She didn’t reach the tent flap in time to escape. A strangled sob wrenched through her throat before she could stop it.
Nothing was going the way she’d wanted it to. Arcanium was supposed to have been a good date, something that reminded her and her husband of why they loved each other, why they’d gotten together in the first place. Visiting the fortune teller was supposed to have made her feel better after her fight, not worse. And a silly fortune wasn’t supposed to upset her this much.
But the fortune teller wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do either. Psychic predictions were all about tall, dark strangers and coming into inheritances, prospects looking good in the near future, no shaking hands with southpaws. If he’d wanted to get the most out of her, he would have told her that change was possible, that she and her husband could still make their marriage work if they saw someone on the quarter moon while Mercury was out of retrograde, after sacrificing a pear to the chicken gods—with his help.
A psychic wasn’t supposed to tell her there was no hope for her marriage, no hope for change.
“Neve. Please.” The fortune teller placed a hand on her shoulder. “It is my nature to meddle, but my intentions are neutral, believe me.”
That was an interesting way to put it. But she still should have known better than to open her heart to a confidence man, albeit one who considered himself chaotic neutral instead of lawful evil. And a fortune teller should know to stick to fortunes rather than attempt armchair psychology, as though she and Joseph hadn’t tried real psychology on so many levels.
“Do not leave this tent angry,” he said. “There’s more yet I can do for you that has nothing to do with the heart line or your heartstrings.”
When she turned back around, no effort to duck her head could hide that she was fighting a losing battle against tears.
The fortune teller frowned. He opened the leather bag he wore on his belt to pull out a white handkerchief. She would have taken it, but he eased her hands away. Instead, with the care of someone accustomed to working around makeup—though he wore none of his own, not even eyeliner to match the leather pants—he gently caught each tear that fell over the edge of her eyes.
“Sweet Neveline. Not wanting sex is far from the end of the world.”
“How do you know that name? Only my dad calls me that. It’s not my real name, not anywhere online.”
“I know.” He folded the handkerchief then tucked it back in his bag. “There, no damage done.”
She took a cautious step back. “Who are you?”
“Bell Madoc, the owner of this circus and quite good at my job. Not average at all, I’d say.”
“How can you know these things?”
“Because I am expected to know them. I apologize if I overstepped what you believe should be my boundaries. I get carried away with my own understanding and penchant for dramatic flourish.”
She swiped at the last of her tears and prayed that would be the end of it. “You weren’t entirely wrong. I just hope you are.”
“I’d rather you didn’t hope I was wrong. I would rather you embrace what you are.”
“I think it’s normal to want to change things about yourself.” Neve sniffed as she undid the buttons of her coat. Between the space heater and the emotional upheaval, she was actually starting to overheat. “Look, we’ll deal with the sex issue eventually. We have to. It’s important to him, and it’s important to me. No offense, but despite your ‘neutral’ intentions, we’re not going to make our decisions based on the recommendations of a fortune teller.”
“Wise. Although I hope you are kinder to yourself in pursuit of change.”
His amusement had returned, as though solemnity were nothing but another part of the show. And it probably was.
“I’m sorry I cried. I’m betting weepy customers aren’t your preference.”
“Tears, like screams, signify an emotional reaction, one entertainment is meant to evoke. You needn’t apologize. Finances are the primary strain upon a relationship. Intimacy is a close second.”
She sighed. “I enjoy it in my own way. But when I experience him enjoying it, I feel like I’m missing something important, unable to understand why he feels so much and I feel so little. I wish I could enjoy sex the way he wants me to, but there’s just nothing. Most cases of asexuality have a cause. If it’s not an obvious one, then there must be an unobvious one. I don’t intend to stop looking.” She hugged her stuffed Cthulhu. “I’ve been here God knows how long. I don’t want to dominate your time, and I certainly don’t intend to pay for more than the original price. I have to thank you for such a wonderful circus and carnival experience, though, at least before my personal problems decided to take over.”
“It was no trouble accommodating you, and I wouldn’t dream of charging extra for a few minutes over. But while we’re on the subject, Neve…” He curled his fingers around her wrist before she could leave, his knuckles nudging her stuffie. “What if there were another way for you to change your capacity for sexual pleasure?”
“Is this where you take out Love Potion No. 10 and say it can be mine today with five easy payments?” She would hate it if that were so. It would cheapen the whole confusing time she’d spent with him.
But she felt strange with his hand around her wrist, stranger as he slowly drew her back toward him. He wasn’t forceful, but he was undeniable, his bright eyes intense over cheekbones cut from glass.
There was that sense he was hypnotizing her again. She was lightheaded, breathing shallow, but there was another quality underneath—one she couldn’t put name to.
“What if I told you that you just found the only natural loophole to an unchangeable sexuality? I would have preferred for you to stay as you were, but you’re far more useful to me this way.”
“I don’t understand.” Neve tried to ease her wrist from his grasp, but he somehow used the attempt to bring her closer still.
“You’re a woman of science, yes? What would you say to another experiment? I doubt an elder god would mind his present position.”
