Ali
D ad throws a Tuesday poker night and a fancy dinner party on Thursday, but the next big event is on Saturday. That’s how our holiday seasons go each year: smaller events in the week, little blips to keep Dad happy and keep tongues wagging about the Wainwright social calendar, and then on the weekends… it’s carnage.
Tonight’s party is themed. A masquerade. All the guests are dressed in priceless gowns and tailored tuxedos, glittering with wealth and swarming through the mansion like a perfumed tide, hungry for drama behind their masks.
Music throbs and clothes rustle; laughter rumbles and women shriek. The energy tonight is itchy, restless. People are anonymous, and they want to misbehave.
Me? I’m popping bottle after bottle of champagne in the kitchen, topping up glasses for the guests. Normally, you’d expect a party like this to have swarms of staff on hand, but not at a Wainwright function. There’s just me, or folks serve themselves.
That’s part of the promise: the privacy thing. No risk of stray phones or leaks to the press from some gossipy college student working a pop up bar. Once in a while a guest will complain, but not for long. Not when they see how wild things get when everyone can finally let loose, unwatched.
“Another drink, sir?”
“Can I top you up, miss?”
“Champagne?”
My face feels waxy from smiling below my mask, but at least serving drinks passes the time. It makes Dad happy, too. And it keeps me in the brightly lit kitchen, away from shadowy corners and groping hands, right where Saxon can keep an eye on me.
Saxon.
Biting hard on my lip, I pour another glass of champagne. Every time I feel the head of security’s eyes on me tonight, warm shivers coast under my skin. Is he near?
“Having a good night, sweetheart?”
Dad’s glowing from booze, his bald head shiny with sweat, and his steps are a little wobbly as he swaggers toward me in the kitchen. He’s dressed in a white tuxedo with a black pocket square and bow tie, and his mask looks like a white wolf. There are lipstick marks on his neck, too, but I forcibly wipe those from my brain.
“Sure. Want another drink?”
There’s no point telling my Dad I’d rather be holed up in my bedroom all night than down here serving, like when I was a teenager. Reading fan fiction for my favorite TV shows and snacking on a big bowl of popcorn.
He knows. I’ve told him a hundred times, but he insists that I come to these parties regardless. Says it’s about showing a united Wainwright family front.
Except… what is so united about him wandering off with some strange woman for most of the night, or gallivanting with his guests, while I serve drinks in the kitchen? Our masks don’t even match. His is a wolf, and mine is a black kitty cat.
The next glass I pour is sloppy, my movements jerky with resentment, and bubbly fluid sloshes onto the kitchen tiles by our feet.
“Whoops,” Dad says cheerfully, reaching back to grab a cloth from near the sink. I open my mouth to thank him for cleaning up, but then he nudges the cloth into my hand. “Better wipe that up before someone slips. Thanks, sweetheart.”
By the time I crouch down carefully in my tight gray dress and heels, gripping the marble counter for balance, Dad is long gone. Doesn’t he realize how hard this is in this outfit? Would it have killed him to help?
Two large black leather shoes stride across the kitchen tiles, coming to a stop mere inches away. Just like that, my bad mood melts away like a spring frost, and I’m already grinning when Saxon squats beside me.
“Give me that,” he mutters, plucking the cloth from my hand. He swipes it across the puddle, mopping up the spilled champagne with cranky movements. “Who are you, Cinderella? Jesus Christ.”
He’s not mad at me , he’s pissed off at Dad. God, I love when Saxon gets grumpy on my behalf, bristling with irritation behind his short beard. It’s such a thrill.
And I’ve missed him this week. He’s barely looked in my direction since our secret K-I-S-S, even if it was the most chaste peck on the lips the world has ever seen. Dad probably wouldn’t even care if he knew, and yet Saxon acts like we got busy in the backseat of that borrowed SUV.
If only.
But I can’t be mad that he’s avoiding me, because he blushes too. Every time I’ve walked past Saxon this week, his cheeks have flushed pink above his beard. It’s the cutest freaking thing I’ve ever seen.
“Hello, stranger,” I purr at him, laughing when Saxon flushes around the edges of his mask. On Dad’s orders, even the security team are wearing masks tonight—plain black and utilitarian, but masks all the same.
Saxon shoots me a look as he scrubs the tiles. “Behave.”
There go those warm shivers again, coasting down my limbs; there’s that excited, fizzy feeling in my stomach. When Saxon holds out a hand to help me stand up, I cling to his strong fingers like I’ll never let go. The swooping sense of vertigo I get—that’s not head rush from standing up too quickly. No, sir.
That’s all Saxon. Being near him again, feeling his heat. Smelling the soap on his skin.
And maybe I won’t let go. Maybe I’ll climb this man like a lemur scaling a tree, and I’ll wrap myself around his big trunk and refuse to ever be peeled off again. Maybe I’ll live up there on his broad shoulders, or make a nest in his beard.
“son,” Saxon says in warning when I just stand there, holding his hand.
Huffing, I let go and step back.
Reality bites.
