by Amo Jones
“What are you doing?” I whisper, only I wish I didn’t speak because my lips rubbed against his softly. My palms sweat and itch, my stomach doing cartwheels.
“Lower,” Kyrin urges.
He grabs my wrists and pins them above my head, using his other to hike my leg up onto his hip.
“Killian,” I grind out. “Get off me.”
“Tad lower, then try again.”
Killian’s hand squeezes my thigh as his lips fall on top of mine. Not enough for a kiss, but enough for a warning. “How do I know you?”
I suck in a breath, my heart thundering in my chest. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“You d—don’t…” I answer.
He freezes.
I still. I’m confused, but mostly, I want his fucking muscular body off me and I need it off now.
His grin is untamed, and the only reason why I know that he’s grinning is because his white teeth gleam against the darkness of the room. “That wasn’t so hard, was it, Little Villain.”
“Stop playing with the food, Kill…” Kyrin snaps, but his voice is in the background now. “We got what we wanted.”
Killian doesn’t move and I’m still frozen beneath his body.
He leans down and suddenly I feel his tongue lick across my collarbone. My eyes shut as the tingles of his erotic touch sends electricity shooting all over my body.
I grind my teeth. “Get the fuck off me!” Just because he makes me feel some sort of way, doesn’t mean I’m going to give my body the satisfaction of getting what she wants.
“One, you’re a fucking liar, sweetheart, and I hate liars, and two?” He pauses, releasing my thigh. “Told you I’d be able to get you spread eagle in three seconds.” He jackknifes up from my bed, leaving me feeling exposed and vulnerable. Words can be a powerful weapon, lethal enough to strip anyone of their composure while leaving their confidence bleeding out over the floor.
I shiver, unmoving.
“I’ll figure your shit out, Little Villain, and when I do…” Killian runs his tongue over his teeth and grins. “You’re going to wish I was still trying to get you naked.”
I kick the door to our bus closed, heading straight for the fridge and pulling out a can of Coke. I know that if I have any alcohol right now, it won’t help with the clarity that I need in order to decipher everything right now.
“Kill…” Kyrin says. “You need to think long and hard about what it is I know you’re thinking.”
I take a swig of my drink just as Keaton comes down the stairs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It’s been good having Dove out of the bus, but losing King in here was a loss I don’t think any of us were really prepared for.
“The fuck is the slamming for?” Keaton growls, dropping down onto the chair at the table.
“There’s something up with Saskia. There’s more to her.” That’s all I’ve got right now.
Keaton rolls his eyes, running his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, no shit, she’s Kiznitch, what do you expect? And by the way, this fascination you have with her is making you fucking grumpy.”
Ky looks back at me, bored. “If she isn’t who she says she is, we’ll just kill her. Now can I please go to bed? Fuck. We have a long ass trip tomorrow, and since Justice is all in love with Delila, we have to all do the driving ourselves.”
Kyrin threatening someone’s life should never be taken lightly. Because he will. Kyrin is a weapon and one of Kiznitch’s best-kept secrets because of the way he goes about his kills. Though that part isn’t really a secret. He leaves a brand on every single person he takes.
“We can’t fucking kill her,” I reply, bored with Kyrin’s lack of imagination. Kyrin is black and white. He doesn’t see grays or colors, or fucking lines or barriers. See where I, I look for opportunities. For games. That doesn’t mean that I have a problem putting someone down, it just means that I’m more histrionic about it.
“Why not?” Ky shrugs, opening a pack of potato chips and tossing some into his mouth.
“Because she’s close to Perse,” Keaton adds, as if that should simmer Kyrin.
It doesn’t.
“So? She ain’t my girl, so why should I give a fuck about upsetting her.”
“Yeah?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “And what about King?”
Kyrin rolls his eyes, knowing that I’m right.
“It’s settled. We won’t be killing Saskia. No flesh removal is needed…”
Kyrin glares up at me from thick lashes. “Yet.”
