by M. S. Parker
My palms were sweating as I approached the studio. I wasn’t assuming or asking for anything, but I had two contracts with Alix, so I could walk in there without anything but work on my mind, and it wouldn’t be a lie.
Not entirely.
The door was locked when I reached it, but that wasn’t out of the norm. If Alix was focused on something, he didn’t always remember to check the time. I punched in the code he’d given me for instances such as this, then went inside.
I made it halfway across the main floor before I realized I wasn’t alone.
“Sine, right?”
A woman’s voice came from the couch. I mustered a polite smile as I turned to see Giselle lounging there. She had that fake casual thing going on, the kind that said it took a lot of work to be so nonchalant.
“Good morning, Giselle,” I said.
She fluttered her red tipped fingers at me. “When Alix heard my job was completed, he asked me to come back in and finish up his series.”
Was she talking about my series? The one he’d said I’d inspired? The one that he hadn’t been able to see anyone else doing?
“I’ll leave you two to it, then.” I nodded at her before turning and heading to my office.
Alix didn’t owe me anything. The contract for modeling had been at his discretion. Either one of us had the ability to end it whenever we wished. It was for that reason we had a second contract for my work as his assistant, so that even if he chose to discontinue the series, or it reached its natural conclusion, I would still have a job.
Giselle was a professional. It made sense that Alix would want to work with her. My own time in front of the camera had been a fluke, nothing more. I’d told myself that every time I was there, and I thought I’d been listening.
I never imagined how much it would sting to see Alix move to another model. Then again, it was coming as quite a surprise. If it had happened right after we slept together the first time, I would’ve thought that he’d gotten what he wanted. But we’d proven that sex hadn’t needed to change anything.
Or that’s what I’d thought, anyway.
But that wasn’t what I needed to focus on. I’d been gone yesterday, and I needed to get caught up on things. If I fell too far behind, I could lose this job too. And this was a job I was qualified to perform, one I liked and felt competent doing.
So, I did what I did best. I organized and filed and attended to all the little details that most people let fall through the cracks.
I flipped on the radio and tried not to think about what Alix and Giselle were doing on the other side of my door. A door I’d closed on the off chance that they were saying things I didn’t want to hear.
Like how foolish Alix had been to think that I could give him the sort of quality work that could compare to anything Giselle could provide.
I didn’t think Alix would be cruel, but an admission such as that, no matter how kindly spoken, would still hurt. Better to keep my dignity through ignorance than be hurt by some innocuous remark from someone I’d come to consider, at the very least, a friend.
The hours crept by as I struggled to keep from glancing at the clock every five minutes. By the time eleven o’clock came, I couldn’t wait any longer for lunch. I needed to get some air.
I felt a bit childish, opening the door a crack and listening, but I didn’t want to risk walking out into something that would only lead to embarrassment for all involved. When I didn’t hear anything, I ventured out, not taking my usual care to keep my steps as quiet as possible so as not to disturb Alix when he was working. I preferred to err on the side of giving them time to finish whatever it was they were doing, professionally or otherwise.
I didn’t see Alix when I entered the main studio area, but Giselle was difficult to miss. She lay sprawled out on the pillows in the usual staging area, those ebony curls of hers spread out, and every inch of her perfect skin visible.
So much for not taking nudes.
“I hope we didn’t bother you,” Giselle said with a self-satisfied smile. “Things were getting a bit...noisy out here, what with all the moving things around.”
“I had the radio on,” I said, keeping my tone even.
“Are you going for lunch?” she asked, lazily stretching her arms above her head.
“Do you or Alix want anything?” I asked, refusing to react to her attempts at baiting me into making a scene.
“Well, we did work up an appetite,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk. “But I’m not sure if he’s ready to take a break yet.”
“I’ll ask him myself,” I said, my stomach clenching at yet another innuendo. “Just to be sure.”
She shrugged, then stretched lazily, her full breasts rising and falling. “He’s in the bathroom cleaning up. Well, that and making sure I didn’t draw blood.” She wiggled her fingers at me, manicured nails painted a rich crimson. “I may have gotten a little carried away. You understand how that goes, right?”
My stomach heaved. She had to be guessing because Alix never would have told her that he and I had slept together. Unless it’d been brought up in the context of how he moved on from me so sex with her wouldn’t be stepping on anyone’s toes. Maybe I’d had it all wrong from the beginning. Maybe Alix had been playing me from moment one and Giselle was looking out for me.
Either way, I refused to show either of them how my insides were being torn up.
“If either of you changes your mind and want me to bring something back for you, just give me a call.” I made my words even and mild, without a hint of what was lurking below the surface of my skin. Then I turned and walked away, my pace deliberately unhurried, as if I wasn’t dying to rush outside so I didn’t risk seeing Alix.
