Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  “Not much. It’s formfitting, but not overly revealing, so Merc…won’t be overly agitated.”

  His lip curled, but he forbore comment and began to unwrap the strips of cloth. The snakes slid away to her shoulders again as he turned her, once, twice, three times. She closed her eyes, dipping her head at the dizziness while her wings stretched out, full and free again.

  Drawing her over to the crates, he pressed her down so her breasts pressed against the rough slats of the one on top. He ran his hands over her wings. Bending to tease them with lips and fingers, he explored and found where they were most responsive; at the joining point with her body, and along the thin membranes between the bones. He dropped to his knees, kissing his way down her spine, hands cupping and kneading her buttocks, pushing her up on her toes, making her feel the strain in her thighs.

  “John.”

  “Master,” he said against her flesh. “Right now, that’s what you call me.”

  “Master.” She hitched over the last syllable, because he’d wet a finger and was tracing it along the rim between her buttocks, setting off a cascade of feeling that rippled through her sex, making her dampen anew.

  He bit one cheek, and she gasped at the cutting pressure of his teeth. As he rose, he gave the curve a healthy smack, making it wobble. The sting of his bite and impact of his hand shot a glorious spiral through her once again.

  “Sometimes, when a submissive soul is afraid of something, it helps if her Master reminds her he’s in charge of her wellbeing. That she doesn’t have to worry so much. Stay where you are.” He moved into the recesses of the tent and came back with a handful of slim wooden sticks that he slapped against his hand, showing they were flexible.

  “A birching usually helps with that, and I think these will do the trick. The marks it leaves will remind you.”

  He wasn’t asking her opinion on it. That deep part of her that responded to the unconditional demand for service, the right kind of service, rose to the top, taking her voice until he summoned it from her.

  “Say, ‘Yes Master.’”

  “Yes, Master. Thank you.” She added that last spontaneously, and it seemed to please him. He ran a hand over her backside, massaging, pinching, giving her an occasional slap that made her jump. When he hit her with that handful of slim rods, the slapping noise made her jump too. The resulting sting was dispersed over both buttocks, so it hadn’t hurt, not much, but she quickly realized he was warming her up as he did it a few more times.

  As he increased the weight of the blows, he slowed down. Each impact sang through her nerve endings and had time to spread like the warmth of the sun before he did it again. It hurt, but it was also arousing her.

  She didn’t keep count, lost in the sensation. When he paused, running his hands over her burning, stinging flesh, she had tears in her eyes. But she wasn’t thinking of her worries anymore.

  The snakes were arranged on the crate around her head and shoulders. They were caught up in the usual lethargy they experienced when she became aroused, though Ratqueen’s head rested on the top of her hand.

  “What do you want, Medusa?”

  “You,” she whispered. “Inside me. Please.”

  That marvelous belt sound and the tick of a zipper. When he put his hands to her hips, he slid into her wetness as easily as she might have dived into the pool at her waterfall. She groaned at his size, how her tender flesh had to stretch to accommodate him.

  “Yeah, you got me big as a piling there. When you call me Master, it’s like a trigger. I want to fuck you right then and there. So keep that in mind if we’re ever in a Starbuck’s.”

  She was too aroused to giggle, but she felt the frisson of amusement in among the pleasure. She gasped as he began to pump into her slow. He slid his hands over her wings, her back, and curved his hand over her nape, holding her down as he increased the power of his thrusts. “Goddess…Master…”

  “You feel so fucking good. Love your cunt, and love you. Love you…”

  She closed her eyes as he drew them both to that quivering, shimmering edge. “Please…”

  “Going with me. Going over that same cliff. Right…fucking…now…”

  They both came as he’d demanded, him keeping her high on her toes as he slammed his hips against her backside, her making moans of pleasure as the climax rippled through her in continuous waves, tightening and loosening everything at once.

  When he slowed, he wrapped both arms around her, holding her wings folded against her body and all of her inside the span of his arms.

