23. Vera #2
Sloane’s smile falters. “I’m not picking. I’m... facilitating. He deserves someone good.”
“I know.” My gaze drifts across the room before I can stop it. Finds him without trying.
“Earth to Vee.” Sloane waves her hand in front of my face. “Were you checking out my brother?”
My heart stops. “What? No. I was admiring the architecture.”
“Uh huh.” She’s grinning. “You know, for two people who claim to hate each other, you spend a lot of time looking at each other.”
“We don’t—“
“Relax, I’m kidding!” She laughs. “Although it would be kind of hilarious if you two started liking each other.”
She has no idea how right she is.
“Never going to happen,” I force out. “We’re too different. He’s so serious about everything,”
Sloane sighs. “Yeah. He needs someone who doesn’t add to the intensity. Someone easy to be with, you know? Someone who — fits.”
Each word lands exactly where she doesn’t know she’s aiming it.
A server appears with fresh champagne. I take a glass I don’t need.
A buzz in my clutch.
Gerald: Go to the front desk. Give them your name. Package waiting. Then bathroom, open it alone. Trust me.
My heart stops.
Then restarts at double speed.
“Sloane, I have to go to the bathroom. Be right back.”
“Hurry back though, Lisa might come back.”
Perfect.
The receptionist smiles when I approach. “Ms. Beckett? Yes, this was left for you.”
A small black box. Unmarked. Sleek.
I take it with trembling hands.
The bathroom is mercifully empty. I lock myself in the largest stall, sit on the closed lid. The party sounds muffled through two doors. Someone’s heels on marble. The silk of my dress cold against my thighs.
My hands shake as I open the box.
Inside: a sleek remote-controlled vibrator.
And a note on his firm’s letterhead, in his precise handwriting.
Wear this. Trust me. P.S I have the remote. — K
Oh my god.
This is his professional event. His colleagues. His clients. His sister.
I stare at the toy.
Another feeling sits underneath the shock, though — one that has been building since he texted Careful what you ask for. I already know what it’s like when Kane is in control. I already know what it means when he says trust me. He has never once let me fall.
I hike up my dress with trembling fingers, slide my panties aside, and insert the toy. It settles inside me, snug, hidden.
I check my reflection. I look normal. Composed. Slightly flushed, which is the champagne.
No one will know.
I smooth my dress, reapply my lipstick, and return to the party on legs, already aware that the thing I’m walking back into has changed in a way I can’t fully account for yet.
I’m halfway across the gallery when I see them again, Kane and Lisa, heads bent together over something on her phone. She laughs and touches his arm.
A cold flash moves through me.
Then the vibration starts.
Low. Teasing. Barely there.
Across the room, Kane’s hand is in his pocket. He’s still talking to Lisa. But his eyes flick to me for a second.
I force myself to start walking. Casual. Purposeful. The vibration increases — not enough to make me obvious, enough to make every breath a small negotiation.
The bastard.
I’m mid-sentence with the Whitfields when the vibration pulses.
Once. Twice. Three times.
My voice catches. “—and for a foundation profile that size, the narrative needs to do two things at once—” Another pulse. I grip my champagne glass. “Build public trust and protect the family legacy.”
Mrs. Whitfield peers at me. “Are you alright? You look flushed.”
“Just warm. These gallery spaces.” I fan myself with the program.
The vibration shifts. Pulse, pulse, steady. Pulse, pulse, steady.
This couple could be important clients.
The moment I have the thought, the vibration eases.
I go still inside.
It could be coincidence. Or Kane’s been reading my body language from across the room, watching for the exact moment I tensed, easing off before I fail. I let my shoulders drop. Trust that he won’t push too far.
“What I’d suggest is a tailored press strategy — something that frames the anniversary as a milestone rather than a moment.” My voice steadier now. “I’d love to put together an initial outline for you. May I get your contact information?”
“That would be wonderful.”
The vibration pulses twice. A short rhythm that I read as his reaction. Good girl.
I exchange contact information. Professional. Composed. The arousal building with every breath, and I’m not fighting it anymore, existing with it, trusting the hands on the other end of the remote.
Not a scene. No safewords, no structure, no walls holding the edges in. This is him, reading me from across a gallery full of people who have no idea, finding the precise line between more and too much and walking me right along it.
That’s the thing I’m only understanding now, floating here in this dress with his toy inside me and my professional smile intact: he’s not restraining himself for my sake. He wants the edge. He’s making me walk it, but he never lets me fall off.
