Funhouse

by Aurelia T. Evans

  She’d apparently rendered him speechless.

  “You talked about sex drives. Well, most of my life, I didn’t have one,” she said. “My desire for nonsexual interaction with men hasn’t diminished just because my desire for sexual interaction has increased. But turning into a voracious nymphomaniac has made it harder to have nonsexual interaction with men, because once they know they have a good chance, they pursue, and I have to fight not to give in. And I want more than that, damn it!” She hit the table with the flat of her hand, angry out of nowhere—at men in general, at Bell, at Mikhail, at herself. “I want someone—anyone—to look at me and not see the sex they want to have. Is that so much to ask?”

  A large strongman flinching was an uncommon image. “I don’t think you want me to answer that question.”

  Neve slid down the table a few feet away from him. The distance between them seemed wider than that. “Is that so?”

  “There are four levels by which an incubus experiences attraction,” he said quietly. “When a human is attracted to us but not us immediately to them, their attraction incites our own, triggering our magic to intensify the attraction. Two, we can create attraction in cases where neither we nor the subjects are immediately attracted to each other—with the exception of those with an incapacity for attraction.” He nodded to her. “Then there are the people who we find attractive on our own, but they initially do not. Then there are those attracted to us and we to them at the moment of meeting. That connection explodes with tension, as you well know.”

  He deliberately stepped around the table closer to her. “Every time I look at you, I want you. I can mask the effects, but I can’t make them disappear. And I feel what other men want from you. With very few exceptions, no, no one can look at you without wondering what it is like to sleep with you. Women’s responses are either more nuanced or come from a place of envy. But you cannot alter how fundamentally attractive you are—across multiple generations, multiple cultures, multiple centuries of trends. You are timelessly sexy, Neve. If you’re looking for nonsexual male companionship, perhaps you should seek out a gay best friend.”

  What he said gave her too many feelings, one after the other—contradictory and on completely different sides of the multiplanar spectrum of emotions. Flattery, irritation, a primal sexual heat at being so wanted rather than just needed, despair at the confirmation that she was a perpetual sexual object to strange men even outside the objectifying context of Arcanium, fury, pride, depression, grief, pleasure, nausea, gratitude…

  She tried to keep all those emotions out of her voice when she said, “You really think I’m beautiful? You don’t just want everything that breathes and has breasts—and sometimes even those are optional?”

  “If I had my way, Neve, no matter what restrained me, I would break through it just to bring you against me and have you in your bed, in mine, in whatever bed is closest—and only a bed, because we could stay there more comfortably all night and all morning like we did. Even though you wanted nothing to do with me when you first saw me on Oddity Row, I saw you and wanted you with a power that you couldn’t have known before Bell got his hands on your wish.”

  Still careful, he closed the distance completely. He traced the frame of her face, curling her hair around his finger, then released her with visible effort—still holding back the effect of his magic as well as he could, only a stray wisp brushing her like fragrance passing on the wind. “I called then. You didn’t hear me, but when you called for me from miles away, I followed you. I’ve had many women, and I thought many of them beautiful. You are beautiful, too, Neve, but beautiful in a way that makes it hurt to desire you, to desire a woman who doesn’t want to want me. I don’t understand why or how you resist so stringently.”

  She didn’t want to want him. To give in to him now would undercut everything she’d just said. But even without the full measure of his magic pulling her under like a riptide, he was wearing too much and so was she. Her mind projected the image he’d given her of him taking her back to her trailer, filling up the small hallway, filling her bed, filling her, or kicking in the door of someone else’s home and throwing her on some random bed just to wrap himself around her and sink into her all night. Or his bed. She’d never visited his trailer, a whole place that would carry his scent deep in its matter, the way everyone’s houses eventually did.

  For a moment, she thought she understood what it was like to hunger for sex like a succubus—as physical a craving as for food. She wanted his taste in her mouth.

  “Not a sexless relationship.” She coughed, because it had come out in a whisper. “But does every encounter between us have to be about sex? Am I really just going to be the resident Arcanium slut and that’s it? Is that all you can be for me? Is that all I can be for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I considered men to date, a bare minimum of what I did with them was sexual. I enjoyed contact for intimacy rather than to satisfy some sexual tension. I married my husband—my ex-husband—because I could talk with him, laugh with him, cry with him, cuddle close to him, stay up all night binge-watching TV shows with him, visit museums and national parks with him. And the entire fucking thing dissolved because I didn’t like sex with him.”

