by Logan Belle
“To the future,” she said, touching her glass to his.
They sipped their wine. She could tell it was very good; the better the wine, the easier it was for her to drink. And this wine went down like nothing she’d ever tasted before. With wine like this, she could understand how people became obsessive oenophiles.
She imagined that everything in Gavin’s life was like this: only the best. While he didn’t talk very much about his personal life, she knew he’d grown up in Manhattan, gone to the private school Horace Mann, and then to Princeton. He was great looking; he was smart—she imagined he could have pretty much anything he wanted out of life. And from the way he was looking at her, it seemed at that moment, what he wanted was her.
18
Poppy poured soy sauce, olive oil, lemon juice, and Worcestershire sauce into a blender. She doubled-checked the recipe for the steak marinade. It said mix for thirty seconds. She hit the On button, confident that the way to inspire passion in her girlfriend was through her stomach.
With the buzz of the machine, she didn’t hear her phone ring, but by the time she poured the marinade into a bowl, she realized she had two new messages. She hoped it wasn’t Patricia saying she was going to be working late after all; Poppy had been shopping and prepping all day to make a romantic dinner for the two of them. Partly, it was out of guilt for what she’d been doing with Violet. But it was more an attempt to rekindle the spark in their relationship. Ideally, she would love to go somewhere exotic to try to get their sex life back on track. But even if she could finesse a week off from the Blue Angel, Patricia’s legal job was too demanding. Poppy couldn’t remember the last time she took a vacation, and maybe that was part of the problem.
Poppy dialed into her voice mail, extending one toned leg and thinking she had to get to the gym. Before she could reach her messages, her phone rang again.
“Why the hell aren’t you picking up your phone?” Violet snapped.
“I just did,” Poppy said.
“Meet me at the Cellar in a half hour.”
“Not going to happen,” Poppy said.
“I just want to talk to you. It’s business.”
“I can’t see you right now, Violet. I’m busy.” There—she had said no! And she felt better already.
“Doing what?”
Poppy sighed. “If you must know, making dinner.”
“So you’re at your apartment?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently.
“Meet me at the Cellar, or I’m showing up there.”
“Violet, I can’t do this anymore, okay?”
“I’ll see you in a half hour—in midtown, or at your place. It’s your decision.”
Poppy looked at her watch. It was seven o’clock. An hour before Patricia was due home.
“Jesus, Violet. Fine. I’ll be there in a half hour. But I can only stay for a few minutes.”
She hung up her phone, scribbled a note saying she’d run out for some ingredients, and left to see Violet for what she planned to be the last time.
Gavin’s driver let them off in front of a building on Bond Street.
“I know I shouldn’t keep you out late on a work night, so just one drink,” he said.
“Yeah, my boss is a tyrant.” Mallory laughed, already extremely buzzed. The last thing she needed was another drink. Then she noticed the unmistakable, art deco front gate of 40 Bond.
“You live here?”
“Why do you seem so surprised?”
“I have friends who live here,” she said, wondering if she would run into Justin Baxter and Martha Pike, and this gave her a pang for the loss of her burlesque world. But then she looked at Gavin, thought of the incredible dinner they had just shared—and about what lay ahead. “They have one of the townhouses.”
“I live in the residential tower. I never thought I’d move from the Upper East Side, but I couldn’t resist this place. Everything Ian Schrager does is pretty top-notch.”
Gavin’s apartment was similar to the Baxters’ place, with floor to ceiling windows, oak floors, eleven-foot ceilings, and a wood-burning fireplace. Gavin’s décor was very masculine, but not as aggressively modern as that of the Baxter residence. This place was more Ralph Lauren chic, with comfortable couches and rugs in earth tones, and lots of wood with some accents of chrome.
“I have heat lamps outside if you want to sit on the roof garden,” he said, leading her through large glass doors. Sure enough, the garden deck held two towering heaters like the kind they had at outdoor restaurant spaces in LA.
“This is amazing,” she said, looking at the view of Bond Street below.
“I’ll be right back with the wine. I figured we should stick with the reds. I have a bottle of Silver Oak I’ve been waiting to open.”
“Sounds good,” she said. She folded herself into a comfortable chair under one of the heaters. When Gavin returned with the wine, he handed her a cashmere blanket. “Just in case the heaters aren’t doing the trick,” he said. She thanked him and pulled the blanket around her like a wrap. She was perfectly warm, and with her first sip of the Napa Valley Cabernet, she felt a sense of luxury and well-being that was completely foreign to her.
“It’s amazing to be having wine outside at this time of year,” she said.
“I know. Some nights it’s just too cold even with the heaters, but we got lucky tonight. It helps get me through the winters, though what I’d really like to do is get a place in California and travel more during January and February if I could swing it with the workload at the office.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Mallory said, emboldened by the wine and the seeping tiredness she was beginning to feel.
“Sure. Ask me anything.”
“How do you live like this? I mean, even with the office being busy—it can’t bring in enough for this place. And your car. And another place in California? You’re not that much older than me, and my friends are all living in glorified studios.”
