by Jordan Bell
She pressed her mouth and leaned back with her cards close to her face. Behind them she mouthed, “Tease.”
I gasped.
She gave me a pointed look behind her cards at the dancer next to me, then canted her head across the room, to the Magician no doubt.
The idea that I should watch my behavior was so galling it emboldened my next action. His knee knocked into mine where his legs were spread wide to accommodate the back of the chair. I settled my hand there and leaned into him. He met me halfway, our heads bent close.
“I’m Serafine,” I said softly.
He grinned, his teeth very canine and predatory and I realized, suddenly, where I knew him from. He’d been the ticket master that first night I’d arrived. Before I could pull away, he wrapped his hand across mine and held it to his thigh.
“I know, love. Tell me something else I want to know.”
I grinned when he didn’t tell me his name, a purposeful omission that made me shiver. “Ask.”
He released my hand and reached for my face. His thumb came in contact with my cheek and stroked up to the tip of my nose. “Do you have these amazing freckles everywhere?”
Micah jerked back from the table, sending cards spilling onto her lap and the floor. She smacked my arm to tear my attention away from the dancer. “Sera,” she warned and raised her gaze past me.
I frowned and turned away from his mouth, so close to my ear I could feel his breath, to follow Micah’s gaze.
And then jumped when I found the Magician standing close behind us, arms crossed. His mouth was pressed in a tight, grim line, but the storm of emotion in his eyes paralyzed me. He was so good at keeping his thoughts in check that having them laid so openly sent my thoughts into a tailspin.
“Eli,” I swallowed and discretely pulled my hand from the dancer’s leg, who sighed and leaned away to a proper distance as if he knew this was inevitable. I suspected this was not the first time he’d invited jealousy from another man.
“A word.”
I glanced at my untouched cards. Everyone at the table stared in rapt interest between us.
“Right now?”
“If you can tear yourself away.”
Eli stood unmoving until my hesitation gave way and I stood, sighing. Micah gave me a sympathetic look, though undermined by her told you so smirk. I wrinkled my nose at her and left the table with the Magician beside me, though a half step quicker. At the doorway he set a hand on my arm, his fingers tight against my skin, and pulled me out into the cold night air.
Outside he set a swift pace across the back lot away from the noise of the gaming tent. He did not let go of me so I wriggled lose and swatted his hand when he tried to take hold again.
“That was unnecessary.”
“What was unnecessary?” I tried not to sound irritated, but he made it so difficult.
“Making me jealous. I was already there. I did not need prodding.”
“You’re delusional. And narcissistic. And wrong.” I stopped on the edge of the circle personal wagons and refused to go another step. He looked frazzled when he turned back to me. “I was not trying to make you anything. What a waste of time that would be.”
“Really,” he snapped. “Then what other reason would you have for inviting Daniel’s hands all over you?”
“Maybe because I want to be touched by someone.” He startled like he’d been slapped. “Not everything is about you. I assure you that was very much just about me.”
His hands dropped to his side, at a loss for maybe the first time since I’d met him. He shook his head, displacing several black curls. “Not him.”
“No, you’re right. Not him. But I’ll take what I can get.”
“Serafine.” He approached slowly and for a moment I thought about running. He made my heart act in the most irrational ways. His nearness made it worse.
“No,” I said, imploring him not to do this. I squeezed my hands against my stomach. “What do you want from me?”
“I need to explain myself.”
“You don’t have to explain anything.”
“I do. You know I do.”
With more practice than I cared to admit, I screwed on a blameless smile and shrugged easily. “It’s nothing. It’s fine, really. I don’t care. I have a tent for a reason. And you’re a magician.” The last part I said with forced flair he did not appreciate.
“Serafine,” he growled softly, annoyed, and backed me up until I spun around, prepared to stalk away from him, but he caught my wrist to stop me from fleeing. His warm fingers pressed against my pulse. Without asking he moved in against my back, a hand slid across my stomach and with increasing pressure, pulled me back to meet his body. Our fit was too easy, too perfect. I swallowed and suddenly nervous and excited and frightened in equal parts, first one then the other until I felt dizzy and lost.
