Masked Midnight Stalker (Dark Obsessions #9)

Chapter 1

NASH

Idesigned the beach house so that no one could prove they had ever been inside it. That was the point. No neighbors, no cameras facing the driveway, and no direct line of sight from the road or the water.

The land curves inward along the cliffs in a way that hides the structure until you’re almost standing on top of it, and even then it looks like nothing more than another expensive mistake carved into the coastline.

Architects call that kind of design minimalism, but I prefer to call it privacy.

Years ago, the men who came here never existed on paper. Men who preferred their meetings without witnesses and their agreements without signatures. Deals were made over whiskey and ocean noise, voices carried away by the wind before they could reach anything resembling a recording device.

But that was five years ago. The house had served its purpose and has since sat empty on the edge of the Pacific, with the lights dark and gates closed, the ocean slowly reclaiming the stone paths with salt and wind. The only people who knew it existed were men who understood the value of silence.

Which is why the phone call irritates me more than it should.

“Someone’s using the property,” my contact on the other end says carefully. He sounds nervous, which is never a good sign.

“What do you mean using it?” I demand.

“Lights at night. Power draw. Water running.” He pauses, and I hear him swallow. “Looks like a squatter.”

The word settles into the silence between us. A squatter. In my multi-million dollar house.

I don’t respond immediately, instead letting the thought sit long enough to turn unpleasant. The house was designed so that no one could stumble across it accidentally. No one finds that place unless they’re looking for it—or someone tells them where to look.

“Did they break in?” I ask.

“Looks like the gate code’s been overridden.”

My jaw tightens. “That’s not possible.”

“It is if someone knows how.”

I end the call without saying anything else.

The drive takes just under two hours, and by the time I reach the coast, the sky has turned the deep ink that holds the moon perfectly, the ocean already a dark sheet stretching toward nothing.

I kill the headlights before the last bend in the private road, letting the car roll the last stretch in silence.

The house reveals itself slowly. Glass first, then the sharp angles of concrete and steel rising from the cliff side like something that grew there rather than something built. It looks exactly the same as the last time I saw it.

Untouched…except—

There is a very muted hint of light from inside. It glows faintly through the glass walls, warm against the surrounding darkness, and something low and unpleasant stirs in my chest.

Someone has been living here. Is living here.

The gate opens for me without hesitation. The security system still recognizes the car, and that detail alone should reassure me, but I can’t help but feel on edge.

I park at the top of the driveway and for a moment I simply sit there, studying the windows, cataloguing reflections and shadows. There’s no movement, no silhouettes crossing the light, revealing themselves to the voyeur outside. But the lamp is definitely on.

I glance at my watch. Midnight.

I reach into the glove compartment and pull out the mask. It’s plain black with no decoration, no theatrical flourish, and just enough structure to hide the shape of a man’s face beneath it.

Years ago, it had a purpose, when the kind of meetings that happened here required anonymity, when certain men preferred to speak without recognizing each other in daylight, the mask solved a simple problem. If things ever went wrong, no one could describe who they had seen.

Tonight, it serves a similar function. Not because I’m afraid of whoever is inside, but because I want to see them before they see me.

I slip it over my face and step out of the car.

The wind sweeps across the cliff side, carrying salt and the steady beat of waves colliding with rock below. The house absorbs the sound rather than reflecting it, the glass and stone swallowing everything that might otherwise travel too far.

I slip in through the concealed entrance—the one that feeds straight into the safe room, unseen and untraceable. This is where I’ll stay. Where I’ll watch. Where I’ll decide exactly what kind of torment whoever has earned by stepping into my space.

From there, another hidden passage opens silently, bleeding into the darkened library beyond.

Inside, the air is warm. Someone has been here long enough to change the temperature of the place. Presumptuous.

I walk into the hallway, then toward the open kitchen and living area, and my senses are assaulted with life…coffee, fabric softener, and something faintly sweet I can’t immediately place. None of it belongs to me.

My gaze moves slowly through the living space. There’s a blanket draped over the couch, a washed mug draining beside the sink, and a book open facedown on the coffee table.

Not the chaotic mess of someone breaking in and making do. No, it’s more calculated, with some semblance of routine. Someone has settled here.

In my house.

I move through the rooms the way I used to when meetings here required a certain…caution. Quiet steps, listening between movements, and the instinct to map exits and shadows even when there’s no obvious threat.

The office is empty, but the bar has been used. One bottle of vodka missing a finger more than I remember leaving it. Interesting. Whoever is staying here isn’t afraid to touch things.

In the atrium, I glance to the upper level and notice at the top of the stairs the door to the guest room is slightly ajar. I take a few steps, then stop halfway up the staircase and listen.

There…breathing. Slow and even, and completely unaware.

