But as she bobbed over the top half of his cock, holding it with her thumb and forefinger around the base, Caroline squirmed against the platform. There was nothing for her to press her own hips against, nothing to touch and titillate where the blood flowed so sweetly between her legs. The buzz in her clit was as soft and gentle as the buzz in her head. She didn’t know whether she could come tonight with the tequila in her system, but God, she wanted someone to touch her.
Caroline crawled to her knees and twisted her mouth as she sucked up his heavy erection. He threaded his fingers through her hair. His hand was almost as big as her face, two of his strong fingers almost the width of his cock. Caroline whimpered when he tightened them into a fist as she released him. His cock plopped out of her mouth and against his stomach with a wet slap. But she didn’t want to stop. All she wanted to do was climb over his leg to straddle his thigh.
She mashed her folds and clit against the firm muscle just above his knee. He loosened his hand in her hair when she wrapped her own grip around the fat base of his erection, squeezing like the ring she’d rescued him from.
Riley grunted, grimacing as though in terrible pain, but his cock seeped the thin fluid of pre-cum that told her how much he liked it.
Then she waited until he opened his eyes again to meet her gaze. Caroline lowered her mouth over him and smiled, grazing her teeth lightly under the thick part of the head. He jerked, which caused him to pull at her hair, and that pulled her teeth up harder against the sensitive head. He shouted, then again when she sucked at him, her mouth all soft in insincere apology.
“God, you’re going to kill me. You’re such a tease,” Riley groaned.
“Tease? I’m giving you what you wanted, aren’t I?” Caroline asked. She spit on the head and stroked him roughly, smearing her saliva and his pre-cum over the shaft. She liked the way she could feel his pulse in her hand.
“Not a bad thing,” Riley said. “Just… Ah, fuck! I’m going to come. It’s too… Yes, pull it, damn it, just like that. Give it to me rough.”
Riley hadn’t been the more articulate of the two men when she’d thought he was a dream. She hadn’t expected she’d like it when he started getting all demanding.
Caroline kept her grip tight, her mouth poised above the glistening slit. She could tell he liked what she wanted to do, because he didn’t blink, even when he clearly wanted his head to fall back and his eyes to close. She preferred to swallow than clean cum off her face, but she didn’t hate it, and she certainly didn’t hate the look he gave her.
Even though he was going to mark her, he looked like he’d do anything for her because she was willing. A girl could fall in love with that look. She had back when she’d learned a man’s cock wouldn’t break and that she liked the sounds men made when they were about to fall apart, their pleasure literally in her hands.
Rubbing the head against her tongue, she coaxed his climax from him. She pulled back slightly when the first spurt hit her mouth, then licked her lips as the rest hit her mouth and neck. Caroline only belatedly remembered to hold back her hair. She’d just got her hair done. She didn’t need any more product in there.
“Fuck yes.” Riley had doubled over as he came, and now he fell back. “I can’t tell you… Years. Whole years, hard all the time. And it’s like I can’t get any satisfaction unless you’re the one doing it. Having a four-year-long erection gets old, but goddamn if you don’t make it feel good again.”
Caroline rocked against his thigh, her arousal simmering with each pass, but right now, she honestly didn’t need anything more. All she needed was this drowsy contentment, staring down at a man exquisitely hard from every perspective, except where he’d softened, and that looked replete against his thigh. It made her irrationally proud that she had done that for him—irrational, because as far as she could tell, it had never been too difficult to bring her partners to orgasm, with the occasional exception. But this was a man who hadn’t had an orgasm in years, so she decided to let herself have that victory.
“For fuck’s sake, let’s just sing Kumbaya and wave our ribbon wands. Our blessed savior has freed us. It’s not like we’re still prisoners or anything, just at a gentler hand—so to speak,” Colm said. He slid nimbly from his spider mount and stalked to the carousel’s edge.
Seeing him from the side made it impossible not to notice that his erection hadn’t gone away. Far from it.
“Either way, you poor bastard,” Colm muttered, “you’re not free and she’s not your savior.”
“You were the one who said it, not me,” Caroline said. “I just thought you were a dream. I’m not trying to save anyone. I’m only trying to get through the year.”
“Oh yeah, a year pushing a few buttons and playing with a weak boy toy who doesn’t even have the staying power to do anything for you is really quite the punishment,” Colm said. He clenched his hands into pale-knuckled fists. “Damn it.”
He punched a golden-painted horse this time. Then he winced, shaking his hand. This horse didn’t react either, although its expression seemed inexplicably sardonic after Colm hit it.
“I never said I was being punished. That doesn’t mean I was setting out to join a demonic circus when I left home,” Caroline said. “I think I’ve earned a little ennui. Now I need to pee and possibly collapse, because I’m sobering up and you can go fuck a duck for all I care right now.” She picked herself up off Riley and patted his thigh. “You, however, are welcome to join me in my ungainly collapse in the cabin under the carousel. I don’t know whether sleep’s on your agenda or whether you can even sleep at all.” When one couldn’t move for years, Caroline imagined there wasn’t much else to do besides sleep away the time.
