Freakshow

by Jaden Wilkes

  Truth be told, I just needed to step off the crazy train for a few days and recoup my senses. So much had happened since that first day in Vancouver, and sometimes my brain didn’t want to keep up.

  I wanted a couple days of indulgence with Cairo, a hotel room somewhere overlooking the water, dirty sex, sweet love making, sightseeing...I wanted to be Miss Normal again, even if just for a few hours.

  We took a truck from the Cirque’s inventory, threw our bags in the back seat, and headed north.

  The drive was supposed to take a couple hours, but Cai and I stretched it out by stopping at all the tacky tourist shops along the way, having an extended brunch among the tall cedar of the coast at a roadside diner, and stopping for a quickie near the beach at the coast.

  It was a good day, and one that would remain imbedded in my memories forever, I was sure of it.

  Every once in a while I felt a little tweak in the back of my head, a whisper of Brigid, reminding me of our true task. Other than that, the day belonged to Cai and I.

  We found ourselves in rush hour traffic and passed the time singing at the top of our lungs to old rock n roll. It turned out he knew the words to every Stones tune, and could keep up with me every time Pink Floyd came on the radio.

  We pushed the truck through the packed cars of the city, and found a little boutique hotel just a few blocks back from the water. We ate dinner on the Pier, gorged on oysters and made people uncomfortable with our public displays of affection.

  I’d never felt so outrageously free with another human being, and I had become completely and utterly mad about him.

  Time hung still when I was with Cai, and the missing girls, the terror of Orion’s insanity, the pressure of the Cirque, it all peeled away when we were on our own.

  We made our way back to the hotel room, staggering and drunk on our desire for each other. We’d barely touched the bottle of wine we’d ordered with dinner, and left half our dessert on the plate.

  We wanted each other, to drink our love and feast upon our lust.

  In the elevator on the way up, he pulled me against his broad chest and I sighed with a huge, contented smile on my face.

  “I love this,” he said, “let’s pretend we’re never going back.”

  “Do we need to?” I asked, looking up at him, loving his broad chest and shaggy beard from this angle. His cheeks looked hollowed out, and the lighting made him look fearsome and ancient, like a Pict from old days, he should be covered with blue paint and the blood of his enemies.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his brows knitting together as he gave it thought. “My sisters are there, I don’t want to leave them with my dad. And all the performers, I don’t know.”

  “I know,” I said and smiled to hide the sorrow in my voice. “You have to go back, you are tied to the Cirque as much as we are tied together. I feel it too, now. I can feel them tugging on me even now, across this much distance.”

  “You have become their unwitting and unwilling leader, my love,” he said, looked down and kissed me.

  He beard tickled and I could smell the adventure of our day clinging to him, enticing my senses.

  The elevator bell dinged and the door slid open, revealing our hallway. We walked hand in hand down the hall to our door, trying our possible best to appear casual about it. In reality, we would have sprinted to our room in order to get each other naked as quickly as we could had we not been under the rules of social convention.

  Cairo slid the keycard through the door, it opened with a beep, and we burst in, laughing and high on our addiction for one another.

  He stripped me fast, his hands all over me at once, tearing and pulling at the clothes that were keeping my flesh from his.

  “Your turn,” I said, standing in the cold air of our room, heating up moment by moment as he slowly peeled his clothes off, revealing more and more of his glorious body.

  That body, the landscape of my love. Already I knew every swell and valley, the apex of his thighs and the monument of his cock. I knew it all, and yet I wanted more. Always, I wanted more.

  I dropped before him, as if in worship, and cupped his cock in my hands. It was hard and ready for me, I slid my lips around the head and tasted the bright tang of his precum on my tongue.

  He wrapped his hair in a high bun on the back of his head, as always missing a couple tendrils that framed his face as he looked down at me, watching me suck him deeply.

  “I love you so fucking much, Liv,” he exulted, making my name sound more like a prayer than a title.

  I would have replied, but his cock was buried in my throat, and I felt tears spring to the back of my eyes at the poignancy of the moment.

  I didn’t know why, but it felt important. This night, of all the nights we’d been together, felt thick with power. As though I could sense a behemoth under the surface of a lake, the motion of the rippled water above giving it away.

  I could feel the ripple in the fabric of time and space, and I sucked Cairo with the reverence of a sacred act. Man and woman, we were simply aspects of the duality of power and nature, and we represented the earth and sky on this night.

  He ran his fingers through my hair, caught a handful in each, and leaned over me, watching me, holding me tight.

  He began to fuck my face, gently at first, not breaking eye contact with me, then faster as his breathing quickened.

  He groaned, an earthy, organic sound, like the noise a tree makes in the wind, it seemed natural and perfect.

  My pussy throbbed for him, I ached with need, and I wanted to slip our bodies together and move against each other, a continual flow of yin and yang, never ending.

  I took him deeper than I had before, almost to the gagging point, and looked up at him from there, letting him see his cock buried deep in my throat.

  “Liv,” he rasped, thrusting forward, “Fuck, girl, you’re gonna kill me like this. Your face, so beautiful, your mouth...so fucking hot...”

