Sexy Behind The Mask
She hides behind ugly suits and fake names. He's done trusting women. When they meet in a masked sex club, neither realizes they've been fighting each other across boardroom tables for eighteen months. At Taylor Industries, she's Joy Smith-the frumpy CFO who drowns her curves in shapeless polyester and wearing a wig. At home, she's the forgotten wife of a cheating lawyer who hasn't touched her in so long she's starting to wonder if she's broken. When she finds hot pink lace panties stuffed in her couch cushions...definitely not hers, it's not heartbreak she feels. It's freedom. Grayson Taylor doesn't do relationships anymore. Not after walking in on his actress fiancée with another woman. Now he channels everything into hostile takeovers and board meetings, especially the ones where his overcautious CFO fights him on every goddamn acquisition. Joy Smith is brilliant, infuriating, and funny when he pushes all her buttons. But Honey is tired of being invisible. Tired of never having felt real pleasure. So, when her best friend gives her the details of The Velvet Room-Manhattan's most exclusive masked club-she promises herself just one night. One night to find out if her husband's right, if she really is frigid, or if she's just never been touched by the right hands. She doesn't expect the masked stranger who claims her the second she walks in. Doesn't expect the chemistry that ignites between them, the way he makes her body sing, or the orgasms that leave her shaking. Doesn't expect him to hand her an email address with one command: "Only me. No one else touches you."
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Chapter 9
Friday, October 6th 10:37PM
When Honey returned home that night, the apartment was still empty. The motion-activated cameras hadn't sent a single notification to her phone. Riley was likely spending another night with his teenage mistress, which suited her just fine. She needed time to think.
She kicked off her heels by the door and poured herself a glass of water, suddenly conscious of how much she'd drunk at dinner. Enough to loosen her tongue, not enough to impair her judgment, a fine line she'd walked carefully knowing she was coming home. Riley could have changed plans and come home after all.
The information Lauren had sent about The Velvet Room glowed on her phone screen. An exclusive members-only club in a discreet location, requiring both a substantial membership fee and a rigorous vetting process. Masks mandatory. No real names. Total privacy guaranteed.
"This is insane," she murmured, scrolling through the details. "I can't possibly... To even be thinking about it."
But the thought lingered as she moved through her nightly routine. In the bathroom mirror, she studied her reflection... the vibrant red hair, the green eyes, the curves her husband hadn't touched in months, and even when he did, she was left unsatisfied.
Why shouldn't she explore what she'd been missing? Riley certainly wasn't holding back. She knew two wrongs didn't make a right. But she had no clause linked to her name in their prenup. The money in their relationship was all hers, excluding what Riley made working as a lawyer.
Her encounter with Grayson at the restaurant kept replaying in her mind. The look in his eyes when he saw her... not Joy Smith, but Honey Johnson. The way he'd looked at her with genuine interest before she'd shut him down with her accusation.
"I don't cheat," he'd said with such conviction.
Honey sighed, pressing her forehead against the cool mirror. Maybe there were still decent men in the world. Just not the one she'd married. But Grayson wasn't for her. It didn't matter the spike in her blood pressure when he looked at her tonight. He was her boss.
Honey stepped into the bedroom, her gaze landing on the bed she and Riley shared. The king-size mattress with its white sheets. Had he brought Brittany here? Had he taken the nineteen-year-old housekeeper in their marital bed while Honey worked late?
She shuddered, a wave of disgust crawling across her skin. The thought of sleeping there tonight made her stomach turn. Even with fresh sheets, she couldn't bear the thought of lying where they might have been together.
"Not happening," she whispered.
She turned away from the bed, then left the room and walked down the hallway to the linen closet, pulling out clean sheets, a spare duvet, and pillowcases that still had their packaging creases. The guest room hadn't been made up in months.
Honey made up the bed, and fluffing pillows with perhaps more force than necessary. Each snap of fabric felt like a small declaration of independence.
When she finished, she stood back and looked at her handiwork. It wasn't just a bed for tonight. It was the first step toward something else, a life where she didn't accept less than she deserved.
As she slipped into bed, her phone pinged with a text from Ben: Got initial surveillance photos. Meeting tomorrow?
Honey responded quickly: Yes. Your office. 10 AM?
Confirmation came immediately. She set her phone aside, lying back against her pillows. The bed was smaller to she felt happy and she didn't miss Riley's presence. She missed something else entirely... the intimacy she'd never actually experienced, the pleasure she'd been denied. Riley didn't cuddle at all, always telling her it made him uncomfortable. No... life had to be better than this.
Before she could overthink it, she picked up her phone again and navigated to the application form Lauren had sent. She filled it out methodically, detailing her preferences and boundaries without allowing herself to hesitate. When she reached the section asking for her club name, the identity she'd assume inside The Velvet Room... she paused.
Not Honey. Not Joy. Something new. Something that reflected what she was seeking.
She typed "Desire" into the field, then deleted it. That wasn't her, she didn't even know her own desires yet.
