Page 16 of Boardroom Mask

“I asked you a question,” he says. “Do you fuck a lot of men?”

“That is none of your goddamn business.”

“Everything about you is my business from now on.” His tongue darts out to wet his lips as his pale eyes regard me. “Don’t duck the question. I want to know what you let them do to you.”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“All the difference in the world” He takes a half-step closer. Just one. Enough to close the gap I fought for. “I need to know how many of them have touched you.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“How many, Jillian?”

“You’re out of your mind. You know that, right? You broke into my home with a gun, and now, you’re asking me about my sex life like some crazy ex-boyfriend, except we’ve never evenmet.”

“How. Many?”

“A hundred!” I cry out sarcastically, throwing up my hands. “A thousand! Every man in Manhattan! The whole borough! I’m working my way through Brooklyn next. Happy?”

His breathing changes. It gets heavier, rougher, and I realize I’ve poked something I probably shouldn’t have poked. The air between us goes thick and dangerous.

“You think that’s funny?” he growls. “Every man who’s ever put his hands on you is a man I’ll eventually find.”

“Is that supposed to be romantic?!”

He shrugs again, one shoulder rising and falling nonchalantly. “You’ll soon learn that romance in my world isn’t flower arrangements and chocolate boxes. It’s the bleeding, severed cock of every man who thought he was allowed to defile you, all arranged in a neat little row while their former owners find permanent beds in the muddy marshes of Red Hook. Would you like that, little fox?”

I shake my head so hard that my hair flies out of its messy bun. “You’re sick. You’re very, very sick and you need help.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But I’m not the one pressing her thighs together every time I open my mouth.”

“You’re doing a lot of talking for someone who supposedly came here to kill me.” I tilt my head to the side and give him a pitying look. “That’s because you don’t have the balls to do it, do you?”

The Masked Man laughs once again. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” he says. “For tonight, you’re safe. I’m going to keep an eye on you while I decide what to do. This will be a fun little game, I think.”

“While youdecide—?” I sputter. “No. No. We’re done here.” I push off the wall, throw the crumpled mail down on the kitchen counter, and turn around so I can shove him toward the door. “Get the hell out of my apartment.”

For a second, I think he’s going to let me get away with it, that he’ll disappear from my lightless apartment like the wisp of smoke he is and this will all turn out to have been nothing but a bad dream.

But it doesn’t go quite like that.

Instead, he catches my wrist mid-shove, spins me around, and pulls my back against his chest in one fluid motion. When he laughs again, I feel it shudder through every inch of me.

“You’re adorable when you’re brave,” he remarks.

His free hand arrows down, past my stomach and the drawstring of my pajama pants, until his palm cups me between my legs over the thin fabric.

I gasp.

He doesn’t go any farther, though. He just holds it there, hot and warm and solid, pressing where I’m suddenly achy. My knees nearly buckle.

“I’ll be seeing you very soon, little fox,” he whispers in my ear.

Then his hand is gone. And so is his heat.

His smell, however, lingers.

I don’t move for a long time. I stand in the dark with my back against his ghost and listen to my apartment settle around me.