  He trailed off, watching me take him down. I groaned, I couldn’t help it, I could almost feel the pleasure radiating off his body, I could smell it and taste it.

  Being with Cairo was my high, making him come gave me a bigger mind fuck than I could have ever imagined, and bringing him such brutal, joyful release was so fucking addictive I didn’t think I’d ever stop.

  “I’m...there,” he exhaled, his voice thick and raw. His body stiffened up, he paused, his fingers wrapped and entangled in my wild locks, and his eyes bright, shining with desire. I felt his cock pulse, a few swells like waves on the ocean, and his cum hit my throat, thick and ropey, hot and salty.

  I drank him down, every drop, and craved more immediately.

  I couldn’t get enough of him, I wanted to consume him, feel his cells in my body, joining mine forever.

  I needed him for sustenance.

  I needed him.

  I felt his cock soften and his breath come in short, harsh growls. He slid out of my mouth and slapped my cheek with his piercings, his cock growing hard again immediately.

  “I need to taste you,” he said, “get up, Liv.”

  He helped me stand, swung me into his arms, and picked me up. I laughed, and said, “You don’t have to carry me anywhere you know. I don’t remember a ring.”

  “I don’t need a ring or a ceremony to tell the world you’re mine, Liv,” he said, his voice so serious he almost frightened me.

  He reached down, ripped the blankets back, and dropped me to the bed gently. I stretched out and expected him to begin fucking me, or sucking me, I expected something.

  But he dropped to his knees beside the bed, took my hand in his and pulled it to his heart. “I mean it Liv, you’re mine. There’s nobody else for me, ever. Until I take my last breath, and even beyond, we are joined.”

  The hair on my arms stood on end and my flesh prickled. His words held power, and it surged between us, flowing from his heart to mine.

  “I feel it,” I said and fell back on the bed as he released my hand. �
��I feel it in my marrow, in my heart.”

  “Until the last star burns out, remember. You are the universe contained in my flesh, and I love you for it,” he said and dipped his head towards my soaking wet waiting pussy.

  I tensed up in anticipation and almost came the moment his hot tongue stabbed my cleft, found my clit and mercilessly licked it. His breath, his tongue, his mouth, his full lips, and the prickling of his beard on my most intimate flesh. It all combined to build the most intense, crazy mountain of sensation.

  No pain had ever been housed in my body, but until Cairo found my throbbing clit that first night and brought me into the concept of pleasure, I’d been living half a life.

  With his body, his love, I was full at last. I was complete.

  I groaned and raised my hips off the bed, twisted my body and wrapped the sheets between my fingers. He was relentless and unyielding in his attack on my cunt, and I was ready to surrender to his ministrations.

  “Fuck,” I choked out, a guttural, raw exclamation that broke up the wet sounds of his mouth on me, and the ragged sawing of my harsh breath. “Cai, I’m coming.”

  I bucked up like a woman possessed, I twisted and fought, but his hands held me down and forced me through the rushing slipstream of euphoria.

  It was almost too much, almost too intense for me to handle, but he kept me there, insisting I experience it all.

  I finally broke free and soared above it all on the echo of my scream as I came. I felt almost disembodied as he forced my orgasm to burst forth, tearing me apart and pulling me back together with each harsh breath.

  “Cairo,” I exulted his name as if it were sacred to me. In a way, it was. He was sacred, his love was magicked and his body was like a temple for me to lie down in front of and offer my obeisance.

  He was my god, my man, my sun and moon and stars.

  Not my earth, that was for Brigid. I could almost feel her jealousy lurking in the back of my head as I went in that direction.

  Cairo was my everything else, and in that moment when I came, he was my eternity. I lived forever in that moment, between breaths, between cries, when his tongue consumed me and his love completed me.

  I fell back down to the mattress, my demons exorcized by his persistent pleasure. I moaned and gasped, grabbed at him and brought him up to lie beside me.

  “Fuck,” I said, gnashing my teeth, “fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “You have such a way with words after you come, my love,” he said with a crooked grin, propped up on his elbow, tracing the curve of my rib with his finger.

  “You bring it out,” I smiled and felt the joy bubble in my chest. I was in love, and I wanted to open the windows and scream it to the world.

  Instead I fell back into the cocoon of our world, where our love was paramount and our lives were as one.

  Chapter Thirty One

  Our love was endless that night in Seattle. Perhaps it was being away from the Cirque, or being so close to Canada, or even listening to the distant rhythm of the ocean, but there was something powerful that night.

  It was that night I first dreamt of Brigid. I believe something changed between Cairo and I, when we declared our devotion to one another, and that opened me up somehow.

  That night she came to me in the form of an old crone, wise beyond wise with kind eyes and a quick smile.

  Her voice was the same as when it had been in my head though, buzzing like the wings of hundreds of bees in perfect unison. It was difficult to follow at first, but my ears adjusted.

  “Why are you here?” I asked her. We were standing in the middle of a lush garden, insects and birds flitted from flower to flower, a herd of grazing bison were just off in the distance.

  “I am you,” she replied with a grin, “where else would I be?”

  “Then don’t speak in riddles,” I said, feeling irritated that my dream had been invaded. “Just tell me what you need me to know.”

