32. Reese
Chapter 32
Reese
“Reese.” Dante’s mouth caresses my name like he’s savoring it.
The piano quickens, each note tumbling through the red-stained club. My shoulders shimmy, feeling the music.
I’m transfixed by the dancers. I want to be up there.
I want to make Dante watch. I want to make everyone watch.
I don’t want to be perfect, choreographed, or directed. I want instinct.
I’m done asking what Robyn would do.
Tonight is about me. What does Reese want?
My feet move before my mind can second-guess.
A dancer reaches for me—leather harness, exposed skin, body humming with invitation. I take her hand and let go.
The dancers spill around me like paint. Fluid, untethered—none of the control I’ve shaped my life around. Their hands brush my skin, and heat blooms. My pulse pounds at my throat, my wrists, behind my knees.
The air has gone thick like molasses, coating my lungs with each labored breath. My thoughts shatter like glass. I’m dissolving, becoming pure sensation—just nerve endings and wanting and the endless, endless ache. The music pulses through me until I can’t tell where rhythm ends and my body begins.
The spotlight shifts, shining on me.
Everyone is looking at me.
He is looking at me.
I feel divine.
I keep moving. My sundress whispers against my thighs. My hair weighs heavy on my neck. A dancer’s hands gently find my waist. I melt back into her touch.
“There you go, darling. Show them how you shine,” comes a whispered encouragement.
Red light transforms me into something wicked, something wanting. My body burns with a hunger that feels like I’ve stepped into my own inferno.
Dante leans forward in his seat, watching me. It feels physical, like hands on my skin.
I can’t look away. Won’t look away. My hips move in slow circles, and I imagine his hands there instead.
The thought makes my thighs clench.
I want to undress, like the rest of the performers on stage.
I find the zipper at my side and drag it down so slowly I ache. Everyone watches as I reveal what’s underneath my floral sundress: the crimson Agent Provocateur slip I ordered in secret.
One strap falls.
Then another.
My skin prickles with exposure, with desire. A dancer helps me out of the rest of my dress, her touch professional but still electric.
I spent hours choosing this lingerie. Clicking through endless pages of lace and silk until I found exactly what I needed. The way it sits against my skin makes me feel powerful. Like I could be devoured whole.
When I look at him again, his legs are spread wider. His hand rests heavy on his upper thigh, touching the obvious bulge in his pants. It makes my mouth water. It makes me think about dropping to my knees right here.
The dancers move around me, teaching me their secrets.
How to arch. How to bend. How to make every movement drip with sex.
In the mirrors, I am transformed. My neck is flushed. My nipples are hard against the silk. I look exactly like what I am—desperate to be touched.
I’m grateful for the club’s strict no-phones policy. No cameras. No flashes.
Just this sacred space where I can exist as myself, not Reese Sinclair the actress, not anyone’s daughter or project.
Just a woman. Just movement. Just desire.
For the first time, I’m not playing at sensuality. I’m embodying it. Each sway of my hips is a love letter to my own liberation.
No more scripts. No more handlers. No more directors.
My pearls rest heavy at my throat. I lift them, biting his ring. My tongue traces it slowly, tasting the silver. Between my legs, I’m embarrassingly wet. The kind of wet that makes thinking impossible.
And, as if we’re on the same plane of the ether, he’s losing control too. I can see it in the way his fingers clench and unclench, the way his throat works as he swallows. The violence of his restraint feeds something dark and hungry inside me.
I want to break him. I want him to break me.
Dante rises from his seat like a man possessed, and the sight of his very obvious erection straining against expensive wool makes my body buzz.
My hair is still held in place by the same headband I wore to our first table read. When he got close enough to smell the perfume on my skin and neither of us moved away. I take off the headband and throw it directly at him.
He snatches it out of the air, bringing it to his nose and inhaling so deeply it’s like I am his oxygen. His careful mask shatters. Raw hunger stares back at me, honest and unashamed.
My gaze asks what my lips won’t. Do you like what you see?
Beautiful , he mouths.