Stepping outside the next morning, I’m heading straight for the tent after realizing that I woke up late. Twenty minutes late, to be exact, and I have no one else to blame but Kyrin and Killian. Bastards.
I push through the doors, dragging my hair into a high pony and tossing my bottle of water to the ground. I had no time to change into something that would get me into the vibe of dancing, so I settled for tight bike shorts and a sports bra, and by settle, I mean I literally had no other time to put anything else on. Brisbane is warm, and I heard on the radio that they’re just coming out of summer. So fucking weird. They’re literally the land down under.
“Saskia…” Delila stutters from the corner of the center ring. God, it’s good to be back inside the tent. To smell the worn rubber, the damp grass, and the faint smell of gasoline.
“Yes?” I blink rapidly. “Sorry, I had a disrupted sleep.” My eyes cut to Killian briefly, who is bent over the stage with no shirt on and grease rubbed all over his chest. You will not stare. I try to ignore the way his tanned skin gleams against all of his tattoos. The new sleeve he got during the holidays, the Kiznitch over his chest, but it’s hard when the man hardly ever wears a shirt.
“Okay, well that’s alright then. You be late whenever you need to be…” Delila has been extra fucking cranky lately and her sarcasm was not lost on me. She was never like this before. She was smooth and collected and—dare I say it—sophisticated. Now she’s a mess. No longer wearing perfectly tailored suits and primed hair styled to the nines. Now her suits have wrinkles in them and her hair—though I should blame the Australian humidity—is frazzled.
“Sorry, Delila,” I murmur before slowly making my way onto the stage where Perse is glaring at me. I give her a small smile, ignoring Callan and winking at Kenan.
“Alright.” Delila claps, lighting a smoke and bringing it between her cracked lips. “Now that the showstopper is here, let’s continue, shall we?” She moves to the front of the stage. “Did you all decide what you’re doing for the tour? If you’re doing the same choreography and songs at every location?”
Perse nods. “Yes, we did. I have our group dance and show, my solo, the duet with Sass and Kenan, and—” She sucks in a breath, turning to face me. Her eyes say I’m sorry, but I get the feeling that she is not. “I would like Saskia to have her own solo act.”
Everyone silences.
“What?” Callan chokes. “Why?”
“Yeah! Why?” I glare at Perse.
Perse squeezes my hand before going back to Delila. “Listen, on New Year’s Eve, we were playing around with the fire batons and—well, the fire equipment in general and she” —Perse turns to face me—“can motherfucking dance with them! Drunk. On Jager bombs.”
“Ahhh…” I raise my finger. I’m in trouble already this morning, I don’t want to give Delila another reason to be angry at me. “I can explain.” Well, I actually can’t, but I’m hoping to think up something quick while everyone is silent.
Delila glares at me. “Saskia, you playing with toys is not going to get you in trouble. I don’t give a shit about your safety.” She blows out a cloud of smoke. “Is what Perse is saying true? Do you breathe it too? Correctly, because fire breathing is one of the most dangerous circus acts known to man…”
I gulp. “Yes. But, but I don’t know how I know.”
Killian snickers in the back.
I ignore him.
Delila is staring with newfound interest. That’s the thing with her, if you d
on’t bring something to the table that sets you apart from the rest, you are disposable. “Tell me, my Little Showstopper, are you a pyromaniac?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I just—well, I don’t know. I understand how they work and what to do, as if I’ve been doing it all my life.”
I watch as her face flashes with something, but before I can decipher it, it’s gone and replaced with her scowl. “Hmmm. Show me later. I would like you to work on that today.”
I nod, and after she has yelled the rest of her orders to everyone, me and Perse’s crew start warming up. I need to get my head into the game. Into music. Music can drown out even the loudest of screams.
Three hours later and we’re done for the day. The routine that Perse has me and Kenan doing is probably one of my favorites. I recognize the song from a movie, but never would have thought that Perse would have us dance to such a hypnotic and entrancing slow tune. Kenan uses my body as his own personal tool, and I him. It’s intimate and heart crushing and takes a lot of stamina to keep up with.
