Haunted, page 23
“I’ve missed that.” He ran a thumb along one of those scars. Her grin faded, but she leaned into his hand. This time, regret instead of panic pulled at her heartstrings.
She wove her fingers through his. She hadn’t been this close to him since the last Funhouse event. His black hair fell around his shoulders and curtained one side of his face. His skin was darker than Sasha’s and he was hotter than her, as though he’d soaked in even more sun. His black eyes were just as dark as hers, though, with quiet ferocity behind them.
But he was in control, so much more in control than he had been when she’d first met him. Maybe because he wasn’t hungry for the first time, but she thought it was more than that. She thought that with all the practice holding his breath, he could do so with more ease.
She wanted to kiss him, and it wasn’t just from skin contact. But she slowly withdrew, unable to look at his lips and not see Locke’s. As men, they were so different, but somehow when Locke went demon, she saw their resemblance—even though they still didn’t look anything alike.
There at the foot of the bed, she turned around and lay back to beckon Sasha over her. She wasn’t so far from Mikhail now, and he gently stroked over her shorn scalp, tracing the clean edge of the burst of dark red hair. From her angle below on the bed, his cock seemed huge and improbably tight against his abdomen, but he didn’t touch himself again, and when he noticed her looking, he adjusted his shirt to cover most of it.
Neve squeezed his thigh through his jeans. “It’s okay. As long as it’s not over me. You can take care of yourself. You can… Oh.”
Sasha crawled between Neve’s legs, lifting them up until her knees were almost at her breasts. She slid her body against Neve’s like a serpent herself before licking a hot trail up her neck.
“I’d love to see you two together one day, riding him at a gallop. Fuck, just the thought of it is the sexiest thing I can imagine right now. Mmm…” Sasha undulated against Neve, her hips simulating far more masculine sex than Neve expected—nor did Neve expect how strongly she’d react to it. She raised her hips with a whine, desperate to meet something, but the angle didn’t give her any of the contact she wanted.
“So you want to know how a succubus feeds on a woman?” Sasha murmured against her lips. “Don’t worry. I can’t bite this way—at least, not with my cunt.”
Sasha climbed further up her body, throwing one leg over and keeping one of Neve’s legs hooked in her arm for her to hold onto, tucked around her hip. She brought her folds flush to Neve’s clit.
“Oh. My. God.” They were like lips, but not. The labia were more dexterous, closing around the hood and the clit like something blind. The suction was like a mouth…but not. The tongue swirled around her clit like a molten version of the silver Locke had wrapped around it, except it was hot, smooth, wet velvet instead of cold metal.
“Believe me, Neve, I haven’t even started yet. Come here to me. Help her up, Mikhail. I want my girl.”
Mikhail lifted her upright, their bent legs mirrored. Sasha clasped Neve against her with greater strength than Neve could find, her limbs like jelly as Sasha’s folds adjusted to the new angle.
“Damn, that feels so strange.” Neve dug her fingers into Sasha’s shoulders, holding on as though on the edge of a cliff.
Her nipples caught on Sasha’s skin, leaving them aching as intensely as her clit. Sasha’s magic was weaving around her, inside her, getting under her skin like Bell’s thick black stitches. It was less insidious than Mikhail’s, less subtle in its efforts to get inside. Sasha pierced her way in and didn’t let go.
Neve moved against her, incited into the rhythm by her suddenly unbearable lust. She pushed her clit against the odd, grasping, sucking mouth of Sasha’s cunt. Sweat beaded down her temples and back, but Sasha didn’t relent. The succubus took her over with a kiss, rocking her hips, riding Neve’s clit. She moaned as though starving, and Neve felt her already drinking. Each suck of that lower mouth took something from her.
The angles were awkward. Without Sasha’s strength, they might not have worked. But the succubus didn’t stop, and Neve didn’t want her to. The pleasure was purer, one hundred percent proof, unfettered by any attempt to hold it back or control it. It swept every last second thought from her mind, every last memory, every last fear. It was bliss, not remembering, not having Locke in her mind for a few minutes, though it couldn’t last.
