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  Her skin felt the truth of his words as he bit his way back up her body, growling and leaving marks. Sharp pain was something she already knew she liked, and she arched into every bite. But more importantly, he dragged his body against her. Every fine hair and cell of her flesh nearly screamed in its own miniscule orgasm. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, urged him up, urged him against her, curved her body to fit his.

  Holding him was like holding hot marble covered in a thin layer of velvet. He was unexpectedly hard, heavy, impossibly dense, though he moved with the ease of someone half his weight. His flesh yielded just enough for her to believe he was a man.

  The darkness in his eye sockets burned as he looked down at her, his hips slotted against hers and the base of his cock settled between her folds. It was even hotter than the rest of him, nearly as hard, somehow bigger when she couldn’t see it and measure it for herself. She trembled as he canted his hips in simulation, watching her reaction with something like curiosity.

  “You can take me. You can take all of it, love. Don’t fear that.”

  She’d only had her husband, and not often, not long when he was inside her. All men seemed small in comparison to this stranger, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. A woman was made to pass much bigger through the canal, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful to endure, and that kind of pain might just be too sharp for her.

  Even plastered against her as he was, he somehow found space to smooth his hand up her side to her breast, taking a moment to enjoy the give of her, far more yielding than him, all of her softness and curves pressed to the hard planes of his large body.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “For what?” There was so much of him to touch, and though he was hot and heavy over her, she didn’t mind how she’d sunk into the mattress, didn’t mind how shallow her breathing was. She wished she could see him, wished she could have him underneath her, facedown, to study the play of muscle in his back, his shoulders, the flex of his buttock and thigh. She used her sense of touch as well as she could in lieu of sight.

  “For this.” He didn’t have to reach down and position himself. He shifted back, tightened his muscles as though he could direct himself by will alone and pressed the head of his cock to her entrance.

  It was like he’d brought a fist there, and she tensed, in spite of the rest of her body wailing and pleading for the god on top of her to lavish her with every inch of generosity he offered. She was sure he’d apologized because he was going to rip her open from the inside, rip apart his promise just like her husband and leave her torn after exorcising his pleasure and denying her her own—a victim for her cuckold and cheating husband to put back together, the last insult.

  But as he shifted forward, the weight of his cock sank him into her, and though she felt strain, there wasn’t tearing or stinging or pain. Far from it, the deeper he went, the tighter she clenched around him, not just around his cock but around his body. Her mouth dropped open as she tore lines down his back.

  He dominated her with his kiss once more, savage as a counterpoint to the patience of his cock, which seemed to take forever to reach the base. She expected him to have to hold back, only enough room for a few inches to fit comfortably, especially as tight as she felt around him. She was stretched thin, with agonizing arousal alight across nerves she hadn’t known existed. But he kept entering her, and she kept opening for him. He filled her emptiness, a hollow always waiting just beyond where he entered her.

  This isn’t normal. He was too big, and he was too far in. He should have hurt her, through microtears or something bigger at a part of her so rarely used, or just from him hitting her cervix, lengthened though her cunt was from arousal alone.

  But she could hardly complain when it felt like the ecstasy written about in books that never described reality. She kissed him with her own hunger, her own starvation, raised her hips to take him deeper, deeper, deeper, until finally he reached his end.

  Air shuddered from her lips as he pulled back from her again.

  “I’ll hold out as long as I can,” he whispered.

  “Neve, if you don’t answer me, I’m going to find the key and break in. I value your privacy, but I’m seriously worried.”

  “I’m sorry.” The man didn’t let her ask why again.

  He peppered her with kisses, shallower this time, less possessive, so she could focus all her attention on the possession he’d taken between her legs. He wasn’t slow anymore, although he started gentler, just a rolling of his hips to snap him back all the way inside. But as she realized he wouldn’t hurt her, she parted her thighs more, lifted them to bring her knees to the back of his ribs, and his thrusts grew stronger. Each one nailed pleasure deeper inside her flesh, driving her breathless, head spinning, eyes fluttering shut, though she didn’t want to close her eyes to him.

  It was as though his cock was the only thing inside her, filling her beyond its already exceptional girth. Pleasure stretched out from where he fucked her, tendrils of excruciating, exquisite, impossible arousal that seemed to come from him.

  Then he climbed onto his knees, changing the angle and forcing her hips up with him. Her breasts shifted toward her chin. She let go of the man to hold them down, not anticipating how the press of her palms over the protruding nipples would awaken them again, happily accepting her in replacement of his chest against them. And without him to kiss her, there was nothing to conceal her moans.

  He dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips, used the leverage to thrust himself deeper at this new angle—harder, harder. His thighs struck hers with bruising slaps. His groans were low, as though they originated from all the way down where he took her. Every time he pushed in, however, his cock seemed to reach all the way to her throat, pushing out her moans in time with his claim.

  “Neve, what are you doing?” Joseph was right up against the door, rattling the doorknob. Then, after a beat, “Who’s in there with you?”

  “Not you,” the man rumbled.

  Joseph stopped trying to get in, and footsteps hurried away down the hall. He’d be going for the house key.

