Charles abruptly closed his mouth. “How have you been, really?”
“Peachy.”
“Valorie.”
“Started out a little shaky, ended up transcendent for a majority of the time, recently turned shaky for different reasons. The contortion part doesn’t suck, though. How about you?”
“Why can you never take things seriously?” Charles asked, deflating a little.
“What makes you think I’m not taking this seriously? I was summing up twenty years. What did you expect?” Valorie asked. “A bedtime story?”
He sank back into his seat. “Fine. I guess the sum of my life was covered by what you saw, then. Good catching up with you.”
“You too.” Being cold to him again hurt like ice picks stabbing her all over. But making him regret ever seeing her might be the only thing that could save him. A girl had to do her part.
“Do you have to kill me if I just try to…forget? Assume she left me for another man and go with that? My wife doesn’t know I’m here. I told her I had to go back in to work. She had no reason not to believe me. I can just leave, go to work, go home and pretend this never happened. You don’t have to do anything to me. I won’t tell a soul. Who would believe me if I did?” Charles laughed a little. “I’m not sure whether I believe it myself, even now.”
“If you believed it, I would be less worried,” Bell said. “Those who do not doubt me don’t cross me. But I can hear the truth in your words. I see the truth in your mind. You will not tell your wife. You will not tell your pastor. You will not tell the police. You will keep these memories for a while. Then they will fade by your choice. I can accept this end.”
He stood. With Charles sitting, this was one of those few times that Bell would be taller than him in his human form, but perhaps Charles got a flicker of what Bell carried inside him, a glimpse of the intensity barely contained in the man who he walked around as—a power that was effortlessly charismatic, a power not to be reckoned with. And all in the way that he carried himself when he looked down upon the two humans in the small room.
“But only this end,” Bell emphasized. “If you speak of the real Arcanium to anyone—if you think of speaking of the real Arcanium—I will be there. My power is not limited to this circus. I can punish you here, and I can punish you in your home. I assure you, you do not want me to punish you in your own home, sir. Your family would be quite upset.”
“Don’t you dare threaten my family. It’s bad enough you did what you did to Valorie. And I’m still not sure whether you did something her mind too or not. But don’t go near my family,” Charles said.
Now he stood again. If he’d hoped his height would faze Bell, he was disappointed.
“I won’t threaten or harm your family if you give your word that you won’t threaten or harm Arcanium and the people in it,” Bell replied.
Charles glanced down at Valorie as though expecting her to protest in some way, interfere on his behalf. But what Bell was offering was a risk, a bigger risk than Bell usually made when it came to his precious circus. Valorie kept her suspicions to herself, however. She didn’t want to get in the way of Bell’s generosity.
“It’s a good deal, Charles. Believe me,” Valorie said. She bent one leg against her chest and wrapped her arm around it. “You should take it. Take it. Run. And don’t come back.”
“But…” Charles tried to continue, but sound didn’t come out of his mouth.
“No. Don’t come back. Don’t make this more complicated than it already is. Forget about it. Forget about me,” Valorie said.
“Is that how you handled it? You forgot about me?” Charles asked. He fussed with his jacket and finally shoved his hands in his pockets like the young man he had been with her. It was funny how a person regressed like that when confronted with their past.
“I didn’t forget,” Valorie said. “I just…put you aside. There was nothing I could do then, and there’s nothing you can do now except protect yourself and your family. And let’s face it, Charles, we were almost family. We weren’t family.”
“Doesn’t mean I didn’t lose something just as precious to me,” Charles said quietly. “You’ll never know what it was like when you disappeared.”
“Neither will you,” Valorie replied.
Charles looked down where he toed at the rug with his dress shoe. His throat worked as he fought to swallow.
“I’ll take the deal,” Charles said. “I give you my word, but I won’t like it. I don’t like any of this. It stinks to high heaven, Valorie. If you can find a way out of here, I suggest you take it.”
