He closed the brief gap between them with a surprisingly gentle kiss, moving his hands from her wrists to the walls on either side of her. He broke the kiss with a groan when she ran her palm over the front of his trousers.
“What is it with demons and dicks? Is it a man thing?” Neve asked. “You know, average is perfectly fine.”
Bell laughed as Neve worked his leather trousers open one-handed, but his laughter caught when she wrapped her fingers around him without warning. She didn’t have anything for lubrication, but he didn’t seem to mind as she stroked over the shaft. She advanced, stepping between his legs, forcing him to retreat in an awkward dance, because she still stroked him with a too-tight grip. Even so, he threaded his fingers through her hair and caught her lip in a tender bite.
“Demons are larger to intimidate. It’s the nature of the beast, darling.”
“Why do I doubt female demons have the same inclinations?”
They passed the platform of the human knot that usually resided in the haunted funhouse. They were still missing parts, but now mouths and hands were sewn and working over breasts, balls, clits, cocks, their bodies oiled and slick, a surgical orgy in progress—and by all appearances, as pleasurable for the people in the knot as their time in the haunted funhouse had been terrible.
Bell stopped her against the wall, holding onto the edge of the partition before the tableau as he thrust into her hand. Pre-cum was now more than adequate, as though he’d called it forth, and although he wasn’t as big as Mikhail became, he was still well above average, which would have made her nervous prior to becoming part of Arcanium.
“For most female demons, the only thing they need for intimidation is mere aggression, to take what they want and not need a man to do it, but wanting him anyway. Also the nature of the beast, I’m afraid.”
“Am I intimidating you, then?”
He brushed one of the broad straps of her dress to the side, exposing the swell of her breast almost to the areola, but he seemed in no hurry to bare her entirely. Instead, he claimed the line of her collarbone with his thumb, nearly bruising the hollow, as though he could hook her if he wanted to. “I said ‘most’.”
“Oh, yeah, because you’re so special, so different. You like a good, strong female because that means you’re better and stronger if you get to have her. And you treat her like crap because it reminds her that she’s here at your behest. It’s still an ego trip, just like this whole clockwork circus, or else you’d set us all free, let us all be voluntary, instead of working us until you’re ready to let us go.”
“I’m not making you do this.” He tried to kiss her, but she turned her head.
Neve didn’t stop him, though, as he lowered his mouth to her neck instead. That felt almost as good—tasting over her pulse, down the cord to her shoulder—as they stumbled back into darkness. He made no effort to hold back his moans. Why would he, when he was getting exactly what he wanted from her and he could let anyone know it?
She was the one to shove him into the wall this time, her hand over his cock quickening. He was hot to the touch, as much of a furnace as Mikhail, his cock hotter than the rest of him but his tongue feverish under her jaw. Sweat formed at her temples, at her lower back, and she squeezed her thighs together.
“You’re right. You’re not making me do this. You also can’t make me finish it.” She abruptly pushed herself back, using the fabric draped over the partition to wipe her hand. No one would see the damage in the dark. “Suck on that. Suck on that yourself if you want it done.”
“You bitch.” But he laughed again—laughed and panted with his trousers open on either side of the cock sticking out, hard and needful. “If I were the vengeful sort, you just put yourself in a terrible position, because I’m the one who decides whether you come tonight.”
“What else is new?” She brought her strap up, adjusting her dress back to normal. “Maybe now you’ll understand a little of what you did, what you’ve made me feel ever since you granted my wish.”
He carefully tucked himself into his trousers fully erect, which left a good portion of the head still over the waistband. He covered it with his shirt as though he was barely bothered, which just made Neve more annoyed. He hadn’t spontaneously lost his erection to make himself more comfortable, though, and that assuaged some of her annoyance.
“I’m more than familiar with the sensation of dissatisfaction,” he said, “of lust without an outlet. I’ve been fighting the influence of the incubus and succubus far longer than you, and although it’s been a while since I’ve had a dry streak, I have gone quite a stretch without sex, you know, even when I didn’t have to.”
