Chapter Sixteen

 

 

 

“Do you trust me, little Spider?”

She ran her teeth over the edge of his ear. “More than anyone else in the entire fucking circus. I thought I’d made that clear.”

The Creature hooked his hands around both sets of her thighs, digging his fingers in as she rocked against his erection.

The sex demons were in fine form, because the night had barely begun and she wanted the Creature everywhere at once. The whole circus had been like this for weeks. By all accounts, the guests were feeling it, too, getting together behind tents and booths, fingering each other during performances, hiding under the bleachers, making cars rock in the parking lot—and a few inside the caravan as well, with the cast members who took lovers from the outside. Elizabeth was not among them. The Creature satisfied her just fine. She’d discovered that a being who could decide his own arousal could be just as tireless as she through the nights, through the mornings.

“You quickly recover now from your fear of heights, your fear of everything in your red tent, no matter what I do to challenge you.” He scratched his claws through her hair with a smile. “It is not a terrible thing to be conquering your fears, Elizabeth. But I purged so much into your ex that I find myself hungry all the time, and no one is as delicious as you.”

“What did you have in mind?” They were both still clothed—as much as either of them ever were. She couldn’t tear her hands away from him to start pulling off her costume, couldn’t bring herself close enough to him just with the movement of her hips. Her heated skin prickled as though in pain. He wasn’t touching her nearly enough.

“Do you trust me?” he asked again.

Elizabeth paused in her attempt to wriggle out of her own skin. He was too serious in his query for her to make light of it.

“Yes.”

He wrapped his arms around her in the now familiar embrace that signaled she better hold on. Elizabeth tucked her mouth against his neck, closing her eyes at the initial, disorienting sight of the funhouse roof falling away. But she opened them again as he flapped his wings. All she could see from here were the stars. The lights from the midway and picnic tables obscured some of the night sky, but the circus often parked itself in out-of-the-way places, and more stars pierced through than she used to see in the city.

The Creature brought them lower, the canvas of the big top tent rising into her vision. He landed at the backstage entrance.

Taking her by the hand, he led her into the big top. Valorie and the fire-eater passed them on their way out, Valorie doing a similar sort of leading, although by the fire-eater’s collar instead of by the hand. Ciarán followed behind them, Moss on his shoulder. Other than the people in the lion and tiger cages, the only one left backstage now was Bell, who was using an anachronistic pink chaise longue to help him unlace his black boots.

He glanced up, halfway through his last boot. The arch to his eyebrow suggested he hadn’t been expecting them, but he didn’t exactly look surprised.

Elizabeth stopped where she stood, her hand slipping from the Creature’s hold. “What is this?”

“He scares you,” the Creature said. “He is the only one here that you fear who I trust not to harm you. And I know you desire him. Do you trust me?”

“You want him to fuck me while you watch?”

The arch of Bell’s eyebrow lifted even higher, and he straightened with his boot still on the chaise, gaze shifting from the Creature to Elizabeth. He waited, wisely not chiming in.

“I want him to frighten you while I feed. While he takes you.”

“Why would you ask me to do this? How could you ask it? Why would you want me to have sex with another man when you—”

“As you’ve already observed for yourself, Lizzie, there’s a tendency among the people of the circus to take more than one lover. There’s more than enough libido to go around,” Bell said.

He bent over again to finish untying his boot. He tossed it with the other, then turned to face them. “You already know that Maya is mine. No one touches her without my permission, and no one touches me without hers. But we give our permission freely and often.”

He lowered himself to recline like a jaguar on the chaise. “This is Arcanium, not the world, Lizzie. I’m in favor of a few iniquities to smooth through the nights, as you’ve taken liberal advantage of since arriving. So don’t stand there so shocked the Creature would ask this of you. It’s merely a request. He doesn’t want to pass you around like a glass of wine or a cigarette.”

“I notice you’re not protesting,” she said, crossing her arms.

Bell’s gaze didn’t lower to her cleavage, but his Cheshire Cat grin deepened. “Why should I?”

The Creature stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the smug son of a bitch. “It’s okay to be frightened, little Spider. We needn’t stay.”

Elizabeth angled her head into the cradle of his palm, closing her eyes for a moment. “What exactly am I afraid of?” she murmured, uncertain she wanted to know the answer.

The Creature brought his teeth to her neck, breathed her in. “I think you’re afraid of how much you desire him, afraid of how much he desires you, afraid of how much he’ll take if you yield to him. You’re afraid you’ll want whatever he gives, that you’ll have gone from one evil man to another you can’t run from. Afraid you need him anyway. More than you need me right now.”

