Funhouse Read online

  “No. You could walk out now, and I wouldn’t say a word against you.” But his pained expression and the way his cock pulsed and continued to grow in her hand suggested he’d be sorely disappointed.

  She couldn’t know how much of what he said was honest and how much of it was to get her to continue. She’d told him she would regardless, but he may not have believed her any more than she could entirely believe him. He sounded sincere, though, and he’d tasted like an Old Fashioned, smelled of old leather and good shampoo. She raised herself onto her toes to kiss him again.

  She shrugged off one strap of her dress to bare her breast, but she stopped him before he could slide his hand up her leg, before he could tumble them onto the loveseat provided.

  “No,” she murmured against his mouth. “Just this.”

  She pulled her hand from his trousers, spit into her palm then slipped back in. She wrung him in the same hand to which she’d switched her wedding ring, alternated between kissing him as though she wanted to swallow him up and watching his face. She’d learned how to give her husband pleasure by watching his reactions, learned to love watching him come undone because of her, even if she couldn’t share in his pleasure. But now, watching a man’s pleasure gave her just as much pleasure as she gave him.

  Ever since Bell had changed her, she hadn’t had a single human being. Victor was the closest, but he’d been altered by Bell enough to not to count. This man was without question a man, with a man’s imperfections, a man’s weaknesses. Having him against her, kissing her, swelling to fill her hand… All of these things set off an electrical storm that had so little to do with magic or demons that she suspected it was as close as she was going to get to normal.

  He couldn’t read her mind to know what she wanted before she knew she wanted it. Any stamina was either age or pharmaceutically induced. He didn’t have a whole arsenal of spells and tricks to get her into bed with him. He wasn’t the most attractive man in the world, not even the most interesting. But he was real and he was human and he was a man, and touching him was like touching a tree after stripping away the bark.

  She pulled him down over her on the loveseat, wrapped her legs around him as she continued to stroke his cock and over his sac to the sensitive flesh behind. With her other hand, she pushed him down her neck to suck her exposed nipple.

  He wasn’t anything like Mikhail or even Victor. Years with his wife and paying for company had taught him confidence that had been well-earned, but he was so very real. And somehow, she was not. All she could think of was more. She felt as wicked as the demon hands that had left their invisible marks all over her body like brands, as though they’d passed their corruption on to her.

  Samuel came over her hand, pulses of semen striking his trousers and her dress. His groans mingled with hers between their parted mouths as he gasped out his orgasm and tried to keep kissing her at the same time. She hadn’t come, but at some point, it had stopped being about that.

  “I’m sorry,” he panted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He cupped her folds over the dress, trying to take care of her, but she eased them both upright on the couch and gently pushed his attempts away.

  “That was what I wanted. I don’t… I mean, I’m not…” She didn’t know how to explain the line she’d drawn in the sand, knowing that the slightest breeze might shift it or make it disappear. “Pleasuring you was all the pleasure I needed.”

  It was a cheesy, fake line, but it was as true as the rest.

  He brushed her hair away from her face, peering as though trying to understand her. “I hope you didn’t think you had to do that because I hosted the event. I hope Bell didn’t put you up to this.”

  “No,” Neve said quickly. “No, I chose this.”

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Are you all right? You appear…stunned.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay.” Samuel adjusted the strap back over her shoulder, the silk back over the breast. Tentatively, he leaned in and she met him for a slow, simple kiss. “The staff are outside to help us clean up?”

  She nodded again.

  “Shall we?”

  Neve hadn’t quite understood the term ‘Walk of Shame’ before now. Although she’d just given Samuel Amendola a hand job and it had been her choice, she felt people’s judgment, their assumptions about her that seemed self-evident, given the state of her dress and the front of Samuel’s trousers as well as the cleansing wipes that he used to tend to himself back in the room and the ones the golem gave her to clean the worst of the cum off her dress.

