Page 16 of Prince of Masks (Hearts of Bluestone #2)

“School is school,” he says with a soft sigh. “It’s like what Oliver said last night. The truth that struck a chord in you.”

The corners of my mouth dig into my cheeks.

The truth that struck a chord in you…

It silences me, how easily he understood my reaction at dinner, how effortlessly he read me.

“The truth is that, after graduation, it changes.” He brings the mug to his mouth; his throat bobs, once, twice, then he sets the mug aside.

“Our roles change, the expectations close in, and suddenly, the responsibility of a family, of a wife are pushed onto us—and we are to make the appropriate choices. School is school,” he echoes with a faint shrug, “but then it’s life, and that is different.

Play in the mud when you are five, not twenty-five. ”

I lean closer, a snarl twitching at my lips, “You play in the mud all the time, Dray. You just call it rugby.”

His smirk is small, but sharp.

He says nothing, just watches me.

“What goes on in the casino then?” I ask, then shove my empty mug onto the tray. It lands with a rattle. “What’s so secret we fragile women can’t handle it?”

“Nothing more than losing money,” he says and leans forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs, “drinking, cigars, networking.” His mouth twitches into a crooked grin. “The occasional escort.”

My eyes widen.

I know he means himself or Oliver, the unmarried men, not our fathers, obviously, but still.

I make an ick sound at the back of my throat. “All you aristos men are more ran through than a train station.”

A faint laugh jolts him, a single curt sound that’s as quick to die as it was to come.

I glare at him, at the audacity he has for finding anything I say funny, that he thinks I am joking with him, when I am actually calling him a used-up whore.

He probably knows exactly what I am saying.

Maybe it’s that our parents are just up the side of the boat at the bow, or that Mr Younge and Mr Burns are on the top deck above the dining room, parked on loungers, enjoying their free time, but within eyesight if they care to look.

I didn’t pick a blind spot to settle into.

I made sure I had all angles covered.

Not to mention, from the under-cabin and the dining room, crew are moving around.

“You might understand once you’re married,” Dray says, luring my attention away from the passing steward who carries a tray of juice jugs to the bow.

I lift my blank stare to Dray.

The shades hide me to a degree, but he seems to know that there’s a stupid look planted on my face.

He clarifies, “Escorts. Sex.”

Behind the sunglasses, my lashes flutter, and I feel them brush over the lenses, a foreign and unwanted pressure. “What do you mean, once I’m married?”

His smile is breathtaking for a beat, then he scoffs a true, curt laugh. “When you have had it yourself.”

The surprise of the wildly inappropriate topic isn’t what stuns me. It’s that Dray thinks I’m a virgin.

Dray actually sits here now, relaxed, casual, with the flippant mention of his belief that I haven’t had sex, says it like it’s some unquestionable fact.

That stuns me.

For a moment, I’m silent.

I peel off my shades and aim my frowned, crumpled face at him.

Still, the smile ghosts over his pinkish lips, full and lovely. But it’s starting to fade.

I’m no virgin.

And Dray is figuring that out, right now, in this very moment just by looking at my baffled expression.

My mind reels with my conquests—not many, given how limited I am, of course, and not many I am proud of either, but hey, I’m probably the most virgin aristos senior in Europe.

When I was younger, around fifteen, I was sent to Grandmother Ethel’s for a weekend.

I may have gotten closer to a neighbour’s son that I was already familiar with.

Flirtations over the years, when we were both free of our boarding schools during breaks, and then a once-off shared bottle of cheap wine in the shed one night that I snuck out, and there it went, my virginity, in a fucking garden shed.

James, too.

I know.

We drank too much.

Maybe that’s a theme. Drinking.

James and I don’t talk about that.

Ever.

Honestly, I’m not even sure he remembers.

My own recall is hazy at best. It was terrible, very ‘stabby’ with a thin penis like a pencil, and he kept leaning on my hair. Neither of us finished.

There was also that one guy, a gentry elite, at last year’s Debutante Ball. I myself wasn’t a debutante yet, but I was drinking the champagne.

Yes.

That’s it.

Alcohol.

Still, I’m nowhere near Dray on the whore scale.

And there was also that guy at Bluestone, a half-breed I tell no one about. We flirted here and there, mostly in the library, and well, he was always nice to me when he was at school, but he was two years above me, so I haven’t seen him in a long while.

I wonder if he put an offer on my contract.

He might not be single anymore. Married, maybe.

I have the list forming in my head.

But I don’t give it to Dray.

His voice is soft, it’s breathy and uncertain, as though he fears the answer, “Have you?”

I let a laugh split me, bitter and short. “Maybe not everyone thinks I’m so repulsive.”