“What do you want?” My voice came out sharper than I meant, all too aware of the hardness of his body pressing into mine.
“Tell me you’re lying,” he begged softly against my hair. “Tell me it’s not fine. Tell me you can’t sleep, that you lay awake through the same hours as I do. Tell me you’re lying or I’ll go mad. Tell me it’ll never be him. Tell me. Now.” He exhaled, desperate fingers holding me surely to his body. I closed my eyes and sank willingly into his arms and he folded around me, brought his warmth and strength and we stood there for a long time not answering or questioning. It was pleasure. Pure, untempered pleasure to be held by him.
Like fate, but not the silly kind. Not the meant to be kind. The kind that broke even the strongest people violently, even as they were unwilling to let go.
Before that could happen, I withdrew from him with a shove. “That’s not fair. You have no right to ask that of me. If you won’t kiss me, then someone else…”
The Magician caught my arm and spun me towards him. Before I could fight loose he had my shoulders against the side of a wagon, pinned by the cage of his arms.
“No one else,” he exhaled, shaking, his eyes gunmetal aggression and unrestrained want. It stopped my words, made them lose meaning and left me helpless in his grasp. Eli caught my face in one large hand, fingers threaded into my hair, and dragged my mouth to meet his.
His mouth destroyed me.
His kissed me hard, all animal and hunger and aggression both frightening and exhilarating. The sharp of his teeth grazed my lips, pushed them open to accept his tongue and breath and furious little growls as he claimed me. My first hesitation gave way to need and my hands found his chest, slid across the stretch of his suspenders and up across the back of his neck.
The Magician stole my breath, caught one hand under the curve of my buttocks and lifted and pinned in one smooth movement. His hips ground me against the rough wagon, fit perfectly between my legs. He palmed my thigh, dug his fingers in for grip.
We struggled for control, my need and his want, his power and my hunger. His tongue pushed mine back into my mouth and licked and sucked possessively. His fingers in my hair tightened to hold me still and I obeyed.
Giving in, giving control, lowering into his arms gave me the euphoric rush I’d always dreamed of but never had. Softening to his clawing, grasping hands, his hard, rough body sent waves of dizziness and pleasure into my core where it heated and swelled.
His desperation ebbed but his power didn’t lessen as he kissed me and kissed me and kissed me in the darkness.
22
__________________
Eli
That night, they did not sleep.
The memory of her mouth yielding to his, soft and giving as water, kept his thoughts spinning.
Eli had her in his bed, one of his shirts hiding half her body from him, the rest open to his wandering touch. He leaned over her, his head propped in one hand, the other drawing shapes across her right thigh. Everything about her was supple, plump, and touchable. He liked her soft, something delicate but unbreakable in a way he hadn’t known women could be. He craved every one of her freckles, pat
terns of copper on her arms, her thighs, her pert little nose. He kissed them when he thought he could get away with it, eliciting laughter, as sweet as candy in his dark bedroom. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a girl laughing in his bed, stretched out and not naked and not nameless.
He watched her face, her mouth in particular. There was something hypnotizing about watching her breathe. Something erotic. She explored his tattoos, tapped a fingernail against the snake on his left bicep. It wrapped around twice and squeezed to hold a tarot card, The Magician, in its coils.
“I recognize this deck,” she murmured as she traced the top hat. His skin jumped with the sensation of her caress. “My mother had one like it.”
“It’s from the carnival’s private deck.”
Her eyes widened a fraction, so green he could have believed they were lit from within. “Is this you?”
The Magician smiled and touched a kiss to the corner of her eye. He could feel her skin crinkle there in barely suppressed laughter. She seemed particularly amused whenever he kissed her someplace odd.
“Perhaps. Depending on the reading I suppose. That’s not really my kind of magic.”
“There are different kinds? Really?”
“Many different.”
