Ringmaster Read online

  Also, Kitty got to wear fairy and princess costumes and anything else that struck her fancy. Right now, Kitty was in one of her fairy ensembles. How many normal, gainfully employed people could say that?

  The breeze made the ribboned skirt flutter and curl around her legs in the dark. She’d already informed Bell that she was leaving for the night. Kitty didn’t need to tell him, but she felt it was good policy to let him know her comings and goings, just in case.

  She waved goodbye at passing audience members as she joined them in crossing the fairegrounds to get to the parking labyrinth on the other side. Kitty was glad she didn’t have to find her way through one of the makeshift parking lots typical of where Arcanium set down its stakes. They were always a nightmare.

  However, Kitty recognized Victor’s older model Volvo sedan immediately. He pulled up in front of her and rolled down the window.

  She leaned over, resting her arms on the opening. Her breasts threatened to spill over the bodice, but they wouldn’t. She had tailored the design to her exact measurements. Nothing was going to fall out unless she stood on her head.

  “Hey, pretty girl. My cat is missing. I was wondering whether you might have seen her. Lusty ginger female, answers to ‘Kitty’.”

  “I think I have a few ideas,” Kitty said huskily. “Mind if I join you in your search?”

  “Hop in,” Victor said. He flashed his gorgeous smile at her.

  Kitty heard the murmurs, giggles and whispers from people who walked around Victor’s car and heard the exchange. She always heard them.

  Let them look. Let them talk. Let them laugh. She gave the proverbial middle finger at everyone who thought they weren’t right for each other, opened the door and climbed in.

  * * * *

  They didn’t bother with a motel room or hotel. Victor drove her to the place they usually went, a place where public land met private, where the desert stretched out in every direction, and the occasional headlights peeked through the moon-grayed brush.

  She was spread underneath him, lying on a large flannel blanket. He had unbraided her hair and arranged it on the blanket and over her bare breasts, less furry than her chest or her abdomen. He hadn’t undone the bodice all the way, just enough to set her breasts free for his gaze.

  Victor loved looking at her. He couldn’t get enough. She captivated him. But when his eyes had drunk their fill, his hands would still be hungry.

  “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he said. He’d said that during their first encounter. He said it during every encounter. Not once did it ring untrue, like flattery that some men just threw around to convince a woman’s legs to open for them.

  Kitty knocked his hand away from the front of his jeans, where he squeezed himself lightly. She didn’t want to ruin his handiwork. She could undo the front of his jeans without getting up. But he was up. Very much so.

  “How long have you been like this?” she asked, wrapping her hand around his cock through his boxer briefs. The cotton was damp.

  “Since you called,” Victor said. “The moment I heard your voice. It’s too bad you don’t like using your phone a lot, because you could give awesome phone sex.”

  “Did you touch yourself?” Kitty asked. She stroked up and down the shaft far too slowly, but with a torturous, firm grip.

  “Yes,” he gasped.

  “Did you come?”

  “No. I knew I’d have you tonight.”

  “So you just went around work with an erection all…day…long.” She delivered a particularly deliberate, twisting, gripping pull on that last word. He bucked forward with a groan. “I think I like that idea.”

  “What about you?” Victor asked. He stroked against the grain of her hair up her sternum. The hair all over her body was mostly soft, softer than even his light dusting of dark fur. For the men given the honor of touching her, they often couldn’t touch enough.

  “I’m always turned on. Today, you were the reason,” Kitty said. Just the light brush of his fingers had her tingling all over. She arched her back for him to touch her breast, but she still didn’t want to disrupt his artistry. He grinned knowingly and didn’t give her what she wanted.

  “Always, huh?” he asked.

  “You have no idea.”

  Kitty released his clothed erection as Victor stroked the length of her regular hair, the kind that grew on her head—although like the rest of her, it grew faster than the average person’s. It needed a cut again. Unbraided, it reached halfway down her thighs.

