Chapter 1
HAZEL'S POV
I stared at my reflection and wondered what the hell I was doing.
The maid dress was Maya's idea. Obviously. It was always Maya's idea. She'd shown up at my apartment forty minutes ago with a garment bag, a makeup palette the size of a dinner tray, and that look in her eye—the one that meant argument invalid, you're doing this.
"I look ridiculous," I said, shifting my weight from my left hip to my right.
The dress was black and white. A fitted bodice with a plunging neckline that pushed my chest up in a way I wasn't accustomed to, a tiny skirt that barely covered the tops of my thighs, a white lace apron tied tight around my waist, and a little headband with an attached mini white apron. Stockings. Garters. Actual garters digging slightly into the soft flesh of my upper thighs.
"You look incredible," Maya corrected from behind me, clipping something into my hair. "Hazel, you have the body of a pin-up girl and you dress like a suburban dad on laundry day. Tonight, we're fixing that."
I tugged at the neckline. My cleavage spilled over the top edge. I never showed this much skin. Ever. At the shelter, I was in oversized flannels and jeans. I was the girl who smelled like dog shampoo and carried treats in her pockets. I was comfortable.
This was the opposite of comfortable.
The stockings whispered against each other when I walked. The garters tugged with every step. I felt exposed. Airy. Like at any moment a breeze would come and the world would know exactly what I looked like underneath it all.
Maya handed me a small black purse. "Lip gloss, phone, emergency cash. That's it. You won't need anything else."
"I'm not getting drunk," I said firmly.
"Nobody said you had to."
"You implied it. Heavily."
She grinned. "I implied you should loosen up. There's a difference."
---
The party was in the woods.
Not near the woods. In them. Some guy named Derek who I'd vaguely heard of—friend of a friend of a friend—had apparently gotten permission to use a massive cleared area deep inside Hallow Creek Forest. There were string lights everywhere, tangled through tree branches and draped over makeshift wooden poles. A bonfire roared in the center, throwing orange light across a crowd of maybe a hundred people. Music thumped from massive speakers somewhere I couldn't see. People danced. People drank from red cups. People pressed against trees in shadows.
The autumn air was cold against my bare shoulders and legs. I hugged myself instinctively, feeling goosebumps rise along my arms.
Maya and our other friend, Janelle, immediately disappeared into the crowd. I was left standing at the edge of the party, holding a cup of something I hadn't sipped, watching skeletons made of paper mâché sway from branches above me.
Loosen up.
I repeated it like a mantra. My fingers tightened around the cup.
An hour passed. Maybe two. I talked to a few people—girls from my high school I barely recognized in their costumes, a guy dressed as a vampire who told me I looked "like a snack," which made me visibly cringe. I sipped my drink once. It was too sweet. I set it down on a tree stump and didn't pick it back up.
Maya found me again near the bonfire, her witch hat askew, cheeks flushed.
"You're standing exactly where I left you," she said, exasperated.
"I'm socializing."
"You're standing. Hazel, please. For me. Go get another drink. Dance. Talk to someone attractive. You're wearing a maid costume that's making every guy here lose their minds and you're acting like you're at a PTA meeting."
I opened my mouth to argue.
She was already gone.
I exhaled. Shifted my weight. Looked toward the makeshift bar—a long folding table covered in bottles and mixers, set up just inside a tent-like structure made of tarps and poles near the edge of the clearing.
Fine. Loosen up.
I walked over. The ground was uneven, covered in leaves and pine needles, and my heels—the one concession I'd made, small black blocks—kept sinking. I pushed through the tent flap.
The kitchen area was dimmer. Quieter. A few people leaned against a counter made of plywood and sawhorses, talking in low voices. I moved past them toward the drinks, reaching for a bottle of—
A hand slid around my waist.
Fast. Tight. Fingers pressing into the soft curve of my hip through the thin fabric of the dress.
I froze.
"You shouldn't be walking around looking like that if you don't want attention, sweetheart," a voice slurred close to my ear. Hot breath. Smelling like cheap whiskey. His other hand was coming up—I could feel it, hovering near my chest, and my stomach turned violently.
"I—let go of me," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt, but my heart was slamming against my ribs.
He laughed. Squeezed harder. His fingers dug into my hip hard enough that I knew I'd have a bruise tomorrow. "Come on, don't be—"
A shadow moved behind him.
It happened so fast I barely processed it. One moment the man's hands were on me, and the next he was gone—wrenched backward by his collar with a force that looked almost casual, like the person doing it was moving through water. The guy stumbled, crashed into the plywood counter, bottles rattling. He turned, swearing, ready to fight—
And then he saw who'd grabbed him.
I saw who'd grabbed him.
He was tall. Not just tall—massive. A wall of a man standing in the dim light of the tent. He wore a black mask that covered the lower half of his face—simple, almost clinical, like something from a military surplus store. His eyes above it were dark. Gray. Almost black in the low light. They weren't looking at the man on the ground.
They were looking at me.
And then they shifted. Cold. Calculating. Back to the guy.
"Touch her again," the masked man said. His voice was low. Deep. A rumble that I felt in my sternum more than heard. "And I'll break every finger on both your hands. Slowly."
The guy on the ground stared up at him. His face went through several emotions—anger, confusion, and then finally, fear. Raw, animal fear. He scrambled up without another word and pushed past me out of the tent.
I stood there. Breathing hard. My hand was shaking where it gripped the edge of the counter.
The masked man turned to me.
Up close, he was even bigger. Broad shoulders that stretched beyond what any hoodie could contain—but he wasn't wearing a hoodie. His upper body was bare. Dark ink covered his left arm—shattered patterns, thorned vines, something that looked like birds or ravens, all in black and gray, crawling up from his wrist over his shoulder and disappearing toward his chest and back. His skin was pale underneath the ink. His torso was thick, muscled, the kind of build that came from deliberate, obsessive work—not casual gym visits. His stomach was rigid, lined, and his chest rose and fell slowly. Controlled.
