Funhouse Page 24

  She fought against the hands holding down her wrists and legs, but their grips were as unyielding as iron. She didn’t know whether she was fighting to get free or fighting to offer herself more fully to the demon who took her, didn’t know whether she screamed out of pleasure or pain, whether the stinging was one or the other or both.

  What she couldn’t mistake was that, underneath the moans and cries she couldn’t control coming from her mouth, the sound of his fingers moving inside her made clear how wet she was. She didn’t know whether the people on the other side of the glass could hear it as loudly as she could, but they’d be able to see.

  “You’re the strongest in the room, little girl. I smell you, hear you, feel you, feel what you’re feeling, feel what you want those hands that aren’t mine to do to you. You’re irresistible. It only makes what I send so much stronger in return. I thought I could control this. I thought I could fight how much I—”

  That wasn’t Bell.

  The voice in her head was much deeper, wilder, a vibrating rumble that brought tears to her eyes. She thrashed under the prison hold of the hands, which struggled to keep her down as the giant demon hand beckoned for her orgasm.

  It ripped through her as though he’d clawed straight through. Liquid splashed over the demon’s hand and on the silk as her hips bucked off the bed. The thick fingers continued to plunder her, forcing her orgasm into pain and back. Her cunt clutched at him in desperate need. Neve bit her pillow, her screams grating and scraping through her throat.

  Applause followed, but Neve could barely hear it through the roaring in her ears and the familiar groan in her head. She felt his orgasm, too. He sent the waves of it through the Funhouse, leaving only heightened desire in its wake, because in a glass case and with a blade affixed to his erection, he couldn’t satisfy himself or kill anyone with his feed.

  The hands didn’t stop or disappear. She didn’t expect them to. This was a continuous exhibit, presumably until everyone had made it through and had their fill of whatever repeats they wanted. The haunted funhouse was a place of perpetual dissatisfaction, all teasing and no follow-through, but this was the exact opposite. And apparently the demonic hands qualified not as sex toys but sexual partners, because the end of her orgasm was followed by sheer relief that none of the dildos or her own hands could give her.

  It didn’t last long, with the sex demons emanating like nuclear reactors, but the tension that had been building up since Victor had snapped. What followed was new tension, new desire, new lust, and she could live with that, even though it came on just as strong.

  As the crowd that had gathered around her moved on, either to whatever lay beyond the Funhouse maze or to previous exhibits, the fingers inside her eased out all too slowly, forcing her awareness of every stretch, pull and caress of him until he emerged. And as his fingers lifted away, her wetness made a thick, fluid line between them and her cunt. The hand stretched those fingers out to show off how she’d made his shiny skin glisten even more.

  “Again…” Mikhail pleaded. “Please don’t stop.”

  She didn’t know whether he could hear her, but she tried to think in his direction. “Stay away. Stay out of my head.”

  “Your desire screams even louder than you do. It’s all I can do to not shatter the glass and break down the walls between us to bury myself in you and feed until I no longer know hunger. But I can’t not hear you. Your desire is so much stronger than my control, and it begs for me… I can’t…stop…this…”

  Another wave of need hit her as strong as a twenty-foot wave, obliterating the satisfaction the demon hands had given her as though it was nothing but a castle in the sand.

  Thick fingers coated with her arousal entered her mouth mid-moan, forcing their way in against any muffled protest. With the desire hot and thick inside her like a summer storm, she shook her head as though trying to refuse, but she also sucked him in, breathed in the strong fragrance of her own scent, swallowed her own salty taste. Underneath it, she tasted the demon as well. Bell had been thorough in his creation, down to the undertaste and aroma of smoke and uncooked meat.

  “Do that all you want, but stay out of my head.”

  “You opened the gate, Neve, not me.”

  She couldn’t keep having a conversation with Lord Mikhail and handle the sex magic and demon hands at the same time. As the demon’s filthy fingers filled her mouth without any magical aid, its other hand drifted between her legs again, this time avoiding her pussy, which still felt as though it gaped, the air cool against the wet heat.