  “Christ, you’re going to kill me. And I’ll die with a smile on my face.” But his hand dropped, smoothing over her buttock. It was sore, but she didn’t mind the feeling. “You liked that,” he said.

  It was a statement, not a question, and she wasn’t sure if that was okay. “Yes. I felt how you liked it, as well.”

  “Yeah. There are a million ways I want to have you, and it seems like we’re only getting started.”

  She liked the sound of that. She liked it a lot.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Big Top was full, nearly a thousand parents and children. Clara told her a thousand was a small crowd for most circuses, but Yvette considered that the optimal house size. Gundar had offered Medusa a complicated explanation involving supply and demand and marketing strategies that mostly went over her head, but the end result was they usually had sellout crowds. Through ticket and novelty sales, that number provided enough of a “take” per show to make the “nut”, the Circus’s operating expenses, and a profit besides.

  The practical side of the business was Gundar and Yvette’s responsibility. After hearing all that went into it, and getting slightly lost with all the unfamiliar terminology that even the translation spell couldn’t completely decipher, Medusa was glad her only job, at least for tonight, was her performance with Merc. Fortunately, it left plenty of time for watching.

  As Medusa stood hidden behind the curtain at one of the troupe entrances to the rings they called a “back door,” she was as dazzled by the show as anyone in the stands. She couldn’t imagine any child attending tonight who wouldn’t be planning to join a circus after seeing it.

  The show had started with a dramatic encounter between Lianthe and Tragar, the male dragon. Lianthe had stood next to Medusa, letting her rest against her side, until the unicorn was cued and came cantering out to a wave of oohs and aahs from the house. The reaction escalated into gasps as Tragar emerged from the other end of the tent with a dynamic flap of his wings and a bugling call.

  The unicorn and dragon performed a mock fight that would look very real to anyone who hadn’t seen the rehearsal. Yet Lianthe dissipated the intensity when she later pranced up to the dragon with an olive branch. Tragar shot fire perilously close to her as she skittered out of harm’s way. The audience laughed harder when she came back carrying a raw steak in a basket decorated with flowers. The dragon’s heart was won and a truce declared. At the conclusion of the act, Tragar was coiled around Lianthe, his large head resting upon the unicorn’s back, her touching her muzzle to his brow.

  After that, the centaurs burst upon the scene, doing their ring tossing and flame jumping. The three male performers rakishly flirted with their audience. Medusa hadn’t had a chance to get to know them the way she had others in the Circus, but John had told her the centaurs were very tribal and treated most non-centaurs as outsiders.

  “You think I’m protective?” He’d rolled his eyes. “Have you yet seen a centaur female or one of their young?”

  When she shook her head, he’d grimaced. “You won’t, until they’re absolutely sure of you. If you ever stumble upon one of them in the forest by accident—which even that would be a miracle, because they have natural concealment abilities that would eclipse even Maddock’s magic—promise me you’ll lower your eyes and back away as fast as you can. A centaur male will kill a stranger for being within a stone’s throw of his family and ask questions later.”

&nbs
p; She’d promised, though she couldn’t wait for the chance to someday see a centaur foal. As she stood in the shadows, watching the performers and the reactions of the crowd, she realized she was near humans again, many of them, and it wasn’t frightening. She was excited.

  She’d expected to have some trepidation about this, and suspected Merc had a backup act ready in case she’d rabbited. But as she watched the children’s eyes light up, heard their laughter and calls to the players, saw the parents smiling and sometimes with equal looks of wonder on their faces, she felt no fear. Just amazement and gratitude that she was here, able to do this.

  That was the magic of the Circus, wasn’t it? Gundar had explained it well when she’d sat and watched him do his metal working one afternoon. As he hammered and turned the steel, creating his knives and swords, he’d talked about why the Circus was a sanctuary to so many.

  “When people attend a show, they can straddle a line. Tell themselves it isn’t real to keep them in their comfort zone, but believe it is real during the performance to give that part of them that wishes it was real a chance to get out, stretch its wings.”

