Unmasked (New Adult Romance) (The Unmasked Series) (7 page)

"I'll go first," Preston laughed, "this might be
easier than I thought."

"Okay."

"Remember when you picked mushrooms and my dad
wandered around with you sometimes?"

"Hold on just a damn minute."

"Yeah?"

"He told you about that? I didn't know it was your
dad until a lot later."

"Well," Preston said, obviously flustered, "that
was you, right? This might get a little awkward if not."

"I never knew him as your dad. I mean, yeah, I
snuck under your fence and picked mushrooms all the time. Until my father told
me who he was, I thought he was a hobo."

Preston giggled a little, and he doubled over,
laughing so hard he couldn't stand up straight.

"That was no hobo," he said. "That old man – he
always wore khaki stuff, right? Shirts with lots of pockets? Safari hats?"

"...Yeah?"

"I can see him rolling around in his grave,
laughing. Richest hobo in these United States."

"Holy shit," Lys said with her mouth hanging open.
"Oh God, sorry. I've got a sailor mouth sometimes."

"It's okay," he had managed to catch his breath a
little. "I can imagine the shock. But, your mushroom instructor was the richest
oil man north of Texas. And probably the only completely independent one left,
even then."

"Still blows my mind he was the great Preston
Webb."

"He wasn't a happy man." Preston's voice got very
dark and very serious, very quickly. "He had a lot of troubles. A lot of
problems, and most of them had to do with me..." He held his breath for a
second. "Anyway. You were the light of his day. A lot of times, the only light
of his day."

"I'm sure that's not true," she said. "Sorry, not
my place."

"Again with the apologies. Relax."

"Okay, my turn."

"I'm not finished," he whispered, moving closer to
the door and facing it for the first time. Alyssa still couldn't make out any
features, no matter how she strained. "There's more. I still have to answer the
question you asked me."

"I won't open it," she said quickly, and put her
hand on the door. "I just..."

"I know," he said, and put his on the other side.
"And I'm not doing this to make sure."

In her mind, the heat from his hand moved through
the door and warmed her palm. She opened her mouth, but closed it again before
she said anything.

"When you were out there, every now and then you'd
come out of the woods. You had a brown satchel. And you'd come out of the
woods, poke around and explore a little nearer the house."

"Oh-"

"Quiet. It's my turn."

Lys's mouth clapped shut.

"Good," his voice was soft again, but it sounded
like he was getting impatient. Maybe. Or maybe it was nerves. "Let me finish.
I'm not...this isn't easy for me."

His fingers curled against the wood under her
hand.

"I watched you. I'd stand in my window on days
when I felt especially alone. And I'd watch, hoping to see you, and when I did,
I imagined that you saw me, too. I'd imagine you waving at me or just looking
at me, and not turning away when you saw my face."

The hand he didn't have on the door flickered
through the shadows and it looked to Alyssa like he ran it down his face.

Is that his scar? His whole face?

"I did," she whispered.

"You did?"

"Yeah. One of the times I was out there, I, uh,
was looking at the house. Imagining what it would be like to live there, with
all those gardens and the big trees and the massive windows. I was staring at
them, at the windows. Up in my room, there's a big one that my dad put in when
I asked him to a long time ago. I've just got this thing for big, open windows.
It's like being outside but, you know, not." She stifled a giggle.

"I know what you mean."

"Shh," she said, finger to her lips. "My turn."

Preston smirked when she shut him up. No one had
ever done that before. Something so simple brought a smile to his lips.

"But, I'd go out there and look at the place, but
the way it's arranged next to those hills, you can only see the top floor from
the edge of the woods. Or I guess it's the top floor. That place isn't three
stories, is it?"

"Not above ground, no. There's a basement, but-"

"Okay so it's the top floor. Anyway, I would go
out there and look and look and look, imagining what it was like to be behind
one of those windows. And then one of the times I was out there playing
pretend, I saw a shape. Tall, and slender," she paused to run her hand down the
door's grain, "and I imagined that whoever it was at the window, was looking at
me."

Preston drew a breath and stepped closer to the
door. She thought she heard his toe tap against the jamb.

Suddenly, from behind her, a door shut, and two
chairs scooted on the floor. Preston cleared his throat and stepped back.

