“That is such bullshit,” Maya said. “Animals are driven by instinct. Amoebas don’t even think. They just do what they’re programmed to do. Humans transcend instinct, and so can your jinn or your demons or whatever they are. Kitty said you had free will just like us. No matter what your instincts tell you, it’s still your choice to…to do the awful…awful things you do.” The slight dusting of hair on his chest crinkled against her palm. His nipples caught between her fingers.
“You want bullshit?” Bell said, ghosting a hand over her shoulder and down to her draped sleeve. He pushed it down farther, folding the fabric over her breasts to expose just a little more, almost too far, but it was as though he didn’t want to see it all, tantalizing himself with the mystery. “You think you are above instinct, above the basic human needs of sustenance, shelter, companionship, intimacy, admiration? How little you know your kind or ours. How little you know yourself, Maya.
“When you sneak a piece of chocolate cake on a stressful day and you’re on a diet, have you exerted your superior will? When you pretend things that matter don’t, and you slip under the sheets with your red-headed lover, holding yourself close to his heat although his heart has gone cold to you, and he holds you and you hold him…have you overcome your instincts? When you fight your way into fucking on the couch, is that the better nature that you speak of?”
He leaned in, his nose brushing against her forehead. His breath mingled with hers when she looked up at him. Her fingertips traveled up his neck to his face, finding his sensual lips.
He swallowed thickly, but he continued, “No, my dear, we are all slaves. The sooner we realize what we are, the sooner we can stop struggling against ourselves. Only when we know what we are and embrace it, do the manacles open and fall at our feet.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how things work,” Maya said. “Our natures are what damn us. We all have something to overcome, some more than others. Jinn are no different.” Her heart pounded furiously. His arms felt as strong as they looked. Not Lord Mikhail strong, but solid under her hands.
“The clowns eat children. They consume little else. Would you let them starve just because you don’t like their source of nutrition?” Bell asked. He pressed his forehead to hers. The hand that cradled her neck massaged her lightly. “My incubus and succubus kill to replenish the energy they lose during the extended periods of abstinence this life requires of them.”
“I think it’s suspicious that their very natures make them do evil things,” Maya said. She couldn’t stop touching him, arousal humming under her skin, in her ears and in her head like a deep, resonating bell.
“You can blame the Creator for that,” he murmured in her ear. “We are what we are, and we do what we were created to do.”
“That’s not the way I hear it,” Maya said. “Anyway, I wouldn’t say you’re a reliable source. I don’t believe you speak for Him. Everything you say is a lie.”
“Nothing I say is a lie. When have I lied to you, Maya?” Bell said. He ran his knuckles over the swell of her breasts before stroking the line of her collarbone. “Name one time.”
She couldn’t focus, much less page through the catalogue of their conversations to find a lie. If there was one—and Maya was sure there was—it would be hidden, carefully crafted and cultivated within an embrace of truths, just like everything else about him.
Somehow the narrow space between them had grown nonexistent. Although he’d just been enjoying an after-hours delight with his woman, the bulge of his erection nudged her stomach, hot as coals. Yet her hips canted against it, drawn to him as though his body were a spindle and she the yarn.
She slid her hands down to his chest again, spreading her fingers to cover as much of him as she could.
“What are you doing to me?” Maya whispered.
“I’m not,” Bell said. He lowered his lips to her shoulder, but then stopped himself, raising his head again, as breathless as she. “I told you, Sasha and Mikhail…after they’ve fed…and we were so close to them. And you… We already…”
This was the first time Maya had seen him almost at a loss for words.
“So the demons are doing this,” Maya murmured.
She inhaled the scent of him. His fortune teller incense had permeated his clothes, his hair, his skin. Her lips parted as though to taste the smell, and she found herself with her mouth against his chest. Not quite a kiss, but far from innocent or chaste or completely out of her control. She could pretend to herself that the action was involuntary, but she couldn’t deny how much she wanted to kiss him, to lick and taste the flesh beneath her lips.
“They intensify what you already desire,” Bell said. He crooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. She watched his lips as they formed his words. “You desire me, Maya. You want me to have you, whether you think you should or not.”
“I don’t,” Maya said, but he gently drew her closer and closer, and she raised herself on her toes, gasping for breath as she begged herself to resist, to listen to her common sense. Common sense in a world untouched by all things common. She should have known better. “I won’t.”
“I desire you,” Bell confessed in a husky whisper that melted down her spine. He tilted his head and pressed his lips lightly on her cheek, lower on her jaw, just underneath, his kisses like moth wings. “I have desired you since the moment we met and I saw that you would be one of mine, part of my Arcanium. If you only knew how difficult it has been to keep you so near and not touch you like this.”
Until now. But Maya couldn’t bring herself to push him away or tell him to stop. She thought if she tried, she would only pull him even closer and beg him to continue. Whatever pall the incubus and succubus had cast over the circus, it had stripped away the lies and recriminations she’d heaped upon herself to stay away from him.
In spite of the immodest costumes, Maya thought they were far too overdressed.
