Velvet Mask: a Rough Gay M/m Mardi Gras Quickie Carnival

EmilioI came to New Orleans for three weeks of consulting work. Clean spreadsheets, tidy profit margins, and a flight home to my perfectly organized life. What I didn’t plan on was Braxton Devereaux—six feet of paint-stained chaos who makes Mardi Gras masks that look like they were crafted by fallen angels.The man is everything I’m not. Wild where I’m controlled. Passionate where I’m practical. And when he traces my jaw with those artist’s fingers and calls me contador in that bourbon-rough voice, every rule I’ve lived by crumbles to dust.One blank mask. That’s all it was supposed to be—a forty-dollar souvenir to prove I’d loosened up. But Braxton doesn’t just sell art. He creates temptation. Silver vines and obsidian tears that transform me into someone I don’t recognize. Someone who begs.When rival artists sabotage his studio the night before his career-defining unveiling, I should walk away. Stick to my spreadsheets and let him burn. Instead, I’m rolling up my sleeves, diving into his glittering world of velvet restraints and midnight confessions. Because beneath all that beautiful chaos, Braxton’s breaking. And I’m the only one who can hold the pieces together.He ties me up with crimson ribbons in his candle-lit attic. Bends me over his worktable between mannequins and masks that watch us with hollow eyes. Makes me wear his art while he takes me apart with surgical precision, each touch unraveling another layer of my control until I’m nothing but nerve endings and need.But when the masks come off, we’re just two men falling for each other in a city built on secrets. Him—the artist who hides his fear behind glitter and gold. Me—the accountant who’s tired of calculating every kiss, every breath, every heartbeat.The Krewe sponsors want to sanitize his work. Make it palatable. Safe. They don’t understand that Braxton’s art isn’t meant to be tame—it’s meant to strip you bare and show you who you really are when no one’s watching.I won’t let them break him. Even if it means becoming someone I never thought I could be.Even if it means staying in New Orleans forever.Some masks reveal more than they hide. Some accountants know how to balance more than books. And some love stories are written in glitter, sin, and the kind of heat that burns everything else away.Warning: This book contains explicit M/M content, light bondage, public encounters, power exchange, creative use of art supplies, and an uptight accountant who discovers that the best things in life can’t be calculated. Intended for mature readers who like their romance served with extra steam and a side of Mardi Gras magic.