“No,” Charles said. His eyelids fluttered as his eyes rolled back in his head. Mikhail must have seriously rattled his brains. “Can’t lose them. If we go back, Elian and Kendra…”
“Then you need to make another wish, Charles. No, don’t poop out on me now,” Valorie said, slapping his face. “You need to wish that you never came here, never saw me and never want to come to Arcanium again. That’s the only way the demons won’t seek retaliation. The only way you can have your family, Charles, is if you never found me. Charles!”
“But I did,” Charles murmured. He was still losing consciousness. “We got our closure. Where am I…?”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Valorie whispered as she slapped his face more forcefully, shook him by the shoulders, but all she got out of him was a groan and intelligible mutters. Lord Mikhail had officially knocked him out. The man had a concussion, a bad one.
Valorie looked up. The clowns were getting too agitated for John to keep them away for long. Lady Sasha held Elian from behind, her cheek against his shoulder as the succubus waited for Valorie to figure out what to do. Elian looked more than happy with this arrangement.
Lord Mikhail was still thoroughly engaged with Charles’ wife, as tender yet insistent as he always was, surprisingly tender for his size.
John’s burns healed before Valorie’s eyes, but the wounds were shiny and black, and he continued to shudder in pain. He didn’t look like he was in much of a state to take on the clowns if they decided to go through him to get to Elian.
“Bell, help them, please,” Valorie begged, holding Charles’ head in her lap. “He’d wish if he could. I can’t. They won’t.”
“I have my obligations. You know this,” Bell said. “All trespassers and those who would harm my people, no matter their good intentions or personal vendetta, belong to the demons. I cannot stop this from happening. Only you can.”
“I’m not taking his children away from him,” Valorie responded.
“Then it seems you have a very difficult choice,” Bell said.
“God damn you!” Valorie screamed, pounding the dust with her fists. “Even when I wanted to leave, I was loyal. I’ve been loyal all along. Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m not doing this to you, Valorie,” Bell said.
The clowns darted forward, running around John to test whether he would send out his fire. He didn’t.
“I wish that the man in Valorie’s lap had never come to Arcanium and never will,” John grated through his burned throat. “And that they, he and Valorie, still have whatever they needed from him being here. I’ll do it. I’ll wish it.”
“You… That’s your second wish,” Valorie said, stunned. The terrible things going on around her seemed to fall away, and not because of magic this time. “You can’t—”
“I just did,” John said, his arms and legs buckling. The clowns had already passed him. He couldn’t defend Elian. Only Lady Sasha holding the boy protected him now, and she looked somewhere between pissed off and understanding. Lady Sasha and Valorie had always had a cordial relationship. It occurred to her that if the wish went through, Valorie should still fulfill her promise—if she remembered it.
“You don’t even know why I need to save them,” Valorie said.
“It doesn’t matter,” John whispered. “What matters is that you need to. And you don’t have any wishes left.”
“John, I… I can’t let you do that.”
“Too late,” Bell said. He’d approached slowly and quietly, unnoticed until he chose to be. “And for the loyalty that you so aptly pointed out, my dear, I will grant you the full memory of what never happened. You, John and I will be the only ones who carry this timeline. It’ll be easier to correct than twenty years.” He stroked Valorie’s tousled hair away from her face. “I knew you weren’t ready to leave me.”
“Don’t make me watch his family die,” Valorie said, although all demand had dissipated from her voice in relief and the release of her fear—because it didn’t matter how hard Lord Mikhail had hit Charles or whether he or the clowns ate their fill from Charles’ family. It would all be undone.
“I wasn’t planning on it. Your second wish, fire-eater, is granted.”
* * * *
In the blink of an eye, everyone but Valorie and John disappeared from Oddity Row.
Valorie spread her fingers in her lap where she’d been holding Charles’ head. He was gone. He’d never been there.
She’d said her official goodbyes, but she hadn’t had time to watch him leave. She hadn’t been able to tell him everything would be okay. She hadn’t been able to say her last goodbyes. He’d never know how close he’d been to losing everything.
He’d just had to lose her, even the memory. He wouldn’t miss her—only as much as he’d missed her these last twenty years. The wish had given him the closure they’d found, what he’d needed to let her go.
But he’d been ripped from her this time. All at once, it wasn’t enough closure for her.
She sat down hard on the ground and bent her legs up so that she could bury her face against her thighs. Hot tears like acid poured from her eyes before she could stop them. There was nothing she hated more than crying except crying where someone—anyone, human or demon—could see, but she couldn’t stop.
John’s burns hadn’t disappeared when Bell had granted his wish, but they’d healed into new scars. He crawled over to her, his hands and knees whispering in the dust. When he touched her bare shoulder, she wrenched away. But as he smoothed his hand over her skin and wrapped his strong, warm arm around her, Valorie found herself leaning into him, her head against his chest, her face still against her legs, embraced in fetal position and crying as though she were a normal, heartbroken woman.
He didn’t do anything but hold her while she shook and shivered, ruining her leather pants, not to mention anyone’s perception of her if they happened by. Although no one had reason to be in Oddity Row, she never looked up, just in case she had to see someone’s surprise at the contortionist showing the softer, leakier side of herself she’d rather die than admit she still had inside her.
