by Jordan Bell
“Say, pretty please, Eli,” he teased. I hesitated. It felt like a trap.
I nibbled my bottom lip, but finally gave in.
“Pretty, pretty please, Eli.”
“No,” he growled playfully, a pleasant rumble that made his accent thick and hoarse. I could feel the rumble in my chest and all along my thighs. “But I like to hear you beg sweetly for a change, especially since you barged into my home where I am not getting any sleep.”
“You’re impossible.” I shoved him, not hard, but enough to make my point. He took advantage of my hands coming in contact with his chest and pulled me closer. His palm settled across the small of my back. We were so close. I could smell his warm skin and there was no place for my hands but curled up against the dragon. Despite its fierceness, the inked skin was soft with faintly raised edges.
The Magician opened his eyes and met mine. While he watched me, I ran my thumb across the top of the dragon’s head deliberately, aching for a reaction to my touch. He’s muscles trembled beneath my thumb and his lips parted, wet and full in the dark.
“There’s that word again,” he whispered. “How many wonders does a man have to perform for you before you’ll believe?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’ve never had anyone perform wonders for me before.”
Eli went quiet and still. I wanted to lay my head against the dragon and listen to its heartbeat. I wanted to know what it felt like to sleep in the cage of his arms.
But I could feel his hesitation. This is close enough.
Here there be dragons.
You have been warned.
“Go to sleep, Serafine.”
“I don’t really sleep either, even before meeting your brother, which didn’t help matters.”
He frowned. “He can’t hurt you here. I would never allow it.”
“I believe you.” I meant it. It seemed impossible that Castel could find us here, hidden in this grove of trees, protected by Imaginaire.
The Magician released my hip and brought his hand close to my face, made me look cross-eyed and hovered so close my eyelashes brushed his fingertips. When I didn’t flinch, he touched my eyelids until they closed and he slid them to my cheeks and along the tip of my nose.
“Tonight you sleep. For me.”
“How’s that? With a spell?” I mocked, but softly and without derision.
“If you wish.” He touched his thumb between my eyes and I sank into his pillow. Two fingers to my eyelids and I saw stars. A single touch to my lips and I bent my head to his shoulder.
“Abracadabra,” he murmured.
And I slept.
18
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Every night, like a lost kitten, I found myself on his doorstep, reluctant to go inside until he pushed the door open and held out his hand. We didn’t talk about it. I didn’t tell him that I wanted to explore all of his tattoos, even the ones I hadn’t yet found with my eyes. I didn’t tell him that I’d kill to place my mouth on his collarbone and kiss all the way up to his chin. I didn’t tell him that I wanted to follow the lines of his muscles with the tip of my tongue to see where they lead me.
Sleeping beside him already felt like I was asking for too much.
The night Micah met me after the show, regaling me with a story of spectacular drop she’d done that night, I found him waiting on his steps, wringing his hands and messing with the black leather cuffs he wore on his wrists. He looked distracted and tense.
Seeing Micah approach at my side did not prove to relax him.
“Eli,” she said with a little wave. “My favorite magician. How’s tricks?”
“Not as fantastic as I hear you were tonight. I heard you made Annabelle wet herself in terror.”
She beamed as we came to stop before him. “And thank god for Katya’s big, gossipy mouth. There’s a reason that I’m the star aerialist and it’s not because I’m hotter than a sinner on a preacher’s knee. Though it helps, of course.”
I chucked and Eli flicked his gaze from her to me and back again. I wanted to reach for him and once I thought he might actually reach for me.
Unfortunately, Micah had eyes like a hawk. A tiny, over-caffeinated hawk.
“So. Well. A-hem.” She cleared her throat and bounced onto her toes. “Well, I suddenly feel like a third wheel. A third wheel who will be waiting at breakfast for all the details from her very best friend.”
“There are no details,” I interjected before the acrobat slinked away. Micah smiled innocently.
“Of course there’s not.”
“Micah,” Eli warned with his scary lieutenant voice. “This is not gossip.”
“Like I’d give Cruella de Katya any more ammunition against our girl. Who will tell me everything worth knowing tomorrow.”
“There’s nothing to know. Really,” I insisted. “Micah.”
My friend shrugged her shoulders emphatically as she backed away.
“Sure there’s not. You’re both terrible liars. Like, the worst.”
I started to protest but she was already gone through the trees. I sighed and turned back to him. “Sorry about that.”
He answered by capturing me around the waist and pulling me into his space. My insides went melty as he fit me in between his spread knees. He pressed his face into my stomach, inhaled my scent as if he ached for it and my hands trembled as I touched his hair, still a little damp with sweat from the hot stage lights. His big hands slid down the backs of my wide thighs and gripped them possessively.
“It doesn’t matter,” he murmured into my shirt. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
“You were waiting for me?” I asked, surprised.
Without answering he took me by the hand and pulled me inside.