And in a room full of people who’d destroy us both if they knew what we were doing, I trust that completely.
The thought arrives with a cold, quiet clarity I don’t expect: this is what we’ve built. This impossible thing.
My attention drifts to Kane again. Lisa is still talking to him, animated, laughing at something he’s said. She’s good at this — the easy lean, the eye contact that says you’re the most interesting person in the room. I know that move.
And then her hand finds his arm and she tilts toward him and I think, with absolute composure, that I am going to walk over there and—
The vibration slams back on. Hard. Insistent.
My knees nearly buckle. I plant my hand against the nearest wall.
The absolute bastard. He saw me looking.
He knew exactly what I was about to do and he — I press my lips together, furious, which does nothing because being furious while your body is doing this is a deeply undignified experience and he knows that too.
He knows all of it. He’s standing across this gallery in a charcoal suit looking like he owns the room and he is doing this to me on purpose and I cannot even —
I ask for water, arranging my face into something that might pass for fine.
I am going to kill him.
Later. After.
The vibration eases. Then stops.
I exhale once, carefully, and find Kane across the room without meaning to. He’s already looking at me. He gives me a controlled, small nod. Bastard.
I pick up my water, and turn away first.
A woman in a burgundy dress catches my eye and smiles. “Beautiful event. Though I’m mostly here for the open bar.” She laughs. “Plus-one to an architect.”
I just nod and smile.
She accepts her wine and leans in. “Don’t look now, but there’s a handsome man across the room who cannot stop watching you.”
My stomach drops.
“Tall, dark hair, gorgeous suit. Charcoal, I think. He’s been at it a while.” She grins. “Lucky you.” She drifts back into the crowd with a knowing smile, while I stand at the bar, gripping my water glass.
Someone noticed.
I pull out my phone.
Me: People are noticing you staring.
Gerald: Let them notice.
Me: That’s not reassuring.
Gerald: Should I stop looking at you?
Me: ...Yes?
Gerald: No.
I smile despite everything.
Me: You’re impossible.
Gerald: And you’re beautiful. Now stop texting me and go be impressive somewhere else. I’ll watch from here.
I pocket my phone.
The vibration pulses once. Soft. Then stops entirely.
I work the room. The Harrington group near the east window — their nonprofit rebranding has been in the press for the wrong reasons and they know it.
I spend twelve minutes with them and leave with a follow-up meeting on Tuesday.
A journalist from City Profile who covers architecture and culture and who is currently very interested in the story of a firm that builds sustainably in a city that mostly doesn’t.
I give her Vera Beckett, PR, and my card, and she gives me her editor’s name unprompted.
I am, objectively, very good at this.
My phone buzzes.
Gerald: Private viewing room. End of the east corridor. Five minutes.
I look up without meaning to, and find him across the room immediately, the way I always do. He’s not looking at me. He’s listening to someone, patient, one hand in his pocket.
Then his eyes move to mine. Hold. Move away.
I shouldn’t.
I find Sloane across the room. She’s deep in conversation with two women I don’t recognize, wine glass in hand, fully occupied. She won’t miss me for five minutes.
I set my glass down on a passing tray and drift toward the edge of the room. Unhurried. The way you move when you’re going nowhere in particular.
The east corridor is dim, separate from the noise of the gala. My heels are quiet on the stone floor. A door at the end, no signage, no light underneath it.
I glance both ways. Empty.
I slip inside and close the door behind me.
The room is dark except for the city bleeding through a floor-to-ceiling window at the far end.
Large canvases on three walls, unlit, shapes in the shadows.
A space that exists between events, between openings, between the public version of this building and whatever happens when no one is watching.
Kane’s already here. Leaning against the window ledge, arms crossed, tie loosened, jacket gone somewhere. The city lights spread behind him.
“You came,” he says.
“You knew I would.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Lock it.”
I turn back to the door. The click sounds impossibly loud.
“Now come here.”
I cross the space. He uncrosses his arms and I walk straight into them. His hands find my waist and pull me against him.
“You wore it,” he says, against my hair.
“You asked me to.”
His lips brush my temple. “Good girl.”
The praise lands differently here — not the dungeon, not a scene. This is Kane in a dark room at his own professional event, slightly undone, telling me I did well.
“You’re evil,” I breathe.
“Tell me.” He pulls back to look at my face. His eyes are dark. “What was it like?”
“You know. You had the remote.”
“I want to hear you say it.”