But it was a mistake she was going to have to live with. She’d deal with the consequences. And wasn’t that what an adult was supposed to do, not let their parents bail them out at every turn?
He’d wanted her to be less comfortable. Here she was in a leather corset in the middle of summer—he had no way of knowing that Lady Sasha’s leather was the eighth wonder of the world—running a carousel like a boss, sleeping in a pod cabin away from home, and touring the country for a year. Plus there were all the things that had happened behind the Arcanium curtain that she couldn’t—and wouldn’t—tell him about.
She wouldn’t call this comfortable. She called it committed.
“Your daughter came to me and asked if I had an opening,” Madoc explained. “I didn’t force her to take it, and I certainly don’t require anything else from her in return for the job. I’m insulted at the insinuation.”
“I can’t think of any other reason a man your age would accept a child like mine at the drop of a hat, someone with no circus ambitions or skill,” her dad said.
“The position was open,” Madoc said. “She was fortunate that she arrived before it was filled, nothing more.”
“Dad, he didn’t do anything to me,” Caroline said. Technically true. If she had said ‘hasn’t done anything’, that might have been closer to a lie. “I wasn’t coerced into sending that email to you or to join Arcanium. That was my decision.”
“Caroline, let your father take care of this,” her dad said. “I’ll get you out of here and back home where you belong. You’ll find a job for the rest of the summer and go back to school in the fall, like you’re supposed to.”
“I already contacted the university,” Caroline insisted. “I’m out for the year now, and I’m staying here.”
There was no pretending that the rest of the carousel wasn’t watching anymore, especially since the program was reaching its end. There was Oddity Row. Then there was family feuding. Both were excellent ways to indulge train-wreck syndrome, which was why all these patrons came to a freak show circus in the first place.
Caroline was mortified, but she stood her ground and clutched the edge of the control board for a lifeline. She never talked back to her father. Not like this. The only thing that kept her legs strong was the fact she’d faced far scarier things than him just in the last twenty-four hours, and she’d survived intact.
“Stop being stubborn,” her dad said. As soon as the carousel stopped, he reached over the gate and grabbed Caroline’s arm. “Now let’s go.”
“Let go of me!” Caroline shook him off and stepped back.
“Hey, man, if she doesn’t want to go with you, get your hands off!” some guy yelled from one of the horses. Despite the urgings of the staff from the ground, no one was disembarking.
“I’m her father,” he shot at the one who’d interjected. “I have a right to protect my daughter, even if it’s from herself. Now come on, Caroline.”
“Your daughter signed a contract,” Madoc said, as calm as her father was not.
“I have lawyers,” her dad replied. “Consider this her notice.”
“I’m staying here, Dad.”
“Dammit, you are not twelve years old anymore. Your rebellion isn’t cute or productive.”
“I’m not rebelling,” Caroline said. “I’m making a decision. I’m honoring a contract, a promise that I made. I’m earning a living. I’m flying the nest. You’re right, I’m not twelve years old anymore. I’m twenty. I’ve been a legal adult since I was eighteen. I’m old enough to make these decisions. You can’t make them for me anymore. You can decide whether I live in your house or use your car. That’s your property. But you can’t control me.”
“This is insane!” her dad yelled, his face red. “I will pull your tuition, young lady. You won’t get another cent from me. And there certainly won’t be a place at home for you, if you’re so keen to leave it.”
“Do whatever you think you have to do, Dad. I can’t stop you,” Caroline said. She took a deep breath, but God didn’t strike her dead, so she figured she hadn’t done something unforgivable.
“Goddammit, Caroline!”
She knew she’d hit a nerve when he added blasphemy to his cursing, since he had very strong opinions about that.
“I wish you’d just face up to reality, stop acting like a stubborn, petulant child and get a real job like a goddamn grownup.”
Her world froze.
Not literally, although that wouldn’t have surprised her. It seemed like a dramatic, Hollywood thing for Madoc to do, to hear a wish and stop reality to grant it with a menacing, inhuman glow in his eyes.
Her father had made a wish in front of a jinni. A jinni who she’d been warned not to make a verbal wish in front of. A jinni who twisted wishes by removing limbs. A jinni who she knew better than to consider predictable. She knew from personal experience that liking her didn’t mean not playing with her.
Was this the get-out-of-jail-free card that she no longer wanted, the jinn way to breach a contract?
More importantly, was Madoc going to let her go that easily? If not, what did this wish allow him to do to her? What did it allow him to add to her sentence?
Her world froze, but really it was just her—and Madoc knew.
“And your wish has been granted, Mr. Barrett,” Madoc said deliberately, staring into Caroline’s eyes before returning his attention to her father. “You might not like the job that she’s chosen, but it’s a real one, and she accepted the responsibilities that accompany it like an adult, not a child. I know you’re not happy, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave Arcanium at this time. You’ve caused enough of a disturbance today, don’t you think?”
“What do you think you’ve done to your mother, Caroline?” her dad accused. He shook Madoc’s hand away from his arm. “She was worried sick when you up and left like that.”
“How do you think she would have felt if you’d kicked me out of the house like you said you were going to do?” Caroline asked, her stomach a writhing knot.