He stripped his shirt off, then his shoes, and left them haphazardly near the bed. I watched him from the door, his back a beautiful display of muscle and strength. He had several more tattoos across his back, and I felt like there was a pattern to them, a story I couldn’t quite piece together. They were beautiful, subtle except for the great dragon on his chest.
As he got ready, I removed my shoes. I hadn’t planned another night with him, though a part of me hoped I would end up here. Not enough to pack a bag, though. That seemed a little too brazen. Tempting fate was never a good idea. I slipped out of my bra from under my shirt, and then left my pants in a pile on the floor.
Standing behind him in nothing but a t-shirt, barely covering my underwear, reminded me of the night in my apartment before we had to run for our lives.
And when he turned to call me to his bed, he gasped, a strangled sound that played havoc with his expressions. His eyes widened, the pupils enlarged, then they narrowed, his brow knitted, lips parted to speak then shut automatically. His chest puffed and framed between the curtains that hid his bed, his slacks slung low on his lean hips, he looked beautiful and powerful and a little heathenous. The way his chest rose and fell with his deep, barely restrained breaths made me feel like I was dangerously close to being captured and carried to his bed and claimed.
A part of me badly hoped he would try.
Kiss me.
Nervously, I tucked a bare ankle behind the other and waited.
“Come here. Sera.”
I went to him, balanced on the balls of my feet, hovering close to his bare chest. He caught my hand, rested another along the width of my hip. His fingertips dug into my skin through my shirt, hiked it dangerous where his thumb could brush along the hem of my underwear. It felt like he was encroaching on some unwritten violation.
More.
Eli’s grip tightened, and just before I thought he’d lift me against him, he pushed me towards his bed. He released me and lifted the covers away while I settled in.
It was hard to squash my disappointment. He climbed over me, for one delicious second he hovered against my body, his eyes meeting mine, before finding a spot unnecessarily far away.
We lay quietly side by side, not touchi
ng, though I was irrationally aware of where our bodies almost met.
Without asking, I moved closer until we touched, until he groaned with the pleasure of contact, and opened his arm for me to slide beneath. We held on as if our life depended on not disengaging. I listened to him breath, his heartbeat, and wanted him to touch me in the worst way. When I ran my leg up against his, he shuddered, caught my hip, and pulled me almost on top of him.
We slept locked like this, his face buried in my curls, so close I could feel his breath on my neck.
What we were doing, I knew somehow, went against all the rules.
But we didn’t stop.
My sleep was dreamless. For once, someone kept the nightmares away. For once I’d started waking up without dark smudges beneath my eyes.
Sometimes I woke to the sound of his long, deep breaths and little pleasant rumbles, as if he were a cat dreaming.
When I slept beside him, Eli slept deeply, vulnerably. While he dreamed, he wasn’t damaged or beyond repair. Here he became new again, boyish and sweet. And mine. In a way I couldn’t describe to anyone, not without sounding desperate and delusional. Here when he slept, when he released his worries and gave them to me to keep for the night, he was mine in a way I thought maybe he wasn’t with anyone else. Didn’t allow himself. I wanted to believe that. I did believe in that, but only at night. While he slept.
In the morning I tried to sneak out of his arms early, hoping to get to my tent before anyone noticed I wasn’t there, but as soon as I tried to leave him he tightened his hold and dragged me across the sheets to his side, mumbling softly into my neck.
“No,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
It was not meant to last, of course. How could it? He was the Magician. I was the mongrel.
The next night, after the final curtain fell, I went to him once more, hungry to fold into his arms and disappear until dawn.
Instead of finding him waiting, I found his door locked.
19
__________________
Eli
Her thoughts were tempestuous, willful things he could feel through the carvings in his door. He didn’t know exactly the words spinning through her beautiful mind but he got the heat of them, the hurt of them. She lingered inches from where he stood, but she might as well have been a thousand miles and a hundred years away for all the good it did.
He was wrong to have her in his bed. She was twenty-two, still a young girl and he couldn’t even remember what year it had been when he’d been twenty-two. He’d had Castel then and they’d still been in London, probably, but beyond that he couldn’t remember. It was before Imaginiare, but not much more.
And he’d had so many women in his bed since then that it seemed grotesque to think she would become another notch. Another warm body filling his worthless nights. She didn’t fit.
Cora, of course, would never have forgiven him for taking Sera into his bed even if they’d both been clothed and he’d never even kissed her. Not for lack of wanting or imagining. And he knew she thought about it every bloody night. Where her thoughts trailed, indecently over his body, he could feel the sensation of her mouth, could feel a memory that hadn’t yet happened passing over his collarbone, his throat, his chest.
Lower.
Jesus, he’d woken up once with her curled against his chest, her face pressed against his bare skin, lips slightly open and touching the hollow of his throat and he’d almost taken her right then and there. Woken her by burying himself inside her.
The memory shook him. He ran a hand through his hair for the hundredth time and willed his hands to stop trembling. After what felt like forever she backed down the steps, one at a time slowly as if she wanted him to change his mind and come after her and god damn if he didn’t almost do that.
