Page 58 of Boardroom Mask

We found our way to the bed somehow, clothes and blood both getting shed along the way. Now, I’m propped against the pillows, covers pulled up, staring at the backs of my eyelids and waiting for the telltale sound of the window opening and closing.

But, to my surprise, it doesn’t come. Instead, there’s a weight on the edge of the mattress. He’s sitting there, elbows on his knees, head bowed. He’s dressed and has his mask on, like he’s ready to go, but he’s not moving.

A minute passes. Then two.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Don’t.”

I sit up and the sheet pools around my waist, exposing my bare breasts to the cool air of my apartment. “Something was different tonight. Did you?—?”

“I saiddon’t.”

“Is it about whoever sent you?”

He leaps to his feet, charges out of my bedroom, and vanishes. But there’s a moment right before he goes that lives in my head for a long time afterward.

Hepaused.It lasted half a second, maybe less. But it was like he was torn in two. Something in him wanted to stay with me, even though the sex was done for at least a little while. There was apull.A hook. A connection. A hope.

It didn’t stop him from leaving. But he lingered.

That’s new.

What’s worse is that he knows I caught that tiny hesitation. He felt me feel it, and that’s exactly why he stormed out so angrily. Because staying would’ve meant answering my question, and answering would’ve meant I’d know something real about him.

And real is the one thing we agreed not to do.

22

JILLIAN

“Am I underground / Or am I in too deep?”

— “When I’m Small” by Phantogram

Monday morning finds me at my desk in a state of despair.

I can’t focus. Every time I try, my brain yanks me back to the other night. It’s a sex flashback marathon that I didn’t want and never asked for, but boy, is itthorough.

Hands. Mouths. Nails raking bloody ribbons down The Masked Man’s back. His lips clamping over my center and sucking until I started quivering and drooling like I was being electrocuted.

I have to press my thighs together and wriggle in my chair to find a position that isn’t so anxiety-inducing. My body is sore in places I forgot could be sore. There’s a bite mark on my collarbone that I’m hiding under a turtleneck, and every time the fabric brushes against it, I’m transported to right back in that bed.

If that were all it was, it would be bad enough. But the part that really has me troubled is that it’s not the rough stuff that keeps replaying.

It’s the pause. That curious half-second where he sat on the edge of my bed and didn’t leave. Something cracked open in him and I saw it and he knew I saw it, and then he bolted before I could do what I do best: pry.

I keep picking at that moment the way you pick at a scab. What was he going to say? What would have happened if he’d stayed? What was passing through his mind in that short span?

And then my brain helpfully cuts back to the feeling of the wall against my bare back as he drove into me, and my whole body flushes hot at my desk in the middle of the goddamn newsroom.

I liked hurting him. I didn’t just tolerate it or go along with it; I dug in and wanted more. He said “again” and I didn’t hesitate. So what does that make me? Is the mask turning me into someone new, or is it just giving me permission to be who I’ve always been?

I don’t love either answer.

I blink and force myself to look at the screen again. The document is a Delaware corporate filing for one of Lazarev Global’s subsidiaries. It’s about as sexy as a tax return, and every bit as riveting.

“Pierce.”