“You delicious little peach. I could drink you all day and night,” Sasha groaned, throwing back her head. “No wonder you didn’t tell me how tasty she was, Mikhail. No wonder you wanted to keep her all to yourself. I should hate you right now, but I can’t, because she’s so goddamn good.”
Neve bit along her neck and closed her teeth over Sasha’s shoulder. Sasha gave a cry, perhaps of pain, but she pushed Neve back down on the bed, nearly sobbing as she frantically worked her lower mouth over Neve’s clit.
“Don’t stop,” Neve begged. “Don’t ever stop.”
She gripped Sasha’s ass, pushing her harder against her. And when she turned her head, she caught sight of Mikhail stroking himself, his hand a blur, his cock flushed red and its veins purple. He ran his free hand over Sasha’s back, sending a ribbon of his magic through her and—as though lust could be conducted—through Neve as well.
Neve reached to take his erection in her own hand, parting her lips as though she would twist around to take it in. Her cunt was hollow, her mouth hollow, her body hollow, with Sasha pulling everything out of it instead of filling it. But Mikhail covered her wrist and lowered her hand.
Sasha turned Neve back to her, taking her mouth to satisfy at least one of her desires. And with magic siphoned from two ends, Sasha came, her arousal flooding around Neve’s clit, but the mouth closing even more tightly around it, its rhythm that of her orgasm.
For what felt like minutes, their orgasm was one and the same—the same heartbeat, the same spasms, the same back-and-forth waves of mind-numbing pleasure like a drug. Finally, Sasha broke the kiss, loosening her hold on Neve and raising herself up to grind the final pulses against her victim.
This. This was how it was when a sex demon’s feed was supposed to kill her. Neve was boneless on her duvet, unable to move, her mind a terrible, wonderful blank as Sasha shifted her hips away, releasing her and allowing her release to reach completion.
Almost without pause, Sasha leaned over, and Mikhail pulled away his hand to let her take him in her mouth instead. Her throat rippled and cheeks hollowed from the intensity of the suction. Mikhail shouted, pulling up the duvet in a fist as he shoved his cock up into Sasha’s mouth in an almost instantaneous climax like the one Neve had let him have the night of the first Funhouse—a climax for its own sake, none of the other trappings. Neve and Sasha together had been the trappings tonight.
Without Sasha muddying her head, Mikhail not letting her touch him even when she’d been mindless with sexual magic gained all the more significance. She couldn’t—shouldn’t—let him have sex with her right now, and sex meant so many more things than his cock inside her, she knew.
In that one moment of watching him come down from the orgasm Sasha had given him, Neve thought she might love him—fierce, powerful love that had nothing to do with the sex he could give. It was the kind of love she’d thought she had with her husband, the kind that didn’t need sex to work.
The feeling lasted for only a moment, but it shook her more than any orgasm that the incubus or succubus had given her, because everything after Locke had seemed like an everlasting, apocalyptic end.
And this seemed like a beginning.
Mikhail retrieved her eyepatch and Sasha’s dress. Neve pulled on what clothes she could reach, tossed the duvet to the floor at the foot of her bed for the golems to eventually clean then grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around herself. Though it was the middle of the day, Sasha tucked herself against Neve’s side. Mikhail settled behind the succubus to keep a body between him and Neve. After a few minutes, the cobra came to join them, drawn to their collective, welcoming heat.
Sasha drifted off, but Mikhail stayed awake. He brushed Neve’s gashed cheek as though he’d been afraid he would never touch her again.
And Neve kept her one good eye open, unable to tear her gaze away.
Just the beginning.
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Arcanium: Skeletons
Aurelia T. Evans
Excerpt
Vivian had expected more from Arcanium.
When she’d arrived at the Renaissance faire that the freak-show circus had paired with, Arcanium was little more than a collection of small tents and booths attached to the far edge like barnacles. The way her friends had described it the previous year, it was supposed to be the kinky steampunk party everyone needed in their life. But she’d been in the hospital again back then and hadn’t been released until after the circus had already moved on.
