3. Sage #2
“Give up control?” he asks, and I can see an eyebrow rise above his mask. Or maybe I can feel it. The arch of it. The question in it. The way he’s asking something else entirely.
“Yes, sometimes I do that,” I say, my voice feathery as I imagine him having his way with me. As I imagine he’d want to. I bet he likes taking just enough control. The same amount I want to relinquish.
He hums approvingly. “Good to know.”
That heady feeling winds through my body, that sense that we’re on all the same wavelengths. Still, I toss out a question. “And why’s that? Do you like having control, then?”
The man takes his time before he answers, almost as if the reply is taking shape seductively on his tongue. “Sometimes I do.”
A shiver dances down my spine, the sparks of pleasure zipping through me. I study his gaze, trying to read his eyes behind that mask. They’re dark brown. Chocolate. Rich. Gorgeous. “Sometimes? I doubt that. You seem like an all-the-time control guy.”
He gives a light laugh. “Do I?”
“Yes. You do.”
He steps closer again, raising a hand, running it down my arm. Oh, holy hell. His touch is electric, and my breath catches as he says, “By day, I like having control. Often by night too. But it’s not a requirement.”
His voice is seductive, dreamy, and a little gruff too. It’s sandpaper and stubble. It’s whiskey and cigars. His confidence is like an enticing cologne—one I want to inhale.
He brushes a strand of hair off my shoulder, reminding me why I left it down. For this—for touch. He takes a beat, then asks, “And by night, what do you like?”
My pulse spikes, shooting all the way through the roof. “By night, I like what we all like,” I say, wildly turned on from the conversation. From his . . . obvious seduction. One I don’t want to end.
He runs a finger along the feathers in my mask. “And what’s that, lovely bird?”
I look at his full lips, wondering how they taste, how they’d feel on my skin. “At night, I like to be surprised.”
Those lips spread into a mischievous smile as he holds out a hand. “Dance with me.”
“That’s not a surprise,” I toss back saucily.
“But maybe it’ll become one,” he says, his voice gliding over my skin as his seduction clearly continues.
Maybe it will.
Maybe I want it to.
I take his hand, and he leads me to the dance floor.
He sets one palm on my waist, and we waltz to the music, joining the other couples moving elegantly around us under the lights, sophistication, and smoke. Eliza is nowhere to be seen. She’s gone, and so is the man with the beard.
But I’ve no time to think of Eliza when my dance partner spins me, then dips me, letting my back curve into an arch. “You fibbed,” I say, pouting.
“Did I?” he asks, a naughty tone of mischief in his voice. He keeps me in this position, bent back, under his control, waiting.
I don’t hate it.
In fact, I rather like it.
My skin turns hotter. My heart rate races.
“Yes. You lied. Because you waltz perfectly,” I say as he tugs me up and draws me close, flush against his hard frame. My God, he is hard everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
He strokes his fingers along my bare shoulders. “Perhaps I’m improvising. Or maybe I sensed that you wanted to be surprised.”
I want to be touched. Judging from the way my skin sings under his fingertips, I want to be touched everywhere. Still, I manage to keep up the banter, saying, “You have me there.”
“I’d like to have you in many places.”
Tingles burst through me. Confidence is so sexy. So alluring. Confidence is the ultimate aphrodisiac. “Would you?”
“I absolutely would,” he says, as the music shifts to something simpler. Not quite a bump and grind but a tune that’s easy to sway and move to.
This time, he brings me closer, and I am giddy, lit up. I am drunk on this night. And maybe even getting a little tipsy on him when he stares at my lips, then says, “Your smile is radiant.”
“So is yours.” I lift a finger, feeling daring, tracing it along the top of his lip. A shudder moves through him as I touch him.
“You’re quite bold,” he says, nipping at my finger, then moaning lightly around it before letting go.
“Does it bother you?”
“Not in the least. But maybe I’d like to be bold with you.
” He tightens his grip on my waist, his fingers playing, moving across my corseted costume.
I swallow roughly. He must know what he’s doing to me.
“Maybe I’d like to kiss this radiant smile right off of your beautiful face, make you hot and bothered, gasping, begging me to touch you more. ”
“You’d do that to me?”
“Does that surprise you?”
I shake my head, my body buzzing, my head hazy, the taste of possibility on my lips. “No. It turns me on.”
“Good. That’s what I want to do to you. And I’m a man who knows what he wants.”
I expect him to say, I want you. That’s the next logical statement.
But he doesn’t, because a blue-eyed man cuts in, tapping on my shoulder. I turn in his direction. He’s the man with the Phantom mask. Up close, his jaw is chiseled, his face clean-shaven, his lips kissable. “May I have this dance?”
My throat is dry. And my skin hums all over. From the first man, and now the second one. They are opposites—one has dark eyes, one light. One’s voice is gruff and raspy, and the other’s is deep, melodic, and British.
But both are panty-melting.
Two Prince Wickeds.
As the English one draws me against him, the American man moves behind me ever so briefly, pressing his chest against my back before he steps away.
Suddenly, my mind is racing to lands I never thought I’d want to explore.
In a flash, in a heartbeat, I do.