Chapter Seven

 

 

 

Another day, another faire.

Different costume, though. Simpler, practically A-line, this time in dark red leather because Sasha still didn’t want her in brown. It laced up like a corset from her navel to just below her breasts, showing the skin of her abdomen between the lacings. The thick straps of the dress held her breasts in—more or less—but the skirt stopped just barely above mid-thigh. Expertly tailored, as usual, to hug her curves and cover everything legal. She didn’t know how Lady Sasha managed it. She would have preferred much more length in the skirt, but at least it was something new.

Before he’d stored them away, Bell had also given her a peek at what she could expect when they started doing far more hard core adult entertainment for kink shows and conventions and Burning Man. He’d been thoroughly amused with how she’d fought not to rain holy hell upon him when he’d shown her some of the other things Lady Sasha had made for her.

She was beginning to understand the game—please the jinni. Make it not about her, although sometimes he made it about her. Operative words—he made it about her. It was as infuriating as it was exhilarating, and he seemed to relish her frustration. At least she could please him in that way without even trying.

These costumes she wore for him—and would wear for him—sometimes made her feel like every day was slutty Halloween. She’d done the latex nurse and latex devil and bordello corset thing before, but she usually reserved that crap for October.

And every day, Bell took in the view without hesitation, looking her over as though he didn’t already know what was underneath the leather—as though the costume left anything to the imagination anyway. She would wonder how he hadn’t grown tired of her already, except she hadn’t grown tired of him either, even though they’d gone at it like animals in heat for three weeks.

And on top of that, Bell had also been spending more time with Valorie since the night Bell had handed Maya off to Ciarán and Moss.

But Valorie knew now. Maya couldn’t say how she knew Valorie knew rather than just suspected. Women’s intuition—although it was nothing that Valorie had said.

That wasn’t to say that Valorie didn’t make her displeasure known. Maya’s couch had become a virtual minefield. Maya had even found a coral snake in it one time that made Maya worry that Valorie hadn’t known what she was handling—or worse, that Valorie had known.

She’d apologized to the snake after she’d cut it in two with a butcher knife. What else was she supposed to have done? At the time, Bell had been quite busy with the very woman who had put the snake in her makeshift bed. No, Bell was no help. He was getting everything he wanted without interfering.

Maya didn’t just have to contend with venomous snakes, though, which would have been bad enough. There were toads that pissed themselves in defense when she picked them up to toss them outside. There were wolf spiders.

Valorie was obviously not a member of PETA.

There were nonliving torments as well. Some of Misha’s knives had stabbed into the cushions from beneath, pricking her back and buttocks before she’d realized that she’d almost slowly impaled herself in her sleep. And itching powder. Valorie had actually pulled the stupid itching-powder-in-the-blanket trick.

Maya was glad Valorie hadn’t yet wished that looks could kill.

Then she’d wonder how many wishes Valorie had left.

Maya was this close to slapping Valorie’s pretty face and challenging her to an old-fashioned duel to get the animosity out in the open and out of her system. Valorie looked younger than Maya, but according to Kitty, she was significantly older. She should have known better than to be this juvenile.

But Maya had suffered her share of tacks on her chair and weird app sounds when she’d taught teenagers. Reptiles, amphibians and arachnids didn’t scare her. Coral snakes did, but she chose to believe that Valorie had been threatening her off, not intentionally risking her life.

However, it was starting to get harder to believe the best of Valorie’s jealousy. Because, frankly, Valorie’s actions mystified Maya almost as much as Bell’s did. Bell had his jinn nature to explain his inexplicability. What was Valorie’s excuse? Wrathful glares, dangerous retribution, petty vengeance…for what? For a cruel man like Bell, whose fault this was to begin with?

If Maya weren’t so stubborn herself, she might have drawn Bell aside, informed him of what was going on and told him to focus on the woman he’d already had before Maya had come along. She might have surrendered.

But then Bell would look at her like he was doing now, the summer sun beating down on his tent, cooled only by a fan moving the air around, and the two of them all alone. Business was usually hopping in the early evening, but for some reason, groups chattered past the tent entrance, their shoes crunching the grass and dry dirt. No one came in.

“Come here.”

She hated and loved when he did that, made himself sound like he was right at her ear when he was on the other side of the tent. She could almost feel his breath rustling over the hairs on the back of her neck. Kitty had chosen a loose braided knot today to lift her hair up in the humidity. Straightening it would have been a fool’s errand.

“Bya inja. Come to me, Maya.”

The tent entrance flapped closed by itself.

“No way. There are people right outside, Bell. Someone could walk in at any moment,” Maya said.

“They won’t as long as the tent is closed,” Bell said. He unfurled his fingers, and as though she was tied with marionette strings, she stood from her chair and went to him.

He took her by her wrist and eased her gently but inexorably into his lap.

“It’s okay for me to have you during the day too, you know,” he said, caressing her cheek before possessing her chin and drawing her down to kiss him.

As always, she was chocolate to his warmth, humming with the lazy fever that twisted deliciously within her. Their tongues met in a sultry slide. He smoothed his palm over the leather at her waist, over her stomach, teasing just above her mound. He loosened his grip on her chin and made his hand a choker over her neck, a claim rather than a threat. He didn’t squeeze, but breathing became harder for her anyway. After a little more of this, he could start to unfasten the ties of her painted-on dress and take her on the spindly little table where he did tarot and palm readings. She wouldn’t give a furry damn who saw.

He was her temptation, and she gave in to him. The apple tasted like honey and cinnamon. Irresistible. If she kept thinking that, maybe she’d be able to convince her conscience that it was true—although it wasn’t like she listened to her conscience anyway.

“Oh, sorry. The tent was open,” Kitty said, hesitating at the entrance. She was looking peculiarly pretty today in a light green dress that ribboned away from her legs and showed off the long, shaggy, lustrous hair all over her body.

Bell relinquished Maya’s mouth, but continued to hold her against him. “Come in,” he said. “I was distracted. I didn’t know just anyone could come in and see.”

“Yes, you did,” Maya whispered, facing away from Kitty. “The tent was closed. You opened it, exhibitionist bastard.”

He licked her neck. She twitched away, conscious of Kitty’s presence.

“I’m not sure how professional that is,” Kitty said. “You know, in front of potential customers.”

“It is my circus,” Bell said, still gazing hungrily at Maya’s body rather than addressing Kitty. “I can do as I wish, including take an unscheduled break. Speaking of, Kitty, you’ve been away from your post quite a long time this afternoon. You ought to have returned by now.”

“I know,” Kitty said, sitting across from them in one of the customer’s chairs. “I just had a feeling.”

“You aren’t prescient,” Bell said.

