Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 959

Chapter 959: Mask Until They Don’t

Being the most wanted man in a room full of masked strangers is a specific kind of pressure that I will never complain about because I know exactly how I got here and I know exactly what my life looked like before. I will simply experience it and be grateful and also slightly overwhelmed and not tell ARIA that last part.

"Free time," she said. Her voice was low. Even. Calibrated. The voice of someone who’d decided what they were going to say before they said it. "You have any?"

"Depends," I said. "On what we’re talking about. And where we’re having it."

She tilted her head slightly. The gold trim at her mask caught the amber light. "Both answers to be determined. The second one especially."

Behind me, Charlotte was holding her ground. Madison was being charming at a safe distance. Eziel was doing whatever Eziel does when no one is watching, which is probably something that would concern me if I knew what it was.

My women — being themselves, capable, needing nothing from me.

Which meant I had time.

The woman was watching me calculate.

She was good at patience. The kind that comes from having done this before and knowing that the man who speaks first is never the one controlling the conversation.

I spoke first anyway, because controlling the conversation wasn’t the point.

"Chat won’t hurt," I said.

Her smile reached the only part of her face I could see.

"No," she agreed. "It won’t."

Where you have sex on some parties and occasions matter, and I was being honest that I had never had sex on a party, have I?

I’d had it in classrooms. Plural. I’d had it in a VP’s office — that was Isabella’s idea, which tells you everything you need to know about Isabella— she’d called herself in sick from her own class, called me in sick from mine, and proceeded to do things to me on that man’s desk that I’m pretty sure violated not just school policy but multiple international agreements.

I’d never told that story to anyone. Only ARIA, who knew had filing it under things Peter does that are technically his fault.

I still don’t know whose mug that was on the desk. The one that got knocked over. I hope it wasn’t his.

Actually, I genuinely don’t care. I’ve made peace with it.

But a party? Never. Something about that felt like an oversight worth correcting tonight.

We talked for maybe eight minutes.

Eight minutes of her being precise and warm in equal measure, giving me exactly enough to be interesting without giving me enough to place her — which was deliberate, I could tell.

Eight minutes of the party continuing around us, every woman who’d been watching from a careful distance recalculating, adjusting, waiting for the conversation to end so they could insert themselves into whatever gap she left.

She wasn’t going to leave a gap.

She leaned in.

Close enough that her mouth was at my ear, close enough that her warmth reached me before her voice did.

"They have the best bathrooms in the building," she said. "I’ve been told." A pause, light as punctuation. "Also — my zipper’s stuck. I’d ask someone else but honestly you look like the only person here I’d trust with it." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

She pulled back. Smiled. Walked away.

Just like that. No fanfare. No looking back. The specific confidence of a woman who knew she didn’t need to.

"That’s the second oldest trick in the book," ARIA said in my ear, dry as a tax document. "The oldest involves a different kind of stuck. Just so you’re informed."

I watched the woman go for approximately two seconds before she did the thing — a slight stumble, hand going to the wall, one heel lifted off the ground with the particular delicacy of someone who’d just turned an ankle.

She looked back over her shoulder with an expression of perfect helpless apology.

Oh, this woman.

This is either the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me at a party or the opening scene of a true crime documentary.

They’re not mutually exclusive.

Worth it.

I didn’t have time to say anything about it because her hands were already at my shoulders and I was already moving — my hands finding her waist, lifting, and she came up without resistance, her legs winding around me with the ease of a woman who’d made this decision long before the zipper story.

Her dress rode up her thighs with the motion. My hands found the curve of her through the fabric and I pulled her in and there was nothing pretending between us anymore.

She’d earned it.

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