Page 12 of Your Masked Haunting

“I don’t bluff when it comes to you, Mona. But I might beg.”

“Hmm. What are you begging for?” She pushes me further, leaning into our little banter.

“For you to walk into the house, go up to the third floor and into your room. Don’t turn on the lights.” I pause as a shudder runs down my spine at the possibility of her saying yes. “And wait for me.”

“Like a pet? Just ordering me around?” Stepping toward the house, she bites down on her bottom lip. “And if I say no?”

“Then nothing happens,” I assure her. “Your boundaries.”

“A respectful creep.” She mulls the words over.

“I’ll be respectful … until you beg me not to be,” I add, my voice almost quivering with anticipation. “But only then.”

Her head nods ever so slightly, that big smile still on her beautiful face. “And if I want that? For you to follow me to my room. To touch me. Kiss me. Fuck me. Enact all of your dirtiest desires and keep me. Then what?”

“Then I’ll tattoo your name on my fucking chest and keep you forever,” I growl, blood pooling to my core.

“Hmm,” she hums sweetly, but the look on her face is anything but. “And what if I want to make you wait? Edge you out until you can’t take it anymore?” She pauses.

I’m suddenly incredibly thankful for the wall keeping me upright.

“Until you’re so hard that the mere thought of me parting my legs and letting you in makes you come in your pants?”

Jesus Christ.

My cock throbs at her words, and I’m starting to think that the hypothetical isn’t too far off. “Then I think I might propose to you.”

This earns me a cackle as she spins around, still surveying the crowd. “All right then. I might have to make you wait.”

A beat passes as I rerun her words in my mind, wondering if I heard her correctly.

“You’re crazy enough to stalk me. And I’m crazy enough to like it.”

“Sounds like we’re soulmates.” I wet my bottom lip. “Now go to your room and relax. Everything you need will be here soon. Until then, I want Bryce’s greedy eyes off of your body.”

She glances to her left, where Bryce is at the face-painting booth, his gaze glued on her. Her movement shifted her enough that I’m out of her direct view.

With a little chuckle, as if I’m joking in any sense, she asks, “A bit possessive, huh?”

My foot breaches the light, and I step out of the shadows.

“You’ll see. You’re mine, Mona, and I don’t fucking share.”

I end the call and tuck the phone into my pants before strolling across the yard, back to Bates and Kol, who might as well have a bucket of popcorn in their hands.

“That looked like it went well?” Kol asks, a brightness in his light blue, almost-gray eyes.

Throwing my leg over the bench of the picnic table, I can’t contain my smile as I dig my phone back out of my pants. “Better than well. Time to move to stage two, boys.”

Bates humors me. “And what’s stage two?”

Unlocking my phone, I wink at him. “Thanks for asking, Finny.” A dramatic, theatrical voice overtakes me as I announce, “Stage two: I’m going to fire that twit named Bryce from my haunted house. Break my mask back out. And meet my girl for real this time, without a hundred feet between us.”

Something’s clinically wrong with me. That’s the only explanation. Or he drugged me somehow and is manipulating me under some kind of persuasion. Because there’s no rational reason that I should be this into a man who’s stalking me. Right? Right.

But …

Maybe for once in my life, I shouldn’t fight something just for the sake of defiance. At least until he gives me a good reason to. It’s not that I intentionally face the world with my fists drawn. It’s just my automatic defense mechanism.