He’d done what she’d told him he was allowed to do and no more.
She didn’t feel bad about how she’d treated him, but she acknowledged the step forward that John had made. And she’d woken up in a much better state of mind than when she’d gone to sleep.
Valorie turned around in his arms and guided him onto his back. He didn’t protest. She kept her sheets around her body, but she brought her arms out from under them to have full access to his long, lean, strong torso. It wasn’t a massage like the one he’d given her, but she moved her hands over his abdomen with the same sensual, firm strokes. She didn’t dig in, however, and he didn’t wake up yet. He sighed, his eyelids fluttering as she circled his dark nipples with the pads of her thumbs.
When he was asleep, she didn’t have to control him, didn’t have to ensure that he was doing exactly what she told him to do, didn’t have to think about what kind of man he was or what his motives might be. When he was asleep, he was all innocence. Even his cock, darkening the sheets with blots of his pre-cum, was innocent. It didn’t rear up at the promise of power or subjugation. It just wanted someone to touch it and help it come. That was all. Simple. Innocent.
Valorie liked the way his lips parted in a sigh when she trailed her fingers down to his navel, brushing through the dark hairs just above the insistent head of his cock. The way his hips moved upward when she traced the lines of the V almost to the base of the shaft. The way he turned his head against his arm, stretched up over the pillows, when she caressed his inner thigh, knuckles brushing his scrotum. The way he moaned when she ghosted her palm a hair’s breadth from his erection’s feverish flesh. It seemed to strain beneath her hand, as though if it thickened just a bit more, it could touch her.
God, he was beautiful like this. Vulnerability from waking up after a spectacular massage with the amazing specimen of manflesh before her was the only reason she could think of for why she bent down and ran her tongue from base to head of his cock—slow, torturous, wanting her tongue to caress every contour that it could reach, sparing no nerve ending on her way up.
His sighs turned into light moans. He tossed his head on the pillow, his eyelids shut tight, but he still appeared asleep. She thought he’d be more controlled if he wasn’t. And he’d be watching. He’d definitely be watching.
Valorie flicked her tongue along the ridge of the glans, tasting the drips of his pre-cum and swallowing them down as she adjusted her position next to him. She stroked his inner thigh with her thumb as she ever-so-slowly took the head into her mouth, all lips and tongue, practically worshiping him. She’d never gone down on Lennon—he’d been far more interested in going down on her—but she found that she’d missed it since Bell. And as big as Bell had been, his magic helping her accommodate him, John felt more substantial in her mouth. The stretch of her lips and the solidness against her tongue, it was all real, nothing to spread her lips wider or make her throat relax for him. She’d have to draw on muscle memory, because just dealing with the head wouldn’t be enough for her, she could already tell.
“Oh…” he murmured, tossing slightly. “Don’t. She won’t let me.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, although he didn’t seem to know whether to push her away or pull her closer.
Valorie sank down over his erection then pressed her tongue against the underside as she swept back up. “Shhh,” she whispered with her lips against the head. She pressed a kiss to the treasure trail leading down from his navel. She was absurdly amused by the fact that he was telling her no because even in his sleep, he was trying to obey her. “Yes, she will. She’s telling you yes. Just enjoy it.”
“No, I…Valorie. Oh fuck, Valorie…”
She took him in again, the lifting of his hips pushing him into her mouth smooth as honey. She moaned into his cock. He tossed again from the vibrations, muffling his own groans into his forearm. She bobbed over him, shallow movements, then relished his loud cry when she twisted her head down, taking in as much as she could before pulling off him with a gasp. She brought her hand away from his thigh to wrap around the hot, throbbing shaft, pumping him while she caught her breath and took in the unfettered expression of blissful agony on his face.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” she said quietly. “Mistress is feeling like less of a bitch, and pet tastes good this morning.”
