John reached for Ricardo’s hand, slipped his agile fingers into Ricardo’s grasp, and gently pried Ricardo’s arm away from his body. Ricardo did allow himself to be held now, but his heart was still heavy with disappointment and anger. “They’ve taken Ricardo the Magnificent and run with him,” Ricardo said, “and I don’t even recognize him now. They’ve been doing it for weeks. I had no idea. And I won’t be a part of it anymore.”
John pressed a kiss to Ricardo’s temple. “It’s almost over.”
“No…that’s not good enough. It is over. For me. Whatever the next challenge is—I’m throwing it.”
John tightened his arms around Ricardo. “Even if you did, you wouldn’t be voted off. Ricardo the Magnificent is too popular. Whether you approve of him or not.”
“Then I’ll quit.”
“You signed a contract—and it’s not worth damaging your career for the sake of making a statement now. Once we’re out of the Mansion, you’ll have plenty of chances to tell your side of the story. Everyone will be salivating for an interview. You’ll get your chance to set everything straight.”
“Straight. Right.” They stood together in their awkward embrace while crew bustled in the distance of the Mansion, and finally Ricardo said, “If I got hurt doing a stunt, they’d need to let me out.”
“Don’t say that,” John snapped, flinging Ricardo away to arm’s length and digging his fingers hard into Ricardo’s upper arms—and that X-ray vision look from the Professor Topaz poster blazed forth, far more intense in real life than it could possibly be in a photograph. “Don’t ever say that.”
“But I—”
“Don’t even think it.”
“Oh, hell…I can’t believe I just—”
John backed Ricardo into the wall and pinned him there. “Life…is so precious. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I’m sorry. I will.”
John’s mouth found Ricardo’s, more with desperation than with passion. This was Ricardo’s idol—not just a performer named Professor Topaz, but a person, an actual, real man. A man with hopes and dreams, disappointments and fears. A man who’d had a life full of experiences for Ricardo to share and understand. And though it was tempting to not only think “Professor Topaz,” but “Professor Topaz half-undressed from his tuxedo,” as strong hands raked down Ricardo’s sides, when a breath caught as their kiss deepened, mostly what Ricardo thought…was “John.”
John slid the kiss from Ricardo’s lips, whiskers tickling over jaw, and buried his face in the crook of Ricardo’s neck. The sound of breathing filled the room then, as if their lungs sought to find something in the very air to anchor them together. Ricardo wouldn’t have thought he’d be capable of responding to a kiss or a caress—not now, when reality as he knew it had just been stripped bare, and revealed as a trite charade. And yet, John’s hands sliding around his ass, grasping it, working it, John trailing scorching kisses across his throat, now felt like the only reality that was actually worth knowing.
When John’s hands shifted and slipped down Ricardo’s waistband, Ricardo actually moaned. John was relentless in his persuasion. “Don’t use your True magic,” he pleaded against Ricardo’s neck. “Not here. It’s too dangerous.” His hand closed around Ricardo, stroked him to stiffness in a few sure caresses. “I won’t lose you too.”
“John….”
“Promise.”
John slid his thumb over Ricardo’s slit, once, twice, and a spot of wetness welled to slicken the tiny stroke to devastating perfection. “I promise,” Ricardo gasped. John thumbed him again, and a shiver raged through Ricardo’s core. “I swear.”
John’s other hand wrapped around Ricardo’s ass, fingertips prying the cheeks apart, and everything else fell away—the Mansion, the competition, the hideous autograph session and the awkward limo ride afterward and the knowledge that Ricardo was being presented to the world as something he was not—and everything ceased to exist but a fingertip teasing at Ricardo’s hole. Teasing…and making its own promise.
Need blossomed in Ricardo, so strong and pure it washed away the anger and the dismay. It might only be a temporary solution to obliterate the events of the day in an act of passion, but at the moment, that hand, those lips, those fingers, were the only thing that mattered anymore.
“Please,” he said raggedly. John shifted his grasp on Ricardo’s cock and treated it to a slow, deep stroke…and with his other hand, he pressed the very tip of his finger in.