  The Big Top went fully dark, a spotlight highlighting the huge black wolf standing center ring. Medusa knew glitter had been added to Rand’s coat to augment its gleam beneath the lights. It intensified the gold and blue stare of his bi-colored eyes. Rand stalked along the edge of the audience, the spotlight following him. Parents tried to keep their children from reaching over the rail to rub his fur, but inevitably one slipped past a mother’s guard.

  When the little girl’s palm slid along the line of his spine, he merely kept moving forward. As if a string holding them back had snapped, the children instantly crowded against the rail along his path. He trotted along the perimeter, staying close enough their hands could pass over his coat, one after the other. Medusa was delighted by the expressions on their faces, the excitement as they turned to their parents, palms up to show the coating of glitter, likely another reason it had been used.

  The air was punctuated by a shrill whistle. Rand stopped and wheeled, ears pricked. Another spotlight hit the center ring and, a breath later, a giant purple shoe with green laces landed there with a thump.

  He bounded away toward it, leaping a strategically placed group of crates to highlight the power and flexibility of his muscular body. As he landed on the shoe, a cacophony of noise and protests happened behind the back door curtains. A clown wearing only one purple and green shoe emerged, shaking his finger and trying to persuade Rand to give it back. The lights went up and a small army of the clowns came pouring forth to back him up.

  A hilarious skit ensued where the wolf kept trying to chase them out of the ring and away from the shoe.

  Feeling a movement to her left, Medusa glanced up to see Cai at her shoulder. A light smile was on his serious lips. While he had that predatory stillness that told her she shouldn’t be anything less than careful and respectful around him, he often seemed more approachable than Yvette, perhaps because he was a younger vampire. She hadn’t confirmed that; it was just a feeling.

  “Rand loves the kids,” he told her in a low voice. “We don’t get the chance to be who we are in their world often. The Vampire Council wasn’t on board until they came to one performance. After that, I think they all wanted to join the Circus, too. Yvette has created a magical world here.”

  Hearing the note of regret in his voice, she asked, “Why does that make you sad?”

  He glanced at her. “Because eventually it’ll be destroyed. It’s what happens to things this good. There’s my cue.”

  The clowns had scattered, and Rand had settled down to chew on the oversized shoe he’d successfully retained. Because Cai moved with vampire speed, it looked as if he’d suddenly appeared behind the wolf. The lights dimmed again, leaving two spotlights on the pair of central players.

  Seeing the vampire, a growl started in Rand’s throat, a rumble that grew to be heard in every corner of the large tent. Cai dropped to his heels, fingers templed on the ground, a predator’s crouch. The crowd gasped as he bared fangs that lengthened to lethal curving points that pricked his chin. He looked as wild and untamed as Rand. He was also admittedly an erotic fantasy, the widow’s peak of his dark hair increasing the intensity of his sculpted face and deep set eyes. His costume was a black silk shirt and snug trousers over silver tipped boots. A pair of silver chain link bracelets glittered on either wrist. His eyes glowed crimson.

  Then they both leaped.

  She’d seen them practice, and she still gasped, making Waterlight jump, coiled on her brow beneath the antenna headdress. Seeing a vampire and a werewolf wrestle was like watching a pair of gladiators fighting to the death. Though they were doing this for show, it wasn’t the first time she’d wondered what issues the two of them worked out during these battles. A couple times during practice Cai had come away bleeding after having to pin Rand, hold him in a choke hold until he settled. A rage roused in the male when he was in his beast mode. But based on what she’d heard in Cai’s voice when he spoke of the Circus not lasting, she wondered if that rage had its complement in the vampire’s own demons.

  “One of them needs to get it over with and rip the other one’s head off,” Merc murmured at her side.

  She met his eyes; she always did, and it was always an effort, because she was predisposed not to meet a Dominant’s eyes. She hadn’t recognized that in herself until John made her more cognizant of it. She could almost tell who was Dominant by whose gaze she had trouble meeting. Yvette, Gundar, Marcellus, Cai… Oddly enough, sometimes even Rand, for all that he was Cai’s servant.

