The estate was a vineyard in Napa, the kind with a stone cellar that went three levels underground and a main house that hosted dinner parties for Silicon Valley billionaires. I’d been married to Richard for five years — he was the host, the collector, the man who bought wine by the case and never tasted a single note.
Sloane was the sommelier. Twenty-eight. She’d been hired for the season, and she had a way of describing wine that made me forget my own name. She wore black vests over white shirts and had a silver tasting cup on a chain around her neck, and she had a habit of looking at me across the dinner table like I was a rare vintage she intended to sample.
Tonight was the gala dinner. Twelve guests. Seven courses. And Richard had sent me to the cellar to “fetch the Sauternes.”
Sloane had followed me.
“My husband is pouring the Bordeaux upstairs,” I whispered, leaning against the stone rack in my cocktail dress — emerald green, backless, completely wrong for a cellar. The air was cold, damp, scented with oak and age. Sloane was in front of me, her hands on my waist, her tasting cup cold against my collarbone. “The dinner party is seated. Twelve guests. The first course is being served. And your hands are on my waist, not the wine list. You’re supposed to be fetching the Sauternes. Not touching me. Not pressing me against the ’47 Burgundy. Not—”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned in, her cheek brushing my jaw, her hand sliding from my waist to the slit in my dress, her fingers tracing my thigh with a precision that was completely devastating.
“If the butler comes down for the ’82 vintage,” I breathed, my voice trembling as her fingers slid higher, “he’ll see the sommelier with her hands inside the host’s wife’s dress. He’ll see your vest open and your mouth on my neck and the racks of bottles hiding us from the world and he’ll know that the wine isn’t the only thing being uncorked tonight. He’ll know that while my husband pairs the cheese course, his wife is being tasted by the woman who knows exactly how to handle a vintage.”
She turned my face toward her with a hand on my jaw. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like oak and tannins and the exact moment when a cellar becomes a sanctuary. Her tongue slid against mine, her hand sliding down my stomach, into my dress, finding me wet and ready and completely at her mercy.
The cellar door opened.
Footsteps on stone. The butler’s voice — James, sixty, proper, completely unaware.
“Mrs. Voss? Mr. Voss sent me for the ’82 Margaux. Are you down here?”
Sloane didn’t pull away. She just pressed her other hand over my mouth, her fingers still moving inside me, her eyes locked on mine in the dim amber light.
“The best wines need to breathe,” she whispered against my ear, her thumb circling my clit, her fingers pressing deeper as the temperature control beeped above us. “And I’m about to take your breath away. So be still. Be silent. And let me show you why the French call it le petit mort.”
She made me come against the stone rack. Her fingers inside me, her mouth on my breast, the bottles rattling with my shaking, the cellar air turning my gasps into ghosts. I came with her hand over my mouth, my cry swallowed by the stone, my body arching into the ’47 Burgundy.
“Mrs. Voss?” James again, closer.
“Just comparing vintages, James!” Sloane called out, her voice perfectly steady, completely professional. “Give us two minutes!”
“Of course.”
After, she fixed my dress. Selected the Sauternes. Kissed my forehead.
“The dessert wine,” she said, handing me the bottle.
I carried it upstairs. Richard poured it. The guests toasted. And when Sloane described the notes — “honey, apricot, and something indefinably wild” — she looked only at me.
I still host the dinners. Richard still collects wine. And every party, I find a reason to go to the cellar. Sloane finds me. She uncorks me. She tastes me. And she always says I’m the finest vintage in the house.
She’s right. I improve with age. And I’m only getting better.
