She let her head drop back, the little bit of alcohol surging in her blood, but it might just have been due to her pulse racing in her veins.
“You like it when I tell you you’re a good girl, don’t you?” He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “That’s why, over the video chat, you would do anything I wanted when I told you that you were a good girl.”
God, the way he lowered his voice into his throat, or even his chest like a lion’s growl, shivered over her skin and made her want—something.
She whispered, “Maybe.”
“Ah, QueenMod, you’re so responsive. I like it. I like you. But what shall I call you?” he mused, his fingertips barely stroking under her jaw and lifting her chin as he examined her face. Up close, his mask looked like a shield of metallic lace, and she could see glimpses of light skin under it as he spoke. “QueenMod isn’t a proper name for what we’re about to engage in. Shall I continue to call you pet?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her breath fluttering in her chest. Because he was looking down at her, the eyeholes in his mask were shadowed, but she thought she’d seen a hint of a light-colored eye, maybe blue or green.
She’d read about things like this, of course. Was he going to want to call her his slut or a whore? She wasn’t sure how she felt about him calling her something like that. Honestly, she wasn’t sure how much of a beating her ego could take, considering everything.
“Or princess, perhaps?” Twist asked, his voice emanating from behind the mask without any visible movement, almost like he was a robot. “Perhaps you’re my little princess.”
“I like that one,” she said, all too aware that she liked it too much.
As she said it, Twist stepped away, and he walked around the side of her as if he was inspecting her again.
She started to turn with him, but he gently turned her back around with both of his hands on her upper arms.
The Sailor Moon costume left her shoulders and upper arms bare, which meant he grabbed her naked skin. His fingers and palms warmed her flesh, and the feeling of his skin against hers sent a zing over the surface of her body.
He must’ve leaned down because his metal mask was beside her cheekbone when he whispered, “Face forward. Let me look at you.”
“I feel like a piece of meat you’re inspecting,” she muttered.
“Not inspecting. I’m admiring.”
The Sailor Moon costume didn’t so much cling to her curves as crease over the rolls around her midsection. “Dude, I’m chubby. It’s been a rough three years, and I’ve kind of eaten my way through it.”
“I think you’re beautiful,” he murmured.
She muttered because she knew she was supposed to say, “I didn’t say I was ugly. I said I was fat.”
He chuckled, but it didn’t sound derisive. Instead, his low laugh sounded like her sarcasm had amused him. “Your skin is butter soft, like silk.” He ran one finger from the cap of her shoulder to her elbow, sending another thrill through her. “The curve of your neck down your spine is entrancing.” Then he traced the tendons of her neck down to the hollow between her shoulder blades. “You are absolutely beautiful, and I’m glad we’ll have this time together.”
Wow, that accent. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
And yet, he had a US passport. “And we’re never going to see each other again after tonight, right?”
He was walking around her other side, his fingertips brushing her upper arms and the tops of her shoulders where her costume left her skin bare. “Correct. I rarely come back to the States. It was just good luck that I happened to need to make a trip after our encounter the other night.”
“And you’ll never contact me like this again, right? This is a one-time deal. No muss, no fuss, no booty calls, no repeats.”
“Correct.”
“And you’ll never tell anyone about us, right? On the forum, this never happened. I don’t want this to mess up my forum status. It’s important to me.”
“Agreed. On the forum, I won’t mention it at all. If someone else were to suspect anything, I will deny ever meeting you. Haven’t I been properly deferential on the boards over the last few days?”
She snorted a laugh. “If anything, you’ve stayed out of trouble more over the last few days than you have for six months.”
“Have I mentioned the moderated status of my account tonight or tried to convince you to remove it?”
Tension trickled out of Colleen’s shoulders. “Not until now.”
