State of Ruin (Alchemy New York #1)

1. Sinclair

Sinclair

I’m not looking at the aerialist suspended high above us, her modesty barely concealed by her glittering body stocking and the lengths of white silk around which she twirls.

Nor am I looking at the blonde who’s been trying to get my attention at the bar for several minutes now, and who is objectively a Hamptons ten but the likes of whom I’ve dated—and fucked—so many times that she may as well be a plant or a candelabrum, for all the interest she piques in me.

Nor am I looking at the row of smoked Old Fashioneds being assembled on the bar in front of me.

No.

I’m not looking at any of those things, because I cannot look away from the woman assembling said cocktails behind the bar.

There’s a knowingness to the women in Manhattan, like everything they wear and do and say is calculated for maximum effect.

It gets so fucking tired. And, for whatever reason, it strikes me that the brunette who’s currently smoking an upturned heavy-cut crystal tumbler on the long-blackened plank of cedar she blowtorched a few moments ago hasn’t one iota of that knowingness.

She’s not engaging, either. She’s been polite, but she’s not trying to catch my eye or flirt, which is unusual in itself.

She knows who I am, surely? Working on the basis that everyone in Manhattan reads Page Six, everyone knows who I am.

Especially women. And if we’re being frank here, it’s not only my profile—or my family’s profile—that draws women to me.

As she focuses on fixing me and my two buddies our drinks, I stay focused on her. Her dark hair is slicked back off her face and tied in a ponytail. It’s a look I see on a lot of women, but only those with superior bone structure can truly pull it off.

She’s pulling it off.

Her face is very… pure. Very classy. Dark, wide-set eyes and a delicate jaw that evokes memories of Audrey Hepburn.

Full mouth, slight overbite. Small nose.

Not only are her features individually the kind that women wave a photo of when they meet with their plastic surgeon, but collectively they amount to something beautiful.

My years of experience at the helm of the U.S.

’s most prestigious cosmetics group makes these kinds of calculations inevitable, and they lead me to conclude that this woman could probably be a model if she wasn’t so short.

I can’t see how tall she is, exactly, but she’s way off model height.

Nor can I see her body fully from this angle, but I certainly have a front-row seat to the delicate architecture of her collarbones as exposed by her black tank and to the easy, unaffected grace with which she moves.

The desire I have to bend her over and fuck her every bit as gracelessly, as brutally, as she is graceful is a rock in my stomach and gravel in my throat and as shocking as it is acute.

Full anonymity may not be possible for me, even in a place like this, but the NDAs help, as does the general code: a lot of big hitters come here, and we’re all here for the same reason.

We see; we conquer; we come. No strings, no complications, no obligations.

Which means that if I did want to fuck the hot blonde next to me, she wouldn’t expect a phone call, let alone a Voss family heirloom on her finger.

What I’m trying to say is that all this is good.

It’s liberating and it’s convenient and it’s reliable, all of which are godsends for a guy in my position.

So why I’m ignoring the lure of an easy fuck right next to me and mentally screwing the Audrey Hepburn-coded ingenue opposite me would be perplexing if I didn’t understand the following about myself: I am bored out of my fucking brain, so of course I’ll fixate on the least easily available option.

She walks through the steps of her recipe with precision but no flair.

This isn’t a performance, even if most other mixologists would have made a song and dance about singeing the cedar with the culinary torch.

She must be aware of my relentless eye-fucking, every bit as heated as that torch, but if she is, she doesn’t react.

Nor does she falter as she adds a couple dashes of bitters to the requisite sugar cube, their addition an angry stain on its virginal white, nor when she muddles the concoction in each of the three glasses with a splash of water.

She’s a scientist monitoring her experiment, and I’m a fucking wolf as I fixate on the subtle rise and fall of her small, perfect tits beneath that tank.

“What whiskey would you like, sir?” she asks, looking up from her handiwork.

“Rye? Bourbon?” The eye contact and the direct question feel as shocking, in light of my ill-disguised leering, as the brush of one gloved hand against another would if I were a young maiden in Victorian times. Get a grip, Voss.

“We’ll take the Pappy 15,” I snap. It’s arguably excessive to combine such a nuanced bourbon with not only bitters and citrus but actual smoke, but if anyone thinks my social circle cares for a second about excess, they’re mistaken.

And if I thought my little flex would raise an eyebrow from her, I’d be equally mistaken.

“Of course, sir.” She says it neutrally—not deferential; not impressed.

She speed-pours a couple ounces of Pappy into the three glasses.

Uses silver tongs to add a large, perfectly clear distilled-water ice cube.

Peels three strips of orange zest. As she pinches each strip over its glass with her pale, slender fingers, the fruit releases a fragrant mist that teases my olfactory glands immediately.

Like I said, there’s no fanfare, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t the mixology equivalent of burlesque.

“Will that be all, sir?” she asks me as she places the tumblers on three neatly aligned leather coasters, all bearing the Alchemy “A” logo.

“Yeah. Thanks a lot,” I add.

“You’re welcome.” She hesitates. “I’ll need to stamp your hands.”

Of course. Alchemy has a two-drink maximum.

It’s a major pain in the ass, but it doesn’t do to kick up a fuss about it, and I get it.

The last thing anyone needs in a sex club is for drunkenness to complicate things, I guess.

They handle it with a rubber stamp on the back of the hand for each drink consumed.

You don’t get upstairs to where the real action is if you’re sporting more than two stamps.

I nod curtly and shout to my buddies, who are standing a little distance away.

“Hey. Get your asses over here. The lady needs to stamp you.”

They shuffle over, laughing, my man Felix still in the middle of some tale in which he’s almost certainly inflating his own role, and hold out their hands like Boy Scouts so that the beautiful creature behind the bar can brand them with the “A” in black ink.

I watch through narrowed eyes as she does.

It is unfathomable to me that they don’t seem to have any reaction to her beyond the usual low-key appreciation. How is it possible not to react to her?

Felix gives her a wink. “Thanks, Elyse, darling,” he says, laying on the British charm. He’s such a douche.

But: Elyse. That’s a beautiful name. Fitting, somehow.

She smiles at him as he turns away.

She does not smile at me, but her fingertips hover lightly on the sides of my fingers to hold my hand in place as she stamps the back of my hand.

It feels like foreplay, and I stare at her downcast eyes in astonishment as the rubber brands me with my second stamp of the evening.

She takes as much care with it as she did with every step of our drinks.

“Thank you, sir,” she says, docking the stamp on its ink pad and glancing up at me again. “What’s the name, please?”

“Voss.”

I watch her face as if it’s a book written in a foreign tongue. Nothing.

Seriously?

“One moment, please.”

She types my name into the keypad and prints off a receipt, laying it in the leather check wallet.

I sign with a flourish and add a hundred as a tip.

I can only blame desperation to prolong this admittedly underwhelming interaction for what I blurt out as I slide the check wallet back across the bar.

“Do you ever work upstairs?”

Upstairs means the Playroom, where the good stuff goes down. And while there’s technically a bar up there, that’s not what I mean by work.

A quick shake of her head as she files away the signed receipt. “No, sir.”

The blood rushes to my head in a violent wave at what feels like stepping off a cliff edge to my death. It’s a bad idea on every level… but fuck it. “Do you ever play upstairs?”

Our eyes lock for a beat, and hers widen.

I’ve shocked her.

Good.

God knows she’s fucking shocked me.

But then her full, perfect lips with their subtle pink lipstick purse together with what looks an awful lot like distaste.

“Absolutely not, sir.”

It’s officially my first ever brush-off in a year of membership, and I don’t like it.

Not one little bit.