  “Hurry.” She grasped his forearm, pulling on him to urge him on.

  “Don’t worry about him. You’re mine now.” He overlapped her fingers with his to massage her breast then brushed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “There’s nothing he can do. Time to sing for me, love.”

  He rocked his hips, forcing her to arch in order to take him all. She shouted, writhed when he brought his thumb from her mouth to her clit to rub the hood and sometimes over the sensitive nub itself. She’d never understood why women would scream unless they were faking, but now she tossed her head from side to side on the pillow, unable to hold back or keep quiet. With the window open, the whole neighborhood had to hear her. Maybe someone would call the police and report a domestic dispute…or a murder. She didn’t care. There was no space for her pleasure with him inside her. She had no choice but to release it.

  “I can’t…” He doubled over again, sliding his hands under her back to arch her himself as he thrust harder, and she kept expecting it to hurt, but it never did. Instead, it kept feeling better and better. She gathered sheets up in fistfuls, her breasts moving back up toward her chin without her holding them, but she didn’t need to breathe anymore. She needed to come. She needed it more than she needed air, more than she needed to function, more than she needed to think. She’d give anything, even her soul, for him to make her come as strongly as the storms inside her promised she would.

  He slammed in hard enough to hurt now, but as he came, he took her face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers as though in grief, growling like a beast as he snapped his hips, grinding into her.

  Neve screamed to wake the dead, her whole body bowed up as though in spasm. Climax was like the thorns from before raking over her insides and outsides, tearing her raw, and still she asked for more. She thrashed as much as she could with him inside her, with him holdin
g her head. He ground into her and she ground herself back over him, clutching, clenching, tightening, but everything about her was soft and everything about him was hard. And he was the one who tightened around her, swallowed her from the inside out, sucked her in—he the black hole and she the star whose light he devoured.

  Her heart raced, skipped. Air sucked out of her lungs. For a second, she ceased to exist. She blinkered out, her limbs laden as stone and the light at the end of the tunnel nothing but religious ecstasy—light, heat, lust, a second that lasted forever.

  Neve slumped in his arms, at the mercy of his not inconsiderable strength. He panted, great heaving breaths, like a bear after a fight. He closed his eyes, his forehead still on hers. When he withdrew his cock from her, he made a sound as though removing himself from her cunt was physically painful, as though the thorns he’d sent through her had wrapped around his cock as well.

  The bedroom door unlocked, flew open. Joseph ran into the room, took in the dim tableau of a giant, wild man over her, both of them naked, the fog in the room still steaming from their skin. Neve couldn’t move yet, shaken to the bone. She wondered what he thought of her, limp on the bed, undignified, tousled, bent upward on the man’s thighs, her breasts heavy along her collarbone, her mouth slack, her legs spread wantonly on either side of the stranger.

  The man raised himself up, flipping his hair back, his teeth bared.

  “Neve!” Joseph pointed at the stranger in accusation. “You bastard, what did you do to her?”

  “Get out!” The darkness of the man’s eyes glinted, lightning over a night sky. Joseph flew from the room, striking the wall out in the corridor with a terrible crash that made her suspect the drywall hadn’t survived. The door slammed and locked once again.

  The coiled tension in the man’s limbs loosened, but he was far from relaxed. He hung his head, his hair tickling her breasts and belly.

  “Not that I’m upset, but how exactly are you doing that?” Neve knew things moving on their own was impossible, but after seeing it twice, it was damn hard to deny that it had happened—which meant she’d met a psychic person who could spontaneously change her sexuality in the span of a second and a wild, sexual beast with the ability to move things with his mind both in one day. What were the odds, really?

  All of a sudden, she remembered where she’d seen the man before.

  He jerked up in surprise, tension shooting through him once more as he stared down at her. “You’re alive.”

  “You were almost that good, but not quite.” She managed to twitch a finger, which snowballed into closing her hands into loose fists. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “You said that already.” As soon as she could prop herself up on her elbows, she did, narrowing her eyes. “Did you expect otherwise?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  What were the odds that the strongman of Arcanium would be at her window just hours after the fortune teller had made her sexually voracious? She hadn’t recognized him because his hair was loose, and he’d seemed less…animalistic while posing like a bodybuilder for the audience outside his oddity tent. She and Joseph hadn’t lingered long with him. Feats of strength didn’t usually impress her, but the snake charmer appealed to both her and her husband—her because of the snakes, him because of the charmer.

  Yes, what were the odds? And what were the odds that the voice she’d heard in her head, clear as day, had come from the aforethought fortune teller mere seconds after said strongman was surprised he hadn’t killed her with his cock?

  Something weird is going on seemed like an understatement.

  The man in her bed crawled back, tilting his head—a cautious beast.

  “Mind telling me what’s happening, or are we just going to freeze to death?” Neve managed to lift herself upright, bent her knees to push herself back, but she still didn’t have the energy for it, so she just sat there on her bed, a damp spot underneath her, her legs parted to a lewd degree, but after what he’d just done, she couldn’t convince herself that now was the time to cross her ankles like a lady.

  Her aunt would call her scarlet. Her grandma would call her a slut. She’d call herself a cheater, and she was pretty sure turnabout hadn’t been the proper way to get back at Joseph for doing the same thing to her.

