“Oh man, you were so lucky he had you burning your tongue and face every time you opened your mouth,” Valorie said, laughing without humor. “I almost wish you’d argued to Bell that you hadn’t done anything to his sweetheart and two other members of his circus.”
“It still burns,” John said quietly. “Not as bad as it used to. And I can talk and eat things without the fire coming out my mouth. But it still burns too hot inside me sometimes, and if I’m not careful… Every time I use it, it’s real fire, real heat. I just heal faster now.”
“You’re still lucky.”
“I know,” John said. “Shawn got his tongue back, and he’s still not talking. But me…”
“You’re talking an awful lot.”
“Before I came here, I was committed to football. I might not be a nice guy or too big to fail like I thought I was, but I’m still a team player. I always sacrificed for the team. I didn’t try to be a star if it meant leaving the team in the dust. I wanted us to win, not me. The scholarships I got for college were awesome, but I got them because of the sportsmanship too, not just the skill. See? That was part of why I figured I couldn’t be so bad. I got awards for being selfless on the field. I was in my church’s youth group and went to church every Sunday in college. Wednesday, if we had a game on Sunday. Every week. I was a team player there too. Sang in the choir and everything.”
“I get it,” Valorie said. “You were the golden boy on the outside, but it was just foil wrapping.”
“I spent the first half year or something thinking wrong had been done to me. No one would talk to me or do anything for me. I had to drink smoothies through a thin straw. I thought I was going to starve without a steak or a hamburger. I lived with Shawn then. We were mute together, and we couldn’t look at each other without knowing what kind of shit we were in. His eye… I’m still not over watching his eyes dissolve and the one he has now growing in. I still can’t look directly at him, and he can’t look at my burns. When I burned his ass one night, Bell separated us, and then I was alone. I was so angry.”
“Because of what happened to you,” Valorie said.
“Yeah. I was such a tragic fucking hero. Then I realized that the reason all y’all were shunning me like a plague victim was because I was the plague you were avoiding. You were treating me like a monster, as you called it, because I was a monster. I was a golden boy before because people treated me like one, and it finally hit me that I wasn’t a golden boy anymore, because I was being treated like a monster. And if I was a monster now, I was a monster back then too, because I hadn’t changed. Y’all weren’t ignoring me because of my face or because I’d spurt fire at you given half a chance. You were ignoring me because I was an asshole.”
“Congratulations on your enlightenment,” Valorie said, reaching for the doorknob.
“I’m not telling you this for validation or reward, Valorie,” John said.
“Don’t you dare say my name, pig.”
“Sorry.” John looked down. The contrition appeared sincere. “I’m telling you this to explain why I did that stunt. I didn’t stop being a team player. Arcanium’s my team now, and as long as people think I deserve to be here—including me—it’s going to be my team for a long time. And now I guess I’ll do anything for it. I’ll do anything to be more a part of this team. Do you get that? If that means being wrapped in rope from head to toe and licking your feet clean, I’ll do it. If it means I treat everyone like they’re better than me because they are, I’ll do that. If Bell wants me to walk around the circus with flammable jelly on my junk and gives me a match to light it, I’ll do it. You said people don’t change. Maybe they don’t, but I get why I’m here. I get what I did wrong, and I want to make it better however I can. Maybe that’s not change, but let’s just say I want a chance, even if the pain never goes away and I never get to see my family again. I probably deserve worse. And my family deserves better than a son who got himself stuck in hell.”
He shook his head. “Six months. Or was it eight months? Whatever. Too long for me to figure out I was in hell for things I did instead of because demons are evil. Terrible as it is, demons do what they’re supposed to do, like you said. I was the one doing evil I wasn’t supposed to do. And I can’t imagine the hurt I caused to people before Christina and Maya and Troy or what I would have done in the future if Bell hadn’t stopped me. It causes real horror in me, man. It changes everything when you realize you thought you were the hero and it turns out you were the villain the whole time. I don’t know whether I’ve changed, but I’m trying.”
“Good for you. You get twenty-five cents and a toaster. I’m not interested in your confession, fire-eater. I came here to tell you to leave…me…alone. If I want you for some reason, I’ll come to you. You keep changing your life in ten easy steps by yourself and maybe you’ll get into heaven. But I’m not heaven,” Valorie said. “I’d be fine if you rot in the eternal kind of hell, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my life.”
“Whatever you say,” John said.
Once again, that infuriating sense that he was mocking her behind that honest face, as though his burns masked the real thing behind something that appeared damaged and innocent.
“Just so we’re clear,” Valorie said. “Because you talked an awful lot, and guys like you don’t always hear what other people are saying over the sound of their own voices.”
“I guess I had a lot I haven’t been able to say,” John said, staring down at his bare feet and shrugging. “You kept listening.”
“My mistake,” she said. “If I’d known walking out would have stopped you, I would have done it a while back.”
He held his hand to his heart, not a gesture of false sincerity but of a man with heartburn. With him, that was probably more literal than most.
