E l y s e
SINCLAIR: The only issue with this exclusivity thing is the once-a-week part. What’s with that bullshit?
ME: Oh yeah? What do you want to do about it?
See you more often, obviously. When can I see you again?
You can “see” me tonight at Alchemy. But if seeing is a euphemism, then that’s rough for you Believe me. I’ll
“see” you there. When can I get you back in my bed?
I’ll take you through my shifts later. Some of us work for a living.
I work. N epo babies work. (Well, some of us.) But I’m a very good multitasker If that’s your way of
suggesting I go to your office to blow you, hard pass.
Jesus Christ. I won’t get a scrap of work done today, you little minx
Whoops *Sets reminder to ask Katrin to put that spanking bench in a room later and give you a longer break*
Your excessive horniness is not my problem On that you are very much mistaken.
he period at the end of that last sentence feels ominous. Why is that so hot?
H E DIDN ’ T GET me on the spanking bench that night. He didn’t get anything more than a few kisses in
Katrin’s office on my break. Clearly, he doesn’t have as much sway with my boss as he’d like to think. That,
or he’s all bark and no bite.
(I suspect the second one.) Over the next couple weeks, I exist in a state of exhausted, orgasmaddled delirium
as Sinclair and I meet up at his apartment whenever we can. One time, he suggests that I reduce my Alchemy
shifts by one a week and he makes up my lost wages financially.
Suffice it to say, he never dares to suggest that again.
My days are mostly like regular days: I do occasional casting calls and help Dad with the school run and take
Jambon for walks and Sylvie to her PT—she’s making progress for sure and spending more time at home out
of her chair and limping gingerly around the house on crutches. Sylvie was regular-person fit before the
accident. She ran a little, did the occasional online Pilates class. But the rehabilitation process has been so
exhausting that she told me if she’d known she was going to get taken out by a car, she’d have spent her entire
life exercising in pr eparation. The toll the PT takes on every muscle in her body is no joke.
On my free evenings, I go to Sinclair’s apartment, where we eat and chat and either fuck like horny teenagers
or make love, d epending on our mood. Sometimes both. His driver drives me home around midnight, and I
hate leaving every single time. Sinclair hates it too, I know, but I don’t see
any way around it. I won’t abandon Sylvie—or the others. Our little system just about works, but it has zero
slack. My family knows I’m dating someone, but they absolutely do not need to know the details.
On the nights I’m working, Sinclair tries to get home early. I stop by his apartment on my way to Alchemy,
where he feeds me—usually things his chef has pr epr epared, to save on time. Then he comes to Alchemy with
me —always in his car, always entering via the basement parking garage, staying a couple of hours and
loitering around the bar area, getting roasted by his buddies when they’re there, and making puppy-dog eyes
at me.
All I can say is, I’m glad everyone in that club is NDAed up to their eyeballs, because he isn’t exactly subtle.
But when he’s around for my shifts, I have this warm, gooey glow of happiness, and I suspect he feels the
same way. Right now, Alchemy is the safest place for us, aside from Sinclair’s apartment. It’s the only
semipublic place where I know our interest in each other won’t get leaked.
“I want you to know,” he says one evening, when I’m draped over his chest in bed and his arms are banded
tightly around me, “I’d shout about us from the rooftops if I could. I want to take you out and show you off to
the world. But—it’s complicated, mainly because of my profile. That sounds douchey, but I don’t want you
getting pulled into all my shit.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him, adjusting my cheek to his chest so I can feel his heartbeat. I’d rather do that than look
into his eyes right now. “I get it, honestly.”
I mostly get it, more accurately. I know how crazy speculation around Sinclair’s love life can get. Who’s he
dating? When will he settle down and make an honest woman out of some socialite or celebrity? Is it serious
between him and that random person he was snapped talking with at suchand-such gala? As long as the public
is interested in the private lives of glamorous folks like him, the press will fuel that interest relentlessly, no
matter how tenuous or inaccurate its stories are. And I want no part of that.
But there’s a tiny, fragile voice somewhere de ep inside my head that has other takes on why Sinclair Voss is
ke eping a nobody like me on the downlow, and it likes to whisper its theory far too often. That theory is that
I’m a nobody. Worse: I’m a server from a blue-collar family, and there’s no way I’m worthy of a man like
Sinclair making a public statement with me. I’m not the kind of woman he wants on his arm at the Fall
Fashion Gala, or any other of his fancy events.
I’m the kind of woman he spots behind the bar, decides he wants to fuck, and then hooks up with as
transactionally as possible, with payments and NDAs. Clean and tidy and, above all, discreet. And when he
wants more, he hides me in his apartment. He has his driver usher us to Alchemy and drive me home at night.
The only people who see us together are either on his payroll or members of a club with the most watertight
NDAs in Manhattan.
It’s all very carefully managed.
Carefully contained.
Let’s face it: I’m a novelty. A plaything. I’ve caught his eye, and God knows how long that will last. I’d do
well to enjoy feeling like the center of Sinclair Voss’s universe, because I’m sure it will soon be a memory.
These exact thoughts torment me as I lie here in his arms, only interrupted when he says, “I want more time
with you, though.”
Take that, intrusive thoughts. “Yeah, me too,” I say in the tone of someone who has absolutely no hope of
getting what they want.
He hesitates. “I was wondering... is there any way on earth that we could free you up so you could come
spend a weekend at Fairwater with me? We’d be totally alone—no one in my family will be there through
November. Not until Thanksgiving, anyway. What do you think?”