“I get it. You can have whatever you want whenever you want it, and you’re only without what you want because you choose to be, because you’re such a nice guy.”
He caught her by the hair from behind, pulled her back gently but inexorably, gathering more of her hair in his hands until her neck strained from how far back he’d pulled her head. He bent over her, peering at her upside-down.
“Like Sasha, my dear, I’m not nice.” Bell kissed her forehead then abruptly released her. She bent her knees to catch herself before she collapsed on her ass.
The Tall Man sat on a stool in the next glass case. The Short Man stood on a platform next to him so that he was half a head taller than his companion. Neve bit back a rare expletive at the erection the Tall Man held in his thick-clawed hand. Both men were in full demon mode—sharp teeth, black eyes and certain parts of their anatomy quite exceptional in comparison to humans. Although the Short Man was giant in proportion to his height, he seemed much more manageable when next to the Tall Man’s erection, easily twice the size of Mikhail’s, which was already impossible. Sure, it fit in his giant hand in a proportional way, but still… How did a penis like that even work? Was there enough blood in his body for his heart to pump through it?
“Why don’t you ask them to find out?” Bell sauntered by her. His demeanor suggested a complete lack of the distress and frustration that she’d tried to give him. Now she wanted to slap him again.
The Short Man jerked his cock more quickly as he peered down at her, his grin wide and wicked.
Neve blushed as she realized he probably had an excellent angle down her dress from where he stood.
The Tall Man turned his ponderous head toward her as well, as though he’d only noticed her once the Short Man did. His teeth were so large that they pushed his lips out. When he opened his mouth, he looked like some kind of prehistoric predator, like a dire wolf or a sabretooth tiger. Yet his black eyes were surprisingly placid, his only apparent tension held in the hand moving just as ponderously over his massive cock.
“Neve?” Bell called from the other end of the hall.
But she looked between the two men, the two demons, Mikhail’s magic surrounding her like thick fog as though he’d sent it after her in particular. What she’d done with Bell hadn’t come to any fruition, and fruition was all Mikhail’s magic wanted from her.
She shrugged the straps off her shoulders, pushed them down until the fabric over her breasts folded away. The ruching under her bust kept the dress from sliding down. She watched the two demons intently, watched their reactions to what she let them see.
Moss grunted, nearly doubling over as he swept his hand in a blur over the shaft. Semen spurted over the glass, spilled over his hand.
Ciarán narrowed his eyes into slits like black ink across his face. He found his own faster rhythm, startling for a hand of his size, and he spread his legs wider as he leaned toward her.
Moss muttered something Neve couldn’t understand as he continued to stroke his own cock through the last thin flows. Ciarán gave a series of groans like the Earth itself moving. Moss grinned, needle teeth glinting as he whispered one more unintelligible thing.
The Tall Man snapped his cock into his grip, closing his eyes entirely as jet after impressively thick jet of cum struck the glass right in front of her.
Bell took Neve’s forearm to lead her on. “Was that really necessary? Not that I’m disappointed you’re having fun, but now Moss and Ciarán are going to have to work twice as hard to build another erection, and as you’ve probably noticed, Ciarán’s takes a bit more effort.”
“You didn’t have to lead me through either funhouse. You could have just put me where you wanted me, turned the key and set me off like a wind-up toy. If you didn’t want me to do things like this, maybe you should have made me different. Or not done anything to me at all.”
“Then you’d still be married to the man who fucked another woman not minutes after trying to fuck you behind my tent, which would have been much better, I’m sure.”
“He was only with her because Arcanium’s a honeytrap,” Neve snapped.
