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  Caroline turned her head to block her moans against the back of her hand. She caught a glimpse of Riley watching them intently. He had seen Caroline in the cabin’s bright, cool light before, but never quite like this. He was fascinated, his mouth parted and his cock fat and heavy in his hand as he stroked himself to Colm torturing her clit and the soft folds around her cunt. His gaze traveled upward toward her breasts when she moved her hands to them. She plumped them for his delight, kneaded the firm flesh before focusing her efforts on her dark, tightened nipples.

  Both Riley and Colm watched from their respective vantage points. She preened under their combined attention, the heat from it spreading in her body like smoke from the fire Colm had built up inside her.

  Finally, licking her lips, she couldn’t resist anymore. She beckoned for Riley to come to her. He leaned over to kiss her, but she reached out for his cock before his lips touched hers. She lapped playfully at the corner of his open mouth as she pulled with merciless roughness at the shaft, wringing a strangled moan from him. She did let him kiss her when he’d recovered from the pleasurable assault, a slow caress of their lips and tongues together to contrast with the furious rhythm Colm set against her clit—as though determined to have her come before she could get what she wanted from Riley.

  She welcomed a little healthy and hopefully friendly competition—it meant they’d try harder than they already did. So they’d all always win.

  “Let me,” she murmured against Riley’s mouth. She tugged his cock by its base in an unmistakable command, one that he didn’t hesitate to obey.

  He knelt next to her head, stroking her hair away from her face as she shifted toward him. Colm withdrew to adjust her leg over his shoulder and keep her open for him. While Caroline still didn’t know quite how Riley felt about Colm having sex with her at the same time, Colm appeared unfazed by Riley. Maybe Colm’s lack of jealousy when he wasn’t making Caroline a battlefield for dominance would rub off on Riley. Neither Colm nor Riley could reach the top of the tower with that fight. Madoc had given Caroline the key. She thought Colm, at least, understood that. He probably wasn’t happy about it, but he might know it better than Riley.

  Caroline laved and mouthed Riley’s cock, rubbing it against her tongue, feeling its weight in her mouth before sucking off from the tip with a wet sound that made him twitch in her hand every time. Eventually, though, she couldn’t content herself with teasing. Colm’s onslaught against her clit reached a head. He interspersed sucking almost too hard with flicks of his tongue that once again reminded her of the clowns. She’d have to tell him how right he was about her being wicked. After.

  Riley moaned, unable to contain himself as her rhythm and intensity on him started to match Colm’s on her. He braced himself against the wall cushion, his thighs sculpted from tension as he tried not to fuck her mouth. She dug her fingers into the muscles of his flank with relish. Taking him in as far as she could pushed her saliva against her hand holding him at the base.

  She couldn’t deny how hungry his cock always made her. She didn’t know why, because it wasn’t the loveliest she’d seen. It wasn’t like Comedy’s or even Colm’s. The base was much fatter than the defined mushroom cockhead, and it had a slight bend to the side. Its color was red and angry under his darker skin.

  But God, she liked him, liked how he reacted, liked how his cock reacted to her mouth and her cunt. Maybe because, of all her partners in Arcanium thus far, he was the most human—and of all her partners, period, he was the first who was most eager to please rather than just take.

  Colm was different. He was more effective at giving her pleasure—probably a consequence of experience, and some of it might have been the demon side of him, she wasn’t sure—but he gave her pleasure for his own. It didn’t bother her that his very selflessness was selfish, because the end result was the same amazing sensations for her either way.

  Riley just plain tried. And so often succeeded when he did. Hard not to like a guy like him, even with all the shit from his past and what it said about what he used to be—and what part of him still might be.

  But she’d been tongue-fucked by killer clowns, and a man who used to be a demon was about to give her a massive orgasm just from eating her out. Giving an enthusiastic blow job to someone who’d almost killed people seemed like the much lesser of several evils—if it was even close to evil at all, which she didn’t think it was. The thing with the clowns was still up in the air, but these two men in her cabin didn’t make her feel guilty anymore. Not at all.

