Funhouse Page 17

  “I’ve not begun to tire yet, little girl.”

  Neve knew the moment he’d gathered magic against her again, because she suddenly stiffened, all tension returned, her folds pulsing, clit pulsing, cunt pulsing. The aching was back, desire everywhere she was soft, everywhere he was hard.

  “Don’t you see how wonderful this can be?” he said. “Isn’t this tension so much better when you know it is fleeting?”

  “Mikhail, please stop trying to make this okay. When you talk, it just makes it worse.” But as she raised herself up, it pushed her down to the base of his cock, and she choked on her words. She brushed his small, dark brown nipples with her fingertips, and when she tweaked them with her thumbs, he made a happy grunt that extended into a groan as she rolled her hips.

  “I apologize. Speaking to women like this is not my forte.”

  “Like this?”

  “When women don’t know what I am, when they aren’t inclined to resist, I am the artist. It is part of my hunt to lure them in with pretty words. But Sasha is the only woman I’ve spoken with properly for over a hundred years, the only one I can speak with after sex. Even as the Arcanium strongman, I am not required to talk. For the longest time, all I ever had to say to women was everything I needed to get me into their bed. And that was all they ever wanted from me. What am I supposed to say?”

  “How about nothing?” She licked the hollow of his clavicle, tasting salt and flesh, licked up his throat, kissed under his jaw. “Just stop. And if you’re going to make me feel like this, don’t keep it this strong. Fuck me, please.”

  “Ride me.” He cradled the nape of her neck, but he didn’t guide her until she had kissed up his chin of her own accord. “Rise up and work your pussy all over my cock. Let me see you, Neve.”

  She did as he told her, bracing herself on his abdomen instead of his chest to keep herself as upright as possible, as distant as she could be while still spitted on his cock. She breathed in his magic, swam in it, raised herself up and let gravity bring herself back down again. She sheathed him to the hilt every time, her wetness and his cum making an unbearably wet sound every time she took him in. But she couldn’t stop now, didn’t want the pleasure of his cock against her inner walls to stop, not when every stroke was as good as one of her old orgasms.

  Her breasts shook and swung, not appreciating the violence with which she bounced over his cock, but she couldn’t care. She rolled her hips and ground down, took him as hard and deep as she pleased, until another cry ripped from her throat and another shared orgasm heated through her and left her boneless, a collapsed, dead-weight body over his, not that it fazed him.

  “I promised you all night, Neve. I am unreliable in many things, but I keep my promises.”

  Chapter Seven

  He eventually wore himself out long after she’d been left nearly catatonic, though she kept her nails hooked in him, quivered when he brought her to orgasm. By the end of it, she felt as though she’d been systematically skinned inside and out with a fine razor, all nerve endings exposed and stimulated over and over and over and over… Each time she thought she couldn’t stand more, he’d shift the angle, kiss her again and the fire would rekindle.

  His cock could have continued, but he pulled one of the blankets out of the drawer next to him and folded it between them so that he was no longer in contact with her.

  Despite that, her dreams during the few hours of sleep she managed were such that the two of them somehow pushed the blanket beneath them and came together while unconscious. He was still asleep when she woke up, his movements too slow to be anything but unhurried somnambulism. She clung to his shoulders, pressed her face to his chest, breathed in the sharp, musky incense of his skin. She hid herself against him, canting her hips to his patient, bleary rhythm.

  He woke to climax, tangling his fingers through her tangled hair, the dreamy motion of his hips quickening and strengthening until he sank completely in, semen pulsing to join the rest, and his feed upon her nearly pulling her back into the dream from which she’d emerged.

  Mikhail hummed as he finished, her own orgasm fluttering around him. He eased his fingers from her hair to comb through the mess he’d help make.

  As soon as she was able to move, she shoved his chest.

  Her intention had been to shove him away from her, but he was so immovable, she shoved herself back from him, which worked just as well but was still unfair, since this was her trailer, her bed.

