RU TOOK RODINA back to their rooms at the Circus. Once I would have said he was taking her back home, but I’d seen too far into her heart. I knew she didn’t consider it home now. The knowledge made me sad, like I couldn’t shake her emotions off me completely. I was in the dancers’ bathroom backstage trying to fix my smeared lipstick with Ethan standing outside the door. The trouble was I didn’t usually use base makeup, so I didn’t have any with me to put back on after I had the lipstick cleaned off; my skin was a slightly different color or texture or something from the bottom of my nose down to my chin and I had no idea how to fix it. I was supposed to be waiting in here until we could decide if I was safe to be around Jean-Claude or Nathaniel since I was a lot more closely connected to them metaphysically than to Rodina or even Ethan.
There was a knock on the door and Ethan said, “Nathaniel is here to be the sacrificial lamb.”
“What did you call him?” I asked.
“I volunteered,” Nathaniel said through the door.
“What if it gets out of hand?” I asked.
“Then we’ll have sex like we’ve had hundreds of times. I don’t have to be onstage tonight.”
“You may miss seeing Jean-Claude do your choreography onstage.”
“I’ll see him do it later.”
“Jean-Claude wanted me to see him onstage tonight and have a date night, and now it may not be happening.”
“You can have your date night another time, Anita.”
I stared at myself in the mirror—the careful makeup, the curled hair, the dress, the stupid heels—and now because I couldn’t control my own powers it was all for nothing, damn it.
“Anita, nothing is wasted, or ruined. Unless we rip the dress up you can wear it again for Jean-Claude.”
I watched myself smile in the mirror. “I think we can keep the dress intact,” I said, smiling wider.
“Aww,” Nathaniel said through the door, but I knew from the tone he was smiling.
I laughed and told him to come in, and the door opened and there he was, one of the loves of my life. He’d put his hair up underneath a cap that looked like a fedora, but the brim was too small, and whatever the type of hat was called, it was giving the illusion that his hair was short. He’d meant to sit out in the audience to watch the show, so hiding his hair was a necessity. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it with his hands behind his back and looked at me from the hair and makeup all the way down to the heels.
“Wow, you look amazing.”
“Thank you, I think, it doesn’t feel very much like me.”
He gave me that warm smile as he pushed himself away from the door and crossed the room to me. “You’re always beautiful, but you’re right, this is like nothing I’ve ever seen you wear. It’s like lingerie or a costume for you, or should I say, for Jean-Claude?”
“Are you saying you didn’t help pick out any of this?”
He grinned. “I saw it, and maybe the color, but except for the shoes it’s not any of my kinks.” He stood there and we were eye to eye with me in the heels. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and it was just natural that my arms went around his waist. It was weird to be face to face instead of me leaning on his shoulder and looking up. His eyes were lavender, not blue like he had to put down on any government ID. Asher had nicknamed him our flower-eyed boy. For the first time I didn’t have to go up on tiptoes or have him lean down so we could kiss. Everything was exactly where it needed to be. His lips were full and pouting, made for kissing. If he’d been female he’d have been an old-fashioned centerfold, but he lifted too many weights and ran too many miles to have the curves that promised.
He drew back first from the kiss to smile at me. “Now I know you made out with Rodina, because I can taste her scent on your mouth. That is so hot.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Really, you have some interest in Rodina that I’m not aware of?”
“You know I don’t, but you also know I’m a serious voyeur. Watching you with anyone is hot but watching you with someone new is hotter.”
Once I might have been mad at the remark, but now I just laughed, because truth was truth. “There’s something seriously wrong with you, you know that.”
“But you love me anyway,” he said.
“I love you because of it, because your wrong matches my wrong.”
“Are you saying two wrongs make a right?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” I said, smiling.
He met my smile with his own, and our smiles joined together into another kiss. It grew into eager lips, tongue, teeth as he bit my lower lip just enough to make me weak in the knees, and for a second I forgot the unsteady heels. I grabbed him around the shoulders, and he grabbed me around the waist at the same time. “Wow,” I said. He looked very pleased with himself.
