Contortion

by Aurelia T. Evans

  “Sit down,” Bell said, gesturing to the chair across from him. “Do you need your fortune told or your tarot read?”

  “If you want me to not cut into your customer time, I need for this to go more direct, Bell,” Valorie said.

  “Very well.” Bell shuffled the deck. “I will do my best.”

  He would. That didn’t mean he would succeed.

  “Why did you give me the fire-eater?” Valorie asked.

  “I don’t think that’s what you really want to ask me,” he said.

  “Bell.”

  “I think what you want to know is why I gave you to the fire-eater,” he continued with a patient smile. He set the tarot cards next to the small runner of velvet where he read palms.

  Valorie leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. Black leather pants, painted-on leather halter top. She wasn’t even cold yet in spite of the chill outside. If she got cold, she had a duster that ironically made her look like a demon slayer of some kind, like she ought to be striding through the circus with a semiautomatic.

  “So what if I am?” Valorie asked. He could see right through her nonchalance, but Valorie had too much pride not to attempt to show it.

  “You fear that, by giving the fire-eater to you, I’ve both elevated him and diminished you,” Bell said, “and you feel that I’m being unfair, promoting the boy so quickly when I am not usually so forgiving to those who have threatened what is mine.”

  “What gives, Bell?” she asked, wrapping her long arms around her abdomen.

  “I haven’t spared him pain ever since I gave him his voice back and made it so that he wouldn’t scream every time he burned,” Bell said. “He shall have to bear that for much longer. However, when he came to me, begging for a chance to show his loyalty, I recognized his sincerity. I gave him this small oasis because he proved far earlier than many of my lost souls that he could learn. What’s more, I thought he could be of use to you, a man compatible to your needs that are no longer being serviced. Was I wrong, Valorie? Is he inadequate?”

  “It’s not his physical attributes. It’s his character…and his status,” she said.

  “Just being accepted into your presence elevates him, true,” Bell said. “It was an unfortunate side effect. However, accepting him into your presence does not diminish you, my dear. I had hoped you might merely find him a pleasant toy, and you have already proved that his reward can also be his punishment.”

  “Seems awfully cushy for a punishment,” Valorie said.

  “Only because you’ve limited yourself by your own insecurity. Perhaps I can help broaden your mind on the matter,” Bell said.

  “Are you calling me insecure and small-minded?”

  “I’m calling you insecure,” he replied. “Are you going to tell me you interrupted potential customers and are considering leaving me because your foundation is rock-solid?”

  “Sometimes I hate you so much.”

  Bell smiled. He reached into the leather bag affixed to the beaded leather belt that slung low over his hips, lower than the black leather trousers he wore.

  There was so much leather in this circus that they could have been single-handedly responsible for the extinction of all the cows south of the Mason-Dixon line. At least, Valorie thought the skin was from cows. She hoped the skin was from cows.

  He pulled out a thick, studded collar with a heavy metal ring in the front. Attached to it was a thin but strong leash, nothing delicate or decorative. It wouldn’t break from a sudden jerk or anything short of a bolt cutter. If it could hold a large dog, it could hold a human.

  There was no way that heavy-duty thing fit in his bag.

  He then pulled out another collar—fierce-looking, with real metal spikes instead of studs. Both collars were of the same style as the cuffs he’d given Maya back when she’d decided the only way she could handle being in a demonic circus was by consenting to become Bell’s slave, which didn’t seem all that rewarding in Valorie’s opinion. But Maya was still wearing the cuffs. And here Bell was handing her her own hardware.

  “If you believe he should be shown no mercy, then show him none. I didn’t hand him over to you just for the one night, my dear,” Bell said, setting the collars and leash on the table in front of him. “I thought you could get quite some use out of him. And now I pass on responsibility over him from me to you. If he steps out of line, it is for you to see that he is punished by the Ringmaster and your duty to heal what needs to be healed. In the meantime, he is yours to discipline as you see fit, for your own pleasure or for his pain, as long as you stay within the rules of this circus.”

  “Like you do with Maya?” Valorie asked.

  He nodded. “You’ve done quite well with him so far. He would have to consent to your punishment, to your ownership, but I believe he has made his wishes quite clear.”

  “Is that what this is?” Valorie asked, nudging the chain with one of her dusty feet. “A fulfillment of one of his wishes? Am I roped into another person’s wish again, Bell?”

  “Unspoken,” he replied. “He continues to heed Kitty’s warning. She does make sure that my circus runs more smoothly, without repercussions of wishes to contend with, but it also makes my life less entertaining. The wishes in this tent, Valorie… You cannot imagine how mundane. I need a challenge, my dear, a real challenge.”

  “Install a wishing well,” Valorie said. “So you saw fit to fulfill his wish without him having to say it?”

  “I fulfilled your spoken wish too,” Bell said. “I could have compelled a wish from him, but I suspected you would value more his being bound to you of his own will rather than my magic. What do you think?”

  Valorie’s lips thinned, but she hooked the collars and the leash on her ankle and brought them to her hands. She glowered at them.