“Don’t play high and mighty with me, Bell. I might not be jinn, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely unconnected to the beyond,” Kitty said.

“You’re experiencing the same neural misfirings that cause mistakes like déjà vu. A phantom feeling of dread,” Bell said. “You don’t have a psychic bone in your body, love.”

“I’ve never been wrong,” Kitty said softly.

“Because bad things always happen,” Bell replied. “That’s life.”

“Oh, charming,” Maya said. She tried to get up for Bell and Kitty to argue it out without her lounging like a concubine on his lap, but Bell tightened his grip on her waist. “Let me up,” she said, tugging at his arm.

“Stay,” Bell said.

“I’m not a dog. It’s hot and so are you—in the literal sense. It’s not the best combination,” Maya said.

“You didn’t seem to mind a minute ago,” he said. He loosened his embrace but did not quite release her.

“A minute ago, the heat had a purpose,” Maya admitted, ducking her head so she wouldn’t have to see Kitty’s reaction. “Now it’s just sticky, and I could use a walk while the two of you snip at each other.”

“You don’t have to escape, Maya,” Bell said. He still didn’t let her go. “Kitty is hardly one to judge.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Kitty said. She sounded angry, but when Maya glanced over at her, Kitty instead appeared stricken.

“This is not just my circus. I am Arcanium, my little Kitty cat,” Bell replied. “Secrets kept do not remain secrets for long, even those specially hidden from me.”

“God, you know, Derrick was sometimes a dick, but at least when I wasn’t in the mood for the whole cuddling thing, he went and played GTA while I got some space,” Maya said, squirming harder to get off Bell’s lap.

He abruptly removed his arms from around her. She slipped in the grass, bracing herself on the backboard and trying not to knock over any candles in the process.

“So there it is,” Bell said. “I wondered when the first idealized mention of your disloyal boy would cross your lips.”

“Given what I’ve been doing the last few weeks, it’s rich calling Derrick dis― What?”

“Almost a month in Arcanium, and already the few years living with him have taken on a patina of nostalgia, of lost perfection. But you allowed me into your mind, Maya. I know what’s happened to you on the other side of locked doors. You’ve never had it as good as me,” Bell said, crossing his ankle over his knee with the cold arrogance of a king.

“Conceited much?” Maya said. She straightened her skirt, which had risen up during the fall. “Derrick never tied my wrists together and strung me up without explanation. And he certainly never attempted to unsuccessfully juggle two women at once. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t disloyal.”

Bell tilted his head. “He never tied you up, but he bound other things, didn’t he? More important than the integrity of your wrists. I am, of course, excepting the fuzzy handcuffs you kept in the top drawer of his nightstand.”

“Pervert,” Maya snapped. Once again, she wanted to cross her arms over her chest or arrange herself in some other suitably aggravated and imperious position, but anything she could do in this costume only accentuated her assets when she was angry. That’s the way he liked her. She settled for hands on her hips, insufficient as it was.

Bell stood, managing to intimidate her with more than just his height. Bell was a man with confidence in his abilities, and why shouldn’t he be? Only someone fully secure in his strength would sometimes wear a flower wreath in his hair.

“That paragon of virtue, that man who was six months away from hitting you and you hitting him back, swollen lip, swollen eye, because you meant nothing to him—that ginger Narcissus with delusions of manhood, that pestilent petulance,” Bell spat, “that is what you long to return to?”

“Bell…” Kitty murmured, setting a hand on the table in a nervous warning.

“You expect that less-than-white knight to come galloping after you on his nobler steed?” Bell asked. He narrowed his eyes and caressed Maya’s cheek. The gesture was somehow warm and ice-cold at the same time. “You would have stopped hitting back eventually, because underneath your anger, you harbor a heart of fear—fear that what happens to you is what you deserve, that what your men do to you in word or in deed is what is meant for you.”

“What does that say about you, you son of a bitch?” Maya hissed.

“I am jinn,” Bell replied. “If I think I am better than those puling boys, it is only because I am. But you, what makes them better than you?”

“You said I’d hit back,” Maya said.

“You wouldn’t hit first,” Bell said. “And then you wouldn’t hit at all.”

“Irrelevant,” Kitty interrupted. “It won’t happen now, and who knows what circumstances might have arisen to interrupt that chain of events? It’s not that simple, Maya.”

“It had already been woven into the tapestry, had his wish been spoken outside of my hearing,” Bell said. “The wish unraveled it, but the possibility was still very real.”

“I wi―would have preferred that,” Maya corrected. Then she covered her mouth. It had almost just spilled out.

“Would you?” Bell asked, staring at her lips as though he could see the wish that had nearly escaped. He encircled her waist and brought her to the table. “Why don’t we see what your dishonest hero has been doing, my dear? Do you think he pines for you? That in your absence he has realized he threw away the rough, jagged gem that you are? Do you think that spoiled little prince has sent all the king’s horses and all the king’s men out looking for you?”

“Bell, don’t,” Kitty said, but she was hitch-hiker to a bullet train, and he barreled past her as though she wasn’t there.

“If you didn’t keep them away, they could have found me,” Maya shot back, wrenching out of his arms, but not backing away, because he was bringing the crystal ball to the center of the table. “You hide my phone signal. You do something to confuse the police, and maybe you make people forget about me or come to the wrong conclusions.”

“That’s my usual approach,” Bell said. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered I didn’t have to engage in my usual machinations to keep you. Your boy did most of my work for me. Haven’t you been wondering why even your loving mother hasn’t called or texted you to find out how you are? It wasn’t me, Maya.”

“You’re a liar. You’re a demon and a liar,” Maya replied, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet as she tried to simultaneously back away and lean in closer to the crystal ball.

White, glowing smoke had begun to billow in its center.

“I am neither,” Bell said. He didn’t need to raise his voice for emphasis. He filled the small tent with the command of his tone. “How I have waited for you to invoke his name against me, Maya, so that I could show you the monster to whom you almost imprisoned yourself, stubbornly and willingly. The one who imprisoned you here to begin with.”

“That was you, asshat. You,” Maya said. “You weren’t the passive savior in all of this.”

“I don’t need to save you, Maya,” Bell said. “I just need to show you.”

The cloud had filled the crystal, and color bled in like paint, coming into focus.

“Bell, if you…” Kitty began, walking around the table, but Bell put a strong hand on her shoulder, and she froze.

“And point of order, I didn’t know about the handcuffs from looking through your head,” Bell said.

It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s a trick. He’s lying because that’s what demons like him do. He has access to your mind. He can make it look as real as possible and still lie to you. This isn’t real.