He laughed. “I did my time in glorified studios—believe me. But I got tired of it, and the truth is, my family has a lot of money. I didn’t rush to tap into it, but once I hit thirty I felt ready to start living a more … adult lifestyle. I used to look down on my parents for their extravagances, but now I realize that when you get older, it feels good to have nice things. Especially when you work as hard as we do. No matter how stressful a day I have in court, when I walk in the door here, I feel calm.”
She looked up at the sky, took another sip of wine, and exhaled.
“I feel calm, too,” she said. And she did—except for the thing that neither one of them had mentioned since last Friday night: their unfinished business that she found herself wanting, more and more, to finish.
“So how does Alec feel about your decision to return to law?”
“I don’t really know. We aren’t speaking right now.”
“Oh—I’m sorry, Mallory.”
“Are you?” she said, suddenly feeling remarkably sober.
He looked at her, and their eye lock was turbo-charged.
“No. Actually, I’m not.”
She shivered.
“It’s getting cold out here. I guess modern technology has its limits.” He held his hand out and helped her stand, arranging the blanket around her shoulders so it didn’t fall off. She had an overwhelming sense of being taken care of. It felt different—and it felt nice.
He opened a different set of glass doors than the ones they had used to get to the roof garden, and instead of returning to the living room, she found herself in his spacious master bedroom.
“This is beautiful,” she said, because really, what else was there to say? Maybe nothing. But she was too nervous to be silent.
He stood behind her and helped her off with her coat.
“Mallory,” he said quietly.
She turned to face him.
“I have to admit I still feel weird about this because you work for me.”
Mallory nodded to conv
ey that she heard him, but also because she had an epiphany: She realized she should be more proactive so he didn’t feel that he was the one hitting on her or taking advantage of someone who worked for him. She would have to put her nervousness aside, and take charge; he could be her boss in the boardroom, but she had to call the shots in the bedroom. It was the only way this relationship would work.
She put her arms around him and kissed him the way she had the other night in the office. He pulled her close and ran his hands up and down her body, eagerly cupping her breasts under her light sweater. His hands were cold but his touch was gentle, and as his fingers played with her nipples his kiss became more ardent.
He was shorter than Alec—most guys were—and this threw her off slightly. She decided it might be better to sit. She moved to the edge of the bed, and he followed her, his hands never leaving her body. It was a good thing he didn’t stop touching her—she hadn’t had sex with any guy aside from Alec in four years, and being on the verge of it made her nervous. Mallory was an overthinker, and the only thing that turned off her mind was turning on her body.
Gavin stretched out on the bed and took her hand, pulling her next to him. She lay down on her side and propped herself up on an elbow. Heart pounding, she undid his belt, and he helped her slide his pants down. He had great legs—long, lean, and muscular. She imagined them wrapped around her waist, then had a fleeting thought that she might not be able to go through with it. She wondered if he would think she was a tease if she just wanted to fool around a little, not have actual sex. Thinking of sex made her feel like she would be cheating on Alec, which was crazy for so many reasons, she knew. Or maybe once she and Gavin were fully in the moment, she would want to sleep with him.
Gavin pulled her close, and she felt him hard against her. She ran her hand lightly over his boxers, feeling his cock hard underneath the fabric. She slipped her fingers inside the opening and touched his bare flesh, his penis so warm against her hand it was practically throbbing. She couldn’t believe she was touching Gavin Stone like this.
He lifted her sweater to kiss her breasts, and she pulled the sweater off to give him quicker access to her body. His tongue ran over her nipples, followed by his hands. She moaned and unzipped her skirt, tugging it down along with her argylepatterned tights. She could barely remember what underwear she had put on that morning, and could hardly believe that she’d gotten dressed earlier that day having no idea that she’d be getting undressed in Gavin’s bed.
She glanced down at the lacy, pale coral Belabumbum boy shorts she was wearing. Thank God she’d done laundry on Sunday and wasn’t stuck with the dregs of her underwear drawer that morning.
Gavin looked at her.
“God, you’re flawless,” he said, his hand trailing from her breasts to her belly to the top of her underwear. From her vantage point, he was pretty damn perfect, too. She reached over and unbuttoned his shirt, then slid it off to reveal his magnificently proportioned shoulders, his muscled, nearly hairless chest, and his taut stomach. She knew he could have any woman in New York, and for some reason he wanted her. She was flattered, and her nerves slipped away. The perfectionist in her kicked in, and she wanted to impress him. She wanted to be worthy of his interest, to seduce him as much as she was being seduced.
He kissed her, his hand in her hair, then cradling the base of her head while his arms brought her closer to him. Their bodies pressed together, only their underwear between them. She could feel his cock so hard and defined between her legs; it was as if they weren’t wearing anything at all. But somehow the fact that there was still something left to remove made the press of their bodies all the more thrilling.
