Ringmaster

by Aurelia T. Evans

  “Like, oh, say, shacking up and crazy in love with the most evil demon in this circus? Everyone agrees on that point, even you,” Victor said. “Some of the people here hate Bell with a blinding passion, but it’s the Ringmaster they’re most afraid of.”

  “As they should be,” Kitty replied mildly.

  Victor rubbed his face in his palms. Kitty recognized irritation when she saw it.

  “You don’t love me,” Victor said, muffled behind his palms.

  “I do. Just not the way you want me to,” she answered.

  “But you love…him? How?”

  Kitty rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. “I don’t know whether what the Ringmaster and I feel is allowed to be called love,” she replied.

  “You know what the worst part about this is?” Victor said. He collapsed onto her pallet. The cot springs squeaked. “You always tell people things that they don’t get beforehand, but then we look back and can’t say you didn’t warn us. You outright told me that you weren’t exactly the woman I thought you were. That’s true with everyone in some way, but… You’ve been spending way too much time with Bell.”

  Kitty grinned. “Take that back.”

  Victor didn’t smile, though. He just watched her until his scrutiny made her feel like she was humming inside, slightly uncomfortable but also slightly pleasant.

  “Does he give you what you’re missing?” Victor asked.

  “I wasn’t aware I was missing anything,” Kitty said, lifting a hand in a shrug. She glanced down at her skirts, where the sheer panels sometimes gave glimpses of her legs. “But he gives me what no one else can. Everyone else gives me what he can’t, and that’s always included you. Although…” She picked up her iced coffee cup. “He’s been bringing me coffee. The Ringmaster has been bringing me coffee.”

  “Well, now you know it’s love,” Victor said.

  When Victor gave her a crooked smile, Kitty knew it was safe to laugh.

  “I don’t like it, though,” he said. “Actually, I don’t know what to think about it. Every time I’ve pinned down what I want to say to you—or yell at you—it changes.”

  “That’s okay,” Kitty said. “I don’t think we know what to think about it either, and it’s been going on for a while. We don’t…talk much.”

  “I imagine not.”

  “No, it’s not like that. He just doesn’t like to,” Kitty said. “Although he’s been chattier lately, since you came along.”

  “You get why, right?” Victor said. “I thought he made that abundantly clear last night.”

  “Yes,” Kitty replied. “Thing is, I don’t think he understands it quite the same way we do. He processes things differently. I don’t think he understood why he wanted to hurt you last night at first. Not until…”

  “What?” he asked quietly.

  Kitty took a sip of her coffee. “It was something that Bell said. I think the sadism wasn’t enough anymore. I guess there’s something missing in him too.”

  “Can I just ask you something in complete honesty?” Victor said. “I’ve asked this before, but now I really mean it. Are you insane? I know some people are pretty good at hoarding their nuts from view. I’m just trying to reconcile what I know of you with what I know of him, and I can’t. It doesn’t compute. So spill, Kitty. Is one of your secrets that you’re a crazy woman, and I missed it all these years?”

  Kitty slowly stood and walked over to him, stepping between his legs until he had to spread them farther apart in order to accommodate her. She crooked one finger under his chin and raised his head so that she could lean down and press her lips against his. The cuts around her mouth were gone, the sting of them little more than a memory.

  Any time he tried to speak again, she would capture his lips once more. She trailed her finger down and slid her whole palm over the front of his trousers. He was probably as tired as she was, but one part of him was very much awake.

  She rested her hand on his thigh and finally lifted away from his mouth for him to speak.

  “What do you think?” Kitty asked huskily.

  “I think you’re scary sane,” Victor said. If his skin weren’t made of stone, Kitty believed he’d be flushed red from forehead to chest. “That’s the terrifying part. Now I think I’m the one who’s crazy.”

  She kissed his cheek and patted his leg. “Welcome to Arcanium.”

  “You’re such a tease,” Victor said, slapping her ass lightly as she headed toward the exhibition side of her tent.

