The electricity in that far end of the city was poorly provided with extremely expensive bills. The farmers had to invest in their lands using their hands, seeing that the utensils and machinery were rated for high class only. The classification of people had returned by the time the second king of the East had come. And that led its people to be divided. The low class, which consisted of farmers and factorists, were forbidden from entering the high class’s areas, such as the ‘Park of the Lords’ and the Royal Palace. As Riley watched how vast lands divided the Palace from the farmers’ lands, she was slowly growing bitter.
“You are quite a runner, aren’t you?” He recovered from his laughter and approached to stand next to her.
She did not deserve to be sitting here, sipping wine with the royals, and her people were dying of maladies every day. Not everyone had her to provide them with money like her grandparents.
“What are you thinking of?” His low voice hummed against her ear, arousing her.
She felt his right hand barely touch her arm as he slid it against her and took the goblet from hers. He placed their glasses on the mahogany table next to him and returned to stand behind her.
“How to change the world,” she answered honestly.
“You can start with one human being.” His lips softly moved against her ear.
Fires were crimsoning their way through her body at the sound of his low decoying voice. She could not deny the way he felt against her.
He was confident and beautiful.
He was powerful and ensnaring.
He was cunning and mysterious.
And she wanted to unfold every part of him.
“What do you want from me?” Her response came out unsteady and shaken.
“I want to unfold your closed pages,” he whispered, his hands roaming the fabric of the dress above her waist. His fingers were wriggling the fabric and slowly lifting the dress upwards.
He could not deny the need for her, the need to feel every inch of her. Women were mostly at their most vulnerable state in bed. They would share their deepest secrets and give him their all. And if she were not of that type, she would definitely give her all to him since he had never been denied a request.
“They are blank,” she said but her last word was muffled by a gasp as he lifted her dress up and felt the fair skin of her legs give out the goosebumps at his touch. He fixed his body on hers from behind until they almost became one entity.
“Then let me mark them with poetry,” he pleaded as his body moved against her, and her guard was slowly diminishing.
“I don’t want your kind of poetry, Mr. Jonathan,” she said, breathing faster and closing her eyes. Why was it so hard to gain back control? She had never felt so defenceless, in such a need for his arms wrapped around her.
“Your heart says otherwise.” His right hand slid between her breasts and he pressed against her heart. It was beating wildly.
“Don’t trust my heart.” She pulled on his hands and removed them from her body. She felt about to whimper at the loss of contact, but that was her intention all along.
“Do you not trust me?” He frowned as he looked at the austerity in her eyes when she turned to face him.
“I don’t trust anyone,” she said and raised her head in triumph. “I don’t know what that was for, but it shouldn’t happen again. I don’t believe my king would allow these things to happen in his castle.”
“Yet they happen all the time,” he replied sharply. How dare she refuse his order? He offered her something only a few duchesses and princesses were lucky to have. She was merely a performer, yet she seemed more deserving of his body than anyone else.
“I don’t care if others are willing to defy the rules. I don’t want to have my head hung on the gate of the castle.”
“The king adores me. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt my women.”
“Your women?” She frowned, her voice rising with anger. “Who said I was your woman?”
“You would be if only you would give in to your temptations, which are not as bad as everyone makes them seem.” He defiantly stepped closer to her.
“As if I were an object to be possessed. You need to see the world we live in. Even if women were stripped from their rights again, we still have our will to do whatever we want. And I refuse you, Jonathan.”
“If I were the prince, you would jump into my bed instantly.”
“I am not a whore.” Her blood was rising.
“I never said you were.” He smiled challengingly. “But you have quite a reputation.”
He knew. She stood in her place and watched him intently. He knew she let some men inside her private room to offer her sexual services in return for money. Little did he know she did not do anything. It was all in the mind of her silly, weak-minded customers. She sat there watching as they gave up under the influence of creating the illusion of ecstasy.
“Is this why you approached me?” she asked him, disappointed.
“No,” he retreated and spoke sincerely. “I don’t give a damn about your past. I only admire you. You don’t yield so easily.”
“You mean to tell me you were interested in getting to know me.” She snorted at the irony of the situation. “Of course, through guiding me to bed.”
“What is wrong with that?”
“You can’t get to know the person by sleeping with them. You do not really talk meanwhile.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. I want to observe you.” He squinted, making the butterflies rise through her again.
He had beguiled her with the intensity of his blue eyes. They were observant like a hawk’s and as dark as an owl’s. He did observe her… and that made her want to get closer to him.
Before she got the chance to respond, his cellulogram started buzzing in his pocket until he blinked away his attention and pulled the device out. Pressing on the touch screen of the flat three-inches-long device, a grey hologram of a code took form in a minute shape. It said “112.” Jonathan rolled his eyes and turned off the device.
“We must leave,” he announced in a disappointed voice.
