Beneath This Mask (Beneath, #1)(26)

As I laid her on the bed, she reached out and flipped a switch. The lamp on the bedside table illuminated the room with a soft glow. She unwrapped her legs from around my waist, and her smile turned sultry. I knew she could read my mind.

The thought was confirmed when she said, “You want to see it, don’t you?”

“Fuck yeah. Are you joking?”

She bit her lip, whether out of shyness or because she was trying to keep herself from laughing at me, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I was barely restraining myself from ripping her pants off.

“I’ve never quite had this experience before.”

“Oh … well then.” She looked down meaningfully and reached for the button of her pants. I brushed her hands away and unbuttoned and unzipped them myself. When she lifted her hips, I peeled them down her legs.


Laid out on the bed, she looked like a goddamn fantasy come to life. Her legs pale and unmarked, her arms covered in works of art, the glinting gold tipping the pink nipples of her fantastic rack, her wild red, purple, and black waves spilling across the quilt. I paused to appreciate the sight. I was even more dumbstruck than I had been the night she’d stripped by the pool, because tonight I had enough light to see everything I’d missed then. She was more than a f*cking goddess. “You’re so goddamn beautiful … there aren’t words…”

“I don’t need words. Just you.”

I knelt and hooked my fingers in her panties and slid them down, unveiling the rest of her, inch by inch. Once I’d dropped the black lace to the floor, I bent to drag my tongue along her slit until I bumped her hood piercing. It was gold, matching her nipple rings, and it was the hottest f*cking thing I’d ever seen. I tongued it, flicking it against her clit, and she writhed on the bed, her fingers gripping my hair and tugging.

“Holy … Simon … don’t stop.” Her words were breathy, and my dick pulsed in my jeans. I ignored my hard-on and continued devouring the sweetest * I’d ever tasted. Jesus Christ. This woman would own me.

She bucked against my mouth, and I flicked her piercing again. When she screamed my name, I’m pretty sure everyone in a four-block radius heard it. I f*cking loved it. Her hips jerked and she sank deeper into the mattress, pulling away from my mouth. She pushed my head away, and I looked up at her. Her features were languid, sated. I wanted to make her look like that every day for the rest of my life.

The thought slammed into me with the subtly of a two-by-four to the face. I knew I wanted to see where this could go between us, but I hadn’t stopped to consider exactly what that could mean.

As she reclined against the bed, I considered what I knew about her: she had attitude and ink in spades and constantly kept me guessing. I knew her name, where she worked, where she lived, that she had only a few friends, and she loved her dog. That was the sum total of my factual knowledge of Charlie Stone. Before I let myself get any deeper into whatever this was becoming, I needed to know more.

She propped herself upon her elbows, eyes raking over me. “Are you going to let me return the favor?”

All coherent thought fled my brain except for hell yes.





I locked the door behind Simon and sagged against the wood. Sweet baby Jesus. The man had rocked my world. Both in bed and out. Because of him, I was going to potentially put my safe and anonymous existence at risk. I crossed into my bedroom and punched in the code to the small, hotel-type safe bolted into my closet. Harriet’s last tenant had left it behind, and I used it to hoard my cash and the reminders of my past. My license, passport, and old credit cards were stacked inside. It was strange to see my real name again. Only Harriet knew it, and I was confident she’d never reveal my secret. I’d stopped thinking of myself as Charlotte Agoston about three months after I’d left Manhattan. By that time I’d embraced my new identity. All it took was 1,300 miles and a fake name to finally discover the real me.

Under the false bottom built into the safe, there was a nondescript composition book. It was deceiving in its simplicity, but the pages were filled with a gibberish mess of letters and numbers. It was the one thing of my father’s I had taken from the penthouse, although I probably shouldn’t have. But I’d run across it by chance and taken it as a sign. I didn’t know what it contained, but I did know that my father wouldn’t go to the trouble to encode something unless it was pretty damn important. It was my insurance policy. Although, it could just as easily be my ticket to facing an obstruction of justice charge. Either way, I’d known that my disappearance wouldn’t go over well, and there was a chance the Department of Justice might still decide I belonged in prison with my father. If that happened, information would be my only bargaining chip. I just didn’t know what kind of information I had. I hadn’t touched the book since the day I’d stashed it in the safe. And I didn’t want to be touching it now. It was an irrational fear—that my father’s evil would somehow seep under my skin if I handled his dirty secrets. Honestly, I’d planned to do nothing with it unless and until I needed to use it as a defensive weapon. But Simon had unknowingly convinced me to be proactive. The only way I’d ever be able to stop looking over my shoulder was to find the money.

The FBI had all of the computers, servers, files, and records from Agoston Investments, and with all that information and the resources at their disposal, I assumed they would have found something by now. Tens of thousands of people were counting on them. But nothing in the news mentioned even a dollar being located. If I could decipher the notebook, and it actually contained information that would prove useful in the search, I could feed the feds anonymous tips while retaining my ace in the hole. Once all of the money had been recovered, I could emerge from hiding on my own terms. It was an idealistic plan, but it might be my only shot at exploring something real with Simon.