Fear, Lust, and Vanity

"Not me," Rachel laughed. "Ryan's just too wonderful. Even if I do have to get him drunk just to open up to me a lot of the time."

"Oh, too many Englishmen are like that," sighed Keira. "So fearful of intimacy, insulting a girl and pushing her away rather than getting next to her. Scots are so much better at flirting, just like you Americans."

"I'm Canadian," Rachel corrected her.

"Sorry," Keira apologized. "Anyway, I can see you like this man. He's seemed alright when I've seen him on screen. I'm sure you two are great together."

"We are," Rachel agreed with a pleased look. "He's over there in England now, working on some Shakespeare thing. I was going to go with him, but this shoot tied me up. I miss him terribly."

"As I miss Josh," agreed Scarlett. "He's off in Mexico, working on another film with Robert Rodriguez. I call him every night, but it's just not the same."

"I know," Rachel concurred. "Ryan and I have talked on the phone a lot, and on Instant Messenger and webcams, but seeing him is just better." She looked at Keira. "Do you have someone?"

"Not at the moment," Keira grinned. "On all the sets I've been on, no one has ever made a pass at me. And it's so hard to meet a guy over here and not be treated like some kind of otherworldly presence. Some of the guys back home are better about that. The girls over here, though- they know how to treat you right."

"Girls?" Rachel asked, her mouth falling open. She grimaced and closed it. "You've been with other girls?"

"Of course!" Keira laughed. "Don't tell me you've never tried it! It's wonderful. Men are great, there is no substitute, but there are just some days when you want someone soft and wet as you, and well..." She shrugged and grinned.

"That's, um, interesting," Rachel replied, her eyes showing Scarlett she didn't know what to think. "Anyone I would know?"

"Well, it started when I filmed Bend It Like Beckham," Keira smiled, eyes flashing in remembrance. "I don't know if you've seen it."

"Yeah," Rachel nodded, smiling. Scarlett smiled too. She had loved the film. "You were a soccer player."

"Football," Keira corrected her. "Where I'm from we call it football. Anyway, we didn't have much of a budget for the film. No stuntpeople, all us girls in one dressing room, then training together nine hours a day and shooting scenes together. It was a very bonding experience. I had been around naked girls before, but never really been close to them. Then there was this part in the script where Mindi- my costar Parminder Nagra- my mother thought her character and mine were lesbians. I had never done any part where I was going to be perceived in the script like that before, and I wasn't sure how to go through with it. But Mindi helped me."

"You and her..." Rachel raised her hands, then put them down and grimaced. "Wow."

Keira smiled. "That was pretty much my reaction. Mindi had been with a few girls before during her theater career- she's not lesbian, but the fact that she enjoys loving with both sexes is one of the reasons she resisted arranged marriage. It was so exciting at the time it happened, so different. I loved it, I have ever since."

"Do you still see her?" Rachel asked. Scarlett smiled at her evident interest.

"Sometimes," Keira replied, laughing. "Mindi's very busy with her show ER now, we can't get together much. Although I have heard rumors about her and some of the other girls on that show. I applaud her, whatever she's doing." She smiled. "There have been other Hollywood girls for me too- Lucy Liu in Domino, Rosamund Pike in Pride & Prejudice- but I'm not seeing anyone right now."

What about what we did just over an hour ago? Scarlett almost asked her, then closed her mouth. Maybe Keira was waiting to bring that up. Should she even be thinking about it? Yes, she answered the inner voice. It was great, it was wonderful. Josh or no Josh, I'd gladly do it again.

"What about you, Scarlett?" Rachel cut into her thoughts. "Have you ever..." She hesitated, then smiled. "Been with a woman?" The last question was asked very fast.

"I had a fear of spiders," Scarlett smiled, hoping Rachel would make her own confessions next. "Kari Wuhrer helped me with it."

"Eight-Legged Freaks, right?" Rachel asked, and Scarlett nodded. "I saw that on HBO once. You were great in there. There were so many big monsters- I can see why you were scared."

"I hate spiders," said Scarlett. "Always have. Always will, probably. Acting alongside so many of them was just so..." She chuckled. "Disgusting. And then Kari offered to help me with it. I thought what she wanted to do was disgusting too at first, but then..." She smiled at the memory. "I haven't seen her since that movie though. I was so young, it was so long ago. I had a brief fling with Erika Christensen during The Perfect Score, but after one time that was over."

"Sounds like some boyfriends I've had," Rachel grinned. Scarlett and Keira both shared her laugh.