  Mikhail was out in the lounge again. He’d changed out of costume and into a suit of his own, with a red-wine-colored sweater under the jacket and his long hair bound back. He’d taken a seat near the carousel, and he watched her as he sipped something in a tumbler, darker amber than the Spider’s whiskey.

  He watched as she came out of the booth, saw her as everyone else saw her.

  Watched as she stood in indecision at the high tables, where her food had been half eaten.

  Watched as she turned away from everyone and walked as casually as she could to the dressing rooms—away from how everyone saw her, from what she knew she was, from what she couldn’t help but become.

  * * * *

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Bell knelt next to her and wrapped a fleece blanket around her shoulders. Well, he’d said all she needed to do was ask.

  She continued to sit there against the column, concrete floor painful against her ass, but she didn’t want to move. “You’re awfully hands-on with me, Bell. You never struck me as all that interested in anything but the circus, not the care and mental balance of your people. Why the exception?”

  Bell crossed his legs to sit next to her. “This is usually Kitty’s job, but she’s been busy when you’ve needed help. And I do care about my people, Neve. To care for my people is to care for my circus. You’re no exception. Besides, I find myself with plenty of free time these days,” he added dryly.

  The Ringmaster glowered down at them as he passed by, his red leather jacket swinging around his trousers like that of a darker Captain Hook. “You disgust me.”

  “Fuck you, too,” Bell said in a perfectly conversational tone. “Go get ready to whip Maya. That should improve your mood.”

  “What’s his problem?”

  “He thinks I’m far too soft with my humans. If I didn’t let him whip people all the time, and if he didn’t have Kitty to keep him grounded, I believe he would have left Arcanium long ago. Or perhaps I underestimate him.” He wrapped his arms around his crossed legs and rested his chin between his knees, deceptively flexible. “He’s only had Kitty the last eighteen years. He’s been with me for sixty.”

  “How long has Arcanium been operating?”

  “One way or another for about two hundred and fifty years. I’ve been a con man of con men for longer.”

  “The con being that it’s not a con?” She felt less numb now. The magic that kept her from getting too cold couldn’t compare to the comfort of actually being warm. She took the edges of the blanket and pulled them tighter around her like bat wings.

  “That’s always been the humbug, long before P.T. Barnum made it his game to show genuine fakes. It amuses me.” He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “You really didn’t have to do that. That’s not why you’re here.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I’m not lying to you, Neve.”

  “You don’t get to make someone driven to have sex with almost anyone, even after being finger-fucked into oblivion, then say that you didn’t make me to have sex with your patrons.”

  “You didn’t have to stay in the lounge. If talking with Samuel made you uncomfortable, both I and Mikhail emphasized that you could deny them anything.”

  “You didn’t make me the kind of woman who would deny them anything.”

  Bell turned her face to him. “Hey. What you did was your choice. Even if you feel you can’t control how
much you want sex, you still have the choice who to have it with. I didn’t put you in the Funhouse so that you could give my patron his perk. He’s never taken advantage of one of my women during the Funhouses he’s hosted. You’re the first he ever had in one of the privacy booths. I don’t know what else I can do to convince you that Arcanium is meant to be your playground as much as mine.”

  She closed her eyes. “I suppose you want me to do the performance now.”

  “I swear, woman, I could slap you sometimes. Yes, you’ll enjoy the performance, but I reiterate for the five hundredth time that you’re not required to do it, just as you were never expected to engage in any sexual activities with our guests. Maya and Kitty make no bones about only choosing men they want, not men who want them. Neither Valorie nor the Spider ever have sex with guests. Victor usually only has sex with guests, so you were a bit of an anomaly there, too. I promise, Neve, that you need not do anything you don’t wish to do. I didn’t interfere with what you did with Samuel because it was what you wanted.”

  And what do you want, Neve?