It didn’t matter how many times Maya repeated the mantra, it faded to nothing as the scene in the crystal unfolded. It was amazing how clear such a flawed crystal ball could be, especially when she put her hands on the table and brought her face inches away from it. She could see the entire bedroom, full of little details that a lesser artist would have left out. The pile of dirty clothes on the hand-me-down, hideously orange armchair that Derrick loved. The Iron Man bobblehead on the dresser. The Swarovski crystal hanging from the ceiling fan’s chain. The houndstooth comforter askew, dark blue sheets twisted around the legs of the inhabitants on the bed.

There was no mistaking Derrick’s pale, freckled body or his distinctive red hair. There was also no mistaking Little Miss I-Left-My-Wallet-at-Home, Little Miss Tell-Me-Everything-in-Sordid-Detail, Little Miss Oh-You-Poor-Thing, sitting on top of his dick and moaning like a howler monkey.

Kerry Thomas, one of the last friends Maya had had in her old life who hadn’t just been one of Derrick’s. The only one that hadn’t abandoned her during one of Maya’s previous relationships, or finally bailed when she’d started dating Derrick, like all the others.

Sure, Kerry sometimes didn’t know when to shut up and Maya had always had to pay for Kerry’s coffee. But Kerry was more than willing to listen to Maya when things were bad, so Maya had always deliberately overlooked the fact that Kerry was a gossip vampire. She was there, which was more than Maya could say for anyone else. That, and when they went over to Kerry’s apartment, Kerry wasn’t stingy with the wine.

But right now, she wore Maya’s turquoise bracelet, the sterling silver one that Maya loved. Maya literally saw red at the sight of it on the vile, traitorous slut riding Maya’s boyfriend.

When it came to her own questionable decisions, Maya could argue that she was making the best of a bad situation under the influence of a demonic ecstasy mist. But Derrick should think she was missing. She didn’t expect him to be gouging his cheeks and wearing burlap, but the photograph of Derrick and Maya in Central Park shouldn’t have been face down on the nightstand, and Maya’s fucking bracelet shouldn’t have been on Kerry’s wrist as though it belonged to that bitch.

On the comforter, Derrick’s phone beeped with a text message.

“Shhh, shhh, baby, gotta take a look at this,” Derrick said.

Kerry giggled and moved her hips in little circles. He groaned, falling back against the pillow, but he reached for his phone. The crystal ball zoomed in on the conversation.

“My mother. Why is he talking to my mother?” Maya said. Somehow her voice had gone up an octave in pitch. Maybe the sharp pebble stuck in there had something to do with it.

 

We’re coming into town next weekend. You and Derrick free to meet for lunch? <3 Mom

 

Derrick smirked as he typed back.

 

Can’t. Got a wkshop that weekend. Sry to miss u. Good to hear from u. Sry I keep missing ur calls.

 

“Apparently, you lost your phone, and you’re sharing your boy’s now until you can afford a new one,” Bell murmured over her shoulder. “You’ve been very busy via text message. He’s quite the vindictive termite, if I do say so myself.”

“He’s… I’m missing!” Maya said. “I haven’t come over to get my stuff. My bracelet is on that bitch’s wrist. My mother gave me that bracelet. It was my grandmother’s. In what universe would I have let him keep my things and give them away to the first whore who walked in and took her shirt off? Yes, I’m talking to you, Kerry, you fucking whore. How long did you wait after I disappeared to crawl your diseased cunt over his prick?”

“Would you like to know what he sent your principal to get you fired?” Bell continued, the devil in her ear. “It was one of those pictures he took of you in the car last summer. In the Sonic parking lot.”

“Skittledick son of a dead bitch,” Maya swore. Her face flushed violently at the thought of her boss getting those pictures and how stupid it had been to take those pictures at all—it wasn’t like she hadn’t been burned before. But though Derrick had many faults that Maya wouldn’t have hesitated to name, loyalty had never been a question in her mind—at least not until now.

She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d clenched her fists around the tablecloth. She was shaking from head to toe. The image of Kerry and Derrick laughing as he sent the text swam in her vision then became clear again.

“With Maya working her big ass off, how are we going to fill your time?” Kerry asked, rolling her hips.

Derrick flipped them over, and Kerry squealed as Derrick snapped his cock into her.

“No more Maya,” Derrick said. “If she knew what she was missing, she’d have crawled on her knees to my door by now, begging me to take her back after all she’s pulled. If we keep talking about her, I’m going to go limp. Christ, I was this close to blue-pilling it if we’d gone on much longer. I want to be with you. Have for so long.”

“You’ll never hear me complaining like she did,” Kerry said, stroking up his chest. “The shit she said about you… She doesn’t deserve this. Oh, baby, that’s…”

“That’s right, this cock is gonna make you scream,” Derrick groaned, pistoning his hips in. “Fucking your tight pussy. Forget her. Forgetting her already. Screw her.”

“Screw her?” Kerry asked in another moan. “Screw me, baby.”

“Do they even care where I am?” Maya asked, barely above a whisper.

“He waited two days,” Bell whispered. “Two days to sink himself into her willing…arms. But she kissed him long before you were lost. Wine and vodka on their breath, him lying over her on the couch, he came in his pants making out with her while you were out on a run.”

Maya didn’t have words, curse or insult, left. Tears streamed hot down her cheeks, safety pins in her eyes.

“I barely had to do anything to keep you,” Bell continued. He brushed his fingertips over her arms. “The police don’t even know you’re missing yet. The people in your life that your boy didn’t scare away before you became a part of Arcanium? They think everything’s normal. The rest haven’t spared you a second thought.”

She wanted to grab that crystal ball in both hands and smash it against the ground into a million tiny pieces. But doing that wouldn’t make the images go away, the images of those two getting off on their collective mockery of her.

She was damned in this supernatural prison because of Derrick—because of his refusal to listen, his lack of compassion, his incapacity for love, such that anything not in line with his desires seemed like the worst kind of selfishness because it wasn’t his. Then there was her remora of a best friend, who had apparently only stuck around because she’d been waiting for Maya to get out of the way. Had she just been siphoning all of Maya’s dirt on Derrick back to the source, poisoning the water of the relationship the whole time in order to get a taste of it herself?

“This is your man, Maya,” Bell whispered. “All he really is.”

He had told her that he loved her. That he’d never leave her. That he’d never cheat on her. He’d never promised to be perfect. She hadn’t been looking for perfect.

She hadn’t been looking for a salted slug slime trail either.

She shook so violently that the words trembled out of her, “I wish he could feel the—”

“No, Maya, don’t!” Kitty shouted, going the other way around the table, away from Bell, to reach Maya.

“Yessss,” he hissed. He licked up the shell of Maya’s ear. “Finish the wish.”