“It’s alright. I have to get back to my room anyway. The banquet must be over.” She sighed in discontent and followed him out of the secret room.
Chapter 13
The blood-red satin walls, disturbed by golden letters and inundated with rococo paintings, whispered in hushed scared voices as Jonathan passed between them, taking large steps towards the king’s office. The code 112 meant only one thing. He was in trouble. He checked the time displayed in digital numbers on his cellulogram and it looked grave so. As the poor lived by the triviality of time, he had always lived to race with it.
At the sound of the heavy door clicking open, the king lifted his wrinkled eyes to see Jonathan striding inside. The royal guards dared not stop him, but moved together, each to one side to clear the way.
Jonathan straightened his back, his jawline clenched. He faked a smile and bowed to the king.
“You have requested for me, my king. How may I serve you?” His adamant voice sounded in the empty room. No cameras were installed in the king’s office nor his bedroom. He was to have his complete privacy unlike the other chambers in the kingdom.
“Have a seat, John.” The king’s eyes did not meet his. Instead, he was focusing on the screened files on the surface of his desk. Blue squares displayed digital letters. They were the files that held the biography of every civilian in Regitum. The king swiped the picture frame of Mathew to the left and it disappeared, leaving the room for other pictures of the circus crew to appear.
Jonathan sat down silently on the satin chair.
“Do you know why you’re here?” the king asked him in a sinister voice.
The calmness and seriousness sent chills through Jonathan’s system. It was impossible not to overthink the consequences. If rules had been broken, not even he could get out of the punishments.
“My king…” he started, but was soon cut off.
“Don’t play the fool with me,” King Christopher hissed. “Where did you take her?”
Jonathan’s nails were grazing inside the skin of his palms.
“I wanted to persuade her into revealing her history.” The coolness in his voice angered the king. The king was the one in control after all. If anyone was to question or be isolated with Riley Red, it would be him. Taking her to the garden then to the fourth tower was treacherous and against the consent of the king.
“I gave her my permission to go outside and breathe.” His voice had risen as he pounded his fist on his desk. “You do not have the freedom to freely exchange fine words with her about poetry then let your filthy mind wander to places it shouldn’t.”
Jonathan frowned. It was odd of the king to speak this way. It seemed as if Jonathan had made an inappropriate move on one of his mistresses. And what if she were? Was she fooling him? He was enraged at the thought of being watched as he took a leap of faith with the woman.
“Was someone spying on us?”
“Do you expect not to be watched?! Where do you live, Jonathan?!” The king sprinted to his feet and was slowly turning red.
Jonathan flinched and took a step back. He was truly afraid to be punished for this, and more afraid to have Riley suffer from the consequences.
“I did not know she was your—”
“She is my guest, and I expect you to follow my orders. Or else, if you disobey me one more time, Jonathan, your punishment will be worse than any criminal in the dungeons.”
Jonathan swallowed. He could feel the lump in his throat forming and getting more painful. What was there to do but nod and bow like the robot he had turned into? He could not argue with the king of the East. He could not scream in his face about his passion and need to be the ruler instead, all in the purpose of having his complete freedom given on a silver platter.
You will be, he whispered to himself. It was only a matter of time before the throne would be his.
“Get out of here and don’t dare anger me again.” The king had calmed down. As he beckoned towards the door, Jonathan nodded and pressed his hand against the small tablet by the door. His hand was scanned and the door clicked open.
“We shall meet later, father.” He uttered his last word in disgust before he disappeared from the king’s sight.
He sniffed. He ran his hand through his hair. He drummed his fingers against his leg. He was enraged.
Abandoning his conversation with his father behind the closed doors, he started for his room. He was even forbidden from returning to Riley, who by now would be in her room, drowning under the sheets. He would do anything to be with her at this moment, but his desire was not enough to get him beheaded.
He flung his chamber door open and shut it before any of the guards dared to move. When did he reach this point where he wished he was not a royal? Perhaps, being a royal was not as tiresome as it seemed, but he was no ordinary man. He was the one to inherit the throne after his father and take all the filthiness that came with the position.
His father was never merry. He always seemed to drown in his kingly duties and had forgotten how to be a father. Jonathan did not mind that, of course. What he was afraid of was that after he would get enthroned, he’d forget how to live. He would not have time for the pleasures of the world. Not even making love would be enjoyable. The time dedicated to it would be in the sole purpose of getting an heir to take after his shit.
And then… it hit him. Dyane had run away with his brother to escape that hellhole. His mind’s eye shifted to himself running in the fields with them, fields of freedom where being a king was impossible, fields where his decisions were his own.
“What am I doing?” he groaned and sank his face in his hands.
His brother was probably murdered before stepping outside the marked land of the palace and Dyane drowned in the nearest swamp. That was a possibility if the Regitan Forces did not take her to the Vanish Room where lasers would wipe her out of existence, dismantling every particle in her body.