After a moment's consideration, she simply entered "Red." Simple. A nod to her natural hair color that Riley had never appreciated, asking her, after they married, to dye her hair blonde.
She submitted the application before she could change her mind, then set her phone on the nightstand and turned off the lamp. In the darkness, her pulse thrummed with anticipation and fear. What was she doing? This wasn't like her at all.
Or perhaps it was exactly like her... the real her, buried beneath years of compromise and Riley's gaslighting and the professional mask of Joy Smith.
Sleep eluded her as her mind filled with possibilities. By the time dawn broke, she'd made her decision. She would see this through. One night at The Velvet Room couldn't hurt. One opportunity to discover if the problem truly was her, as Riley had claimed, or if she was capable of pleasure with the right partner.
One night to be someone else entirely. She didn't have to carry that thought with her into anything.
Saturday, October 7th 10:00AM
The next morning, Honey dressed carefully in a tailored pantsuit she had bought last month but never worn... it was neither Joy's frumpy work clothes nor the sexy dress from last night, but something in between, professional yet feminine.
Ben greeted her with a nod, gesturing to the chair across from his desk.
"Good to see the Honey I remembered," he said, sliding a folder toward her. "I have to say the file you supplied helped get this information a lot faster."
Honey opened it to find a series of photos: Riley and a young blonde woman... definitely Brittany, their housekeeper, entering a hotel, his hand possessively on her lower back. Another showed them in the hotel bar, leaning intimately toward each other. The girl wasn't even old enough to drink. A third photo captured them kissing in the elevator before the doors closed.
"These were taken yesterday afternoon," Ben explained. "They spent three hours in the room before he returned to his office."
Honey studied the photos with clinical detachment. "He told me he was working late."
"He did go back to the office after their... meeting," Ben said, his tone professional. "Left around 9 PM."
"And after that?"
"Directly to Paul Matthews' apartment. Stayed there for the night."
Honey nodded, unsurprised. "Paul's covering for him. Probably has been for months." She had never liked Paul, found him creepy. At her wedding to Riley, Paul had spent the whole night hitting on all her friends.
"Would seem that way." Ben leaned forward. "There's something else you should know. The girl Brittany. She's been making regular visits to an OB-GYN. Started about ten weeks ago. I tracked down the charges on Riley's credit card, the ones you circled, unsure what they were. You didn't say anything about being pregnant, so I'm guessing it's her."
The implication hit Honey like a physical blow. "She's pregnant?"
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9.0
He drew her before he ever met her.
She dreams of him every night... without knowing who he is.
Nora is a brilliant editor in a prestigious journalism company - confident, successful... and completely unaware of her past. But night after night, she dreams of a mysterious warrior prince in a realm that feels far too real. When Edward, the enigmatic new CEO of her branch, walks into her life, her world starts to unravel. He's the son of the company's owner, and though they've never met, he's been drawing her face for years.
As their connection deepens, strange events begin to blur the line between reality and fantasy. What neither of them knows is that their souls are bound - not just in this life, but in another.
In a parallel world, Leela is a fearless warrior and spy, sworn to protect her people. Jing, the prince of a war-torn kingdom, trusts her with his life... but must never love her. Their bond is dangerous. Forbidden. And yet, undeniable.
Two women. Two men.
Two worlds on the brink of war... and love that defies fate.
When destiny calls across dimensions, will they choose duty - or the one their soul remembers?
7.1
Aria Graves was the perfect Luna.
After seven years of a marriage built on lies, She didn't break when the truth surfaced-she burned. Her revenge was clean and her rejection final.
But fate wasn't done with her.
To protect his own secrets, her father used her mother's life as leverage and forced Aria to take her sister's place, sending her to the Silverfang Pack as a living offering to their ruthless Alpha King, Damien Rothwell.
Cold, commanding, and scarred by war, Damien should have killed her. Instead, he claimed her.
Yet the King is not the only one who wants her.
His half-brother, Ethan Rothwell, once the blind boy Aria taught to read, now returns a man who sees her more clearly than anyone else.
Now Aria stands between two brothers-one bound by duty, the other by love.
In a world where loyalty bleeds and desire burns, she must choose: the Alpha King who could ruin her, or the brother who would burn the world to save her.
8.2
For three years, nineteen-year-old Ella Campbell rotted in a freezing psychiatric isolation room.
Her billionaire family didn't visit her once, only pulling her out today to force her to publicly apologize to Ashlyn, the perfect sister who had framed her.
At Ashlyn's glamorous engagement gala, Ella was treated worse than a stray dog and forced to watch her childhood sweetheart propose to her sister.
When Ella showed no jealousy, her brother Ivan dragged her onto a dark balcony and nearly choked her to death.
Her mother didn't even check if Ella was breathing, merely ordering a makeup artist to paint thick concealer over the dark purple handprints on Ella's neck so the family's stock price wouldn't drop.
Standing under the blinding stage lights in a shapeless gray dress, facing three hundred mocking Wall Street executives, Ella was supposed to be the broken, obedient psycho the Campbells needed.
"I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused."