  Caroline moaned over Riley’s cock as cum shot into her mouth. She swallowed as quickly as she could, wincing against the sting of it at the back of her throat but loving the power. Riley shouted helplessly, bucking against her. Only her hand around the shaft kept him from pushing in too deep.

  She was glad that Riley had come before her, because it meant that she could fall back on the cushions when he was finished and lose herself entirely to Colm feasting on her orgasm while she screamed at the ceiling. Before she could come down from the trembling shocks of pleasure through her, Colm crawled over her again like the demon that he once had been, jerked her leg higher to open her wide for him then plunged in. He left teeth marks on her calf and growled through his gritted teeth. His hard thrusts extended her climax until she was turning her head from side to side, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

  “God, you’re good at that,” Caroline moaned after Colm had seized and slammed into her one last time.

  He didn’t collapse on top of her, just settled there before sliding to the side, where he rested his back against the wall cushions.

  “I know,” Colm replied.

  He dragged her against him, her back to his chest. Riley settled on the other side of her. They were cramped together on the tiny bed, but she curled her leg between Riley’s and closed her eyes. Their bodies surrounded her with their scent and heat, the velvet of their skin and the hardness what was beneath. She focused on what she had with her now and not what she’d left behind, because the people here wanted her and she wanted them. She wanted to stay.

  * * * *

  She woke up when Riley kneed her thigh, and his elbow briefly knocked her breath out. Colm shouted in indignation. For a moment, all she knew was weight and prodding from every angle. She was going to have bruises tomorrow.

  “Get off, you big lunk. You’re like a gorilla,” Colm groused, shoving Riley off the both of them. “What the fuck is going on?”

  Caroline giggled madly in dreamy amusement as Colm embraced her against the moving of their world around them. He held her like a kid holds a teddy bear in a storm, as though he was afraid she was going to be swept away with the rolling of the ground beneath them. Riley, in the meantime, was having an interesting time trying to get his bearings and brace himself without touching Colm, which was difficult when the wall cushions were even narrower than the floor part of the bed.

  Oh dear, what is a heterosexual male supposed to do?

  “We’re on the move,” Caroline explained. “They’re turning this part of the carousel on its side to transport it. It’ll settle upright in a minute. Just go back to sleep.”

  “Like this?” Riley asked. He sounded miserable.

  “If you touch my boobs while your arms and legs are touching his limbs, does that make it okay?” Caroline asked, shifting out of Colm’s grasp to settle into the narrow groove between their bodies.

  She had no way of knowing whether her question made Riley realize how silly he was being or whether he and Colm would hash out their conflict in low voices later. She wriggled until she got comfortable again, cushioned on their bodies instead of the wall, then slipped into sleep once again.

  Chapter Ten

  “You know, I’ve never seen you attend a performance,” Riley said. “You always stay here at the carousel with us or have your dinner by the food booths and read.”

  “I went to the performance after I got hired, before I knew that some of the
cast were demons and others were cursed,” Caroline said.

  Moving on from their previous locale had helped her start to get over being disowned. Much harder for her father to come careening in, firing on faulty cylinders. So a few roots had been pulled and she was shiftless once again. She guessed a circus was a good place for the shiftless. It wouldn’t help her settle, but she wouldn’t be lonely.

  Caroline did notice that she’d been more willing to sit and eat with the rest of the cast than before. She received a few raised eyebrows when Tragedy came over and nuzzled her in greeting some mornings or evenings. Caroline let them grind the rumor mill. Most of them didn’t pry. Madoc knew why Tragedy liked her, but she didn’t need to point their resemblance out to anyone else, nor did she have to let them know about Tragedy’s unorthodox gifts to her.

  She’d told Riley and Colm out of loyalty. That had gotten her enough strange looks—although Colm had reacted with as much almost morbid fascination as Riley had been mortified. They didn’t reject her for it, thank goodness. They just didn’t understand, and that was okay. She didn’t either.