I’d known this was a bad idea from the beginning, so I didn’t have anyone to blame but myself. The only bright side I could see was that Mam wouldn’t be able to give me her usual I told you so.
It didn’t prevent me from hearing the words echo through my head anyway, each one reminding me of how I screwed up.
Eighteen
Alix
“What the hell did you do?”
I blinked. “Have we progressed past civilized greetings now, Jean?”
Her voice didn’t soften any. “When you do exactly the opposite of what I ask you to do, yes, I move past being civilized.”
I was thoroughly confused, but I took a moment to watch the town car disappear around the corner before turning away from the window.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I picked up the wine glasses and carried them to the sink while I waited for an explanation.
“You have no idea why I got a call from your assistant slash model telling me that you’ll need a new assistant, and that she doesn’t plan to sign the release papers for the photos you’ve already taken?”
I frowned. “What?”
“That’s exactly what I said.”
Her words ran through my brain again, but I didn’t understand them anymore this time than I had the first time.
“I’m serious, Jean. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I’d intended to clear the table while I was on the phone, but now all I could think was that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” I suggested.
Jean let out a huff of air. “Sine McNiven. The assistant you didn’t want. The one I told you to behave yourself with. The one you decided to turn into a half-naked model.”
“I know who she is,” I snapped.
“Good,” Jean snapped right back, “because I was starting to wonder if you’d hit your head or been on drugs or something.”
A little flare of panic went off. Jean had always been tough, and she’d never put up with any shit from me, but I’d never heard her like this before. She was genuinely pissed at me.
“What happened to Sine?” I found my fingers tightening on my phone.
“She called me about twenty minutes ago
and said that she wouldn’t be able to work for you anymore, that she was sorry, but you would need to find a new assistant. When I asked her why, she said that she realized it’s not a good fit.”
Not a good fit? What the hell did that mean?
“Then she said that she had second thoughts about posing for you, that her religious mother would have a heart attack if she ever found out about it.”
“And you just let her hang up after that?”
Silence.
I backpedaled. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”
“Yes, it was.”
“This is all just catching me off-guard,” I admitted. “I wasn’t in the studio today, and she called in sick yesterday.”
“Where were you today?”
“My parents came to the city to surprise me.” I ran my hand through my hair. Was it possible that less than fifteen minutes ago, I’d seen them off? It seemed like a lifetime had passed. “I put a note on the studio door. I figured that Sine would appreciate another day off since she wasn’t feeling well.”
“So, you didn’t do anything to piss her off?”
“Not that I know of.” I racked my brain, trying to think of anything I could have possibly done to make Sine want to quit. “We were fine the last time I saw her.”
“When was that?”
“Friday afternoon, when we left the studio.” I didn’t even have to think to know the answer.
After our Thursday session...encounter...whatever label I gave it, I’d worried that Friday would be awkward, but it’d felt fine to me. I’d been tempted to push my luck and kiss her again, coax her into sleeping with me again, but she’d looked exhausted, so I simply smiled and told her to rest up.
“And you said she was sick yesterday?”
“Most of the weekend, based on the voicemail she left me. She looked tired on Friday.”
Jean sighed. “And you didn’t talk to her directly? Not since Friday. When she started feeling sick. Seriously, Alix?”
She had that same sort of exasperated sound that my mother got when I did something stupid.
“Do you call all of your employees at home if you think they’re sick?” I asked, disliking the defensive tone in my words.
There was a beat of silence before she spoke again. This time, however, her voice was soft. “She’s not just any employee though, is she?”
My chest tightened. Jean was right. Sine wasn’t just another model, or some random person hired to organize things for me. She wasn’t my girlfriend, but she deserved to have someone look after her. And I hadn’t done that.
Fuck.
I knew better.
The very core of being a good Dom was taking care of my submissive, and I hadn’t done that. It didn’t matter that we’d only been together a few times and that we weren’t a couple. She was more than some random fuck at Gilded Cage, or some girl I hired to pose for me.
“And she didn’t say why she was quitting?” I ran my hand through my hair. “I mean, she didn’t say that I did something...wrong?”
“No,” Jean admitted. “But I figured you must have because I didn’t believe for a minute that she hadn’t thought it all through before signing.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“So, you did do something.”
Yes. I fucked her. More than once. In kinky ways. And I wanted to do more.
“No,” I lied.
“Then you better get your ass over to her place, apologize, and get her back.”
I scowled even as I looked for my shoes. “I said I didn’t do anything.”
“And I’ve turned forty-five for the past decade.”
I couldn’t remember Sine’s address. “Shit.”