“Then why haven’t you?” Maya asked. “Aren’t I bound to you? Doesn’t the wish mean I have to learn that not everything is about me? Seems like the perfect wish for creating a slave and making me do everything you say. It’s what I expected. It’s not what I wanted, but it’s what I expected.”
His hand on her neck tightened, and he almost kissed her lips. He came within a hair’s breadth, but he pulled her away from him, groaning. She curled her fingers into his shoulder, trapped between relief and regret.
“That’s not something we do here,” he said. “But I would be lying if I said I was never tempted by that wish.”
“So murder is okay, but rape’s too much?” Maya asked.
“I fulfill the wishes and the Ringmaster deals the punishments, but those are the only torments and tortures allowed in Arcanium. The rest of the time, my people are to remain untouched and unhurt against their will,” Bell said.
“Why?” Maya asked.
“Because that is how I wish it,” Bell replied.
“I thought your wishes don’t have power.”
“No. But I do,” he said. He swept an arm around her waist and brought them more tightly together. There was no way for her to deny his arousal—and no way for her to deny her own. “Is it your wish that I take you, Maya?”
She shook her head and bit her lip to keep herself from saying yes, although her hips rubbed subtly against his erection, acting independently of her will. Her mind was no longer steering this ship—if she wasn’t willing to speak her wishes aloud, her body intended to make them known. She slid her hands down his chest to his abdomen, pausing at the darker trail of hair that led into his loose trousers. It would be so easy to follow that path. Her fingers twitched.
“Good girl,” he said. He released her hips to cradle her face in his palms and advanced. She backed away to keep her balance.
It felt like a dance, a tango without the prudishness. Maya had never experienced this kind of need, as though she would explode if he didn’t kiss her in the next fifteen seconds, burst into flame and burn down
to ash if he stopped touching her. She’d never known such intense lust actually existed.
“Do you want me to take you?”
“No,” she said, clutching his forearms, her legs aligned with his as he guided her toward one of the oddity’s tents.
When her back hit a wooden tent pole, he ceased his insistent push. His hands hovered over her shoulders, down her arms. His gaze crawled over her, over all the places her body wanted him to lavish her with every ounce of his inhuman intensity. But he didn’t. Evil as he was, the man had a code—a twisted, arbitrary code, but a code nonetheless.
“Beg me to take you anyway.”
She was suddenly reminded of Lord Mikhail telling her to go, the husky growl that shot straight between her legs.
Bell broke from her. The touch she craved, wanted, needed, had been taken away. Maya tugged at the roots of her hair, leaning against the post. It might have been the only thing holding her up at that point. She thought she might sob, for a whole shameful knot of reasons.
In her entire life, she had never wanted something she shouldn’t so badly before. Of all the things in this circus she should run from tonight, this was the one that would truly damage her if she didn’t.
She wished to God—not to Bell, and thank goodness he didn’t grant mental wishes—that she could blame her arousal on Lady Sasha and Lord Mikhail. But it was like Bell had said. Her attraction had already been there. That hadn’t been one of his lies. In spite of all the things that should have worked against it, attraction didn’t listen to reason or fundamental morality. It just wanted.
“Beg me, Maya,” Bell rasped. He stepped back, clenching those beautiful hands into fists of restraint.
Hail Mary, full of grace, oh God, forgive me, I don’t know if this is wrong.
She grabbed the back of his neck and snaked an arm around his waist, yanking him back against her and pulling him down to kiss him. He groaned, releasing his self-imposed self-denial in a single fell swoop. Maya swallowed the vibrations down deep into her, and her legs trembled. She didn’t know if the tent post could support both of them.
He touched his tongue to her lower lip and sucked it into his mouth as she shuddered all over. He ran his hands across the laces of her corset and down the leather skirt then sought her thigh underneath, drawing her even closer.
Maya clutched at his close, coarse hair, but she couldn’t find purchase. She stroked his chest and abdomen and the shifting muscles of his back with purpose now. When he hooked her thigh over his hip, forcing her to cling more tightly around his neck to keep touching him with her free hand, she had to relinquish her balance to his strength.
Bell bit her lip to make her cry out. She arched her back, pressing her barely clothed breasts against his chest.
He hitched her up onto his hips, nipping at her chin.
“Not here,” he said.
“Why not?” Maya asked. She’d strip down in the middle of the ring with a full audience as long as he kept kissing her and as long as Bell brought out that cock pressing against her panties to play. She bit and sucked at the flesh just below his ear. His cock twitched.
Bell laughed. “There are eyes everywhere.”
That made her look up, all at once aware that there was life beyond the cocoon of lust that had woven itself around them.
The clowns, smeared and grinning dementedly, stood like scarecrows at the other end of Oddity Row. Then, to her left, there was a pair of electric blue eyes and hair that moved on its own. Lennon, in his demon form. She couldn’t see anyone else, but who knew what lurked in the shadows?
“And I do not intend to share,” he said huskily, throwing back the painted tent flap. They had been making out in front of the Lizard Man’s tent, which somehow made things even more surreal. Now he plunged them into the darkness within.
“Aw, come on, boss!” Lennon shouted after him.
