🎃 The Masked Stranger | Chapter Four: Behind Closed Doors

🎃 The Masked Stranger | Chapter Four: Behind Closed Doors

Things are getting considerably hotter in Chapter Four of The Masked Stranger, part of the Wicked Little Treats Halloween Collection!

Delaney has stopped trying to figure out who's behind the mask, at least for tonight. Alone with her mysterious stranger, she's discovering that his confidence extends far beyond the dance floor.

But even as the clothes come off, the mask stays firmly in place. And while Delaney might be willing to surrender to temptation, there's still one thing she isn't getting: his name.

Chapter Four

Behind Closed Doors

Delaney

The sofa is too narrow for this, but neither of us cares.

His hand slides from my shoulder down my arm, unhurried, the way he does everything. Like he's got all night and intends to use it. My dress has a side zipper, and he finds it without looking, thumb hooking the tab before he stops.

"Tell me if you want me to stop."

"You've really got to stop asking that."

"I'll take that as a no."

"That's a hell no, actually."

The zipper goes down. Cool air hits my ribs, then his mouth does, and whatever clever thing I was going to say next dissolves somewhere around my collarbone.

Here's the thing about a mask: it takes away his face and makes everything else more noticeable. The line of his jaw. The way his throat moves when he swallows. How the dark fabric shifts when he leans down, exposing a strip of skin and the faint scent of whatever cologne he's wearing.

I hook a heel around the back of his calf and pull. He comes willingly, bracing a forearm beside my head, and the weight of him settling over me is the first thing all night that shuts me up completely.

Not for long, obviously.

"Careful," I manage. "We're going to break something."

"I'll be gentle."

"See, when you say things like that..."

He kisses the hollow beneath my ear, and my sentence dies. He does it again, lower this time. He's annoyingly thorough, and by the time he's worked the dress down past my hips, I've gone from running my mouth to gripping the back of the sofa like it owes me money.

"Okay," I breathe. "Okay, that's... you can keep doing that."

"Was that a compliment?"

"Don't let it go to your head."

He laughs against my stomach, and I feel the vibration of it.

The dress ends up somewhere on the floor. My heels go next, one, then the other, and he takes his time with it in a way that suggests he's enjoying my patience running out. He loosens his tie, pulling it free before unbuttoning his shirt and tossing both aside. His mask, however, stays firmly in place, which is somehow the most fascinating and infuriating thing about him.

"You know this is ridiculous," I tell him, running my hands over his bare chest.

"What is?"

"I'm about to sleep with a man I couldn't pick out of a lineup."

"Then it’ll have to be memorable."

He reaches past me, pulls the throw off the back of the sofa, and waits.

"Same rule," he says quietly. "Any time."

I answer by pulling him down. It's slow and unexpected. He's careful in a way that feels like restraint rather than hesitation, and there's a moment when his forehead rests against mine, and he simply breathes. The tenderness of it catches me off guard, especially when I consider how little we actually know about each other.

The rest of the world might as well not exist. The fire crackles nearby, music drifts faintly from downstairs, and his fingers lace through mine against the cushions. Whatever happens between us tonight, I already know I'm going to remember it.

"Tell me what you want," he says against my mouth.

"I thought we covered that."

"Not the version you say when you're being funny."

I open my eyes. He's braced above me, mask in place, chest rising harder than it was a minute ago, and there's nothing teasing left in his voice at all.

"You first," I say.

"All right." His thumb drags down my sternum, unhurried, watching it. "I want to get you out of the rest of this. I want my mouth on you until you stop being clever. And then I want to be inside you, and I want to hear what that sounds like."

My brain produces approximately nothing.

"Well," I manage. "When you put it like that."

He smiles and gets to work.

The bra goes first, and he doesn't rush it. He gets it off, tosses it, and then just looks at me, which is its own kind of unbearable. His palm covers my ribs, thumb sweeping once, and then his mouth follows the same path, and I arch off the cushion.

"God—"

"Mm." He's smug about it. He has every right to be.

He works his way down with the same methodical patience he's done everything with all night, and by the time he's got a hand hooked under my knee, pushing it wide, I've given up on dignity entirely.

"There are a hundred people downstairs," he says against the inside of my thigh.

"Great. Fantastic. Thanks for the update."

"So you'll want to be quiet."

"I can be quiet."

"Can you?"

He proves his point. Thoroughly. Two fingers, then his mouth, and I get a fistful of the throw and make a noise that is definitely not quiet, and he hums against me like he's pleased, which only makes it worse.

"Delaney."

"What?"

"You're terrible at this."

"I'd like to see you— oh." My hips jerk. "Do that again."

"Yes ma'am."

He does it again. And again. He keeps up a running commentary in that low, level voice, telling me how I taste, how he's been thinking about this, how he could do it all night and might. I say something that's mostly consonants. He laughs, and the laugh is worse than the fingers.

"Look at me," he says.

I do. The mask is the last thing in the room I want to look at and the only thing I can.

"Good girl."

I actually feel it land somewhere behind my ribs. Then he curls his fingers, and I stop feeling anything else.

He gives me about eight seconds before his hands are on my hips, sliding me down the cushions, working the throw out from under me. His belt comes undone, and I hear the zip, and then he pauses.

"Wallet," he says. "Chair. Left side."

"You're telling me to fetch?"

"You're closer."

I make a show of sighing before reaching for his pants draped over the chair beside us. I find his wallet, pull out the condom, and hand it to him with a raised eyebrow.

"Always prepared, aren't you?"

"Never hurts to be optimistic."

He hooks an arm under my lower back and lifts, settling me against him so we're both propped against the arm of the sofa. His mouth is at my ear.

"Now," he says. "Tell me if it's too much."

"I will."

"Say it."

"I'll tell you," I say. "Just… go."

He goes slow. His hand slides up between my shoulder blades, holding me steady, and there's a long moment where he's just filling me and breathing against my jaw and neither of us says anything at all.

Then he moves, and the mask is right there next to my cheek, and I can hear his breath go ragged.

"Oh," he says, like it's been knocked out of him.

"Bit more than oh," I manage.

"I was going to say something clever."

"Try."

He tries, but whatever clever response he comes up with doesn't last long. He tells me to relax against him, his voice growing rougher as he repeats my name. Eventually, he gives up trying to form complete sentences, and I can't blame him. Whatever restraint he had earlier is slipping, and the intensity between us is nothing like I expected from the mysterious man who approached me on the dance floor.

"Harder," I get out.

He groans. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He does it harder. The sofa creaks under us like it's complaining. His mouth finds the side of my throat and stays there, and his free hand slides down to where we're joined, and that's it, that's the end of me. I say something that might be his name and isn't, because I don't have one, and he notices.

"You don't know what to call me," he says, wrecked.

"Shut up."

"Say it anyway."

"Make me."

He does, twice more, until I'm arching against him and swearing into his shoulder. Everything around us fades away except the warmth of the fire and the sound of his voice. I cling to him as the pleasure finally overwhelms me, leaving me breathless.

He follows soon after, his teeth grazing my collarbone as he lets out a quiet, completely undignified sound. There's something about hearing him lose control for once that makes me smile. I think it might be my favorite moment of the entire night.

Then he sags. His weight comes down, his forehead lands on my shoulder, and his hand finds mine on the cushion again and stays there. Neither of us speaks for a minute.

"You were right," he says eventually, muffled.

"About what?"

"We almost broke something."

I laugh, which jostles him, and he groans. "That was the sofa, not me."

"Sure it was."

One More to Come!