"It's mainly been men for me," Scarlett continued. "Josh is very good to me, and Jared was before him. Keira's right- women are nice but there's no substitute for a good man."

"Amen," agreed Rachel. "Weren't you also with Tom Cruise once?"

"Do not remind me," Scarlett grimaced. "He turned out to be such a loser."

"Sorry," said Rachel. "I just really liked him in Top Gun and Rain Man when I was a kid, and then he was so powerful in Jerry Maguire and Collateral."

"Yes," Scarlett nodded. "A great actor, especially at covering up the fact that he's not much of a great human being. Katie Holmes is welcome to him, I'll just be happy if I never see that man again." She grimaced. "I never slept with him, you know. He was just too old and weird for me. Kari's the only person that old I've ever been with."

"And you said it was good," Rachel replied, closing her eyes for a moment and then opening them. She looked back at Keira and Scarlett once again. "I'm sorry," she told them, laughing. "I know we shouldn't be talking about this, I'm just getting to know you two. I have a natural curiousity about things, I guess I'm indulging it."

"It's okay, really," smiled Keira. "We've bared our bodies to one another, we might as well bare our souls!"

"I wasn't, I didn't..." Rachel stammered for a moment, then laughed and blushed. "You know, I've been curious many times, but I've never actually been around another naked woman. Even back during my skating days I would find empty locker room aisles to change in, try to avoid the other girls. So many of them were so mean to me on the ice. I didn't want to be around them. I guess I was... scared."

"Scared?" Scarlett chuckled at her, an idea springing into her mind about how to get Rachel to open up to them. "Oh come on. Don't tell me you haven't been tempted by some of the girls you've worked with. If I had the chance to act alongside Lindsay Lohan, or Claire Danes..."

"Oh, I never even had the opportunity to become friends with Claire," Rachel laughed, her blush deepening noticeably. "She and I were at odds so much in our movie it carried over to offscreen too. We could hardly stand to be in the same room sometimes. And anyway, the script in that film had so much discussion of sex I got sick of it. It took some serious chatting with Ryan to get me out of that mindset after the film was done." She looked out the window and grimaced at the heavy traffic around them. Scarlett looked at it too, her mouth almost falling open as she noticed an old lady with a walker moving faster than they were. Scarlett turned and raised an eyebrow at Keira. The British actress nodded and smiled indecipherably, eyes flicking towards David. Scarlett glanced at the driver, but he did not look back, eyes intent on the road. Is he complicit in this? Scarlett wondered. I guess so, she answered herself. Either that or he doesn't care- he's just doing his job and ignoring us.

"I was a little closer to Lindsay," Rachel went on, smiling again at Scarlett and Keira. "I gave her a little coaching during Mean Girls. She coached me too- I needed it, playing a girl who was still in high school. I've read a few stories on the Web about our characters getting together, but I really never considered it. I don't think I would be with someone like her anyway. She's so much younger than me, in body and mind. I can act the part of a Plastic, but to turn into one for real, like Lindsay has..." She shook her head. "It's just unbelievable to me."

"What about that girl who played your sister in Wedding Crashers?" Keira asked her. "I know she's been with other women. A while back I was swapping stories with Kylie Minogue and Melissa George in a VIP room in Soho, and they both mentioned her name."

"Isla?" Rachel's mouth fell open. She grinned and chuckled. "No way, that's impossible. She was acting in the movie, totally acting. She's nothing like the character she played. She never talked to me about her sex life at all."

"Did you talk to her much?" Scarlett asked Rachel.

"Not really," the Canadian actress confessed, shaking her head and blushing. "Just enough for us to get into our roles as sisters. I mainly talked to Owen and Vince while filming Wedding Crashers, and Christopher of course."

"He is a great actor," Keira agreed. She leaned closer to Rachel as a new song came on the radio, the band Loverboy calling some girl notorious. Keira maybe? Scarlett wondered as David adjusted the volume. "So you've never even been close to another woman?"

"I've known some as good friends," Rachel replied, moving back a little. Scarlett leaned in close to her as she did. Rachel noticed this and moved back towards Keira, looking a bit nervous. "Lindsay was alright until she dyed her hair and went crazy, and Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried were both nice to me when we were filming Mean Girls. I've also gotten a lot of good acting tips from Tina Fey, Jane Seymour, and Gena Rowlands. They're all women I enjoy talking with. And then," she smiled and blushed heavily, "I guess there's you two now."