"What's wrong?" She said.

"Nothing. I – I wish I could stay. I wish I could
let you see me. I think Gadsen is trying to tell me something though."

"Quite right, sir," the old man with the pulled
back shoulders said from the kitchen. "Very perceptive, as always."

Alyssa's neck prickled. All the hairs stood on end
every time he talked. Every step Gadsen took nearer put her further on edge.

"Can we not have a few more minutes? I was having
a good time talking to Preston," she said.

"Ah, no. Mr. Webb," he said pointedly, "and I have
a meeting this evening with the oil company's board. Perhaps some time in the
future we'll have you for dinner. He's a very busy man, young lady. I'm sure
you understand."

"Don't be rude, Gadsen," the man outside the door
whispered. "These are very nice people who invited us to their home."

"Quite right, sir. Sorry for the sharpness Ryan,
Alyssa. I didn't mean anything by it. We've just got quite a meeting before us
and need to hurry along."

"No, of course," Ryan said. "That's the way of things."

"Right, so hopefully we shall call on you again in
the near future?"

"I really hope so," Alyssa said, still a little
taken aback.

"Count on it," Preston said in his velvet whisper.

Gadsen moved past her, out the door, and footsteps
followed then turned back. From the shadows outside a hand darted in and
grabbed hers.

"I have no idea why I'm doing this, but I can't
keep from it," he pressed her palm to his lips, kissed it, and turned, all
before she could register what happened. "It won't be long, I promise."

The door clattered shut, the tall man in black
disappeared back into the night.

"Well then, that was more eventful than I thought
it'd be," her father said from behind her.

Alyssa's chest rose and fell as she breathed.

"Did that just happen?" She touched her chest with
the hand that Preston kissed, imagining that his warmth still radiated out from
it, and into her body. "It did, didn't it?"

Ryan Barton smiled, and he picked up a ledger from
the counter and returned it to the desk.

"Now how did that get there?" He cocked his
eyebrow. "Huh."

––––––––

"No," Gadsen said as he pulled into the back lot of
the Webb Oilworks headquarters twenty some-odd miles from the estate, on the
very opposite end of the property. "Absolutely not. You have no idea what
you're doing with this girl. She's young. The only reason you're so smitten is
that you've never had anything to do with anyone else."

"You're wrong." Preston glared out the window,
staring partially at his own reflection and partially at the field beyond. "And
you don't actually have any say. You're making it really obvious what you're
doing, Gadsen. You want me to fail to meet the demands. You want the board to
take over the company and leave me out in the cold."

"And why would I want that? I have no stake in the
company. I have no influence over the board." The butler ran his teeth over his
bottom lip. "If you can explain to me how I'd get anything out of your failure,
I'd love to hear it."

"That's...the one thing I can't figure out. I have
to give you that. But I know you, Gadsen. If there's an angle to play, you've
got it under control. Don't think I believe for a second that you've not
planned every single tiny thing you can do once I ruin this trust and get
tossed out of my own family's business. I might be sheltered, but I'm not a
moron."

"Fair enough, Mr. Webb," Gadsen said under his
breath. "Fair enough. The truth is I've not figured it out. There's got to be
some way to leverage this against the board, but I just don't know what it is.
But regardless of that, I have no intentions of profiting by your failure. I
promised your father."

Preston didn't notice the old man's sideways
glance, or if he did, made no sign. He just stared out the window, obviously
preoccupied.

"I like her, Gadsen."

"You don't know what you're saying. You were
together for twenty minutes on the outside. You're being emotional when you
need to be thinking."

"No!" He snapped with his fist clenched around the
handle on the door. "No I don't. And of course I'm being emotional. What's that
supposed to mean? She's honest. She has an honest face and a nice smile and I
could tell that even looking at her through the door and the three or four
seconds I saw her when I opened it, that she spent a long, long time getting
ready for those twenty minutes. No one has ever, treated the way she did. No
one's reacted to me in any way except to try and either manipulate me for my
money, or convince me to do something I don't want to do."

"Now, sir, that's hardly fair."