“The Page of Cups is my card,” she confided. “It appeared in all my readings. She’d hold it up and say, Look at her, Serafine. Her cup is full of nothing but possibilities. She can have anything she wants. She will never want for love.” For a moment sadness filled her eyes, but it was only there for a moment before she locked it away where she could protect it with sarcasm and quick wit. Before he lost her to memories, he kissed her and brought her back to him.
With her eyes on him, he ran his fingers across his arm, covering the tattoo, and when he pulled away The Magician had become the Page of Cups. A little gasp of surprise came to her lips and she reached out to touch it, to see if it was an illusion.
She curled up and kissed his arm, her soft, wet mouth leaving a trail of kisses down his bicep.
Distracted by the hem of her shirt, he watched as he pulled the shirt up her body to reveal her full thighs and plain, but cute blue underwear. He kept raising it until her stomach was bared to him, pale and spattered with more freckles. Like stars painted on her skin.
“Don’t look,” she pleaded softly and tried to push her shirt down. He caught her wrist and pinned it to the mattress. Her self-consciousness made him smile - though around her those came easier every day. His mouth hurt from the number of smiles she’d dragged out of him that night.
“As if I could keep myself from it. I like to look at you.” He caressed his hand down the slight swell of her belly and across the lacy band of her panties. “I like to touch you, even if I should stop. Even if it’s not right, this.”
Sera frowned and started to pull back but he stopped her with a kiss. She sighed into his mouth.
“I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care if it’s a thousand ways wrong. But I am a self-destructive fool.” He grazed his thumb down the center of her stomach to her belly button, then spelled his name over her skin with his fingertip. “You’re young, still practically a girl. I haven’t been young for a very long time. Don’t argue. For once.” He held up a hand to silence her already argumentative mouth. “With you in my bed, I sleep. For the first time in twenty-two years, I sleep and I have beautiful dreams, dreams I could hardly describe to you. You should be home, somewhere warm, in your own bed, somewhere safe. Instead I want you in my bed, where you are anything but.”
He searched for words that seemed to elude him. He struggled, clasping and unclasping his grip on her.
Hesitantly she touched his face, cautious and curious and sweet. She stroked the shape of his jaw, all the way to his mouth. He kissed her offered fingertips, each of them, one after another, until they’d all been lavished in his affections. She smiled and drew her kissed fingers across his brow, releasing the tension there.
As if by magic.
“I think time is the most irrelevant of our problems.”
“Ok.” He turned serious and took her hand in his, knowing the next part would hurt her. “I take women to my bed. Often. Plenty.” He tightened his grip on her hand when she tried to pull away, her eyes crinkling with hurt. “But I don’t want them there. They pass the nights I can’t sleep.”
“Stop.” She inhaled and hugged herself with her free arm. “I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. We just sleep.”
He stayed her retreat with a skeptical glance. “I feel your thoughts. I know that’s not all we do.” He kissed her wrist, right where her pulse beat out his name. “I wish you could hear mine…well,” he paused. “Maybe it’s better that you don’t.”
“What have I been thinking?” Her hesitation gave way to a smile, a teasing, coy shape he wanted to cover with his mouth and lick speechless. “Tell me what you’ve heard in my head.”
He growled and took a kiss from her mouth, surprising her so he had easy access to her parted lips. He licked at her teeth and stroked the tip of her tongue with his. She mewled kittenishly, giving up all pretense of her tough exterior.
“I heard you tonight,” he whispered against her cool skin. “You watched the show, watched Daniel,” he could hardly get the name out without grimacing, “dominate the girls on stage for a room full of hungry, powerful men. I could feel you thinking about it, picturing yourself there. You liked what you saw.”
She shivered and clung to him. “Very much. But I wasn’t thinking about Daniel.”
Her admission pierced right through him, through his heart to his groin and the erection she inspired.
Eli hesitated for only a moment before giving into his basest, most wicked desires of her. He captured her wrists and hauled his body on top of hers. He pushed open her thighs with his knee, spread them and tucked her knees up high to her waist and held her still, contorted and pinned beneath his weight. He could feel her crushed, panting for breath, immobilized by the size of him.
