Taste of Cyn

This post has adult content. If you are under the age of eighteen years old or sensitive to adult language/situations, please do not read this post.

While we’re waiting for Sinful Rewards 1 to release (July 15th – You can pre-order it now!), I figured I’d shared the first scene.

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Chapter One

Forever can’t be purchased from a fast-talking street vendor outside Grant Park. Knowing this, I shouldn’t feel betrayed or even disappointed by my designer-knockoff purse’s deplorable state. I plunk the fake on the kitchen’s bright red countertop. Quality lasts. Everything else, including poorly crafted copies, is temporary.

When I purchased the small black messenger bag, only the most gifted fashionista could have distinguished it from the Ralph Lauren original. Months later, I’m not fooling anyone. The logo has fallen off and been glued back on twice. The faux leather is worn around the edges of the purse, exposing the white interior. The strap clings to one of the metal loops by six fragile threads.

I can’t do anything about the strap. When it finally snaps, my relationship with my purse will be over. I’ll have to throw the fashion essential away and buy a replacement. The faux leather is fixed with a black marker. I carefully trace the piping, thankful that Cyndi, my extremely wealthy roommate and hyperactive best friend, isn’t here to witness my purse doctoring.

She hasn’t yet returned from her Tuesday night drunkfest. Her bedroom door remains open, her lights are turned off, and the place is tidy. There are no high heels kicked haphazardly over the gleaming hardwood floor, no cute little designer jackets tossed on the breakfast nook’s custom-crafted bar stools, or candy-coated chocolate pieces skittered into every hard-to-reach corner of the room.

I long for these messes, for my best friend’s presence, the silence in the space echoing the strain in our relationship, the widening gap caused by our very different financial situations. As Cyndi’s token middle-class buddy, unable to pay for much more than the utilities on this luxurious condo, I’m often left home alone, excluded from shopping trips and fancy nights out.

Unless something changes, I’ll face a fate similar to my purse. I’ll be replaced and discarded.

I won’t allow that to happen. Not again.

I place the cap on the marker, return the dollar-store purchase to the painstakingly organized junk drawer, and move toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Our third-floor condo overlooks a tiny park wedged between three high-rise buildings. Neither the wrought iron fence nor the thick green hedge surrounding the green space impedes my view.

It’s a view any Chicago socialite would trade her string of Tiffany pearls to enjoy. Nicolas Rainer, the condominium complex’s enigmatic owner, sits on the wooden bench positioned closest to our condo, his traditional black wingtips planted solidly on the ground, his finely groomed head bent over one of his tablets.

Papers and electronic devices radiate from the left and right of his long, lean body. These are carefully arranged in the same pattern every morning, smallest to largest devices, lowest to highest stacks of paper. Today is Wednesday, which means one of the stacks consists of invoices, printed on thin yellow paper. Tomorrow is Thursday. There’s an additional stack of papers on Thursdays, widening the orbit around him.

The billionaire bachelor’s routine is the same every week, rigid, unbending, reassuringly consistent. It was Nicolas’s predictability that first snagged my attention, piquing my interest. In a world battered by broken promises and casual encounters, he’s a man a woman can depend on, can trust not to change.

Then I watched an old interview Cyndi found online, and I was lost. While my roommate mocked Nicolas’s curt, blunt responses, mimicking his voice and mannerisms, I saw the loneliness reflecting in his eyes, the hole in his soul. Having seen the same expression in my mirror, too many times, I knew we were meant for each other.

He’s mine. He simply doesn’t know it yet. I gaze at him with a warmth in my heart. The sun’s rays shine on Nicolas’s wavy black hair. Streams of gold dance over his fashion-model good looks, his high cheekbones, his deep even tan. His navy blue suit is formfitting, his white shirt immaculate, the design on his tie subtle. Light reflects off his metallic cuff links, adding a touch of shine, a hint of sparkle.

Nicolas frowns at the tablet, lines of concentration etched between his dark eyebrows. He’s likely working on another one of his projects. His net worth is mind-boggling, his financial success a source of legend. When he finally realizes I’m perfect for him and we marry, I won’t have to choose between helping my cash-strapped mom or indulging my love of fashion. I can do both, guilt-free.

And Nicolas will marry, maybe not tomorrow, but some day. His company develops properties, maintaining ownership of these prime locations forever. He’s lived in the condominium complex since it opened, worked with the same management team since he founded his company.

His personal relationships won’t be any less stable. I’m not in a rush to wed—I have my own career to establish—but I won’t waste my time on someone who is afraid of commitment. I won’t make my mom’s mistakes. It is forever or nothing for me.

I suspect Nicolas thinks the same way. There’s only one obstacle standing in our way—he doesn’t know I exist.

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Sinful Rewards 1

Cynthia Sax

Belinda “Bee” Carter is a good girl; at least, that’s what she tells herself. And a good girl deserves a nice guy—just like the gorgeous and moody billionaire Nicolas Rainer. He is everything she wants in a man.

Or so she thinks, until she takes a look through her telescope and sees a naked, tattooed man on the balcony across the courtyard. Hawke is mysterious, the bad boy she knows will bring only heartbreak. He has been watching her, and that makes him all the more enticing.

But when a mysterious and anonymous text message dares her to do something bad, she must decide if she is really the good girl she has always claimed to be, or if she’s willing to risk everything for her secret fantasy of being watched.

Is her mystery man the reclusive billionaire with a wild side or the darkly dangerous bad boy?

Buy Links:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sinful-Rewards-1-Cynthia-Sax-ebook/dp/B00I7V89H0

Barnes And Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sinful-rewards-1-cynthia-sax/1119055390

Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Cynthia_Sax_Sinful_Rewards_1?id=g08ZAwAAQBAJ

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/sinful-rewards-1/id814148703?mt=11