  Hate-filled resentment, surprising in its once-again abrupt vehemence, gave her the strength to back away again. “Haven’t you ever wanted anything more than sex from the women you had sex with? You called their deaths a waste. That’s why you came to Arcanium. Even though you’re an incubus with a drive to consume sex, isn’t there more to your life? And if there isn’t, do you want there to be?”

  Mikhail lowered himself to the bench of the picnic table, his legs comically angled because of his height. The age smoothed from his face, the gray from his hair, until he was just himself—or whatever counted for himself in this particular form. “Yes.”

  Neve inhaled deeply. She’d been unaware that some part of her had been holding her breath. Then she sat next to him. “Bell clearly had the two of us in mind when he made me impervious to whatever makes your feed fatal. But I don’t want to fall into bed with you just because you won’t kill me, okay? I suggest, just as an experiment, that we suspend sex unless we’re both desperate—the point at which Bell would send you out of Arcanium to hunt. You think you’re nothing but a mindless animal, that you’re just made for sex and strength, but I’ve actually really enjoyed talking to you. You’re charming. You can be considerate. You’re not afraid of multiple syllables or evolutionary biology, overly simplistic though it can be. Maybe it sounds radical, but what if we just…dated?”

  Mikhail’s expression appeared angry, but the blackness and red glow to his eyes faded until his irises alone were black. “Dated.”

  “Dated. Did things that weren’t just sex. You were waiting outside the newly formed Arcanium book club. Kitty knits. Caroline watches shows with her men. Troy draws and tattoos out of his trailer. Besides attacking helpless men and women and practicing choreography with Lady Sasha, what else do you do? I know you don’t pump iron to look like that, and I’ve never seen you jog around the fence line like some people here. Is your entire life truly nothing but the pursuit of your next meal?”

  “I, um…” Mikhail appeared completely taken aback by the question. It occurred to her that, like his awkwardness trying to figure out what kind of man she wanted to fuck because he’d never had to put that much energy into making himself desirable, he’d never reached a point with a woman where she’d asked him what he liked to do—standard small talk for a first date, but small talk he rarely had to employ. “I like nature series and documentaries.”

  “That explains a lot. Stephen Fry or David Attenborough?”

  “Attenborough, although both are calming. I… Are you honestly asking whether I want to just sit and watch nature films with you then not have sex?”

  “Yes. The actual person’s version of ‘Netflix and chill,’ because who wants to get it on while watching Brea
king Bad? Hemlock Grove, maybe.”

  “I don’t know that one.”

  “Not a fan of horror, big guy?” She slid a little closer to him until her knee touched his. That was all, but he still appeared completely confused by her signals.

  “We live horror here. I see no reason to perpetuate it in my escape.”

  “Fair enough. So, what say you? If you don’t want to get to know the woman you’re having sex with without killing her, you don’t have to. And if you don’t want me to know the incubus haunting me, you can keep yourself a mystery. It’s your decision. But if dating isn’t your scene, then you need to stop creeping on me and doing all kinds of sexual gymnastics to try to get me to sleep with you all the time. We’ll chalk our sexual encounters down to legitimate necessity, each of us taking impersonal advantage of the other then moving on. I don’t know about you, Mikhail, but that doesn’t sound appealing to me. Sounds more like going to the doctor to get vaccinated.”

  “But no sex.”

  “Your focus on that suggests it’s a sticking point…or a deal-breaker.”

  “I’ve so rarely encountered people attracted and attractive to a sex demon who request that they not have sex,” Mikhail said. “If no sex is to be had, would what you ask of me be mere friendship instead?”

  Neve patted his thigh. Again, he looked down at his leg as though it were covered with alien lifeforms. “There’s nothing ‘mere’ about good friendship. I have—had—male friends. The difference is in chemistry—a desire for closeness, for contact that doesn’t automatically lead to sex. It’s keeping our clothes on while stripping away the layers to the mind.” She shook her head in amusement. “Many men are presented with this journey and choose a different path. They wouldn’t think any less of you for refusing.”