“Me,” he exhaled and towered over her upturned face. Her wide, lovely green eyes took him all in, locked on his, awaiting orders. “Pretty girl, sassy and mouthy and bossy and pushy girl, just waiting for a man like me to take control of her. Is that what you want?”
She gasped as he lowered his hips between her legs, too much clothing keeping them separate, but the sensation of his thickness pushing into her softest, sweetest spot almost destroyed his control. He shuddered over her and she writhed, stretched, and tested the tiny bit of space she was allotted.
“Not a man like you,” she panted. “Just you. Only you.”
“Mine.” He lowered himself to lie on top of her. He kissed her open, panting mouth. Tiny little sounds escaped her throat as he took her kiss and pushed her into her pillow. He withdrew enough for her to suck in a lungful of his air. “Say it, Serafine. Promise it to me.”
“Yours.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and dug her fingers into his shoulders.
As if she were afraid of falling.
His mouth turned up against her ear. He inhaled her honey and cinnamon scent. Rich and dusted with vanilla sugar. “I think you’ve been mine since that first night on my stage.”
She hesitated a long time, warring over some important decision. Finally she lifted her green eyes to meet his and he tightened his hold on her. The tip of her tongue snaked across her lips, wetting them, making them shiny and inviting in the moonlight.
“You’re not going to believe me. I hardly believe me,” she said, shivering against his body. “But I think I’ve been waiting a long time for you to find me.”
Her admission weakened him. He’d never, not in the long, long span of his life did he think he’d be for any woman. Take them, pleasure them, enjoy his own pleasure, yes. They were perfect for that. But he’d never needed one the way he needed this one. He’d never thought, mine, with such possessive, jealous need as he did when he gazed at his lion-haired lovely. She may not have had the flair
and painted beauty of so many of the show girls who threw themselves at his feet every night. It was her simple, unique prettiness that made her so irresistible. There was no one else like her in the whole carnival, none like her in the audiences, or the cities he’d lived. In the world. He held a rare thing in his hands and she was his.
Eli traced his hand up her arm, her soft, supple flesh to thread with her fingers. He held her gaze so that she would understand his full meaning.
“Open your legs.”
She obeyed without hesitation and he snaked his free hand between them to find the cotton triangle guarding her heat. He stroked her. Long, deep strokes from the front of her panties, between her legs and behind. Her eyes darkened, lost their focus, and she pressed into his hand suddenly delirious.
“Good girl.” He released her hand and leaned back far enough to free her shirt from his weight. “Take it off. I want to see if your freckles really are everywhere.”
She smiled, a feverish, excitement brightening her face. She squirmed and got the shirt over her head and tossed it beyond his closed curtains.
And then, she was bared to him.
Seeing her sucked the air out of his lungs and left him momentarily drowning in her. Her skin was so pale, as pale as cold milk, warmed by the copper dots that patterned the tops of her full, heavy breasts but left their underside blemish free. Everything soft and curvaceous about her body thrilled him. He wanted to grab hold of her and stroke her and dig his fingers into her tender skin. He wondered if she’d let him tie her to his bed, leave rope marks against this perfect skin. If she’d really enjoy being dominated as much as she dreamed about it.
He could find out. He could find out how far she was willing to go with him.
Tying her now would mean waiting, and there would be no waiting tonight, not when she looked so damn inviting, flushed and pliant. He’d have her tonight and tomorrow they’d play.
Eli leaned over her and kissed her pert, peach colored nipple. She reached for him, sighing his name like a prayer. Before she could get a hold on him he took her hands and pinned them crossed over her head. He held her still and returned to her beautiful globes, wide and round. They danced under his touch. He licked at each nipple, unable to choose just one, and after lavishing them with his licks and kisses, he finally locked onto the right one and sucked until she writhed and gasped and begged for gentleness that he would not give her.