The need deepened into a desperate ache—as if John’s caresses had not only found the real Ricardo Hart beneath the veneer of Ricardo the Magnificent, but gone deeper still, to a place where names meant nothing, and instead there were only wordless, formless Truths surging together in all their blazing glory.
John flicked his wrist, and Ricardo’s stretchy pants snapped down around his thighs, exposing him in all his throbbing need. And before Ricardo registered what was happening…John knelt before him, and took Ricardo’s cock deep into his hot, wet mouth.
Bliss.
Someone made a very loud sex sound…and Ricardo realized distantly it must have been him. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but that amazing thing John was doing with his tongue, that sublime flutter while he sucked, and sucked, and sucked, and now his finger was buried to the knuckle and oh my god you have to stop because if you don’t I’m gonna—
“Wait.”
John paused.
“In the bed. Please.”
John stood, towering over Ricardo briefly, then swung him around and lay him down on the narrow bed. Ricardo was helpless to assist as John yanked off his shoes and pulled down his pants. His arms felt numb, like he’d forgotten how to work them, but once he managed to get his own shirt off, he couldn’t stop staring at the bulge now straining at the front of John’s trousers. “Do it all,” he said, because a blowjob really wasn’t enough at this point—and yes, it seemed reckless to tell someone to take him without a condom, but all the rigamarole they’d gone through to get into the mansion had involved not only vaccinations and physicals, but a totally clean bill of health. It hadn’t actually been “tetanus” Iain was referring to when Ricardo had bled out into the Wand Pond, after all.
John trailed a caress down Ricardo’s belly, smiling his sad smile, and then sat up straight and began unbuttoning his tuxedo shirt. As if he’d just read Ricardo’s mind, he said, “Don’t worry about that. The Truth is more powerful than a condom, anyway.”
“It is?”
“Just…not strong enough to stop a car.” John slipped his shirt off and hung it from the footboard. If this act had been happening anywhere else, Ricardo would have begged him to leave it on—to simply open the front of his trousers and go at it half-tuxedoed. But what they were doing, here and now, was more important than any fantasy, however well-cherished it might be. Once he was shirtless, John stood, watching Ricardo watch him. His body was tall and lean and dusky-skinned. Classic and timeless. And then he eased his slacks open…and revealed his thick, dark cock.
Ricardo arched his back, yearning to feel it sink in—now, finally. For real. He fumbled the lotion from the Magic Mansion welcome basket off the nightstand and squeezed half the tube into his palm. “Hurry,” he said—and he couldn’t have articulated what the rush was all about, just that he needed it—now.
He took John’s cock in hand—so solid—and pumped it in his slick fingers. John closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, and breathed in great, deep gasps. Ricardo drew his knees up, spread his legs and guided John there between them, pleading with the tilt of his hips for John to do it. After all this waiting and wanting and hoping, to finally make everything complete.
The entry was bright with pleasure-pain, sparkly as sequins on lamé, and the penetration felt as if it would go on and on and on…but finally, John’s pelvis pressed into the curve where the backs of Ricardo’s thighs met his ass, John’s entire body covering his…and then a pause, so he and Ricardo could bask in that m
agical moment.
When the bliss ebbed enough for Ricardo to seek more, he flexed his hips and encouraged John to keep going. John planted his elbows in the mattress, repositioned his knees, and began the primal grind where their bodies would start to get acquainted. Ricardo’s hands were free to roam, mapping the hills and valley’s of John’s back. Lower still, he paused—top, or switch? John made a small sound of encouragement against Ricardo’s mouth, and Ricardo worked his fingers into the cleft of John’s ass, stroking his taint, teasing his hole, dizzy with the desire to give John as much pleasure as John was giving him.