“That’s cold, dude,” someone still on the carousel said.
“This is none of your business!” her dad shouted.
“You kind of made it their business,” Caroline said.
“I’m coming back for you,” her dad said, pointing at Caroline. “If I have to, I’ll call the police and report an abduction. You’re holding her here against her will, displaying her like a piece of meat at the market, and you think being polite is going to make me just walk away from my daughter?”
“Dad, I’m fine,” Caroline said. She’d never witnessed her father acting like a conspiracy theorist, and she was more than a little alarmed. “I really joined a circus—of my own free will. I’ll be back next summer and back in school and everything. It’s just for a year.”
“So help me, I’ll do it. I’ll call them when I get to my car. I don’t believe you, and I don’t trust him.” Her dad glared at Madoc like he was a bare-chested, bohemian pimp.
“If you call the police, they’re going to ask how old I am, and when you say I’m an adult, they’re going to ask if there are any signs that I’m here against my will, and there aren’t. If they get as far as coming here, they’re just going to be pissed you wasted their time when they see I’m perfectly fine. I’m sorry I didn’t get the respectable job that you wanted, but I would have had to wear less at some of the restaurants I was getting dangerously close to applying to—or the strip joints that I would have had to dance for if you’d kicked me out. Okay?”
Her father shook Madoc off his shoulder again and pulled his sports jacket down to try to regain a little dignity. “You disappoint me,” he said.
“That’s okay, Dad,” Caroline said. “You disappoint me sometimes too.”
She wondered whether this time she’d gone too far. She hadn’t intended to say it, hadn’t even known she’d been thinking it until she’d spoken. But apparently it was what her dad had needed to hear, stricken as though he’d
been slapped. Finally, he squared himself and walked off the carousel of his own volition. He didn’t let any of the carousel staff help him. He didn’t look back.
Caroline’s chest hurt.
Madoc looked over his shoulder at her. Then the riders around them started clapping. A few whooped.
“Stop!” Caroline called. “Stop.”
The applause faltered.
“Show’s over. You want to see a better one, the circus performance is at eight.”
Madoc didn’t move from where he stood in front of the cage gate. “The wish had already been granted by you. Nothing needs to change,” he said through the gears so that no one else could hear.
She nodded and sat back down in her chair as the riders finally disembarked to allow the next wave on. Madoc left with them. Caroline leaned over her elbows on the control board, running her fingers through her hair. The cold sickness hadn’t left her stomach. She started the next ride using the autopilot program and just sat there like that. These people knew she had been yelled at by her dad. She would sit up again and smile when this ride was over.
* * * *
Riley climbed down into the cabin after she didn’t come up to meet them. What surprised her was Colm coming down with him. His gaze darted around as though he didn’t like the confinement, but he didn’t flee.
Colm’s eyes were gray, pale enough to take on the color of whatever lights the carousel had shone into them on the platform. Funny that she’d never seen the gray before until he was under proper lighting. It made him appear much milder than the set of his mouth implied.
Caroline had already changed out of her costume and into the tank top and panties she wore as pajamas. She turned over in the cold—she’d cranked up the air conditioning to cool off the overheating of her emotions—and stared at her two men. They filled up the room. Riley was usually enough to do that on his own, but add Colm into the mix and her cabin was entirely too small for a threesome arrangement.
“Shit,” she groaned. “I forgot you two can hear everything. Well, that just makes this sucky day complete.”
“You know you were right, right?” Riley asked. “I mean, you’re young, but everyone’s young once, and you have to start young or else you never start at all.”
“That made no kind of sense,” Colm said.
“I just meant that there’s a threshold that a person crosses where they break away from the rules and start having to decide which of them they’re going to follow. You take everything you learned and put it into practice, taking what you need and leaving the rest, discovering new things.”
“You’re not exactly the poster child for doing that right, boy,” Colm said.
“I’m just saying that I think she crossed that threshold,” Riley said. “And since I know how badly it goes when a person goes too far, I think I’m qualified to notice when it’s done right. I thought it was pretty badass myself. I could hear that you were scared. I kind of wanted to punch him.”
“He’s my dad,” Caroline said. “He was just doing what he was supposed to be doing.”
“Except the whole letting-go part,” Riley pointed out. “From where I was, it sounded like he’s been trying to push you over the threshold all this time then choked when it finally came to you doing it. Personally, I’m proud. Bell is too. I could tell.”
“I have no stake in this either way,” Colm said.
“Then why are you down here?” Riley asked, glaring at him.
“I think I pushed too hard,” Caroline said.
“Fuck that,” Colm said. “Hard as he was pushing, there’s only so much you can take before you have to push back, so the other one knows you’re not something he can push around.”
“And once again, we’re back in the place where you’re not the best person to be telling me that, considering where you ended up when you pushed back,” Caroline said. She turned over on the bed, facing away from them.
