Chapter Fifteen – Wren
I tell Sloane about my midnight meeting, just in case things go sideways. I’m strangely okay with trying new things now, but I should still be a little careful, so I tell her where I’ll be going and I don’t really know how long I’ll be gone. I share my location with her just in case.
She doesn’t try to stop me. Of course she doesn’t.
I didn’t assume she would. She’s not the kind of girl who would stop someone from doing something questionable, and now I know why.
Her entire life has been full of questionable things, the most recent thing her relationship.
She does, on the other hand, offer to drive me to campus, to the cemetery in the middle of it.
I don’t take her up on the offer, mostly because I don’t know what to expect once I get there, where exactly I’m meeting my mysterious man.
Thankfully, once Saturday night rolls around, it’s cold but not too cold. Thirty-five degrees is actually pretty warm for a late January night. I bundle up, stick my phone in my pocket, and get going.
As I walk across campus through the night, my mind races with possibilities. I don’t even know if my mysterious masked man is who I’m meeting, or if it’s someone else, like Reese. He did say he’s into other things, and I told him I’d be okay exploring those things with him…
I don’t think Logan would leave me a note like that, or even know how to break into a house without leaving a trace. He knew where to go to not alert the cameras, but that’s it. I don’t know if he’d do something like this.
Regardless, I’m going to find out very soon, I hope.
If it is my mysterious masked man from the party, I do have to wonder how he figured out where I live, which room was mine.
How he tracked me down without even knowing my name—unless, all along, he knew exactly who I was, which means I have to know who he is, right?
Maybe I’m overthinking things again and I just need to go with the flow.
I’m well aware tonight I could be making a mistake meeting whoever it is, but at this point, I don’t think I care. I’m curious, and I’m more open than I’ve ever been. If this turns out to be a mistake, then I’ll deal with it.
Or, you know, I’ll be dead, in which case I won’t be around to deal with it. A possibility I’m trying not to think too hard about.
I cross campus. It’s eerily empty for this time of night, even on a Saturday. The sidewalks are well-lit though, so there’s that. It hasn’t snowed all week, so the sidewalks are clear of all snow and ice. The cemetery won’t be, which is why I wore boots and a fluffy jacket.
The only entrance to the cemetery is around the back side of it, so it takes me longer than it should to reach it since I’m coming from the opposite direction.
As I walk around the high iron bars of the cemetery fence, I can’t help but toss glances inside it every now and then, trying to spot someone waiting.
But the cemetery isn’t as well-lit as the rest of campus. In fact, it’s pretty freaking dark. The only light will be from the moon, and that is a sliver in the sky, so it’s not much.
I round the back end of the cemetery, and the entrance to it is in sight.
I make it to the iron gate that is normally locked once night falls.
It didn’t even occur to me that the cemetery is technically closed after dusk—to try to stop students from messing with headstones or throwing parties inside its perimeter.
Tonight, however, the iron gate sits open just enough to slide through, so that’s what I do.
Is this technically trespassing? Could I get arrested for this? Oh, boy. That’s kind of scary, isn’t it? Not as scary as meeting a stranger in a cemetery at midnight alone. Two different kinds of scary.
The note was pretty skimpy on the details, such as where exactly I’d be meeting this person.
The cemetery is a huge place, and at night it feels even larger.
I stick to the main path as I venture through it, my hands stuck in my coat’s pockets.
The night breeze blows around me, and though I should be cold, after all the walking I did to get here, I am actually quite warm, considering the temperature and season.
Or maybe I’m just warm because of the excitement, the anticipation, the unknown. Those things never would have affected me in the past. Heck, I would’ve never even thought about coming here before.
I follow the path deeper into the cemetery. At least the path is plowed, so I’m not walking on a bunch of snow. I start to wonder whether my note-writer was leading me on, but right as that possibility crosses my mind, I spot him.
He’s wearing all black, so he blends in with the shadows quite nicely.
He wears the same mask he wore to the party, although his ensemble is minus the devil horns.
I freeze the moment I see him, my breath coming up short.