There were harnesses everywhere the eye could see, leather and lace, bustiers and kickass boots. The Spider Woman creature…thing…person was tied up in white rope, and to Vivian’s untrained eye, it looked authentic. But kink was more than outfits, and steampunk was more than cogs and gears, although there was a good bit of that, too.
And to Vivian’s disappointment, the big top that her friends had all talked about was nowhere to be found. Any tents set up along the perimeter were small, and any open-air performances were seemingly spontaneous and limited in scope. There was no sign of the hot, homoerotic trapeze artists Lupe had mentioned.
As Vivian slipped through the crowd in her flowy gypsy skirt and peasant blouse—the closest she had to appropriate for the venue, although if the circus had been actually kinky, she would have had a few other things to contribute, she noted the performance times were unpredictable and the offerings slim, but the freak show was fucking beautiful. The kink and steampunk nods in the circus were more perfunctory than devoted homages, but the parasitic circus’ enthusiasm for natural and unnatural weirdness seemed unmatched by anything she’d ever been to or seen before. Sure, she’d seen circus movies and shit, but those cheated enough that these freaks—the ones that were definitely real, at least—were worth a look.
But a look only lasted about fifteen minutes, and what else was she supposed to do with her time?
She abandoned the circus to return to the faire, where at least they had turkey legs she could pick at while watching falconers, wondering whether anyone would catch the irony. No one did, but the birds of prey kept her attention and the falconers weren’t too bad either. She supposed they’d seen plenty of pressed cleavage in their day, but she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and she wasn’t wearing a bra. After the act, that distracted the sandy blond with an overgrown but somehow sparse beard. She smiled, finished what she was going to finish with the turkey leg, which was a little dry and how the hell did a single person eat the whole thing without looking pregnant when they were done? Vivian had only chosen it for the irony, anyway, and if even the falconer couldn’t spot it, she needed to move on.
She was that close to throwing in the towel and leaving to drink heavily elsewhere—someplace where the pissy beers didn’t cost an arm and a turkey leg to buy—when she heard music. And not the usual Celtic crap that sounded like it belonged on one of those soundtracks found at souvenir gift shops.
Vivian abandoned the falconer without a thought to follow the siren song of rock and roll where it didn’t belong.
There was no stage, no curtains, nothing but a bare-bones set-up of amps, speakers and instruments next to the circus’ food court. On the bass drum, someone had painted ‘Skellies’ in spiky script. And on an easel, a sign with the same script read Karaoke—Auditions for Lead Singer.
“Seriously?” Vivian muttered.
“Seriously,” a man said behind her.
She could have sworn no one had been there, and as he stepped around her, the continued impression that he didn’t displace the air was the weirdest, most unsettling feeling. Even though he was pretty as sin, she leaned away.
Pretty, indeed. Gently toned muscles wrapped around his bones. He was shorter than her, but when he looked up, he didn’t seem to take it personally. He walked with absolute confidence as far away from arrogance as Vivian had ever seen on an attractive man who looked like he hadn’t met a weight machine he hadn’t tried.
Actually, there was fluidity to his strength that suggested something other than the gym. He wasn’t a bodybuilder, wasn’t absolutely ripped like the strongman. He was lean but not slender, like someone who could do all the weird fitness moves—a trapeze artist or a dancer, maybe. Since he wasn’t with anyone, she wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to be one of the trapeze artists she’d been looking for, although she was pretty sure one was supposed to be blond and the other black, while this man’s close, curly hair was on the brown side of auburn.
He wore nothing but a gold bracelet around his arm—which had to be fake, because this kind of circus couldn’t support that amount of real gold—and a pair of cotton pants that practically invited her to look. She couldn’t see detail, but with the light beige color of the pants, he certainly wasn’t wearing anything under them.
She didn’t hide that she was studying his body, and he appeared unfazed by the inspection. He didn’t preen or flex, didn’t glare, didn’t inspect her back—just sat down on one of the picnic tables that had been set up in front of the band. In spite of decent guitar riffs and beats coming from the practicing instrumentalists, people hadn’t congregated yet.