“It’s my business now, Charles,” she said. “Not yours. That ended a long time ago. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it’s just the way things are.”
He nodded, still not looking at her. “Can I leave now?” he asked Bell. His gaze landed on Bell for a bare second before flitting away. It seemed like scared or sullen behavior, but Valorie recognized it as another sign that he was mulling on something.
The tent flap unlatched.
“You’re free to leave. Would you like your ticket for today refunded?” Bell asked, back to the consummate professional.
“You’d do that?” Charles asked, glancing up again.
“Of course, sir,” Bell said, pulling a twenty-dollar bill from his leather bag. “You didn’t come for the circus. You came for a personal visit. And I kept you here in my tent so that you couldn’t avail yourself of our attractions even if you’d wanted to enjoy them. It would be unacceptably dishonest of me to not refund your ticket.”
“‘Unacceptably dishonest’,” Charles said drily. “That’s a unique bit of wordsmithing.”
“Well, the carnival booths use a certain amount of trickery,” Bell replied. “And we lie by pretending truth is illusion. It’s what the customers expect. It’s what they want. Many professions involve such acceptable dishonesty, as you should be aware.”
Charles gave a side-nod of concession. He accepted the money that Bell gave him.
“So now I just forget. Somehow,” he said. The glance he gave her took a few more seconds, as though committing the woman he now knew was her to memory.
“It’ll get easier with time,” Valorie said.
She got up and enveloped him in her arms, although she was careful not to press her cheek against his chest. The makeup would smear on his jacket or his pristine white shirt. That would be a trick to explain to Janice. At first, he stiffened. Then he relaxed and embraced her as well, although he tried to keep it detached. It was a fool’s errand, but Valorie appreciated that he’d tried.
“It’ll get easier?” he whispered in her ear.
“I promise,” Valorie answered, curling her fingers into the cheap material of his jacket. “Eventually, it’ll all seem like a dream. Best to think of it like that.”
Charles stepped out of her arms. He took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going.”
“Have a good day, sir,” Bell called after him before Charles ducked under the tent flap.
Valorie clutched the back of her chair. “Are you proud of yourself?” she snapped at Bell. “What the ever-loving fuck, Bell?”
Bell walked around his small table. “I don’t know what you mean. I made this all work out perfectly. Better than I could have. You understand that more than most.”
“You’re playing a game, and I’m going to figure out what it is,” Valorie said.
“There’s nothing to figure out,” Bell said. He kissed her lips warmly. He wouldn’t smear her face paint like Charles would have.
Valorie jerked her lips away and stepped out of his arms. “You’re lying. If you hurt him, Bell, I’m out. I’m so out of here you won’t even get two weeks’ notice. And I know you’ll tell me if you hurt him, because otherwise you wouldn’t get the satisfaction of my broken-hearted meltdown. Besides, what does it matter if you drive me away? There are a lot more where I came from, aren’t there?”
She stalked out of the tent before Bell could say anyt
hing more or placate her with his charms. The Zen from the morning was gone, but a contortionist’s work was never done. She still had to give the rest of the day to Arcanium. And if she had to curse Bell’s name the whole time in order to get through it, she’d do that.
Somehow, she got through it. She always did.
Chapter Eight
Valorie jolted awake when she heard someone inside her RV. Without thinking, she went for the knife under her pillow, holding it in front of her as she sat up.
“You keep a knife in your bed?” John asked, holding up his hands.
He’d turned on a light in the living area. His body was a nothing but a dark silhouette, but one she recognized.
“I used to keep demons,” Valorie said. “Once they went away, you bet your ass I kept a knife. What do you want? It’s—” She checked her digital clock. “Okay, it’s only two o’clock in the morning. Not as late as I thought it was, but I just got to sleep, man.”
“I’m a night person. It didn’t occur to me that you weren’t, after some of our evenings,” John said. “Sorry for waking you. I guess it was the light.”