She pulled back slightly, adjusting herself so she had leverage to get on top of him. She straddled him, and he looked up at her with a sort of awe that she used to get from Alec. To be fair, sometimes she still got looks of passion and reverence from Alec, but they were more rare. Maybe guys could only look at women like that when things were new and exciting. When a relationship gelled into love and domesticity, it was hard to maintain that level of intensity. Maybe that was why Alec wanted other women sometimes; he missed looking at someone that way as much as she missed being looked at.
Mallory shook thoughts of Alec from her mind and, slipped off her panties one leg at a time. She tossed them aside, and Gavin immediately pressed his hand to the wetness between her legs. He touched her gingerly, his finger slow and almost uncertain inside the folds of her pussy lips. His hands weren’t as big as Alec’s, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to come as easily as she could from her lover’s touch, which was so practiced and perfect it was as if she were a Stradivarius in the hands of a master musician.
Stop thinking about Alec!
Again, she thought maybe Gavin was afraid to be too assertive because he didn’t want to do anything to offend her. He could only be sure she was okay with what was going on if she initiated everything.
Then she had an idea to unleash Gavin’s reserve once and for all.
She gently pressed his hand away—it wasn’t doing anything for her yet, and she’d rather just wait a minute and lower herself onto his gorgeous cock. She knew they would click. But first…
She leaned forward and grabbed her paper-thin cashmere sweater from the corner of the bed.
“Come back here,” Gavin said, smiling and pulling her gently back into place. Still holding her sweater, she leaned down and kissed him, then quickly wrapped the sweater around his eyes, a loose, bulky blindfold. She reached down to touch his cock—
“What the hell are you doing?” he snapped, pulling the sweater off his face and throwing it across the room.
“What’s wrong?” she said, jumping off him.
He looked at her like she’d just kicked his dog.
“What’s wrong? What do you think is wrong? Why don’t you tell me what you think you’re doing?”
“I’m, um, blindfolding you.”
“Yeah, I gathered that, Mallory.” His voice softened, but he spoke to her as if she were a child. “I can only overlook so much. It’s one thing to act slutty on a stage, but I don’t want these S&M antics in my home.”
Mallory sat back on her heels. She couldn’t have been more shocked if he had struck her.
Then she thought no, he must be joking. Please let him be joking.
“Very funny,” she said, though she was sure her face was drained of all color.
Gavin sat up. She couldn’t help peeking to see if he was still hard.
He wasn’t.
“I’m serious, Mallory. Maybe in your line of work you’re used to sleeping with guys who expect a show in the bedroom, but I’m not one of them. I like women who have a little class.”
Mallory couldn’t, in that moment, think of any reply to that—other than to tell him to fuck off. But considering he signed her paycheck, that probably wasn’t the best response. Although, was she really going to be able to work for him after this?
“I should go,” she said, fumbling around for her clothes. She felt more naked than she ever had on stage.
Poppy walked into the Cellar steeling herself against whatever Violet had in mind for her; no matter what she was offered, Poppy wasn’t buying.
The same girl sat behind the reception desk.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“I’m here to see Violet.”
Poppy took a seat on one of the red velvet couches. She wasn’t going through those double doors no matter what. If Violet wanted to speak with her, she could meet her in the reception area. Fortunately, she didn’t have to argue this point; Violet appeared from behind the doors, swinging a long, black trench coat over a purple and green old-fashioned barmaid frock, gartered white stockings, and five-inch, black patent leather Mary Janes.
“I’m checking out,” Violet said to the receptionist.
“Auf wiedersehen,” the girl said. Poppy smiled. Nothing like a little dominatrix humor.
“Where are we going? I don
’t have a lot of time,” Poppy said, as Violet hustled her out the door.
“Will you stop bitching and moaning. This won’t take long.”
They rode the elevator in silence. Poppy felt she could hear the cables squeaking and straining, and she was relieved when the doors opened into the dark lobby.
Outside, midtown bustled with the after-work and theater crowd. Poppy pulled her coat closed more tightly and thought about her marinade. She wished she’d never heard the name Violet Offender.
Violet steered her into a small Irish pub. She ordered two scotches and commandeered a booth in the corner. Two stockbroker types eyed them, and Violet gave them the finger.
“I don’t want this,” Poppy said, pushing the drink away. Violet shrugged, downed her drink, and then started on Poppy’s.
“So, I was having some thoughts. Big picture ideas. Since you seem pressed for time—though I can’t imagine what could be so interesting in your apartment—I’ll get right to it: I suggest you quit the Blue Angel.”
Poppy shook her head. “I don’t even want to know what is going on in that head of yours, but you’re out of your mind. I’m not leaving the Blue Angel. Agnes gave me my start, and it’s the best club in the city.”
Violet sighed and took Poppy’s hand. Poppy tried to pull it away, but Violet turned her wrist and put her thumb on her pulse. The odd gesture distracted Poppy from withdrawing from her touch.
“Agnes’s day is over. She just doesn’t realize it yet.” Violet said. “I’m going to make her realize it: I expect you to quit.”
Poppy laughed. “Why should I care what you expect?”
“If you don’t, I’ll cut you off. And I don’t think you’d last very long without what I’m giving you. That ugly dyke you have at home is certainly not taking care of business.”
