Hearts of Fire

by L.H. Cosway

  “Well, I doubt she’ll try anything again. I’m sure Pip frightened her enough the first time. If she does, she’d be pretty dumb.”

  Winnie laughed. “Have you seen the girl? I would hasten to say that dumb is her middle name.”

  I laughed along with her, but I wasn’t quite sure I agreed. Julie wasn’t dumb; she was cruel. The way she spoke to King last night told me that. And really, I hated to think she’d been with Jack, had put her mouth on him. The knowledge alone made me shudder.

  A few minutes passed, and I watched Winnie interact with her lions in such a way that made me truly believe she loved them dearly. At one point, she encouraged Skip to roll over onto his back, his paws in the air as she took one in her hand and massaged it. I never thought I’d see a tiny little woman render a beast into a kitten as she rubbed his feet for him.

  “Do you think he’d let me pet him?” I asked shyly.

  “Of course,” she replied. “Come here.”

  I went to her, and she showed me how to approach him. Before I knew it, I was running my hand over his mane, delighting in its softness. Getting to touch the animal excited my curiosity, and I went on to bombard Winnie with questions.

  What do you feed them?

  How long do they sleep each day?

  Do they ever fight one another?

  How old are they?

  How many years do they live?

  Don’t they need to have sex with a lioness every once in a while?

  She was very patient in answering all of my questions. By the time we were done talking, I found I was starving, so I headed for the gazebo to see what they were serving for lunch. Tomato soup and bread was the name of the game, as it happened. I spotted Jack, King, and Marina sitting at a table together. Pierre sat on Marina’s shoulder, watching her as she ate her lunch. I saw him try to swipe for a piece of bread, but she caught him before he could grab it. The little monkey’s antics made me laugh.

  As I passed them by, Jack reached out, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me into him so that I was sitting on his lap. His eyes zoned in on my hair like we were completely alone. I looked down to see there was a clump of green paint in it, and he had started picking it out. He hadn’t said a word in greeting, just spun me onto his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  The intimacy of it all made my heart squeeze.

  My eyes wandered to Marina, and I found she was watching me with an odd mixture of warmth and curiosity. I took it to mean that Jack didn’t often do this sort of thing. It felt a bit like a social show, like when men put their arms around their girlfriends’ waists to show other men they were taken. He was absorbed in picking the paint from my hair as I turned my head a little to face Marina.

  “Winnie let me pet one of the lions,” I said with excitement.

  “Aren’t they just exquisite?” Marina replied, giving Pierre a little pat on the backside. He jumped off her shoulder with a screech before scurrying to the other side of the gazebo. “Back when I was just starting out, I was with a big circus. The tamers would work with about five or six lions and a couple of tigers all in the one act. You could tell the animals were treated terribly — they just looked so sad. It felt unnatural to see these big, powerful animals sitting perched on stools like housecats.”

  I tried to concentrate on listening to Marina, but the way Jack’s fingers worked through my hair, his knuckles brushing my collarbone, was highly distracting. I remembered him from the night before, staring up at me like I was the centre of his universe, worshipping me with his mouth, and squeezed my thighs together tight. I really didn’t need to be remembering how good he was at that.

  King, who had been sitting slumped over the table asleep with his head in his arms, awoke suddenly with a groan.

  “Where the fuck am I?”

  Marina gave him an almighty clip ’round the ear. “You’re in hell. Now tell me who gave you the whiskey last night?”

  An argument ensued between the two, and I looked back to Jack, whispering, “I think you got all of it.”

  He didn’t stop. “I like your hair.”

  “Thanks.”

  His voice got low and quiet as he leaned in and spoke into my ear. “I like your pussy, too.”

  “Jack,” I gasped.

  “It likes me back.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  He shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first person to say that.”

  “What are you doing today?” I asked, shifting on his lap. I thought I could feel him stirring to, uh…life, but I couldn’t be certain.

  “Practice. Then show. Then sleep. And tomorrow we move on.”

