Unmasked: Volume One (3 page)

The word beauty is not a word anyone has ever used in my reference. Not even my parents have called me beautiful. My parents were not the best parents, but at least I can say they never lied to me.

“How do you know I’m beautiful if you’ve never seen me in the light?”

“I don’t. But you have a beautiful figure and a graceful voice. It stands to reason that your face must match the rest of you.”

“And if it doesn’t? Does that make me unreasonable?”

“Not at all. It makes you different. Different is good.”

He lifts away the old dressing cleanly and I breathe a sigh of relief. I begin to sit up and he places his hand on my belly to stop me.

“Wait. Let me put your new dressing.”

I push his hand off, perhaps a bit too roughly. “I can do that.”

He chuckles as he stands. “Have you ever been touched by a man, Alex?”

“It’s time for you to leave.” He bumps his leg on the coffee table as I usher him toward the door, then I quickly make my way back into the kitchen before he can open it and let the soft glow of the light in the corridor. “Thank you for your help, but I need to rest. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Alex. Until next time.”

T
he lies
we tell ourselves have more power to destroy us than any lie we are ever told by another. All week long, I lie to myself. I try to convince myself that I don’t want to see Daimon ever again. I tell myself that I didn’t need his help. I could have changed the dressing over my wound myself. And I insist he had no bearing on my decision to go back to Dr. Grossman’s office to have the stitches professionally removed.

And the biggest lie of all: I felt nothing when he touched me.

But after eight days without a single knock on my door, I can’t keep lying to myself. I don’t know what I felt, but I know it wasn’t
nothing
.

His voice echoes so soft yet commanding in my mind. That delicate French accent. The strong nose and jaw I could barely see the silhouette of with my left eye. His lips, the bottom one just a bit fuller than the top.

I shake my head to clear away the image as I pull the clean clothes out of the dryer and dump everything into a laundry basket at my feet. I push the basket back then close the door on the utility closet. Grabbing the basket, I take it into the bedroom and begin folding the clothes.

My wardrobe consists of eight pairs of size six black jeans, eight black hoodies, eight white camisoles, and eight pairs of underwear. Why eight instead of seven? In case I lose something, I’ll still have seven of everything until the new item is delivered from my preferred online retailer.

I know it sounds crazy. Wearing the same thing every day. Never shopping in a real store. Believe me, I know. I used to watch TV and movies. I’ve seen how normal women my age live. Worrying over what to wear; spending hours at the mall to find the right dress to impress whatever random guy they meet at the bar. I know that’s considered normal. But I am in no way normal.

And I was finally coming to terms with that until Daimon Rousseau blasted his way into my life two weeks ago. I’ve had two brief encounters with the man, who killed someone in front of me. Despite him being a killer, I allowed him into my apartment. And in return, he saved my life by referring me to a physician. Then I let him in again. And he touched me.

“Have you ever been touched by a man?”

No. I’ve never been touched by a man. The only time my father touched me was when we were fighting or training. I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve never even shaken hands with Aasif. I fought off Shorty and his friends two weeks ago and two months before that I fought off a huge drunkard in the gas station parking lot when he tried to grope me. But, other than that, I’ve never felt the touch of a man. Until now.

I let him touch me.

And now I can’t think of anything else.

My panties are all that’s left in the laundry basket when I hear the knock at the door. I try not to smile as I lift the stack of folded clothes off my bed and dump them back in with the panties. Then I drop the basket onto the floor in front of my feet and kick it somewhere into the dark corner of my bedroom.

I take a deep breath and walk calmly toward the front door. Looking through the peephole, my stomach vaults at the sight of him. He has his back to me again.

Last time, I assumed this was a sign of submission. But now I’m wondering if he just doesn’t want me to see his face in the soft light of the corridor.

Suddenly, that schoolgirl giddiness I felt a moment ago seems like a moment of weakness.

I smile as I reach for the doorknob. I’ve healed enough to take him on.

I pull the door inward just a couple of inches, then I head for the dark kitchen again. Like last time, he enters and quickly pushes the door closed in one swift motion. Making it impossible for me to get a glimpse of his face. The room is dark again, but not so dark that I can’t see him turn toward me. We’re already establishing a routine.

Routines can be dangerous. Routines make people relax and do things automatically, without thinking. Not thinking is dangerous.

“Good evening, Alex.”