She was supposed to end the apology there and bow to her abusers, but Ella didn't shed a single tear.
"My only regret is that I didn't insist on waiting for the police to arrive that night. I deeply regret that I didn't demand a full, legal toxicology report to prove to everyone exactly what happened."
As the ballroom erupted into suspicious whispers and her paralyzed twin brother finally saw the violent bruises hidden beneath her makeup, Ella's counterattack against the Campbell family officially began.
8.3
I woke up in a bedroom that screamed old money, but the body I occupied felt sluggish and fragile. I was now Chris Olson, a man known as a pathetic failure who spent his marriage groveling at his wife's feet for a single look of approval.
Elizabeth didn't even wait for me to clear my head before she threw the divorce papers on the nightstand. She stood there in her silk robe, eyes cold as ice, demanding I sign them before breakfast so she could finally go public with her "White Moonlight," Greg.
"You're walking away with nothing," she snapped, her voice full of the disgust she'd harbored for years. She reminded me that my family had disowned me and that I'd be on the streets within a week without her charity.
As I sat up, a metallic, garlic-like scent on my breath confirmed a terrifying truth: the Olson family hadn't just disowned me; they had been micro-dosing me with arsenic for years. They wanted me weak and mentally unstable so they could split the inheritance without a fight.
The original Chris would have cried and begged for her to stay, but I just looked at her like she was a target. I realized then that my "loving" family and my "faithful" wife had been watching me die in slow motion, and neither of them had lifted a finger to stop it.
I signed the papers without reading a single line and walked out with nothing but a duffel bag and a rusted sedan. I didn't need her alimony; I had already called her greatest rival, Adelia Cherry, to discuss a merger that would rock the city.
"I'm not here to save this marriage," I told Elizabeth as I moved into the mansion right next door to hers. "I'm here to bury it, along with everyone who thought they could poison me and get away with it."
9.7
No matter how far I ran, no matter how deep I hid, I knew one truth... He would always find me.
Knock. Knock.
I jolted up from my sitting position, with my heart hammering in my chest.
Just as I was saying... He had already found me.
But by the time he broke down the rickety door, I was already standing and facing him with a knife to my wrist.
I'd rather die than return home with him as his mate.
***
TRIGGER WARNING!
This is a dark, taboo romance containing graphic themes, possessive men, hate-fueled sex, psychological intensity, emotional torment, and taboo that will wreck your morals. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Read only if you're ready to fall for monsters.
***
Eve thought she and her mother had successfully escaped her abusive father by getting married to the former Alpha of a pack far away from where they used to live.
But all her hopes and expectations were cut short the moment she realized her new stepbrother, Alpha Saint, who was also the current Alpha of her new pack, was the same man she had a one-night stand with eight months ago, along with his best friend, Beta Kyrie. And on that fateful night, she had stolen very valuable items from these men.
Hated and controlled by her stepbrother, Saint, who saw her as nothing but a thieving whore, Eve decided to find solace in Kyrie, who was already falling madly in love with her. But Saint would rather fight his best friend to the death than let him anywhere close to the woman he was secretly obsessed with from the day he set eyes on her – Eve.
All hell was let loose when Eve turned twenty-one and found out that not only was she mated to the man she loved and desired – Kyrie. She was also mated to her overly possessive stepbrother, whom she dreaded with her life.
Saint burns with obsession. Kyrie aches with desire. And both men aren't willing to share.
How far can she run? And how much blood are they willing to shed, just to stake their individual claim on her?
9.6
I stood in the ballroom of the Pierre Hotel, holding a champagne flute that felt like a fragile anchor against a rising tide of anxiety.
Across the room, the crowd of New York's elite parted as my fiancé, Campbell Brock, stepped onto the stage to announce a historic merger-and a shocking engagement to someone else.
"I am proud to announce my engagement to Kandice Rose," he said, pulling the "real" daughter of the family into his arms while looking right through me as if I were a ghost. I dropped my glass, the crystal shattering at my feet, but the public humiliation was only the beginning. By the next morning, I was a viral meme dubbed the "Meltdown Girl," and the American Ballet Theatre had suspended me from my position as principal dancer for "moral turpitude." My bank accounts were frozen, my reputation was in tatters, and Kandice was on a livestream tearfully claiming I was a jealous foster girl who had tried to seduce Campbell behind her back.
I had spent four years building a life with this man, only to be discarded like a piece of old wallpaper the moment a better business deal came along.
How could the man who promised me a future turn me into a national joke overnight, and why was the world so eager to believe I was the villain in my own tragedy?
When my high school best friend, the notorious billionaire playboy Charlton Bernard, found me drinking tequila in a dive bar, he didn't offer me a shoulder to cry on. He slid a marriage contract across the table and pressed a black titanium credit card into my hand.
"Marry me for a year, Daphne," he said, his eyes burning with a dark, protective intensity that made my heart race. "We'll join their reality show as newlyweds and show the world exactly who the real winner is."
I looked at the card, then at the man who had always been my shadow, and realized that being sensible had only gotten me dumped on a stage.
"Let's go get married."