"That's not what we meant," Scarlett laughed, moving up against the other actress. Rachel gasped, but she did not move away. Scarlett nearly gasped too, feeling the heat rising from the other girl's body. The radio music was rising in tempo, and Scarlett felt her own emotions rising along with it. She gazed intensely at Rachel and asked a question to which she already knew the answer. "Have you ever been turned on by a woman?"

"I..." Rachel stammered, then gulped. Her eyes flashed back and forth for a moment, head turning from Scarlett to Keira and back again. Finally she paused and nodded, then began talking fast again. "I don't know. Maybe. There was this one scene I did in Red Eye, with Jayma Mays, where I had to hug her. For some reason we couldn't get it right. We had to retake it at least a dozen times. She kept putting her hands on me..."

"Like this?" Keira asked, leaning over and rubbing Rachel's shoulders. Rachel let out a long gasp and Scarlett felt her insides catching flame.

"Yes!" Rachel cried. "Just like that!" She looked from Keira to Scarlett, her mouth falling open as words spilled out speedily. "I kept pushing her away, it felt so weird. Wes had to keep telling us to put ourselves elsewhere. It took a while to sink in, and afterwards I didn't want to be around her. Jayma and I had talked a little before the scene, but she'd never given me any hint she was going to touch me like that. Touch me like..." She stared down at Keira and Scarlett's hands, which were on her knees. Both girls were smiling at her suggestively. "Touch me like you're touching me."

"Do you want to be with us, Rachel?" Keira asked her, moving close and whispering against her ear. Rachel gasped anew at Keira's throaty voice and the feel of her hot body, a gasp Scarlett echoed as she suddenly realized she'd never been in a sexual act with more than one person before. This was going to be new for both her and Rachel, and it was going to be wonderful. They just had to convince Rachel of that. "I know we're arousing your curiousity," Keira spurred along the seduction.

"We can show you what a woman's touch is like."

"I..." Rachel gasped, looking back and forth at their smiles. A smile of her own lit her face for an instant, then vanished. "But... I love Ryan..."

"He doesn't have to know," Keira chuckled. "Scarlett and I had some fun in our dressing room after the shoot was over. I don't think she's going to tell Josh about it. Are you, Scarlett?"

"Oh, I probably will," Scarlett laughed as Rachel gasped again, not believing what she was hearing. "Josh knows about me and Kari and Erika. He doesn't have a problem with me being with women. It turns him on, in fact. It might turn your man on too." Throwing caution to the wind, she moved against Rachel and kissed her lips.

Rachel's mouth stayed shut for a moment, then she gasped once more, her lips opening and her breath mingling with Scarlett's. Scarlett deepened the kiss and moved her hands to the other girl's shoulders, running her fingers through Rachel's curls. Scarlett smiled as the other girl's hands came up and grabbed her head, pulling it closer. Rachel passionately returned the kiss, breath quickening and bringing soft heat down through Scarlett's lips. So intense, Scarlett thought, so sharp. So... She let her breath out as Rachel moved back, gasped, and turned to Keira. Keira smiled, leaned close, and kissed Rachel deeply, their tongues dueling back and forth with each other. Scarlett smiled, her mind flashing back to the kisses she and Keira had earlier exchanged. The British beauty knew how to kiss a woman, not to mention touch one, and Rachel was feeling that now. 3 Doors Down was playing on the radio, Brad Arnold singing about how he'd lived a lot of places and loved the life he was living in. Right on, Scarlett thought, leaning close to Keira and Rachel and moving her lips against the unoccupied portions of theirs. Both women eagerly accepted and returned the three-way kiss. Scarlett heard the music increasing in volume along with their emotions. Is David trying to keep his mind off us? she wondered. Then the thought fell away as Keira and Rachel's lips pressed against hers. So good, she thought, so...

Rachel broke away from them suddenly, her hands moving to push away each of the other actresses. "I..." she gasped, looking at them. "I can't..." Then she shook her head and grabbed the front of each of their shirts and pulled them closer. "I can," she declared breathlessly. "I just... I'm not sure I know what to do."

"Don't worry, luv," Keira replied with another chuckle. "We'll show you. I've been with a lot of women, and Scarlett's had good teachers." Scarlett smiled and nodded as Rachel looked at her inquiringly. "Do you have anything else going on today?" Keira continued. "Can you come up with Scarlett and me to my hotel room?"

