Page 4

“It isn’t a joke. Walk to the back row. The one you used in June. I remember how you sounded.”

I should hang up.

I should walk back to my desk and forget this.

Instead, I walk to the back row anyway, because I am hard, I am twenty-eight, and I have never been good at walking away from Rafe.

A figure is already there.

Slate-grey utility coverall, hood up, unisex as a shadow. Black gloves. Black soft boots that don’t make a sound against the tiles. And a mask.

The mask is bone-white and covers the whole face. There are no cheekbones to tell me if it is a man or a woman. There is no real mouth to read. There is only a thin dark cut where the lips should be, and dark mesh over the eyes so I cannot see them. My heart is pounding.

The figure walks toward me. Slow. No hurry. The shoulders could belong to a male or a female. The height could be half the people I just passed.

I hear myself say it, because someone has to say something human.

“What’s with the mask, Rafe?”

Nothing.

There is no joke. There is no Rafe laugh. The phone goes dead in my ear. Then I hear the tap again, right in front of me, bone on nothing. The same close voice comes out of the mask.

I step closer anyway. It is a stupid thing to do, but I still want this. Rafe was always one to play dirty and get kinky. Maybe this is just one of his sick and twisted erotic games. I reach for the jaw of the white mask, ready to lift it and kiss whoever has been talking dirty to me since I left my desk.

A gloved hand catches my wrist.

The close voice is almost tender.

“Not yet. Take it off. All of it. Slow. I want to see what I’m getting.”

“Rafe—”

“Strip,” the voice orders.

I am turned on and scared all at the same fucking time, and I cannot tell which one is stronger. I laugh once, shaky, and start to undress because this is the game we always play, and I have never got what I wanted by saying no.

I slide the jacket off my shoulders and lay it on the table, slow enough that I know the mask is watching. I pull the tie loose and let it slip through my fingers. I undo the grey shirt one button at a time, down my chest, and let it fall open. The belt comes next. I take my time with it. I pop the buckle, drag the leather out of the loops, and drop it. Then I push my trousers down my hips and step out of them. Socks last, before I hook my thumbs in my briefs, pause, and look at the mask.

“All of it,” the voice demands.

I push them down. My cock is hard and standing up against my stomach, wet at the tip. The file room air is cold on my skin. I am naked in Rhys Preswood’s building for someone whose face I still cannot see, and I have never been harder and more turned on in my life.

The person steps in close. The coverall makes a soft sound. A gloved hand slides over my hip and does not touch my cock yet. Then they drop to their knees.

The bone-white face lowers.

It looks like they are about to put their mouth on my cock. That is what I asked for on the stairs. I tilt my head back and wait.

I am still waiting for their mouth when something cold touches my stomach.

For a second I think it is a fingernail. Then the cold turns hot, and a long thin line opens across my stomach. Blood comes fast, warm, running over my hands. I understand it is a blade. The sound I make is ugly and sexual at the same time. I fold forward over it. I press both hands to the cut and feel it wet and open under my palms, trying to hold myself closed.

“Wait—” I say. “Wait, wait, I can’t—”

I fold forward and they stand up with me instead of backing away. The coverall presses against my bare skin. Blood from my stomach smears between us. The mask pushes against my mouth and stays there, like a kiss. The gloved hand wraps around my cock, tight, stroking once, twice. This is still the game. Rafe is just taking it too far. My hips jerk into that fist while I am trying to hold my bleeding stomach closed.

“Look at you,” the close voice says through the cut in the white. “Pretty when you bleed.”