  “Neve?”

  Poor man sounded confused.

  She used the distance she’d made to help her as she rolled off the bed. Neve hoped the golems knew a good dry cleaner, because sex was damn messy. She was used to only doing it once at a time, but she’d lost count of how many combined orgasms they’d had—with a corresponding amount of semen that seemed like serious overkill, unless it performed a different function for incubi other than carrying sperm. At this point, though, her biological curiosity was so far on the backburner, it couldn’t have boiled water.

  She’d cover herself with a blanket, but his side was the one with the blankets, and she didn’t want to ruin another one.

  “I need you to leave. Please.”

  Mikhail sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand. Did I do something wrong?”

  “You can’t stay. I’m exhausted, dehydrated and in desperate need of a shower.”

  “Neve, what’s wrong?”

  “Please, don’t call me by my name.” She massaged the bridge of her nose. The headache from dehydration needled the place between her eyes and behind them, little pinpricks that threatened to throb. “Just…go. Get out.”

  “I don’t understand. Were you not satisfied?”

  Neve laughed, though nothing was funny. It was a good thing she wasn’t expected to smile for the customers or else she’d really be in trouble. “Oh yeah, I was satisfied. I’m feeling almost normal now, except for not wanting anything to touch me and most of my circus days being nothing but hands. Except for feeling like a cumbucket.” Yet another word she never used, but there wasn’t anything more accurate. “Except for the two hours of sleep where I basically had sex dream after sex dream, and I’m squelching and sticking and there’s enough semen in here to get a harem pregnant. I just really need you to leave.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You said that already. I hate to be impolite. Really, I do. But I have nothing left, and I couldn’t be clearer about you needing to leave. Maybe in a few days, I can be clearer as to why, but right now…” She picked up a bookend in case that made her point, even though she’d have to disinfect it later.

  What a little girl holding a bookend was supposed to do against a strongman when her fastball had barely made him blink didn’t matter. He stood, retrieved his trousers from the floor. He, unlike her, seemed to have emerged from the night unscathed, traces of their various bodily fluids nowhere to be found.

  Brow knitted, Mikhail ducked out of the bedroom. He paused at the top of the stairs. “Thank you. My mind hasn’t been this quiet in months.”

  “You’re welcome.” She guessed she meant it, but she wouldn’t be able to appreciate it either way until she’d had a long, hot shower.

  As soon as he was out of her trailer, striding out in the morning with the usual steam rising from him in curling billows, Neve gathered all the blankets that could have possibly been soaked through and dumped them outside. She couldn’t see anyone else out there looking at her, so she didn’t know if she flashed someone in the process, but right now, she just couldn’t care.

  * * * *

  Her mood didn’t improve after the shower, though she spent longer in there than most mornings. She ate apple slices, cheese and summer sausage from the mini-fridge instead of going for breakfast under the big top. She wanted these precious few moments without anyone around, anyone close to her.

  But more than having alone time, somehow she knew… Maybe it was because of Misha and Carlo hurrying to one of their trailer
s last night, unable to wait. Or Kitty telling her that the sex demons’ sexual tension affected the entire circus.

  It only stood to reason that a release of that tension would also affect the circus. A whole night of releasing tension…and again this morning… What had everyone done while the incubus’ magic had surrounded her, insinuated into her like a parasite, spread its tentacles to suck the self-replenishing life from her then burst in shared climax? She was all too aware of what they’d probably done, and the last thing she wanted was to go out into the circus where everyone knew what she’d done and for how long and how intense it had been—as though they’d been peering through the windows, too.

  When she couldn’t stay in her trailer any longer without getting to Kitty’s tent too late for makeup, she pulled on one of her negligees—the jersey dress was on the lawn with her linens. It wasn’t her usual costume, pink silk with lace cutouts, and her bra and panties showed through the thin material, but if Bell had wanted her to always wear the jersey, he should have given her more dresses to choose from. The grasping hands in the funhouse would cover most of her body anyway.