“Is there something to eat? I’m not hungry but…I haven’t eaten all this time,” Riley said. He struggled to reach his shorts then stared at them as though wondering whether they were really worth putting on, all things considered.
“Yeah, the fridge is stocked. Probably not with anything substantial, but I can get you more food tomorrow evening. I can even feed you too if you’re not still in a snit about my being responsible for you,” Caroline said to Colm.
“I thought we were the ones supposed to be waiting on you hand and foot so that we can please you,” Colm spat.
“And I thought you were part of my carousel to take care of,” Caroline said.
“It’s Bell’s carousel. You’re just the jewel he decided to pin on it,” Colm said.
“You say the nicest things without meaning to.” She passed by him. From a foot away, she could sense the heat coming from him, fever that burned as he glared down at her with eyes that seemed like they wanted to glow. “I’m still responsible for making sure everything runs smoothly. Do you want me to get you dinner tomorrow or not?”
Colm lifted a hand as though he was going to strangle her. And with the way his fingers flexed, that was clearly in his mind.
All he did, though, was run his fingers through the sticky mess that Riley had left on her neck and up to her chin. He was not tender or gentle, but Caroline didn’t move or wrench away. His pupils dilated as he gazed at her mouth, at the lips that he must have seen grow thin around Riley’s cock. Her mouth, that he had tasted so thoroughly when he’d thought she was the key to freedom and not just another lock. Her mouth, that he now filled with his smeared fingers.
He pushed rudely into her, as though trying to make her gag or at least pull away. But Caroline sucked at his fingers, licking the tacky fluid from them, remnants of the pleasure Riley had spent and Colm couldn’t have—because he hadn’t let himself and because she wouldn’t give it to him again without a damn good reason to after tonight. He’d missed his shot at having her pliant.
She was definitely sobering up, anger and numbness rising like a flooding well.
“Do you know how many times I’ve tried to hurt you tonight?” Colm whispered. He curled his fingers up against her hard palate, pulling her closer to him. “I couldn’t move. Everythin
g I do to try to treat you the way you should be treated, as a human at the feet of a demon, I am left paralyzed.”
She closed her hand around his wrist, taking his fingers out of her mouth. “Somehow,” she said, “I don’t mind. Now get your hands off me.”
He held his hands up. It was clearly not his choice to do so. “I’m not going to be imprisoned forever.”
“You don’t have to be imprisoned forever. Only as long as I live,” she said. She jumped off the carousel.
“Just because the boy’s penitent doesn’t make him pure. And just because you’re awake doesn’t make you any less wicked,” Colm called after her.
“What I don’t get is why you care,” Caroline replied.
* * * *
In the morning, Riley was gone, magicked up and away back into his spot in the carousel—at least that’s what she assumed. But she stretched luxuriously in her small bed. She still smelled him on her. His scent permeated her clothes, and Colm hadn’t completely wiped her clean of what Riley had left behind.
She washed it off in Kitty’s shower, but that was okay. He’d be there again tonight.
He’d laid with her in the narrow bed, his arms wrapped around her over the blankets. The air conditioning had kept him from overheating her. It had been good to sleep with a man again, to have intimacy without necessarily having sex. They’d had that up on the carousel.
Here, she’d just fallen asleep with him against her, around her.
A girl could get used to it.
The next three days that she had off—since she wasn’t a performer and didn’t have to rehearse—made it even easier for her to get used to the fact that around eight o’clock every night, two men would appear on the carousel.
Colm mostly disappeared right after, fleeing from her before she could give him food or say anything. He wouldn’t even look at her. He carried an expression of such disgust, Caroline found it difficult to remember she’d once seen him nearly crippled with desire for her.
One of those nights, he came back with more stripes over the welts healing on his side and places on his legs where the leather trousers had been torn anew.
As far as Caroline was concerned, Colm could do whatever he liked, and she could enjoy the way the trousers hugged his ass as he walked away.
She’d honestly thought she’d get tired of sex with Riley, because like Colm, whenever he turned back into a man, he was still hard as wood every time. She’d thought the novelty would wear off and the sex would get repetitive fast. But she wasn’t even close to being done with him.
He never pushed, never pleaded, not like he had that first night, which told her how much agony he’d been in, to beg her. Even so, she could tell he was uncomfortable. Those shorts didn’t help either, but she didn’t have anything else for him to change into.
He also didn’t say anything to her about it, never requested anything more than dinner, after which he would wait for her to undo the fastenings and either stroke or suck him off or kiss him breathless as she straddled him. He never took, never asked, never said no, never seemed like he didn’t need it—he took anything she offered him as a precious, priceless gift, as though every gesture wasn’t to even be hoped for.
The thing was, maybe sometimes Caroline didn’t want to be a delicate piece of glass to be gently handled.
The sex was fantastic. She’d never thought sex could be this good, both giving and receiving, but it was. She wasn’t complaining about that.
It just seemed there was something missing, and she didn’t know how to articulate it to a man who was obviously more than willing to give her anything she asked for.
There was one other thing besides sex with Riley that she did during all her downtime—aside from finally going on a coffee run, because she’d thought if she didn’t get a frappe in her system, she was going to spontaneously combust.