Bit by bit, Bell had eased her close enough that the stuffed Cthulhu was caught between them. Bell suddenly seemed very naked. And she seemed quite clothed, layer upon layer, yet not enough for how close he’d somehow brought them. Close enough to dance. Close enough to kiss.
Men had come this close before, had lowered their gaze from her eyes to her lips. But why had her own gaze been drawn down the line of his cheekbones to his mouth, the slightly parted lips, to the hooded eyes, to the movement and shift of the muscles of his arms, shoulders and neck? And this time, a cross-section was the farthest thing from her mind.
When she trembled, only part of it was from nervousness. “What are you doing?”
“Let me kiss you.”
She was almost certain she was supposed to reel back. Instead, her mouth went dry, and a kind of tingling urge underneath her lips seemed to draw her closer. It was horrifying and exciting at the same time, but she didn’t know what it was, didn’t know where it came from.
“Let me kiss you, and you’ll know what your husband wants you to feel. I wouldn’t ask for more than testing a scientific theory. Just a kiss, and you can be on your way with your husband—not fixed, but altered.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” It came out a whisper, because he brought her wrist to his mouth and saluted it, the way a gentleman might kiss the hand of a lady, but this action was far from that of a gentleman.
“Permission, my lady?” He smiled against her wrist.
There he went again, saying things as though he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. At that moment, peering into the uncommon dark amber of his irises, she could believe he was actually reading her mind.
Her face suffused with heat, heat that seemed to sink down her spine with little electrical shocks that weren’t painful at all.
Bell threaded his fingers through her hair, pushed the rubber band from her ponytail to let the rest spread
loosely over the shoulders of her coat. She loved when people played with her hair, when nails would scratch over skin, especially during the winter months when no amount of conditioner kept her scalp from itching. His caress over her head and the light pull of each follicle had the old familiar comfort, but also a whole new sense of intimacy that no closeness had ever inspired before.
“What are you doing to me?”
“What you should ask, my dear, is what I’ve done to you.” He angled her head as effortlessly as he’d pulled her in, as though their very closeness now was just another illusion.
But in being so close to him, she wanted something more than real, something she didn’t have words for. She was certain, as she was that the Earth revolved around the sun, that Bell knew what she wanted—and that he wanted to show her.
She tentatively slid a hand over his shoulder at the base of his neck. He was even more of a furnace half-naked than Joseph was fully clothed. He felt like fever to her cold hand, but she couldn’t escape how smooth and soft his skin was, like good leather over the defined, surprisingly hard muscle underneath, but no mistaking it as anything but warm, living flesh. She’d never been quite this fascinated by the texture of skin before, although she’d enjoyed the sensation of leather when she and Joseph had experimented with S&M play.
An experiment, he’d called it.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The kiss was chaste, just a touch of his lips to hers. Her awareness narrowed to his thumb on her wrist, his fingers over her scalp and the sensation of his lips brushing hers.
The stuffed elder god fell to the ground.
Bell pushed her coat back as he wrapped an arm around her waist, and when he brought her hips to his, she couldn’t help the gasp that parted her lips. He didn’t waste time, didn’t give her an opportunity to think about what was happening to her. The closest thing she could compare it to was the shock of adrenaline that followed the best jump scare in her favorite horror movies, the ones that made her think her heart was going to stop.
She had once loved making out with Joseph, although prior to him, she hadn’t much enjoyed tongues in her mouth. There was a theory that kissing was an immunological booster, exposing oneself to another person’s microbial biome and gradually inoculating oneself to a different environment. Mouths were supposed to be one of the germiest places, after all. A human bite was more dangerous than a dog bite. All of that was the unsexy, scientific side of romance. No one was ever going to hire her to write romantic sentiments. She couldn’t think of many greeting cards that went ‘Let’s make our immune systems stronger together.’
In practice, however, making out with Joseph was good for her because she liked the contact, liked the closeness, liked becoming a part of him. And if the scientific theories behind it were a contributing factor, she made sure to save that for when they weren’t fooling around on the couch or in bed with his hand up her shirt. Before they’d married, he’d laugh whenever she’d mention it during, which would kill the mood—albeit in an amusing way. After they’d married, he didn’t laugh anymore. Talking about that kind of thing was just another way in which his wife might as well be an android when he’d thought he’d married a woman.
Right now, not a single biological thought entered her brain, which was suddenly filled with sensations too big for her, feelings ready to burst like grapes under a heel. But she didn’t know whether it would be painful, or where it was going to burst.
Bell was achingly slow, still gentle, but when he ran his tongue along the tip of hers, she nearly died. Some part of her might have, because she weakened against him. Her hips shifted against the front of his pants, and her breasts pressed to his chest. She parted her lips to take him deeper, to suck the length of his tongue, suddenly making a connection between their kiss and his cock twitching in its confines against her hip.
With Joseph, she’d known how to move against him to make him moan, to give him an erection, to bring him to his climax. She’d memorized his groans, followed where he’d guided her, learned his pleasure the way a foreign student learned English. She’d done what needed to be done, because she loved giving him pleasure.