  Mikhail looked out toward the midway, where some glow-in-the-dark features were luminescent from a whole day of recharging. “If I say yes, must I offer you flowers?”

  “You may. It’s not my preference, though.”

  He scowled, but though his frustration could snap a metal wire and his anger could melt a stop sign, his expression was less dangerous. “Very well. But may I kiss you tonight? I haven’t been able to since that night, and you’ve done many things since then that made me want to kiss you.” He rested his knuckles against her cheek, but though it could have been aggressive, all he managed to portray was tenderness. “Just a kiss, I promise.”

  When she licked her lips again, they and her mouth seemed bone dry, despite the fact that she’d been salivating ever since she’d stepped out of Kitty’s tent. “If you break your promise, you break so much more than that promise. Do you understand?”

  Lord Mikhail nodded as he leaned in, holding his breath still.

  He brought his hand to her neck, almost as though to choke her, and she flinched automatically, but he just smoothed his huge palm up her neck, caressing the length of her throat with his thumb in a gesture both possessive and unbearably intimate.

  He stayed gentle, as chaste as a centuries-old incubus could be, his magic simmering under his skin. It tried to reach for her, but he kept it leashed as well as he could as he kissed her, parting his lips to savor hers. All her focus narrowed to that contact. Her nature made it electric enough, the same as it had been for every other man she’d touched, save for a thin extra layer of arousal that threatened to shift inside her—like his cock in her cunt—if he let his control slip even a little.

  But other than that, kissing him was like kissing any other man, and it was still honey-sweet and sultry, early autumn instead of midwinter.

  When he pulled back, both of them gasped for breath. Neve knew why she had, but Mikhail still appeared surprised by the whole affair.

  “Is that how humans kiss when they date?” Mikhail asked.

  “I think you’re confusing dating with romance. Sweet romance, anyway. Some like their romance spicy. Some don’t want romance at all.”

  “And you?”

  “A little bit of all three. I’m going to stop this now.” She retreated back around the table, which was a better barrier than willpower. “Not because we wouldn’t both enjoy the outcome if we stayed here, but because we’ve agreed…or I thought you had. Do you agree, then? There’s no pressure to date, Mikhail. It all seems very weird, even to me. This whole evening has.”

  Mikhail crossed his arms, this time in contemplation. “Must I hold my breath indefinitely?”

  She shook her head. “I’m looking for a partner, not just a sex partner. I want dating to eventually lead to sex as a natural consequence, not as an immediate given. With my appetites, is that unrealistic?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “It’s merely…unprecedented.”

  “Dating with sex is unprecedented for me, so we’re both in unfamiliar waters.”

  “Beware, little girl. Here there be monsters.” A tentative grin.

  “You don’t say.”

  “I’m willing to try.” He stepped around the table, but all he did was offer his hand to shake.

  Which she did.

  As she turned to head back to the caravan, he slapped her ass hard.

  When she spun around, shocked, he raised an eyebrow. “A little spicy, no?”

  She couldn’t restrain a smile. His tentative grin broadened, caution in his black eyes, but also wonder.

  Order your copy from

  Totally Bound Publishing

  First For Romance

  Amazon.com

  Amazon.co.uk

  iBooks

  Barnes & Noble

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Sign up for our newsletter and find out about all our romance book releases, eBook sales and promotions, sneak peeks and FREE romance eBooks!

  Check out our other imprints and bookstores dedicated to romance fiction:

  About the Author

  Aurelia T. Evans is an up-and-coming erotica author with a penchant for horror and the supernatural.

  She’s the twisted mind behind the werewolf/shifter Sanctuary trilogy, demonic circus series Arcanium, and vampire serial Bloodbound. She’s also had short stories featured in various erotic anthologies.

  Aurelia presently lives in Dallas, Texas (although she doesn’t ride horses or wear hats). She loves cats and enjoys baking as much as she dislikes cooking. She’s a walker, not a runner, and she writes outside as often as possible.

  Aurelia loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website details and author profile page at https://www.totallybound.com