  He instead focused her clit, pinched the front of her folds between two fingers, plumping them and trapping the blood inside. The smooth side of a claw teased the hypersensitive flesh. There was no body to laugh at her, but Neve still sensed amusement in the way some of the other hands eased their hold on her. The long-clawed pair found her breasts again, pinching her nipples as well between the razor edges of his claws. They all seemed to delight in making her wrench and writhe, which only made it worse.

  Please please please please…

  The long, scabrous hands from the beginning parted her legs until her heels were on the edge of the bed on both sides. Then, as though afraid the larger hand torturing her clit would notice, they slithered in, thin finger by thin finger, until she was nearly screaming again. They stretched her inside, pulling her open more and stroking all angles of her cunt.

  The demon in her mouth forced her head from side to side, demonstrating his dominance. The hands over her breasts might have actually been giving her little cuts at this point, but she wouldn’t know, wouldn’t care. And still the hands at her wrists kept her pinned.

  The hall on the other side of the glass was nearly empty. She had an audience of one. Neve could hardly believe that all of this was going on and almost no one was interested, which briefly distracted her from the intensity of her own need.

  The man on the other side of the glass stood near the back of the corridor out of reach of the light, an apparition she could barely make out until he touched his hat in greeting and stepped forward.

  He wasn’t wearing the tan trench coat this time. A trim leather jacket clung to his slim frame. But he still had that fedora, and she couldn’t forget those uncanny bright eyes or the enigmatic amusement that lit his whole beautiful face with the subtly of candlelight.

  She tried to sit up, suddenly embarrassed that someone she recognized was watching her. All the hands forced her back down again, redoubling their efforts to thoroughly overstimulate and distract her.

  He wasn’t touching himself, and she couldn’t tell whether he was aroused. But there was a quality to his face, to his consideration, that transcended simple interest and entertainment. When he realized she recognized him, his boyish grin broadened, but his amusement didn’t transition to humor. He wasn’t laughing at her. And as more gaunt fingers found their way into her pussy and the pulsing pinch over her clit became too much to fight, his smile melted away, leaving his beautiful face something thinner, darker, hungrier than it was before.

  He was looking into her eyes when she came again.

  The giant fingers retreated from her mouth. Neve gasped for breath as the fingers inside her continued to fill and stroke her inner walls, and still more entered. How many fingers did this particular demon have, and how many more could she take before it became painful?

  The man continued to survey her, savor her, as the hands over her clit and inside her pussy once again stretched out her orgasm thin and tight to the brink of agony before letting her come down. The giant demon hands released her clit. It throbbed terribly as blood moved through the flesh again, which circled her cunt right back into a pleasureless orgasm that clenched around the thin, spidery fingers inside her.

  The man nodded—in acknowledgment, gratitude? Then his grin returned, and he sauntered around the corner.

  Only when he was gone did other people start passing by her tableau again, and the hands reprised their assault on her s
enses in tandem with waves of the incubus’ lust.

  She had no idea how long any of this took, but the hands eventually slunk away from her body, retracting back into the bed as though they’d never been there but for the rumpled sheets and what some might kindly call her ‘disarray’.

  Neve closed her eyes. She slumped, replete and panting, against the mess of silk around her, completely uncaring that her dress was ruined or that she was the very definition of ‘ridden hard and put away wet’ and felt like it, too.

  She was briefly alone and untouched. After too many orgasms to count—what were the odds a woman could have that problem twice?—and at least eight hands on her at all times, she was quite through with contact.

  The glass at the front of the case whispered to the side. Bell had removed his shirt and had since taken care of his erection one way or another. To Neve’s irritation, Lord Mikhail stood a few paces behind him, still in his ‘sex kills’ costume, still hard and emanating, although he seemed to be semi-successfully reining it in.