Bell lifted her off him and set her on the ground. For a few frightening moments, Maya was alone in the dark with nothing to hold, all the doubts creeping into the void where Bell had been, although not a shred of her arousal diminished.
The evening display lights switched on and bathed Bale’s exhibition stage in golden lamplight, crafted for an impression of creepy campfire stories. They lit Bell from beneath, although he stayed out of the beams. He’d never looked more like a devil than he did right then, the golden light turning red in the shadows. As he walked around the stage back to her, her self-consciousness returned.
“Geez, didn’t you get enough from your girlfriend? You need to go after me, too?” Maya asked.
“I am a man, Maya,” Bell said softly, in that deeper voice that made her close her eyes to control the swell of arousal that followed in its wake. “But you should not mistake me for human. I can last much longer and endure more orgasms than you can. I could fuck you all night if I wanted to,” he whispered against her neck.
Her mouth dropped open with a whimper as he unhooked and unzipped her skirt. It fell to the ground in a rustle of tulle. She thought he would take her corset off next, but instead, he kissed down her neck in an unrepentant, welcome assault of hot mouth edged with his teeth. As she exposed the length of her neck to him, he pulled her draped sleeves down even farther, baring her breasts in full. Maya shrugged out of the sleeves so that she could have full range of motion instead of being captive to a few slips of lace.
She allowed herself to be maneuvered behind the stage, relying on his strength and balance to keep her steady. Her ears filled with the carnal sounds of his mouth devastating her neck and her own sighs of pleasure. Every sharp bite was followed with the soothing of his hot tongue and gentle lips, but she liked the sharp best, in spite of herself.
Her nipples caught with glancing brushes on his chest. Although he had exposed her, he still hadn’t taken her breasts in his hands, in his mouth. Maya usually had trouble keeping men’s hands off her breasts, not getting them on.
“Is that why you need two women?” she asked. “One just isn’t enough to satisfy your demonic needs?”
“I am satisfied when I determine I’m satisfied,” Bell said, withdrawing from his wonderfully obscene admiration of her neck with a grin. “If I let my prick alone dictate the terms, it would never be finished.”
He lifted her onto the platform then knelt between her parted legs. Meeting her eyes, he stroked her inner thighs in a ticklish caress all the way up to her panties. He hooked his finger over the top, and she raised her hips before she could tell herself not to. If she wanted to cover her breasts again, she could just unfold the top of her blouse and slip back into the sleeves. It would be harder for her to take back Bell revealing her cunt to himself.
It was out of her hands—or rather, off her body—in a matter of seconds. He spread her legs as wide as she could where she sat, just so he could see her.
“The number or quality of the women has nothing to do with my satisfaction…or their satisfaction,” he said.
“Oh fuck,” Maya breathed.
Derrick hadn’t liked giving oral, although he’d never complained in the act of receiving. Maya hadn’t protested too much. It wasn’t any fun to cajole and coerce someone into doing something they actively disliked, so she’d stopped mentioning it after the first few times. After all, he’d got the job done through other means.
None of her boyfriends had liked the giving part of it much. Maya thought it was because it hadn’t done anything for their needs. They’d preferred pleasure they could share.
Well, for some of her men, that excuse was a bit generous. Sometimes, they’d wanted their cocks inside her in three moves or less, and they’d wanted her to just want that, so it was a good thing she liked a cock inside her as much as that one time she’d been licked into an orgasm.
And that had been a long time ago.
Except now Bell was between her legs, looking at her eyes instead of her breasts, and he bent down and lashed the tip of his tongue over her clit. Just a quick lash, but she cried out, colla
psing onto her elbows. She didn’t blink as he leaned in and lapped at her again, this time flicking his tongue against her.
“So it’s been a while?” Bell said. “I’ll give you a while. Lie down.”
She learned why he’d made the suggestion when he closed his mouth around her clit. She should have remembered how intent he’d been on Valorie’s pleasure the day she’d watched them from where she’d been tied up.
Maya shouted, her elbows giving out. She hit the platform with a dull thump again and again as she arched and released, arched and released, from every shocking frisson of pleasure sparking through her. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stifle the noises that threatened to alert more of Arcanium to what was happening just a few feet away from them.
After occupying himself mercilessly between her legs, bringing her to the edge and teasing her at just below the pressure, speed and suction that she needed to come, Bell plunged his tongue into her cunt. He had remarkable control of that tongue, not to mention stamina, as he drank the wetness of her arousal out of her. It moved in her like no cock ever could. Her clit practically screamed for him to finish her off, to redirect that passion where it had been promised.
Maya still had trouble finding a hold on his hair, but she managed to grasp onto him and pull his head away from her cunt and up. He chuckled into her flesh. The demon knew well and good what those vibrations did to her.
“Bell, I’m going to…”
He slid two fingers into her tightening pussy and locked his sweetly sucking mouth around her clit, working in tandem at just the right time and right rhythm to bring her up and over the first peak of her orgasm, then coaxing it even higher. Her hand couldn’t stop her high screams from piercing through the night.
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