“I’m hoping that’s because you know you screwed up and not as a commentary on my age.” Jean’s voice was dry, but didn’t sound pissed anymore, so that was good.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “I just have to find my phone. I have Sine’s address in it and now I can’t–”
“You’re talking on it.”
I closed my eyes. “Yes. Yes, I am. Sorry, my parents showing up just really threw me.”
“If you want to pretend that’s what it is, I won’t stop you.”
“Jean...”
“Let Sine know that I won’t be calling around for any replacements unless she comes in to see me herself.”
The call ended, leaving me staring at the phone and wondering when the hell my life had completely spun out of control.
Nineteen
Sine
When I’d gone back to the studio, Giselle and Alix had been nowhere to be seen, so I’d just gone to my office and done the work I’d been hired to do. The whole time, my brain had been going round and round with all sorts of ideas about what my next move should be. Alix hadn’t done anything wrong, so I had no right to be angry at him. Things had been perfectly clear regarding our roles.
That didn’t stop me from being hurt though. Hurt that I’d been replaced. That the things I thought we both felt hadn’t existed. Or, rather, that they’d been one-sided.
All of that was my fault though. I was the one who’d thought Alix and I had been moving toward something real. And I hadn’t even admitted that to myself until I’d seen Giselle.
By the time I’d gotten home, I’d known I couldn’t subject Alix to whatever awkwardness I’d bring to work because of my own errors in judgment. He already had his new model. He didn’t need my pictures, and he didn’t need me.
I wouldn’t have the money for a visit home now, but maybe a longer venture back was in my future. My lease would be up soon, and if I didn’t find a roommate or a better paying job, I’d need to worry about where to live. And if I couldn’t find a job, I’d be shipped back to Balbriggan.
But that was a problem for tomorrow.
Today, I intended to enjoy my stew and biscuits. Take a hot bath. Do some reading.
And not think about Alix Wexler one single bit.
My resolve lasted until the moment someone knocked on my door, and I heard his voice.
“Sine, we need to talk.”
Dammit.
I couldn’t bring myself to be rude when he’d done nothing wrong, so I opened the door and gestured for him to come inside. I didn’t look at him though. I wasn’t ready for that just yet. I needed a moment to compose myself. I hadn’t planned on seeing him today.
I was just glad I hadn’t done my bath yet because I would have felt a lot more vulnerable than I already did. I was still wearing the skirt and blouse I’d worn to work this morning, my only concession to comfort was my lack of shoes.
“Why’d you quit?”
No small talk. Straight to the point.
At least this would be short.
I took a deep breath and tried to keep it all as simple as possible. “I told Ms. Holloman that I was willing to work until she found someone new, so I’ll have everything organized and in place for whoever comes next.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” He took a step toward me. “And you’re not just my assistant.”
“You made the right call.” I tried a different approach. “Rehiring Giselle now that she’s finished with her prior engagement. I’m sure she’ll be perfect for the series.”
“Giselle?” He frowned, the look on his face so completely baffled that I wondered if perhaps I’d gotten things wrong.
“She and I spoke earlier today,” I continued. “She explained things, and I don’t wish for you to feel awkward about changing your mind. I thought leaving–”
“Sine.”
I shivered at the way he said my name. No one should be allowed to make two syllables sound like that.
“Start at the beginning.”
Why couldn’t he just let it go?
I sighed and did as he asked. “When I arrived at the studio this morning, Giselle was there. She told me that her previous job was done and that you’d asked her to come back to finish the series.” I kept my voice level and flat. I
t was a recitation of facts, nothing more.
“Sine, I didn’t–”
“It’s all right,” I cut him off. “And I’m sorry for not telling you directly. You were just...otherwise occupied when I left for lunch, and then neither of you were there when I came back–”
It was his turn to interrupt. “I wasn’t there at all.”
I stopped, mouth open as whatever I’d been planning to say died before it could get out. It took me a moment before I was able to ask, “What?”
He took another step toward me, his hand coming out to lightly touch my arm. “I was with my parents all day today. I left a message.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t get a text from you.”
A sheepish expression crossed his face. “I misplaced my phone.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I know,” he said. “It sounds like some sort of con, but I promise that it’s not. Last night, I was doing some re-arranging at my place, and I misplaced my phone. I didn’t realize it until my parents showed up here for a surprise visit, but I didn’t find it again until a couple hours ago.”
The light in his eyes was so earnest, I wanted to believe him. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I still had questions.
“I swear, Sine, on the way to breakfast, I stopped at the studio and put a note on the door saying you could have the day off. Giselle must have removed the note.” He scowled. “I won’t be working with her again.”
“How did she get inside then?” I asked.
“I give models guest codes that I usually remove once the job’s done. I must have forgotten to remove hers since her contract ended early.”