He sees me—wild, wanting, finally free.
I close my eyes and give myself to the music completely, to the ache between my legs that pulses in time with the bass. After tonight, I can never go back to being anyone other than this version of myself. The thought makes me dizzy with possibility.
It makes me feel infinite.
I am on top of the world.
“Fuck yeah.” I giggle, thinking of the taste of Ivory soap, how Grandma would wash out my mouth if I uttered any curses.
I grab my hairbrush, staring at myself in the mirror as I attempt to tame my sweaty, hairspray-tangled mess. Dante should be here to help me undo this nightmare. Instead, he dropped me off at my cabin after my jet landed back in Crescent City with a forehead kiss and his responsible insistence that I get some rest.
So responsible.
The bristles catch in the back of my hair, refusing to budge. I tug hard at my scalp. Ouch.
Beauty is pain.
I’ve heard it at least five times a year since my earliest memory of my mama braiding my hair. But why does it have to hurt so damn much? Everything about being a woman is a pain. Our periods. Push-up bras. Brazilian waxes. Eyebrow threading.
Every decision about my appearance has felt out of my control. My body, my face, my career have been in the hands of someone else.
After tonight’s dance, I’ve taken back a part of myself I never realized I lost.
My sexuality. The sensual, yearning parts of me that Dante has awakened. And it feels so fucking good.
Everything I’ve wanted. I acted like an empress. I took charge. I’m an EP now. I’m playing an active role in this film by working with Amara. I’m almost thirty and no longer headed to playing roles as someone’s mother. The world’s reaction, all the media attention—it’s working in my favor.
Everyone loves this new era of me taking charge, and oh, so do I!
I try to work through the knot in my hair, but the bristles don’t move. The brush is still stuck, caught at the nape of my neck. I tug at it again, but it’s not moving.
I grab my brush again, yanking it and wincing. “Ow, ow, ow!” It won’t budge, it just hangs awkwardly from the side of my head like a bizarre fashion accessory. My eyes land on the kitchen scissors sitting on the counter, the ones I used to cut the labels off my lingerie set before I packed for LA. I can surely cut around this. Can’t exactly walk around with a hairbrush in my head.
I mean, it’s only at the back of my neck, right? Like no one would notice.
I carefully position the blades around the brush handle, the metal cool against my fingers. Snip . A chunk of hair falls free, along with the brush, and oh—the feeling is new.
Liberating.
I hold up the severed strands, watching them shimmer under the light.
This isn’t simply my hair—it’s been my identity my whole life. Now, between the pads of my fingers, it’s simply fragments of my past self.
The Sinclair.
My signature look since I was eleven on Clubhouse . The hairstyle that made me millions in hair care commercials, that made me Diamond Essence’s ambassador for over a decade.
But gosh, it was like wearing a crown made of chains. It’s beautiful and suffocating. I’ve spent years taming it, styling it, forcing it into submission.
And now, one more cut couldn’t hurt.
“Screw. This.” I punctuate each word and snip at it again. Then I hesitate.
Maybe I’m making a massive mistake? Should I text Heather to let her know? And what would Amara think if she saw this? What about Dante?
No. I’m not a child who needs her agent’s permission to get a haircut.
I have control in this film, and the haircut could be a marvelous addition to Robyn’s character. If Amara doesn’t see it that way, then there are incredible wigs out there.
And Dante? He’ll love it because I’m going to love it.
Doubt tries to creep in; I push it away.
This is my hair. My choice. I get to do whatever I want to it.
I keep cutting, unevenly, definitely too short in places.
Snip.
Snip.
SNIP .
Blonde strands flutter to the floor.
The scissors feel like freedom in my unsteady hands as I make the final cuts, my bare feet dancing through the fallen strands on cold tile.
When I lower the scissors, my reflection shows a choppy, uneven pixie cut. My neck feels exposed. I run my fingers through the short strands, marveling at how different it feels.
I feel lighter.
So much lighter.
It’s messy, amateur, absolutely nothing like the polished Sinclair—and I love it.