I’m taking a sip of water when we hear the bikes fire up in the back. The Brothers ride in, in a loud rumble of smoke.
Maya bumps me with her hip. “I need to see your fire routine.”
I swipe my mouth. I never know how to take Maya since I know she and Killian are so close. “Sure.”
“You know…” she begins to say, and my eyes follow hers to Killian. But before she can say any more, I interfere.
“Oh, he is that bad…”
“What?” she asks, confused, but with a smile on her face.
“You were going to say that Killian is not that bad of a person?”
Maya pauses, her eyebrows shooting up, and then a loud laugh breaks out of her. “Oh no, he is definitely bad. In fact, he’s the worst. He thinks that flashing that pretty smile will deter the fact that he’s evil.” She turns around as she walks away, but not before saying, “Don’t mistake those sinfully good looks for a good man, Showstopper. The glistening teeth that sit behind that grin are the very same that rips flesh from bone…”
I massage my temples and watch as she bounces toward Killian, stepping up into his wheel. “STARGAZING” by Travis Scott is playing loudly over the bikes, and once again, Killian is watching me. Even as Maya passes him and hops onto her swing, his eyes are on me. Finally, he revs his engine and rides it up the plank and onto the wheel. I exhale and scurry out of the tent through the main entrance. Usually we enter and exit through the back because the main entrance is basically another tent, only half the size of the main one. In this one, there’s a bar, a food stall where you can buy candied corn, hot food and such, and then a small alleyway that leads to the bathrooms. I continue through to the main entrance, passing a couple of the Six Demons. We’re set up in some secluded area behind suburbia, trees line the paddock, which lead to our buses that are hidden behind the tents. I guess we are granted with some sort of road access while we travel, allowing our vehicles and trailers into whatever country we’re in.
I make my way to our bus and push open the door, needing a quick shower before I go back to the tent and figure out what the hell I’m going to do about this fire routine.
Once I’m out of the shower, I open up my camera, clutching the towel in my hand and open Instagram. I flip it onto selfie mode and snap a photo of me purposely rolling my eyes. Moving it to my stories, I write the words PLAYING WITH FIRE over top of it and throw on a filter. Scrolling through my newsfeed, I click on a photo of Perse and King that she took. He’s grumpy as shit and she’s smiling with her teeth on full display. Her arm is hooked around his neck and her hands are around his cheeks, trying to get him to smile like you would a kid.
It’s so cute. I double click it and then click on her profile.
I laugh when I see the photos she has. Some of me, a lot of her and King, and some of her and The Brothers. I click on one with her and Kill. I don’t know why, but before I could analyze why I did it, I was already there and distracted. Killian is on his bike, wearing ripped designer jeans, a white shirt that has the words MOTHER FUCKER on it. And then in smaller writing, is says read that again. I snicker. Killian is terrifyingly confident, and probably rightly so. When I read through the comments, his username sticks out.
@killiancornelii My thumb hovers over his username.
I toss my phone onto my bed and get dressed instead, not wanting to go onto his page. I’m not touching that right now, and anyway, why the hell should I care.
Changing into a tight leather crop top and tight little booty shorts that show my ass hanging out the bottom, I continue to rifle through my suitcase.
I need something else edgy.
Tearing off the leather crop top but leaving on the shorts, I find the perfect top. It’s actually copper gold and is made from metal. The front fans out over my breasts like wings. There’s a dip in the middle that is lined with diamonds before it cuts off as a crop. The back is simple, clipping around my body. It’s revealing, and not something you could wear anywhere else except here, or maybe at a festival. Clipping it up, I find my black snake cuff that curls around my lower leg and comes up to my knee. I’ve always wanted to wear it since I bought it when Perse and I went shopping after Christmas, and now I can. Throwing on some ankle boots, I tie my hair back in a bun and leave my face free of makeup. No point getting show ready for practice, but I do need to practice in the outfit I will be wearing during the first show in a couple of days.
