Chapter Three – Wren #2
I stand in the hallway near the front door, peering into the living room, wondering why I can’t shut my brain off and act like everyone else here.
A gush of cold alerts me to the door opening, and out of the corner of my eye I see a masked man enter.
He wears all black, like Elias, but he’s taller than Elias by a few inches.
His mask is plain, the kind with no facial expression, just a blank slate and holes for the eyes and nostrils.
Tiny curled horns sit on his head—the only part of him that looks like a devil.
I meet the guy’s stare for only a few seconds before I duck away, suddenly feeling claustrophobic, like I need to find a place to be alone and catch my breath, slow my wandering thoughts.
In a house like this? With a party going on? Should be easy to find some privacy, right?
Going upstairs is always a possibility, but I don’t want to intrude on any space or barge in on people getting down and dirty, so that’s probably a no-go for me.
I wander to the back of the house and peer out of the glass near the patio door, and I see that they have some of those space heaters outside.
Hmm. I don’t know how well those things actually work. The snow around them is definitely long-since melted, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the air around them will be warm enough for me.
I feel paralyzed with indecision, and even though there are tons of people in this house, all seemingly having the time of their lives, I feel so alone it hurts. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself since my life blew up, it’s that I don’t particularly enjoy being alone.
Being alone sucks. Is it really so wrong to want to be wanted?
With a sigh, I’m seconds from moving away from the window. I turn around and nearly bump into someone—a hard, solid chest. With the wall and window behind me, I barely have enough room to recover, and I blink rapidly and gaze up at the person I nearly walked into, saying, “I’m sorry.”
But the moment I angle my head back and meet the masked man’s shadow-covered eyes, the words kind of die in the back of my throat. It’s the same guy who just walked in. It’s like he ignored everyone else in the house and decided to come straight for me.
Those eyes… he faces away from the lights, so his entire face is covered by shadows, due in large part to the mask he wears. Still, as I stand there, a strange part of me feels like I’ve stood there before.
Do I know him? My heart skips a beat in my chest, and I swallow hard. The man is at least a foot taller than me. Not as overly muscled as, say, Logan, so that can’t be who it is. I see dark hair and a very well-toned body, but he could be literally anyone.
When he does not move, when he doesn’t say a word, I whisper, “Uh… hi.” Wow, way to sound lame. If I could smack myself I would. You’d think I’d be better at this sort of thing by now, but I’m not. New year, new me? Not so much.
The guy tilts his head at me, the movement slow and methodical, and I wonder what he’s thinking. Heck, I wonder who he is beneath that mask. Maybe we had a class together before? He’s definitely not Logan, and he’s not Mike, either. Too tall for that.
No, who is this guy, and why do I feel so oddly at ease beneath the shadow of his gaze?
Once the cat no longer has my tongue, I manage to ask, “This might be a weird question, but… do I know you?”
All he does is shrug. It seems this guy is sticking to his silence. Maybe his voice would give him away, and he’s not ready to divulge his identity to me. Maybe I wouldn’t give him the light of day if I knew who he was.
Hmm. I suppose there is something weirdly attractive about him in that mask. How he holds himself, how he gazes down at me. There’s something about him that screams familiar to me, and yet I can’t put my finger on it.
My mind flashes to Black Sacrament. Those guys, and their new female lead singer, all wear masks on stage.
Though their masks are more demonic than this guy’s, I’d be lying if I said they weren’t attractive in them.
There’s something about a mask that brings about an air of mystery.
It forces you to not pay too much attention to their face, but in how they walk, how they move.
This guy? He wears the plain black mask well, even with the added devil horns behind them.
“Well,” I say, not knowing what to do in this situation, “I guess I should go.” Though I say it, there isn’t much heart behind it.
It’s almost as if I don’t want to go, like this guy’s gaze is pinning me in place.
I’m immobile, and suddenly the loudness of the party, all the other people here, even Sloane and Elias; none of it matters to me anymore. It all fades away.
I say I should go, but I don’t move. I just can’t. And, besides, it isn’t like the masked guy moves out of my way. His body effectively blocks me from all escape.
