We shall attend the Carnival Ball in full Venetian regalia. Sir will be wearing a light tuxedo with a simple half mask. I shall wear a sixteenth-century-style dress with a full Venetian mask. No part of my body, aside from heavily made up eyes, will be visible for the entire night. To be sure the mask would be comfortable, Sir had it custom made to exactly fit my features. It sits so close to my face that once tied into p...

I followed my best friend down a pathway, passed the manion of a wealthy old man. The path led to two big black doors. My heart was pounding through my chest and I could feel the sweat in my palms. I gulped and took in a deep breath. ''ID?'' the tall and bulky women dressed in tight black leather straps that barely cover her body asked. I reached for my ID, but before I pulled it out of my bag, my best friend pulled out a...

Since I caught your eye, you've found it hard to keep from staring across at me. A masquerade ball on a boat is definitely hot, even without the man in the suit with his eyes confidently on you, and after a hour on the water and a few drinks, what your friends have to say is becoming much less entertaining than someone showing their interest in you like that - looking across the boat that way, past the people he's drinkin...

A mask was hiding part of his face. In the dim light of my apartment, he was standing right in the center of my living room, with just that. A mask and his black jeans opened already for the night. He wasn't saying a word, but his eyes were penetrating me. "Psycho?" I said. Of course, I did not call him psycho, but for the sake of this story he will be Psycho, I will be Mia. He didn't answer, but he took a few steps towar...

She woke up by strange, blurred noises she couldn't quite make out; a lot like the rattling of cold steel. Her head was a mess – one big, agonizing mess. Bits of memory flashed through her mind: a lazy evening with Hubby, a sudden malaise, a sudden nausea, a sudden impairment of her consciousness. Drugs? And then, the masked men breaking into their house. Three of them. Then, darkness. A pang of thunderclap headache shook...

Her sweet taste lingers on my lips as I wait, watching the door, wondering what she will do. Will she wait there or will she make her escape sooner? The second I saw her, I knew none of the other women were quite as sweet, quite as naïve, quite as tempting, as this red-haired siren in the elegant but understated blue gossamer. Unlike the other women my men invited, she has no pretence of entitlement. She has demonstrated...

  His hands drift over the skin of my shoulders. I'm not entirely sure how or when, but somehow he has maneuvered us away from the dance flow, the ebb and flow of the music now distant as we hide secluded in one of the many rooms off of the ballroom. This one is decadent and library-like, a large fireplace at one end, wall to ceiling cases of antique books, a leather couch in front of the fireplace. "It had to be a librar...