As soon as they were around the corner and in front of the Creature—chained onto his knees, with his wings forced into their full twenty-five-foot span by hooks buried in the leathery skin—Bell shoved her into the light. She flinched when he reached for the straps down her arms, but to her surprise, he yanked them back up her shoulders. The fabric didn’t completely cover her breasts until she adjusted them, but it was clear he’d wanted them to.
“You think Joseph only fucked Maya because of the succubus? Without Sasha plying her trade, your husband still wouldn’t have said no when Maya made her move. Even if she hadn’t gone after him that day, if I hadn’t granted the wish—which I’m incapable of doing, by the way, when I hear one—it would have taken only two weeks before he’d found someone else. By the time you realized he was having affairs, he would have slept with five different women.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it as surely as you stand here now.” Bell had raised his voice, though he wasn’t quite shouting. “What is this, Neve? I thought we’d reached an agreement that, of my many faults, saving you from your husband wasn’t one of them.”
“What are you doing, Bell? Why are you wasting your time with me like this? Why allow me to do what I did to you? Why take the time to put me through the Funhouse so you can watch my reaction? Do you really think I’m going to come up to you, sway out of my dress and beg you to do for me what my husband couldn’t? Do you think that because Maya is ignoring you and everyone else is paired off, as long as we have similar figures, I might be an adequate substitute?”
Bell stepped forward, pointing at her with such restrained anger that Neve nearly cowered. “No. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t want you warming my bed some nights. But if you think for one second that I made you the rebound when I didn’t even know Maya was going to leave… What I want from you is nothing like what I wanted from her.”
His fine cheekbones twitched from clenching his teeth as he attempted to rein himself in. “I’m not wasting my time with you. If you want to tease me every day without bringing me to completion, I won’t deny you. If you never slide between my sheets, I won’t ever force you. There’s no subterfuge here, no nefarious plan. I wanted to show you the Funhouse because I believed you would appreciate it, and you do.”
The Creature had stopped pretending to be a prisoner. He watched them, snapping his head from one to the other as though watching a tennis match.
“And just as I didn’t change you for my bed, Neve, I certainly didn’t change you for Mikhail’s, regardless of what Lady Sasha believes. I thought you’d enjoy Mikhail, not the other way around. If you haven’t liked what he gives you, why don’t you instruct him on how to properly serve a woman like yourself? Or you can continue distracting yourself with Victor. It’s no skin off my nose, love. I enjoy playing games, but not I’m not playing you. Believe it or not, Neve, I simply enjoy our time together, and I want you to be happy here. Is that a fucking crime?”
Neve blinked. She was pretty sure the Creature did, too. Because Bell almost sounded like he was hurt. She wondered whether Maya’s absence was getting to him more than he thought.
She crossed her arms under her breasts. “How did you not know Maya was going to leave you?”
“I’m not actually omniscient. I seem so to a human being, but there are gaps in my knowledge. Seeing things profoundly relevant to my own fate is one of those gaps. The closer someone is to me, the less I see their future in relation to mine. It’s why Arcanium still needs watchdogs, along with the fact I can’t be in two places at once.”
He made himself small. Neve knew that much. He was two or three inches taller than her, just under average for a man, too lithe for most to see his power, and Neve couldn’t help but think it had to take a certain kind of man to choose to underwhelm, to camouflage himself as unthreatening. There were two kinds of men who did that—those who used it to give themselves the perfect moment to strike when no one expected it, and those with no need to strike. Neve suspected he was a bit of both, and she suspected the latter was the one standing in front of her, because she’d given him every last chance to strike, and he still seemed to take offense that she thought he would.
Bell didn’t say another word as she considered him, didn’t glower or even sulk, didn’t get defensive, didn’t loom. He was a puzzle box she turned over and over in her mind, unsure if solving it would release the cenobites or not.
Finally, without saying anything else, she approached him and tucked her arm around his elbow again.
“How’d that taste?” Bell asked over Neve’s shoulder.
“Barely enough to spread over my tongue. She’s wary, Bell, but she’s not afraid of you.”
Bell covered her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Good.”