  “Go out there, make some woman very happy, then come back and tell me that,” Kitty said with a grin. “I suggest hovering in front of Lady Sasha’s tent. I promise someone will find you.”

  “I’m not done with you yet,” he warned, easing to his feet for an entirely different reason than sore muscles.

  “You don’t have to be,” she replied. “Have fun.”

  * * * *

  When Maya climbed onto Kitty’s stage in her thigh-high strappy boots and short, red leather dress with its plunging necklace, it didn’t matter how much furry cleavage Kitty displayed—no one was looking at Kitty.

  “You went on the high wire in that?” Kitty asked. She could have sworn that Maya had been wearing one of her burlesque costumes earlier when she’d last checked Maya’s hair and makeup before the first performance, not leather.

  Maya laughed. “No. I’m not quite up to wearing the boots on the rope, mad skills or no mad skills,” she said. “Bell wanted to do his illusionist act next, so I went more comfortable.”

  “In those boots?” Lady Sasha’s leather was impossibly comfortable, but high heels were high heels, and Arcanium used the natural terrain.

  “And a little sexy,” Maya added with a shrug as she sat in Kitty’s lap and wrapped an arm around her neck for the benefit of the crowd. Kitty and Maya tried to keep straight faces at the flashes and clicks of cameras and phones. “Come on, I’m a tiny person. I should be able to indulge in heels now and then, potential for sprained ankles be damned.”

  “Is there a particular reason you’re here, except to make the paparazzi cream their jeans?” Kitty asked.

  Maya laughed again into Kitty’s shoulder. “No. I’m just here because Bell told me to tell you that he wants you to stay backstage for the whole second performance tonight. It’ll give you a chance to take a long break before tackling the rest of the night.”

  “That’s awfully kind of him, letting me do that two nights in a row,” Kitty said. “What’s the catch?”

  “He didn’t see fit to share that with me,” Maya replied. “You know how he is, scheming little hell god. Or he could just be showing his usual favoritism. Hard to tell. So how scandalous do you want my exit to be?”

  “Alas, some of the crowd is under eighteen,” Kitty said.

  “There’s nothing triple-X about a kiss,” Maya said.

  Oh yes, that was ending up on YouTube.

  * * * *

  Kitty still couldn’t decide whether Bell was planning something or just in a unique position to know why she was so tired. Either way, she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She dragged the chaise longue out near the curtain so that she could see some of the performance through the opening and recline with the drink she’d needed last night. Just a few more hours, and she could get some real sleep. The not-waking-up-until-lunch kind of sleep.

  After Bell and Maya amazed the crowd with real magic perceived as particularly spectacular illusion, Maya joined her on the chair, sitting at her feet. Kitty wasn’t unobservant, and neither was Maya—Maya was showing questionable-companion solidarity. Kitty didn’t mind the company.

  “I want to thank all of you for joining us tonight,” the Ringmaster boomed through the ring. “It has truly been a pleasure to amaze, excite and horrify you, and we hope we added a little intrigue to your evening. Before you go, I have a gem of my own to share. Some of you might have been here for the last performance, so you are aware that, as well as master of the
ring, I can master any beast—lions, tigers, miniature little tumblers…”

  The audience laughed. The Ringmaster was in his element, a place where he could spin yarns and hyperbole like an imp spinning straw into gold. Kitty loved to listen.

  “However, I must confess to you, good sirs and ladies, that there is one creature that I cannot tame. You might already be familiar with her—Arcanium’s Pretty Kitty, our very own bearded lady.”

  Kitty didn’t quite drop her drink. Nothing so dramatic as that. But her world did seem to pause. She felt Victor’s eyes. Bell stood with Joanne and Jane across backstage, but his attention was on her. From the shift of the cushion, she sensed Maya turn to her. Everyone in the audience began their encouraging applause. Everyone backstage went completely silent.