“Don’t say another word, Maya,” Kitty said, clapping her hand over Maya’s mouth.

Kitty’s hand flew away, making Kitty stumble over the hem of her ribbon skirt.

Bell wagged his finger and clicked his tongue at her.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Kitty accused. “You did this on purpose. You gave Maya this pain to make her wish for you.”

“I did not cause her pain. I don’t enjoy her pain,” Bell said. “But I will enjoy justified retribution. I will enjoy revenge. Make your wish, Maya.” He touched his fore and third finger to her lips. His magic pulled at something deep inside of her, like a fisherman reeling in his net.

“So much better than her, babe,” Derrick grunted into Kerry’s collarbone.

Kerry curled her fingers into Derrick’s hair. The sterling silver glinted at Maya.

“So fucking hot.”

Derrick stringing her mother along and fucking her best friend in their bed. A cracked couple photograph. The mine had been planted.

“Make him pay,” Bell whispered.

Too late nights. Too early mornings. Leather and sweat and unseen chains. A pit of vipers teaching her how to slither.

Suddenly, it was so easy.

“I wish he could feel the way I feel right now,” Maya said.

Kitty fell onto the chair, palms on her cheeks, but she couldn’t cover her eyes, even though she knew what was coming.

Bell slipped his arms around Maya’s waist and rested his chin on her shoulder as he peered into the crystal ball with her. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

In the clouded crystal, Derrick started riding his filly to the finish line as Kerry laid into her dog whistle, porn star cries.

Then Derrick went rigid and fell off her, and Kerry’s screams became real.

Derrick’s mouth gaped open in a rictus. Then it opened too far, the jaw coming out of joint and falling to the side of his neck as though he was a puppet who wished to be a real boy.

The bedroom and the fortune teller’s tent filled with the sound of redwoods falling in the forest. Derrick didn’t shout. He screamed as every large bone in his body wrenched broken, the ends poking out inside his skin like driftwood against tarp. His heart lurched against the cracked detritus of his ribs. Derrick’s eyes bulged, veins bursting until they looked like blood blisters in his sockets.

Kerry screamed and screamed and screamed like a tit chick in a horror film, falling off the bed with the sheets knotting around her legs and shifting Derrick’s limbs in the process. He shrieked, pulling back against it the tugging pain and shrieking again. Every part of him had cracked like twigs, and there was nothing he could do to make the pain stop. Anything he did made it worse.

“For God’s sake, stop!” Kitty pleaded. “Look what you’re doing to her.”

Maya didn’t know what Kitty was talking about. She’d been turned to stone, cold stone, all the way to the soul.

There was so much screaming, and the cracking didn’t end. The smaller bones now, Maya assumed.

“Stop! Don’t make her a murderer, Bell,” Kitty said, her hair swinging as she lunged forward and grasped his hand. “Please.”

Derrick suddenly became very still.

Kerry had gone white, whimpering and biting past her nails and chewing right on her fingers, drawing blood. She looked like a vampire.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god,” Kerry muttered.

Derrick twitched. He was still alive. His heart still lurched, punching his broken ribs.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.” Kerry gave Derrick wide berth as she crawled along the edge of the room to grab Derrick’s phone and dial nine-one-one. “Hello? Hello? My name is Kerry Thomas, I’m at my boyfriend’s house. Something happened. He’s hurt. Something…I don’t know what happened, but all his bones… It was so awful… I can’t. Just come. Oh God. He’s dying. Oh God!”

Threads of blood dripped from Derrick’s nose and unhinged mouth.

The crystal clouded over, glowed white, then went clear.

Bell tucked a strand of hair behind Maya’s ear. “He’ll live,” he murmured. “If you can call it that. You’re welcome.”

 

* * * *

 

Maya was vaguely aware that Kitty asked her if she was okay as Maya walked out of the tent like a somnambulist. Either Maya managed to appear normal for a few seconds or Bell stopped Kitty from following her. It didn’t matter much either way. Kitty might have also called Bell a stupid fool. That didn’t matter either.

Random scenes from her three years with Derrick played before her eyes like a nickelodeon, interrupted by record scratches of his scarecrow-limp body as she wandered through the circus.

Early in their first year, before Maya had started spending more time at his place and had still been living in her own apartment, she’d called in sick to school for three days straight because of one of the worst flus she’d had in her life. By the time she’d reached adulthood, it was harder for her to get sick to a level past annoying, but when she did, it hit her with all the subtlety of a sack of bricks.

At that point, she had pretty much surrounded herself with all the things she needed— saltines, water, a bottle of Tylenol, a six-pack of Kleenex already half-used, two blankets, her phone, a Sue Grafton novel, and the TV and Blu-ray remotes. She would get up to go to the bathroom and sometimes to warm up a can of soup. Other than that, her head had ached too much, and she hadn’t wanted to move.

Derrick had still been in courtship mode, like a male bird displaying its plumage to a potential mate, but it had been sweet anyway when he’d arrived on her second day of sickness with a box of chocolates and a shaggy teddy bear. He had stayed and made her soup so she wouldn’t have to move that evening, got her 7-Up when she’d asked, opened another box of Kleenex, and kissed her fevered forehead before he’d left, even though she hadn’t showered in two days. Maya swore the affection in his eyes couldn’t have been faked.

A few months later, they’d played a friendly game of volleyball with some people from the local Protestant church, which had built a sand court near their campus. Derrick had been so mad at Maya for missing an easy serve her direction that he had slammed the volleyball on the wooden slats that kept the sand contained. It had sounded like a bouncing skull.

That one night in the Sonic drive-thru, Derrick had told her to do the most obscene things with her hot dog, then with the sundae. He had eaten his tater tots off her stomach, which didn’t sound all that erotic out of context, but it had been salty and he had used them as a kind of Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb path to between her legs. He’d taken pictures, and they’d left the windows down. She’d thought she’d heard skates go past the car at one point, but no one had bothered them. At the very least, no one had called the cops. Maya had thought it was the funniest, craziest, surprisingly hottest thing she had done up to that point.

He’d thrown a snow globe at the wall during one of their arguments about who was right about something unimportant, which really came down to who could claw their way to the top of the hill. Maya had grown up with four brothers. She was used to fighting for position. But Derrick had been wearing her down. Sometimes when he’d looked at her, he would grin like a clown at his luck, and other times he’d looked like he wanted to strangle her with his bare hands. Derrick was an only child. He didn’t fight because he’d always had to, like she did. He fought because he had to be at the top. Anything less would tear his world apart.

His mouth had been too wide, his tongue a wriggling, lolling slab of meat. His arms had bent in five places instead of two, popped out of the socket like a ball-jointed doll.