When he still didn’t wake up beyond a few more indecipherable murmurs, she held the base of his cock and sank down over him again, going even farther when he bucked up against the back of her throat. She swallowed frantically to keep from gagging. Her breath came harshly through her nose, but she was gratified when her lips touched thumb and forefinger where they held and stroked the base.
His eyes flew open, the whole top half of his body coming off the bed. His arousal throbbed through the cock in her mouth.
“Oh my God,” he panted, disoriented by sudden consciousness as well as overwhelming pleasure. “Oh fuck, is this really happening? Ahhhh…”
She swirled her tongue against the underside as she made her way back up to the head, where she applied such intense suction that he cried out again, jerking his hips up.
“It’s happening, pet. Now just lay back down and let it happen some more. Your Queen has things she wants to do to you,” Valorie said.
“Fuck, I always wanted to wake up like this…” His voice got amusingly high near the end of it. Now that he was awake, Valorie didn’t mind letting him feel her teeth.
She wouldn’t bite down, though, not unless he became more like his old self. Valorie still didn’t believe he’d changed as much as he thought he had, but he had changed some. She could give him that.
It was too early in the morning for anything complicated. Still, she didn’t think John would complain about a simple blow job—stretching her mouth around him until the head nudged her soft palate, stroking the base where it was harder for her to reach, smearing his pre-cum over her tongue like syrup, thrilling in the sounds that he made and the way he had to hold himself back, because she’d caught him at a vulnerable time too. The ache in her cunt turned deliciously keen, but the sheets were twisted around her, and she had her hands full. Valorie pressed her thighs together, poor substitute for real pressure.
“I’m gonna come,” he gasped, with that adorable push-pulling of her hair, telling her to leave if she didn’t want him to ejaculate in her mouth and at the same time begging her to stay. “I’m going to come.”
Valorie moaned as she took him in halfway down. She undulated her tongue over him and sucked his climax into her. He grasped fistfuls of her sheets to hold his hips down while his cock pulsed inside her mouth, hot fluid hitting her throat with each pulse. She swallowed again and stroked the exposed shaft to coax more of his cum into her, thick, salty, each spurt as satisfying to her as a finger through her folds.
Finally he slumped, shoulders and abdomen relaxed. His panting breaths slowed down. He rested his hand on the back of her head, idly stroking her hair as she eased off him. His cock fell from her mouth and listed to the side, glistening. A thin thread of cum attached to her lip before she licked it away.
“I thought you weren’t wanting sex,” John said, looking down at her where she rested her chin on his hip. It was an awkward angle, but he obviously preferred to stay lying against the pillows, not ready to get up for the day after what she’d done for him. “I thought I was still the wrong kind of bad boy and you didn’t want me anymore.”
“I wanted to reward you for last night. Encourage good behavior,” Valorie said. She rolled over and opened the top drawer of her nightstand before pulling out her trusty bullet vibe. She brought her hand under her sheets. She didn’t even bother going underneath her panties.
“I can help with that,” John said, covering her hand over the sheets. His warmth seeped through like liquid. “You know I can.”
“No,” Valorie said. With her free hand, she took his away from where she’d turned on the vibrator against her mound, working it down to her clit in tight
circles. She interlaced her fingers with his. “Just stay here a while.”
She let her instincts lead her into an easy orgasm, quick and unadorned, attending to her needs rather than her desires without fuss or frills. She still wasn’t up to sex, in spite of her arousal, because every time she thought of John’s hands on her, Valorie couldn’t help but remember being in bed with Charles.
Valorie had told him to forget. Now she was trying to do the same, and it was so much harder than she’d thought.
Was it going to take her years, like it had when she’d first been taken? God, she hoped she could get over this more quickly than before. She couldn’t imagine having to go through the five fucking stages of grief all over again.
Valorie tucked her cheek against John’s arm as she turned off her vibe and just lay there. It was a rehearsal day, so she was in no hurry to get up, no schedule to adhere to that she couldn’t change, and she’d had trouble getting out of bed for the last few days as it was.