“And your big, skulking body creaking the vehicle. What are you doing here?”
“It’s been half a week, and—”
“You’re pissed off that I haven’t given you the amount of sexing you think you’re supposed to get from me. Is that it?” Valorie said, but she let her knife hand fall to the sheets.
“Would you stop putting words in my mouth? No. It’s not about what kind of sex I’m getting. I mean, it’s inconvenient that I’m not getting any when I kind of expected I’d be getting more, but that’s my problem, not yours. I get it. What pisses me off is that you keep thinking the worst of me when I told you I’ve changed. And I’ve done things to prove I’ve changed,” John said.
“There’s where you’re wrong,” Valorie said. “A few weeks doesn’t prove anything. You’re relieved you’re getting sex, and that makes you more inclined to be obedient. But if you don’t feel entitled to it now, you’ll feel entitled to it after maybe a few more months. A person doesn’t change that fast, not when you’ve been a douchebag for years.”
“No,” he insisted. “You put enough pressure on something, it’ll change fast. We saw it all the time at church, people turning their lives around. It happens. And this place…this place makes a man want to change. It’s like I died a little and had a vision of hell, Valorie. I’ve experienced what happens to guys like me. I’m a different man than I was. You’ve got to believe me.”
“I’m not convinced,” Valorie said. “You take the humiliation and commands like a good boy, but I’m not convinced you’re a completely changed man, fire-eater. It’s going to be a long time before that happens. Now, did you come here to argue your redemption? Because I’m so not the one for you to be having this conversation with, and I want to go back to sleep.”
“You haven’t used my collar in days,” John said.
“The circus hasn’t been open,” Valorie replied, flopping back down on her pillows. She didn’t let go of the knife.
“I didn’t know the collar was for the crowd. I thought it was for us, and you just happened to make it public.”
“Us? There is no us,” Valorie said. “I told you that at the beginning.”
“Mistress and pet is still an us. That’s all I’m saying,” John said, sitting at the foot of the bed. But he didn’t sit anywhere near where her feet were. Smart man.
“The collar wasn’t a wedding ring. I’m not required to give it up when I’m tired just because you need a fuck,” Valorie said. She turned over under the covers and closed her eyes.
“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t need sex from you?” John said.
Even with her eyes closed, she could raise a skeptical eyebrow just fine.
“Okay, maybe I do need sex. Maybe I am uncomfortable. But I’m not here for sex right now. That’s not the only reason I want to be with you, Valorie,” he said. “Can’t I just…help? Whatever’s bothering you, can I help?”
“No,” she murmured.
“Can I stay?” he asked quietly. “No sex. No expectations. Can I stay and help you relax?”
Valorie opened one eye to peer up at him. There were those damn puppy dog eyes again. Valorie wasn’t one to be swayed by scars like some of the girls who came through Arcanium. She barely saw them, actually. But his expressions were somehow enhanced rather than masked by those scars. The way his collar framed the lower half of his face didn’t help her either.
She sighed and closed her eyes again.
“Fine,” she said, kicking off the sheets and tucking the knife back under her pillow. She was wearing a gray T-shirt and boy shorts only because it was cold. In the summer, she slept naked. “Do whatever you like. But we’re not having sex, and I’m going back to sleep. I don’t care how blue your balls get.”
The incubus had been sending out signals as strongly as usual, but it turned out that his magic wasn’t infallible. Valorie was aroused, but God if she didn’t have a single fuck to give for sex right now. Let her nethers tingle all they wanted, her pussy ache, her nipples press against her rehearsal T-shirts. Seriously. No fucks to give. Even if Bell, Lennon and John were to join forces and request a Valorie-focused foursome, she’d have walked out of Arcanium just to get some alone time.
She knew what was wrong. There was no mystery to her mood. She wasn’t interested in sharing her feelings with anyone else, though. Not Bell, who had caused this strife in the first place. Not Lennon, who hadn’t mourned her absence, as though glad she’d cut him off so he could give all his attention to his new mermaid. Not John. A person confided in pets only because they couldn’t understand, and John would be able to understand her all too well.