  “If you climb out here, you’ll feel ever so much better.” Bell clasped his hands behind his back, as though he was just passing through and incidentally rendering aid.

  Neve groaned as she sat up. All of her muscles ached, and there was an unspeakable wet spot underneath her. The straps of the dress draped over her arms, the dress itself fluttering on either side of her breasts. She brought the sides together, more to maintain a semblance of dress than of modesty.

  Her legs were weak, shaking. Bell stepped onto the platform to help her down. Upon crossing the threshold, all the juices, sweat, salt and blood disappeared and her dress stitched itself back together, leaving her as un-disarrayed as she’d been when she’d entered the Funhouse maze.

  “I may kill you both,” Neve said.

  “You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten,” Bell said. “We haven’t started performances yet, and you don’t have to mingle.”

  “What do you mean, we haven’t started performances yet? What the hell was I doing?”

  “Too much, love?”

  She punched his arm, and she wasn’t gentle.

  “Ow. I told you there was something you could do in the circuit in addition to the Funhouse exhibits.”

  “Right now, all I want to do is wear sweatpants, wrap myself in a fleece blanket and eat pizza rolls while I watch a movie. But the only one of those you let me have in my trailer is the blanket.”

  “I’ll get some pizza rolls for the freezer and an e-book reader with a streaming program. And if you wanted pants, all you had to do was ask. As long as you limit use to when no one from the outside can see you. We have a certain mystique to maintain, after all. But we have to finish out the night, and I told you that you’d enjoy the performance as well, didn’t I? I promised. Lord Mikhail, please escort Neve to the buffet and show her where she can recharge without any of our guests accosting her.”

  Neve skirted away from Mikhail as he held out his hand. She was so done with hands.

  Bell placed his own on her shoulder. “He’s fed, my dear. He’ll be little trouble to you for a little while.”

  She glanced from Bell to Mikhail, who was one of the few people who could appear dignified and stoic while done up in that ensemble. “Who died, then?”

  “Lady Sasha broke the ban,” Mikhail replied, “for tonight alone. She wasn’t any happier about the effect I was having on her than you. We’ve fed on each other, which should give us a brief respite even in the midst of this cacophony. I won’t hurt you, Neve, and my control is no longer so tenuous. Please.”

  “If you’re going to perform, you’ll appreciate a little help, but the effect of his touch won’t overwhelm,” Bell said, uncharacteristically gentle.

  Putting her hand in Lord Mikhail’s sent fresh electricity through her worn-out circuits, though the leather of his gloves kept the contact from being direct. Even so, it wasn’t half the impact of what he’d emanated at the beginning or when he’d tried to convince her to fuck him. He pulled at her, as though hooking threaded needles through her palms, but it was bearable.

  “How much are you holding in right now?” she asked.

  “How long can you hold your breath?”

  “One minute ten seconds in the summer, when I swim. Is that how long I have?”

  “No. That’s how it feels to hold the magic in,” Mikhail said.

  “Can you really do this?”

  “After feeding as I did upon Lady Sasha, yes. Trust me.”

  “Haven’t been given a reason yet,” Neve said.

  “Let me give you a reason.”

  Against all her better instincts, she tentatively wrapped her fingers around his hand and allowed him to do the same.

  “Good. I’ll let you crazy kids get something to eat while I handle logistics. Excuse me.” Bell climbed through the rumpled bedroom then ducked through a folded back panel that Neve was positive hadn’t been foldable before.

  “Am I the last exhibit?” Neve asked.

  “The explosive finish,” Lord Mikhail replied.

  “I can’t hear anyone.”

  “They’re on the other side of the red curtain.”

  Lord Mikhail led them to the red curtain at the end of the maze. He held the velvet up for her. She let go of his hand to duck under.

  The murmur of people talking among themselves as though once again part of a fancy cocktail party instead of a sex-and-horror show was louder than the curtain should have been able to conceal.