"I..." Rachel breathed, looking down at their hands on her knees, then up at their smiling faces. "Sure!" she said happily. "Sure I can. I was going to call Ryan and look over the script for the new Bond film, but I can do that later. I'll be with you two now. I... I..." She grimaced and then laughed. "I want you both so bad."

"Likewise," Scarlett said, moving her hands across Rachel's face and then down over her body, smiling as Rachel gasped and moaned. Her hands moved to Scarlett's neck and Keira's, rubbing the tops of both their spines as they leaned in to her and shared another three-way kiss. Their tongues all came out for this one, meeting and lashing against each other. Scarlett and Keira each threw one arm around Rachel and deepened the kiss, fingers of their other hands gliding up the Canadian beauty's thighs. Rachel gasped and pulled them closer to her, then pulled back and let out a strained cry. Keira and Scarlett rubbed her thighs and shoulders, increasing the tempo as Rachel continued to moan at them. Scarlett dared to reach forward, pressing against a growing dampness on Rachel's panties. Keira's hands meanwhile withdrew, moving up to and fondling Rachel's breasts.

"God, yes..." Rachel moaned at their touches, fingers moving up and down on their spines, pushing into each nerve, tangling in their hair. "Oh yes! Oh Jesus..."

Why do people always have to thank that man? Scarlett wondered, moving her fingers faster. I always hate it when people bring him up at awards shows. Why do they have to seek a higher being? What is their problem? Can't they find enough glory here on Earth? Can't they... She felt the train of thought derail as Keira's hand suddenly squeezed her thigh. Scarlett gasped, reaching across Rachel and pulling Keira closer. The move caused Rachel to move into her and brought off another chorus of moans and paens to Eros. They tumbled back against the seat, the safety belts coming undone. Scarlett realized Keira must have unfastened them. How? she wondered. When? Then her thoughts were lost in Rachel's screams, in the shaking of her body between Keira and Scarlett, in the gush of fluid against Scarlett's fingers. Scarlett couldn't stop herself from wondering where she had last seen such emotion as that on the other girl's face, felt such passion so close to her. She could not remember a time when she had. That she saw it now was a clear signal the other girl was embracing her new experience.

"I'm so wet," Rachel breathed out, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she fell back against the seat. The other two actresses exchanged smiles and pulled away from her. "I... I must be soaking your car, Keira."

"Don't worry about that, luv," Keira said, smiling and kissing her cheek, then her forehead. "David will clean it up. He'll be glad there's no blood this time. Virgin," she answered Scarlett's raised eyebrow. Both she and Rachel had their mouths open in surprise.

"You'll make this really good, right?" Rachel asked, staring at Keira and Scarlett. "If you don't, I swear, I'll never again talk to either of you."

"Ladies," David cut in before either Keira or Scarlett could answer. Scarlett felt herself start for an instant as she realized the car had stopped moving. "We've arrived at the Waldorf Hotel."

***

A whirlwind of emotions blazed through Scarlett's head as they exited Keira's car and headed into the Waldorf Astoria. Looking at Rachel, she could see similar emotions playing out on her beautiful features, hopes colliding with fears as she anticipated what was ahead. Energy was still radiating off her, its aura shocking the air. Scarlett grimaced and ordered herself to look away from it. The feelings were contagious and now was not the time to feel them again.

Once again Scarlett couldn't tell what was going on within Keira as the British actress moved efficiently around them. First she thanked David for the ride before dismissing him, pressing a roll of money into his hand and giving him a speech much like that Scarlett had given her own driver earlier. Then a nod to one of the hotel bellhops, requesting he have some wine sent upstairs to Keira's suite. Rachel and Scarlett moved beside her as they strolled through the hotel's main doors, past the front desk, and towards the elevators. The lobby was remarkably crowded for late afternoon, several guests waiting in both the check-in and check-out lines while others milled around talking in small groups. For a moment Scarlett worried someone in the crowd might recognize them, but no one seemed to. The only looks directed their way were those any trio of beautiful women got when they entered a room.

Fear froze Scarlett for an instant as she thought she saw a tall darkhaired man in a black suit coming out of the hotel's restaurant staring intently at them. Then she realized that was impossible- the man was walking with a white cane, his arm in that of a young blonde man in a turtleneck walking alongside him. The blind man leaned close to his companion and said something, then they both turned and walked away. The feeling the man had been watching them quickly passed from Scarlett, though she noticed Rachel staring after him. Calm down, Scarlett ordered herself. The paparazzi are gone- David took care of them. Even if someone recognized us here, I doubt they'd approach us. And they couldn't possibly guess what we're here to do.