I run my finger along the gold outline of my mask, remembering my fascination with these stories when I was younger. As a girl, I was obsessed with historical romances. I found the tattered old books on my mother’s shelves, and I didn’t know she’d stolen them from the library. Innocent then, I gobbled up her contraband tales, devouring forbidden stories of the most rakish rakes, of the most roguish rogues, of the most devilish dukes who attended such masquerade fetes in hope of seducing the women they’d always had their eyes on.

Naturally, the hero could only seduce her if they were both in disguise, for she was a commoner and he was a titled man who could only be with a lady.

Or something like that.

I give a coy curtsy in the mirror then a shy little smile, pretending I’m the star of the story. All that mattered to me in those tales was that both hero and heroine were in disguise—half masks, eye masks, even full-face masks that could be pushed up at the critical kissing scene. I’d watch their seduction play out on the page. Mistaken identity, playacting, lords in disguise—all of it was so delicious.

Some scenes were chaste, and some were not. A waltz with an unknown lass, a stolen kiss in the hallway, a secret moment—every room was a potential location for a tryst at a masquerade ball, especially the library. If they went to the library, you knew it was going to be oh-so-good.

I flutter my hand over my chest, as the heroine would do.

No matter how far they went, they’d always leave on their masks. Names hardly mattered when you could zero in on his lush, knowing lips.

The mouths of the men in masquerade were made for sin. For making a woman weak in the knees—drunk on a kiss.

I fell for the hero’s charms too. As the heroine swooned, I’d swoon. As the charming duke with raven hair kissed her throat then licked a path to her heaving bosom, my skin flushed hot too. I’d flip dog-eared page after dog-eared page, consumed by the tale, picturing the plunging necklines on the women and the tight breeches on the men that, naturally, barely concealed their manhood.

How I longed to be at such parties.

I turn away from the mirror, heading to my jewelry box on the bureau. I don’t attend many such parties in real life though. Most of the masquerades I’ve gone to over the years have been the standard Halloween variety. The masks the men wore were of gorillas, zombies, or President Nixons.

Suffice it to say, none of those made me swoon.

I suppose the closest I came to a true masquerade party was in college when the drama boy I dated senior year invited me to one, and costumes and masks were plentiful and traded freely. So were kisses between the girls and boys, the girls and girls, and the boys and boys.