  She didn’t know what to do. She sometimes went out during a quick display of the human oddities of Arcanium, but as a rule, she disliked going out into the ring because she felt useless, unable to perform in any fashion. She displayed her weirdness for Arcanium the rest of the time it was open. To do the same thing in the ring always seemed redundant.

  Kitty looked frantically over at Bell, the real puppeteer of the performances. He swept his arm toward the curtain.

  “He didn’t inform me of the change, nor did I have foreknowledge of his plan until the beginning of this performance.”

  “A warning would have been nice.”

  “But then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of your surprise. The audience is waiting.”

  Kitty muttered under her breath about Bell’s debatable parentage as she handed Maya the drink, briefly gripping Maya’s other hand for strength. Then she pushed through the curtain, pretending this whole thing was rehearsed. She didn’t know how convincing she was as the spotlight swept over to her, inspiring more applause at her arrival. She swept her hair behind her shoulders and curtsied deeply.

  The Ringmaster stepped down from his dais and held his hand out to her. She tentatively placed hers in his.

  The lights dimmed and went crimson, the same color often used during Maya’s high wire set. A cello duet shivered through the speakers, and the Ringmaster drew her close, bringing her hips against him. As if things couldn’t get any stranger in an already strange place, the Ringmaster began to dance with her. She reached for her skirts to lift them up so she wouldn’t trip as he led them in circles around the ring, their shoes whispering in the sawdust, his black eyes like pools of new blood in the light.

  The Ringmaster twirled her out and let her go. Somehow, at that moment, she understood what he wanted her to do, and she continued to spin, her skirts fluttering out around her until she heard the telltale crack of the whip near her waist before it wrapped around her. It didn’t hurt, nor did it damage her corset bodice. He knew how to use his whip for more than just inflicting pain.

  He pulled her in, spinning her in the other direction to unwind the whip, and he swept her across the floor again in a whirlwind of a waltz to the increasingly crazed string duet.

  Then he wrapped the fall around her wrist and flicked her away. She let the whip guide her where to run.

  The leather fell away from her skin as she took her place in front of the curtain.

  The Ringmaster held his arms out from his sides. When she mimicked him, he swung the whip back and cracked it several times in succession—flinchingly loud—before sending it out toward her to snap near her arms. But once again, it curled around them harmlessly. Right. Left. Right. Left. Around the waist. Under her right arm and around the shoulder. Under the right arm. She breathed to the rhythm of the whip declaring his capture at every part of her. The lighting made his dance of domination a sensual dream. It was all too easy to forget the conspicuously silent audience. They might as well have vanished.

  She flinched at the crack near her ear, but the fall encircled her neck several times without cutting even a tiny lock of hair from her head. The whip bound her hair against her neck. The cello duet began its final climb to the song’s rough climax.

  Kitty bit her lip against a moan as he spun the rest of the tail, not to unwind her but to reel her in as it wrapped around her neck. Pass by pass, the leather quickly became a collar until she was less than a step away from him and he held the handle between her breasts.

  Gazing down at her as though he could consume her like a beast himself from head to toe, he used the end of the handle to lift her head, much as Kitty had used her finger on Victor. But this was so much more dangerously intimate.

  The audience wasn’t exclaiming their amazement or applauding like they usually did. Perhaps they sensed something about this act that was less rehearsed, less of a performance in the first place—a glimpse into the boudoir privacy of two members of the strange circus they’d visited tonight.

  But it wasn’t the audience that concerned her. Their voyeuristic experience would fade when they returned to the world at large, a world where Arcanium oddities like them didn’t dare exist in the same space. The private lives of circus freaks and performers wouldn’t cross their mind as anything more than a passing thought or fantasy, nothing real, nothing concrete. The audience could disappear into a cornfield for all she cared right now.

  However, there was no question in her mind that everyone backstage was clustered at the two sides of the curtain, peering through to watch in bewildered fascination.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  The cellos lengthened their notes and smoothed out the vibrato as they pulled back from the climax of the song in the final bars.