I should feel uncomfortable. I should tell him to move. I should do something, anything, besides stand there and act like he injected me with paralyzing venom. All those things, though, are suddenly impossible. I am rooted in place, and I don’t know how to snap out of it.
The guy shakes his head once, his way of saying, No. No, I shouldn’t go, or no, he won’t let me go? Either way, it doesn’t really matter. He’s the only thing I see.
He lifts a hand, and I suck in a hard breath as that hand moves to my face. I assume his skin will be cold from having just been outside, but I’m proven wrong when the backs of his fingers trail down my cheek and along my jaw. He’s warm. He’s very, very warm.
My cheek tingles where he touches me, and as his fingers fall to my chin, I can’t breathe. I’m holding my breath for a reason I can’t begin to describe, lost in the shadows on his face and the innate feeling that I know him.
I know him. I know I know him. This is killing me.
He doesn’t pull that hand away once his fingers reach my chin.
No, that hand falls to my neck, his fingertips trailing down to my collarbone, which he traces so lightly I can hardly feel it.
The dress I wear isn’t overly skimpy; the only reason I agreed to wear it is because it covers most of my chest. That doesn’t seem to stop him, though, because after he traces my collarbone, his hand continues to fall lower.
My lungs are darn near ready to burst when that hand of his falls to my chest. It’s like… it’s like he’s taking his time, exploring me. Like this masked man has waited his entire life to be right where he is and nothing and no one can make him rush.
He steps closer to me the same moment his hand lifts back to my face, and his thumb runs over my bottom lip in a gesture that is way too intimate to be between two strangers. I can almost taste the tension in the air, the palpable desire radiating off him.
And what’s even stranger is I think I feel it, too.
This guy… who is he?
He takes his time in running his thumb over my bottom lip, and then he drops his hand to my side. Before I know what he’s doing, that hand travels even lower, and all the while he watches me from the shadows in his mask.
Is he waiting for me to tell him to stop? I don’t know if I could. Everything is jumbled in my head right now. It’s like I can’t think straight, can barely see straight; it’s all him, whoever he is. My mysterious devil for the night.
His hand drops, and though I don’t bend my neck to see what he’s doing, I can feel it.
He toys with the bottom of the dress, and after another second, he pulls the front of it up just enough as he leans even closer to me.
The entire world is blocked out by him. I don’t know if anyone’s watching us or if everyone is simply too enraptured in their own lives to pay attention to the two strangers near the window.
You know what? It doesn’t matter. I actually don’t care, as surprising as it might be.
I am caught in this guy’s web; I don’t even know who the heck he is, and I don’t care.
My gut is telling me that I am right where I’m supposed to be, and that moving in any way, that telling him to stop, would be the biggest mistake I could possibly make tonight.
His shadowed gaze is on me as his hand goes someplace a stranger’s hand shouldn’t. With my dress bunched up, his hand follows the curve of my body outside of the tights, and though he doesn’t touch my bare skin, he still sets a fire burning deep within me, flames that will only grow at this rate.
I can’t even stop to think about what I’m doing, what I’m letting this masked man do to me—in public, no less, where any and everyone could see. My mind is a jumbled mess, and I don’t feel like myself.
He doesn’t stop there, of course. After running his hand above the crux of my tights, he doesn’t drop his hand away and step back, allow my dress to fall and cover my midsection. Oh, no. He’s apparently so close to his destination, so why would the masked man stop now?
His hand glides to the band of my tights, sliding down until his fingers come in contact with my panties… and then those fingers dip beneath those, too. The very moment his fingers graze the sides of my clit, I suck in a hard breath, my lungs about to burst, just like that.
A rumble of appreciation leaves the masked man’s chest, and I swear I feel that sound in my core.
Such a low, guttural, animalistic sound, like he’s finally found what he’s been searching for his whole life and he lost his will to speak.
Like he can only grunt and growl out his pleasure.
It’s hot. It’s a sound I wouldn’t mind hearing again.
His fingers make themselves at home around my clit, pinching and stroking, and all the while he pushes up against me, blocking out the rest of the party with his height and his black ensemble.
His plain mask is burned into my memory, but no matter how hard or how long I gaze up at him, I can’t see the color of his eyes.
The shadows are too thick, the light behind him at the worst possible angle.