  “This is just the beginning, my daughter,” she replied in that buzzing voice, “we have much to cover between now and then.”

  “When?”

  “The after,” she replied. “Go back to him now, you need this to fulfill your portion of the prophecy.”

  “What prophecy?” I asked.

  She reached out, her brittle hand wrinkled with paper thin skin stretched across her knuckles. She placed her hand on my forehead, smiled, blew a hot breath on my face, and pushed.

  I fell back.

  And woke with Cairo’s hands traveling the landscape of my body.

  “Good morning,” I said with a sleepy smile.

  “It’s not quite morning, but it’s going to be good,” he replied. I could sense his grin in the dark.

  I stretched my body, opened my legs and drew him into me. His piercings slid along my entrance, sending a thrill of ecstasy up and down my spine.

  I arched towards him, dug my fingers into his back, and pulled his body as far into mine as it would go. I wanted to envelope him, possess him and draw him in, like air into my lungs.

  God, I wanted him.

  His mouth found mine in the dark, and our bodies found their own rhythm of lazy courtship. There was nothing more to it than our love being expressed by the undulating advance and retreat of our corporeal forms.

  As Cairo’s lips hungrily devoured mine, I could still feel the warmth of Brigid’s breath on my face as his beard prickled against me. I moaned and ran my hands up to his hair, loosened it and felt it fall onto my face brushing me, tickling me as he kissed me.

  He reached over and turned on the bedside lamp, coming back to look me in the eyes and wordlessly continue to slide in and out, sending me higher with each thrust.

  We came together, fast and hard, and with an intensity that shocked us, left us breathless and staring into each other’s eyes. I wanted to break the tension of the moment with one of my usual smart ass quips, but I was unable to. It felt sacred, the potent vitality that was being exchanged between the two of us. If I broke the moment with vulgar language, it would be like swearing in church, the hallowed air polluted by the profane.

  Our bodies slowed, a lessening of the transfer of power as we receded from one another. I felt a smile flicker over my lips, the ghost of a smile that was gone as quickly as it came.

  “I saw that,” Cairo said softly, touching my face.

  “Saw what?” I asked, the smile returning.

  “That,” he said and ran his finger along my lips. “Your smile. What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that this is the single most important moment of my life,” I replied. Our voices were almost muted in the heavy air that still hung between us. “No pressure or anything.”

  He laughed, and rolled off me, pulled me to his chest and curled his arm around my shoulders. I sighed and closed my eyes, listened to the timbre of his voice as he said, “No pressure? If I hadn’t been here, feeling that, I would think you’re crazy. But I feel you, Liv. It was...there was something big going on just now.”

  “Something,” I exhaled, “some...thing.”

  “I don’t know what it was, but I know I love you,” he said.

  I tilted my face up to kiss him, our mouths found each other again, and I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep, the hum of magic still throbbing inside of me.

  No dreams came to me after that, and once the morning broke, we both got out of bed, showered together and made the call to Detective Smythe and arrange a meeting with him.

  He wasn’t around though, so we left another message and hoped he’d get back to us before we had to go back. If we decided to go back.

  “Let’s get a tattoo,” Cairo said over breakfast at a little diner down the street from the hotel.

  “A tattoo? Like matching ones?” I asked.

  “Yes, that can be our commitment to each other. Who needs a ring when you’ve got ink? It’s more permanent, more meaningful.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Those words,” he said, tracing his fin
ger down his rib cage, “here...the spot I saved for the woman who claimed my heart.”

  “And that would be me,” I grinned, letting him take my hand in his.

  “And that would be you,” he smiled, bending to kiss it. Even in the bright light of day, seated in the window of a busy diner, in front of the world, I still got overwhelmed with urges every time he touched me.

  I wanted to climb on his lap right then and there, ride him until we were both panting and satisfied, until our ragged breath was the only way we could communicate, when language escaped us in the face of our primal need.

  But unfortunately I couldn’t, so I pulled him close and whispered my plan in his ear, watched him go slightly red, grin, and felt his cock twitch under my hand on his thigh.

  God I loved him then, I loved him so much that I couldn’t possibly imagine life without him. I loved him enough that my natural skepticism and uncertainty was destroyed in the shadow of our staggering love.

  How fearless I was.

  We strolled the sidewalks of Seattle until we found a small waterfront shop. The artist was available, so we decided why not. This was our commitment.

  Cairo was first, he stretched on the chair after we chose the font, and dug in for his ink.

  He was stoic, I knew the rib cage was one of the sore spots to have done, but he could have been me for all the reaction he gave over the pain he must have been feeling.

  Partway through the tattoo, Cairo’s phone buzzed. It was located in his jeans pocket, so we ignored it.

  “We can call him back,” I said, “Besides, if he’s texting us it must not be that important to him.”

  We both assumed it was Detective Smythe and didn’t want to be interrupted during our bonding time.

  Cairo gripped my hand, I could feel the urgent pressure as the tattoo artist dabbed the needle along Cai’s ribcage.

  “Is it bad?” I asked, trying my best to empathize with him. I felt lacking in that department. If I’d never known pain, how could I possibly try to understand?