  The Ringmaster suddenly pulled her forward and kissed her, sliding an arm around her waist as though they were still dancing. Kitty froze, her fingers opening and closing at his sides in uncertainty and a brief shock of panic.

  Then he pulled back a little and opened his eyes to meet hers. So close to her, the red light behind his shadow, he became her world, her beautiful devil in leather and fur. He didn’t deny her. He declared her to all and sundry as his. The whip around her throat couldn’t be clearer. But by no longer keeping her his secret, he declared himself subject to her as well, witnessed by humans and jinn alike.

  Kitty brought her hands to his face for his beard to harsh her palms as she stood on her toes to kiss him again. She yielded herself as he slowly and methodically tasted her, owned her through his fist on the whip and the devastation of his tongue over hers. She shivered against his body burning hers, but it wasn’t his heat that welled up inside like hot springs at the base of her spine.

  The music had reached its end, but they weren’t finished yet, not until Kitty bit his lip and sucked it out before releasing him. She lowered herself back to the ground, sliding her palms down his chest.

  “So you see,” the Ringmaster murmured, his voice filling the ring again as he unwound his whip from her neck, “this is the one I cannot master, for she has mastered me.”

  He took her hand and swept to the side to spread his arms. He lowered both of them into a bow to the closing crack of his whip, the spotlight returning as a brilliant glare.

  Finally, confused, captivated, aroused—whatever the hell they felt—the audience let loose and cascaded their applause down into the ring for the Ringmaster’s final performance and for all those who had gone before him.

  “Thank you,” the Ringmaster said, his grip on Kitty unrelenting. “And have a truly terrifying night.”

  The Ringmaster pushed her through the curtains, plunging them into darkness as he kissed her again, this time discarding any censure to his actions. For any of Arcanium to see, the Ringmaster kissed down her neck and laved and bit the breasts spilling over the neckline of the bodice. He lifted her thigh up against his hip to bring her even closer to his unrepentant, leather-covered erection.

  Kitty slipped her hand under the back of his jacket to savor the muscle beneath the thin layer of skin. She had to bite her lip again to keep from moaning in front of everyone. She still valued some privacy, even if the secret was out. They didn’t have to
know how she sounded. She couldn’t help her gasps, though, as desire quickened her blood and made it difficult to breathe. Kitty fought not to give in right there on the backstage floor.

  Finally, the Ringmaster brought his kisses back up her body. He grinned wickedly against her cheek as he guided her back to standing on her own again.

  “What brought that on?” Kitty asked, ignoring the rest of the cast around them. They would spread the word to those not fortunate enough to see it for themselves—and some of those who hadn’t witnessed it would never believe it, even in such an unbelievable place as this.

  “Whoever believes I am weak for having you, they can go to hell, with my guidance,” the Ringmaster replied. “I will take my time showing them otherwise. In excruciating detail.”

  “You say the most romantic things,” Kitty said.

  “Tonight, when the gates close, you will be in my bed, Katharine,” the Ringmaster said, running his fingers through the wavy chestnut tangle of her hair. “I will make you beg for mercy that I will not show you.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied softly. She trusted him after last night to give her only what she could take. And she knew, with a delicious tightening of her cunt, that she could take quite a lot.

  The Ringmaster pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, a deceptively simple gesture that concealed the promise of far more in those demon eyes.

  Then the Ringmaster brushed past her, through their smaller gaping audience, and left out of the back exit.

  Kitty adjusted her dress and her hair with a not-yet-satisfied smile on her lips. She dared anyone to comment. No one did. Not even Victor, who leaned against the tiger’s cage, shaking his head but grinning in utter, ambivalent disbelief.

  Bell held Maya against his side as Kitty walked by them. Maya threaded her fingers through Kitty’s for a moment.

  Kitty left backstage and headed out into the crowd, her hair over her shoulder and her hips swaying enticingly. Everything about her told the world to look its fill, but don’t touch. Not until she let them.

  Just a few more hours. Then the gates of Arcanium would close, and the Ringmaster would have his way.