  “They change it up all the time, so I hear,” Riley said. “They’ve gotten a few new acts since I last saw the show. Besides, if it was as good as when I saw it, I’m sure it’s amazing the second and third time too.”

  Caroline set her tablet on her lap. She’d been reading on top of the giant spider. He was broader than most of the other mounts and strangely comfortable. Something about the position of his legs was nice to lie back on.

  “Is that all a roundabout way of saying I never take you anyplace new?” Caroline asked.

  Riley grinned. “Maybe. Granted, the view here today is awesome.”

  “I’ll bet it is.”

  Turned out they’d rolled into town just in time for a joint kink and pride convention, which had made for some entertaining customer costumes. In fact, though Caroline wore her barely-there, strapped, brass-ringed dress that suggested far more than it concealed, she’d almost blended in. Between some of the rides, the staff had had to clean off more molted feathers than candy bar wrappers.

  It had been kind of liberating, actually. There had been some blatant flirtation, but it hadn’t felt threatening to her, just part of the playfulness of the clientele, as though her carousel was a float in a parade.

  At the moment, though, Caroline only straddled the spider in her miniskirt because there was no one to see her unladylike but Riley and Colm. The performance was about to begin.

  “It’s probably entirely different from when I was free,” Colm mused.

  “If you wanted to go, you didn’t have to wait for me to give you permission,” Caroline said. But she dismounted and went down into the cabin to put her tablet away.

  Colm surprised her by following her and Riley off the carousel toward the big top.

  “Wanted to see the victor’s spoils?” Caroline asked.

  “Something like that,” he replied.

  They entered just as the lights dimmed.

  “Damn,” Caroline whispered. The bleachers were full to the brim with all the convention folks who had stuck around after the families had left, plus ordinary customers. Finding a seat for three in the dark was going to be difficult.

  She started up the side of one of the bleachers, but Colm stopped her with a hand to her wrist. He shook his head, his grin dark golden in the darkness with the spotlight bright in the middle of the ring.

  Without a word, Colm guided her back toward the entrance of the tent and motioned for them to duck into the empty space under the bleachers.

  “Really?” Caroline whispered in his ear, trying to sound disapproving, but she kept following him until they had a good vantage point through the seats without people in front of them blocking the view.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never been under the bleachers,” Riley said. He hugged her around the waist from behind and kissed her neck. She felt his smile against her skin.

  “I’m an indoor girl, believe it or not,” Caroline answered. “Or at least I was in high school. I learned to appreciate the great outdoors more in college. This circus thing is out of my air-conditioned comfort zone.”

  “It’s a good thing the tent’s air conditioned, then,” Colm said. “Especially if the incubus and succubus are gearing up like they are. Can you feel that?” He held onto a beam above his head and breathed in. The way that the shadows played over his body entranced her, the muscles stretched and displayed like in a crucifixion painting. She didn’t ‘feel’ anything, but maybe her difficulty looking away was a sign that the sex demons were close and ready for their electric performance.

  As though Colm had given a cue, Riley’s interest grew against her ass as the curtain parted and the Ringmaster announced Lord Mikhail and Lady Sasha.

  They came out onto the sawdust stage, most of their bodies revealed to the slavering crowd around them, their skin oiled to gleaming under the spotlight. Now that Caroline knew what they were and what they could do, she could finally sense what Colm did and understand her reaction, unlike the first time. Their magic swept through the big top like a heatwave from an oven. The air conditioners masked most of it, but not all. The little hairs on her body stood on end. Even the thin, trimmed hair at her pubis as well as the multicolored hair at her scalp prickled from the aroused suggestion.

  “You like looking at him,” Riley murmured.