“Awfully specific for just a taste,” Elizabeth said dryly.

“That isn’t what I tasted. I know your fears better than you think I do. I don’t have to consume them to observe what is true.”

“Well, if you’re so smart, are any of these fears real?”

“All fears are real. I can’t tell you how to feel or how to protect yourself. But what creates your ambivalence time and again, little Spider, is not letting yourself have what you want because of fear, whether rational or not.”

“You want to see me with him.” She swallowed. Took a breath. “Have you thought about it before? Fantasized about it when he looks at me like he wants to shove me onto a table and rip my clothes off, the way you did in the tent the first time he confined me? Do you imagine me writhing under him, over him, on my knees, begging him—”

He caught the cord of her neck with his teeth like a dog, sucked at the skin, pulled at it. Her head fell back from the ache between her legs. “What do you think I do all day while you’re bound to a spiderweb where I can no longer join you?”

“Imagine I was doing those things to you,” Elizabeth said, but she found herself breathless.

“Oh, I do that as well. But I’m the fly to your spider, Elizabeth, and I do not believe I could ever truly frighten you. You know that with me there is no risk, no consequence. I can be neither your judge nor your executioner, but perhaps I might learn more what you are willing to accept from me if you yield it to him first.”

He fed upon a layer of jitters, but she gently eased his head up from her neck. “You sure you’ll still respect me in the morning?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m the one who made the request,” the Creature said.

“You’d be surprised how many men condemn you for doing them in the same breath they’re doing you.”

The Creature slowly stepped around her, exposing her to Bell’s view once again. Despite Bell’s casual demeanor, she twitched reflexively when he stood. But she started walking toward him, like a woman walking the plank into shark-infested waters.

“Hello, Lizzie.” He smiled, his body as loose as hers was tense. He carried no insecurity, no doubt, none of the fear she held in every fiber of herself. His smile was wicked, but gentler, even kinder, than it had been. He couldn’t hide his amusement entirely, but a trace of caution in the set of his eyes and mouth tempered it.

“Are you certain?” he asked.

She stopped, a great deal of space still between them in the large backstage area. With crates piled high behind him, the backstage suddenly seemed immense, and she and Bell very small parts of it. But it didn’t swallow him up, and why should it? Mere size wouldn’t dare to diminish him.

“No,” she replied.

Each step he took was deliberate and measured, without impatience.

“You know, I never used to enjoy the sort of thing you’re looking for. But I confess I’ve developed a taste for it since. I think I can give you what you’ve been craving, my dear, but you will have to agree to this little unconventional arrangement before I can fulfill it.” He didn’t hesitate, didn’t break his slow stride. Not until she stepped back. “I don’t fuck an unwilling woman unless we’ve agreed to it beforehand.”

“Then she isn’t unwilling, is she?” Elizabeth shot back.

“You and I both know that isn’t entirely true. There are layers of consent, especially in these murky waters, where a woman of mine has a unique craving for domination, but not some bedroom game—damnation in the name of redemption, purgatory in search of a heaven. Just because Desmond is the reason your mind and body respond to pleasure against your will doesn’t mean you can’t take pleasure in enjoying pleasure against your will.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Then why do you understand every word I say?” He stopped not ten feet away, opened his arms, offering himself to her. “You can still hate me, Elizabeth, and need me at the same time. I will not abuse your trust, even if I abuse you. Do you understand? If your tongue cannot be honest, then hold it, and answer me.”

Elizabeth caught the tip of her tongue between her sharp teeth—not drawing blood but knowing she could. Reluctantly, she nodded.

“Do you understand that I am dangerous?”

She nodded again.

“But do you understand that you are completely safe?”

Elizabeth didn’t look back at the Creature, but she clung to the knowledge that he was there, that the fist squeezing the base of her spine would satisfy him. And God help her, she was turned on again, unable to look away from the fortune teller. She remembered all the times Bell had wanted to kiss her, the times his fingertips had lingered, the way he’d embraced her when he created her, remembered his fingers in her mouth as he gave her venom. Remembered all the things she’d submitted to—and with Dez no longer a threat to her, things she couldn’t help but want again.

She’d never truly be done with him, but perhaps there was a newer idol to whom she could bow, a new tyrant bound by an odd honor that Dez never had.

She nodded.

“Tonight, I won’t stop just because you tell me to. But I will not disappoint you. Do you entrust yourself to me?”