Though there’s at least twenty feet between us, it feels as if he’s right there, right in front of me, ready to take whatever he wants from me, just as he did at the party.
I have to find out who this guy is and why I feel so drawn to him.
The masked man is the first to move. He strides toward me, closing the distance between us in record time.
I’m dumbstruck, for some silly reason, so when he extends a hand to me, it takes me a while to pull out one of my hands from my coat pocket and take it.
His hand is unreasonably warm, and it feels ungodly good.
He turns and leads me off the path, deeper into the cemetery.
“Who are you?” I ask, needing to know, but the man doesn’t say a word. He brings me to a spot cleared of snow, nestled between two old headstones, where a few small candles are lit, and what looks like a thick blanket is laid down on the ground.
We stop before the blanket, and my heart beats like a madman in my chest. A date in the middle of a cemetery. Kind of morbid, isn’t it? And, beyond that, how the heck can it be a date when he’s wearing a mask and not talking? Unless… unless talking is the last thing we’re going to do.
“Why won’t you show me who you are?” I can’t let it go. My curiosity is strong, so strong I can’t ignore it. I’m absolutely dying to reach up to his mask and tug it off his face.
What if I don’t like who I see? Or, what’s perhaps even more frightening: what if I do like who I see? What will that say about me? What does he think about me, a girl who’s willing to meet a stranger in a cemetery in the middle of the night?
He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he works on sitting me down on the blanket, and within another minute, I’m on my back beneath him. His hands find my neck, and he cups my face for only a few seconds before he unzips my jacket and starts to explore in the same manner he explored me at the party.
The cold air? Doesn’t mean much when you have a furnace on top of you, when you have hot, searching hands dancing across certain parts of you.
His hands are large and rough, but I’m too focused on the shadowed eyes behind the mask.
Just like at the party, I can’t see their hue.
The shadows block out too much of their color.
They could be blue, green, or even brown.
The small candles around us don’t shed enough light to discern their true color either way.
Beneath my shirt, his hands roam, and I take that opportunity to reach for his mask, figuring he’d be too lost in what he’s doing to stop me, but I’m wrong.
My hand makes it maybe three or so inches away from his mask before he grabs me by the wrist, pins that wrist above my head, and gives me a single, solemn shake of his head, a tsk-tsk gesture if I ever saw one.
“Is it so wrong that I want to know who you are behind that mask?” I breathe out. “I just want to know who you are, why it feels like I know you.”
As he holds my one wrist above my head, he brings his other hand lower, and with an expert touch he undoes my jeans. Button and then the zipper, and I hold my breath the entire time, knowing what’s going to come next.
He really does want to get straight to business, huh? I guess I can’t blame him. I’m already breathless at the thought. In a minute, I’ll be worked up and ready to lose myself in the way this guy will make me feel.
He doesn’t slip beneath my panties, but he does dip his hand beneath the jeans and curl his fingers around my clit over the thin fabric. I suck in a hard breath and squirm a bit, but the squirming is for show. The moment his fingers start to work on me, I just about lose it.
It’s just as it was at the party. It feels too good to be real, like I walked into some dream. Like, whoever this guy is, he has the key to my heart, my soul, and my body, and he’s going to use it however the heck he wants to and I am powerless to stop him.
My body becomes a sauna. Even though it’s winter around us, I instantly become too hot.
My clit swells beneath the attention, and I don’t bother trying to stifle my moans.
We aren’t in public this time, aren’t at a party where anyone could come close and see what we’re up to.
This time, it’s just him and I, two people following their animalistic instincts.
Because that’s what this is. It’s what this has to be. Instinct. Granted, it’s instinct I would not have had a year ago, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
After a little while, the hand he has beneath my pants move so it’s beneath my panties, and the very moment his fingers surround my clit, I pant out a heavy breath, knowing where this is going to lead.
The masked man watches me as he unravels me to my core. He plays with me like he was born to be on top of me, like every part of my body was made for him. I come with a cry, and heat and fire surge through me at lightspeed, every single part of me burning up.
I want out of these clothes. I don’t even care if I’ll be too cold.