  “I don’t know whether this is enough,” Valorie said. “And I’m not sure whether I want that creep. Shit on all that reformed rhetoric. I don’t care if it’s genuine. He hasn’t proven himself to me.”

  “Then make him,” Bell said, standing.

  Her audience with him was over.

  He slid his fingers around her wrist before she could leave, drawing her back toward him. He snaked an arm behind the small of her back.

  “Bell…” she whispered. Having him so close brought everything back, desire that went so much deeper than lust. That was how it manifested only because that was all her body could process. It hurt like a whip to her heart to be this close, yet not to have him no matter how tightly she held him—not to have anyone. The wish Maya had made had taken away her jealousy, not her yearning. If Valorie had a wish left to spare, she would have wished her love away. It hurt too much and had made her far too vulnerable, far too unpredictable. It had changed her without her realizing it then left her out in that cold—all her changes for nothing.

  She tried to back away but stepped closer at the first sign she would lose contact. God, she hated herself so much right now.

  “He’s not a consolation prize,” Bell said. He traced her collarbone with the tips of his fingers then found the line of her cheekbone. “You aren’t second best, and you aren’t my leftovers fit only for the dogs. I don’t like it when you think so little of me. You know that you could still have me.”

  “Not the way I want you,” Valorie said. “Maya gets your heart, Bell. I know that. I accept it. But I can’t have anything less than that. It’s why I cut you loose. It’s why I cut Lennon loose. I don’t want a timeshare arrangement. If I can’t have all your heart, I don’t want the rest. Whether you want me to feel like tossed-out leftovers, that’s how I feel, and I feel it most when you try to convince me that I’m not.”

  She stroked his cheek but forced herself to retreat, once again the loser in a battle Bell hadn’t meant to start—but he’d done it anyway.

  It was like ripping open an old wound over and over again. Lennon had been the consolation prize, not John. John was the consolation for the consolation prize—a poor bandage for such s
elf-inflicted wounds. Bell needed to stop trying to be the man she’d fallen in love with. He needed to become her boss again. This needed to become more professional now, or else she wasn’t going to be able to stay, not without the wound getting infected.

  Perhaps with something worse than jealousy this time.

  Valorie couldn’t help but feel a little justified by the hurt in Bell’s eyes. It was difficult to hurt jinn. Perhaps that meant she had some power left, although it was hardly the kind of power she’d signed up for.

  “It was never my intention,” Bell said.

  “No, but it was the outcome you knew would happen,” Valorie responded.

  “Could happen. Until I became sure that it would happen,” he said.

  “You know that doesn’t make any sense to us, Bell, and it’s not helpful knowing you put me through this even when you knew what would definitely happen,” Valorie said.

  “I had to,” Bell said. “Because it was going to happen.”

  She sighed and held up the hardware. “Thanks for the gifts. I’ll think about using them.”

  “Valorie, you are still a queen here, as much as you ever were,” Bell said. “What can I do to convince you to stay?”

  A deposed queen was no longer a queen. His logic was faulty, or it wasn’t human logic. Either way, it wasn’t helpful.

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “You came to me.”

  “I came to the boss. There is nothing you can do for me. Let me try to fix this on my own. And if I can’t…” Valorie unhooked the tent flap to open it up for customers again. “Then I need you to let me go. You can’t have everything you want, Bell. That’s not how this works.”

  The inaccuracy of her saying he couldn’t have what he wanted was tempered by the knowledge that Bell only took so much for himself. He was at his most ruthless when fulfilling wishes. The rest of the time, he would rather let his toys do the things they did without too much of his interference—as long as they didn’t interfere with the progress of his circus.

  In truth, Bell could have everything he wanted if he didn’t have a soft spot for free will. Sometimes he indentured a will, but he’d always let it free after a time. ‘Free’, though, was a relative term.

  Some part of Valorie would always be trapped in his clutches as long as she stayed.

  All the more reason why she should probably leave.

  So she’d decided. But she wouldn’t leave all at once. Time to start looking for what she could do after she left, where she could go.

  Until then, maybe she could have a little fun, the last bit of amazing sex she might ever have again. Valorie would make sure it was worth the short while.

  Then John would have to go back to depending on his hand and impressing the boss into giving him some other kind of reprieve. And she would have to find a way to live outside this place, surrounded by people and the demons unseen, never quite fitting in even if she never flew her freak flag ever again. She’d never belong on the outside. She just didn’t know whether she’d ever belong here either, and here hurt more.

  * * * *

  “Hey!” Valorie shouted in the middle of the crowd. “Fire hose!” she added, just in case the boy couldn’t recognize the voice of his Queen.

  John turned around from where he’d been cooking customer’s raw sausages on a stick for them. People loved it when he did that. Whenever anyone thought to sic health inspectors on them, they always found that the sausages were cooked through. It was safer to eat anything here than just about anywhere else. Unless a person made the wrong wish, of course.

  They were in the middle of Oddity Row, John in front of Christina’s, Sandra’s and Arnie’s tents, which were down-curve from her own and meant she could sometimes see John and sometimes not when he was doing his usual stunts.

  “Come here!” she called, pointing imperiously in front of her—at her feet.

