The Billionaire's Mask (Book #1) - Unedited Version

Chapter 13

ALAYNA

"What do you want?"

Master's eyes gleam. "I said I want you. Are those words not clear?"

"I thought you hate being touched," I say breathlessly. "Why are you doing this now?"

He chuckles deliciously. God, his smile. I almost want to faint.

"Is that what you think of me?" he asks.

"What do you want from me?" I continue to wriggle. "Please, let me go. I can't feel my hands anymore."

Master Brandon lifts me, then he lays me on the couch, then he clasps my wrists and pins my hands above me. "Better? Am I making you uncomfortable?"

I squirm against him again, but he is keeping his grasp tight.

"If this is about Oliver, you should not—"

"This is about you and me," his voice thickens. "Do you like him that much, that you think this is about him?"

"You should stop. He's been friendly to me ever since."

His eyes peer. "Let say he is. You didn't answer my question."

I look away from his intense gaze. I jerk my arms from his grip and shoves away his chest, then sit.

"No, I don't, and even if I like him." I lift my chin. "But are you going to oppose? Am I not allowed to like someone in the house?"

Someone like you? Someone so mysterious and someone with too many issues?

He lets out a humorless laugh and slumps back on the couch. His eyes turn glacial. "I was right all along," he mutters, then twitches his jaw. "You like my cousin and to answer your question, I won't allow you like someone in my house."

I think so too. I can't like you.

"I told you I don't like Oliver." I grit my teeth. His statement and wrong judgment are starting to piss me off. "Oliver is the only person in this house I could be friends with, and I don't understand what the hell you meant about you don't share. You don't own me. No one owns me."

He looks away from me, stands up, and walks far from me. "Please leave, Alayna. I guess I can't talk to you like this."

What the heck? He just told me he wanted me, and now he's asking me to leave? What a mercurial person! How can he pull something he can't stand for?

"You know that you can't possibly shake me like this, and then you are just going to make me leave. Fine," I snap. He's making me confuse about everything about him now and then.

I stand up and head toward the door.

He is so unpredictable and hard to please. He is a huge mess that I need not pay attention to or I'll just get myself hurt in the end. I'm about to open the door when I hear him speak another.

"Because you make me feel alive again," he suddenly confesses and his voice is defeated. I hear his footsteps approach me. "I've been dead for so long and Oliver is the only person who stayed for the last decade of my pathetic existence. And you like him, Alayna. It's too complicated."

"You made yourself into this person," I say, still facing the door. "People in this house care about you, but you just couldn't see it."

His presence is now behind me, and gently, he turns me around. "You don't know me," he hisses, then points to his mask. "You don't know the nightmare beneath this thing."

"I don't judge you, really. And do you think that thing defines your life?"

He lets go of my hand and hurls a sigh. "Where have you been all this time?"