  She kept her head down, but she was fortunate not to meet anyone or have anyone bother her on the way to Kitty’s tent.

  No such luck when she entered it.

  “Holy crap, woman, what did you do last night?” One of the twins—Neve couldn’t tell which because she couldn’t read their necklaces from the entrance—swiped invisible sweat from her forehead. “I haven’t had a night like that in years. What are you? Insatiable?”

  “I don’t think anyone in the whole damn circus slept,” the other twin said. “Everyone looked completely trashed at breakfast this morning, either because they rode the waves or because they weren’t able to.”

  “I’d stay away from Bell if I were you. He’s snippy as a feral tom. You know, I don’t think he’s been without a woman in his bed for over twenty years. Did he have anyone before Valorie, Kitty?”

  “There was a period when he didn’t, but not long. Before Valorie, he had the woman who was the illusionist before he took the position.” Kitty braided the twins’ pigtails together as she talked. She glanced up at Neve, assessing. Like the twins, her face was drawn, although the color in her cheeks and light fur over her face concealed the worst of the dark circles. “Don’t worry about him. He knows how to handle himself. I’ll get to you in a minute, sweetie. Feel free to grab some cold-press coffee from the fridge.”

  “Lord Mikhail had the circus going so hard,” the second twin said. “Seth and Lars actually did their personal gay thing with us there, which was weird and wonderful. They’re out and everything now, but they were so embarrassed this morning. Hey!” The second twin pressed a hand where her hair met her forehead. “What gives?”

  Kitty finished off their hair without another word, pretending an invisible gnome had yanked their braids instead.

  Valorie ducked into the tent and headed straight for the vanity, where she put on her own rhinestone-studded, glittery harlequin face. She acknowledged Neve with a raised chin and smirk but, thankfully, that was all.

  Maya came in next, wincing a little as she walked, but she, like the rest of the women in the tent, appeared thoroughly satisfied, thoroughly tired. She still had trouble looking Neve in the eye, her posture telegraphing guilt, even though Bell was more at fault. Seeing her in her Mad Red Queen regalia gave Neve a twinge of nausea anyway.

  “Thank you,” was all she said in Neve’s direction, but that was enough to bring a flush to Neve’s cheeks again. She bent over her knees to hide her face while she waited for Kitty to call her up.

  The girls seemed to figure out something was wrong and didn’t say anything to her about it again. Other women who popped in and out didn’t add to the humiliation, so there must have been some mouthing words and miming when they came in, but Neve didn’t look up to make sure.

  “Your turn.”

  When Neve stood, only the Spider was at the vanity, putting heavy kohl on her lids then painting two more eyes under her real ones to create the illusion she had four.

  Kitty started by pinning Neve’s hair away from her face. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  * * * *

  The funhouse hands worked over her as fervently as they did when she wore the jersey dress, so now she knew it didn’t matter which costume she wore.

  Those hands quickly restoked the fire Lord Mikhail had extinguished. She’d known it was only a matter of time before the arousal returned, just as it would only be a matter of time before Lord Mikhail showed back up on her doorstep, but she’d hoped she would have longer than a few hours.

  She nearly cried, tears hot and stinging in her eyes with betrayal at her own body for not letting her have any peace. At Joseph for wanting her to be like this. At Bell for transforming her into this—because heaven knew he could have interpreted that damn wish any way he damn well pleased. At Lord Mikhail for only making it worse while he at least got a good feed. At every single person who passed her while she writhed against the hands, because she didn’t have to fake the horror of being pulled into an unseen abyss.

  Weeks, months, years, decades of this insatiability stretched before her like a prison sentence, more and more a version of hell as time went on. Sure, it wasn’t pain, but it was a lifetime of discontent, and there was nothing within her own power to do about it. She had to depend on the kindness of friends and strangers. But she didn’t want to.