  He swept his palms briefly against the sides of her breasts on the way, avoiding the aching nipples. Even in the darkness, he had to see how the broad, darker flesh puckered, the peaks hard and prominent in the moonlight.

  She bit her lip and whimpered as his touch continued down over the bodice of her dress to the ribbons that draped between and outside her parted thighs. Victor gripped those thighs for a moment, digging his fingers into the flesh in a teasing massage. All he needed to do was push the ribbons of her skirt aside, pull down her panties, and she’d be his for the taking.

  “You’re the only girl I know who’s always turned on,” he said. He brought his fingers tantalizingly close, brushing her inner thighs with his thumbs in a deliberate caress. Then he started his trek back up, ignoring her breasts once again.

  “The only one who says it out loud, maybe,” Kitty muttered. She could think of a few ladies in her immediate circle of Arcanium acquaintances who could give her a run for her money.

  “Turned on as much as this?” he asked. He abruptly swept his hand between her legs. Her panties were soaked through, evidence of the buildup of her lust since that afternoon.

  “There are plenty of horny girls all over the world. I’m just lucky you happen to be with this one,” Kitty said. She covered his hand with hers, guiding him, urging him harder, faster.

  “God, that is so hot,” he whispered. He did as she silently instructed, stroking her clit in firm circles, sometimes cupping all of her before pressing down on the bone beneath her mound.

  Kitty’s breath quickened. There was a pulsing in her clit, her folds there swelling as though to make themselves soft and welcoming for him—as though she needed help in that department.

  “Let me see it, baby. Come for me. Get all dripping wet for me,” Victor said, stroking her more furiously still.

  Kitty cried out in the desert night, all her muscles going tense but something inside collapsing into a wonderful puddle of lust and release and the feeling of being the prettiest damn girl in the room.

  Victor leaned down to kiss her, gentling his strokes to her clit and broadening them over her folds and cunt, keeping the excitement at a low burn.

  Kitty threaded her fingers through his short, dark brown hair. He was shaven, well-groomed and his scent was clean, just a sheen of new sweat from the heat of arousal inside him. She met his tongue with hers, angling his head and pulling him down closer. Humming with pleasure, she spread her legs wider to accommodate him. His cock rubbed against her thigh.

  During a moment of her own curiosity, she’d once asked him why kissing a woman with a beard wasn’t like kissing a man to him. Not all of her men liked to kiss her mouth—that was fine by her, since there was so much more of her that they were just fine kissing, and there were places she wasn’t thrilled about kissing them either—but Victor always had.

  He’d replied that he knew she wasn’t a man. That was more than enough for him. Besides, he’d said, her whiskers didn’t feel like a man’s, and he would know. It just felt like her hair, and he liked her hair. All her hair, from her head to her furry little toes.

  And he’d always said that the hair between her legs was the softest of any women he’d ever eaten out.

  “Can’t wait,” he murmured against her cheek. He took his hand out from between her legs and grabbed his erection by the base. “Been thinking about you all day.”

  “We have all night,” she said. She latched onto his neck behind his ear, one of the places
on his body that made him downright crazy.

  He groaned loudly and bucked into his hand.

  “Go on, love. Take what you want.” She licked him where she had bit, laughing a little when his elbows gave out.

  “Shit,” he swore. He pushed himself up and stood next to her while she unhooked the ribboned skirt from the fit-and-flare bodice that reached just below the apex of her thighs. Then she peeled off her wet panties as he stepped out of his jeans and underwear and pulled off his shirt.

  He was a fine-looking man. In Kitty’s opinion, he’d only grown more attractive as he’d gone from a young man into a man proper—broad shoulders, flat stomach toned by exercise but not easily confused with rock formations. He ran every day and obsessively took care of his body—which wasn’t to be confused with obsessing over having a good body, because he didn’t. He was ordinary good-looking, and while Kitty often thought that normal was overrated, that didn’t mean she couldn’t like looking at it. Or touching it. Or having sex with it.

