Sean’s phone buzzed incessantly on the bedside table. He pulled his head out from under the pillow and could tell it was barely dawn. Who the fuck is calling this early? He didn’t recognize the number, but could tell it was local.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice gruff with sleep.

“Sean? It’s Bill.”

“Bill?” Your lawyer calling you before eight in the morning is never a good sign. “Why … why are you calling this early?”

“I’m in New York, it’s nearly lunch time. Did I wake you? There’s a new D.A.” Bill didn’t even wait for Sean to respond.

“Yeah? So?”

“So he’d known for being a hardass. Look, I know I told you everything was under control, sympathetic judge and all that. The judge part is still true.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m telling you this new D.A. might make trouble, if he’s so inclined.”

“But I wasn’t even the one driving—”

“I know that,” Bill said with an exhausted sigh. “But you were both totally wasted in that car. Those B.A.C. levels were off the charts. Cocaine in Ashton’s system—”

“But I was clean. Of drugs,” Sean said.

“Yeah, you were clean, and your B.A.C. was lower than his. That might make it worse.”

“Worse? How?”

“He could argue that you were in a right enough state of mind that you should have been the one taking care of Ashton. And the coke found in the car? I know you said it was Ashton’s. I believe you. Hell, I’m sure a jury would believe you if it came to that. But there’s no way to prove it.”

“What … what do you mean?”

“I mean the D.A. might argue the coke was yours, that you encouraged Ashton to get high, and for whatever reason you just hadn’t taken any yet. Maybe he’ll argue you just hadn’t got around to it—after all, there was coke all over that goddamned car. Pretty evident that he was taking it right there. He might try to argue you’re a dealer and got Ashton hooked, but don’t get high on your own supply.”

“What?”

“Look, I don’t know what his angle is yet, Sean. I just found out about the new D.A. this morning. I just wanted to warn you. It’s possible he might try to pin this whole thing on you.”

“So … what now?”

“Just hang tight. I’ll figure this out.”

Bill hung up while he started to yell for a cab. Sean was readily alert. What the fuck? His head spun and he rubbed his temples. What now? Nothing. Nothing now. Now you wait.

Shit, and he’d planned that rooftop date tonight, too. Sean couldn’t disappoint Harper. Besides, maybe dressing up and whisking her away to the roof of The Monalban for the Rooftop Cinema Club was just what he needed.

“You ready for tonight?” he texted her.

“Yes, I’m excited,” she said. “What’s playing?”

“You’ll see, sweetheart.”

Sean spent the day doing whatever it took to keep his mind off the call with Bill. By the time he needed to shower and get ready for his date with Harper, he’d gone through every possible scenario. It wouldn’t be manslaughter, so that was good. What was the worst sentence they could pile on him?

“What should I wear?” Harper’s text waited for him when he stepped out of the shower. He liked that, how she’d so easily transitioned into waiting for his daily instructions.

“A long skirt, it might get cold. And a thin top, no bra.” Evenings in California could get chilly. The idea of playing with her hard nipples as the massive screen lit up the audience got him hard.

Harper lounged on the patio chair when he pulled up. She’d done well. The long black maxi skirt swirled around her sandaled feet and the thin, white Hanes tank top might as well have been transparent. “I brought a scarf, just in case,” she said. “I hope that’s okay. It’s just that … this shirt …”

He leaned over and kissed her. “It’s perfect.”

The valet at the hotel rushed his door while another struggled to keep his eyes off Harper’s chest as he helped her out. “Here for the rooftop film?” the valet asked.

“Yes,” Sean said. He slipped the valet a twenty. “Make it so there’s no wait when we’re finished.”

“Yes, sir,” the valet said. Sean furrowed his brow. He’d grown used to only hearing those words from Harper.

She took in the stunning lobby filled with couples who clung closely to each other. “Look,” Sean said with a nod. An otherwise plain couple stood closely together by the elevators. The woman held a thin swatch of leather in her fist. A chain attached to it led to a dog collar wrapped around her date’s neck.

“What exactly are we seeing?” Harper asked.