  And this was all she was ever going to be to friends and strangers alike—a cypher either way, a living sex doll whose body had weight and substance, but did anyone realize she was inside it, too? She was a commodity to be consumed, a pretty thing to look at. She couldn’t even impress them with some feat of physical prowess or accident of nature like the performers or freaks. Bell could make the arms seem alive with his magic, so he didn’t actually need a woman in this tableau. She might as well be a mannequin.

  Her brain liked to feel useful, but there was nothing for a scientist to do here. Being pretty was its own accident of nature—and its own curse. It certainly had been back when she hadn’t been interested in sex, yet that had pretty much been the only reason men had wanted to be within her sphere. It was even more of a curse now that she was interested in sex, now that she had virtually unlimited access to sex she knew she’d enjoy.

  Because I’m incidental to the whole equation.

  That’s why she was so ticked off at Mikhail and Bell. That’s why she’d woken up satisfied yet still frustrated. That’s why she hated everyone right now. But it didn’t matter to any of them, because she had big boobs and sexy lingerie whether she was happy or not.

  Neve wished she could get a hold of the chainsaw. Maybe the bone saw. She bet people would notice something other than her body then, too concerned with what she was doing with theirs. She wasn’t morbid or violent by nature, but a regular diet of horror movies had given her brain access to some gnarly weaponry for her fantasy life when she had idle destruction on her mind. Blood spattered in stark patterns on the walls of her imagination.

  That got her through most of the day of guys groping themselves and the Gentleman having to move along nearly a dozen men trying to do things to her they shouldn’t.

  Above all, she didn’t make eye contact. She pretended they were the fourth wall and she the performer who couldn’t acknowledge it. Eye contact made the more brazen of the men think they had her permission. She dared them to use that logic in a zoo. When they reached for her, she would twist away, but she still wouldn’t look at them. Whether they thought her glaring at them was encouragement that she wanted them or encouragement to annoy the crap out of her, the result was the same. The tightening of her belly called the Gentleman every time.

  She wasn’t sure whether she was more anxious at being touched because they were doing it without her permission or because, if they did touch her, she might let them do whatever they wanted anyway. Neve didn’t know whether a ma
n had to be an incubus to make her feel good. Bell hadn’t been an incubus, and the brush of his fingers had been enough to set her skin off. And all these damn hands on her…if any of them went under the edge of her underwear, she didn’t think she’d resist much.

  At a certain point late afternoon or early evening, there was a brief lull in the number of guests coming through the funhouse, as there sometimes was. She hoped it was close to the end of her work day, hoped the prospect of a good seat in the big top tent had drawn guests away from the funhouse. She’d never drunk more than a glass of wine now and then—and a cocktail even more rarely—but she suddenly had a taste for vodka that she wasn’t interested in developing more fully. Mostly, she just wanted to sleep in a clean bed with clean sheets and room to stretch. And if she had to have sex dreams, she’d rather have them alone and wake up without another person there, even if her body would prefer something warm.

  This circus was going to drive her insane, and Neve didn’t think she was exaggerating. How was she supposed to make Arcanium work for her when what it demanded of her went against everything she used to be?

  A man rounded the corner, walking alone, which was enough to make him unusual. People didn’t come to the circus on their own. People came on dates, with their family, with a group of friends or some variation thereof.

  Neve hadn’t been single often, but it had been enough to know that most places were incredibly lonely by oneself, with all kinds of reminders that alone wasn’t okay. Particularly at restaurants. God forbid a woman want to be seated alone at a table rather than at the bar or getting her food to go.

  The world was built around relationships, and people tended to go into haunted houses in groups. Part of it was for safety in numbers, but scares also worked better that way. Fear was as contagious as humor—which was why horror movies used screeching violins the way sitcoms used laugh tracks and why the funhouse had its own soundtrack throughout the building.