Page 39 of Boardroom Mask

The clear shine on his fingers.

The red lash of his tongue between them.

The pale gray of his eyes.

The black, black, black of his mask.

“Say the word and I’ll leave,” he murmurs. “I’ll go out the window and you’ll lock it behind me and tomorrow, you’ll pretend this never happened. Just like last time.”

I don’t speak.

“Or,” he continues, “you don’t say anything at all. And Idon’tleave.”

My breathing is ragged. My fingers are still wrapped around his forearm. I can feel the tendons grinding and pulsing underhis skin. We’re reaching a breaking point, but whether it’s him breaking or me breaking remains to be seen…

… until I speak.

“Just… don’t take off the mask,” I whisper.

The Masked Man’s goes very still. His eyes search mine. “What did you say?”

“The mask stays on.” My throat is dry. “That’s my condition. The only thing I’m asking for. Don’t take it off.”

I can’t fully explain why I’m saying this. If I did, it would probably go something like this: If I see his face, he becomes a person, and if he becomes a person, then this is real, and if this is real, then I have to feel it, and if I have to feel it, then I’ll fall the fuck apart.

The mask makes him no one. That’s the only way this works.

He nods once. “It stays on.”

Then he lowers me until my feet touch the floor, but he doesn’t let go. His hand stays fisted in my shirt, right over my sternum. He walks me backward, away from the wall, into the open space of the kitchen. My bare feet find cold tile.

There, he stops and looks down at me. I look up at him.

“Get on your knees, little fox,” he says.

I sink down. My knees hit the frigid floor and then I’m sitting back on my heels, looking up at him the way I did that first night—except everything is different now. That night, I knelt because he told me to and I was terrified.

Tonight, I kneel because this is the only place that feels safe anymore.

He crouches in front of me. His gloved hand comes up and cups the side of my face. “You’re shaking,” he says. “Are you scared?”

I gulp and nod. “Yes.”

“Of me?”

“Yes,” I croak. “But also of myself.”

He pulls the glove off with his teeth. Bare skin now. His thumb traces along my cheekbone, over the freckles there, down to my jaw. His hand is huge and warm and rough with calluses.

“Lie back,” he murmurs.

I lower myself down onto the kitchen floor. The tile is cold through my shirt. I can see the underside of the table, the legs of both chairs. The ceiling light makes everything too visible. He sinks between my legs and I let them fall open and the vulnerability of it almost sends me somewhere else—that ceiling, that crack, that lone gray sock by the door—until?—

“Hey.Hey.Look at me.” His hand is on my chin, turning my face toward him. “Stay here. Right here with me.”

I look at the mask and slowly, The Fear recedes. He’s not the one from before. He’s nobody.

The mask proves it.