"Don't tell me about fair. You've kept me locked
in a twelve-thousand square foot prison cell for my whole life. Fair is about
as far a thing from my mind as exists. I like her. You should be happy for me,
not trying to maneuver your way out of a sticky problem. This is why I think
you're up to something. No," he gritted his teeth, "not think. This is how I
know you've got some plan that you're just keeping quiet about."

"This is absurd," Gadsen said, visibly rolling his
eyes. "You're acting like a love sick puppy. I'll not speak of this until
you're reasonable."

"Reasonable? What does that even mean?" He slammed
his fist sideways into the door.

Gadsen pointedly looked down, swallowed, and
looked back up straight out the windshield.

"You do that, Gadsen. You keep up the act. We'll
see how far this goes. I've still got time. Whatever strange little plan you've
got cooked up, the first step for you is just watching the clock until it runs
out, isn't it?"

A second later, Preston laughed under his breath
as the car's engine switched off. Gadsen handed him a long length of silk.

"What's this for?"

Gadsen pinched the bridge of his nose. "You
weren't planning on appearing in public uncovered, were you?"

Preston grabbed the cloth and stared at it, then
let his hand fall limp to his side.

"Maybe so," he shrugged. "Like Alyssa said, it's
just a scar. Lots of people have scars."

––––––––

"There's no way you can call him or anything?"

"No, baby girl, I can't. I don't have a phone
number. All I do is send letters, which is what I'm doing right now. Sometimes
he answers, sometimes he doesn't."

Alyssa paced back and forth around the perimeter
of the red and green area rug in the middle of the living room. Preston was two
hours gone, but she had not yet managed to sit down and be still. Her father
found this tremendously entertaining, and almost as exciting as she did. He'd
never seen her so fidgety.

"I can't calm down. Why am I all worked up like
this?"

"I'm afraid this is called a crush, Lyssie," her
dad grinned.

"A crush? I'm too old for that."

Ryan wanted to tell the story about how he had a
crush on her mother that made him feel a bit like this for most of his life,
but he left it in peace.

"Well, I'll tell you what. I'll write this letter,
you sign it and add a little bit to the end, and we'll see what happens, okay?
That's the best we can do. But the way he was acting when he got whisked away
by Gadsen, I don't think you have much to worry about in the 'does he like me'
department."

That got Lys grinning.

"I know," she said. "He kissed my hand! I've never
had anyone do that. Bret did it once, but it was kinda weird, and it was at a
masquerade ball. This just...happened. And it seemed like he meant it, you
think? I'm not just being a dumb girl am I?"

"No, not at all." Ryan put a hand on his
daughter's shoulder and gave her a squeeze.

"Okay, whooo," she whistled and finally settled
down enough to sit. "I think my blood pressure is coming back to something
resembling normal." She looked over at her dad, found him smiling, and couldn't
help but crack a grin herself.

A minute later, if even that, she stood up again
and started hopping in place.

"Okay, nope, never mind. I still feel like an ant
on a sugar high. I'm gonna go take a bath and try and figure out some way to
calm myself down." Her feet pounded heavy, and Ryan listened to them go up the
stairs, turn left to the bedroom, then right, into the bathroom.

"Oh boy. To be young again." He spotted the letter
he was just about to open when Gadsen Cartwright called and hijacked the rest
of the day.

"Right, the bank. Wonder what they want this
time."

He slid his finger along the seal and pulled out
the paper. His heart sank as he scanned the single page note.

"Behind on the house? That isn't possible. I never
fell behind, not even when I barely had nickels to rub." As he read further,
his heart drooped almost to his knees. "When did the rate change? Oh my God,
how did I forget about this?"

When he got the job with Webb, he went back to the
bank and renegotiated the loan, thinking he'd be able to pay it off sooner and
with a lower rate, and then promptly forgot about what he'd done. Now, as the
letter said, he'd accrued a little over four grand in back payments, and if he
didn't make it soon – within a month from receiving the letter – the house was
theirs.

A quick check of his bank account, and his heart
hit the floor. There was enough to make a dent in what he owed, but without
some kind of windfall, the numbers just didn't match up.

"I guess I could ask Mr. Webb for a loan, I'm sure
he'd give me one. No, I can't do that. I just can't do it. Wait a minute. What
about those mushrooms? Alyssa's got a thing for collecting them. And it...no, I
won't expect my daughter to help me with money. I'm the one that messed it up
in the first place. I can't lay my problems on her feet."