Neve looked over her shoulder at the Creature as he put himself back into imprisoned animal mode. “What was that about?”
“Just getting a second opinion. We should complete the visit and set you up in your exhibit now. We don’t necessarily have to rush through the rest, but we really shouldn’t stop again. Under less formal circumstances, you’d be able to take your time, but I sent the Ringmaster to the front to entertain, which I’ll have to compensate him for. He intensely dislikes direct interaction with guests. I want to relieve him as soon as possible.”
“If he dislikes people so much, he might have chosen the wrong profession,” Neve said.
“There are perks, and as a rule, he rarely has to deal with people he’d rather be torturing in a similarly fashioned dungeon.” Bell eased them away from the werewolf, enclosed in a metal cage framed like an open Iron Maiden. In the haunted funhouse, he wore pants. Not so in the Funhouse event, where he’d been stripped completely to display his hairiness and the strangeness of his transformation. His cock and scrotum were shackled like the rest of him, and he surged against the chains strapping him into the cage. He’d also been muzzled in metal, which concealed his teeth but not his seeking tongue.
Neve stopped a few feet behind Bell. “Is he a prisoner or not?”
“He’s on probation. He’s calm enough when released but quite an animal in the sack. He’s sometimes put on the circuit if he’s been a good boy.”
“The circuit?”
“You’ll see. There has to be some mystery in life.”
“That’s where you want me, isn’t it?”
His silence in the darkness was answer enough.
Maya rested on the next platform, reclined supine on an inclined bench and wearing only a pair of black panties. Her gaze followed Bell and Neve until they were right in front of her. Bell stepped onto the platform, trailing his fingertips up the valley of Maya’s spine.
She rolled her shoulders to shrug him away. “I agreed that you could hurt me, Bell. But don’t think I agreed to it because I wanted everything back. This is for the Funhouse. That’s it.” She turned her head around to face the back of the wall. “Save it fo
r the audience.”
“Of course,” he said quietly. Bell turned to a surgical tray of hooks, rings and a coil of silver chain. “Maya’s a genuine masochist with an appetite for contrition. Sometimes she chooses scarification. Needleplay. Branding. In this case, corset piercing. I have a potion that heals wounds as though they were never there. It gives me and the Ringmaster a perpetually blank canvas, and Funhouse regulars believe we’re not truly hurting her, because her skin remains flawless from session to session.”
“The Ringmaster?”
“He’ll whip her during tonight’s entertainment.”
Neve furrowed her brow, staring at the back of Maya’s head as though she could send concern through the woman’s scalp. “You mean that great big bullwhip he uses in the haunted funhouse? I’ve seen them used only once in a scene, and it wasn’t the way the Ringmaster uses it.”
“He’s still pissed I won’t let him wield the glass-knotted whip in the funhouse anymore,” Bell said.
“Do you know the damage it does? Not just surface damage. It can crack ribs, traumatize organs. I don’t understand how that can feel good, and I don’t understand how you can let it happen…”
Maya turned back around, offering a weak smile to Neve, although she wouldn’t acknowledge Bell as he stepped down from the platform. “Whatever damage he does can be undone. It’s not about feeling good. Sometimes I don’t want to feel good. It isn’t like the scenes you might be more familiar with. Safety and sanity aren’t concerns here. Only consent. Nothing’s happening that I didn’t choose.” She nodded toward the darkness ahead. “Go on. Don’t worry about me.”
“She’s been doing this for years, and she’s still healthy, not a single scar on her that she didn’t want to keep. She’ll be fine.” Bell guided Neve with his hand on the small of her back, but he stared at the brushed concrete floor instead of at Maya, keeping his head down until they’d turned the corner.
Neve bit back the impulse to ask if he was okay, but Bell straightened, inhaled sharply as though to bring himself back and hide the feelings deeper. He clearly didn’t want to discuss it, and she wasn’t his therapist.
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