Page 52 of Suite 7

I lock the room. Shower. Change into dark jeans and a black henley.

At six forty-five, the intercom buzzes.

“Mr. Sinclair? Ms. Beckett is on her way up.”

My heart kicks.

“Thank you.”

A minute later, the elevator opens and Vera steps out in fitted jeans, ankle boots, and a soft cream sweater. She walks off it like she owns the building. But her hands give her away, fingers curled before she smooths them.

“Hi,” she says. Then reconsiders. “I mean, good evening, Sir.”

“Hi works fine.” I cross to her, take her jacket. “We’re not in a scene yet.”

“Yet.” She catches the word.

“Yet,” I confirm.

We sit down and negotiate at the kitchen table.

It’s not glamorous. It’s a yellow legal pad — hers, pulled from her bag, covered in handwritten questions — two glasses of water, and the city lights coming on outside the window. She sits across from me, legs tucked under her, pen in hand, and works through every item.

She asks about frequency, about how scenes outside Eclipse work, about what she’s allowed to expect from me between sessions. She asks about Sloane — how we manage it, what the plan is, whether I have one. I tell her the truth: not yet. I watch the answer cost her something. But she accepts it.

She asks about limits. Which are fixed, which can shift, what that process looks like.

She asks, carefully, about orgasm denial. The soft limit from her intake form.

“You’re nervous but curious,” I say, and watch her flush. “We won’t implement anything you haven’t understood and agreed to. It’s a tool, not a punishment. It builds trust in a specific direction, your body learning to wait for my signal. We’ll discuss it before it ever applies.”

She nods. Makes a note.

“And if I change my mind about something?” she asks.

“Renegotiation is always available. Nothing is locked in.”

She makes another note.

An hour. We spend an hour on this, and by the end her legal pad has two pages of notes and my handwriting alongside hers where we’ve settled on terms together. When she finally caps her pen and looks up, the line between her brows is gone.

“Okay,” she says simply.

“Okay,” I confirm.

She stands, legal pad tucked under her arm, when her eyes catch the shelf above the bar cart.

“Is that a cactus?”

She says it the way she’d say is that a grenade.

I look at it. “Yes.”

“You have a cactus.”

“I do.”

“’Kane.”’ She turns to face me fully, a slow grin spreading. “You have one plant in this entire apartment and it’s the only plant on earth that survives deliberate neglect.”