His face hardens to stone.

I watch it happen, slow, gradual, like icicles forming in a cave. But his face does harden, and for a moment, he just stares at me, into me.

The boat sways, rocks with the waves.

The engine is loud, turbulent, as we venture farther away from populated land, deeper into the sea.

Waves knock against the side of the boat, some manage to reach up high enough that water sprays us. Just some droplets, a drizzle, a mist, but enough that every other moment, I’m watching water droplets hit my knee, then run down the meat of my thigh.

And Dray just stares at me.

Solid, unmoving, a statue sat on the bench, arms braced on his thighs, feet planted on the floorboards, and his hard stare latched onto me.

I think it has never occurred to him before now. He’s never considered that I might have had sex.

Maybe he thought I didn’t have the opportunity. And that’s a fair assumption, because there hasn’t been much of those. I’ve also had to be considerably sneakier than any other aristos. The target isn’t just on me, it can switch to anyone I’m with, especially those I’m fucking.

Oliver would kill them.

Looks like Dray would, too.

At least he wants to.

Or is that me he wants to kill?

Me, definitely me.

In a heartbeat, a flurry of swift movement, he’s pushed off the cooler and dropped to a knee beside me. The flare of his eyes are blue blazes as his hand shoves between my legs and grabs the inner meat of my thigh, hard.

A gasp cuts me, and I clench my legs shut.

His hand is trapped between my thighs, but he makes no move to retreat. His fingertips press harder into my flesh.

That grip tightens, tightens, tightens—until I’m cringing back into the bench, as though I can sink into it and be swept away from him.

But there is no escape, not from that searing, cold stare.

“ Who ?” His jaw clenches, tight, those slashed shadows down his cheeks darkening. “How many? How many have had you?” His fingertips dig into the meat of my thigh, pushing the flesh into muscle and bone. “Where? At Bluestone?” His voice lowers into a seethe. “It’s Harling, isn’t it?”

The bite of pain turns into a roar.

That snaps me out of my shock—and I’m grabbing at his wrist, pulling it, pushing it.

My face is twisted around a grimaced cry, trapped in my chest. “Let go,” I grunt, shoving and shoving at his arm.

I throw my gaze down the way to our parents. So far, just shadows and silhouettes—and none of them angled towards us.

“It wasn’t Eric,” I wince, then whack his wrist, over and over. “Let me go, Dray.”

“Answer me, and I’ll release you.”

“No,” I hiss. “It’s none of your business.”

His grip tightens, fingers digging all the way to the bone now. “Eric?”

A groan thrums through me. “No, he wouldn’t. He loves Asta.”

That doesn’t ease his violent, lashing rage, that same rage that turns his stare into blizzards and flares his nostrils around deep, heavy breaths.

His words come out in a growl, “How many?”

My face tightens. “Ah—ow, fuck, let me go! I’ll shout, I’ll shout right now, I swear to the fucking gods, Dray.”

But I don’t—and we both know why.

The chaos that would ensue, if Father even came to my aid, could be catastrophic.

Dray knows as well as I do, he said as much:

‘How difficult it must be for him to love you—for the sake of your mother…’

The unspoken threats in his eyes glint at me, the question burrowed deep:

‘How far are you willing to go to find out just how little he loves you?’

Dray shoves my leg free, hard enough that my body is flung sideways, and it hits the floor with a thump.

I throw a glare at him, but he’s already standing, towering over me.

Strands of his hair fall into his stone face, the hue of sand and wheat. But beneath his dark eyebrows, those eyes are icebergs ready to sink me and the boat, take everyone down in their thirst for blood.

My blood.

That’s what I see in him.

A violence deeper than anything I’ve ever known.

His heart is hammering as fast as mine. But mine is fear, his is pure rage. Rage enough to fist his hands at his sides, to flare his nostrils with every other breath.

Dray runs his hand down his face with a mutter that sounds a lot like fucking slut —then, he turns his back on me and storms off.

I stare for a while, long after he’s climbed the stairs to the top deck, and I can’t see him anymore. Even then, I just stare at the spot he stood.

My mind slingshots back to Star Theory.

The classroom.

The words that came wryly from my twisted, smiling lips, sarcasm dripping off of me: ‘ So Dray put Teddy in the infirmary for saying my ass is nice in breeches ?’

The mockery that oozed from me then, in that ridiculous conversation with Eric, is fading now.

I blink on it.

Then I shake it off with a rattle of my head, because that is a thought I can’t even begin to process, and I stumble to my feet.

I brace myself for the nose of the boat, where I’m hoping I can grab my tote without being noticed, and tug on my linen trousers and shirt.

I discard Dray’s shirt on the floor.