Then she was gone and her thoughts slid away. His shaking stopped and the quiet filled his wagon.
He could not let this continue. If she had been anyone else he would have gone to hell and not fought too much over it. He didn’t have much character left to save, but he wouldn’t destroy her on the way. She was…worth more than that.
Eli touched the key around his neck, then dropped it under his shirt. He turned to crawl back into his bed alone where he would, no doubt, spend the entire night not sleeping. She wouldn’t sleep in her tent. She’d be cold and there’d be no one to pull the blankets up when she kicked them off. There’d be no one there to push the hair out of her eyes while she dreamed or to nudge her when she started to snore.
Shit. Shit. He ran a hand through his hair again. How’d everything get to be so damn complicated? She was just a girl. A mouthy, arrogant, bossy girl. He definitely didn’t like those types of girls.
But, despite himself, he liked this girl.
Unwilling to go to bed without her and unable to go after her, he stood like an idiot in the middle of the room.
A sharp rap on his door made up his mind.
He paused, his heart making such noise in his chest that he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. If it was her, then to hell with it. He would never be able to look into those big green eyes and send her away. He’d face the consequences and he’d wrap his body around her and sleep with his nose against her neck where he could hear her breath and feel her heat and smell her skin.
And taste her…
No. No. Too much. Too far.
The Magician stalked to the door and yanked it open, ready to grab her and pull her into his room and carry her to his bed where she damn well belonged.
He jerked back from grabbing Alistair and doing anything whatsoever with the carnival director who stood with his hand on his cane, emotionless and still as death.
A single brow quirked.
“Expecting someone?”
Eli leaned against the door and shoved one hand into a pocket, unwilling to give him the slightest indication that he had, in fact, been expecting someone else entirely.
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“It can’t wait?”
“It cannot.”
Eli stepped out of the way and let the carnival director inside. He glanced around the clearing for Sera, but she was gone.
He shut the door and when he turned, the carnival director stood unsettlingly still again, staring without blinking, both hands on the top of his cane.
“Are you sure you’re not expecting someone?” When the Magician didn’t answer, Alistair glanced around the small space, found a chair, and settled into it. “A red haired young lady, as an example?”
Eli tried not to let his reaction to her described show in his face, but he doubted he did a good job. He leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” He leaned back and set his cane across his knees. “Very well. Your brother is still alive, I’m afraid.”
“I told he was. As much as I’d like to believe Sera could make our lives so simple, I knew he’d survive the fall. He’s given you proof?”
“He set the train yard in Chicago on fire and has been making merry little messes across the Midwest in our wake. He’s close, if he’s not already here.”
“Castel cannot enter Imaginaire.”
The carnival director blanched at the name. “Must you?”
Eli ignored him. He hated how everyone at the carnival made Castel out to be the devil incarnate. “He knows as soon as he tried to cross the fence I’d know immediately and he’d have to kill me to get to the rest of you. As long as no one is stupid enough to leave the carnival grounds, we’re safe.”
Alistair leaned forward and pointed at Eli’s wrist. “As long as you have that, we are not safe.”
Absently he touched the keyhole tattoo. As usual, it felt cold to the touch.
“I don’t need to open this. I’m stronger these last few days than I have been in years. Castel won’t cross the gate.”
“Oh yes, and what’s so special about the last
few days?” The carnival director’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes narrowed and Eli knew he knew.
He lied anyway. “Nothing. I’ve managed some sleep for a change.”
“So the gossip is true.”
Eli snorted and looked away. “What the hell are you doing listening to carny gossip?”
“Are you completely mad? Your brother is out for revenge because of what you did to him,” Alistair punctuated each word with a thrust of his finger into the air between them. “And you’re lining up targets for him? Oh what he wouldn’t do if he found out about her.”
Eli froze, letting the implication wash over him. If Castel knew she was important to him, even just a little, he’d find a way to take her from him violently.
“I will not allow it.” Panic made it hard to breathe suddenly. “I can keep her safe.”
“Put an end to it now.”
“No.” The Magician stood and paced across the room close to his bed where her scent was still strong and lovely. He couldn’t look at the director, didn’t want anyone to see evidence of his alarm. “She lets me sleep. She makes everything easier. I can’t explain it, but I can do things I haven’t been able to since we went dark. Since…” he trailed off and met the carnival director’s warning eyes. “Since the accident.”
Alistair looked away. He tapped the cane against his knee distractedly, nervous gesture Alistair was not prone to indulging.
“There aren’t many ways to kill a magician, Eli, but Cora would have found one if she knew about you two. That should be enough of a reason to end it.”
“I haven’t touched her.”
The carnival director snorted. “I am sure that is not true.”
He scowled. “I am not discussing this with you.”
“Eli, I am saying this as your friend. End it or he will.”
“We’re done.” He pointed at the door. “Get out.”
Alistair didn’t argue. They’d known each other much too long to push boundaries when they were reached. He stood, straightened his jacket, tapped his cane twice, and started for the door.