  “I can’t believe we’ve been here in Caen a whole week. Where do we go next?”

  “Orléans. It’s just over three hours away. You can ride with me.”

  I thought about a three-hour journey with Jack alone in his camper and grew fidgety. What would we talk about? Would we just sit in silence? Strangely, I kind of enjoyed being quiet with him, and usually I felt the need to chatter to fill quiet periods.

  “Okay,” I replied, finally.

  Nine

  Lille lost her way

  The rest of the day was a flurry of activity, and I was proving my mother right by walking around with my head in the clouds. It was all Jack’s fault. His attention made me feel constant flutters and giddiness, and I was sure I had a perennial dreamy look on my face.

  I went to see Bea and give her the finished painting. She squealed with delight when she saw it and proceeded to pester her dad to hang it up on her bedroom wall in their camper. Her dad, Aiden, was a single parent and a general labourer for the circus. He had a decent, unassuming sort of personality. I was constantly seeing him lugging heavy equipment about. It certainly didn’t look like an easy job, but I still had this itching need to tell him that he shouldn’t let Bea run around by herself all the time. I tamped the need down, because I didn’t want to come across as judgemental.

  When I was leaving their camper, I saw Julie walking my way. She took me in, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. I thought she was going to say something mean, but then she surprised me when she plastered a polite though obviously fake smile on her face and said, “Hey, Lille, is Aiden in there?”

  “Yeah, he and Bea are watching television,” I answered. She only nodded and walked by me before disappearing inside the camper.

  Once the show started, I was busy painting faces outside by the entrance. I found that the more French people I interacted with, the better I became at speaking the language. This trip was doing all sorts of great things for my life. I was speaking a second language, doing art every single day, and receiving orgasms from the sexiest man alive. Well, one orgasm, but I had high hopes for more.

  I slept like the dead that night and awoke early to the noise of the men taking down the Spiegeltent. My bed was on the side of our tiny room with the window. I wiped away the condensation and peered out to see Jack vaulting up a pole as he assisted with the dismantling of the tent. It looked like doing such a thing came so easy to him. Well, he certainly wasn’t afraid of heights. I watched him for longer than normal, fascinated. Plus, he was so sexy when he was working.

  Finally dragging myself away, I had a quick shower, making sure not to use all of the hot water for fear of facing the wrath of Violet, then dressed in some jeans and a yellow knit jumper. Violet was sitting by the table, eating toast, one leg thrown over her shoulder (I know, weird) and wearing a T-shirt that read, “Warning, Gymnast: Could flip at any moment.” It made me smile.

  “What’s with the top?” I asked. “I thought you were a contortionist.”

  “An ex-boyfriend bought it for me. He thought it was a funny jibe at me having a short temper. Well, it was ironic that I did flip when I saw he didn’t even get my profession right. I have a mean left hook.”

  “So you punched your ex-boyfriend and you’re still wearing the T-shirt?” I said, amused.

  She shrugged. “Pretty much.”


  I gave her a wide-eyed look. “Fair enough.”

  Lola came out of our room then, scratching her head, her short hair sticking up in every direction. “Shit, it’s moving day today, isn’t it? I feel like absolute crap, Vi. Could you drive this time? I don’t think I’m up to it.”

  “You do realise the only reason I let you live here is because I hate driving this thing, right?” Violet threw back, one eyebrow arched.

  Lola coughed, then sniffled. “Seriously, I’m not faking just so that I can beg off. I think I have a temperature.”

  Violet made a huff of annoyance but didn’t respond. I walked over to Lola and put my hand to her forehead, only to find she was burning up.

  “She’s not lying,” I said. “She definitely has a temperature.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” Violet groaned. “It better not be the flu. I can’t afford to get the flu. Get back in your room, Lola, and stay there. We don’t want to catch what you’ve got.”

  Okay, so it was official. Violet had just about the worst bedside manner I’d ever encountered, and I grew up with the ultimate ice queen mother who never gave hugs or cups of cocoa or petted my head when I was ill.