Caroline had started to sit down at the carousel controls to learn the board.
She studied the different light options and wrote down what speeds felt good to her with each of the twelve songs available. She determined which songs she liked so that she could listen to them less frequently. After listening to the songs she wasn’t crazy about over and over, that would make the songs she liked even better when she let herself play them.
By Thursday, she’d set up three programs for the carousel different from the autopilot setting. She was satisfied with her small measure of productivity. She wasn’t sure what she would do when all twelve programs had been set up and there was little else for her to do, but she guessed that was what her hotspot was for.
At least her evenings were busy.
On Friday morning after breakfast, Caroline visited Kitty again. Lady Sasha had apparently been inspired by Caroline’s casual wardrobe and added another corset bodice into the mix—plain black with velvet scroll accents. Like the peacock bodice, it covered her shoulders, although the start of the front fastenings was lower than Caroline was used to. Kitty advised pairing it with a dramatic red or even a purplish blue lipstick. Like the S and M dress, this particular corset struck Caroline as more punk than steampunk, but she wasn’t going to complain. Who didn’t want to look like Selene?
It was nice to have something that put her visually in-between the cast and the staff. The peacock bodice was gorgeous, and she planned to wear the hell out of it, but Caroline wasn’t cast, no matter how Madoc viewed her. She wasn’t performing a role—just pushing buttons while wearing a smile and something for some of the patrons to enjoy. Madoc wanted her more visible than the crew, but that didn’t make her part of the show—just another eccentric part of the carousel.
* * * *
When the next Thursday came around and the gates opened at noon, she was in the cage ready for customers. It was slow until a little before five because of all the people who had jobs. Arcanium wasn’t considered as family-friendly as the carnivals that hitched up in parking lots, so they didn’t get much of the stay-at-home crowd. Which wasn’t to say that Caroline didn’t have a steady stream of people riding the carousel.
After just one week, she already worked the controls much more confidently, the board comprehensible and intuitive to her after all the experimentation.
Once five o’clock rolled around, the carousel definitely became fuller and louder, with more raucous riders. Fortunately, Caroline didn’t need to stop the worst offenders—the ones who tried to leap from mount to mount, ride more than two people per mount, steal the reins, scratch or ink the paint, carve in the wood or litter their napkins and wrappers in the corners. The staff did a walk-through after each cycle, and Geoff and two other crew members had an uncanny ability to notice the signs of imminent defacement. One of them would jump on and stand in front of the person or people to discourage them from doing anything where they’d get caught. They would forcibly remove the person if he or she—usually a teenage he—decided to push the boundaries. Sometimes they would end up expelled from the circus, but most often, they were simply banned from the carousel for the rest of the day.
The worst Caroline had to deal with were the occasional catcalls and wolf whistles when she bent over in her plain black corset and leather pants. As long as they didn’t try to get in and no one carved her men, she ignored them and smiled in the other direction. She trusted Madoc about as far as she could throw him, but when he said she was safe, she mostly believed him. She couldn’t say how much of his omniscience was just an act intended to add to his air of mystery, but she thought some of it was true.
At the very least, the staff assigned to the carousel had better eyes than she did, and they were strong. She could trust them.
Caroline made it through the day until the performance, at which point she turned off the music—blessing the silence—and all but the base lighting. A few stragglers applauded her when she left the cage. It was oddly touching. She held onto one of the poles on the edge of the carousel and gave them a showman’s bow. Then she went to grab dinner from one of the food booth
s before they closed down. They stayed open a little longer for her now. She’d feel guilty, but they never acted put out. The only reason other cast members didn’t join her was because they usually grabbed a little something after performances, not before.
She sat on one of the benches at a cluster of tables for the food booth customers and used the ebook section of her tablet to read. She could be checking her social pages or email, but that had been getting harder to do lately.
She hadn’t been forbidden to communicate with anyone, although she understood that keeping Arcanium’s secrets was part of the fine print of the contract she’d signed, under the heading of ‘confidentiality agreement’ or something. But when she couldn’t tell anyone that she’d joined the circus in the first place, that made responding to people’s inquiries surprisingly hard. No, she wouldn’t be joining Jodi’s birthday bash. Yes, Jess was looking so big, and yes, she wanted to be there for the next babysitting gig, but she couldn’t make it, since she was in another state now. Wow, Sarah and Eugene were getting married. Too bad she couldn’t go to the wedding in November.
It was just better when she didn’t get connected the way she used to, extricating herself from her former life by not reminding herself of what she missed. Sure, she’d been willing to sacrifice the people in her old life when she’d initially joined Arcanium, but that was before she’d lost her escape route and learned she was surrounded by demons. Caroline couldn’t just quit or move or do any of the things her friends and family could do in bad situations.
They wouldn’t understand, and now she couldn’t quite understand them anymore, with their normal lives, normal problems.
Strange how she hadn’t changed much—a dye job, costumes, an entry-level gig and a boyfriend, no limbs lost or arcane skills gained—but being a part of Arcanium had changed everything anyway.
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