I’ll do whatever it takes to be with Goldie, even get a nine-to-five job. Somehow.
She chuckles, “I meant in the motel.”
“It’s my only choice.” I shrug. “I got to find a job, then I can find an apartment or something.”
“You’re not going back to the carnival?”
“I just said, I’m not leaving you.” How I’ll make that happen is something I still have to figure out. The carnival is all I know. But if they let me work full-time for cash, there must be others.
“I have an idea,” she says, rolling to face me.
“Oh?” She’d better not say she wants to join the carnival.
“Since it’s winter, no one goes near our pool house. It has a bathroom with a shower and everything. You can stay there and save the money.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“That’d be perfect.” I run my hand along her shoulder.
“You just have to be careful my parents don’t find out.” Hold on, what did she just say? I take my hand from her shoulder.
“Why won’t they know?”
“It’s down a little hill from the house, and no one goes out there in winter anyway. They’ll never know, just don’t have the lights on at night, or they’ll see from their bedroom window.”
“Thanks, Goldie, but I ain’t sneaking into your parents’ house. I’m good here,” I say and give her a chaste kiss.
“But it’s expensive staying here.”
“It’s fine.”
“But,” she hesitates, “Can you afford it?”
“I’ve had a job for the past decade, why wouldn’t I be able to afford it?”
Emily’s cheeks flush. “Sorry, I, uh, I just…”
“It’s all right, everyone always assumes a lot of shit about carnies that ain’t true. I got all my own teeth, I’m not inbred, and I don’t smell like cabbage.”
I thought Emily was different.
“I wouldn’t care even if all the things people say about carnies are true,” she says, nuzzling into me.
Silent Scream
(Emily)
I’m such an idiot. I hope Steel wasn’t offended. We lie in silence, and with each breath, I draw him deeper into my core.
There are so many things I wonder about. Where’s he from, for starters.
“Are you going to tell me your name?”
“You know my name, Steel.”
“I mean your real name.”
“Nobody’s called me my real name in ten years. I don’t even remember what it is.”
“Of course you remember your name. Is it something weird? Is it Homer? Jupiter? Bojangles?” Steel’s laughing at me, so I carry on. “Are you a boy named Sue?”
“No, I ain’t called Sue.”
“So why won’t you tell me?”
“I’ll tell you, I just don’t see why it’s relevant.”
“I don’t know. I’ve just had sex for the first time in my life, and I don’t even know the name of the guy I gave my virginity to? Yeah, not at all relevant.”
“Okay, but on one condition.”
“Anything.”
“You never call me it.”
“And here I thought you were going to say I had to suck you off or something.”
“Didn’t think I had to bribe you for that. But if you’re telling me I do…”
I chuckle, “No, you don’t have to bribe me for anything.” Steel’s dick twitches against my body.
“Anything?”
“Anything,” I say with a coy smile.
“I ain’t forgetting that.”
“Good.” If I wasn’t so tender down there, I’d demand he show me what he’s talking about right now.
“It’s Kayden. And the condition is, you call me Steel.”
“Kayden. I like that name. It suits you.”
“Does it suit me more than Steel?”
I laugh, “Not with that piercing of yours.”
“I was worried the piercing would freak your innocent ass out.”
God no. A pierced dick? A tattooed dick? A tattooed and pierced dick? It’s so naughty that just thinking about it sends a rush of heat between my legs.
“It’s fair to say I’m okay with it.”
“Just okay?”
“Maybe a little more than okay,” I say, my cheeks hot with how I really feel about it.
Steel pushes his hand into my hair and grips my head. “Do you know how good your mouth felt wrapped around it?”
“Just good?”
“Fuck, Goldie, I wanted to blow my load in your mouth so bad it hurt.”
“Now I feel ripped off.”
“And here I thought you were a good girl.”
“I am a good girl. A good girl who’s lying naked in a cheap motel with a carny who has a tattooed, pierced dick. Wanting to suck on that dick until it loses control isn’t that much of a leap, is it?”
“Watch yourself, talk like that is going to have to be followed through.”
Steel’s dick hardens against me, and I reach down to stroke it. My God, it’s huge. My fingertips can’t even reach my thumb around his cock.
He growls, and pushes on my shoulders. I slide my body down until I’m eye to eye with his dragon. My mouth fills with saliva, desperate to taste it again. To taste all of it this time.
I lick between the two ends of the barbell piercing. Steel’s hips push his dick forward, trying to bring it against my lips. I lick and kiss it again around the piecing.
Not taking my eyes off it, I say, “So can I ever call you Kayden?”
“When your toes are curled, you can scream anything you damn well want.”
“What about when your toes are curled?”
“Your mouth will be too full to say anything. Now suck it.”
Steel laces his fingers through my hair and pushes my mouth against his dick. I open, and take it in, pressing my tongue against the hardness. I suck and lick as much as I can, but he pushes my head further against him.