People walked around her, laughing, like they had the night Bell had trapped her in time, but she barely noticed them.

She passed the alehouse booth. All at once, the scent of roasted turkey and alcohol assaulted her. Maya gagged and stumbled behind the wooden structure, disturbing a group of college-age young men with the ghosts of recently deceased ales haunting their breaths. She threw up her breakfast, coughed the rest of it out. Then she heaved again. This time, nothing but foul liquid oozed out of her mouth.

“Hey, that sucks. Too much beer, sun and fun, huh? Here.” A guy in a shirt with the sleeves cut off handed her a bunch of napkins, which she took, but she stared through him as though he wasn’t even there.

“You okay, chica?” the guy asked, but she staggered away again.

His femurs, the strongest bones in the body, had cracked in half with the snap of a thousand wishbones, a sound like the clowns grinning.

Because she had wished it. Was that how she had been feeling? Broken not just in her heart, but through her whole, down to the core.

He had gone pale under the freckles she had loved. Then bruises had blossomed where the bones had perforated veins, purple blotches like spontaneous tattoos.

Because she had wished it. And her wish was her desire.

This was her fault. She hadn’t murdered him, but she had broken him into pieces like a china doll dashed on tile in a tantrum. He had betrayed her, ruined her outside life, strung her mother along, essentially stolen her things, condemned her to this purgatory. But he hadn’t earned that. Even so, she was glad. She was glad and she was horrified, and she couldn’t stop seeing it because she didn’t want to stop seeing it.

She had wished it.

There stood the swirling, far-from-pearly gates, swung open for faire folk—a tantalizing illusion for the lost souls of Arcanium.

Was she lost? Funny. The whole time, Maya had thought she’d been missing.

She stepped across the threshold and held her breath for the rip tide of pain that pulled her under until she couldn’t hold it anymore.

Maya had no way of knowing exactly how long she was there at the entrance of the circus, screaming and shaking on the ground as the fire burned beneath the surface of her skin. Claws tore through her throat. Her scream turned into nothing but a rasp, but she still didn’t stop.

This was what she had come here for, to burn all over under the sun as though a giant child had focused his magnifying glass directly on her, an insignificant insect.

When Derrick had wished her into Arcanium, Maya had been sure she hadn’t done anything to deserve this. Now that she had wished Derrick into a different kind of torment, Maya understood that she deserved this and worse, because unlike Derrick, Maya had known what might come of her wish. She’d known it would end in his pain, and she’d done it anyway, on purpose.

Strange how fast night seemed to be falling.

“It’s a seizure,” Bell said. He was a form on the other side of the ballroom, standing straight like a butler, but naked, and he wouldn’t look at her. “She’s epileptic. We’ll take her. We have her medication. Go about your business. We’ll take care of her.”

 

* * * *

 

“Why did you have to do that?” Bell asked.

Air-conditioning was sweet and cool on her forehead. He stroked her hair, which had pulled loose from its knot at one point.

Her vision cleared like the cloud in the crystal. She was in the RV on her sofa. The darkness outside the window showed that night really had fallen by now.

She prickled as though her entire body had fallen asleep.

“Don’t you realize I cannot save you from what comes next?” he said. He held her head in his lap, his jaw set. The golden brown in his hazel eyes seemed to burn brighter so close to her own.

Maya blinked. The action made a clicking noise, and she twitched. She was dry.

Bell handed her a glass of water as she sat up. She brought it to her chapped lips and drank.

“Don’t try to talk yet. You’ve strained your voice,” Bell said. “There are rules here, Maya. Rules that I have set. You cross the threshold once with a warning. After that, you belong to the Ringmaster. That’s why he is here. To mete out punishment. Do you understand? I cannot stop him.”

Maya set the glass down on the coffee table like a judge with a gavel.

“Good,” she rasped.

Bell narrowed his eyes. Anything he might have said or asked was interrupted by an authoritative knock at the door. The knock was a courtesy. The Ringmaster opened the door and stepped in.

Inside an RV, everyone appeared bigger than they were, even inside a luxurious vehicle like this one. The Ringmaster, already over six feet, loomed over Bell and Maya where they sat on the couch.

“The evening is over. Relinquish her to me,” the Ringmaster said. His distinctive, thunderous voice differed little from the electronic enhancement of his microphone in the ring. The glee in his expression in the ring, however, had disappeared in favor of an even more dispassionate mask than Bell’s, as it always did. “You can have her back when I am finished. If you require it, you may watch. But you promised, Bell. You promised they would be mine.”

“I did,” Bell said. He put a hand on Maya’s shoulder, tightening it when she started to get up.

“Give her to me.” The Ringmaster grasped her other shoulder.

She shivered. Bell opened his hand.

“You will come with me, child,” the Ringmaster said.

Maya didn’t say a word. The Ringmaster’s grip felt as though it was literally made of steel, and it propelled her forward, out of the RV, toward the ring. Light footsteps behind her alerted Maya that Bell followed them.

The ring was still lit for a performance, although the audience had already departed. In the center of the ring stood a plain wooden bench under a blinding spotlight.

“Stay out of the way,” the Ringmaster warned in Bell’s direction.

Bell abruptly turned into the stands and climbed to the top row, right next to the entrance. He leaned his forearms against his thighs, staring intently into the spotlight. The circus entrance tent flap swung closed on its own.

If Maya could feel anything other than the beating of her heart—and she didn’t even want to feel that—she might have been interested in the dynamic between the two. She had never seen Bell obedient before. His will ran Arcanium. Yet the hierarchy had shifted. Now the Ringmaster rose above Bell’s rule, at least temporarily.

“Take off your clothes,” the Ringmaster said.

Maya blinked, jolted ever so slightly from the morass. “What?” she asked.

“I will not ask you twice, girl,” the Ringmaster said. He dragged her into the spotlight until he was nothing but a wreathed shadow.

“What is it with all the gutter minds?” Maya asked, voice still rasping and catching on the words. “Don’t you people know how to do anything else?” She was disappointed and angry, although she didn’t quite know why.

“It is not your body that I want,” the Ringmaster said. “There is simply no need to ruin Sasha’s craft. I work better with warm flesh. When you are finished, straddle the bench and lie down on your stomach.”

Any other night, she might have asked why, might have protested, might have tried to run and maybe Bell would have talked her down and explained what was about to happen. However, tonight, all she needed to know was that he was going to punish her.

She unlaced the top of her dress and pushed the thick straps down her arms, then moved her hips from side to side to get the rest of it off. She held the limp leather in her hands, staring at it as though it had gained some new significance off her body. She didn’t know how long she stood there, but the Ringmaster did not rush her. He waited for her at the edge of the ring, his hands behind his back, balefully majestic in his ringmaster regalia.

