Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs

Chapter 959: Mask Until They Don’t

Being the most wanted man in a room full of masked strangers is a specific kind of pressure that I will never complain about because I know exactly how I got here and I know exactly what my life looked like before. I will simply experience it and be grateful and also slightly overwhelmed and not tell ARIA that last part.

"Free time,"she said. Her voice was low. Even. Calibrated. The voice of someone who’d decided what they were going to say before they said it. "You have any?"

"Depends," I said. "On what we’re talking about. And where we’re having it."

She tilted her head slightly. The gold trim at her mask caught the amber light. "Both answers to be determined. The second one especially."

Behind me, Charlotte was holding her ground. Madison was being charming at a safe distance. Eziel was doing whatever Eziel does when no one is watching, which is probably something that would concern me if I knew what it was.

My women — being themselves, capable, needing nothing from me.

Which meant I had time.

The woman was watching me calculate.

She was good at patience. The kind that comes from having done this before and knowing that the man who speaks first is never the one controlling the conversation.

I spoke first anyway, because controlling the conversation wasn’t the point.

"Chat won’t hurt," I said.

Her smile reached the only part of her face I could see.

"No," she agreed. "It won’t."

Where you have sex on some parties and occasions matter, and I was being honest that I had never had sex on a party, have I?

I’d had it in classrooms.Plural. I’d had it in a VP’s office — that was Isabella’s idea, which tells you everything you need to know about Isabella— she’d called herself in sick from her own class, called me in sick from mine, and proceeded to do things to me on that man’s desk that I’m pretty sure violated not just school policy but multiple international agreements.

I’d never told that story to anyone. Only ARIA, who knew had filing it under things Peter does that are technically his fault.

I still don’t know whose mug that was on the desk. The one that got knocked over. I hope it wasn’t his.

Actually, I genuinely don’t care. I’ve made peace with it.

But a party? Never. Something about that felt like an oversight worth correcting tonight.

We talked for maybe eight minutes.

Eight minutes of her being precise and warm in equal measure, giving me exactly enough to be interesting without giving me enough to place her — which was deliberate, I could tell.

Eight minutes of the party continuing around us, every woman who’d been watching from a careful distance recalculating, adjusting, waiting for the conversation to end so they could insert themselves into whatever gap she left.

She wasn’t going to leave a gap.

She leaned in.

Close enough that her mouth was at my ear, close enough that her warmth reached me before her voice did.

"They have the best bathrooms in the building," she said. "I’ve been told." A pause, light as punctuation. "Also — my zipper’s stuck. I’d ask someone else but honestly you look like the only person here I’d trust with it."

She pulled back. Smiled. Walked away.

Just like that. No fanfare. No looking back. The specific confidence of a woman who knew she didn’t need to.

"That’s the second oldest trick in the book," ARIA said in my ear, dry as a tax document. "The oldest involves a different kind of stuck. Just so you’re informed."

I watched the woman go for approximately two seconds before she did the thing — a slight stumble, hand going to the wall, one heel lifted off the ground with the particular delicacy of someone who’d just turned an ankle.

She looked back over her shoulder with an expression of perfect helpless apology.

Oh, this woman.

This absolutely unhinged, completely committed, genuinely brilliant woman.

I crossed the room to her, settled her arm through mine, and we moved—her leaning against me just enough to be convincing, me walking us toward the far corridor like I was simply helping someone navigate a party in heels.

Nobody asked.

The crowd parted and closed behind us like water, because that’s what crowds do when you move through them like you’re supposed to be wherever you’re going.

This is either the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me at a party or the opening scene of a true crime documentary.

Could be both.

They’re not mutually exclusive.

The moment we turned the corner —

The mask came off first. Mine. I pulled it over my head and let it drop somewhere on the floor behind me, and I didn’t care where it landed.

Hers came next — my hands finding the ribbon at the back of her head, pulling loose, the mask slipping free to reveal the full picture for the first time.

Worth it.

I didn’t have time to say anything about it because her hands were already at my shoulders and I was already moving — my hands finding her waist, lifting, and she came up without resistance, her legs winding around me with the ease of a woman who’d made this decision long before the zipper story.

Her dress rode up her thighs with the motion. My hands found the curve of her through the fabric and I pulled her in and there was nothing pretending between us anymore.

She kissed me first.

She’d earned it.

Her mouth was decisive — not a question, not a test, just a statement delivered directly.

I felt it in my chest before anywhere else, that specific charge of someone who kisses the way they talk: deliberate, warm, knowing exactly what they want and not particularly interested in apologizing for it.

I kissed her back and she made a sound against my mouth — soft, low, the kind that exists before someone decides whether to let you hear the louder ones.

Then her tongue found mine.

And she moaned. Small. Real.

The sound punched through the music bleeding down from the floor above us and landed somewhere in my spine and stayed there.

I squeezed her through the dress — both hands, full palms — and she arched into it, her fingers spreading across my back like she was mapping something, each place she pressed making her grip tighten further, like she was surprised by the response her own body was having and had decided the surprise was information she wanted more of.

We hit the wall.

I didn’t mean to, but I also didn’t not mean to — the corridor was narrow enough that the drift was natural, my shoulder catching the wall and us turning in the same motion so her back found it instead of mine, and she made a different sound then— sharper, delighted, not distressed— and her legs tightened around my waist and we stayed there a moment, breathing into each other’s mouths at zero distance, her fingers curled in my jacket, my hands full of her, the muffled bass of the party above us the only reminder that other people existed.

This is the most unhinged party of my life and I was starting to have a great time.

We separated enough to move.

She unwound her legs, found the floor, heels clicking — and then her hand found mine and she pulled, leading, and I followed because the bathrooms were apparently in the other direction and she’d done her research on this.

We made it approximately six steps before I changed my mind about letting her lead and she laughed — genuine, bright, surprised — when I spun her back to me and kissed her again against the opposite wall, her back finding the wallpaper softly, her hands flying to my chest and then deciding to stay there.

We made it the rest of the way to the bathrooms in pieces.

Like that.