  “Don’t take that off,” he said when she started to unlace the rest of her bodice. “Not yet.”

  Kitty took her hands off the stays and lay back, holding herself up on her elbows as he retrieved a condom from his jeans and knelt. She reached for his erection to touch him without barriers. He was warm in her hand, damp from pre-cum at the head. Her mouth watered, but she didn’t think he’d be able to recover fast enough from a blow job to get inside her as soon as possible. People had limits. She didn’t want to wait.

  After Victor had opened the condom, she rolled it over his erection. She slid her hand down and caressed and kneaded his scrotum as he settled between her thighs once again. Kitty knew she wouldn’t be able to convince him that he didn’t need protection, that he wasn’t going to get her pregnant and that neither one of them was going to get the other sick. She’d never be able to explain why. He’d always been so responsible about it. A woman didn’t want to discourage such responsibility. After all, Kitty didn’t delude herself into thinking that she was the only woman in his life any more than he was her only man.

  He ran his cock through her wet folds, probing the entrance until it accepted him like an embrace. He slid all the way in with an unrestrained groan.

  Kitty hissed. Not because she couldn’t take him. She could take what he could give her and more. It had just been such a long wait, and though she could take care of herself, it was much more of a relief when all the sexual tension could be released by someone else. She cradled his head above her in her hands and let him take her, watching the shadow mask of his face as he did.

  He started slow, another tormenting strain on his patience. He was considerate and wanted her on the same page. Every time they met each other, he would forget that she was always several chapters ahead.

  “Come on, Victor. I didn’t call you to make love to me,” Kitty said. She writhed underneath him, let him luxuriate in and among her soft curves. “Use me. Make yourself come inside me. Whatever you want, love.”

  Victor paused and coughed into his shoulder—a small fit that sounded alarming for someone who had seemed fine just a moment again.

  “You okay?”

  “Just some lingering bronchitis. Don’t worry, I’m way past the contagious stage,” he said. “I’m good. So what was that about you wanting me to fuck you like a side-road whore again?”

  Kitty laughed. “Now you’re getting it.”

  The contractions from her laughter rippled and tightened around him. He pitched forward again, almost falling against her, his chest against the cushion of her breasts, his mouth against the demanding cushion of her lips.

  She relieved him of his duty to hold himself up, rolling them over on the flannel blanket and straddling him.

  “Careful now,” Victor said, his arm over his forehead as he stared up at her with a boyish gleam in his moon-reflected eyes. “You’re riding a prized stallion there, little missy.”

  Her giggle caught when she rocked against him, stirring the moisture in her cunt with his cock and reaching all those places she needed him—from the firm pressure of her clit on his pubic bone to the tightness of her pussy around his erection to the way it stroked that spot inside her when she canted her hips just right.

  “My mistake,” he said breathlessly. He reached his free hand up to stroke her cheek through the curtain of her hair. “You’re the wild one.”

  He bent his legs up, bracing her with his thighs as she started to move up and down over him. He met her hips with his own. They made a slapping sound against her ass.

  Kitty leaned back and tossed her hair to the sides for the moonlight to illuminate the two of them. Her breasts bounced as she rode him. It ached a little, but she knew he liked it, couldn’t stop watching them ripple. Her hair eventually slid back over her shoulders and draped over her chest again until he couldn’t keep his hands to himself anymore. Victor palmed her breasts, squeezing them, pinching the nipples between his knuckles.

  “Two times a year isn’t enough,” he groaned.

  He jerked up, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her down completely over his erection as he came. She rolled her hips again, grinding against him to make herself follow him into orgasm while he was still hard inside her. It didn’t take long. He grunted with each fluttering clench around him.

  “Remind me why we don’t do this more often,” Victor said.

  “Because I’m constantly traveling and you’re not,” Kitty said. She stroked his hair and rested her cheek on his shoulder.

  “That’d do it.”