I climb the rest of the staircase slowly, pacing myself and bracing myself simultaneously. When I reach the door, I pause, then push it gently open, just wide enough to see inside.

Moonlight spills across the bed in a pale, slanting band, silver against the dark interior, and it lands directly on her.

For a second my brain doesn’t process the details. It only registers the shape of a body where no body should be—long limbs tangled in my white sheets, bare skin catching the cold light, with dark hair fanned across the pillow like ink spilled over paper.

And then the details arrive all at once.

The thin strap of a sleep tank twisted loose from her shoulder. The slow rise and fall of her chest. One bare leg kicked free with her knee bent slightly, and the line of her thigh disappearing into shadow.

A sudden, violent pulse of heat hits my gut so hard it almost knocks the air from my lungs.

Jesus.

My breath stalls; the reaction is instant and ugly, the kind of raw, primal recognition that bypasses thought entirely. My body reacts before my mind has time to catch up, a brutal surge of hunger that tightens everything low in my abdomen and sends a wave of heat crawling up the back of my neck.

This is wrong. The word surfaces automatically, but it doesn’t change anything.

Because she’s there. In my bed. In my house. Breathing slowly, obliviously, the soft sound of it barely audible beneath the pounding of my blood in my ears.

The sight of her like this—unguarded, half-undressed and skin exposed to the night—does something dark and immediate to my head.

For a moment, I simply stare.

Yes, she’s beautiful. The kind of beauty youth wears carelessly, without calculation. Soft mouth slightly parted in sleep, lashes casting faint shadows across her cheeks, the loose sprawl of her body suggesting complete, unconscious trust in the world around her.

But that’s just surface level.

The real reason I stare is that something inside my mind suddenly snaps sharply into place. It’s recognition. The realization hits me like a fist to the sternum.

I know her.

Not personally, and not well, but…enough. Enough that her presence here makes the situation twist into something far more complicated than simple trespassing.

Blair Russo.

Her name rises uninvited in the back of my mind, along with a cascade of memories I haven’t thought about in years.

Her father’s face, red with anger across a boardroom table. Voices raised behind closed doors. Deals collapsing. Lawyers. Threats. Enemies made in quiet, expensive rooms where men pretend their wars are civil.

The recognition lands fully now, settling heavily into my chest. Of course it’s her.

I step into the room without realizing I’ve moved. She doesn’t stir, and up close, the details get even sharper.

She would be in her twenties now, if I remember correctly.

Older than the sullen teenager who used to linger in her father's shadow at private parties, hovering near the edges, sent to eavesdrop on conversations she wasn’t meant to understand.

While her father was drinking too much and laughing too loudly, she appeared to be studying every person in the room.

And now she’s here. In my bed.

The thought hits me with another brutal surge of heat that tightens my jaw. Of all the places she could have disappeared to, of all the empty houses along this coastline, she chose mine.

My gaze drifts slowly down the length of her body again, and this time the reaction isn’t surprise. It’s something darker and heavier, curling low in my stomach with a dangerous kind of curiosity.

The sheet has slipped further while I’ve been standing here. Her thigh is fully exposed now, pale against the sheets, the muscle soft and relaxed in sleep.

My fingers flex once at my sides, and a thought slides into my head before I can stop it. How warm would her skin be if I touched it?

The idea arrives fully formed and vivid enough that my pulse kicks harder in my throat.

What would she do? Would she wake immediately? Would she flinch? Or would she stay exactly like this, breathing slowly and blissfully unaware, while my hand moved over skin that very clearly does not belong to me?

The possessive urge to find out is almost overwhelming now, a dark curiosity needling insistently at the back of my skull. Just one touch, just to test how deeply she’s sleeping. To test how she feels. The idea sits there for several seconds, heavy and tempting.

I step closer to the bed, letting my gaze consume her, slower this time, cataloguing every inch of exposed skin in the cold wash of moonlight. The slow expansion of her chest, the hollow at the base of her throat, the line of her hip beneath the twisted sheet.

Violent desire pulses through me again, darker this time. The kind that makes a man want to test boundaries simply to see what happens when they break.

I clench my jaw and eventually have to force myself to step back. Distance feels necessary and safer for both of us.

I lean against the wall across from the bed instead, folding my arms loosely across my chest. The mask presses against my skin, grounding me in something that feels vaguely like restraint.

I keep watching her for a long time after that. Just observing how completely comfortable she is. Completely unguarded in my house.

The question now isn’t whether she stays, because that much feels inevitable. The question is what I’m going to do with her now that she’s here.

Downstairs, the ocean keeps pounding against the cliffs like a slow, patient heartbeat, and upstairs, the daughter of the only man who ever tried to destroy me sleeps peacefully in my bed.

For the first time in years, the house feels as if it has a purpose again.