“Hey!” Colm rolled her back by her shoulder and crawled over her, covering her with his shadow. “I may have been trapped as a damn carousel manhorse for almost fifty years, but I don’t regret what I did to get there. Maybe that means I haven’t ‘learned my lesson’ like Boy Scout over here thinks he did. But being bound a few times by beings more powerful than you is part of being an immortal demon. You make enemies. You fight for dominance. You fight for power. I lost fair and square because we were both fighting dirty. I don’t know what it’s like to have a mommy and daddy like a baby bird, but I recognize a fight for dominance when I see it. You fought, and the one used to winning lost. Maybe you played a little dirty, but so did he and that made it fair.”
“I don’t think there was anything ‘fair’ about it, except for the carousel,” Caroline said.
“Fair isn’t good. Fair isn’t nice. Fair is balanced. It’s even. A wicked girl like you should know better,” Colm said.
Caroline laughed with a sharp huff. “Kitty just finished calling me a good girl, and I’m pretty sure Madoc agrees. It’s what I’ve always been.”
“Shows what little they know,” Colm said.
He dipped down and caught her mouth, surprising her with the abruptness of his intensity. He swept her into the kiss, angling to plunder and lay to waste any protest she might have had that she wanted to be alone. Caroline ran her hands up his arms to his shoulders, gripping them as though she were falling. Colm slowly canted his hips, bringing himself closer to her until she could feel the heat against her stomach. The leather encasing his legs rubbed against hers as he shifted. She tucked her arm under his to wrap it around his back and bring him down over her. She felt him smile against her mouth then pull back.
It was odd to see him, really see him. As a man, and not some glittering, colorful demon parading around in a human suit. He was as solid and grounded as Madoc, the same intensity in those gray eyes, but he had none of Madoc’s untouchable endlessness, which might account for why Colm was the one on the carousel and Madoc was still running Arcanium.
“You’re just saying all those things because you want to get in my pants again without me being all mopey,” Caroline said.
“It’s as though you know me,” Colm said with a grin.
He bit her lower lip, sucked on it the way she knew he could suck on other parts of her body. She whimpered, the coldness inside retreating with the blossom of warmth. He was insistent with her clothes. He broke the lavishing of his attention on her only to pull her tank top over her head, sat up only to allow her to push her panties down and so that he could undo his trousers.
If Riley bristled that Colm had taken point, he didn’t make a scene of it. Riley knew she wouldn’t leave him stranded. Just because she liked Colm’s teeth didn’t mean she rejected Riley’s tenderness—or vice versa.
“And what would daddy dearest think if he could see you now?” Colm asked, resuming his place looming over her. His cock bobbed between them, twitching against her stomach and leaving a wet mark on the place it touched.
“God, shudder to think. Probably that he should have kicked an ungrateful degenerate like me out ages ago,” Caroline said. “And that he has two bullets in the shotgun for the two of you.”
“Mmm, I’d like to see him try,” Colm said, covering her again, and this time he gave her no respite, moving over her in a fever as he consumed her every last circling thought of what had occurred that evening. The sensations of the present overwhelmed any pain of the past.
Now was the rasp of his lightly furred legs against hers and the intoxicating sound of his heavy breathing and knowing that it was because of her. Now was the marks he made over her jaw and down to her neck, where he worried the flesh until it stung and sang with pleasure. Now was the heaviness of his scrotum on her thigh, his cock throbbing in her hand as she made him grunt and thrust into her tight, unforgiving grip. Now was the way that he pulled her over him and knocked her legs apart with his own so that his cock parted through her folds to the sticky wetness that he’d inspired.
&n
bsp; They both groaned when she pushed down over him. The tight, dark blond curls at the base of his cock tickled her clit. She ground against him, her hips rocking from side to side as he squeezed and slapped her ass. It didn’t hurt, but the noise of it was sharp in the close quarters of the cabin. He made her writhe with his single-minded focus on the taste of her, testing her tenderness, licking away the salt of sweat, tracing the contours of her breasts with his lips. His cock inside her seemed incidental to him in comparison to taking her nipple into the torturous suction of his mouth.
Colm flipped them over so that she was under him again. She whimpered in protest as he unsheathed himself, his cock smearing their combined moisture over her thigh. He laughed cruelly into her chest. He traced the areola of her left nipple with his tongue, reminding her of the two male clowns doing the same. She thought her nerves there would always hold that memory, because the sensation shot down her body like electricity. Her pussy tightened around the emptiness that Colm had left behind.
He took the pebble of her nipple between his teeth and tugged until she scratched his shoulder blades, her free breast quivering as she tried to get away and bring herself closer at the same time.
“There she is,” he said, still worrying the hard flesh. His tongue brushed against the dark, swollen tip as he spoke. “My wicked little girl.”
He growled when he let the nipple snap back, rippling her breast. Caroline rubbed the soreness that did nothing to quell state of arousal. Colm observed the act with unbridled interest, his gray wolf eyes going darker. Then he once again lunged down to take her by surprise—to just take her, period.
He ate at her cunt with his always-hungry mouth, lapping at the juices he’d helped create before working his way up to her clit. As impossibly amazing and unprecedented as Comedy’s tongue-lashing had been, there was nothing better than the full-mouth experience, and Colm had proven often that he was unafraid of diving right in, using every weapon at his disposal to make her surrender.
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