That wasn’t exactly asking her to trust him. She curled her tongue deeper into her teeth, but she freed it before she could do any damage. “Yes.”

He closed the distance between them with a swiftness that belied his patience before. He took her by one of the straps on her corset and pulled her against him.

She parted her lips without thinking to take him in. He just smiled with hooded eyes, letting her instant submission speak for itself. For a moment, she wanted to push him away for being an arrogant asshole, but she’d have to touch him to do that, and he was such a warm, firm, bare body on hers right now. She was afraid that if she touched him, she wouldn’t be able to tear her hands away.

This wasn’t like when she’d been with Kevin. She hadn’t wanted to touch him, but she’d been compelled to, and she’d liked it though she hated it. This was closer to how she’d first been with the Creature—wanting to touch him so badly she hated herself for it. It was a subtle distinction, but it wasn’t lost on her.

He didn’t bother with foreplay. Without taking his eyes from hers, he slipped his hand underneath her leather bottoms, running his fingers over the line of her folds up to the front, where he took her clit hard between two rough fingers. She’d had clamps on her labia before, and once on her clitoral hood, and that’s what this was like. He pinched her clit at its base, keeping it swollen with blood and sensation, but God, it was painful. She had to grab onto his shoulders and arms with both sets of hands just to stay standing. Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

“You’re going to come just like this.” Bell relinquished her corset to stroke her face, tease the corner of her open mouth without taking advantage of it. He didn’t loosen his hold on her clit, instead pinched it harder in a rhythm that had her clit twitching with arousal in the same beat as the pain.

“You knew this was going to happen, you goddamn bastard,” she said through clenched teeth. “You knew I’d eventually give in, that all you had to do was wait.”

Bell brushed his nose against hers. “I kept it from myself. I told you I like to be surprised.”

“How many of the women you trap here have you done this to?” She tried to writhe away from his fingers under the leather, her nails digging into his skin, but for such a small bit of flesh, he had a good hold on it, and it hurt even more when he used it to pull her back against him.

“You’d be surprised.”

“At how many?”

“At how few. But I wanted you the moment I saw you.”

He laughed when she drew blood from his shoulders, but it didn’t stop him, and her breathing quickened. It hurt like a motherfucker, but the fingers between her legs that weren’t pinching her were getting slippery from her arousal. Underneath the cups at the top of the corset, her nipples rubbed against the material as though it were wool instead of buttery leather.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Her teeth were still clenched, but for an entirely different reason, and she dug her nails in a little deeper. He still didn’t flinch. “You saw a sexually confused, cult-repressed woman with a memory like an extended hardcore pornographic video that you could enjoy to your heart’s content, because you knew eventually you’d have it for yourself.”

“I knew what you’d been, Lizzie, but I wanted this woman. And I liked your tattoos. That’s all. I admit I have a weakness for shame almost as great as my weakness for trying to eliminate it, but the conditioning Dez gave you has actually been more inconvenient for me than you believe.”

Inconvenient? She ripped one hand from his shoulder and struck his face, drawing blood. In less than a second, he retaliated. The clap against her cheek was deafening. Her head swung to the side, more from surprise than from force, although he hadn’t been gentle.

With a laugh, though, he closed his fist over her hair and yanked her face back to him, and when he kissed her, she still opened her mouth for him, kissing him back as though she were the Creature and he the fear she consumed.

He quickened the pulse over her clit. In spite of the pain, she was as horny as her body could hold. Her cunt tightened over nothing, squeezing out her juices, clenching toward an orgasm that promised to be rough, raw, strong as a punch to the stomach.

The climax wasn’t pleasant at all, but his kiss made her mouth ache as though with its own. It should have been messy, completely unsexy, the way he took her, but he was somehow always in the right place at the right time, claiming her mouth with his tongue in just the right moment, turning his head to complement the angle of hers. Kissing a psychic apparently had its benefits. He anticipated everything, wasted nothing.

Bell abruptly withdrew his fingers from her clit and folds and shoved her down onto her knees. Elizabeth cried out. Not only did the blood rushing in and out of her clit mean a whole new swell of pain, but it meant her orgasm hadn’t released anything. She was still taut with arousal, unsatisfied, throbbing, the aftershocks that followed the climax merely physical rather than pleasurable.

The way he stood over her was so similar to how Dez used to, but he didn’t have the stature to loom, nor the posture. However, despite the casual stance, there was tension in his arms and legs that suggested he could show her his power at any time. He stared at her, his attention a caress surprisingly intimate.