“I didn’t know circuses were in the habit of gleaning talent from their audiences,” Vivian said. “Seems kind of desperate, don’t you think?”
His hazel eyes looked a little sad—something in the set of his eyebrows—but he curved his lips in a grin. “Oh, it is desperate, in its own way. I’m afraid a good number of my performers had to leave en masse due to an illness that swept through my circus, with many lingering side effects. Now I’m working with a skeleton crew. I’d ask you to pardon the pun, but it just seems all too appropriate.”
Vivian raised her eyebrow. “Your performers?”
When he didn’t seem to mind her sidling closer, she climbed onto the picnic table and sat on the edge next to him—close enough to telegraph a certain amount of interest, although she wasn’t in heat or anything.
“My circus. My monkeys.” He raised his chin in acknowledgment to the guitarist, a pale man in a see-through shirt screened to look like the bones of a torso. He’d pulled back his long black hair, and when he glimpsed her talking to the shirtless man, he gave a too-wide smile. Despite his white teeth, he reeked of cigarettes from all the way where she sat. Yet she still couldn’t get anything but a visual off the man next to her, who crossed his legs like some kind of bohemian model.
“So you’re the one who’s desperate, then,” she said.
“I’m always on the lookout for talent, love. There’s no shame in soliciting, and our audience has some fun in the process.”
“You ever found anyone this way?”
The man nodded toward the acrylic drum sheet. “Shane, our drummer. Bringing her on allowed Lennon to take a permanent place as guitarist, which he much prefers.”
Shane transitioned into a new beat, shaking her bald head and clenching her teeth—at least the ones in her mouth. The place on the left side of her scalp, which Vivian had initially thought was a tattoo, was dimensional in the right profile. Vivian blinked, squinted to find where poreless latex smoothed into pored skin—because if Vivian didn’t know any better, a fang-filled mouth formed a crevice along Shane’s scalp, like some kind of science fiction brain surgery gone horribly wrong.
As Shane moved, twisting on her chair and closing her eyes to the music, she revealed other places where the eerily realistic mouths opened in wet, red gashes wherever the skintight, bloody, white latex dress cut away from her body—along her shoulder, slashed diagonally over her belly, in place of a navel. Her entire body seemed to have been prepared for a glimpse of horror from every angle. She was skinny, her jutting collarbone, hipbones, knees, elbows and shoulder blades accentuated by the light layer of makeup that made a suggestion of a skull on her face and bones over her exposed ribs and spine.
Vivian dwelled on the beautiful angles of her thin fingers around the drumsticks with more than a little envy.
“Like oddities, talent is everywhere if you’re willing to do what it takes to find it,” the man said. “Or create it for yourself. Arcanium is undergoing a much-needed transformation, and if we are to survive, it needs to be fast. Bell Madoc, fortune teller and illusionist, at your humble service, my lady. I don’t believe I caught your name.” He held out a hand for her to shake.
At least when she took his hand, his flesh was solid and warm, almost hot.
“Vivian. I’ve never heard Bell as a first name before.”
“It’s short for a number of names I have taken. I am the Bell, book and candle behind the magic of Arcanium, and it does as well as anything.”
Vivian turned back to the practicing band. A woman had stepped behind the keyboard and was fiddling with the volume. She wore a long black lace skirt and bralette that appeared to cover only what was absolutely necessary for legal reasons, all the better to show off the incredibly detailed body paint that created the illusion that the woman was only a skeleton.
Vivian was beginning to sense a theme.
Unlike Lennon, the guitarist, who only briefly nodded to the band’s name, and Shane, whose skeleton makeup was soft, like a faint overlay of a skeleton illustration, the keyboardist had gone all out, filling in her body with black where the bones hadn’t been painted on in minute anatomical detail. The woman wasn’t as slender as Shane, didn’t have the same skeletal structure already exposed. Instead, she seemed downright soft—which seemed to be coming back into fashion, but Vivian preferred angles to curves and bones to flesh. When she turned an envious eye, it was to women like Shane every time.
