Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“Too fast,” he says, almost smiling against the mask. “Breathe.”
“I am.”
His thumb strokes the inside of my wrist, lazy, and the “lesson” skews sideways into something that isn’t a lesson. He guides my hand to his shoulder, the knit of his hoodie warm and solid under my palm. Heat unspools everywhere.
“Why do you care?” I ask, dream-brave. “You could let me fall.”
He leans closer, kneeling onto the mattress, crowding my space until his knee brushes my hip and my thoughts go to static. He’s all cedar and night air, dominance and restraint.
“Because I would rather break the world than watch it break you.”
I don’t know what to do with that, so I reach. I hook two fingers in the edge of his hood and tug, testing. He catches my wrist again, not hard—just there. Control like a caress.
“Rule one,” he reminds me, voice gone low and wicked. “Obey me.”
“What if I want to disobey?” I breathe.
“Then I’ll teach you the difference,” he says, and tips his forehead to mine. The mask is cool rubber while the man beneath it is heat. He doesn’t kiss me. He waits. It’s worse than a kiss, better than one—permission turned into foreplay.
“Say yes,” he whispers.
“Yes,” I whisper back, because I’m helpless and hungry and I want everything I shouldn’t.
He breaks. He doesn’t just kiss me; he takes the moment and rewrites it. The mask is gone, but still his face is distorted. It’s messy and sweet and sinful, the kind of kiss that teaches you your own name in a new language. My hands end up in his hood, in his hair—God, there’s hair—short and soft and familiar enough that lightning forks straight down my spine.
He drags his mouth to my jaw, my throat, mapping my pulse with slow, proprietary passes. “Here,” he says, and I arch like the word is a hand on my back. “And here.” He tastes the corner of my mouth. “And here.” He stops just to hear the sound I make when he does.
I make it.
“Good girl,” he says, and I nearly combust.
“Mask,” I breathe out loud, and then—without meaning to, without permission—another name slips into my mind.
Gage.
The dream stutters.
For a heartbeat, I’m awake in the dark hearing my own traitorous mouth say it into cotton and air. My chest is heaving. My skin burns.
Oh God.
I squeeze my eyes shut like I can shove it back into the dream and claim it never happened. It doesn’t work. Heat swallows me whole. Want, thick and dizzy, curls my toes. I can’t tell if I’m mortified or more turned on than I have ever been in my life.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I flinch, heartbeat ricocheting. The screen’s too bright in the dark. One new message on the encrypted thread.
MASK: Don’t dream of me. I’m not safe.
Every nerve I own lights up.
He heard me.
The red pinprick in the corner blinks once, patient. I should be creeped out. I should be furious. I’m not. I’m melting and mortified and aching and—God help me—relieved. Because the ghosts outside can be anywhere, but the ghost inside this room is mine.
My thumbs hover. I should type something sensible. I type the truth instead.
ME: Too late.
There’s a long beat. I imagine him somewhere in the city, watching a tiny screen light up with my hunger, his jaw tight, his hand in a fist by his side.
The dots appear.
Disappear.
Appear.
MASK: You should sleep.
ME: You should come take responsibility.
The dots freeze. I can feel his restraint from here, a taut line running straight from his phone to my body.
MASK: If I come, River, you won’t sleep.
Air abandons my lungs. Heat skyrockets. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
ME: Maybe I don’t want to.
Longer pause. I picture him closing his eyes, counting, losing count.
MASK: I care about your safety. Not your dreams.
Liar. The phone trembles in my hands. I push harder, reckless.
ME: What if I care about both?
Another breathless wait.
MASK: Then obey me. Sleep. Practice in the morning. Thumbs outside.
A laugh slips out. It’s small and ragged. I bite my lip and type softer.
ME: Why do you make me feel like this?
MASK: Because you’re alive again.
My eyes sting. Not with fear. With something that feels like relief.
ME: What’s your name?
Silence. The longest yet. Then—
MASK: It doesn't matter.
ME: It matters to me.
MASK: Sleep.
It’s nothing. It’s everything.
ME: Good night.
MASK: Good girl.
I drop the phone like it’s hot. Maybe it is. My whole body hums, a low, insistent vibration that wants hands and mouth and answers. I roll onto my side and tuck a pillow between my knees, biting it once like that will help. It doesn’t. It makes it worse.
“Mask,” I whisper into the dark again, softer this time, tasting the trouble of it, the wrongness that feels too right. The syllable fits in my mouth like it’s been waiting. However, it’s Gage’s face I see when I close my eyes.