  The sound was delicious to her newly sensitized skin. When the sex demons were just going about their day, the magic they sent out was ambient. When they fed—or whatever caused the occasional spike—it was an uncontrolled whirlwind, like being hit by a lust tornado. However, what Lady Sasha and Lord Mikhail were doing right now was deliberate and calculated. In a crowd already calibrated for arousal, Caroline couldn’t swear to it, but she thought the magic was more powerful and direct than the last time she’d witnessed the performance.

  “You telling me she doesn’t hold your interest?” Caroline asked back.

  “Didn’t say that.” He traced the straps over her stomach, teasing the waistline of the skirt part of the dress. “Just noticing how close you’re looking at him. You know, the two of us have a few things in common.”

  Caroline slapped his hand and looked up at him with a grin. “Are you saying you look like a sex demon?” she purred in his ear. Oh, that got his attention.

  “Better to look like a sex demon than a sex god,” Colm said, tugging Caroline closer to him by one of the straps on her shoulder, which brought Riley along with her. “Sex gods have too many scruples.”

  “I’m just saying you might have a type,” Riley said.

  “I don’t typecast. I have lots of fantasy guys,” Caroline said. “I’m just lucky I have two of them right here.” She kissed Riley’s ear then slapped Colm’s ass before sliding her hand down his pants. “Mmm, they do change up their act. It’s a different dance than the last one.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Riley had no idea what she was talking about, but he was transfixed as Lord Mikhail did his dance of strength and Lady Sasha did her dance of serpentine seduction.

  She had cobras—honest-to-goodness cobras, big enough to be king cobras by Caroline’s inexpert estimation—slithering around them with their ribs out, swaying the front third of their bodies upright to the beat of the arabesque. The crowd was almost completely silent with the requisite tension that venomous serpents demanded.

  But as an outsider to the crowd and an insider of the circus, Caroline had the opportunity to view the audience and know what to expect. Other couples under the influence of the magic stroked themselves or the people they were with, some kissing, some fingering or beating off their partner right in view of the rest of the crowd, not that the rest of the crowd paid attention to anything but the sensuous slide of Lady Sasha’s exquisite body over Lord Mikhail’s equally exquisite form.

  This time, Caroline was almost certain that the dance had been altered for their specialized audience. For God’s sake, it was almost pornogra
phic.

  Lord Mikhail bent back at a seemingly impossible balancing angle. His knees didn’t tremble with the effort. Lady Sasha, parallel to the ground on top of him, had her legs wrapped around his neck. She dragged her breasts against his chiseled abdomen and grasped his knees to stretch herself flat against him. She nuzzled the prominent bulge in his leather briefs, less material than Riley wore. This time, Lord Mikhail definitely had an erection, no question. Caroline could practically feel it inside her just by seeing its outline through the leather.

  “Fuck me,” Colm breathed, more moan than request.

  “Yes, please,” Caroline whispered.

  Riley dispensed with the teasing, frotting shamelessly against her ass as he pulled up the tight skirt to stroke at her soaking panties. These days, she wasn’t entirely sure why she still wore them other than to keep the leather clean.

  “What do you say, boy?” Colm asked. “I think it’s about time you learned how to serve your mistress. Kneel.”

  “What?”

  Caroline didn’t blame him for being clueless. There wasn’t a lot of blood flow going to his brain.

  “On your knees. Caroline’s been more than generous with you, and you should return the favor,” Colm said. He covered Riley’s hand between her legs and dug Riley’s fingers deeper in the groove of her cunt to draw out more of the wetness.

  “What the hell are you talking about, man?” Riley asked.

  “Yeah, what’s this about? Not that I want you to stop what you’re doing,” Caroline gasped. She snaked an arm around Riley’s neck behind her to hold on as she rode their hands.

  Through the slats, Lord Mikhail had straightened up, but Lady Sasha’s legs were still around his neck, her leather bikini mere inches from his mouth as she stayed parallel to the floor, arms outstretched. Lord Mikhail turned around in a circle, as though to show off what he had that no one else could have. And to show off Lady Sasha’s perfect breasts swaying with her as she called her serpents to follow her in the circle like lovesick admirers.