The vineyard was in Napa, a family estate that had been producing wine since before the Civil War. Our parents—her stepfather, my mother—had invited us for a “harvest weekend,” a celebration of the new vintage that involved tastings, tours, and the kind of forced proximity that made me want to drink everything in the cellar.
I was twenty-five. Sloane was twenty-seven. She was the estate manager, the heir apparent to the vineyard, and the woman who’d been avoiding me since the engagement party when she’d cornered me in the garden and kissed me until I forgot my own name.
Tonight was the tasting dinner. A formal affair with sommeliers and collectors and my mother playing hostess in pearls. I’d slipped away after the third glass of Merlot, claiming I needed air. Instead, I’d found the cellar stairs.
The cellar was three hundred years old. Stone walls that sweated in the humidity. Wooden racks that held bottles worth more than my car. A temperature that made my cream silk blouse feel like ice against my flushed skin.
“Your stepfather is upstairs pouring the Merlot,” I whispered, leaning against a stone archway, my wine glass trembling in my hand. “And I’ve had three glasses. I can’t feel my knees. I can’t think straight. And if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to do something that we’ll both regret when we’re sober.”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just stepped closer, her black fitted dress clinging to her body in the dim amber light, her hand finding the stone wall beside my head, her other hand sliding to my waist with a confidence that spoke of every bottle she’d opened, every vintage she’d tasted, every night she’d spent imagining this moment.
“If we don’t go up,” I breathed, my voice echoing in the stone corridor, “he’ll send someone down. The sommelier. My mother. And the stone walls echo. Every sound. Every gasp. Every time your hand slides higher under my skirt, the whole cellar will hear exactly what his daughter is doing to his wife’s daughter in the family wine cave—”
She took my wine glass. Lifted it from my trembling fingers with a gentleness that was completely at odds with the hunger in her eyes. She set it on the rack beside us—next to a 1947 Bordeaux that cost more than a year of my rent—and turned my face toward hers with a hand on my jaw.
Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like Cabernet and oak and the exact moment when three glasses of wine becomes an excuse for everything. Her tongue slid against mine, her hand sliding from my waist to my thigh, under my skirt, finding me wet and ready and completely drunk on something that had nothing to do with alcohol.
Footsteps on the stone stairs above.
“Ms. Voss?” The sommelier’s voice. Male. Professional. Completely unaware. “Your stepfather is asking for you. The collectors want to meet the estate manager.”
Sloane didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed deeper inside me, her thumb circling my clit, her mouth moving to my neck, biting hard enough to leave a mark that my silk collar wouldn’t hide.
“Let him hear the acoustics,” she whispered against my skin, her fingers moving faster, deeper, finding a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. “Let him wonder why his best vintage is making me moan. Let him come down and find us and know that his vineyard isn’t the only thing I’ve inherited.”
She made me come against the stone wall. Her fingers inside me, her mouth on my breast, my silk blouse pushed open, my cry echoing in the three-hundred-year-old cellar like a prayer to the wine gods. The orgasm was sharp, consuming, completely devastating—amplified by the cold stone against my back, the amber light, the knowledge that we were surrounded by bottles that had aged longer than we’d been alive.
After, she fixed my blouse. Smoothed my skirt. Picked up my wine glass and pressed it back into my hand.
“Drink,” she commanded. “You look flushed. And we have a tasting to finish.”
We went upstairs. Sloane shook hands with collectors. She discussed tannins and terroir with a voice that was perfectly steady, completely professional. And every time she looked at me across the room, her eyes said exactly what she’d done to me in the dark.
I still have the empty bottle from that night. Sloane signed the label. She wrote: Best vintage. Cellar-aged. Consumed in the dark.
I keep it on my nightstand. And every time I look at it, I remember the stone wall, the amber light, and the way she made me come while the wine aged around us.