“Thank you,” John said. The burning man actually sounded sincere, thanking her for not being allowed to shove himself up her ass, even though she’d seen him in profile, and the man needed relief.
He turned her onto her stomach.
“If I take off my pants, are you going to stab me?” John asked.
“As long as you keep your dick to yourself, no. I don’t want it touching me,” Valorie said. “One thing leads to another. You’d only make it worse for yourself.”
“I get it,” he said. “Believe me.”
“Make me believe you,” Valorie muttered, burying her face in the crook of her elbow on the pillow.
She heard the zip and the whisper of skin on skin as he removed his trousers. He unsettled the bed when he sat back down again.
John lifted her right foot and rested the instep on his warm thigh. He brought both hands to her sole to rub his firm fingers into the muscles.
Valorie fought not to groan as he massaged her feet, first one then the other. There was a place in her arches that, when he pushed just right, sent electrical shocks of pleasure throbbing to her clit. She wasn’t a stranger to those areas of her feet, but it had been a long time since they’d been stimulated. If John knew what he was doing to her—and she had every reason to believe that he did, since he devoted an awful lot of time to her feet—he didn’t comment. Nor did he press the matter. Just her soles. Even though her feet rested on his thigh, he didn’t so much as brush his cock against them, either by accident or accidentally on purpose, which meant he was making the effort not to.
She gave him silent points for that.
Sexual surges aside, the rest of her melted under his massage, especially when he moved away from her feet and up her legs. He parted them so that he could kneel between her ankles, but the touch remained sensual without turning suggestive. He dug his fingers so far into her muscle that it sometimes hurt, but then he’d withdraw and it would all be roses again. Her breathing was even, her eyes closed. She drifted between sleeping and waking, drawn down by the sweetness of the massage but held back by the changing reality of his touch.
True to his word, although he slipped his fingers over the edge of her panties, he didn’t get near
her cunt. He straddled her hips when he was finished with her legs so that he could start in on her back over her shirt, but he didn’t let his ass rest against her thighs. She wished she could turn over and check whether he was still hard. She wanted to see what he was sacrificing for her. But that would require her to move and acknowledge that she was still awake, and she’d rather stay right where she was than stop him from doing what he was doing.
“You talk mean, Valorie,” he murmured. “Lots and lots of talking mean. Maybe it’s what I deserve or maybe that’s just you. But I knew when Bell handed me over to you that I won the lottery. Whether we have sex or not, it’s insane that I’m able to do this. I don’t know what those demons were thinking. I want to tell you this when you’re not asleep, except then you’d either laugh or throw me out or tell me how bad a man I am. And I guess I am. I have a lot to make up for. But I promised I’d do it all for you. I’ll keep my word. I’d do anything just to be close to someone like you, viper tongue and all. I’ll take it. I’ll take it all and like it. Maybe one day you’ll believe that.”
Sometime when he started to massage her neck and scalp, her hair loose over her shoulders, she finally untethered and slipped off into sleep, mulling on whether he’d known she was awake or not and not knowing what to do about it either way except pretend it had never happened. There was a lot of that going on lately, self-delusion. But there wasn’t much else she could do without her chest hurting so much it made her heart skip.
Sleep was better. Sleep was where she could forget without trying. And what John was doing felt so good that forgetting was that much easier when he made it hard to think at all.
* * * *
When she woke up again, John had spooned up behind her—possibly in his sleep. He’d remembered to put her sheets back over her, so she was pleasantly heated by his body and enveloped in his arms, but his skin wasn’t touching hers except where he had his fingers on her arm.
There was, however, an undeniable erection pressed against her ass through the sheets and her thin clothing. Morning erection or continued from last night, it was impossible to tell, nor was it relevant.
Contortion Page 16
