“But maybe it’ll become one,” he says, his voice gliding over my skin as his seduction clearly continues.
Maybe it will.
Maybe I want it to.
I take his hand, and he leads me to the dance floor.
He sets one palm on my waist, and we waltz to the music, joining the other couples moving elegantly around us under the lights, sophistication, and smoke. Eliza is nowhere to be seen. She’s gone, and so is the man with the beard.
But I’ve no time to think of Eliza when my dance partner spins me, then dips me, letting my back curve into an arch. “You fibbed,” I say, pouting.
“Did I?” he asks, a naughty tone of mischief in his voice. He keeps me in this position, bent back, under his control, waiting.
I don’t hate it.
In fact, I rather like it.
My skin turns hotter. My heart rate races.
“Yes. You lied. Because you waltz perfectly,” I say as he tugs me up and draws me close, flush against his hard frame. My God, he is hard everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
He strokes his fingers along my bare shoulders. “Perhaps I’m improvising. Or maybe I sensed that you wanted to be surprised.”
I want to be touched. Judging from the way my skin sings under his fingertips, I want to be touched everywhere. Still, I manage to keep up the banter, saying, “You have me there.”
“I’d like to have you in many places.”
Tingles burst through me. Confidence is so sexy. So alluring. Confidence is the ultimate aphrodisiac. “Would you?”
“I absolutely would,” he says, as the music shifts to something simpler. Not quite a bump and grind but a tune that’s easy to sway and move to.
This time, he brings me closer, and I am giddy, lit up. I am drunk on this night. And maybe even getting a little tipsy on him when he stares at my lips, then says, “Your smile is radiant.”
“So is yours.” I lift a finger, feeling daring, tracing it along the top of his lip. A shudder moves through him as I touch him.
“You’re quite bold,” he says, nipping at my finger, then moaning lightly around it before letting go.
“Does it bother you?”
“Not in the least. But maybe I’d like to be bold with you.” He tightens his grip on my waist, his fingers playing, moving across my corseted costume. I swallow roughly. He must know what he’s doing to me. “Maybe I’d like to kiss this radiant smile right off of your beautiful face, make you hot and bothered, gasping, begging me to touch you more.”
“You’d do that to me?”
“Does that surprise you?”
I shake my head, my body buzzing, my head hazy, the taste of possibility on my lips. “No. It turns me on.”
“Good. That’s what I want to do to you. And I’m a man who knows what he wants.”
I expect him to say, I want you. That’s the next logical statement.
But he doesn’t, because a blue-eyed man cuts in, tapping on my shoulder. I turn in his direction. He’s the man with the Phantom mask. Up close, his jaw is chiseled, his face clean-shaven, his lips kissable. “May I have this dance?”
My throat is dry. And my skin hums all over. From the first man, and now the second one. They are opposites—one has dark eyes, one light. One’s voice is gruff and raspy, and the other’s is deep, melodic, and British.
But both are panty-melting.
Two Prince Wickeds.
As the English one draws me against him, the American man moves behind me ever so briefly, pressing his chest against my back before he steps away.
Suddenly, my mind is racing to lands I never thought I’d want to explore.
In a flash, in a heartbeat, I do.
4
Daniel
A Few Minutes Earlier
* * *
Some might call me a gamesman.
They wouldn’t be wrong. Anything with a bit of strategy or a touch of cunning holds a particular appeal.
A bet, a night, an opportunity—it’s almost as if I’m drawing a bow across a violin, teasing out a lovely melody.
The start of a symphony.
One that begins with spotting a beautiful woman, admiring the waves of her hair, the cut of her jaw, the curves of her body.
But that’s not all.
That’s not even what interests me the most about the fairer sex. Everything that matters is found in the eyes. And in the lips.
Eyes are hard to see with masks on, so in many ways I’m handicapped.
But that’s fine by me. I like it when the game is a little harder, when I have to think and act smart. To make choices that might backfire.
As I regard the guests—this one, that one, perhaps another one—my gaze returning to the woman in the peacock mask, I know what it’s going to take for this dalliance to work the way I want it to. I’ll let Cole think he spotted her. He’ll dance with her first. Then I’ll cut in.
The symphony plays out in my head, the music growing stronger, louder, suggesting how the evening might unfold.
Because she’s the one.
It’s as clear as night.
She didn’t know it before she left her home, but she was destined to meet us tonight.
The woman in the black corset with a diamond necklace wrapped lovingly around her neck—Could there be any more of a sign that she’d adore long, lingering kisses on that supple neck?—is most definitely the one for us.
As we drink champagne and survey the dance floor, I say nothing to Cole to indicate I’ve found her. I simply let my gaze occasionally drift her way. Part of my plan to let him think he saw her first. Eventually, as Cole and I chat about everything and nothing, which is what we usually do, he keys in on her too.
Perfect.
It’s like leading a horse to water, as he says, “I believe it’s time to ask someone for a dance.”
He sets down his champagne.
I take a drink of mine. “Best of luck to you, mate.”
He raises an eyebrow above his black mask. “You think I need luck?”
“We all need luck. We all need luck every second of every day. Never underestimate the value of luck.”
He shoots me a doubtful grin, then heads over to the woman.
We both believe in hard work, but Cole doesn’t know what it’s like to have luck stolen from you. As I finish off my champagne, my eyes drift briefly to the long, jagged scar that runs between the first two knuckles on my right hand, all the way down to my wrist.
Luck is everything.
In this city, hell, in all the cities all around the world, you have to make luck work for you. Tonight, I let my best friend and business partner think he’s making the first move. It doesn’t hurt anyone for him to believe that.
For a few minutes, I soak in the sights of the party, the bodies moving and swaying, the heat rising in the room, the way women and men collide into each other. Hands slide down waists, up backs, into hair.
This party is so much more than a masquerade.
Or maybe that’s exactly what it is—a mask.
A mask for more.
How many others are here to kiss, to touch, to play?
To grind, to fuck, to come?
From the look of the dance floor, the answer is plenty.
This is not a party for the chaste.