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  “Well, that’s darker, all right. But still perky, if you know what I mean.”

  “That’s what I was going for. So her fans who want mindless dance music will still be happy. But the music critics will have lyrics they can take seriously.”

  “So how does that work? Did she give you the subject for the song?”

  “Well, we talked about some general ideas. It had to be something believable. She mentioned how annoying it was for people who had treated her like dirt in high school to now be treating her like they’d been best friends.”

  Then maybe it didn’t reflect his attitude. After all, mystery writers wrote believable murderers without ever killing anyone.

  Gayle smiled. “I’m sure she’ll love it. You can tell me all about it Saturday night.”

  “So I’ll see you Saturday night, then? Instead of Friday?”

  “You’ll need a full night’s sleep before your drive. And if I spend the night, you’re not going to be doing a lot of sleeping. I’ll see you Saturday. But speaking of drives, I need to start mine. Or I’ll really be late for work.”

  “Go. I’ll see you Saturday.”

  She moved forward, kissing him goodbye despite the foam covering most of his face. Laughing, she wiped her nose and cheek with her sleeve. “Finish shaving. I’ll let myself out.”

  As she drove away, she caught herself humming “Gonna Buy Me a Lover”. Great. Another earworm.

  * * * * *

  The good news was, pop princess Amanda Tiegg loved “Gonna Buy Me a Lover”, and planned to use it on her next album. And in honor of the sale, Rikard and Gayle played a game where she was, as he put it, “a woman with love for hire”. He ordered her to do a wide variety of sexually explicit tasks, including pleasuring herself to orgasm while he watched and offered direction, which she found unexpectedly liberating. But the bad news was that he stayed in his role of Master the entire time, even the next morning as he fed her the promised blueberry pancakes. The sex was incredible, but it did nothing to reassure her that he was interested in having a relationship.

  She continued seeing him on Wednesday and Saturday nights, sometimes spending all day Sunday with him as well. They often played pirate-and-lady again, each time with her getting a thorough flogging that sent her sailing among the stars. They played Batman and Catwoman, and she finally understood why Rikard felt so powerful behind his mask. Knowing that your face was hidden allowed your true self to surface in a way she’d never expected. They played Spanish Inquisition, where Rikard tortured her with fiendishly erotic torments, making her come again and again until she finally passed out in exhausted delight—although she successfully refrained from admitting she was a witch.

  The sex was phenomenal. All she had to do was hear his voice saying, “I have a special treat planned for you”, or see his blue eyes sparkling with that telltale glint in the depths of his mask, and her heart pounded, her breath turned quick and shallow, her nipples tightened into hard nubs, and her pussy throbbed with wet heat. Pavlov’s dogs had nothing on her for salivating on a signal. And every time, after the sex, it seemed as though he wanted more, holding her with fierce desperation, and starting half a dozen times to say something, only to fall silent, and, when she asked, insist it was nothing.

  But Rikard dodged her every attempt to establish a relationship based on anything other than sex. He cooked for her, elaborate gourmet meals that were feasts for the senses of sight, smell and touch as well as taste. He helped her with her music for Into the Woods. Sometimes he sang for her, baring his soul until she bled for his pain and ached with his desire. But he wouldn’t come to any of her rehearsals, like other cast members’ significant others did, insisting he preferred to get the full effect on opening night. He wasn’t interested in going out to the movies, or even renting a DVD and watching it companionably in his home theater, saying he’d spent too many months watching films to find them entertaining any longer. He saw no reason to eat out when he could cook a better meal at home.

  Whatever they did, he did it as Master Rikard. Aside from that one morning she’d surprised him while he was shaving, he was never just Rikard. She liked Master Rikard. She needed Master Rikard. But she suspected she could love plain old Rikard, if he ever gave her the chance.

  She woke up one Sunday morning, alone as usual. He’d admitted that he didn’t sleep much since his accident, and what sleep he did get was restless. She’d peeked into his room once while he was still in the shower, and seen the shambles he’d made of his bed before he had a chance to tidy it. Restless was an understatement. The covers were on the floor, the bottom sheet torn off the mattress, and the pillows flung into the far corners of the room. She didn’t mind not sharing a bed after sex, since unlike him, she actually needed something approaching eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  Shrugging into her robe, she belted it loosely, so that he could reach inside it to fondle her during breakfast. She visited her bathroom, to brush her teeth and use the toilet, and finished the roll of toilet paper. Since the guest bathroom was a peculiar oversight of Rikard’s—he entered the guest bedroom and studio through the hall doors, never through the connecting bath—she knew he’d never notice the roll was gone. She had to change it.

  A brief inspection of the cabinets revealed towels, drain clearer, and more piano knickknacks, but no toilet paper. He must keep the spares in his bathroom.

  She padded across to his room, ignoring the enticing aromas of breakfast drifting up the stairs. Something with bacon or sausage this morning. Mouth watering, she entered the master bathroom. This wouldn’t take long.