He looked back at the letter.

"One month. In one month, I lose the house. I lose
everything."

He clicked through a few things, grabbed a pencil
and did a couple of quick figures. If he could squeeze another week out of the
bank, he'd be able to get all but about six hundred bucks by the time the repo
man came calling.

"Six hundred bucks. Man," he said. "What a way to
lose it all. Less than a thousand bucks."

Upstairs, either Alyssa, or the bathtub pipe, was
whistling.

"You should probably just swallow your pride and ask
her for help," he said. "She keeps saying to stop being too proud to ask for
help. Maybe it's time to listen."

––––––––

By the time the shower was warmed up, Alyssa was
almost calm. The old potpourri she had on the plug-in by the sink was just
strong enough to give the room a little hint of a smell, which she usually
preferred to strong, bracing aromas from anything.

"He kissed my hand," she said. "Preston Webb
kissed my hand."

Beads of water bounced off her chest, ran down
between her breasts in warm trickles. As it dropped down her legs, and between
them, it warmed her there, too.

"Oh," she gasped when she stepped backwards, and a
jet hit her low on the belly. "Oh mmm...maybe this shower was the best idea
I've had in a long time. Or maybe..."

She bent down, hair drooping in her face and
sticking to her skin, and opened the valve on the faucet. Almost immediately,
the pouring water pooled around her feet, and before she could get the stopper
in the tub, the steam from the bath almost seduced her into sinking beneath the
surface.

Then she had another idea. Stepping out and
shaking droplets off her legs, Alyssa rooted around in the cabinet until she
found an old jug of bubble bath. "Rose scented, sensitive skin," she read.
"Good to know."

A moment later, mountains of suds surrounded her
as she sat down, closed her eyes, and slid beneath the water. Surrounded by the
comfortable, caressing heat, she almost wanted to stay there, unmoving, forever
and ever. When she popped back up and took a deep breath through her nose and
her mouth, the scent of roses overwhelmed the weak potpourri and filled her
senses.

"Oh God, that smells good," she moaned, going
under one more time. "I needed this really bad."

She ran her hands down her sides into a stretch,
and then back up, through her hair, and into the air.

"How could anything feel this good?" She took
another deep suck of air, held the wet heat in her lungs for a moment, and
exhaled with a long, trickling, slow breath that had a sigh tacked onto the
end. "Well, unless Preston was here with me, anyway."

She made herself blush, which then made her laugh.
She dismissed it as a way of her mind dealing with the craziness of a man in
shadows, not willing to be seen, talking to her through a door and then grabbing
her hand.

"Or, maybe," she let out a low groan, "maybe this
is more what I need." Down her body her hand slid, lingering under the water
just below her belly button. She felt a flush on her cheeks, hot and prickly,
and then lifted her foot out of the water and closed the faucet.

In the silence, every drip, every tiny movement
she made that sent a ripple along her body, caressed her ears. Every sound
comforted her senses just like the soft velvet of Preston's voice. Further down
her hand went, almost without her thinking about it, and slid over the little
tuft of hair there at the top of her cleft.

Alyssa closed her eyes and imagined the man in the
black suit with his slender frame and long, tall body, stepping over the edge
of a hot tub, one foot on either side. Without his clothes, he was delicious,
and firm and defined. In her mind, his ankles brushed gently against her as he
settled down with his head in the crook of her neck, kissing her behind the
ear. Nuzzling, and then kissing again. His breath prickled the skin of her neck
and made goose bumps crawl down her body as his fingers moved softly over the
swell of her breast.

"Mmm," she moaned in a whisper. "Oh, Preston, it
feels good what you're doing. So good. So, so good."

His lips were soft and smooth like his voice. His
fingers were gentle, but strong and hard wherever they squeezed. And, oh, did
he ever squeeze. Around one of her sweetly aching nipples, his fingers curled,
and his tongue moved slow and fat across the tip. She let out a whimper, then
another soft, delicate moan when his other hand stroked her cheek and he lifted
his lips from her to kiss her throat then go back to where he gave her such
wonderful, naughty pleasure.

