Page 46 of Masks and Mishaps

“Why don’t you drink?” I finally ask, reluctantly sidestepping the part where Essie called me cute. Iamcute. “I figure you drank on Halloween because you wanted to dull the sensation of that stringy little punk, but what about the rest of the time?”

“Again, Alec was six-foot-three and two hundred pounds,” she reminds me. “And I don’t drink because people count on me. Why do you drink so much?”

The words “so much” hit me in a way I didn’t expect. My relationship with alcohol is…long. In that long history, there are good nights and bad. The good ones saw Lander, Everett, and me stumbling out of hot bars into frigid winter nights to find vegan hangover food for Everett. The bad ones were in Rhinebeck with Frank where I matched him drink for drink because it was the only way I could get him to spend time with me.

“Sometimes it’s hard to just be,” I finally admit. “If I’m drunk, I can blame something for the way I am. The alcohol. The blackout. The hangover. It’s like, I’m not a mess;those thingsare messy.”

Essie stares at me for a long time with her brows pulled together. Her gaze doesn’t settle, flicking between my features until her tense expression eases. “It’s okay, Dalton,” she finally replies, and her lips rise at the corner. “Sometimes I wear a mask too.”

I’m not often speechless, but this moment calls for my silence—my admiration.

I step forward, but she doesn’t come the rest of the way.

Free-use means I could take a kiss from her; I’m allowed to use her mouth for whatever I need. But right now, I don’t want to take anything from Essie. All I want is to give her whatsheneeds.

So, I grin. And with our brown eyes taking each other in—just two best friends, soon-to-be step-siblings, and colleagues—I ask, “Have you ever done a body shot?”

***

“You want me towhat?” Essie demands, slapping my arm. “There’s no way this is real. You’re making things up to get me topless.”

“Baby, I have a free-use clause,” I remind her while clearing the last of the art books off my coffee table. “If I wanted you to lay down in your panties, I wouldn’t have to tell a long ass story about getting detained in Salem because I tried to steal Goodman Hawthorne’s puritan hat.”

“You never mentioned you were detained.”

“Surely I did,” I reply before clearing my throat. “I definitely also told you that when Lander and Everett picked me up, I was wearing a novelty t-shirt that said ‘Oops, they missed one’ over a picture of a witch on a broom.”

Essie bursts out laughing, and I’m obsessed with the sound. “You’re…”

“Too much?”

“No…I mean, yes, you’re a lot. But it’s so you, isn’t it?” And while she’s still smiling, she strips down to her lacy black bra and matching thong—and frankly, I’m kind of shocked this is going so well for me.

Still game, Essie positions herself on the coffee table and reclines, letting her legs dangle off one end. At the other, her hair fans around her, haloing her face in soft brown. “Now what?”

Now I make one of my unemployed friends research the process of starting a religion in your name.

“Beautiful,” I murmur as I kneel next to the table and take in her body. “You’re so beautiful, Essie. I don’t think you realize how much I want you.” I put my fingertips on her shin and glide upwards, tracing her. “Free-use is barely enough. I wish I’d written it into the contract that you’d be naked for the next four weeks.”

Then I rise on my knees, letting her see I’m hard—painfully hard. Her lips separate for the briefest of moments before she snaps them shut, trying to regain control before I see how easily the promise of cock does it for her.

“Enjoy this,” I tell her as I trace my fingers up the sinful valley between her breasts. “I plan to. The sight of you laid out for me is going to stick with me forever.”

She scoffs. “There’s no such thing as forever.”

“There is. I spent two years jerking off to this body. You think I won’t remember it?” I lean down and whisper, “I’m going to come on your naked tits tonight. You’d spend the rest of our lives covered in my cum if it were up to me.”

Her expression doesn’t change.

To be fair, I don’t know what I expected. Forever doesn’t mean anything to a girl who lost her mom and whose dad abandoned her. Showing her how badly I want her is a job for Future-Dalton.

Right-Now-Dalton’s job is to suck tequila out of her bellybutton.

My fingers trace the edge of her bra, skimming the top of one of her pert breasts. “I’ll never get over how tight everything is on you. But you’re also so…” I tug her bra cup, exposing a pearled nipple. “You’re down for anything. You’d let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you? Put anything in you. Fill any part of you.” I pick up a lime wedge and place it between her teeth. “Hold that—perfect.”

Finally, Essie’s expression shifts, going from skeptical to downright lusty.

I knew she’d be into this shit.

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