When she could finally move, she draped the dress over the low barrier between the ring and the audience.

“You can leave the rest,” the Ringmaster said, nodding to her panties and her lace-up boots. “On the bench, girl.”

She returned to the spotlight and reclined face down on the bench. She pulled pins from her bedraggled hair and tossed them onto the ground until her hair curtained her face. The bench was low—her knees bent almost to the floor. When her arms hung limp, her knuckles dragged on the sawdust, so she wrapped her arms around the bench instead. It kept her anchored but gave her little comfort. She didn’t seek comfort. She was nearly naked and presenting herself for an unknown punishment to a cold, commanding demon, and nothing had ever felt less sexual to her in spite of her nakedness. She sensed the Ringmaster’s eyes traveling over her body as he circled her, but with less regard for the flesh than he’d give a hanging cow’s carcass.

“First infraction. Twenty lashes,” the Ringmaster said. “Count yourself fortunate, little one. In another lifetime, I used a three-tail whip with glass tied to the fall. Even this little instrument, if used correctly, can cut to the bone. But it takes many trespasses before I am permitted to strike so hard. Few have ever reached that point, alas.”

“I can take whatever you give,” Maya murmured. “I need…” Talking required too much energy, so she stopped.

“Yes. You will take whatever I give,” the Ringmaster said. “Shall we begin?”

Maya wasn’t going to answer, and the Ringmaster wouldn’t care either way.

The whip hissed through the air and snapped over her shoulder. Maya tightened her grip on the bench, flinching with a whimper.

The Ringmaster didn’t count the blows, nor did he order her to. He took his time between each strike of the whip, his boots shuffling an endless beat in circles around her as he observed his handiwork. Sometimes he hit her longways over her back. Sometimes he struck short and specific on her thighs. He tore the fabric of her panties with a blow over her buttocks. Some of her welts split and bled cold down her side.

After the seventh strike, Maya lost track. It didn’t matter how many blows there were. The Ringmaster would finish the set punishment, but it wouldn’t erase the stain. The lash didn’t dig deeply enough.

“Get up,” the Ringmaster said. He used the handle to lift her head. Animation backlit his expression like a flame. There was no denying that he had enjoyed their session immensely. Maya had never seen such terrible love. “We are finished.”

Tears darkened the wood beneath her. Snot threaded slimy from her nose, and whining cries peeled from her raw throat. The muscles of her arms and thighs ached from the tension against the pain and holding her in place.

“Another,” Maya whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“Again,” she said.

His imposing boots shifted direction to the entrance. He was looking to Bell.

“Very well,” he replied. For the first time outside of a performance, Maya thought she heard a knife edge of excitement to his voice. “Another twenty lashes.”

Welts over the welts made flagellated crosses, tearing at raw flesh. Now she felt as though the Ringmaster had used the glass-tipped whip he’d mentioned, as though her back and legs were ground meat.

All the bones that could bend apart had bent. Jagged points on his skin. Bloody eyes that looked like they would pop like blueberries.

It wasn’t enough.

Maya drifted, her mind almost blank except for bursts of pain and its aftermath, her world narrowed to the stretch of torn flesh terrain on her back and her absolute, irrevocable need to correct what had been done. As she floated, suspended slightly above her body, she experienced a moment of the purest clarity—another wish. A wish to take it back.

But that collapsed almost as soon as she thought it. Bell wouldn’t let her take it back. He had wanted to do what he’d done. He had no regrets, no guilt, none of the responsibility that she carried like a pyramid stone on her ravaged back. If she wished for it to be taken back, he’d find a way to get what he wanted anyway.

He had done it for her, but he had also done it for himself.

She sank back into her body, a constant whimper shuddering out of her as the Ringmaster approached her again, raising her chin.

“Again,” she croaked.

“I would dearly love to torture you more, little girl,” the Ringmaster said, crouching down to meet her eyes, and she believed him. “But your lover will not allow it. Not until you trespass again.”

She wiped her nose on her arm, wincing at the way the curve of her spine stretched the places he had struck her. She looked over her shoulder. Maya couldn’t see her back, but she could see her buttocks and thighs. It looked bad and felt worse.

“Then I’ll trespass,” Maya said.

“Please do,” the Ringmaster replied. “So many of the souls and soulless learn their lesson too well after they are given to me. I rarely punish repeat offenders.” He caressed her cheek with the wrapped fall of the whip. His smile was dazzling.

Something flickered over his face. In his joy, he hadn’t been able to hold on to the humanity he wore to hide the demon beneath. It didn’t last long enough for her to know what it looked like, but when she closed her eyes, he reflected in a negative on her eyelids as briefly as she had seen him.

“That is what I am here for,” the Ringmaster murmured, “to repay for your sins.”

“Enough,” Bell said behind Maya. “You are finished.”

“For now,” the Ringmaster replied, standing and stepping back. “Tend your wounded. Make her fresh for the next time. But not all the scars disappear, girl,” he added.

He hung the whip on the crook of his elbow and left through the red curtain. The spotlight faded. The performance was over.

 

* * * *

 

There was no easy way to transfer Maya back to the RV. She couldn’t walk, and any way Bell held her pressed against the fevered, red stripes. Maya resisted none of his efforts, but she couldn’t stop her involuntary reaction to his touch on her wounds.

Bell settled on wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, embraced against his chest as though she was the little girl that the Ringmaster had called her. When she had steadied herself, holding him like she had the bench, he tucked his arms under her thighs, where the damage wasn’t quite as bad.

Her near-nakedness concerned neither of them. The guests were gone, and the cast members wouldn’t mind. They would understand what those welts of insufficient atonement meant.

Some of those they passed looked away, feeling her pain. But they couldn’t really know. They would never understand why she’d invited it.

“Leave,” Bell said when he walked into the bedroom.

“But…” Valorie protested.

“Go!” Bell shouted.

Maya flinched, and Valorie scrabbled back and fell to the ground under the twisted sheets. He eased Maya down onto her stomach on the cool cotton. It was too comfortable, but she couldn’t convince herself to roll over onto the hurt.

“I have tended to your wounds too, Valorie,” Bell told her, gentling his voice in an unspoken apology. “Would you deny her the same respite?”

Valorie rummaged through her drawers until she found a pair of panties and a shirt. Without a word or a backward glance, she stalked out of the bedroom. She slammed the RV door shut behind her.

“Stay still,” he said to Maya. He opened one of the cabinets in the room and pulled out a wooden chest. Inside were vials of thick, pearly, bright blue liquid.

“I thought you didn’t heal,” Maya said blearily.

