Vigil Read online

  I twisted my head, finding his lips.

  His gloved hands moved on me, sending swirls of pleasure through my body. I kissed him fiercely, writhing under his touch.

  Internally, I began scolding myself. What the hell was I doing? This man wore a mask and a spandex costume. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know anything about him. And here I was, practically naked with him, letting him touch me in all my most secret places. The right thing to do was to stop him. The right thing to do was to tell him to get away from me.

  I broke our kiss, filling my lungs with air. I was going to tell him to stop. I was.

  He pinched my nipple.

  I cried out. Sensation shot through my torso, lighting up a fiery line directly to my clit.

  He was touching that too, his fingers making languid circles around it, teasing me. Torturing me.

  Everything felt so good.

  I was lying to myself if I thought I was going to be able to end this. I didn’t want it over. I was really enjoying it.

  I arched my back, pressing my breast firmly into his hand, my ass into his pelvis.

  And I felt his erection, long and hard and hot, pushing into my backside.

  Oh mother of god, the crazy masked man was hard for me, and I liked it.

  I ground my hips into his, rubbing against his hardness.

  He grunted. His hands moved from my breast and clit to my hips, holding me in place. “Fuck,” he whispered in my ear, his voice ruined.

  I let out breath long and slow, sagging against him. My shirt had settled back over my chest. The cotton rested against my hardened nipples. I was excruciatingly turned on.

  “I want you,” he said. “Do you want me?”

  “Yes,” I breathed. “But… I don’t think…”

  “No, that’s exactly the problem, I can’t think. Whenever you’re close, all I think about is how much I want to touch you.”

  I reached up for him, let my fingertips graze over the spandex. “You’d have to take this off.”

  “No,” he said. “There’s a flap.” He grasped my hand and guided it down between his legs. He moved the fabric aside and freed himself. He put my hand on him.

  I swallowed. He was thick. So thick. My thumb and middle finger just barely touched around his girth. I made an exploratory stroke. He wasn’t hurting in the length department either.

  He gasped.

  I stroked him again. “This is a very bad idea.”

  He thrust his hand between my legs again, rubbing my clit. “I think it’s a good idea.”

  Damn it, it was hard to keep my thoughts together when he was doing that. We shouldn’t do this. Because… because… “Condoms. You don’t keep some inside your suit somewhere, do you?”

  “No,” he said. His fingers stopped moving.

  Damn it all to hell, it wasn’t like I didn’t have condoms. There were two in my purse. I always carried them for emergency hook-ups. And there was box in my underwear drawer, which was on the other side of the room. “I have some,” I muttered.

  His fingers moved again. He chuckled into my ear, the sound rich and dark. “Good.”

  I moaned. I reached into my purse again.

  When I pulled the condom out of my purse, he snatched it from me.

  He wasn’t touching me anymore, and I started to turn in his arms, but he stopped me. “Hold on,” he rasped.

  I twisted my head.

  He seized me by the neck and turned my head around. “Don’t. Don’t look at me.”

  I sucked in breath, a thrill of something like fear going through me. “I can’t see you, anyway. You’re wearing a mask.”

  Then he was against me, the length of his firm body pressing into me from behind. His fingers went between my legs again, rubbing my wetness, moving it over me. “I think you might like that, though, Cecily.”

  I whimpered.

  The head of his thick shaft settled against my opening.

  “I think it might turn you on that you don’t know who I am. I’m just a shadow that snuck in your window, and it makes you wet to bend over for me and spread your legs for my cock.”

  I moaned as he pushed into me, splitting me open. He was so wide and huge and solid. My breath quickened, coming in gasps. “Big,” I managed.

  His voice was soothing. “You can take it.”

  I moaned.

  He prodded himself into me, stretching me for him, and it was agonizingly sweet. “Shh. Take me. Take all of me.”

  And I did. I could feel every inch of him inside me, filling me up, up to the brim, cramming me full. I groaned, writhing in place. He’d pinned me down and impaled me.

  He let out a slow breath, the sound whistling through his teeth. He grunted.

  He didn’t move for several seconds, and it drove me mad. I began to buck against him, trying to move on his cock.

  But he seized my hips and held me in place. “Hold on.”

  Hold on? He was killing me here. I need to feel him thrust inside me, needed to feel him drag his thick cock in and out of me.

  He groaned. “Shit, Cecily. You feel…”

  And then he inched out of me and plunged back in again.

  I cried out. The walls of my sex were so sensitive. I could feel all of him, even through the condom.

  He let out a sigh, sounding almost relieved, and picked up the pace.

  With one hand, he held me against him as he stroked in and out of me. With the other, he explored my body, teasing first one nipple, then the other, then plunging down to caress my clitoris.

  He nuzzled my neck, nipping my ear. He spoke to me in low, low whispers, telling me how good I felt to him, how nice it was to have my snug pussy hugging his hard cock, how he wanted to fuck me forever.

  “Forever,” he whispered. “I could do this forever.”

  I didn’t have a problem with that. He filled me completely. His hands fondled my sensitive places. His cock collided with the aching center of me. Over and over again. I could feel my climax building.