“If I weren’t wearing these shoes I’d bite you back, but I can’t catch us both dressed like this,” I said.
“Decorate with bite marks later in the bed, and you can keep the heels on. They’re the pointiest stilettos I’ve ever seen you wear.”
“Ah, that’s why you like the shoes so much, you want to feel them pressed against your ass while you fuck me.”
He shivered in my arms, his arms tightening almost convulsively around my waist. “God, yes.” Then his eyes flicked behind me at the mirror. He was suddenly steadier in our embrace and the look on his face wasn’t submissive anymore but sliding further to the top side of things. He’d come into my life so submissive he had been a danger to himself in the wrong hands, but together we’d learned we were switches. I watched his bottom mindset slide away and the very tippy-top slide through his eyes.
“I like the thong,” he said.
I glanced back at the mirror and realized that I was tall enough that only my legs were below the mirror. I’d never been tall enough to flash my ass in the mirror before. “I’m so tall.”
“Nicky would have to help me get you in the right head space for it, but I’d love to spank your ass while you wear the thong and shoes.”
“One good slap and I’d fall over,” I said, and I laughed a little nervously, a little eagerly. He and Nicky co-topped me sometimes, and there was something about their dynamics that turned my mostly submissive boy into a dominant head space that I hadn’t even known he had inside him.
“We could chain you with your arms up, using the soft leather cuffs so you could hold on to them while we marked up your beautiful ass.” One of his hands slid over my bare skin where the dress riding up had exposed me. It was a gentle caress, but the look on his face while he watched me in the mirror promised something less gentle later. It was my turn to shiver in his arms.
“I don’t think I could stand that long in these heels even with the cuffs to hang on to,” I said, leaning into his hand, rubbing my face against the side of his so I could lay a kiss on the warm, smooth skin of his neck.
He pressed himself tighter against me, fingers starting to dig into my ass. “We can find different shoes and matching thongs for you to wear.” His voice was lower, the first rush of testosterone already pumping through his body. He used his other hand to raise the dress up all the way to my waist, then pressed the front of his body against the front of mine. For once the height was perfect for him to push the growing hardness of his body against the soft mound of mine. Usually when we stood like this he was pressed against my stomach, which felt good, but this felt better.
“Yes,” I breathed.
He drew back enough so he could see my face. “Are you agreeing to spanking, or just getting distracted by this.” He started rubbing himself against the front of me. He was inside jeans, and I had one layer of silky cloth between me and his efforts, which meant my nerve endings were closer to the surface.
I shuddered in his arms, eyes fluttering closed, whispering, “Both.”
There was a knock on the door. “Sorry to interrupt,” Ethan said, “but have you bespelled Nathaniel, or are you just having your usual effect on each other?”
That made us both laugh. “I’m fine,” Nathaniel called out.
“Then Jean-Claude asked me to hurry you along, so that Anita’s makeup won’t delay him taking the stage.”
I looked at myself in the mirror then and realized that Nathaniel had totally distracted me from the mess that Rodina and I had made of my mouth and chin. The makeup looked like what happens when a car swipes another’s paint job with a little fender-bender thrown in, but the rest of the car still looks perfect. “Perfect from here up,” I said, gesturing in the mirror.
“You’re always perfect,” Nathaniel said, “but you’re lucky some of the dancers wear more makeup than I do.”
“I am lucky that someone here has more makeup than you and I do.” He laughed and we opened the door so Ethan could herd us to the dancers’ dressing room, where they were waiting like a beauty assembly line to repair the damage and get me back to my seat. Nathaniel helped me use makeup cleaning cloths to take off all the makeup from below the line of mess. Apparently, I’d ruined it so well that they needed clean skin and to just start all over. Ethan stayed out of the way since he knew less than I did about this kind of makeup. He took up his post by the door, alert for danger, but the only danger seemed to be a fight breaking out between the dancers on exactly what color of base matched what I was wearing.