He wore dark jeans. Scuffed boots. Black gloves—leather, tight, covering his large hands completely.
That was it. No costume. No effort. Just a bare, tattooed, masked giant standing in a Halloween party kitchen like he'd materialized from the dark of the forest itself.
"Are you hurt?" he asked. Same voice. Low. Controlled. Like he was asking about the weather.
I shook my head. "No. I'm—I'm fine. Thank you."
He stared at me for a beat. Those dark eyes moved down—just once, brief, flickering over the maid dress, the stockings, the exposed skin—and then back up to my face. Something shifted in them. Something I couldn't name.
Then he turned and walked toward the tent flap.
"Wait—" I said, without thinking.
He stopped. Didn't turn around.
I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I was saying. My heart was still pounding from the man's hands on me, from the adrenaline, from the way this stranger had appeared like something out of a nightmare and put that fear into someone else to protect me.
And Maya's voice was in my head, looping like a broken record.
Loosen up. Loosen up. Loosen up.
I stepped forward. My heels sank into the dirt. I was close enough now to smell him—cold air, black coffee, something faintly metallic. No cologne. No sweetness. Just him.
I rose on my tiptoes.
The kiss was clumsy. Soft. My lips barely pressed against the edge of his masked cheek—half on fabric, half on the sharp line of his jaw. It lasted maybe two seconds. My hand had landed on his bare chest to steady myself, and his skin was warm—startlingly warm against my cold fingers, the muscle underneath rigid like stone.
I pulled back immediately.
What am I doing? What am I DOING?
"I'm sorry," I breathed. "I—that was—I don't know why I—"
I started to turn around. Face burning. Heart now hammering for an entirely different reason. I was going to walk out of that tent and find Maya and tell her I wanted to go home and I was never listening to her again and—
A gloved hand closed around my upper arm.
Not hard. Not painful. But firm. Unmistakable. There was no moving through that grip.
I stopped breathing.
He turned me back around. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he was turning a page he wanted to read.
Those dark gray eyes met mine from behind the mask. Something had changed in them. The flatness was gone. In its place was something hotter. Sharper. Something that looked like hunger that had been woken up after a very long sleep.
I opened my mouth to say something—I'm sorry, please let go, I didn't mean—
His gloved hand moved to his own face.
I watched, frozen, as his fingers hooked under the bottom edge of the black mask. He pulled it down. Not all the way—just halfway. Just enough. The fabric folded below his nose, below his cheekbones, and then—
I saw his mouth.
That was all I saw. His jaw stayed shadowed. His nose stayed half-covered. The mask bunched just below his cheekbones like a deliberate curtain, hiding everything except his lips and the curve of his chin. His lips were full. Slightly parted. The lower one was thicker than the top, and there was a faint shadow of stubble along his jawline that I could just barely see at the edges of the fabric.
I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see who he was. Just his mouth, and somehow that made it worse. That made it filthier. A stranger with no name, no face, just a mouth and gloved hands and bare, tattooed skin, and I was about to—
His gloved hands moved.
Both of them. Down. They slid from my arm to my waist—my bare waist, where the dress cut away—and then lower. His palms, covered in tight black leather, settled on the exposed skin of my thighs. My bare thighs. Above the stockings. Below the hem of the skirt. His fingers curled around the soft, rounded flesh, and the leather was cold against my warm skin, and his grip was—
God.
His grip was possessive.
A sound escaped me. Small. Involuntary. Something between a gasp and a whimper.
He pulled me forward. My body collided with his—soft against hard, curves against rigid planes, my chest pressing against the inked wall of his chest. The height difference was staggering; my face barely reached his collarbone even on my tiptoes.
Then his hand came up. Gloved fingers threaded into the hair at the back of my head, gripping firmly, tilting my face up toward his.
And he kissed me.
Not like my kiss. Not clumsy or soft or apologetic.
Hard.
His bare lips crashed down onto mine—actual lips, warm and firm and deliberate—and the shock of it, skin against skin after expecting fabric, ripped a sound out of me that I'd never made before. His mouth was demanding. Punishing, almost. He kissed like he was taking something that belonged to him, like he'd been waiting longer than the thirty seconds since my foolish little peck on his cheek. His lips parted mine, and I tasted coffee—black, cold, bitter—and something underneath that was just him, warm and masculine and dark.
My knees buckled.
He caught me. Of course he did. One arm wrapped around my lower back, pressing me even tighter against him, while his other hand stayed tangled in my hair, holding me exactly where he wanted me. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. His gloved fingers pressed deeper into my thighs. I could feel the leather dimpling my soft skin. I could feel the chill of the October air on my back where his arm wasn't holding me. I could feel the heat of him everywhere else, radiating through his bare skin like a furnace.
I could feel his lips. Just his lips. That was all I had of him—no face, no name, no identity. Just the mouth that was devouring mine like I was something he'd been starving for.
When he finally pulled back, I was trembling.
His chest rose and fell heavily beneath my hands. His lips—those bare, visible, real lips—were slightly parted, glistening. His jaw worked beneath the edge of the mask like he was clenching his teeth. His dark eyes studied my face. My swollen lips. My dazed expression.
He pulled the mask back up. Slowly. Covered his mouth. Erased the only piece of himself he'd given me.
Then he released me.
Stepped back.
Walked out of the tent without a single word.
I stood in the dim light, my thighs aching where his gloved hands had been, my lips tingling, my entire body feeling like it had been rewired.
I brought my fingers to my mouth.
I could still feel him. Just his lips. Just that one small, devastating piece of a stranger.
I didn't even know his name.
