Page 17 of Boardroom Mask

When I’m sure he’s gone, I lunge forward and throw the deadbolt, then the chain. Then I press my spine to the wall beside the door and let my legs give out. I drop to the ground, knees up, pajama pants riding up my shins, and I breathe.

I just breathe.

In through the nose.

Out through the mouth.

Over and over until my hands stop shaking, which takes a while.

The lights flicker once, twice, and then snap on. The apartment floods with the warm, ordinary glow of the overhead kitchen fixture and the little lamp I leave on by the couch. Everything looks exactly how it always looks. Clean counters. Stacked books. My half-finished whiskey on the table.

It’s over. It’s truly, actually over.

Something is still bothering me, though. It takes me a second to figure out that something is missing from the tableaux: The space on the counter where I tossed the mail Elliot brought me is empty.

I look on the floor, under the TV, but it’s nowhere to be seen. The only answer is the obvious one: He took it.

I almost laugh. Fuck it. He can have my ConEd bill and whatever credit card offer Citibank is pushing this week.

I’ve got way bigger problems in my future.

7

KIR

“See the animal in his cage that you built / Are you sure what side you’re on? / Better not look him too close in the eye”

— “Right Where It Belongs” by Nine Inch Nails

I pull the mask off the second my penthouse door closes behind me. The leather gloves come next. I drop both on the counter and stand there for a minute, breathing.

My apartment is dark and quiet. Perks of life on the thirty-second floor. The only illumination comes glinting through the windows off of ships passing down the East River, but that’s enough for me. I don’t turn on the lights.

I sit down on the couch and spread Jillian’s mail out on the marble coffee table in front of me. They paint a picture of her life. I know much of this already, but something about touching these things that were meant to be touched by her feels depraved and deliciously intimate. It’s like slicing her open and sticking a finger in her bloodstream. Ifeelher through them in a vital way.

I can still smell her. Black cherry and almond, dark and sweet, clinging to the fabric of my gloves. I pick one up and inhale it, and my dick stiffens immediately. When I ran my tongue along her jugular, she tasted every bit as good as she smelled.

I close my eyes and let the memory unspool.

It wasn’t fear that made her tremble. I know fear, I’ve seen fear in dozens of faces, and fear alone doesn’t make a woman tilt her hips forward like she did. She was shaking with the effort of fighting what her body wanted. All the signs were there and obvious for those who know where to look.

In her finger tension.

Her plump, parted lips.

In her soft, strangled moan.

Fuck, I want to hear that sound again. I’m a mad fucking scientist when it comes to Jillian Pierce; I want to take her apart and study every frequency of her. I want to put my mouth between her legs and make her scream without ever knowing my name or face.

I wrench my attention back to the mail. If I keep ruminating on my little fox, I’m going to fucking rupture every vein in my cock. I need a distraction.

The first envelope is ConEd. I chuckle at the thought of her demanding a bill credit for tonight’s little power outage. Second is a credit card statement from Chase. Third is junk. So’s the fourth. The fifth is a flyer from a yoga studio on Columbus. Grand opening, first class free. I try to picture Jillian in yoga pants, folded into some pose, red hair spilling over a mat—then I picture taking a serrated knife and sawing up the seam of thoseyoga pants to expose a glistening pink pussy, raised high in the air for me, and I almost cum in my pants.

Fifth is a letter from NYU’s alumni association asking for donations. She went there for undergrad. I already knew that. Journalism degree, graduated with honors, took a year off in the middle for reasons nobody seems willing or able to explain.

The sixth envelope gives me pause.

It’s larger than the others and aqua-colored. Jillian’s name is handwritten on the front in neat, looping cursive. The return address is somewhere in New Jersey—Montclair, specifically—with a name I don’t recognize.