Charles finding her had changed everything, brought all that dead detritus back to the surface. Now it poisoned her, because Charles was gone. Forever. And so was she. She’d been a fool to think she could leave Arcanium. A fool to believe she had any place in a happy ending outside the circus.
Eventually Valorie ran out of tears and energy. She sniffed the rest of it in, but otherwise, she didn’t move. She didn’t want to move.
Her throat was thick and moist. She heard it in her voice when she finally spoke, a little over a whisper.
“I’ll never forget,” Valorie said. “I’ll never forget what you did, John.”
“I don’t know who he was. I don’t know what you were doing with him. I don’t care,” John said. “I’m yours. My fire doesn’t char the collar. I’ll give you my third wish if that’s what you ask of me.”
“I believe you,” she replied, this time barely a breath.
“Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.
She nodded, her throat too obstructed again to speak again.
John tucked his arms under her fetal body and lifted her up. Valorie pressed her wet face against his bare, scarred chest. She hated that she needed his comfort, but she accepted what he was willing to give.
Bell stood next to her RV, waiting for them, but he didn’t stay. As soon as Valorie saw him, he nodded, arms crossed, and walked around the vehicle, disappearing from view.
“Not the bed,” Valorie muttered as John carried her inside. “Can we just…on the couch?”
“Of course,” John said. “Do you need water? Are you hungry?”
“Stay with me,” Valorie said, resisting his attempt to leave her on the couch. She’d already shown herself to be pathetic and needy. No need to pretend anymore.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. He lowered himself down with her.
T
hey held each other much as they had before, except somewhere more comfortable than the ground.
“He would have been my husband,” Valorie said into the silence, “before I was brought into Arcanium. We could have gone back. The option was there. But I don’t think either of us would have taken it. We just needed—”
“Closure,” John finished for her.
She nodded.
“I thought you were leaving,” John said. “I was sure of it when I saw the way you looked at each other.”
“I still may. But not soon,” Valorie said. “And not with him. You’ll have to endure me for a lot longer, fire-eater.”
“I can live with that,” he replied gently, stroking her shoulder with his smooth, scarred palms.
Valorie wound her arms around his waist and listened to his healthy, young, strong heart beating under her ear.
“I won’t forget what you did, pet,” she repeated in a whisper.
Chapter Twelve
“I want you to sit down here and put your hands behind the back of the chair. I’m going to have to cuff you,” Valorie said, after leading him into the big top by his collar. It was a rehearsal day, so he wore thick cotton pants and a soft T-shirt instead of his leather. As commanded, though, he kept his collar on full-time.
John took in the empty ring, furrowing his brown in suspicion as he considered the plain wooden chair that she’d placed there earlier.
“What’s this about?” John asked. But he did what he was told, in spite of his reluctance.
Valorie waited until she’d put the leather handcuffs on his wrists. They were the same style as his collar. She’d requested them from Bell, and he’d been more than happy to provide.
“This is your punishment,” she said.
“Punishment? What did I do? Why didn’t you tell me I’d done something wrong?” John asked, straining to look at her behind him.
“I’m telling you now.” She ran her hand over the new scorch scars on his neck leading under the collar of his shirt. “I’ve been thinking about the wish that you made. It occurs to me you might not have been as unselfish as you tried to convince me you were. Yes, it was the wish I wanted Charles to make, and you repeated it the way I said it. But by making the wish, you conveniently got to keep me here, which was what you really wanted, wasn’t it? You stood to gain so much that it hardly compared to the loss of a single wish. Turned out awfully well for you, didn’t it, pet?”
“No!” John protested. “I mean, yes, but no. I made the wish because your guy couldn’t, and I knew you’d be devastated. Yeah, it kept you here a while longer, but I wasn’t thinking about you staying. I was just trying to give you what you wanted. I swear, Valorie. I didn’t do this for me. If you’d told him to wish the two of you out and his family safe and happy, I would have wished that and accepted being unhappy. I swear.”
“John, John, John,” Valorie said, patting his shoulder and bending over it to look in his pretty eyes. She smiled. “I know.”
“You…know. So this is… Oh. This is one of those punishments.”
She kissed his cheek playfully. Then she returned to her position behind him, her knees against his handcuffed hands. He flexed his fingers to stroke her leather-clad legs with his knuckles.
“Lady Sasha, you can come in,” Valorie called.
“What?” John said incredulously.
Lady Sasha, wearing a red leather bikini in honor of the season, stepped out from between the curtains with a knowing smirk.
A rumbling chuckle drew John’s gaze up into the bleachers. For such a big man, Lord Mikhail could hide quite well until he wanted to be seen.
Lady Sasha slowly came into the ring toward where John was sitting, stroking herself over the leather.
“Wait. What’s going on?” John asked.
“I think a delinquent such as yourself is acquainted with the rules of handling an exotic dancer, right?” Valorie said. “Lap dances? Stripteases?”
“Oh, fuck me.”