  One of these days, she was going to ask Bell how all the magic worked, but for now, she could accept that there were rules and laws quite different than the ones under which she’d always worked. Almost nothing was impossible, just statistically improbable, and Arcanium had rendered certain impossibilities to a statistical possibility of one. Not simple at all, yet simple as that. She could spend decades in Arcanium out of scientific curiosity alone, if all these orgasms didn’t give her a stroke or make her punch someone powerful in the face first.

  People turned around to look at her, people with diamond cufflinks and ruby necklaces. She didn’t doubt part of the attention came from being followed by Lord Mikhail, but it struck her like acid.

  Neve held her head up and avoided everyone’s gaze the way she did in the haunted funhouse. After everything they’d seen of her and the suggestive way some of Arcanium’s people were mingling, they might have wanted to do more than talk if she made herself approachable.

  The room, which was really just the rest of the third floor, had been set up in two sections. The red curtain opened to the elevated lounge, arranged with modern couches that snaked in S shapes to accommodate many people at once while cast entertained them from display platforms that took the place of coffee tables.

  The other half of the room had been set up like an amphitheater descending from the lounge. No cheap bleachers here. The platforms were sturdy and didn’t creak, and the seats were just as luxurious as those in the lounge.

  It was easy to pinpoint Arcanium circus folk in the crowd. Even the simpler outfits were more elaborate than the traditional elegance of the guests. Maya had pulled on a full feathered skirt and black corset. Kitty had gone her usual furry fairy route with a glittering copper gown, brown corset and doves done up in her intricate hair. Valorie had changed from her ghost latex into a white lace body glove. Victor wore a crown of crystals with a complete lack of irony that Neve somehow appreciated even more. They all sat with their patrons, laughed, ate, flirted. Kitty sat on a large man’s lap. She was pretty sure Victor was talking dirty with the woman he was drinking with.

  The Spider had chosen not to mingle. She was bound with white rope to a web hanging angled from the ceiling. The fire-eater had been strapped into a pneumatic harness that made him look like a partially turned dragon. He breathed fire from a platform on another side of the room. A few other Arcanium cast members had taken places on platforms, including Misha, doing his sword-swallowing act with innuendo he could never suggest w
hen the circus was open, and the Rotting Man, whose naked body she’d never wanted to see and now couldn’t unsee.

  Two of the clowns, Comedy and Tragedy—who Neve hadn’t expected to be here tonight, given that the clientele was entirely adult—had been chained in pretty but sturdy silver to the columns. Their monster mouths were open all the way to their ears, displaying teeth that Neve hadn’t seen on anything but deep-sea predators. Given that kind of anatomy was impossible to fake without CGI and not even Bell could CGI reality, Neve didn’t know how people could possibly think it was funny feeding them with their bare hands, but the clowns didn’t seem to mind, and no one’s fingers were bitten off.

  To the right, Caroline stood at the center of what looked like a hell-dimension version of her carousel, with the men who’d been fucking her separated head and body as two of the mounts. She wore all patent leather, from the police hat to her stripper boots. Decapitation appeared to have done nothing to dampen her spirits, because she happily switched and caned the thighs and asses of every man on the seven-mount carousel. Christina was riding Troy, who had looped himself into the reins and who laughed madly through his bit every time Caroline got him. The Cyclops and three other prisoners made up the rest of the herd, done up in sub bondage and, in the case of Caroline’s shorter, stronger man, horseplay. A few female guests rode them for a laugh.

  To the left, the odd chef manned an open bar and buffet table of both odd and normal delicacies.

  There were curtained rooms along the sides of the amphitheater that looked almost like box seats. More curtained rooms lined the back of the lounge against the red curtain. Based on parties Neve had been to with Joseph, it didn’t take long for her to realize what those rooms were for.

  “Is there a law here that isn’t being broken or bent beyond recognition?” Neve muttered. “I’m really not sure how I feel about this.”