  He looked around, anxious about the crowd of now-curious onlookers. But when she directed him to her again, he slowly made his way through the crowd. It parted before him, just like it had when he’d done his candle walk.

  “What are you doing?” John whispered.

  Valorie cut him off with a hiss. “I didn’t tell you to speak, did I?” she asked. “No. I’m telling you to kneel, pet.”

  “Here? Right now? Isn’t that—?”

  She hissed again, snapping her fingers, and he stopped talking.

  It was important that this be done. Here. Now. Where all could bear witness. That was the only way this was going to work for her. And it was John’s final test before she declared him ready for duty or kicked him to the proverbial curb.

  She wasn’t going to jump him in front of everyone, but she could make him obey. The crowd would think it was only an act. Suggestive. Strange. But that’s what Arcanium was.

  “I want you to kneel. If you want to be my pet dragon, you will kneel before your Queen.”

  John visibly bristled. Public submission was very different from private—just a step up from public humiliation.

  Valorie lifted her left hand, which had been holding the leash and studded collar against her thigh. Now she exposed it for what it was.

  “If you want a queen, dragon, you have to be bound,” she said. “It’s your choice. Submit to me in all things and wear my collar, or you can have your freedom…and its price.”

  Smoke rose from his nostrils. He sniffed the heat in and shook his head, against the discomfort rather than in denial. There were murmurs around them at that.

  “You said anything,” Valorie reminded him quietly. “You promised you would do anything. I’m showing you what anything looks like.”

  John clenched his teeth, making the tendons at his temples twitch. But his knees buckled as though he’d given himself a mental kick.

  And he fell to his knees before her.

  She was still a little nauseated from her time with Bell, but damn, watching the man do that in front of everyone was sweet.

  “Whatever I require. Nod.”

  He did so.

  “Your subjugation. Your submission. Your humiliation. If I require it, you will give your life to me.”

  He nodded again.

  “You will serve your Queen with everything you have, every weakness, every bit of power. If the dragon agrees, raise your head and set the air on fire,” Valorie commanded him.

  The exposed fine hairs on her arms crinkled at the dry heat that emitted from his parted lips. He blew the fire at her, and for a second, she thought she’d stepped over his line, that he would retaliate the same way any man like him would retaliate—with violence, extreme destruction. He could leave her as so much ash if he applied that power against her. Bell could probably resurrect the ash, but it would hurt like hell then become terrifying nothing before Bell could get to her.

  The flames forked well before they hit her abdomen, instead surrounding her with a ring of fire.

  She hoped he’d taken care not to get the fire close enough to scorch the leather. That would be unfortunate. Valorie would think it was humorous. Lady Sasha would be less inclined toward humor.

  The audience that had gathered around them leaped back from the heat, but they weren’t in danger either. Valorie could see from the glitter in his eyes how maintaining the fire ring pained him. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod. John drew the fire back in on the same paths he’d made for it, like a recording in reverse.

  “Good boy,” Valorie said, stepping forward to stroke the scarred side of his face.

  She didn’t think he’d intended to lean into her touch.

  Valorie licked her lips. Her mouth was dry for reasons that had nothing to do with the way he’d burned away all the moisture from the air around her.

  She stepped around him and straddled his calves. When she looked around at the crowd, she could pinpoint the people who understood what this was, that it wasn’t just the circus version of a fairy tale about a beautiful but wicked queen and a dragon giving her h
is allegiance. There were a few people out there who recognized a collaring ceremony when they saw it. Valorie liked their shock that she was bold enough to do it in public, even if they didn’t know whether it was real or not.

  Valorie opened the leather collar. The insides were slightly padded for comfort. She adjusted his head with her knuckles against his chin to make fastening it easier. It was like tying a belt around his neck.

  “You can remove this at night if you’re not with me, before a shower or a rainstorm, or if I remove it from you. But when you wake up, you’ll wear it so that everyone in Arcanium, cast and crowd, will know that you belong to me. The leash is mine.”

  It was already fastened to the collar ring and wrapped around her wrist. She unwound the chain so that it curved down from the ring, slithering against his skin. A link caught briefly on his nipple. He shuddered.

  She walked back around him and spread her arms.

  “If you would like, you may thank your Queen, pet,” Valorie said.

  John glanced up at her. Fuck. If she had to feel vulnerable, she could handle it so much better when someone else was more vulnerable than she. And he didn’t stop looking at her like that as he crawled forward, dusting up the knees of his trousers. She wrapped the leash around her wrist again as he approached.

  He hovered his hands on either side of her hips. She could practically see him consider cupping her ass, but he stayed teenager-appropriate with his warm hands on her hips, half on her skin over the low-cut leather. John blew gently against her navel, cool air then the light burn of a candle flame before he smothered it with a kiss. Blood rushed between her legs, swelling her folds and the inner walls of her pussy. If she were allowed to have him eat her out again, she’d have commanded him to open her pants and have at it. But she had to stay appropriate as well.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, velvet against her belly.

  Valorie smiled, as cold and calculating as any monarch, although her insides had heated enough to thaw winter. She bent down to unclasp the leash from the collar.