“You can’t avoid me forever, you know.” Smoothing the front of my gray dress, I try to keep my tone light and teasing. Try to hide my mounting frustration, and how badly I miss this man with each passing day. How haunted I am by our forbidden brush of lips. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I seem to attract trouble at these parties. You’ll be swooping in to save me again any minute.”
Saxon growls something under his breath, but I don’t catch it. Not with the thumping music and the shrieks of laughter drifting in from the terrace, and the bodies surging in and out of the kitchen like waves breaking over the shore.
“What?” I say, squinting up at our head of security. Shoot, he looks so handsome tonight with his dark hair combed back and his broad shoulders pressing against his suit, looming over me like a grumpy, gorgeous giant. An earpiece crackles in his ear, but Saxon rolls his neck and ignores it. His eyes are piercing gray behind his mask.
“I said, you might as well stay close to me, then. Save me time.”
His words are casual, but his posture is tense. And… oh, I get it. This is bothering Saxon more than usual—the crowds of strangers; the wandering hands and hungry eyes. We may have barely kissed, but is that a possessive glint in his steely gaze? Is that a jealous set to his jaw?
Works for me. Oh hell yeah, that works for me.
“Okay,” I say brightly, and Saxon flinches like this wasn’t his suggestion. “I’ll stay close, you big grump. But you have to promise me one thing.”
“Mm?” He’s already leading me from the kitchen, one big paw wrapped around my wrist. I totter after him in my stupid heels, beaming from ear to ear, because this is seriously no hardship. Staying close to Saxon? That’s my dream.
“You have to promise not to fall in love with me,” I say, quoting one of my favorite comfort movies as he leads us through the press of people.
Saxon doesn’t bother with a reply, tugging me along faster. Maybe he didn’t hear.
* * *
“Masks seriously make people go loopy,” I observe, sitting on the fifth stair in the mansion lobby. It’s one of those big staircases that splits off in two directions on the next floor, and a gold length of tinsel has been draped across it halfway up between the bronze metal banisters, ‘discouraging’ the guests from going upstairs.
Like that stops anybody from doing anything. They’re here to misbehave. If anything, telling these guests they can’t do something is like waving a red flag at a bull.
Still, it’s quieter in this part of the house, the music drifting in from other rooms. Whenever guests burst through the lobby doorways, their heels clacking against the hardwood floor, Saxon and I watch them like we’re on safari.
Some of the guests are too wrapped up in each other to notice us, kissing each other fiercely, clothes tugged into disarray. One couple in the corner is a heartbeat away from doing it, right here in the lobby, with the woman’s dress shrugged down around her waist and her bare boobs out for anyone to see. Their masks are still on, though. Guess they need some privacy.
I keep eyeing Saxon when I think he’s not looking, but he hasn’t gawped at that woman’s chest once. In fact, whenever that pair moans extra loudly, he rolls his eyes, and when the man starts pushing the woman to her knees, he lurches to his feet beside me and offers a hand.
“Time to go. Come on.”
My heart squirms happily as I take his hand, pulled gently to my feet. My own strappy silver heels dangle from my other fingers, slipped off to save my toes hours ago.
Time moves so strangely at these parties. Sometimes ten minutes feels like it lasts for years, and then three hours whoosh past in a blink. What time is it right now? I have zero idea. Sometime between midnight and dawn.
Hanging out with Saxon, though—this always rushes by too fast. Especially when he hustles me up the stairs, holding the tinsel for me to duck under, muttering darkly about lobby blow jobs.
“Saxon, I have seen porn,” I tell him, laughing as his shoulders shoot up around his ears. You know, for a bearded, tattooed, motorbike-riding tough guy, our head of security is kind of a prude—when it comes to me, anyway. “You don’t have to rush me out like I might faint.”
“You’re not seeing that guy’s dick,” he says flatly, marching me up to the second floor. The walls are glass up here too, supported by huge industrial beams, and the floors are hardwood.
An abandoned champagne flute and a man’s undone bow tie scattered on the floor confirms my theory: guests are roaming through this whole mansion, tinsel boundary be damned. I squeeze Saxon’s hand, then knot our fingers together. He lets me.
Is he jealous? The huge older man by my side seems jealous, his silver-flecked beard bristling with agitation. I love it.
“Saxon?” I say. “You can slow down. You don’t need to frogmarch me all the way through the house, okay? I don’t want to see that guy’s dick. Obviously.”
Our steps slow, fireworks bursting out in the darkness beyond the glass walls. My self-assigned bodyguard sucks in a long, deep breath, then gusts it out all in one go. His mouth twitches when he glances down at me. “Good. Sorry.”
“There is something I want to show you, though,” I say, a sudden, devious plan coming to me on the fly, because if Saxon’s finally softening up with me again, you’d better believe I’m gonna milk this moment for all it’s worth. Who knows when I’ll get this chance again? “Can we go to the library?”
Saxon narrows his eyes at me, like he’s trying to sense a trap. There definitely is one, but I smile at him sweetly. “…Sure.”
Ah, this big, beautiful sucker. I love him so much.