His voice is so different than any voice I’ve ever heard. It’s warm and strong, laced with a slight gruffness and that barely detectable French accent. All these qualities come together so that every word he speaks sounds orchestrated and … bewitching. As if he’s casting a spell on me.

“Good evening, Daimon.”

A long silence follows as I wait for him to tell me why he’s here and he waits for me to question his presence. Finally, he speaks.

“Are you going to offer me something to drink?”

“Are you planning on staying a while?”

I wish I knew exactly what his face looks like. I could imagine him grinning right now.

“All I have to drink is water,” I offer.

“I’ll take that.”

I turn around and step sideways. Reaching up, I open the cupboard above the counter and feel around until the tips of my fingers find a small glass near the back. I grab it off the shelf and turn around.

“Holy shit!” I scream as I bump into Daimon by the sink.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says, taking a step back.

“Yes, you did!”

“I’m sorry, Alex. Truly. I should have known you’d still be a bit jumpy from the attack.”

I huff impatiently, slamming the glass down on the counter. “I’m not jumpy because of the attack. I’m jumpy because there’s a strange man in my apartment who just snuck up behind me.”

“I’m a strange man?”

“Yes! You killed someone and now you’re quietly paying visits to the one person who witnessed your crime. Yes, that’s strange.”

“Strange … or smart?”

“Get out!”

He laughs softly and the sound drives me crazy. It’s so sexy.

“I’m kidding, Alex.” His voice has taken on a bit of a hard edge now and I don’t like it. “I’m not grooming you to go along with my story. And I’m not trying to threaten you. I’m merely intrigued by you. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a beautiful woman who hides in her apartment and can also fight off three armed men?”

“Stop calling me beautiful. I’m not susceptible to flattery.”

We stand in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, facing each other, waiting for the other to speak or make the next move.

“I brought you something,” he says, reaching for the pocket of his dark hoodie.

“Don’t move,” I warn him.

He freezes. “You can reach into my pocket and retrieve it if that would make you feel better.”

I focus on taking deep breaths as my heart beats faster. “If you try anything, I will kill you. One man is a lot easier than three.”

“I believe you. And I wouldn’t dream of
trying anything
.”

I reach forward slowly until my fingers make contact with the soft fabric of his sweatshirt. It’s warm from his body heat and something about that makes me nervous. He’s real.

I slowly slide my hand inside his pocket and immediately feel something soft. I feel around a little more then pull it out carefully. His hand comes up and gently closes around mine as I hold the feather up.

“It’s a black ostrich feather.” His other hand comes forward to pull the feather out of my hand and the feeling of his skin on mine sends a chill through me. “I saw it in a gift shop on the boardwalk and thought of you. Soft and dark. Delicate.”

I pull my hand out of his and tuck it behind my back. “I’m not delicate. Or soft.”

“I would have to disagree,” he whispers, taking a small step forward effectively closing the gap between us. “I’ve touched your skin and it is very soft.”

I swallow my anxiety and stand my ground. “What am I supposed to do with a feather?”

The moment the words come out of my mouth I regret speaking them.

His face is less than a foot away from mine and, from this distance, in the near absolute darkness of the kitchen, I can just barely see a hint of his features. A tiny hint of dark blue light painted in soft brushstrokes over the peaks of his lips, the tip of his nose, the angle of his cheekbones. But his eyes are still completely shadowed by that hood.

“Alex?”

I can’t breathe with him this close to me. But I also can’t move. As if his body is a magnet and I’m a delicate piece of tin.

“Yes?”

“I know I can’t turn on the lights. And, to be quite honest, I rather enjoy getting to know you in the dark. But my curiosity is piquing, and I must …” His hand reaches up slowly. “Can I touch your face?”

A sharp pain twists in my stomach, though I know there’s nothing he will feel on my face that will help him understand why I hide. I don’t have hideous scars, deformities, or malformations. I have severe discoloration of my skin and eye. One brown eye and the other, my left eye, a gray so soft it’s almost white. I have to wear sunglasses to protect my eye and to hide it from the world. I wear thick pancake makeup to cover the discoloration of my skin.

I think I could deal with the skin issue if I didn’t also have the discoloration in my left eye. When I was five years old, my mother walked me into the kindergarten classroom and all the children were afraid of me. None of them wanted to sit next to me. My mother vowed then and there that she would never expose me to that kind of ridicule.