On her sides, Preston's fingers squeezed different
places up and down between her hips and her shoulders as he kissed, sucked, and
even gave her little nibbles every now and then. Opening her eyes in the dim
light with the scents and warmth surrounding her, Alyssa stretched out her foot
and grabbed the shower head's tube between her toes, gripped in and pulled it
off the wall, giggling as it dropped in the water and splashed.

Alyssa's moans drowned out the chop-chop-chop of
water on water as the showerhead began to pulse in her hand. Moving it up and
down her body in a pattern matching her fantasy Preston's hands, the thumping,
pounding, driving jets of water massaged her flesh, pushed against her muscles
and made her take a breath.

When the water beat against her thighs, from the
knee to her hip, her legs first relaxed and then tightened in a strange, but
wonderful pattern of in and out, tight and loose, hot and cold.

Putting one foot up on the cold shower tile, her
toes curled up and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing and
tugging, trying as best she could not to scream out and alert the entire world
to what she was doing.

"Oh yes, yes, yes, Preston, yes," Alyssa groaned
under her breath, smiling as she did, and moving the shower head briefly
between her legs. A pulse there sent a chill all the way up her back. At the
base of her scalp, a chilly pleasure forced her mouth open and she grabbed one
of her swollen, stiff nipples between thumb and forefinger, pulling gently,
pinching, just like she imagined Preston, on top of her, was doing.

As Lys pinched with her wet fingers, she did it
harder, and harder, imagining that her fingers were Preston's lips, his tongue,
flickering across her body and thrilling her more and more with each passing
moment. She took another breath and held it in her chest. Her eyes, half
opened, almost visualized her man in black, only without so much black, and
with a lot more bare skin, scraping his teeth from her neck to her stiff, pink
nibs, like she always wanted someone to do, but never had the courage to ask.

Then, when she sucked another breath through her
nose, inhaling the vague rose scent in the air, she remembered that when he
yanked her hand through the door and kissed it, Preston Webb had the same smell
– a tiny, almost-but-not-quite-there bit of rose to him.

"Was that real?" She asked under her breath as her
fingers slid somewhere they rarely went. "Did all that really happen, or was I
just dreaming it?"

In her mind, the tall, slender, gentle man who had
seduced her with nothing more than his voice and his shadow, kissed her belly
button, and then...

The pulsing, driving, massaging water beating
against her skin send another wave of pleasure through Lys's body. Everywhere
the rippling, raw, wonderful pleasure crept, goose bumps followed and then
right afterwards, a prickly red flush arose.

Slipping inside her folds, hooking deep, her
fingers drove pleasure inside her and pulled the breath from her lips at the
same time. Alyssa squirmed around and pinned the shower between her legs, the
jets hitting her just where she wanted. Just where she needed.

"Oh!"

"Oh, yes!" She felt herself grip her fingers.
Preston pushed her knees apart and kissed her once, then again as her body
began to flutter. Breath, coming harder and faster, filled her lungs then
pushed out a gasp as she drove her fingers deeper, twisted and dragged them
along her front, lingering where on a little place that made every inch of her
body tingle.

With a gasp and a clench of her sex on her
fingers, Alyssa groaned and bent her knees, sinking down in the water so that
it came up around her chin.

Her lips parted, her eyes relaxed halfway open,
and as the water caressed her just where she imagined Preston was touching, the
warmth of the bath enveloped Alyssa, held her in its grasp, and refused to let
her go, or breathe, or see, or smell, until every last muscle squeeze had
relaxed, until every last heated, long-held breath escaped, and every inch of
her being flared to life and then calmed in release.

"Mmm," she smiled, sitting up and squeezing the
water out of her hair. "My, my, Preston Webb, you are quite the gentleman,
aren't you?"

Sinking back beneath the water for a moment,
Alyssa's knees wobbled a little bit when she decided to stand up to dry off.

She couldn't help but smirk.

"Well, well, Lys," she said as she looked in the
mirror. The only light in the room was the faint, dying flickers of a
nightlight that had been plugged into the same socket since Jake and Lori were
born. The gentle orange glow, her heart returning to normal, her pulse slowing,
Alyssa took a long deep breath and stretched.