  Rikard’s bathroom was divided into two sections by the marble basin and counter top, which was directly opposite the door. To the right was the toilet and a combination sit-in shower/steam bath unit. On the left was a lower counter and padded stool, originally designed to serve as a vanity, but which now held his whimsical collection of rubber ducks. There were two sets of cabinets, one below the basin and one on the wall facing the vanity. She guessed he’d keep toilet tissue in the cabinet near the vanity, since that was likely to be drier.

  She opened the cabinet on the wall and looked inside. Rikard’s face looked back at her.

  Gayle screamed. Backing away, she bumped into the vanity, and sat on a duck. It quacked an insulting raspberry at her.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

  “Gayle? What is it? What’s…” Rikard’s question faded into silence, as he saw the open cabinet. “Oh.”

  “Oh? That’s all you have to say? Oh?”

  She forced herself to look inside the vanity cabinet again. It wasn’t his head on the shelf. It was an incredibly realistic mask, complete with hair, on a foam head. In fact, except for the fact that it had no eyes, and ended at the upper lip, it looked exactly like Rikard.

  There was another mask beside it, but this one rested on a plaster head that bore Rikard’s features. The second mask was made of clear plastic, with eye and nose holes and a tiny opening around the mouth, although half of it had been painted white in the style of the Phantom of the Opera’s mask. Heavy straps secured it to the plaster head.

  She shook her head. No. Impossible. And yet…

  “Take off your Master’s mask, Rikard.”

  His hesitation was all the confirmation she needed.

  “I’ve never seen your face, have I?”

  “Not all of it, no.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “No!”

  “What do you call that?” She stabbed an accusing finger at the face in the cabinet.

  He sighed, and pulled off the leather mask she’d grown so accustomed to seeing. She didn’t know what to expect, but the features he revealed looked almost exactly like the ones she was familiar with. The only difference was on the left side of his face. Dark purple-red scar tissue covered from the corner of his eye to just below his cheekbone, shining dully in the florescent light.

  “I call that a memory,” he answered softly.
/>   She hadn’t asked, but he removed his gloves as well. His right hand, which she’d seen holding his razor, was as beautiful and graceful as she recalled. His left hand, though, was covered with a mix of thin white scars and shiny patches of scar tissue, especially across the palm.

  “When the truck exploded, I instinctively threw my arm up across my eyes. It probably would have killed me if I hadn’t. But that limited the third-degree burns to my cheek, instead of my entire face. And my arm. I also got shards of glass in my arm. They were so busy making sure I didn’t bleed to death, lose my hand, or lose my eye, they didn’t have time to worry about cosmetics.”

  He spoke in a toneless, matter-of-fact voice. Yet she could feel his pain and terror, the agony of being engulfed in a fireball, followed by the pain of recovery. Absently, she massaged her aching left hand.

  His gaze tracked her motion, and a wry smile twisted his lips. “Sorry.”

  Abruptly, the sensations stopped.

  She fumbled behind herself, searching for the edge of the counter to grip, scattering obscenely cheerful ducks in her blind quest for something stable and real to hold onto. “You did that. You made me feel…what you felt?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t mean to. It’s this thing I’ve been able to do since the accident. I picture something in my mind, and when I speak, people see it in their minds, too. For some reason, you seem to pick up on things even when I’m not trying to send them.”

  As he calmed down, the scar on his cheek faded to a dull pink, barely darker than his natural skin tone.

  She frowned. Was it fading because he was growing calmer, or had it faded because he was no longer transmitting a mental image of what he believed his scar looked like?

  This was insane. She couldn’t believe she was actually considering his explanation. And yet, it explained so many things she hadn’t even thought to question. If the accident had happened the way she’d felt it…

  She shook her head, and stared at him. If she believed him, that she’d experienced what he’d experienced, then he’d been driving alone in that car.

  “Who was with you when the accident happened?”

  “No one.”

  “But when we were rehearsing ‘Not a Day Goes By’, you said you’d lost your girlfriend in the accident.”

  “Actually, I think I said I lost my love.” He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Gayle instinctively braced herself for whatever further revelation he was about to toss her way.

  “I was a jazz pianist. An interpretive singer and songwriter. That’s all I ever wanted to be, since I started taking piano lessons when I was three years old. I performed at music festivals around the world, and was just starting to build a real name for myself. My first CD had been released, to critical acclaim and decent sales, and I’d started working on a second one. I was sure I was one step away from success beyond my wildest dreams.”

  He swallowed audibly, and lifted his left hand, closing and opening it.

  “I can’t play anymore.”

  Gayle shook her head. “I heard your recording for Amanda Tiegg.”

  “Track after track of one note at a time, layered on top of each other. It takes forever, but when it’s done, you can’t tell they weren’t played together. I build the bass that way, then play the treble against it, and record the words last. You must have noticed I only play the right hand line when we rehearsed your songs.”

  “Well, your left is usually occupied.” She blushed. “I Googled you, and nothing came up about a CD.”