“Not little things like bruises and scrapes. They take care of themselves. And if wounds are part of a wish, I can control the pain and the subsequent healing at my will. However, the Ringmaster’s punishments are different. The marks they leave are too conspicuous, the wounds sometimes debilitating.”

“On with the show, huh?” Maya said.

“In a matter of speaking,” Bell said.

He uncorked one of the vials.

“A punishment usually lasts only as long as the Ringmaster’s performance, although the duration of the wounds depends on the transgression. Sometimes I’ll make the subject suffer for days if he has incurred my wrath,” Bell said as he poured the liquid in thin, cold streams over her back. He undid her boots and threw them to the floor then removed the torn shreds of her underwear. “What you did was a mild transgression, Maya, because I knew the motivation wasn’t to escape. Any future attempts will be considered just as mild, and I might have to lessen the Ringmaster’s punishment if you continue to do it just to hurt yourself.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Maya asked.

Bell placed his hands on her back, the pressure like the sting of a hundred bees. He spread his fingers and smoothed his hands over her, spreading the liquid. It cooled her fever and numbed the pain.

“Why do I heal you or why do I refuse to allow you to torture yourself?” he asked.

“What I did…” she said.

“You wished it. I did it, Maya. I did it for you, and one day you will understand the gift that it is.”

“You just wanted to hurt him because you didn’t like him, for whatever arbitrary reasons you decide whether or not you like someone,” Maya said. She coughed. Her voice still wasn’t right, like it was grappling along the side of a rugged cliff.

“My reasons are far from arbitrary,” Bell said. “It is only because I see deeper into the hearts of man than anyone else that it seems arbitrary.”

Already the liquid or potion or whatever it was had begun its work on the welts. As Bell gently spread it over every wound—not rubbing it into her, but rather letting it sink in—the pain which she’d been holding onto as right and just slipped from her grasp, fading. Her skin twitched as the split welts closed and slowly healed.

“You think you deserved what the Ringmaster did to you because of the wish,” Bell said, “but the Ringmaster punished you first because you crossed the threshold and second because you asked for more. None of these marks were done to you because of the wish. You will not get your absolution here for what happened to your boy, Maya, because you don’t need it.”

“Stop talking,” Maya murmured, hiding her face in her hands. “Just stop talking.”

“Not yet.” He climbed onto the bed and parted her legs to kneel between them as he tended to her whipped thighs. “You wished that your boy would feel what you were feeling, what he had done to you with his thoughtless, careless, loveless wish and everything he had chosen afterward. You were bound to me because of his wish, a curse from which he never experienced the fruit. He cast you aside, and I took you in because it was my will and pleasure to do so. Then he continued basking in his undeserved freedom, until you gave me an opportunity to play my part, to exert my will upon him.”

Now he dug his fingers into her muscles, only minor discomfort left. The massage soothed her stubborn, aching tension and coaxed the knots loose whether she wanted it to or not.

“You punish yourself for hurting him, but you should instead feel vindicated that he finally hurts for hurting you,” Bell said softly, “to the same degree that he hurt you, more than even you know.”

“What the fuck do you care?” Maya asked.

“I told you, Maya. I like you,” Bell said. “Do you know what a rare, coveted thing it is for a jinni to show you favor?”

“I didn’t ask for it,” Maya said.

“You didn’t have to. You don’t get to choose upon whom I bestow that favor.” He ran the knuckles of his fists over her shoulder blades. Maya couldn’t escape from how good it felt. “Or upon whom I deliver just retribution.”

“You don’t deliver just retribution,” Maya said. “You harm and reward those who did nothing to earn it. You do whatever the fuck you want.”

“Which means that sometimes the vengeance I wreak is well-deserved,” Bell said. “I dispense justice in the same measure I dispense injustice.”

“Who are you to judge?” Maya snapped. She bit her wrist to keep herself from groaning as Bell moved down to her lower back, kneading the Gordian knot there with the efficiency of a sword.

“Sometimes the Creator delegates,” he replied.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to believe me. I know it to be true. An eye for an eye, Maya. I simply plucked his out,” he said.

“You know what they say about an eye for an eye,” Maya said into her arm.

“He had already taken yours,” Bell whispered in her ear. “I don’t want you removing the one he left.”

“Can we stop with the body parts? You’ve done enough damage for one day—or not enough. It’s hard to tell,” Maya said, still hiding her face in the crook of her elbow.

No more words, no more slippery arguments that tried to justify what Bell had done with her wish, because if she listened to him much longer, she might start to believe him the way he believed himself. She couldn’t allow the pain to stop, couldn’t allow the memory to fade—the snap of a thousand wishbones—or else she’d become as bad as a demon herself.

Maya wanted to cry. Tears had poured from her eyes like a tapped spring when she’d crossed the threshold to let loose the dogs of pain, and again when the Ringmaster had beaten her. But that had meant nothing except that her tear ducts still worked.

But now she wanted to cry because what had happened to Derrick meant something to her—proof that she was a human being with empathy and a need to make things right, as a Christian who turned her cheek to her enemies, as a fucking member of this world who cared about the needless suffering of others. An eye for an eye, Bell had said. But retribution, if it was to happen, was supposed to come after this life, not in it. Hell wasn’t supposed to be here, no matter what Shakespeare had said.

But if it was, she now knew why she had been taken into the circus instead of Derrick—not just because of Derrick’s wish, which could have been granted without her being bound to Arcanium.

Bell had bound her to him because she was evil. Maya belonged with all the other tortured souls of Arcanium to not only accept her just deserts but to serve the master she’d ultimately chosen.

She wanted to cry for Derrick, but she couldn’t. A padlock hung between her and any emotion that made her a worthy human being. That was how she knew she was evil. There weren’t enough whips in the world for her.

When Bell slipped his hands between her thighs to stroke up the sensitive inner flesh, his touch was anything but healing. She buried her head deeper in her elbow, but her body responded anyway, relieved to be free of what she had brought upon it. Her body didn’t care about salvation in a devil’s den. It just wanted to feel good.

“If the Ringmaster’s whip makes you think you’re being treated fairly, Maya, I am sure we can come to some arrangement. However, if you go to the Ringmaster with your needs, I require that you limit the damage—the potion does wonders, but some scars run deeper than the healing can reach, and we already have enough scarring down there, don’t we? I will still heal you after your sessions with him, but I will permit them if you feel you need them. Ten lashes a week until you feel forgiven. Does that sound fair?”

“Not enough,” Maya muttered.

“That’s not what I asked. There are other ways to pay. I am offering you one method, but I will only allow so much.”

“Fine,” she said.

“The whisper through your mind is that you want your sessions Saturday evenings.”

A masochistic Mass—the phrase that broke through the fog.