They moved together, finding their stride, chests pressing, hips clashing. The room was awash with the sound of their desperate breathing, punctuated by the rhythmic creak of the ancient bed. When John slipped a hand between them, a few strokes was all it took to bring Ricardo to the brink, and he clutched John’s ass hard as he peaked—a moment of sure and utter joy, fleeting—and although it couldn’t last forever, profound. His awareness changed once he’d climaxed, allowing him to be conscious now of John’s breath huffing against his neck, the sheen of sweat covering them both, the scent of his own seed as their bellies smeared it between them.
He clutched John tightly, urging him deeper, harder, whatever it took to bring him the same sweet release where Ricardo was now basking in the aftermath. With a contented sigh, he wrapped his thighs around John—and something shifted, something very, very good, and John’s breathing grew erratic, his thrusts turned to hard jabs, and finally he stiffened all over, gasped, and shuddered his warm, wet release.
Ricardo could have stayed that way forever, clenched against John, with abs, hips and ass deliciously sore, both of them reeking of wilted hairspray, designer lotion and sex. And for all that John was continually pleading caution, he was content enough to stay that way too—and finally his breathing deepened, his leg twitched once, twice…and Ricardo realized, as he drifted off too, that he’d never thought John would let his guard down enough to actually fall asleep.
Maybe John truly did feel like there were no more twists the mansion could throw his way.
Chapter 31
BIG TOP CHALLENGE
-DRAMATIC MUSIC-
“Last time, on Magic Mansion, we said goodbye to some special players…”
(Muriel) Remember—Gold Team rules!
(Gold Team) -CRYING-
“…and the teams…were dissolved.”
(Kevin) -BLEEP- Gold Team. -BLEEP- Red Team.
(John) Now, it’s every man…and woman…for themselves.
“The three top Magicians won a special prize.”
(Jia) Wooo!
“A visit from their loved ones…”
(Sue, to Monty) It’s a good thing I’ve made such great friends in the Mansion to keep me from getting homesick.
“…that could spell trouble.”
(Gary, to Ricardo) If you’re planning on making a move on her…think again.
(Ricardo, with Krista) Just give us a minute.
“The competition is heating up.”
(Faye) This is a game, and we’re all playing it to win.
(Sue) I’m tougher than I look.
(Faye, privately) -CRYING-
“And soon, someone else…will be going home.”
(Bev) I’ve come a lot farther than I ever thought I might.
(John) We’ll see how it all plays out.
“I’m your host, Monty Shaw, inviting you to stay tuned. It’s up to you to decide, who will make it to the Final Four…in Magic Mansion.”
___
Wrenching himself away from the narrow servants’ bed in the cool gray dawn was one of the most difficult things Ricardo had ever done—particularly when he wanted nothing more than to run up to the turret, fling open the window and shout at the top of his lungs that he was falling madly in love with John Topaz.
He’d slept better in John’s arms than he had since he’d arrived, so he was able to shower, hit the treadmill, and duck back into his room before any of the other contestants stirred. He was working off his post-coital giddiness with an extra set of crunches when an assistant brought him a breakfast bagel and told him to be at wardrobe in twenty.
Today’s costumes were circus-themed. The wardrobe assistant gave Ricardo a few leotards to try on. The white spandex number made Ricardo’s careful tan look amazing. He turned and regarded his profile in the full-length mirror, and said, “Do you have anything…gayer?”
The assistant gave Ricardo her typical doesn’t-miss-a-thing once-over. “Costumes don’t get much gayer than that.”
Ricardo turned to the other side and eyed his butt. “You think?”
“Not without adding chaps…and I’d never hear the end of that. Besides, your package looks great as it is. Chaps would be overkill.”
True.
She wrapped his wrists in tape to complete the acrobat look, then told him to send Professor Topaz in. John murmured, “You’re killing me,” as they passed each other in the hall. Ricardo did his best not to indulge in a happily-gloating smirk.
Sue and Jia were waiting by the vestibule fountain, both of them cute as can be. Wardrobe had put Jia in a slinky red snake-charmer ensemble, complete with latex snake, and Sue in pale blue stunt-rider costume with a cowboy hat, high-heeled white cowboy boots and decorative silver spurs. “Holy crap,” Jia said to Ricardo, looking directly at his crotch. “Watch where you point that thing.”