  My eyes rolled back in my head. I grasped the chair in front of me, tightening my knuckles around it, letting out guttural moans, losing myself to him, falling apart.

  I felt the edge of my orgasm begin to spread through me, hot, liquid pleasure, loosening and tightening me at the same time.

  I began to work my hips against him, urging it forward.

  It started at low intensity and then grew stronger.

  I moaned in delight, lurching into him, my motions growing spastic and uncontrolled.

  And my release rolled over me, a white hot torrent of ecstasy, making me twitch and spasm around his thick shaft.

  “Are you coming?” Vigil’s voice. Harsh.

  “I…” I couldn’t talk.

  “Say it,” he demanded.

  “I’m… I’m coming,” I managed.

  I could feel his hot breath on my neck. “You tell me when you’re coming,” he grunted, crushing me tightly against him.

  The last aftershocks of my climax pulsed through me.

  And he speared me, deep into my body, a sharp thrust of half-pain, half-pleasure.

  I felt him release inside me as well.

  He was tense against me for a moment.

  And then he relaxed.

  We both slumped into my desk, gasping for air.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Do you consider yourself a hero?” I said, tucked in the crook of Vigil’s arm and shoulder. We were lying on my bed. One of his arms wound around me, holding me close to him.

  My recorder was balanced on his chest.

  “A hero?” His voice was a deep rumble, but he sounded more relaxed than he ever had. “No. Nothing like that.”

  “But you’re saving lives. Some people would say that’s heroic.”

  “I just can’t let those women die, that’s all.”

  I lifted my head. Ostensibly, I was asking him the questions for the interview, but I was also genuinely curious about him and why he did the things he did. “Wh
y not?”

  He reached over and touched my cheek. “You want a nice sound bite for your article, don’t you?”

  “I want the truth.”

  He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he addressed the ceiling instead of me. “I feel like chance plays a big part in who we are as people. You can’t chose who your family is or what kind of situation you’ll be born into. You can’t choose the circumstances that shape you into the person you are. When it comes down to it, there’s very little you do have control over. There aren’t very many choices you can make. But this is a choice I could make. To save those women. And so I did.”

  I let what he’d said sink in. “Is that why you wear a mask? To choose to be someone else?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  I waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, I reached up and turned off the recorder. “I guess that’s enough.”

  He kissed my forehead. “No more questions?”

  “No.” I moved the recorder to my bedside table and snuggled close to him again. He was so hulking that he took up most of the bed. With his arm around me, he engulfed me. I loved the feeling of being surrounded by him.

  His hand traveled lazily over my thigh. I was still only wearing the t-shirt, but I didn’t feel self-conscious about it anymore.

  “Mmm.” I shut my eyes. “I should get up. I should bang out a draft of that for tomorrow. If I had it first thing, Henry would be impressed.”

  “You’re going to try to write? Now?”

  “I should,” I said.

  “I guess that means I should go.”

  I dragged my fingers over his chest. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want him to go. I liked the way it felt safe in his arms, our bodies pressed together.

  His hand traveled higher, cupping the curve of my hip. “I don’t want to go,” he whispered to me. “I’d like to hold you until you fall asleep.”

  Such an intimate thought for a man who wouldn’t let me see his face or his skin. He confused me. I pressed closer. “Well, I guess I could get up early and work on the draft.”

  “I like that plan,” he said. His arm tightened around me.

  I closed my eyes again, and I let myself relax. I didn’t think I was going to have any problems going to sleep.

  He kissed the top of my head. “Being with you tonight was…”

  I raised my face to look at him.

  He looked away.

  I lowered my face again.

  I heard his voice again, barely louder than a whisper, even though it reverberated in his chest, where my head was resting. “You’re lovely.”

  I felt his words dart into me. They made my breath hitch and my insides clench. I liked him too.

  * * *

  I liked him too much, I decided when I woke up alone in the morning.

  And my feelings were probably going to get me hurt.

  I managed to shove aside my thoughts about it while I worked on the article about him, focusing instead only on writing the best news story I possibly could. Writing was generally like that. Once I fell deep into what I was doing, the rest of the world didn’t matter. It was my passion. I loved it, and it took me away from everything.

  The Vigil in the story, the one who’d answered my questions, wasn’t the same Vigil who I’d been intimate with. Because the Vigil in the story was beginning to seem more and more like my own creation. I was editing so much of who Vigil was out of the version I gave out for public consumption that it was almost as if they were two people.

  It fractured him even worse.

  Presumably, he was someone else under that mask. Someone with another name and another life. I didn’t know anything about that someone.

  Then he was the masked man that saved women, was connected to Hayden Barclay, and fucked my brains out.

  Finally, he was the sanitized Vigil, the one I wrote about, with all of his disturbing and confusing bits cut off.

  But once the article was done, and I got up from my computer, I couldn’t stop hiding from the fact that I’d been intimate with Vigil.