  “Come on, let’s get you back to bed,” I told Lola. “I’ll make you some soup, and you can try and sleep it off.”

  And that’s how I spent the rest of my morning, taking care of Lola and making sure she was comfortable. I was just washing my hands when I saw Jack pass by the window of our camper. He was pulling along a large trunk full of equipment. When he saw me watching him, he raised a questioning eyebrow, as if to ask, Are you riding with me today or not? I got a fizzy sensation in my belly to think he’d been waiting for me to come over.

  “Lola’s all settled. She should be fine until we reach Orléans. I’ll be riding with Jack,” I told Violet, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, drinking a cup of coffee.

  “Cool. Just make sure you don’t let him talk you into a blowjob on the drive. We don’t want him crashing,” she teased, and I gave her a narrowed-eyed but amused glare.

  When I got outside, I practically raced all the way to Jack’s camper. I knocked on the door and heard him call, “It’s open.”

  Stepping inside, I found the place clean and tidy, the same as before. There was something that warmed my heart about how lived in and threadbare everything felt. I’d grown up in a house with expensive carpets and designer couches, where you had to take your shoes off as soon as you stepped in the door. Mum never let me eat in the living room or in my bedroom. It was always so tense. Everything had to be perfect.

  Jack’s camper felt like pure comfort in comparison; it was the kind of place where I could sit back and relax, completely be myself.

  “Hi,” I said, going to take the passenger seat beside him at the front. “What time do we leave?”

  He glanced up to look at me, his eyes moving from my face to my chest and then down. I relished how he completely soaked in my appearance like that. There was something so…excessive about it.

  “Good morning, Lille. Five minutes. I was beginning to wonder if you’d show.”

  I let out a sigh. “Sorry about that. Lola’s fallen sick. I think it’s a cold. Anyway, I had to get her something to eat and tuck her into bed.”

  Jack seemed perplexed by this. “Who are you? Her mother?”

  “Definitely not. In my experience, that isn’t how mothers act.”

  He stared at me for a long moment before looking away again. There was a faraway tone to his voice when he said, “No, nor in mine.”

  “Ah, something we have in common, then? Though I take it your mum never tried to track your location against your wishes using GPS.”

  I winced when I remembered that his mother had died in a house fire when he was little. How fucking tactless could I be sometimes? Christ.

  Jack contemplated my statement for a while. It was probably only seconds, but it felt like forever. “Well, I only have a handful of memories of my birth mother. She was loving, caring, you know, everything a mother should be. Unfortunately, I have more memories of my foster mum. She was the exact opposite.”

  My lips turned down in a frown. “I’m sorry.”

  He glanced at me and seemed genuinely confused as to why I would say that. It was what anyone would say, but I was learning that Jack wasn’t like everyone else. He dealt in blunt statements of fact, not platitudes and empty expressions.

  “Why would you be sorry? You weren’t there,” he said plainly.

  “It’s just something people say.”

  Bea’s father, Aiden, walked in front of the camper then and waved his hand in the air to signal it was time to leave. I watched quietly as Jack started the engine and began to pull out of the campsite behind the truck in front of us. Watching him drive was kind of sexy. He was so big and muscular, and even though his camper was one of the larger ones, it felt small with him in it. The mid-morning sun warmed my face as I sat back and got comfortable. Deciding to make the most of three hours in Jack’s company, I pulled out my sketchpad and began to draw him.

  He was focused on driving mostly, but after about twenty minutes, I saw his attention flicker between me and the road, his head turning every once in a while, craning his neck to see what I was drawing. My lips curved in a smile as I crossed one leg over the other and tilted the sketchpad to obscure it from his view.

  In the end, he huffed out a breath of irritation and asked gruffly, “What are you drawing?”

  “You,” I answered honestly. There really was no point in lying. I was willing to bet he knew I was a tiny bit fascinated by him at this stage.

  “Me? Why are you drawing me?”

  I stewed on that one for a moment, trying to think of the best way to answer. “You’ve got an interesting face. I like interesting.”

