Behind the Mask: A Billionaire Romance novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Silver Mask
Noelle runs a charity masquerade and spends the night with a masked man who knows every exit. Monday, the new owner speaks in the same voice and looks right through her.
By eleven o'clock, the Starlight Masquerade had raised four hundred thousand dollars for burned children.
I was standing behind a curtain in the Merriam Hotel with a headset on, and I had not eaten since breakfast.
"Noelle, the harpist wants water," said the stage manager in my ear.
"Give her water," I said. "Give her anything she wants."
I had spent six months on this night.
Every guest wore a mask, and every mask had been cleared by me, down to the last feather.
I did not wear one, because the producer works the room and cannot be anybody.
That was why I noticed him.
He stood alone by the north wall, a very tall man in a black suit and a plain silver mask.
He was not looking at the dancers.
He was looking at the doors.
First the main doors, then the kitchen doors, then the narrow service door behind the coat check.
Nobody else in that ballroom knew the service door existed.
I crossed the floor and stopped in front of him.
"Are you lost?" I asked. "The bar is the other way."
"I know where the bar is."
His voice was low and dry, with a rasp in it.
"Then you're looking for the exit," I said.
"All of them."
"Why?"
"I like to know how I'd leave."
I laughed, because I did the same thing in every room I had ever worked.
"The service stairs behind you go to the loading dock," I said. "The fire stairs are at the east end. The freight elevator sticks."
"It sticks on four," he said. "And six."
"You know this hotel."
"Tell me anyway," he said. "I like how you say it."
I should have walked away.
Instead I stayed, and I told him the whole building, floor by floor, for forty minutes.
He listened.
Around midnight a violin started a slow waltz, and he held out a black-gloved hand.
"Dance with me."
"I'm working."
"You're standing next to me," he said. "That's working."
I put my hand in his.
He danced, and he never once looked away from my face.
His hand sat flat and warm against my spine, and my skin went tight all the way down.
"I don't know your name," he said into my ear.
"Good."
"Tell me."
"Tonight I'm nobody's," I said.
He went still against me, and then I felt him laugh.
"Then be nobody's with me," he said. "Upstairs."
I had water in my hand and nothing else in my blood.
I knew exactly what I was saying yes to.
"The sixth floor," I said. "I have the key to the Wren Suite."
"The elevator sticks on six."
"Then we'll take the stairs."
We took the stairs.
He climbed behind me with his hand on the rail beside my hip, not touching, and I felt him there on every step.
The Wren Suite was dark and smelled of lilies from the centerpieces I had stored there.
I shut the door and he was on me before the lock clicked.
He put me against the wood and pulled off his gloves one at a time, and then his bare hand cupped my jaw.
"Mask stays," he said, close to my mouth.
"Fine," I said. "Then so does mine."
I had grabbed a half mask off a tray on the stairs.
He kissed me through the lace edge of it, hard, and my knees went.
His mouth tasted like nothing but heat.
I got his jacket off his shoulders and he got the zipper of my dress down my back in one long pull.
"Beautiful," he said when it fell.
He said it like it hurt him.
I pushed him backward to the bed and climbed on top of him in my underwear and my mask.
He lay under me, big and breathing, and he looked at me.
"Take your time," he said.
"No," I said. "I don't think I will."
I unbuttoned his shirt with shaking hands and kissed down the middle of his chest.
His skin was hot and hard under my mouth, rough along one side of his neck, and he groaned when I reached his belt.
"Careful," he said, rough, and I laughed against his stomach and he flipped me under him.
He stripped me with his hands and his mouth, my bra and then my panties, slow and thorough, and he put his face between my thighs and did not come up for a long time.
I held his head with both hands and said nothing that made sense.
When I came the first time, I said "yes" into the pillow three times, and he laughed against me.
Then he was over me, his cock hard and heavy against my hip, and I reached down and took him in my hand.
"Now," I said. "Please. Now."
He pushed into me in one slow stroke and we both stopped breathing.
He was big.
He filled me so completely that I had to hold on to his shoulders and wait for my body to learn him.
"Look at me," he said.
I looked at the silver.
He started to move, deep and steady, and then not steady at all.
I wrapped my legs around his back and met every thrust, and the headboard knocked the wall, and I did not care who heard.
"Harder," I said.
He gave me harder.
He gripped my hip and drove into me until I was shaking and begging, and when he reached between us and found my clit with his thumb, I came apart around him with a cry I had never made in my life.
He followed me a moment later, his face in my neck, swearing my name.
We did it again before the sun came up, slower, with the mask on the pillow between our heads and nobody saying anything at all.
At ten to five I dressed in the dark.
"Stay," he said from the bed.
"I can't."
"Tell me who you are."
"Nobody's," I said, and I shut the door on him.
On Monday morning I walked into Sorrell Tower with my team behind me and sat down in the fortieth-floor boardroom for the all-hands.
The company that had bought my agency two months earlier was finally going to show us its owner.
Nobody had ever seen him.
Two hundred people filled the room, murmuring.
The lights dimmed, and a tall man stepped out of the side door in a black suit and a black glove, standing in shadow with his face turned half away.
"Good morning," he said.
I stopped breathing.
It was the same low, dry voice, with the same rasp.
"My name is Elliott Sorrell," he said. "I own this company."
His eyes moved across the room, row by row, and landed on me.
They did not stop.
They moved on to the person beside me.
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