Now she understood. She understood that other women did those things because their bodies told them to be a complement to their partner’s. Her hips were drawn to Bell’s, her tongue to his, her lips to his. She moved her hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck, pulling him closer because she wanted him closer, not just because he wanted her closer. For the first time, she understood the push and pull of selfishness in a kiss, in the art of making love—one partner balancing what they wanted with what the other wanted, and sometimes those innate desires meeting in a spontaneous moment of equally shared lust, giving in the act of taking.
It was a revelation. She understood. She understood the songs her sisters listened to, the songs Joseph listened to, the songs her parents listened to. She’d always preferred instrumentals and movie soundtracks, but when she’d found Joseph, she’d finally understood the love songs.
With Bell, she finally understood the lust songs.
She chased his tongue, bit his lip. She’d always thought describing lust as hunger was just a metaphor, but she was surprised to learn that it wasn’t. She wanted flesh in her mouth, wanted the taste of him over her tongue, could smell his sweat, craved something salty.
Neve had cultivated a repertoire of sounds that the men in her life enjoyed—based off of their own, based off of movies, based off of porn she’d studied despite her general distaste for the loosely termed ‘art’. As Bell massaged her scalp and met her tongue with his with each pass of their kiss, she learned which sounds were her own because they weren’t calculated anymore. They weren’t chosen and disseminated like Halloween candy, treats to avoid a trick. Each sigh, each moan—which he rewarded with a deepening of the kiss, a moan of his own or pulling back until his lips merely grazed hers and she had to chase him again—were her own, of their own accord.
Neve didn’t think she’d ever been this out of control of her own body’s responses. She wasn’t a person, of flesh, blood and bone. She was sensation, the quickening of her heart, the drive inside her to press forward, to take more and more and more from him. But now that it was her body that wanted it rather than her wanting to please, she was paralyzed on how to begin, only that she didn’t want this kiss to stop, didn’t want this terrible, wonderful chaos to end.
She shrugged her coat off. Then she smoothed her hands over the godlike planes of his back and canted her hips closer. The erection that pressed back excited her.
So this is pleasure. This was what they meant, this susurrus of sibilant words that people used to describe these fundamental biological urges that she’d literally never had—not to this degree, not to this intensity. Just the promise of his cock against her abdomen was more intense than any orgasm she’d ever given herself.
Now she wanted to know what an orgasm was supposed to feel like.
She brought her hands to the front of his leather pants.
He stepped back, stopping her.
As soon as the sexual contact ended, everything else rushed back.
Neve jerked away from Bell, covering her mouth. She’d been so swept up that she’d forgotten what she was doing and with whom.
She’d nearly forgotten her own name. Biological urges had almost driven her to do more than kiss a man who wasn’t her husband—already well over the line between a harmless experiment and unacceptable intimacy.
She began to understand why Bell had said that a lack of sexual interest could be seen as a blessing.
Neve backed away, holding her hands in front of her in case Bell tried to follow. He didn’t, so she felt safe grabbing for the things she’d discarded on the ground. “Why did you— Why would you do that?”
“I needed to show you.”
“Not like that, you didn’t.”
“You agreed to it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t agreed.”
>
“I agreed to a kiss. One kiss. You could have let me figure it out on my own. Or you could have told me to try being with my husband tonight. You didn’t have to do it this way. For God’s sake, you know I’m married.”
“As when I used the candles, I needed you to trust that what I was saying was completely true. I needed you to return to your husband with conviction. He could have been good enough for you, but he isn’t. He doesn’t deserve you. However, you should have what you want, and you’ve decided that you want him.” Rather than advance on her, he backed away to his chair on the other side of the parlor table.
“I trusted you. I thought you were like me.”
He actually laughed. “Why would you think that?”
“Because men stare at me. You didn’t. Not until you started to…” Before, she couldn’t say ‘sex’ or ‘making love’, and now she couldn’t find it within her to say ‘kiss’. At the rate she was going, she wouldn’t be able to say anything unless it was pre-approved by a nun.
“I have discipline other men lack. Not to mention I can tell when a woman isn’t interested, so I proceed to not pursue her, which by some men’s estimation is a Herculean trial. In your case, some might argue that’s not hyperbole. But someone—something—like me doesn’t know what it’s like to lack sexual pleasure. We are creatures of pleasure, you see. Forged in fire, we are not slaves to our passions, as man is, but we are defined by them.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
“A smart woman like you should be able to find out. All you need to know, gingersnap, is that your wish has been granted, and I wanted you to be certain of it.”
Neve alternated between wanting to run out of the tent and turning back to the fortune teller, swallowed back the impulse to ask for the catch—because none of this made any sense. She’d said fifty times that she wanted to enjoy sex with her husband, and forty-nine times, he’d said she couldn’t. Then suddenly there was this loophole.
“You. You did this,” she said. “You altered something inside me, just like you could hear my thoughts. Because you were hearing my thoughts, weren’t you? There’s no way you could know some of the things you know. No earthly way.”
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