I push through the tent just as Sam, our sound man, is passing by.
“Hey! The batons, rope darts, hoops, gasoline, and everything else you’ll need for fire bending is right there. The case also has your name on it now, so when we move, it will be in your staff cubby for set-ups.”
I glance over the range of equipment. “Okay, but Sam? I’ve not done the rope darts, and—” I pause, blowing out a breath. “Wow, is that a fire staff?” I gulp. Shit. What has Perse got me into?
“Sure is!” A voice interrupts my panic, and I turn to face her. “My name’s Ashley,” she says, and that’s when I recognize her.
“Oh shit!”
“Yes, also known as Persephone’s mother.” She drops a duffle bag beside her, and it’s the first time I take in what she’s wearing. Yoga pants and a tight tank. Her hair is down, displaying her long blonde locks and it’s also the first time that I notice the resemblance to Perse.
“Nice to meet you.” I nod at her.
She smiles. “You too. Now, can you tell me what you’re familiar with when it comes to fire bending?” She’s pulling on black gloves, but her focus remains on me.
“Ah, well, nothing. I would watch some of the performers at a small bar in Siesta Key, but other than that, I have no idea.”
Ashley pauses her movements, regarding me carefully. “Interesting. But you know what you’re doing?”
“I do,” I answer, shuffling on my feet. “Is it normal for someone to pick up on it easily?”
She snorts, shoving her other glove on her hand. “Absolutely not. But,” she sighs, but doesn’t bring her eyes back to me. “Let’s get this underway.”
“Hang on.” I pause. “Are you a fire bender?”
Ashley chuckles, leaning down to unzip her bag, but again, not looking at me. As if she’s thinking too hard about something and is afraid that I might read the words over her face. “Not me personally, I did have a good friend who was the queen of fire bending. No one has done it in Midnight Mayhem since her retirement.”
I exhale. “Jesus. I’m really doing this.”
“But do you love it?” she asks, glaring at me with a smirk.
I lick my lips and match her grin. “I do.”
Four hours later, I’m crawling back into bed with sore limbs and a bad stench of kerosene.
“You smell like gas…” Callan snarls, taking a bite out of her toast the next morning.
Kenan is grinning from ear to ear. “How’s our little spitfire?”
“Kenan,” I groan.
“Are we really going to try all the pet names?”
Kenan laughs, clutching his tummy. He takes a gulp of his protein shake. “Yes, until I find one. I like spitfire.”
“Well, if it helps.” I turn the blender on for my shake. A shake I need for fuel today because while everyone else gets to chill before the first show tonight, I have practice one more time. I think out of all of the tools, the rope darts and dragon staff are my favorite and what I really excel in, so we’ve decided to stick to those both for this show. I will get two scenes, one for the rope darts, which is only around four minutes long, and the other will be me dancing with the dragon staff, basically rolling fire off my body. “As part of my costume, I wear devil horns.”
Kenan’s mouth drops open.
“And I’m in leather and steel.”
Wider.
“Kenan…”
“Sorry,” he moans. “Fuck that’d look… hot.”
I ignore him. “I’m a little terrified.”
“Why?” he asks, kicking out the chair opposite him so I can take a seat. I sip on my shake.
“Well, Ash is training me. She knew the last fire dancer that they had in Mayhem, so I guess I don’t want to let her, or anyone down.”
Kenan sighs, leans forward and touches my cheek. I flinch away, and he rolls his eyes, well acquainted with my issues when it comes to intimacy any time outside of the show. I form friendships organically, yes, but it does take a lot to push me through to that phase. “Baby G, you were born for this…”
Callan sits down, biting on her toast. “I’m so hungry this morning. Killian is tiring me out.”
I don’t bat an eye.
“Are you coming to the beach today, Saskia?” Callan asks.
Kenan studies both of us.
I shake my head at her. “Nope. I need to practice once more before tonight.”