  “It was under Richard, not Rikard. The marketing gurus thought that would sell better. If I’d known it was going to be my only CD, I’d have insisted on my own name.”

  “Oh.” Quickly, she changed the topic. “What’s the other mask for?”

  “I had to wear it for two years after the accident, pressing against the skin of my face so that it wouldn’t grow back all knobby and gross.”

  “Didn’t that hurt?”

  “Compared to burning the skin off in the first place? No. Eventually, I found it comforting. The same with the gloves. It started as a pressure glove. When I no longer had to wear it, I found I wanted to wear a glove.”

  He didn’t say it, but she could hear the unspoken end to that thought. He wanted to hide his scars, from the world, but more importantly, from himself.

  She took a deep breath. “So that’s why you didn’t want to go out?”

  He nodded. “I knew wearing that mask would be lying to you. And that’s the real reason I didn’t want you to go with me on my trip. I knew you’d notice it, confined to a car for eight hours. You almost spotted it on our first date, when the latex adhesive started to come loose.”

  “Your lip wasn’t peeling.”

  “No. The mask was separating. The hot coffee, the steam, or both loosened the adhesive on the lip.”

  “Swear to me that that’s the only thing you’ve lied about.”

  Rikard blinked. “What?”

  “You lied about not being scarred. Did you lie about anything else?”

  He frowned, thinking hard. “No. Just about that, or anything that touched on that, like not being able to play the piano anymore.”

  “And since the secret came out, everything you’ve told me is one hundred percent true?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, yes.”

  Was this the secret he’d tried so many times to tell her after they made love? Or had it been this lie that kept him silent?

  “Do you love me?”

  He blinked again. “What?”

  “It’s a simple question. Do you love me?”

  “Yes.” He shrugged his shoulders and stared at his feet. “But I understand—”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “What?”

  She smiled, and captured his hands in hers. Both hands, the one clutching the safety and security of his black leather mask, and the one revealed in all the scars of reality.

  “If you don’t stop saying ‘What?’ I’m going to think that accident affected your hearing.”

  His mouth moved, but he stopped the word before he actually spoke it.

  “As I was saying, you don’t understand. I love you, too. Or I’m pretty sure I could, if you let me close enough to find out. Will you do that?”

  His eyes widened. Without his mask in the way, she could see that the scar pulled down the corner of his eye, which was why his left eye wouldn’t open as wide as the right one. “But I lied to you.”

  “Yes. You did. Are you going to do it again?”

  “No.”

  “It’s okay, then.”

  He blinked rapidly. “You’re not leaving?”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  She released his hands, stepped forward, and cradled his face in her palms. He stiffened, eyes wide in panicked alarm that slowly changed to wonder as he realized she was not reacting with horror to the touch of his scarred flesh.

  Leaning in, she brushed his lips lightly with her own, sealing her pledge.

  “Now, can I finally get to spend time with just Rikard, instead of Master Rikard?”

  “Whatever you want.” He held out the mask to her. “I don’t have to wear this if you’d prefer.”

  “Keep it. I think it’s kind of sexy. Just don’t wear it when we’re not actually playing.”

  “You really don’t mind…?” He gestured weakly toward his cheek.

  “Honestly, it’s not as bad as you think it is. When you’re not upset, it’s hardly even noticeable. And even when it is, it’s no worse than a birthmark would be.”

  “You’re amazing. You have no idea. What can I do for you to show you how much this means to me?”

  “Well, I am kind of hungry. And breakfast smelled delicious.”

  “Shit!”

  That wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. Before he could elaborate, the strident bleep of the smoke alarm made his explanation for him.

  “Go!” She shoved him toward the door.

&
nbsp; He raced for the kitchen, and whatever disaster had occurred there. Idly, she wondered if his racing to clean up kitchen disasters caused by her distracting him was going to be a pattern of their lives together. Considering how much she usually enjoyed his distractions, she kind of hoped so.

  Bending down, she picked up the mask he’d dropped in his flight. She cleared a space among the fallen ducks, and set the mask on the vanity counter. They weren’t going to need that. Not today. But tonight…she was in the mood for a pirate captain and a very saucy lady.

  About the Author

  Jennifer Dunne is the author of over a dozen novels and novellas spanning the genres of fantasy, science fiction and romance. (She’s either a unique individual who is difficult to categorize, or easily bored—you decide.) Beyond that, there’s no point describing her hobbies or activities, since they’ll have changed by the time you read this. (Score one for “easily bored”.) She lives in upstate New York, where she happily plays the lead role in her very own love story, thankfully with fewer explosions, occult happenings and dire situations than in her fiction. Although, there was that one time…

  Jennifer welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

  Tell Us What You Think

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  Also by Jennifer Dunne

  Dancing in the Dark

  Hearts of Steel anthology

  Hot Spell anthology

  Life Sentence

  Santa’s Helpers

  Sex Magic

  South Beach Submissive

  Sticks and Stone

  Tied with a Bow anthology

  Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer ebooks or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.