“It would be more convenient during the week when we’re on the road or setting up, but I am sure the Ringmaster will not object. I keep the Ringmaster sated, but it’s important not to give him too much or else he’ll crave more. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

Bell laved over her folds, tracing up and down the labia before swiping through and tasting the wet entrance to her cunt.

Another involuntary reaction, another betrayal.

“What are you doing?” Maya asked, shifting to twist around, but in her position it was hard to move, and her muscles didn’t particularly want to after what she’d put them through.

“I should think that would be dreadfully obvious,” Bell replied, speaking into her inner thigh before returning to her cunt.

“I don’t want to feel—” Her moan cut her off as he slipped a hand underneath her and palmed her clit with broad, luxurious strokes.

“Oh, but you do,” Bell said. He kissed up her spine until he lay on top of her, his cock resting heavy and full against her ass. “You want to feel so much. I can help you. I can punish you, Maya. I desire to give you pleasure, and you will accept it. You will do as I tell you. You will obey my every wish, no matter how uncomfortable you become, because it will eventually give you the pleasure that I crave to offer.”

“That doesn’t sound like punishment,” Maya said.

“Give it time,” he said.

He spread her legs wider and stretched her cunt around his erection as he slid inside. She whimpered, trying to sink away into the mattress, but there was nowhere that he wasn’t—his warm, strong, moving yet immovable body embracing her, reaching as far into her as possible, as though seeking the scars he couldn’t heal.

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t make me want you. Please.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Bell replied. He bit lightly at her neck, teasing the flesh. “And neither are the sex demons. Not tonight. Just you. Just you and me and the desire we share, azizam.”

She groaned. She arched her back like a cat’s as his cock stroked through her. He traveled his hand down the length of her arm to intertwine their fingers. Maya clasped him, a handhold as she drowned, because in spite of everything she thought she deserved, she just couldn’t let herself go.

“Bell, if you… Fuck.”

He’d changed his angle slightly, rubbing against her G-spot. Her cunt clamped around him from arousal, shivering with an almost electrical shock through her system. “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “If you want me, then fuck me, damn it. Now. Hard. Please.”

“I’d think it would punish you more to deny you what you seek,” Bell said. “You might find you like it too much. I can’t guarantee it’s what you’re looking for.”

“Wishes rarely are,” she muttered.

He smiled against her shoulder.

Then he placed his hand on the back of her neck to hold her down, partially smothered by the pillow but also braced against her arm so that she could still breathe. He climbed to his knees to add leverage and more strength to his thrusts, and he forced her legs farther apart with his knees. The darts of his hips made meaty slapping sounds against her inner thighs—she thought she might bruise there. His balls hit her clit in broad strokes.

He circled the base of his cock with his thumb, fore and middle fingers, grinding into her. Her moisture smeared over his fingers. He slipped a few in with his large cock, stretching her further.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“What was that?” Bell asked. “Are you enjoying this?” He added the rest of his fingers around his cock, as far in as he could. She whimpered. She felt thin around him, the soft, swollen tissue pulled into a membrane around the thickness inside her.

He drew his thumb up her perineum to the pucker of her ass, circling it with her juices.

“Yes. There,” Maya muttered. She bit her wrist. Someone that endowed would tear her with stinging pain. She wanted him to make her hurt in a way he couldn’t take from her again.

“I think that’s quite a bad idea,” Bell said, even as he removed his fingers from her cunt and brought them up to her clenching hole. “At least the way you mean. You forget that you’re not the one who gets to tell me what you want anymore. I do what I please, and you take what I give you. But I can still fuck your ass my way.”

In spite of his refusal to stick his cock where he was playing now, he didn’t give her time to adjust to the two fingers he forced inside—twisting, scissoring, spreading. It already felt full when he added another finger. Derrick had enjoyed something like this, taking her ass while he fingered her pussy. Maya could usually take it or leave it, and that was why she welcomed Bell’s intrusion, the curl of his fingers as though trying to stroke himself through the barrier between. Eventually, she realized he could, the off-rhythm movement of his fingers odd against her walls as he pumped them in and out of her ass while he moved his cock in her cunt, like rubbing hands together inside of her.

Tension, new and delicious where she already ached, gathered in her back, abdomen and thighs, meeting him where he filled her, fucked her, fucked her over, took her, used her. It sometimes hurt, but the pleasure that he coaxed from between her legs unfurled its tentacles and sucked him in, clenching to keep him inside, to keep him crossing the lines, blurring them, erasing them completely.

She still couldn’t cry, and when she cried out, it cracked like eggshell and became nothing, her voice finally giving out. Arousal crawled through her veins like lava flow, spilling over his cock as she gasped out the orgasm he wrenched from her.

He twisted his fingers, pushed deeper and continued to thrust through the fluttering muscles around him, stoking the peak higher, higher, higher until it burst again and she thrashed on the bed as though she were being attacked.

Bell let himself go, flooding her over. His cum squeezed out with her juices as she finally started to unwind from the climax.

Maya slumped on the bed, mentally and physically exhausted.

She felt filled with poison. Good. She didn’t deserve the peace that sleep would bring. If there was any fairness to the world, she would dream over and over again of what she had seen in the crystal ball.

Bell jerked himself out of her, leaving her terribly empty. He got off the bed and left the room.

Maya thought he’d abandoned her. He had been the instrument of her sin, but her heartstrings tugged all the way to her fingers and ached in the hollow place in her chest from being alone.

He’d said he would punish her. This was her punishment, to soak in her own darkness, to cry out in her dreams where no one would hear. A slave alone, as it should be. Yet… She shifted on the bed, but she didn’t want to move while she was still so uncomfortably open.

She silently pleaded for the darkness to just take her, stop her aching heart, her traitorous body, her wicked mind. Just let it end.

Bell turned off the light and crawled under the sheets beside her. He smelled like honeysuckle soap. He’d only washed up.

He put a glass of water on the small nightstand next to her.

“You should drink something before you sleep,” Bell said. “Ideally, you should eat something, too, but let’s save that for tomorrow.”

Maya opened her eyes and stared blearily at Bell’s shadowy form.

“You have to keep yourself healthy to tear yourself down. The longer you stay alive, the longer you can work toward redemption—or what you consider redemption,” he said. He brushed his fingers over her cheek.

She turned over, propped herself on her elbow and drank the water he had provided.

“There’s soda in the fridge if you need something to make your throat feel better tomorrow. Take care of yourself so I can take care of your punishment. That’s an order, Maya. That is my demand.”

She nodded then rested her head back on the pillow. His incense scent had suffused it. She was sleeping on his side of the bed.

“Very well. Sleep now.”

She was way ahead of him. Maya sank like a stone to the bottom of bad dreams.