“It’s enjoyable, sure. But it’s never unconstrained. There’s always something to consider. Expectations.” His voice is a rumble, his face warm and so, so close. I’m about to faint, I’m so turned on.
“Tonight is different,” my vagina makes my mouth say.
“How so?”
“We’re in masks. We’re anyone and no one. No expectations.”
He makes a low sound, almost like a growl, and I can’t take it anymore. I lean forward the last inch, and the softness of his lips meets mine. It’s such an amazing feeling.
The euphoria spreading through me makes me shiver. A strong arm wraps around me, pulling me close, and another makes its way slowly up my curves, grazing the side of my breast.
His lips are as delicious as they looked, and we kiss as ifwe’ve always done this. Locking together, our tongues dance an unspoken dance we both know the steps to. I can’t remember kissing being this good. I don’t think it ever was. I let my hands travel up his muscular back. Just like I wanted from the moment I laid eyes on him.
He runs his warm hand up my arm, my neck, and into my wig—then pulls away.
“Sorry,” he breathes. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’s a wig,” I say, pulling the elastic and pushing the pin in place at the nape of my neck.
“Of course it is.” He traces my flowery mask with a gentle finger. “It’s a costume party. I forgot, and it surprised me.”
He studies me from behind his mask.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Who you are.”
“Does it matter?”
The intensity of his scrutinising gaze makes the blood rush in my ears, and suddenly I’m nervous. I don’t want him to care about who I am.
I’m the almost thirty-year-old who’s technically unemployed as of yesterday, with no dream except to keep trying, keep looking for that path I can feel at home on; which may or may not be found at this temporary, minimum wage internship I don’t know when starts.
It doesn’t exactly make for an attractive dating profile.
“No,” he says finally, “but tell me something about you. Even a small thing.”
“Like what?”
His hand caresses my arm, up the satin sleeves and to my collarbone, following the shape of it just above my cleavage. I breathe faster at his touch, my chest heaving.
“What do you like to do? When you’re not turning my brain to soup at a private members’ club?”
Hisbrain is turning to soup? Fuck. He should see mine.
“I, umm, I love to paint. I used to paint all the time.”
“Used to?”
I sigh. Jesus, how much to I tell him?
“I met a wall, I guess. My parents, especially my mother, kept pressuring me to do extra. More popular styles. Bigger canvases. Keep working. And it just stopped for me.”
“Pressure can do that.”
“It lost its joy. I try to find it in everything else I do, but I’ve not been able to paint for a while.”
“A shame, I’m sure.”