“No, that’s not allowed,” Lady Sasha said, her trademark husky voice like liquid dark chocolate when she purred it just right. “I can touch, although you can’t touch me. But I certainly can’t fuck you, fire-eater. That would kill you, and your Mistress and Bell would be very displeased.”
“I asked Bell,” Valorie said, “and struck a deal with Lady Sasha. See, she’s not supposed to touch a man in Arcanium, period. Nor a woman, for that matter, in case there’s a trace of attraction. But that’s because a touch often leads to more, especially at the man’s insistence. It’s hard for her to resist too, you know. But I owed her.”
“Valorie tells me I did something for her that I can’t remember because of Bell’s wish-granting. Who am I to pass up a favor?” Lady Sasha asked, sliding her hands up to her breasts and squeezing them for John’s enjoyment. She was probably more familiar with her own breasts than any human woman who had ever walked the earth, yet she handled them as though she’d never experienced their joys before, as though she were experiencing them the same way John would…if he were touching them.
That was the thing about incubi and succubi—they were like good escorts. They always made their sex partner feel like the first, the best, the only. Valorie guessed the demons themselves felt the same way, since they couldn’t get enough of sex. Bell had told her once that as much of it as they got, they were still sex-starved in comparison to the ones who roamed free outside Arcanium.
“And I especially appreciate that your Mistress honored a promise she made to me that she didn’t have to honor,” Lady Sasha said. She traced the leather strings of the bikini top to the halter tie under her voluminous hair. “It inspires me to make this truly special for the both of you.”
“Is that what h-he’s doing here?” John had to swallow as Lady Sasha let her top fall. The leather clung to her skin, but gravity eventually won out, exposing Lady Sasha’s glorious breasts. The only rival to them in Arcanium were Maya’s, and Maya didn’t have Lady Sasha’s magic.
“My Lord Mikhail?” Lady Sasha said. “Yes. I imagine I’ll have some sexual tension of my own to work out. You should also enjoy the indirect benefits when my lord and I enjoy each other within this ring, while your Mistress attends to any of your needs that might…arise.”
John suddenly arched as she said arise in that particular way. And no wonder. The slight bulge Lady Sasha’s entrance and the sight of her breasts had given him became more than slight, practically pitching a tent in his trousers.
“Oh my God,” he gasped.
Valorie rested her hands on his shoulders, massaging the muscles there. She licked her lips.
Perhaps punishment wasn’t the best description for this exercise. It would be such exquisite torture, really, to know that he couldn’t have what Lady Sasha was offering. But he would get from the succubus what Valorie had never gotten from the incubus—touch. With his wrists bound, there was very little he could do back to Lady Sasha. The cuffs would be as fireproof as the collar.
“Now, since you’re not going to be able to touch, I’m just going to have to do most of it for you,” Lady Sasha said. She insinuated her long leg between John’s, kicking them apart so that she could get as close as possible without climbing into his lap. Then she lifted her breasts and licked a line from one nipple, into the valley of her cleavage, over to the other before sucking it into her mouth with obvious relish.
“That’s…uh…that’s…” John struggled to speak, but the poor boy was losing blood flow to his brain fast.
“Delicious,” Lady Sasha said, keeping her teeth tight on the nipple before letting it flick away. The flesh of her breast rippled. “You wouldn’t be the first man to want to smother yourself between these breasts. I bet you’ve imagined me on my knees, haven’t you, fire-eater, these breasts pushed together and surrounding your cock?”
The succubus rested her hands on his thighs. Her lacquered fingernails that sometimes looked clawlike from the right angle tapped mere inches from his prominent
erection. The way she bent over him meant he got a front-row seat to her breasts at their fullest and heaviest. He panted heavily, helplessly.
“You can relax, fire-eater,” Lady Sasha whispered in his ear, her hair brushing against his face, his mouth, his neck. “It doesn’t matter how turned on you become. I can keep you from coming, and it is my delight to do so. You’ll come inside your Mistress only once you have satisfied her. It doesn’t matter how strong your desire is as it passes through your veins. It is only ever as much as I choose to give you. It will not be enough until I hear your Mistress scream.”
“No pressure,” Valorie said in his other ear.
“I’m just one man,” he murmured as Lady Sasha stroked his chest over the T-shirt and Valorie teased his earlobe with her teeth, tongue and lips.
“A fine young man. Strong. I like strength,” Lady Sasha said.
“Which surprises no one,” Valorie said, glancing over at Lord Mikhail.
“Remember, boy, you can’t come,” Lady Sasha repeated. She drew her hands down his abdomen, closer and closer to his erection, which had left a damp spot in the gray material of his pants.
Then she encircled his cock with both her hands, one tightening the cotton over the head by wrapping around the shaft, the other closing over the damp head.
John shouted as though Lady Sasha had put his thumbs in screws. The tendons of his neck stood out under his collar as he threw his head back. Valorie was there for him when Lady Sasha began to twist her hands, gently wringing the cotton over his erection. Valorie stroked his scar-ridden, lovely cheekbones. It was a good thing only the people and demons of Arcanium could hear him. They knew that if they hadn’t been invited to a beating, anything going on inside the tent likely felt a lot better than a whip, no matter how he sounded.
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