I can hear his every exhale, amplified behind the painted skull, the ugly anonymity that weeks ago scared me to death, which now makes me weak.
Without faces, these guys could be anyone. Or… anyone I want them to be. I shouldn’t like these masks, in fact, I should hate them. They’re designed to incite fear, to intimidate, to make the men less human. But when these masks go on, something in me changes.
I don’t need to know who they are.
I just want what they’ll do to me.
I reach for Sting’s mask, running my hands over the cold material of the skull, hooking my fingers under the edge of it, right where the bone-white paint meets his skin, and pull it down. Over his chin, past his lips, until it hangs around his neck.
I kiss him.
Not gently. Not tentatively. I take his mouth the way he’s taken mine, without hesitation, my hands on his face, and his whole body responds underneath me. He groans against my lips, low and involuntary, a sound Sting doesn’t easily make.
He’s losing it now.
His hands leave the cushion and he tears at my shirt, the only nice thing I was able to scrounge from the Rot, but I don’t care. He could take all my clothes and force me to walk around naked, and I’d hold my head high without a care.
Jesus, what’s happening to me?
I tilt my pelvis forward to rub against his now-huge erection and his breath stutters. His hands fly to my tits and he kneads, then begins to pinch and pull at my nipples.
How did he know I’d love that?
He kisses me back with an intensity that’s been building for days thanks to the distance and the damn indestructible tension between us. Instead of all that,this, what we’re doing right now, is a conversation in a new language.Do you want me?Yes.Even though you won’t say it?Yes.Even though you’d rather do a security check?
Yes. Fuck the security check.
I pull his shirt up. He helps, his skin warm and taut under my palms. I press my hands flat against his stomach and feel the muscles contract, then run them over his shoulders and down his arms, where he continues playing with my tits.
For a moment, we’re still. There’s no mask between us now, nothing left to hide behind, just two people and the undeniable fact of what we want. And need.
I lean in and press my mouth to his ear. “Can I take the lead, Sting?”
I glance back over my shoulder.
Armen watches from the armchair. Rogue watches from the wall. They don’t intervene. They don’t join. Not yet. They understand something I didn’t plan, that this moment belongs to me and Sting, and that whatever’s been building between us needs to be detonated before it can include anyone else.
So they watch, and they seem damn happy to, watching a woman taking apart the most controlled man they’ve ever known, piece by piece, with her hands and her mouth and the absolute certainty of what she wants.
Sting follows me. All the way down.
26
VI
Sting’shands are in my hair and his mouth is on my throat, and I’m grinding against him with nothing between us but denim and desperation, when I am reminded of the mirror on the far wall.
Fuck, I’d almost forgotten where we were.
The one-way glass runs the length of the small room, that magical mirror that hypnotized me the first time I came to the club and has every time since. The faint, dark shimmer of it, and the knowledge that people on the other side are watching, sends me into a trance.
It intimidated me the first night. But that shit was temporary. The first time one of the guys fucked me from behind, I don’t remember which one it was, while I watched the hungry faces of our audience through the glass, I was hooked.
Not only do I have a mask kink, but apparently an exhibition kink, too.
Never expected this the night I entered the Rothwell Hunt.
The mirror has not been flipped yet, or whatever you call it, and all I can really see is a warped reflection of myself grinding into Sting, both of us topless but still clothed from the waist down. When I look back at Rogue, he gestures toward the glass with his chin.