  Neve climbed to her feet, leaving the blanket behind. She looked down at the wet spots on her dress. A few moist toilettes hadn’t done much to help, and she was pretty sure it was as ruined as other things that had miraculously been repaired before. Until then…

  Bell tried to say something as she took hold of the hem, but whatever he’d had in mind trailed off when she brought the dress over her head.

  The fire-eater—still dressed as a dragon shifter—and the Tattooed Man had been holding a conversation, but both of them abruptly stopped. Lennon, the Serpent King and the Creature all paused what they were doing as well.

  She tossed the negligee onto the blanket and stood there naked as the day she was born in front of everyone in the green room.

  What do you want?

  “Where do you need me?” Neve said. “Let’s do this.”

  Chapter Eleven

  It was as though no one had ever seen a naked woman before, despite being part of Arcanium for so long—and some of them older than the New Deal. Even the Ringmaster spared her a glance, perhaps considering what his bullwhip could do to what she’d exposed.

  Lennon didn’t attempt to be circumspect about sizing her up as he stretched behind the wall that concealed the amphitheater backstage. “That’s a good look for you. You should do it more often.”

  Neve felt oddly free without clothes designed to make her sexier. She was a human body, her meat vehicle burdened with hungers over which she had no control, just like everyone else. She was human from hair to hide, and her brain was as much a part of that body as her body was subject to her brain. Appealing to her brain apparently led to her yielding her body, and any contact with her body lit up her brain. It wasn’t folly to try to separate them, but at this point, she wasn’t sure there was anything to gain by trying.

  What did she want?

  Demon, jinn and human couldn’t look away. The Spider was right. She was the one with the power here. She could walk among the people of Arcanium or the Funhouse guests as naked as Lady Sasha, without even a pair of snakes to protect her, and no one could do anything unless she allowed it. They could want her all they liked. Their cocks could grow, harden, point straight at her. Their balls could turn purple and explode. They still couldn’t have her.

  She’d already decided that she wouldn’t screw the guests. She’d walked the tightrope with Samuel, but he hadn’t been inside her. He couldn’t boast that he’d had an Arcanium performer, at least not honestly.

  But she would perform. Guests could look at her. Guests could jerk off to her. But she’d remain a fantasy. Maybe she could afford to make a few exceptions, but she’d rather form a reputation closer to the Spider’s—look, but only touch yourself.

  What she wanted from the people of Arcanium was still undecided, but when it came to these events and the haunted funhouse, that’s the way things were going to be.

  The show had to go on, and her appetites wanted her to be part of it. She didn’t know if these Funhouse events would give her enough relief or the fortitude to resist the cast the rest of the time, but it was worth a shot.

  Bring…it…on.

  She twisted the wedding ring on her right hand. Naked but for diamond and platinum. She should have a necklace.

  “Like this, my dear?” Bell came up from behind, lowering a silver choker in front of her face then bringing it tight against her neck and clasping it.

  “Do I want to know if those are real?” The base of the choker was light, the jewels small, but two clear, glittering pendants dropped over the jut of her collarbone, and a third larger pendant dropped down to accessorize the valley between her breasts.

  “Money isn’t an object for me. The only reason I charge is because people like to pay. They’d think what I offered was worthless if they didn’t part with their money to have it. Lady Sasha sometimes wears this. She has a whole costume set, but she agreed to let you wear the necklace.”

  “So I don’t want to know if these are real.”

  “They’re conflict-free, whatever they are.” She heard his amusement as he adjusted her hair over the back of the necklace. “We do have gowns or lingerie you can wear, you know.”

  “What the hell are you doing, boss?” Lennon said, hitting Bell’s arm with a grin.

  “Will they just get torn off me like a heroine on the cover of a romance novel?” Neve asked.

  “Likely. They’re easy to repair, though, as you’re aware.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Very well.” He ghosted his fingertips down her arms and kissed her shoulder. Her flesh marbled at the touch, and she almost leaned back against him, but he stepped back, adhering to her preference rather than her weakness. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you’ll be placed on the wheel. As a novice, you’ll be excused if you back out once you choose your fate, but I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “Bell, what exactly is it I’ll be performing out there?” she asked, finally hearing the warning in his reconfirmations.

