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It was… strange, watching people have sex, watching them fuck like animals and have fun while doing it. Switching girls, switching positions… even a little sword-crossing action. I imagined it was like watching porn—something I never did, mostly because of… well, the fact that sex and all physical touch repulsed me above all else.
Alas, the longer I let myself stay this way, the longer my father won. He knew how I’d changed after that night, after he’d whored me out. He’d seen the change in me, and he’d said nothing, but inside, I knew he was laughing at me, mocking me. He didn’t care one lick about me or what I felt, and I hated him because of it.
It was that hatred for him that brought me here tonight, that hatred that would fuel me as I worked to overcome the damage that night had done. It was why I’d abandoned Father Charlie’s cross, why I had to let him go. His memory, that cross… they were just reminders of the same night.
My eyes were still on the group on the stage when I saw a man approaching the couch I sat on. He wore a black mask, and it matched his clothes. Black pants, a black shirt neatly tucked into his belt. He had dirty blonde hair, swept to the side, and he walked with confidence, but I didn’t tear my eyes away from the stage. I… I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.
Ugh. I hated this indecisiveness.
The man sat on the couch beside me, his knees spread, as if welcoming me to check him out. He didn’t touch me, nor did he say anything right away. If this was his way of coming onto me, I was pretty sure it sucked. He needed to work on his skill… although, I realized with a flick of my eyes over to him, he was quite muscled. A very manly sort of guy. And he smelled nice, too. Musky, woodsy. It had to be some kind of cologne. Maybe he was used to women coming onto him instead of vice versa.
Disappointment would be his only friend tonight if he was waiting for me to make a move.
Though I didn’t stare at him, I could tell he was watching me, sizing me up, checking me out. I wondered if he liked what he saw—I believed myself to be a pretty enough girl, maybe not a drop-dead stunner, but someone who could smile and get some men to bend to my will all the same.
Then again, some men were just like that.
He shifted his weight, his top half leaning closer to me. His voice was low and a bit rough, gravelly as he spoke, “What’s a girl like you doing here, sitting all alone?” No hello, no small talk. Getting straight to the point.
I tore my eyes off the stage, landing them on the man. His cheeks held a bit of stubble, but beneath the short facial hair, he looked young enough. Not my age exactly; a bit older, but not too old. Although, perhaps it was impossible to tell without seeing the top half of his face. All those movies where the guy didn’t recognize the girl when she had a mask shielding her cheekbones suddenly didn’t seem as far-fetched.
“A girl like me?” I echoed, cocking my head at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Most who come here get straight into it,” he explained, and I fought the way my eyes wanted to close while he talked. He had the kind of voice that could fill you up, the kind of voice that you could listen to all day and all night and never get enough. Or maybe it was just this place, making him seem more mysterious. “But not you. Why?”
“Maybe I’m waiting for the right partner.”
“Or,” he said, “maybe you’re not sure you should be here.” It was as if he was peering into my head, seeing my thoughts, and he laid them bare in front of me. Hearing a stranger say that made it all the more real. “Tell me, princess, if you weren’t sure about this, why come at all? Why choose that color mask?”
I let out a sound that was something of a bitter chuckle. “Are you always so talkative when you’re trying to find someone to fuck?” If he could be blunt, so could I. I owed this man no manners; I would say what I wanted and I would do what I wanted. I just… I wasn’t sure what that was, yet.
Now it was his turn to chuckle. “No. You make me curious, though. What can I say?” His wide shoulders shrugged. “Why not wear white?”
For a split second, I thought he meant my clothes, like he knew who I was, but then I remembered the masks. Right. There was no way in hell this guy knew who I was. I’d stuck to myself every time I’d gone out of the house—save for Zander, of course. “Maybe I wanted to push myself.”
He leaned closer, his voice nothing but a whisper when he said, “I could help with that.”
“Yeah,” I muttered with a frown. “I bet you could.” My tone was anything but flirty, which he definitely noticed, just like I noticed the fact that his gaze remained on me. Not once did it move to look at anyone else in here; not the group on the stage, not anyone getting busy on one of the beds or the other couches arranged in the place. Me. Just me. It was as if no one else in the room existed, and I didn’t know how that made me feel.
The whole point was to be with a stranger. No strings, no future attachments. Someone who I’d never see again. The whole point of tonight was to push myself, to let another man’s touch drown out the sick memories that filled my head when I was alone in the dark.
Could this man be the one I needed tonight? Perhaps.
The man stared at me for a long time, as if he couldn’t get a read on me. It was a while before he said, “You’re not like everyone else in here.” Not a question, more like a statement of fact he knew in his core. I supposed he could simply mean it as a way to flirt with me, but the way he said it, so seriously, made me think otherwise.
“I wish I was,” I whispered.
“Why can’t you be? If that’s what you want, go for it.”
My fingers fidgeted, and his head bent down, noting the gloves on my hands. I was slow to say, “If only it was that easy. If it was that easy, I like to think I would’ve already done it. I mean, all of this… none of it means anything. That’s the whole point, but I still—” I stopped myself from saying anything more, shaking my head. This man was a stranger; I wasn’t going to unload the worst part of my life onto him.
“You still what?”
Again, I shook my head. I also had to bite my tongue. Saying anything about my past, about my real self, was a mistake here. It gave these strangers clues to who I was, and the last thing I needed to do was advertise the fact that I was not a girl named Josefina Baez.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m probably not someone you want to waste your time with. I’m sure there are loads of other girls—or guys, if you’re into that sort of thing—that would love to have you.” That was basically my push to him, me telling him to get going.
The more I sat here, the more this felt like a mistake.