Relaxing my throat to take him in, my body fuels with heat at what I’m doing to him. I relax the rest of my body to let him throat fuck me, all the time I can’t stop more and more heat from coursing through me.
I cup his balls, and they draw tighter and tighter against him. Steel relaxes his grip on my head, and I pull my head away enough to get the tip of his dick back on my tongue and my hand around the base.
Pushing my tongue all around his pierced head, I suck.
Steel groans, a long primal groan that he has no control over. His dicks surges under my hand. His come sprays over my tongue and down my throat. The muscles in my back quiver at his taste. I leave my mouth on him until he pulls me away and back up into his arms.
“If you get yourself on the pill, I can fill your pussy like that too.”
Without waiting for me to reply, his lips connect with mine. We slowly explore each other’s mouths, his tongue finding parts of me I didn’t know existed.
He breaks our kiss, and in a low voice he asks, “Are you sore?”
I’m conflicted. It’s definitely sore down there, but also full of heat from having his dick in my mouth.
“A little,” I finally admit.
“Fine, I ain’t touching it right now. I’m never doing nothing that’d hurt you.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if you touched me.”
“Listen, I told you before, I was only going gentle on you your first time. Trust me, you don’t want to start out sore, just end up that way.”
If the way he gripped my head and fucked my throat is anything to go by, he’s not exaggerating. Just thinking about it covers my skin in goose bumps.
He squeezes me tight, and my head rests against him and I close my eyes. After all these months, he found me. I still can’t believe it. And that I’ve actually had full sex, and with someone who seems too good to be true.
After a while, Steel asks, “What’s the deal with your parents anyway?”
“How do you mean?”
“Everything you’ve ever said about them makes it sound like they treat you like a child. You’re twenty years old, why do you let them?”
Good question. Why do I? They treat my younger brother like an adult, why not me? Except I know the answer to that.
“My dad’s really old fashioned, and thinks that because I’m a girl, he needs to protect me from the world.”
“And your mother?”
“Pretty much the same, except at least it seems like she cares about me. All my dad cares about is his precious reputation. I think he has dreams of running the entire worldwide Lions Club.”
“That don’t make it right,” Steel says, shaking his head.
“Tell me about it. It’s also complicated because he’s my boss.”
“You work for him too?”
“He had my life all planned out the day I was born. Or at least the day he realized I’d never get into Harvard. I’m destined to be the office manager at his head office.”
“Sounds like your daddy’s rich.”
I shrug. “He does okay. He has the most car dealerships in North Carolina, and manages them from a head office. That’s where he wants me to work, so that’s where I work. It’s a pretty good deal. It makes life easy for me anyway.”
“As long as that’s what you want to do. You shouldn’t ever do things just because that’s what he wants you to do.”
“What I’d really like to do is have my own dealership, because I’d make a lot more money than pushing papers. My older brother does, and that’s his plan for my younger brother, but not me.”
“Let me guess, because you’re a girl,” Steel rolls his eyes.
“You got it.”
“So go get a job selling cars at a different place.”
“Oh my God no, he’d write me off as his daughter if I did that.”
“You’ve got to be your own woman, Goldie. Otherwise he’ll treat you like a little girl your whole life.”
She’s the Woman
(Steel)
“Can I confess something?” Emily says.
“What?”
“I only went back that night because of my dad.”
“You mean the night at the carnival?” I ask, my brow furrowed.
“He kept going on at me not hurting his reputation, so I went to you to get back at him.”
I shake my head. That’s just her excuse. She would’ve come to me anyway. I could tell by the way her thigh relaxed under my hand the first time I touched her. Her body needed me.
“You’ve to stop doing things because of other people and start doing things for you.”
“It turned out well, didn’t it?”
“If that’s what it took to get you in my arms. I’m not used to girls not falling into them all by themselves, but I guess you’re a true good girl.”
“According to my daddy I am because he raised me right.”
“And what’s he going to do when he meets me?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“You’re not planning to keep me a secret, are you? Because I’d hate for you to be embarrassed of me.”
Papa Smurf’s words are rambling through my head now. The outside world doesn’t approve of us, just because we’re carnies. The prejudices against us run deep.
“No, I’m not. But I have to figure out how to ease them into the idea of a boyfriend. I haven’t even had a serious boyfriend since Connor and I broke up just after graduating high school.”
“So you don’t care that I’m a carny?”
“I thought you left the carnival.”
“Only because of you, but it will never leave my blood.”
“That makes sense since it’s all you’ve ever known.”
“I told you before, it’s who I am.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure my parents are going to love you. How could they not?”
“And what about that brunette friend of yours? Is she going to put her snarl away when she sees me again?”
Somehow all these issues didn’t enter into my mind when I was focused on finding Emily. Now here they are, smacking me in the face. But I’m not leaving her, no matter what her family and friends think.