  Another huff of irritation. “I can’t see how drawing me driving would be very interesting.”

  “I’m not drawing you driving. I’m drawing you on stage, weaving fire around your body. Having you in front of me for the physical characteristics is helpful. I can use my imagination for the rest.”

  His brows shot up, and he appeared to be taken aback by my answer. He let go of the steering wheel and held a hand out for the sketchpad. “Let me see.”

  I shifted back a little. “Nuh-uh. You don’t get to see it until it’s finished. And maybe not even then.”

  He made a speedy move, grabbing for the sketchpad, but I was quicker and shot out of reach. “Hey, now, that’s a dirty tactic,” I said, laughing nervously.

  In all honesty, I was self-conscious about showing him. I didn’t think I’d ever put such effort and detail into drawing a person before, and it was perfectly evident. It was also perfectly evident by the sheer amount of detail that I was obsessed with him. And, let’s face it, nobody wants the object of their obsession to be aware of it. Then you just end up feeling weird and itchy and a little bit like a creep.

  “Lille, you have five seconds to hand me that sketchpad, or else,” he warned me. My heart stuttered in response to his harsh tone of voice, and my skin prickled in a way that made me wonder if I liked it.

  “Not going to happen,” I said, sticking to my guns.

  “Fine,” he replied a moment before he abruptly turned the steering wheel, bringing the camper over to the side of the road. The vehicles behind us honked their horns in annoyance while Jack casually pulled over and stopped. The rest of the circus party drove on ahead of us, and I saw a few people staring out of their windows curiously. I almost burst into laughter when Violet sped past, casually mimicking a blowjob with one hand as she drove.

  I knew I was in for it when Jack undid his seatbelt and came at me. Quick as a flash, I was out of my seat and running. Though, since we were in the camper, there wasn’t really anywhere for me to run to.

  I dashed inside his bedroom and slammed the door shut, pressing my body against it and holding down the handle to keep him from getting inside. And yeah, it was a futile mission because, let’
s face it, my strength was no match for his. I was no dainty little thing, but still, Jack got the door open in record time, and I found myself stumbling backwards, my arse hitting the floor painfully.

  “Ouch, my coccyx,” I whined, rubbing at my lower back.

  Jack stood in the doorway, expressionless, for a moment before he began a slow laugh.

  “What did you just say?”

  “I hurt my coccyx, the lower part of my spine. I think I might have done some serious damage,” I complained, scowling up at him. “I’m glad to know you’re finding it so funny, though.”

  He held his hand out to help me up and I took it, my sketchpad long forgotten on the floor. “I’m sure your coccyx is fine, Lille,” said Jack, towering over me. Then his voice dipped low. “But just to be sure, let me check.”

  Slowly, he took a breath and reached around me, encapsulating me in his arms. He found my spine and gently ran his fingers downwards. When he reached the base, he started to rub in slow circles. I drew in a gulp of air, tingling all over from his closeness.

  “How does that feel?” he murmured.

  It felt incredible.

  “G-good,” I managed, and glanced up at him.

  He held my gaze and continued massaging for a full minute. It was perhaps the best minute of my life, all eye contact and gently probing fingers. I was a little disappointed when he drew away. “Better now?”

  I swallowed and nodded. “Mm-hmm, much better.”

  “Good,” he said, and before I could react, he dove for my sketchpad, picking it up and flipping through the pages, trying to find my most recent drawing. I swiped for it, but he held it above his head, and yeah, there was no way I was going to reach it. I briefly considered hopping on his bed for the extra height, but I had shoes on, so I thought that might be rude, even though he was being epically rude by nosing at my pictures without my permission.

  I accepted defeat and stood back, folding my arms and leaning against the door while he examined my drawings as though they were curious artefacts. I got a little dry-throated just watching him. There were a lot of half-finished works in there, and I really did have a fear of my incomplete drawings being seen. I wasn’t sure why, but his opinion was important to me. I didn’t want him to dismiss my work as airy-fairy and pointless like Shay Cosgrove would have.