Page 54 of Boardroom Mask

“Someone will—” I start.

“I don’t give a fuck.”

His hand moves from my neck to my hair and he wraps it around his fist, pulling my head back until I’m looking up at the sliver of dark sky between the buildings. My back is bowed and my knees are shaking. He’s so deep I can feel him in my ribs.

He finishes with a groan that vibrates through his chest and into my spine. His forehead drops against the back of my head and we both just stand there, breathing hard, fogging the cold air between us.

My legs are jelly. I’m barely holding myself up with my palms flat against the brick. He pulls out and I wince. He tugs my jeans back up for me before I can do it myself, which is weirdly considerate for a man who just fucked me in an alley without asking.

I turn around and sag against the wall. He’s already tucking himself back in, pulling his zipper up. My hair is wrecked. My hands are scraped raw from the brick and there’s grit embedded in my palms.

I look down at the carnage of my grocery bag. Egg yolk is oozing across the pavement. Red wine is pooling around the scattered clementines. One of the fruits has rolled all the way to the mouth of the alley.

“You owe me groceries,” I say.

He looks at the mess on the ground, then back at me. “I’ll Venmo you.”

It takes me a moment to realize he’s joking. When he does, I start to giggle, and the giggle turns into a laugh, and the laugh turns into a whole fit of laughter, and before I know it, I’m doubledover, wheezing, delirious, unsure what the hell is happening to me.

I mean, this can’t be real. None of this can. I’ve spent my whole life focused on my career above everything else, and now, I’m running the very real risk of everything getting derailed just so I can get my rocks off in dirty alleyways with a man whose face I’ve never seen. Is that wise? Is thatgirlbossyof me? Definitely not.

But one thing is becoming painfully clear, as I rearrange my clothes and the Masked Man does the same: The thin, weak little rules I tried putting in place to contain this whole disaster are already crumbling under the force of it. There’s something real here that’s more powerful than mere lust, and three simple rules will not be enough to keep it all from blowing up in my face.

When will that happen? How bad will the consequences be when it does? Stay tuned to find out, I guess.

For now, all I can do is laugh.

20

KIR

“You got me beggin’ for thread / To sew this hole up that you ripped in my head”

— “Beggin for Thread” by BANKS

The day after the alleyway, I sit at my desk and try to work. “Try” being the operative word.

I’ve got Lazarev Global’s quarterly reports open on one screen and a merger prospectus on the other, and I’ve gotten nowhere with either one. My head is somewhere else entirely. Split in two directions, actually, and neither of them has a single fucking thing to do with corporate finance.

Direction one: Jillian.

I can still smell her on my hands. It doesn’t matter how many times I shower; she’s under my skin now. Has been since that first night and she’s showing no signs of going away anytime soon.

It’s crazy how fast this has all spiraled out of control. I learned about her existence three goddamn days ago, but the obsessionhas me in an absolute chokehold. I don’t remember what life was like before her; I just know that I saw her, touched her, and breathed her in, and nothing since then has ever been the same.

Since the Jillian Pierce lightning bolt struck me, the situation has only gotten worse. One night wasn’t enough. I went back the next night and fucked her on her kitchen floor. I went back the night after that and she gave me her three little rules—no names, mask stays on, no falling in love—and I agreed to all of them while knowing I’d break every single one. Then Thanksgiving happened. I followed her to a playground and watched her cry at a chain-link fence for reasons I still don’t understand, and a short while later, I had her pressed against a brick wall in a dingy alley with her jeans around her thighs, because I just couldn’t stay away.

Each encounter is dumber and more reckless than the last. This can’t possibly end well. Men like me don’t get happy endings. We get bloodshed, plain and simple.

Direction two: my father. He hasn’t followed up yet, but that’s worse than if he had. When Lukas goes quiet, it means he’s making plans.

I close both laptops and push back from my desk. I need to get the hell out of here. It feels like the walls are closing in around me and the roof is going to crush me flat any second now. I need open sky and space to think.

But just for good measure, I grab a fifth of liquor from my personal cabinet on the way out.

The stairs convey me up to the roof service access. Nobody comes up here. It’s not officially off-limits, but there’s nothingup here except HVAC units, pigeon shit, and a half-decent view of Midtown if the weather cooperates.

I sit on the concrete ledge with my back against an air handler and crack the bottle. It’s still early in the day, but I don’t give a shit.