The Voss Gallery was a converted warehouse in Chelsea, white walls and polished concrete and the kind of silence that made every whisper feel like a shout. I’d been collecting art for five years — small pieces, emerging artists, works that spoke to me in a language I couldn’t quite translate. And tonight, the piece I’d been hunting was finally within reach.
The Red Hour by Lena Volkov. Abstract. Violent. Beautiful. Estimated at $80,000. More than I had. But I’d secured a loan. I’d done the math. I was going to walk out with that painting if it killed me.
Sloane Voss was my personal nightmare. Twenty-nine. An heiress who collected art the way other people collected handbags — indiscriminately, expensively, completely without taste. Or so I’d thought. She’d outbid me on three pieces in the last year. A sculpture in March. A photograph in June. A sketch in September. Each time, she’d looked at me across the auction floor with an expression that was part amusement, part challenge, part something I couldn’t name.
Tonight, she was standing beside me in front of The Red Hour, wearing a white blazer that should have been illegal, her blonde hair pinned back, her hand on the wall like she already owned the building.
“You outbid me on the last three pieces,” I whispered, not looking away from the canvas. The red swirls seemed to move in the gallery light, pulsing like a heartbeat. “The gallery director is watching. And you hate my taste. You’ve said so. In the papers. At the last auction. You called my collection ‘derivative.’ You called me ‘a teacher playing at patron.'”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned in, her cheek brushing my ear, her hand sliding from the wall to my lower back, her thumb tracing circles on my spine through the silk of my red dress.
“If you kiss me here,” I breathed, my bidding paddle trembling in my hand, “you’re not stealing my collection. You’re stealing my sanity. My reputation. My ability to walk into this gallery and pretend I don’t want you to ruin me in front of a painting that cost more than my apartment. You’re proving that you can have everything — the art, the attention, me — and I can’t stop you.”
She turned my face toward her with a hand on my jaw. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like acrylic and rivalry and the exact moment when an enemy claims her prize. It was slow, victorious, completely devastating — her tongue sliding against mine, her hand sliding from my lower back to my hip, then lower, finding the slit in my dress.
The gavel tapped.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the auctioneer’s voice echoed through the gallery. “We will begin with lot 47. The Red Hour.”
Sloane didn’t pull away. She just pressed her palm over my mouth, her other hand sliding inside the slit of my dress, finding my thigh, my hip, the lace of my underwear. She guided me backward, into the back row, behind a pillar where the lights didn’t reach and the cameras couldn’t see.
“Bid,” she whispered against my ear, her fingers sliding inside my underwear, pressing against me with a confidence that made my vision blur. “Keep your paddle up. And don’t make a sound when I make you come.”
I bid. I raised my paddle — $80,000, $85,000, $90,000 — while Sloane’s fingers moved inside me, her thumb circling my clit, her mouth on my neck, biting hard enough to leave a mark that my red dress would hide but I would feel for days. The auctioneer called numbers. The crowd murmured. And I came silently, violently, my cry swallowed by Sloane’s palm, my body shaking, the paddle falling from my hand.
“Sold!” The gavel crashed. “To Ms. Voss for $120,000.”
Sloane fixed my dress. Smoothed my hair. Picked up my paddle and handed it back to me.
“I’m buying the painting,” she whispered, her eyes locked on mine. “And I’m taking you with it. Because you were right — I do want everything. And what I want most is the woman who fights me for every piece.”
She hung The Red Hour above her bed. She invited me to see it. I went because I was weak, because I was angry, because I wanted to know what kind of woman spent $120,000 on a painting and then used it as a backdrop for seduction.
I found out. Sloane made me come in front of that painting six times that night. She said the red matched my dress. She said the swirls matched my heartbeat. She said she’d outbid me on those three other pieces because she’d wanted my attention, and she hadn’t known how else to get it.
We’re rivals still. We still bid against each other. But now, when the auction ends, we go home together. To her apartment. To my apartment. To the bed where The Red Hour hangs above us, watching, pulsing, reminding us that the best collections are the ones you fight for.