  There were many vanilla troupe members, as John called them, but as he’d said, there were quite a few who had embraced the human BDSM world because they were of a Dominant or submissive orientation themselves, regardless of species. Merc was hard to classify. She sometimes thought he was a Dominant, but there was something about him that wasn’t.

  Perhaps it was the lack of control she felt in his core, a foe he was fighting daily. He lost or won that fight too unpredictably to determine which way the final war would go. She saw that knowledge in Yvette and Marcellus’s eyes when they looked upon him. It gave Medusa a cold shiver, because it would be one or both of them that would step in if the war was decisively lost. She could relate to that too well. Maybe that was why she tolerated Merc, far more than she should, in John’s opinion.

  “They love each other too much. Even though they drive each other crazy,” she added.

  “Think so?” Merc studied the vampire and wolf shifter. “I don’t see it.”

  Because he didn’t really understand love. She wondered if he ever would. Thinking of what she was exploring and discovering with John, she believed that was an even greater tragedy than Merc having to be put down at Yvette and Marcellus’s hands. “Yes,” she said. “It’s obvious. Watch. See, where Rand starts to lose control, and his beast takes over, Cai balances him. He takes that control from him, holds it, cares for him.”

  “That’s just the vampire thing about owning his servant.”

  “Yes, maybe. And no.” She thought of how John had reacted to her calling him Master. “It’s a give and take, I think.”

  “Looks like he’s pinning him hard enough to bruise ribs,” Merc said dubiously.

  “Well, he is a wolf shifter, and an exceptionally strong one. Yvette says that’s because his third mark enhances the wolf’s already supernatural strength. He’s not stronger than Cai, but he doesn’t make it easy. He’s a very good fighter, whether in wolf or human form. He could rule a pack of his own, but he chooses to be with Cai.” Something else Clara had told her. While the clairvoyant shied away from telling people their future, she was an intense student of relationships and behavior, a necessity she said contributed to her “fortune telling” skills.

  Medusa had watched Cai and Rand spar when Rand was in human form, and she’d found it very…fascinating. The two powerful males, usually dressed in nothi
ng more than the clinging type of garment they called workout shorts, grappling in ways that not only spoke of their fighting skills, but their carnal knowledge of one another.

  It fascinated her enough that John had reaped the benefits when she found him and ravished him in their wagon, to his amusement and pleasure.

  “Vampires sometimes don’t leave much choice about that shit,” Merc said flatly.

  She suspected that comment, and its barely concealed bitter edge, was directed more toward Yvette than Cai. A sidelong glance showed her Merc’s jaw was in a belligerent set. Sometimes he reminded her of an angry adolescent, frustrated by not being grown up enough, yet feeling so many things that grown-ups could feel and not knowing how to manage those emotions and impulses.

  Don’t humanize him. Not ever. John had admonished her about that several times, and he was emphatic enough about it that she heeded him. Though she wondered if he might give her another of those fascinating spankings or “birchings” if she made him believe she wasn’t mindful enough of the warning.

  Her cheeks warmed at the memory, and she put that away. She and John might disagree about her empathy toward Merc, but on one thing they were in full accord. It was best never to have any sexual thoughts around the incubus, since he could pick up even a trace of human arousal. According to others and her own instincts of self-preservation, he didn’t react well to that.

  “You ready for our part?” he said, those unnerving eyes trained on her. “We’re up next.”

  “Yes, I’m ready.” She looked at her wings, enchanted by how Charlie and her talented army of assistants had transformed them into a Monarch butterfly pattern. Merc’s were a dark purple with gold highlights. The purple would shimmer under the stage lights. While she wore the black bodysuit, his outfit complemented it. Charlie had designed it to be similar to what the acrobats wore. A sleeveless black vest loosely laced over his chest, and pants that clung like a second skin to his muscular backside, thighs and groin. His hair was brushed to a gleam on his bared shoulders.