Page 9 of Haunted Games

Abby

When I stepped inside the haunted house the next night, I knew what I needed to do.

I’d agonized as I lay in bed last night and all day today.

For years, I’d hardly thought about the fact that I was in a relationship.

Michael just kind of was, and while the cheating hurt, being without him really…

didn’t. And now, here I was, panicking because there were two men in my life that I wanted to cling to like a drowning woman.

The clown at the door didn’t even bother to check whether I had a wristband. He nodded to me, and I nodded back, old friends that we were.

Because it was Halloween and I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, I’d thrown together the bare minimum of a costume. I wore a black bodysuit with long sleeves, a short black skirt, and a headband with cat ears. I’d swapped my running shoes for black Converse and called it a day.

The flashing lights and creepy sounds and screams inside the house were light background noise at this point.

The masked man didn’t grab me by the entrance this time, so I made my way toward the Seven Deadly Sins room.

My pace was slow, almost leisurely, as I passed by throngs of people huddled in the various rooms, taking in the sights.

Others streaked past me as they ran from whatever thing had scared them most recently.

I wasn’t in a hurry. In fact, I was nervous and sort of dreading the conversation I was determined to have tonight.

When I arrived to what I’d affectionately dubbed the “Ghosts of Starving Victorian Orphans” room, he finally appeared.

This room had been staged with dummies of the creepiest little kids, old broken toys, and furniture that looked like it came from Dracula’s attic.

It was lit by a poisonous sort of purple light that seeped in the grooves of the masked man’s painted abs as he stalked slowly toward me.

“The other guys shut this hallway down for me,” he rasped behind the mask. “We have thirty minutes.”

I watched him prowl, reveling in the feeling of being the innocent little rabbit hunted by the wolf one last time. My heart kicked into my throat, and my core tightened.

“You look hot,” he said, his void eyes taking in my costume. “A pretty kitty.”

As he closed in, I began to shuffle backwards. He chuckled darkly, following. The back of my knees hit the prop couch positioned against the wall, and I sank into the surprisingly soft cushions.

He loomed over me.

“I… I can’t tonight,” I told him. “I just came to say goodbye.”

He dropped to his knees in front of me and crawled right between my legs. He wrapped those powerful hands around my thighs and rubbed them gently. “Goodbye?”

I nodded. “You’ve been amazing. I’ll remember my nights here with you for the rest of my life.

I didn’t want it to end. I thought I might come here tonight, beg to know your name or see your face, maybe ask you if there was any chance there was more to this for you than just fun, anonymous sex in a haunted house.

At the very least, there was no question I’d let you make the most of out our last night together. ”

He hadn’t moved a muscle as he listened to my speech. “But?”

I sighed. “But there’s someone else. Or there may be. Soon.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “You want me, but you want him too.”

“Yes. But he’s real. You…. You’re a fantasy.”

He dropped his chin to his chest, his muscles tensing.

Maybe he didn’t like the idea that this wasn’t real, but he couldn’t exactly deny it.

After a long moment, he blew out a resigned breath, and then he lifted his face again to stare at me from behind the skull’s empty eyes. “Take off my mask, sweetheart.”

“What?”

He flipped his hood off, revealing lush dark hair that reflected the violet lights above us. “Take it off,” he demanded.

Burning curiosity got the better of me. I reached for the sides of his mask and lifted it up over his head.

I gasped as my world imploded.

“Galen?”

He caught my wrists, a tortured look on his stupid handsome face.

“I’m sorry, baby. Fuck, I’m sorry, but I…

I have wanted you for so, so long, and that first night, after the shit with Michael, I was so angry and had just been slapped in the face by the fact that you weren’t with him anymore, and we had that moment in the storage room and I just…

. That was my wildest dream come true, Abigail. I’m just a man.”

I gaped at him. Emotions raged, swirling in a torrent through my whole body.

Shock.

Anger.

Disbelief.

Relief.

He gave me a rueful smile. “And then I convinced myself that maybe this was the only way I could have you because you’d never want me otherwise. But, fuck, it was so good, Abby. You’re so good and perfect, and it was never going to be enough.”

The slow burn of lust permeated the emotional tornado. Galen had been the one to fuck me like that? Galen was the one with the talented tongue and thick cock and strength and stamina of a war horse?

And he did it all not because I was some random, willing girl he happened upon in a haunted house, but because I was me?

“Sweetheart, say something,” he pleaded. “Or punch me in the face. I deserve it.”

“You’ve wanted me… this whole time?” I whispered.

He let out a ragged breath, his shoulders sagging. He dared to inch a little further into the space between my legs. “Yeah. I would’ve asked you out the second we got back to school our second year, but you were already dating Michael by then.”

“But….” I shook my head. “You were always poking and needling me. Arguing with me. Competing with me. Trying to piss me off.”

“Baby, I couldn’t date you, so that was the only way I was going to get your attention.”

“You stole the Editor in Chief of the Law Review from me! And then you stole my dream internship in DC!”

He sighed. “I applied for those things because I wanted to do them with you. I wanted to be on the Law Review’s executive board alongside you.

I wanted to go to DC with you. I had this delusion that you and Michael would decide to amicably part ways due to the distance.

I was devastated when you didn’t get it.

I’d just assumed we’d both be picked for all these things because we were the top students in our class.

You’re so fucking brilliant and such a talented lawyer, so why wouldn’t you get everything you wanted? You deserved it all.”

The shock had worn off, and Galen was chipping away at the anger with every word. Had Michael ever said anything half as impassioned about my abilities as a student or an attorney?