  There was that eye-pricking moment of loss when Victor withdrew from her and disposed of the condom in a plastic baggie to keep from littering. Take only memories, leave only footprints. Kitty sighed, steeled herself and rolled off him onto the blanket, waiting patiently for him to pull on his boxer briefs and join her. She was overdressed, but he seemed to like the satin of the bodice ribbons on his abdomen as he tucked her against him.

  “Have I told you you’re amazing?” Victor asked.

  “Once or twice,” Kitty murmured with a smile against his chest.

  They wouldn’t sleep, or if they did, it wouldn’t be long. They had all night, but all night wasn’t enough, not even if Victor could get away from his work a few more times before Arcanium moved on.

  She closed her eyes and drifted.

  * * * *

  In Kitty’s experience, there were two kinds of questions everyone had about the freaks on Oddity Row.

  For conjoined twins Joanne and Jane, Tall Man Ciàran, Short Man Moss, and Human Torsos Christina and Carlo, the question most asked about them was how they did things. Usually sex. People were always so hung up on sex. More often than not, people were too polite to ask them directly—yet not too polite to ask the person next to them, as though the oddities and marvels of Arcanium were deaf as well as strange.

  So, one question for one subset of the oddities was how.

  The question mostly reserved for Tattooed Man Troy, Lizard Man Bale, Human Skeleton Sandra, Fat Man Arnie, and yes, Kitty, was why. Why anyone would want to be with anyone like that. Anything like that.

  It used to hurt a lot to hear such a thing over and over again. It didn’t bother Troy too much, because he’d chosen his oddity. Of the three others, only Sandra really understood what it was like to be born into this life, for her humanity to be forgotten underneath her strangeness and nothing to be done about it.

  As far as Kitty was concerned, both how and why spoke to a regrettable lack of imagination.

  To be honest, it still hurt to hear such willful ignorance spew forth from the mouths of overgrown children so insecure that they had to denigrate humanity’s endless variety instead of celebrating it or at least finding it fascinating.

  Kitty didn’t bother herself with such folk anymore. They weren’t the ones who mattered. As far as she was concerned, if she didn’t let them hurt her with their words, the only ones their ignorance hurt most of the time was themselves—a
whole world closed off to them, whole spectrums of experience beyond their ken.

  She granted her time and energy to those who appreciated what she was, those intrigued rather than disgusted by her appearance. She didn’t mind if their interest was mere curiosity, kink or fetish. She welcomed them all, because they were willing to look beyond the constrictive four walls of a society that mostly made her good for nothing other than what she was already doing.

  Kitty wasn’t desperate. She didn’t have sex with everyone who offered just for the sake of having it, otherwise she would be getting a lot more. She had standards—strict, serious standards. She’d managed to cultivate a series of lovers in the forty-eight contiguous United States over the past fifteen years, some one-night stands and others more regular. It meant she could scratch the itch at least once a month, which was enough for her.

  But Victor was one of the ones she really looked forward to. She’d met him about five years ago, and he’d become a regular for any time the circus stopped near his area, which was two times a year at best. Between his job and hers, it meant they usually had about two or three encounters per stop.

  There were few men in the last fifteen years who had formed attachments. Victor had formed an attachment. So had she. If she hadn’t been circus folk, she would have been on that like fleas on a camel’s hump. Romantic walks on the beach, afternoon picnics, dinners with wine, and screw the normals around them who tried to tell them it didn’t work, that a man couldn’t marry an ape.

  Kitty had a feeling that if things were different, there would eventually be jewelry exchanged. And if things were different, she would accept.

  But Victor knew the drill. Enjoy her for the time he had her, and she him. Arcanium was her only commitment. She couldn’t offer more to anyone or anything else.

  He stirred underneath her, turning into the flannel and coughing that phlegmy, constricted, deep-chest cough again before opening his eyes and trying to look like it hadn’t hurt.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” she replied with a grin. “I don’t read star clocks.”