If John was surprised at the gesture, he didn’t comment. He just stayed still, stayed with her like she’d asked, his breathing sometimes aligning with hers, sometimes a counterpoint. He didn’t even hold her. He just gave her something with which to ground herself, an anchor to the present against the current of the past. She didn’t know if he was strong enough for it. But right now, he was all she had.
* * * *
She still didn’t let John have sex with her, no matter how their joint routines worked him up or worked her up. It occurred to her with some disquiet that part of the reason she kept refusing John was because it wouldn’t be fair to him. Since when did she care about what was fair to John? Since when should she care?
Either way, she wasn’t interested, although she sometimes brought the vibe out and held his hand. Sometimes she rubbed him off. Sometimes he rubbed himself off while holding her hand as well.
John was allowed to spend the night, though, if he came to her RV. On the long, cold winter’s nights, he was a good heater to have. She ascribed the lack of flame bursts during these sleepovers to Bell not wanting his contortionist burned to a crisp by accident—or ticked off as hell because her wardrobe had been charred in the night. All the more reason for John to want to stay overnight with her. All the more reason for Valorie to let him, since he wasn’t going to destroy anything, and she got a warm body to sleep with. Lennon used to kick in his sleep, since having a diurnal schedule wreaked havoc with his nocturnal demonic sleep cycle. John was much calmer.
He never pushed her for more. The closest he came was asking. He accepted her answer when she said no, accepted her hand when she offered it, accepted what contact she gave him when she didn’t.
Over the course of a week, Valorie gradually allowed herself to be pulled back into her usual life, or something close to it.
Yet if she had to be honest, she wasn’t surprised when she stepped out of the back of her exhibition tent after a morning’s work to have Charles standing there, waiting. She wasn’t surprised when he took her hands, stepped forward and kissed her.
She wasn’t surprised at all.
Chapter Nine
After twenty years, the kiss should have been the most awkward, uncomfortable thing in the world. Their tastes and tendencies should have changed, their tricks altered, their desires evolved. But he stepped forward to kiss her without preamble, without hesitation, and the action of her exiting the tent and him taking her into his arms carried the same smooth motion of a perfect machine—as though they’d been made for this moment and none of the twenty years had separated them.
He wrapped his arms around her waist. She wrapped hers around his neck. She barely had to stand on tiptoe and he barely had to dip. They angled their heads and their mouths met with instant familiarity.
No, she wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t put on lipstick or face paint this morning. Instead, she wore a purple lip stain that wouldn’t smear on his mouth as he kissed her so thoroughly her knees almost couldn’t support her. His lips still felt like his, moved like his. His mouth still tasted like him. Old memories took the fore, because she could swear he’d kissed her almost exactly like this after he’d proposed and she’d said yes. He’d known then how to make a woman melt. That hadn’t changed a bit.
He does this to her now, she thought weakly. He makes her feel this way. Or was this only ever calibrated to me?
The things a person thought in the midst of a maelstrom. The weather was uncharacteristically warm, actually, with a light breeze, yet Valorie felt swept up in the moment as though she’d been blown into his arms, neither of them with any choice in the matter.
The lust that exploded from his kiss and his body against hers fed off both of them until Valorie nearly tore his jacket off. His erection wasn’t confined at all by his trousers, which gave him room to grow, no room to hide. It pressed against her hip as he tasted her.
Charles moaned into her mouth like an alcoholic twenty years sober taking his first illicit sip. He raised a hand to grasp the back of her head, as though afraid if he loosened his hold she would run—or disappear.
He was the one who broke the kiss, though, gasping as he leaned his forehead against hers.
“I tried,” he murmured. “I told myself all the reasons why I shouldn’t come back. They were good reasons. If I made a list, there would be far many more reasons why I should be home instead of here. But I couldn’t stay away, Valorie. I couldn’t let you go without…”
He brushed her lower lip with the fingers that had clutched at her head.