“And so,” I said, my words coming out in a husky sort of rasp, “you decided that you were going to pretend to be a masked stranger so you could fuck my brains out in a haunted house?”

He studied me for a beat, and then the hottest, most sinful smile I’d ever seen in my life spread across his face. “Did you like it?” he asked, his voice a deep, silky rumble. “Did you like what I did to you?”

A violent tremble racked my entire body. “Yes,” I whispered. “I’ve never been fucked like that before. I’ve never come so hard.”

It was his turn to shudder, his jaw clenched like he was in pain. “Sweetheart, I will fuck you until you lose the ability to speak the English language, whenever you want, for the rest of your goddamned life. Just say you’ll be mine.”

I took a moment to explore his handsome face. I skimmed my fingers over his cheekbones, his dark stubble, and his chiseled jaw. I raked them through his thick hair, and then I let my hand come to rest on the back of his neck. “You aren’t wearing your glasses,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“Didn’t fit behind the mask. I was doing this whole thing as a favor to my buddy Josh, and I almost refused when he said I had to wear it. I hate my contacts.” He leaned in and nuzzled my nose with his. “But I’m real fucking glad I caved and said yes to the masked man role,” he murmured.

“Me too,” I said softly. “And I’m also saying yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“Yes to being yours.”

He surged forward and slammed his lips onto mine. He dug the fingers of one hand into my hair and held my face firmly with the other. He consumed me, tasting and exploring and groaning against my lips.

I kissed his cheek and then his jaw. “How much time do we have left?”

He yanked his phone violently out of the pocket of his tight jeans to check the time. “Ten minutes.”

I ran my hands down his painted abs and skimmed them along the waistband of his jeans. “Can you work with ten minutes?”

“Can I work with—are you kidding me?”

He tossed me onto my back on the couch and crawled between my thighs. He dipped down to kiss me, soft and slow. The purple lights danced in his hair and dark eyes, making him look like some kind of otherworldly incubus.

“Do you want the mask on?” he asked.

“No, I want to see your face,” I said in a low voice. “I want to see what you look like when your cock is inside me.”

He snarled and grabbed me by the throat.

I now realized that it was because the masked man was Galen that I’d always felt such raw, unbridled possessiveness in his hold.

“Careful, sweetheart. Be very careful with that filthy mouth. I am teetering the edge here, and I have been waiting so long for this. Do not push me.”

I wanted to purr like a kitten underneath him. This was Galen, and pushing him was my favorite pastime. “Please, Galen. Please fill me up. I need it.”

“You’re a problem, Crossbar,” he growled. “And just for that, you’ll have to wait for my cock.”

“What—”

He tossed my legs over his shoulders and reached under my skirt. He ripped the snaps of my bodysuit open, exposing my pussy to the cool air. “That was very convenient, Abigail. Are you sure you weren’t here to fuck the masked man?”

“That’s just how bodysuits are—oh.” I moaned as he drove his tongue into me, and that was the only sound I managed to make as he ate me like his last meal.

“Hmm,” he said after a few minutes, between sucks and nips on my clit. “I like this. Whenever you mouth off to me, I’ll just stick my tongue between your legs. It shuts you right up.”

Two could play that game. “Putting your cock in my mouth would probably work even better.”

He rumbled a tortured sound between my legs. “Fuck, don’t I know it. I’ve thought about nothing all fucking week except you on your knees for me.”

“Galen,” I whined. “Please fuck me.”

“For the love of God, Abigail. Fine. Just because we’ve only got five minutes left.”

He set my butt gently back on the couch, and then he went to work on his fly. He freed his huge dick from his jeans, and then he produced a condom from somewhere in his hoodie.

I reached up and stopped him before he could rip it open. “I have an IUD. And I got tested after Michael, um, you know.”

“Made the dumbest fucking mistake of his life? Still want to break his nose, baby.”

“Another time.”

He grinned. “I haven’t been with anyone since I was last tested. You want me bare, sweetheart?”

“Yes. I told you to fill me up, Galen.”

He growled and drove into me in one hard, brutal thrust. I cried out, and he didn’t let me adjust. He didn’t start slow or try to warm me up.

He just pounded into me like a madman, one hand returning to my throat and the other braced next to my head, the corded muscles in his arm flexing with every thrust.

His dark gaze remained glued to my face, and the way he looked at me was everything I’d dared to dream might be under that mask.

The intensity.

The hunger.

The obsession.

My orgasm slammed into me out of nowhere.

I screamed.

“Fuck yes,” Galen hissed. “Give it to me, Abigail.”

My body clenched around his cock, sending wave after wave of euphoria through my limbs, and he came with a very tortured groan.

We spent the one minute we had left lying on the couch, neither of us in a hurry for him to remove his cock from my body. He’d rolled us, and I lay draped across his chest like a blanket.

“Happy Halloween, Galen,” I whispered.

“Best one of my life,” he replied. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Taking you to brunch with Julia and Jason and Maria and whatever random girl from Hinge is Maria’s date tonight.”

He kissed my hair. “Our debut as a couple. Sign me up.”

I sank into him, basking in this happy levity I’d never felt before.

I’d wasted too long with a guy who’d given the bare minimum to our relationship, and I’d let it slide because I was busy and focused and driven.

The thought that I could’ve been with Galen instead this entire time made my heart ache, but it was better late than never.

I’d have to thank this Josh guy on our way out of the house. He’d set Galen loose in these dark halls, and my masked man had hunted me down and made me his.

And now we had the rest of our lives to be together in the light.