“Excuse me,” he said. He scooted back with his blanket still around him and opened the window next to his bed. Like a dragon with indigestion, he expelled a burst of flame into the air outside the trailer. Valorie smelled smoked meat.
John coughed, wincing. But before he could turn back to her, she said, “Just leave me alone,” and slammed the door behind her.
She could still smell the burned flesh outside, of course, but more than that, she started to feel nauseated with every step she took toward her RV. She associated the burned smell in the air with the image of a scolded puppy.
It wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong this time, just something she hadn’t known what to do with. Still, he didn’t deserve her pity. He’d earned every healing burn down his slimy throat. What things had John shoved down a girl’s throat while still thinking he was a good guy? Guys who did what John had been about to do with his friends that night, they’d usually done stuff like that before, which meant John was lower scum than murderers to her. His victims had to keep living with what he’d done, and not everyone could just shake it off or learn and grow and rise up to be the better person.
He hadn’t done anything wrong this time, but he’d done too much wrong in his life. He hadn’t deserved last night. He didn’t deserve anything else. If he thought he could make amends by giving candles and being a nice guy—for his own benefit—he had another think coming.
She was better than this. She was better than him.
As she headed for her RV, she saw Joanne and Jane, with Seth and Lars bookending their crablike gait. Seth’s and Lars’ hands met behind the conjoined twins, but that wasn’t their attempt at subtly acknowledging their relationship. Joanne and Jane couldn’t get away from each other because their spines were fused. Seth and Lars couldn’t get away from each other because they needed to be in constant contact. They couldn’t break away from each other if they tried. On either side of the twins, holding hands was how they kept in touch.
Just another reason why their secret relationship wouldn’t have been shameful to admit, but whatever floated their boat. They somehow made it work, though, with the twins. It was so comfortable between all of them, so easy in spit
e of the twins’ and the boys’ physical complications. Lars kissed Jane’s neck—at least Valorie assumed it was Jane because Lars was usually with Jane.
She had closed her hand around the handle of her RV door when she noticed Bell carrying Maya to their own RV, her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. Maya had buried her face in his neck. She was naked, her back lashed as deeply as the Ringmaster could give it to her without shattering bone. This was the only way Bell could hold her if he was going to tend her wounds in the privacy of the RV, although that wasn’t always their Saturday night plan following Maya’s voluntary beating. Sometimes they shared it with other members of the cast. Sometimes they didn’t make it to the RV.
Bell held her so tenderly, his arms and legs flexing with strength. She could see his love plain as the human mask that he wore, except his feelings were so much less of a lie. He was jinn, and some lumped him in with the other demons, but he could love so much more powerfully than Valorie had ever imagined he was capable of when he’d been with her. So could the other demons, although they avoided it whenever possible. It hurt their cred, and love could be dangerous for both them and the one they had the misfortune to fall in love with. But it happened. Valorie had seen it. And Bell was so fucking in love he could probably stop the Earth’s core from rotating if he thought Maya would want it. Any love he’d had for Valorie had been a poor imitation in comparison.
Just in case she needed more salt in the wound, she heard Melanie’s trailer door shut behind her. The metal door had a distinctive sound. Lennon was with his little mermaid once again.
And here came Sandra, holding Arnie’s hand as the golems rolled him to his custom trailer, which allowed them to open the whole back of the trailer for Arnie to climb in without getting stuck in a door. Arnie, as always, looked suspicious and star-struck at the same time when Sandra followed him in.
Troy’s trailer was shaking. Christina would be in there. She guessed that if she stepped back twenty paces, she’d see Carlo’s trailer doing the same dance.
Valorie hadn’t been horny a minute ago. She still wasn’t, if she was being honest with herself. Her body had responded with arousal, but her brain hadn’t caught up.
She still slammed her RV door shut.
She also slammed John’s door shut behind her hard enough to make the whole tiny trailer tremble and rock as though in an earthquake.
“Not a word, fire-eater,” Valorie said through gritted teeth as she climbed over him in bed. “You want this? Push the blanket down.”
John blinked, startled by her abrupt entrance and the brazen declaration. He might have also been surprised because his window was open and the blinds only halfway down so that he could lean out without obstruction. Anyone could see in if they wanted to.
Anyone could see her with him.
His gaze flicked over her, more impulse than deliberate, but she felt her nipples harden under the leather at his observation.
He warily pushed the edge of the blanket down from his waist. His cock was heavy and full, leaning against his thigh. It twitched under her scrutiny, as though awakening from a lustful sleep.
“How long have you been like this?” Valorie asked. “You can speak to answer.”
“Since I woke up. Worse after the act. Worse more after you came in.”
But he hadn’t stroked himself or squeezed like some guys did when they thought they were being circumspect in front of a woman. They never were, and it always felt suggestive, even if that wasn’t the intention.
“Have you touched yourself since last night?” Valorie asked. “Don’t speak.”
John paused. Then shook his head no.
She grabbed his chin and opened his mouth. “Good,” she murmured, before sinking into him, taking him over with her kiss. She was fierce, making him jerk when she nipped at him every time he thought about meeting her kiss with passion of his own. His passion could only be sated by submitting, and he’d learned his lesson from last night. He leaned back against the wall and let her wrest her pleasure from him.