Ricardo and Jia laughed, and it seemed as if Sue would too…until her chin trembled, and she gave a loud sniff. Tears welled in her eyes. Ricardo knelt beside her, took her hand, and said, “Suze? What is it?”
“I can’t stop thinking…about yesterday.”
Neither could Ricardo. But not for the same reason. “Homesick?”
“What? No. Not at all.”
“Okay….” Then Ricardo had no explanation for the tears.
“It’s the boyfriend,” Jia said. “Gotta be. Probably something he said.”
Sue squinched her eyes shut, then nodded. “Gary. His name is Gary.”
“Did he propose to you?” Jia asked.
Sue nodded again.
Maybe they were tears of joy. “And…you said yes?” Ricardo guessed.
Sue screwed up her face and shook her head no.
Ricardo supposed they hadn’t actually looked like tears of joy, only that he’d been hoping they were. One thing was for sure. He felt relieved Sue hadn’t accepted that weenie’s proposal. He sat down beside Sue and put his arm around her, and the dam broke. She mashed her forehead to his shoulder, cupped her hand below her eyes to keep from getting mascara on his leotard, and started to weep. “I told him…we’d talk about…it later.”
“Hey, c’mon,” Ricardo said. “We’re gonna be taping a challenge any minute now. Stop making your eyes puffy.”
“He’s right, you know,” Jia said. “And that was smart, what you told that guy. What was he thinking, trying to force you into making a decision like that when you’ve got this competition on your mind? Some people just don’t get it. He probably thought he was doing you a favor. Self-centered dope.”
Sue did laugh, then. A timid, wet chuckle. “He is kind of a dope.”
Jia patted her knee. “Just because someone asks you to marry them doesn’t mean you’re obligated to say yes. Women are trained to put everyone else’s happiness above their own. But you wouldn’t be doing him any favors if you went ahead with it when you didn’t really love him.”
Sue’s tears slowed as Jia warmed up to her own tirade of advice.
“Who says you need to get married, anyway? You know what I think? You need to get to know you better. Work on your career. Pick up a few hobbies. Figure out what you want out of life. And this guy, if he’s not willing to wait? Then screw ’im.”
“Screw him,” Ricardo repeated.
“Yeah,” Sue echoed. “Screw ’im.”
“Screw who?”
Kevin Kazan. Ricardo felt his heart sink at the s
ound of Kevin’s voice. Why couldn’t he have been the one eliminated instead of Faye? The three Magicians sitting on the edge of the fountain looked up—screw you undoubtedly hanging there at the edge of Jia’s tongue—but she contained herself, and instead they just looked.
Kevin was all bulging oiled pecs and blackletter tattoos in a strong-man costume, with a broad leather belt, leopard print shorts, and thick leather cuffs.
Ricardo’s wardrobe assistant had been wrong. There was a costume gayer than the white leotard. It just wouldn’t have fit him. And, damn it all, the black bowler they’d dug up looked good on that creep, too. Ricardo was jealous for a moment there…until John stepped out of wardrobe.
John towered over Kevin in his trademark top hat—but this one had a red band to match his red bow tie and brocade vest. The vest was fitted within an inch of its life—no doubt a few staple-gun tacks were in place to make it look as painted-on as it did, contrasting gorgeously with the flowing sleeves of the white silk shirt. His plain black slacks were tighter than he normally wore them, too, leading Ricardo’s eyes down, down, down the long stretch of his thighs. To his over-the knee black leather boots.
And his whip.
“You’re drooling,” Jia whispered.
Iain bustled into the foyer with his phone at his ear, saying, “…I know it doesn’t look as realistic, but if we used actual popcorn we’d be fending off seagulls all day….” He trailed off his phone conversation, gave the contestants each a long look and said, “Not bad. But where’s Bev?”
The door to the third wardrobe room opened, and there Bev stood, all in white, filling the doorway. The entire doorway.
They’d dressed her as a clown.
Magic Mansion Page 27