  Even now, though, anger flared up inside her at the thought of her husband, despite what he’d entered in on. No, she didn’t think she was getting over this, which meant he’d get his wish, too. He’d get his divorce. He could fuck any woman he wanted. And she could fuck every other man in the world if she damn well pleased. She’d fuck the one in her bed again if he kept looking at her like that while her legs were open, her breasts pressed against her thighs, the nipples still hard and sensitive and the rest of her still on a hair trigger.

  “The police are on their way!” Joseph called from outside the bedroom.

  “Damn you, Bell.” The man looked over his shoulder, though there was nothing at the window. “Why would you do that to me?”

  “You’re welcome. Now, take her. She’s one of ours.”

  “What the hell—” she began.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The last two times the man had said that, he’d followed it up with mind-blowing sex. But given how he’d responded to giving her that mind-blowing sex with the assumption he’d climaxed her to death, Neve shook her head as the man turned back to her, the darkness in his eyes more menace than mystery.

  “No—” she began.

  He had quick reflexes and long arms, and he placed his hand on her head before she could back away or crawl to the other side of the bed. He could bend cast-iron skillets, pull phone books apart, so he could do anything to her, and maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to invite him in.

  But with just his hand on her head, already she wanted him inside her again—this dangerous, savage strongman, a man who thought he could kill her with the power of sex alone. Maybe the next time he’d be right…

  All these thoughts passed through her head in a matter of seconds before exhaustion sank upon her and she collapsed to the side. The last thing she remembered was being gathered up in his arms, a burst of cold and a terrible leap from a terrible height.

  Chapter Three

  She woke up in a bed she’d never slept in.

  Tan tent canvas stretched out high above her, and crates were piled almost to the top on one side. To her right, huge cages held two pacing big cats—a lion with a thick, dark mane and an even larger tiger. Their tails flicked with irritation. The tiger bared its teeth in a snarl as a man passed by their cages. When his red leather jacket pulled back, Neve glimpsed a black whip holstered in his trousers. From a distance, and as bleary as she was, the man looked like the devil.

  Neve jerked upright, the covers falling away. She was wearing a silky beige nightgown, thin and slinky enough to be called a negligee. Someone had dressed her since she’d been taken—and not for comfort. She might not have been naked, but she pulled the covers back up to her chest.

  The unfamiliar bed she was in had no headboard or footboard, just a soft mattress, soft covers—and her. The devil in the red jacket barely paid attention to her, though the bed was the most unusual thing in the room, which was either a back room for something in the circus—likely the big top where they did their performances—or just used for storage.

  But as her thoughts caught up with what had happened to her, she started noticing other people there, wearing their own leather, lace and latex. She was definitely back in Arcanium. There, the contortionist and the fire-eater. There, the tallest man and shortest man. There, the Human Torsos—a woman without any limbs at all, who was in the company of the Tattooed Man, and a man with strong arms that functioned as his legs.

  The devil in the red jacket left, but the rest of the circus folk slowly gathered around her rather than dispersing. They each found a place to stand or settle, from the Man Made of Stone and the furry gargoyle with bat w
ings sitting on the crates to the Human Spider reclining on a pink, floral chaise longue that seemed almost as out of place in the tent as the bed.

  The Bearded Lady’s skirt jingled with little bells sewn into the fabric, and she’d woven her thick, chestnut braid over her shoulder with what looked like tinsel. Her beard had been tied in three places with silver bells. She made so much noise as she approached that if the circus folk had been doing something performance-related that justified their costumes, it had likely concluded before Neve had regained consciousness.

  The cadre of clowns passed by the foot of her bed, and the younger of the two male clowns smiled. The line of his lipless mouth stretched well beyond the mouth painted on his face, all the way from ear to ear, and with the sound of a thousand cracking knuckles, he revealed multiple rows of thin, needle-sharp teeth.

  Neve screamed, scrambled back and fell out of the bed with another shriek. The Bearded Lady kept her from hitting the ground completely, grabbing her under her shoulders and helping her to her feet.

  “Don’t worry. They won’t bite.” The Bearded Lady steadied her, but Neve jerked away from her, too.

  The woman’s warm hands on Neve’s bare skin reminded her that the silk she’d been dressed in stimulated everywhere it brushed over her. The lace she’d once been fine wearing now itched, because it was rough where she wanted velvet soft. Under the silk that held her breasts, her nipples had tightened. The tent wasn’t as cold as outside, but she didn’t think her nipples were tight because of low temperature. As sensitive as she usually was to chilly weather, her body seemed to have become sensitive to something else entirely—contact.

  Even her own. Rubbing her arms against the slight chill made her more aware of all the other bare skin in the room, from the Bearded Lady’s fine fur over her arms and chest, to the Human Spider’s long arms and legs, to all the half-naked men. In fact, now that she looked around, the man in the red jacket had been the only one wearing anything to cover his torso. The rest of them wore leather or cotton trousers that left nothing to the imagination, not that Neve would have needed imagination to know what they looked like underneath. There was a definite bulge in every man’s pants—every last one.