“Undress me,” she said as she wrapped her hand around his cock, stroking the shaft and avoiding the head.
The sound of the zipper was deafening in the small space. Valorie rose up over him to kiss him again and to speed up the process, open-mouthed kisses that made his cock pulse, heat, grow even more in her hand. He shuddered, as though cold or afraid, as he folded the leather down her body. She didn’t have to move from her possession of his mouth for him to pull the leather from her legs one at a time. She simply contorted until she could grab the leather from him and throw it away, glad to be rid of it because she couldn’t wait anymore to have him inside. Having him in her hand wasn’t enough. It only whet the appetite in her cunt, arousal that had emerged as desire under her kisses, under his submission.
He would do anything for Arcanium. He would do anything for her because she was a part of it.
“For your sins,” she murmured against his lips as she released his cock. Valorie raised her eyebrows at him, expectant. He quickly understood what she wanted him to do.
John exhaled sharply as he took his cock in his own hand and held the head steady for Valorie to slide down around him. This time she didn’t take her time. She ground her pussy against his fist, almost taking it in with his cock when he didn’t get out of the way.
“This isn’t a romance, dragon,” Valorie panted, already bobbing over him so fast and hard, keeping herself tight around him, that he shouted. “You can be my pet, but I’ll never be your girl. And I’m not your happy ending.”
“Whatever you want,” he gasped, arching his back, his neck straining.
When she took his face between her palms, prepared to wrench him back into a near-bruising kiss—maybe prepared to draw blood this time—he suddenly covered his mouth with his hand.
His body became inferno hot around and inside her. The air filled with a fresh draft of burned skin because he couldn’t get to the window in time. He threw his head back, and Valorie leaned away just enough that the burst of fire roaring out of him, along with his scream, didn’t singe her face or hair.
She grasped his shoulders and dug her nails into the flesh, continuing to ride him because the heat… Oh God, the heat. It spread through her like arousal, like her body couldn’t tell the difference. Demons had a different kind of heat that suffused a body, tingling like warm water on cold skin, but this…this was the dry heat of an oven, aggressive as it filled her, as she aggressively filled herself with his cock. She’d taken him so quickly that he pulled her taut, hit places that hadn’t been any more ready than he.
John coughed. His fire-free mouth didn’t look charred like it had back when he’d been forbidden to open his mouth wider than the circumference of a straw. It was inflamed, but he gave a muffled groan when she dove in, tasting the heat that had been left behind.
Smoke was a good smell to her—not cigarette smoke but real smoke. It was the smell of home, family memories. It didn’t matter that it came from his body. She wrapped her arm around his neck, kissing him until tears pricked her eyes and she had to quickly brush them away before the boy realized it. She couldn’t let him see that. She couldn’t let anyone see that.
He surrounded her with his warmth, his strong arms, arms that could hold themselves out for thirty minutes without wavering, and his strong legs underneath her, legs that could dance for ten. The way she fucked him with her cunt was almost violent, but neither of them were going to complain. Their mouths were occupied and her body sang, the music rising higher and higher. Valorie hurried toward its end.
This didn’t need to be drawn out. The sooner she could leave, the sooner she could get her bearings and wonder why she punished herself like this, why she had to let him make her feel good when he was one of the last men she should be with. Being with him, encouraging him like this? It brought her down to his level. His disgusting, unforgivable level. And he got her after the things he’d done? Twice?
The rest had rejected her. Was John her consolation prize, or was she his?
John took his arms away to grab fistfuls of his covers as he shouted—this time without the fiery column that had singed the already charred ceiling—and came. It wasn’t the eruption of before, but he still had enough heat within for her to feel it. More burning arousal trickled down her spine until she couldn’t take it anymore. She clenched her teeth against a cry as she seemed to burst around him.
As soon as she was finished and her heart stopped racing as if she’d run a marathon, Valorie got up from him without another word. His cock left a damp stain against his hip.
She snatched her harlequin leather costume and stalked out of the trailer, slamming the door behind her once again.
Chapter Five
“I have ten dollars. I need a minute with the boss, Maya,” Valorie said. She held up her bill.
Bell usually didn’t like for his cast to interrupt the flow of customers, but Valorie had found the loophole a long time ago. Customers paid for his time. If the cast wanted to pay for the time, he wouldn’t object. Besides, Valorie knew from personal experience that he sometimes took time out of the day for his own pleasures. She was mostly sure that she didn’t have to bring the money, not with their history, but it was her way to show she was serious, not just banking on their original relationship.
“Sure,” Maya said.
She didn’t ask Valorie what she wanted to talk to Bell about, nor did she check with Bell first. She stood up from the armchair she used to flash her legs at male customers while Bell flirted shamelessly with the women and stepped out, looking like an extra from a French bordello. Maya never tried to get in Valorie’s way when it came to Bell, even though she didn’t need to be afraid of Valorie anymore. Maya had won, but she respected what Valorie had once had with Bell as well as Bell’s continued affection for Valorie.
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