“I don’t care about any of her snarls. I don’t care about what anyone in the town thinks, and my parents are going to have to learn to live with it. All I want is you, and that includes the carny part.”
I knew Emily wasn’t like other people.
Stroking her hair, I grip around the base of her neck and kiss her before pulling away to examine her face. Our eyes lock in a steady gaze, and I start feeling more naked than I already am.
In order to break eye contact, I roll onto my back. Emily might have jumped all over my monster cock, but I don’t know if she’s ready to know more about me. Hell, I don’t know if she’ll ever be ready.
The trouble is, she’s so far from the other side of the tracks as me, I don’t even understand what her life is like. There’s no way she’d be able to understand mine.
Emily cares so damn much about what her family thinks of her, and she lets them influence every bit of her life, am I really going to win out over them? There’s no doubt in my mind they’ll do everything they can to pull her away from me, I just hope the magnetism between us is stronger than them.
I’m prepared to give up everything I am for her. Will she do the same?
“What’s going to happen when your parents don’t approve of me? Because they won’t, you realize. No father with a reputation to uphold would ever stand by while a carny fucks his daughter senseless.”
“Hmm, maybe it’s better if you find a job here first, before I introduce you? Then you won’t be a carny.”
“Goldie, I am a carny. Once you’ve been one, people look at you like you’re contaminated for the rest of your life.”
“So we won’t tell them.”
“And the tattoos? How will they go over?”
Emily’s eyes run over my naked body, lingering on each of my tattoos before getting stuck on the one on my neck.
“The neck one might be an issue for them. They’ll think it means you’re an ex-con or a gangster or something.”
“Well, I ain’t no gangster.”
“You’re not an ex-con are you?”
“Not exactly.”
“So they’ll just have to learn to accept it.”
“It’s going to be that easy, is it?” No fucking chance.
“Like it or not, they’re going to have to accept it.”
“As long as you can handle their reaction.”
“All these months I’ve been dreaming about you, but I didn’t even know what was under your T-shirt, let alone your pants.” Emily says, changing the topic. She pushes herself against me. “Now I finally know.”
“I didn’t think it was possible to fantasize about someone wearing clothes.”
“Oh it is, believe me.”
“I’m going to guess the Steel in your dreams was nothing like the reality.”
“You could say that.”
“And how did the real thing compare to your dreams?” I ask, flashing my biggest smile.
“Are you kidding me?”
“So tell me, what did you dream about?”
“Every night I’d etch the lines of your face in my head, so I’d never forget a single thing about the way you look. I’d remember the feel of your strength as you pulled me close and kissed me. Mostly I thought about your lips, you know, down there.” She shifts her eyes down her body before continuing, her breathing rapid. “I’d close my eyes and touch myself, pretending my fingers were your big, thick ones when they broke into me.”
“We’re going to have to stop talking about this, because I know you’re sore, but if you keep it up, that ain’t gonna matter to me.”
Emily closes her eyes and pauses a moment before saying with a smile, “I’ll tell you another time.”
“Smart move.”
The next several
hours flew faster than loose change out of the Zipper. Emily left to go home around nine.
I’m lying awake on the first double-size bed I’ve slept in in my life, thinking back over the day with Emily and about how keeping up my search for her was the best decision I ever made.
* * *
I’ve been at the Motel 6 for a month. It’s costing me forty bucks a night, which is almost what I make in a day at the carnival. Good thing I’ve been socking money away all these years, but this isn’t how I’d pictured spending it.
It’s been easy to pick up lots of odd cash jobs for people needing an extra set of strong arms, but I’m still figuring out what to do about something permanent. How am I going to manage finding a decent permanent job for cash under the table?
Emily and I already have plans to get our own apartment when I find one. But she’s still keeping me a secret. She’s still worried at how her parents are going to react to me. Figures it’s better if she can first introduce me after I have a job so at least they won’t be able to complain about her dating an unemployed guy.
Except I’m only unemployed because of her. I’ve held the same job for ten whole years, doesn’t that count for something with these people?
The carnival season is starting up, and I need some indication from her before I go and quit the only life I’ve ever known for good.
So now we’re in a catch-22, one she probably isn’t even aware of.
There’s no fucking doubt in my mind that we’re meant to be together, but how am I ever going to overcome the problem with her family when she won’t even introduce me in the first place?
Somehow all my anger and frustration flies out the window whenever Emily comes to see me every day, and I’ve never brought it up to her.
You’d think we’d have run out of things to talk about by now, but every day I talk to her for hours. Until our talking turns into her leaving scratch marks down my back.
Symptom of the Universe
(Emily)
It’s Saturday evening, and Steel and I are at the big mall in the town just past where Steel’s staying. It’s our one-month anniversary of finding each other, and he’s taking me to a movie and then back to his motel.
For fun, I’m wearing the dress I wore to the carnival on the night we first met. And nothing else, no bra, no panties.
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