I feel like there's an inch of sweat on me."

When Quinn's tongue made contact with her neck, licking a broad swipe from her collarbone up to her earlobe, Santana barely suppressed an embarrassingly loud moan.

"Mmmm…salty," Quinn purred.

Despite being taken aback by the unexpected action, Santana quickly recovered; she wasn't going to let Quinn have the upper hand. She may have caught her off-guard in the club's bathroom, but Santana had regained control in the taxi when she'd taken advantage of the fact that Quinn was wearing a skirt. She'd regain control again.

Santana grabbed onto Quinn's hips, feeling the fine bones slice into her palms. She pinned Quinn on her back, pulling an uncharacteristic squeal from the beautiful blonde. "That was kind of adorable, Q," she murmured.

She continued to admire the woman beneath her. Quinn's hair was a little tussled and her cheeks looked flushed. And even while being a little breathless, she looked perfect, if not more so than usual.

The way Santana was looking down at her made Quinn's heart flutter. But it also made her uncomfortable. There weren't supposed to be feelings involved with this. She hadn't come to New York to complicate their friendship even more. But she also couldn't deny the feelings of jealousy and possessiveness she'd felt earlier.

Quinn grabbed onto the front of Santana's t-shirt. "Just kiss me," she said impatiently.

TBC

A/N2: In Chapter 4, I finally earn that M-rating :D