No, he did not want to run away. He preferred to be in control.
No, being a king was what he was meant to do.
That was why Dyane and his brother escaped… because the throne was meant to be his.
Once he gets it, he would obtain whatever he desired, even if it meant killing in order to get there, starting with Riley Red.
Someone knocked on the door three times.
Riley let out a loud sigh and sprinted to her feet. After the banquet, the king had not ceased to visit the crew while they were practicing. Although Rufus politely told him that the performance was supposed to be a surprise to please the king, he did not listen and loitered around the studio.
Several times, Riley would be performing a dance with her dancing partner. All the while, the king watched her. He drank in every move against the dancer’s body and every sway of her hips. She noticed but did not say anything.
A week later, he asked her to take a walk with him in the Royal Garden and she delightfully agreed. Their conversation was not that of literature but that of politics, and Riley ensured her own safety and that of the group by praising the system and every decree coming from the king himself. The poison worked perfectly and eased her into his mind, but she wanted to climb in the king’s bed faster than the time he was taking to approach her, or else, the poison wouldn’t be as strong, and controlling his mind would become way more difficult.
She stumbled upon Jonathan more than once but he did not stop to apologize nor hear her apology. Having to face him had weakened her. She did not realize how charming, how sharp, how handsome, how luring, and how enmeshing he could be. He was like a beautiful lullaby that put her to sleep, only to be molested by nightmares.
“William?”
William bowed to her and took a step to the left. Behind him appeared Una in her smallness and coy eyes.
“What is it Una?” Riley pressed.
“May I enter?”
“Yeah.” She stepped aside and let Una inside the chamber.
An air of guilt and shame swam through the servant’s lung as she laid the bag in her hands on Riley’s bed.
“What is that?” Riley asked and closed the door behind the young girl.
“It’s an outstanding robe, milady.” Una opened the leather bag in the dead silence and retrieved a beautiful piece of art Riley had never dreamt of wearing.
It was a one shoulder long black dress. As she slid into it, the see-through dark lace wrapped around her chest causing it to look as if it were suffocating and begging for release. At the waist, it flew down in waves of thin fabric, and was cut at the left side, baring her leg.
Riley did not elaborate on the topic. It was as if she already knew where she was going. Una applied dark make up on her fair skin, and she fixed her hair the way it was done before the banquet.
The enormous door, closed shut by the guards, was the only thing between her and her freedom. Riley’s mind operated in a different way. Her freedom would come after her slavery. It was a price she was willing to pay.
She was in the King’s bedroom.
Concealing her amazement at the bouquets of candles behind the vast bed that would fit at least five people, she kept her uncaring face on. She struggled to ignore the fact that the thousand-year-old painting guarding the bed, and the violet covers laced with diamonds, and the golden chandelier as big as their tour bus, and the thick violet carpet under her feet could afford to feed an entire nation.
“Good evening, Red.” The ominous sound of the king woke her up.
She drifted her eyes towards the balcony and saw him entering, only in his robe. He was unattractive. The robe covered half of his body and was not wide enough to cover the curves of his inflated stomach. He had a medium-sized beard and wide black eyes that radiated with desire under the fading lights of the chamber.
“My king.” She bowed and kept her head down. Her insides were churning and all she wanted to do was flee. She wa
nted to flee from the responsibilities bestowed on her. She wanted to go into the arms of her grandparents and forget about her mission, forget about the effort she had put throughout the years.
His finger gently touched her chin and lifted it up until she met his eyes. He did not look as evil as his deeds, though she knew his intentions and that made him even more repulsive.
“Don’t look down. I need to look into your eyes,” he tried to sound as gentle as he could.
“I don’t believe I deserve the honour, my king,” she dishonestly answered.
“Come here.” He took her hand and guided her to the long mirror, lying against the wall.
She looked at her reflection. Her reflection smirked.
You are close. Torture yourself now, but gain later. Don’t stop. Don’t stop until they yield before your power.
Riley nodded then looked at the king in the mirror. He snaked his arms around her waist and laid his chin on her shoulder. It was much more enjoyable when Jonathan did it, she thought. She was on the verge of either crying or screaming.
Keep it together. Just one night and Regitum is yours.
“I promise you everything your heart wishes for.”
You cannot give me anything…
“My family is everything I have and need in this world, my king,” she politely answered.
A low chuckle escaped the king’s mouth.
“A lot of women have stood here before you, Red, but I am planning on keeping you. You are one hell of a woman.” His lips traced the bare line of her shoulder.
She closed her eyes. It was happening and she would have to be at her strongest.
The sound of the unzipping of her dress sent gloomy chills through her skin. Finally, the dress kissed the floor. Her body was exposed to the king. It was his property. He was about to invade it, to pollute it, to turn the uncontaminated parts of it into a conquered land.
Red Circus Page 10