“They declared you dead,” Charles said. “I never stopped hoping. I never visited your grave because I knew you weren’t in it. Even if the longer you were gone and alive, the more likely you were in a bad place, I never stopped hoping. This is a kind of bad place, though, isn’t it? That’s what you said, that it started bad before you…”
“So you hoped I was in a bad place, as long as I was alive?” Valorie asked.
“I know. It’s selfish, isn’t it? I’m not such a good man after all. If you’d been dead, you’d have been in heaven. But I would’ve rather you feel like you were in hell, just for one chance to see you again on this earth. I tried to let you go, babe. I even thought I had until I saw you again,” he said. “I shouldn’t be here. I lied to my wife again. I had to break a promise to my daughter. I didn’t think I was this kind of man. I love Janice. I love Kendra and Elian. I love my family. I made a life for myself. But the two of us… You were The One first. I can’t help but think it all should have been ours. Our house. Our kids. Our life. Our love. Because it wasn’t our fault that it got destroyed. I was mad at God for a while. I guess I should have been mad at the devil.”
“He’s not the devil,” Valorie said. “He’s just different.”
“I’ve been through the freak show. I’ve seen what he does to people. He’s the devil, Valorie,” Charles said.
“Some of them aren’t human either. And some of them were already like that before they came here,” Valorie explained.
“But not you.”
“No.”
“So others were also made into what they are for your boss’s freak show?”
“Yes.”
“Then I call him the devil,” Charles said.
“He could be a lot worse,” Valorie said softly. She thought of some of the wishes he’d granted, inside and outside the circus, and shivered. “Believe me, the people you see…that’s him being restrained.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Charles said, pulling her back in to kiss her again, his hold on her arms bruising. His facial hair rasped against the sensitive skin of her palms.
This time, she took control of the kiss and brought her hips tightly against his until he grunted, swaying away from her to contain himself. His scent, emanating from his skin and suffused in his clothes, surrounded her with the heart’s pang of nostalgia. But she couldn’t help but think that he hadn’t had those glasses the last time, and his body had been slightly dif
ferent against hers—his muscle tone firmer in his youth, his clothes more fitted…all the little things that had changed and that she needed to be the same to make this kiss less guilt-ridden.
The man she was kissing wasn’t hers, and she knew it. She’d be a hypocrite if she let this continue, and it was bad enough she was a bitch.
Yet Valorie couldn’t let him go. Every time she broke away, he would follow her and she would let him. They stumbled against the stiff canvas of her tent, the hum of people talking so close, with the occasional outburst of shouting or laughter. Anyone could have seen them if they’d walked halfway around the tent or bent over one of the closer souvenir tables.
The cast was allowed to engage in certain kinds of encounters with customers if the mood struck them, but not in public. Not where they could be seen, not least because circuses already had the same reputation as ballet and theater of prostituting lovely young women to wealthy patrons. Charles wasn’t wealthy, if his off-the-rack suit was any indication, but Arcanium didn’t need a potential customer getting disgruntled when a cast member said no after the customer had clearly seen an instance where they’d said yes.
Yet Valorie couldn’t stop.
“You’re married,” she finally gasped between their kisses.
“It was supposed to be with you,” he replied.
“But it’s not.” She wound her arms around him under his jacket, traversing the contours of his back. “Come on. You’re the grown-up here.” Valorie gave a soft cry when he dragged his tongue along her jawline then began kissing her neck, just like when they’d been young and leaving hickeys had made them laugh. He’d had twenty years to perfect the technique, and he hadn’t been anywhere near bad to begin with. “You need to stop this.”
“If anything, I was cheating on you with her. You were there first, Valorie, and you were taken from me against your will,” Charles said against her neck before biting at the base and sucking on her skin, running his tongue over the sensitized flesh and coaxing blood to the surface with his heat. “I wish—”
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