He pulled the tickets out of his leather jacket and handed it to her.

“The Secretary,” she said. “I can’t believe they’re showing it in such a … normal venue.”

Sean shrugged. “I know you liked it,” he said. “It’s not exactly groundbreaking in the world of BDSM, but it could be worse.”

She laughed and elbowed him gently. “Don’t pretend like it’s not a good movie.”

“It’s alright,” he conceded. “Especially for the time, it was certainly more accurate than other mainstream films. I could go with a different actress than Maggie Gyllenhaal, though.”

“What? She’s hot!”

“She’s kind of dopy looking. And too skinny.” The words were out before he caught them. He saw Harper draw in a breath, but she didn’t say anything.

“These tickets don’t have seat numbers. Is it open seating? We should hurry,” she said.

“They don’t have seat numbers because we’re in a private booth.”

“Private? I … didn’t know these kinds of things have private booths.”

“They don’t,” he said. “But they can for the right amount of money.”

“Oh.” She flushed and looked down.

“Honestly, I was going to book a private rooftop viewing of The Secretary for just the two of us,” he said. “But when I saw an advertisement for it happening anyway, I got to thinking …”

“Thinking what?”

“Why fuck you on a rooftop to your favorite movie, just the two of us, when I can get you off surrounded by dozens of strangers?”

She blushed and Sean was aware that his voice carried. The woman who clutched the dog collar looked over at them and smiled.

“So … where are the seats then?”

“You’ll see.”

A makeshift private box with a balcony had been created to Sean’s specifications. It perched ten feet above the crowd, just high enough to allow some privacy—but not so far away that they couldn’t eavesdrop on conversations. All the crowd had to do was turn around and they could make out whatever Sean did to her.

As James Spader told Maggie Gyllenhaal to lean over the desk for the first time, Sean pulled the long silky skirt up Harper’s legs. Every time Spader spanked Gyllenhaal, Sean flicked a finger through Harper’s wetness. Her nipples hardened more, jutted through the thin material.

By the time Gyllenhaal had positioned herself in the leather executive chair, drowned in a wedding dress, he’d brought Harper to orgasm four times. Every time she reached for his cock, he gently brushed her away.

“Who’s to say that love needs to be soft and gentle?” asked the priest who came to take Gyllenhaal away from the desk. Even as she thirsted from dehydration. Even as she pissed herself to prove her devotion.

As the characters descended the hidden stairs from the law office to Spader’s secret bedroom, Sean pulled Harper close. Gyllenhaal was bathed by hand in the copper tub and laid out on the bed made of grass. While she told Spader the story of each cutting scar, Sean thought of Harper’s own body secrets. The ones he’d started to unravel.

The marks he inflicted on her were temporary. The ones she inflicted on herself were invisible for most, especially in L.A.

But he’d started to notice. He realized he’d rarely seen her eat by choice, though she ate the exact amounts of food he demanded. The curves he’d first fallen for were built in the gym, not fat but muscle. And that ant’s waist, so incredibly small, he’d realized was due to a permanently empty stomach. Sean longed to fill Harper, wholly, completely. Beyond what happened in the bedroom.

Lizzie West’s “Chariots Rise” swelled across the rooftop, and Gyllenhaal asked Spader endless questions. A quest to know everything about him. “Where were you born?” “Des Moines, Iowa.”

They watched the character melt into the familiarity of daily living. The housewife, the lawyer who goes off to the office. The marriage in a vacant field. A black wedding dress. A tied-up fuck against an oak tree for consummation.

The dead cockroach was flung onto the bed, a token and a call for a night of unorthodox play. “Harper,” Sean whispered into her ear. “I … feel something. For you. Something more than can be explained by the … chemistry between us.”

She looked up at him in the dark. The light from the film cast a glow across her face. The murmurs from the crowd, the small munches of popcorn, filled the silence. “I feel the same,” she said.

He could see the truth in her eyes, knew she meant it. It looked like she wanted to say more, like there were critical words in her throat. She opened her mouth, but then seemed to think better of it.

They stayed in their private little box above the world, suspended in the night sky, until the end of the credits.