  Every time I moved, I became aware of the fact that I’d gotten laid last night. I had that just-fucked tenderness between my legs, the sort of sweet twinge that took me back into my memories of what had happened. I walked across the room, and I remembered the way it felt to have his hands on my breasts. I riffled through my closet looking at clothes, and I was lost in the things he’d whispered to me while his cock pounded in and out of me. I sat down, and it was as if his mouth was still on my neck.

  I was assaulted by the memories of it. They were good memories. I had enjoyed every second of being with him, and I wanted to wallow in thinking about it, taking out each moment and replaying it over and over again, cherishing the things he’d said to me like well-worn keepsakes.

  But other thoughts were intruding.

  It wasn’t late at night anymore, and he wasn’t here, and I could think clearly away from him.

  And what I kept thinking was that I was in deep trouble.

  I hadn’t been with an enormous number of men. Vigil made five.

  There had been two in high school, one that mattered to me and one that didn’t.

  A drunken hook-up in my freshman year.

  And Scott, who I’d broken up with only a few months ago.

  But even though I hadn’t slept with scores of men, I recognized the symptoms of what I was feeling for Vigil. I seemed to be cursed with falling for for men after I slept with them. Possibly only because I slept with them. I didn’t know.

  I did know that both the boy who didn’t matter in high school and the drunken hook-up in college had broken my heart.

  I didn’t mean to fall for any guy who managed to get his dick in me, of course. That didn’t stop it from happening.

  Darlene had told me that the only way to get over it was to have a lot of sex with a lot of different guys. She said it was emotionally painful at first, but that after a while it got easier.

  I didn’t like that option. It sounded to me that Darlene had simply burned off her ability to feel. She’d hurt herself enough to become desensitized to it. I was afraid that she’d made herself numb. Not just to pain, but to actual love. When a guy came along who deserved her, would she be able to remember how to care about him after she’d spent so much time training herself not to?

  And I didn’t want that to happen to me.

  Of course, Darlene never got a chance at real love. Barclay stole it from her.

  Darlene aside, I was developing feelings for Vigil. Because of the sex. It hadn’t helped that he’d been so tender afterward, almost as if I’d tamed him by fucking him. I thought of the way he’d held me while I interviewed him, of his lips on the top of my head. Of his telling me I was lovely.

  Damn it.

  And the sex…

  Well, the sex had been phenomenal. It wasn’t a prerequisite to my falling for a guy that I banged that the sex be good. I’d been head over heels for the guy in high school, and we’d had pretty much the worst sex of all time.

  Vigil and I, however, had been explosively connected. I didn’t know how to describe how amazing our coupling had been.

  But just like that boy in high school, the one who hadn’t mattered, Vigil wasn’t right for me, and I knew it.

  There was no future in banging a guy in a costume, no matter how perfectly his cock fit inside me or how easily he’d made me come.

  I couldn’t go on a date with him.

  He couldn’t be my boyfriend.

  There was no future in any of it. All I could hope for was fantastically sexy interludes.

  I had to admit I was excited at the prospect. I wanted him. I didn’t know if I’d ever wanted someone so badly.

  But I couldn’t be satisfied with a man who occasionally crawled through my window at night for some raw footage. I needed more from someone if I was going to be having sex with him. And Vigil couldn’t give me more. Wouldn’t give me more.

  Which meant
that I was on a path to disaster.

  I could see the future, and in it, I was going to be devastated. He was going to hurt me. He was going to shred my heart.

  I needed to stop it somehow. I needed to take an exit somewhere, turn around and head back to safety and rationalism.

  But I also knew I wasn’t going to do that. He had too deep of an effect on me. I was helpless against him.

  * * *

  “So, you had company last night.” Airenne raised a wicked eyebrow over her coffee mug.

  I felt my face go hot. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that Vigil and I were making noise. Maybe too much noise. “Oh my god, I’m sorry.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I only caught the tail end of it. You did wake me up, though. Who’s this mystery guy? He wasn’t here when you went to bed. Did you get a late night booty call?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “He’s, um, no one.”

  She set down her mug on the counter and reached for a granola bar. “I want a no one like that. You gotta at least tell me where you found him.”

  I had to lie. I couldn’t tell her what was actually going on. I had to keep it a secret. So, where could I say I met a guy? The bar? What would Airenne think of me if she thought I brought random guys home from the bar? “Uh, I met him through work. While I was working on the Vigil story.”

  She looked disappointed. “I never meet guys through work. Unless they’re gay. It’s the only downside of working for a fashion magazine.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Did my ears deceive me, or did you just admit that Bold! was a fashion magazine?” She generally said that the term was derogatory and dismissive.

  “Shut up,” she said. “You want coffee? I’ll make you some if you want.”

  “I’ll get some at work.” I grabbed a banana from the hanging basket next to the refrigerator. “Are these my bananas or yours?”

  “Yours,” she said. “I don’t buy bananas, because there’s only one day where they’re actually at the perfect ripened stage. The rest of the time, they’re either hard and green or squishy and black.”

  She had a point. The one I was holding was heading into squishy territory. “But they’re so portable.”

  She laughed.

  “I’m really sorry I was loud,” I said.