She homeschooled me in all subjects, but one particular subject was the emphasis of her curriculum: How to Hide Alex’s Hideous Face. She gave me lessons on how to apply makeup to cover the skin discoloration when I was just seven years old. But she only took me out in public when it was absolutely necessary. Like when the basement was flooded during a particularly bad rainstorm and we had to stay in a motel for a few days.

Other than that, I spent most of my days in the basement, being homeschooled by my mother or physically trained by my father. Always perfecting the art of hiding.

So, Daimon won’t feel anything unusual on my face. He won’t even feel my makeup since I’m not wearing any tonight. I only wear makeup on days I work. And I’m not going back to work until tomorrow night. But I’m still afraid of letting him touch my face.

I draw in a deep breath. “First, I want to touch your face.”

“Very well.”

My heart pounds so hard my chest hurts as I reach for his face. My fingertips reach his jaw first and I draw my hand back immediately at the prickly sensation.

“That’s my scruff. Is it too rough?” he asks with what sounds like genuine concern.

“No. Just … It’s fine.”

I reach up again and the roughness of his scruff tickles my fingertips as I trace them along his jaw. My other hand reaches up to the other side of his face and I can hear him take in a sharp breath. With my hands working in unison, I trace from his jawbone down to his chin. Then I bring both hands up and place my fingers on each of his cheekbones. Before I can stop myself, my hands are sliding back to feel the curves of his ears.

He exhales a soft sigh, as if he were holding his breath, then his hands are on my waist. “Alex.”

The way he says my name, a soft incantation, I feel my muscles slacken. He can sense it and before I can question him, he scoops me up in his arms. My hands still clinging to the sides of his face, he looks straight ahead, his gait purposeful as he carries me to my bedroom.

He lays me down gently then sits on the edge of the bed, the way my mother sometimes did when I was sick in bed as a child. He reaches for my face and I hold my breath. Then his fingertips make contact with my cheek and I exhale.

This time, he doesn’t ask to touch me. And I think I prefer that.

His fingertips roam lightly over my cheekbone then swoop down slowly to caress my jaw. He curls his hand so he can feel the same area of my face with the backs of his fingers. A shiver travels through me, down my arms, through my chest, into my belly, and pulses between my legs.

“Shh.” He shushes me gently when he hears my breathing getting heavier.

Somehow it works. It works so well, I don’t notice he’s removing my sunglasses until he pulls them away from my face.

“Relax,
ma chérie
.”

I take in a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth. I can see his face a bit more without my sunglasses, though the bedroom is even darker than the kitchen. I reach for his cheek and his other hand lands on top of mine. He presses my hand against his warm skin then nuzzles his cheek against the palm of my hand.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to fear me.”

A surge of raw emotion rises to the surface and I feel my eyes beginning to water. I’ve never been touched like this.

Suddenly, my mind draws back to a cold, rainy day eight years ago. Eleven years old and running a fever so high I could hardly see straight. I couldn’t move my body as my muscles were beginning to seize up. I begged my mother to take me to the doctor.

She looked down at me from where she sat on the edge of my bed and shook her head. “It’s just a fever, Alex. Do you want all those doctors and nurses to make fun of your face over a silly fever?” I grabbed her hand, desperately trying to force her to feel my forehead and she recoiled, yanking her hand away and standing up quickly. “Stop it! You don’t touch me. You don’t touch
anyone
!”

“Alex?”

Daimon’s voice draws me out of this painful memory. My hand is still on his face and his hand is still on mine, wiping the tears as they slide down my cheeks. I pull my hand away from his face and let it fall onto the bed between his leg and my side.

“Alex, are you all right?”

I look up at the dark place where his face is beneath the hood. As if he can sense what I’m thinking, he reaches up and pushes his hood back. I still can’t see the details of his features, but the ghostly outlines of his cheeks and nose are clearer. He has short hair. Almost short enough to be a military cut.

“Sit up, so you can feel my face,” he whispers. “I want you to form a picture of me in your mind.”

I sit up on my knees next to him, then he bows his head slightly as I begin exploring his face with both hands. I trace both thumbs over the straight bridge of his nose and up over each eyebrow. And a picture of his face begins to form.

His brow bone is prominent and his cheekbones and jaw are sharply angled. He keeps his eyes open as I lightly trace my fingertips over his eyelids and under his eyes. I can’t see if his eyes are dark or light, but I can feel that they’re round and turn down ever so slightly at the outer corners.