  “It’s a game of chance.” Bell pulled a silver half-dollar out of nowhere—certainly not from any sleeve—and traveled it over his fingers one way and back. “You might not even be chosen to perform tonight. But you won’t know with whom until after you choose a door.”

  “It’s ‘The Lady and the Tiger,’ love,” Lennon said, “but the lady might also be a tiger, if you know what I mean.”

  “I get it,” she replied. “I don’t choose who I have sex with. I just choose the door. Then I have to submit to whomever—or whatever—is on the other side and give our guests a good show in the process.”

  She’d be a lot more nervous if she hadn’t gotten off too many times to count under ministrations of hands that couldn’t be anything but demonic. But she couldn’t pretend the idea didn’t also make her feel like she’d swallowed a cold squid, because it meant she couldn’t be selective. She couldn’t deny someone in the circus just because she didn’t like them. Actually, she could, but it would ruin the show, and since she’d decided the show must go on…

  “I’ll see you soon.” Bell regarded the image of her in the jewelry and nothing else with lust he made no effort to conceal. “The Ringmaster runs the ring during the circus performances, but I emcee for the Funhouse.”

  As soon as Bell left, Lennon flipped onto his hands, turning so he faced her with his feet up in the air. “You angling for the boss’s bed now that Maya’s out of the picture?”

  “No. He’s not the only one who can see me naked, you know.”

  “I’m well aware of that, love. Just asking.”

  The impulse to hold her arms over her body was almost unbearable, but it would be a fool’s errand, given how much of her there was to cover, and now everyone had seen everything anyway. And even more Arcanium members were coming backstage. Kitty, Maya, Valorie, Victor and a good number of the rest had returned, each as surprised by her n
udity as the last. She supposed they were used to Lady Sasha being naked, but everyone else wore something, even if it wasn’t much. Or they were like the Spider in her body paint or the Horned God, able to walk around naked without appearing so.

  Well, she was wearing diamonds—or something that looked like diamonds. She really was afraid to check.

  Kitty beckoned her over to where Maya, Valorie and Caroline were also waiting. “Daredevils over here.”

  “Only women?” Neve asked.

  “Sadly, our audience is heavily straight, with a male majority,” Kitty replied with dry hatred Neve hadn’t heard from her before. “While invitees are informed of our broader spectrum and simply walk past what they don’t like in the maze, we find that when we go too homoerotic in our performances, there can be backlash. Not when women do it, of course. Just men. It’s backlash we can handle, but we’d rather avoid it altogether.”

  “Generally, they like the ‘damsel in distress against the terrifying monster’ scenario,” Caroline said. “You know, the Universal horror posters of fainting women and ravaging villains. They like it when a victim succumbs, like what you did in the maze. Nice work, by the way.”

  Neve blinked. She kept having to remind herself that Caroline wasn’t as young as she looked and that she’d been doing this for a while. “Thanks. Do you mind playing the victim?”

  Caroline laughed. “Not at all. It’s scary at first, because you rarely get to see the demons and monsters of Arcanium in full evil mode, but no matter how evil or scary they look, they’re still in it for our pleasure as much as theirs. It’s fun. And Riley and Colm get all riled up watching it, too, because they’re possessive but it’s also really hot, so I get ravished twice. What’s to complain about?”

  “In a nutshell,” Maya said, shrugging.

  “Besides,” Valorie said, adjusting her lace body glove, “when you’re more or less exclusive, it’s nice to have a change every now and then, just to shake things up.”

  “Speak for yourself.” Maya unlaced her corset and untied the skirt of feathers. Two lines of large gauge rings in inflamed skin striped her back. Silver chain had been attached to the rings in a crisscross corset pattern. They jingled lightly when she straightened.