She started to get up, thinking he was done, that withdrawal had been his punishment for her, his absolution—this dissatisfaction and profound sense of betrayal.

He placed his foot on her shoulder and eased her back onto her knees before withdrawing that touch as well.

“Don’t.” He spoke with tenderness that nearly brought tears to her eyes in her post-climax state, made worse by being suddenly denied contact that the Creature had always given her.

“What Dez did to you ensured that the prisoners were given far more leniency in their transgressions against you for so long, because you permitted them. What he did to you meant that I couldn’t smite him the minute he came into your tent seeking to remove you. What he did meant that you and the Creature had to subsist on a state of ambiguity for so long. That was inconvenient for me, but I fully understand it was more than simple inconvenience for you. It is inconvenient to have to rebreak broken bones that set improperly, but it is fully necessary.”

“Yeah, you’re the hero.” Elizabeth scratched at her own arms where her skin was exposed, her legs, rending shallow bits of flesh and bringing blood to the surface. The combination of sex-demon lust and his denial made her want to peel out of her skin, and the intensity of his regard wasn’t helping.

“Perhaps more of a gray hat than white, darker gray sometimes more than others. Remove your gloves and your shoes. As much as I liked the tattoos, your skin alone is a lovely thing.”

She could leave. She could get up and leave, and though she’d agreed to have Bell ignore what she said, she thought he’d let her if that was what she decided. There was a thin line between not wanting something to happen and not liking it when it did. It was a line she’d always had trouble with, and a line Bell was more than willing to exploit—with her blessing.

She could leave, but she wasn’t going to.

Her breasts felt too big for the little bit of leather covering them, full when she bent forward to remove her boots. Then she pulled the gloves off and tossed them behind her with the boots.

The Creature had climbed onto one of the crates, partially hidden in the shadows, his red eyes glowing for her to see him. He’d removed his loincloth, and with his legs bent to the sides, he made no attempt to conceal his cock, hard and thrusting outward. That helped, too, remembering why she’d agreed to this. She’d accepted any number of things she wouldn’t have chosen for herself because of him. She certainly wasn’t doing it for Bell.

The fortune teller crooked his finger for her to crawl to him, his amusement unfaltering, as though he knew what was going through her mind was less than complimentary toward him. There was no glory or honor for her in being just over the line, creeping on the tightrope like his girlfriend. But there was also no victory for him in giving a spider venom, then making himself immune. Her canines extended the closer she came to his leather-bound legs, to the cock that stretched the skins taut.

Bell backed away as she came close to him, forcing her to keep crawling until she anticipated what he wanted from her. Not just submission, no—the full horror display he’d envisioned from the beginning.

She rolled her shoulders and hips the way she had for Dez, but when she’d done it for him, she hadn’t had a separate set of shoulders or a secondary set of hip wings. She crawled for Bell like a spider, the way she’d seen Goliath move over her—all joints and jerky grace, each limb moving independently from the rest. She focused so much on the intricacy of the movement that she couldn’t think about how being on her hands and knees debased her.

When he let her catch him, he lifted her chin with his fingertips. “There’s my darling Spider. Well, my dear, now that you’re there, I’m sure you know what to do.”

Elizabeth started at his ankles, smoothing her palms up his legs. The leather there was as soft as the kind she wore, his firmness beneath a bit surprising, because it made him flesh to her, made him real. He felt more human than the Creature, a good feeling to hands that had fondled their share of flesh.

“Are you sure you want me to? You saw what happened to the last dick in my mouth.” She ran her tongue over her extended fangs.

“I’ve had sharper teeth around my cock, love. I was even briefly castrated by a particularly voracious female. Flesh is easy to grow back when you’re a shapeshifter.” He tucked her hair behind her ears, a pretense for sliding his fingers behind her head in a possessive hold.

She stroked his thighs, her thumbs brushing between them, touching everything but where his cock bulged out in dimensions far more alarming up close.

“And this is the shape you chose?” Elizabeth asked.

He led one of her hands from his hip to his cock, closing her fingers around the width, guiding her to stroke him through his trousers. “Why? Do you find it inadequate?”

She swallowed. She could lie, but he would see right through it. And not just regarding his cock, which was as large as the Creature’s—an attribute apparently common to demons and monsters. Men had odd ideas about what a girl wanted from them when it came to what dangled between their legs, but Elizabeth had been groomed to take small cocks as though they were large and large cocks as though they were small. All that set aside, the truth was he was an intimidatingly pretty man, and she’d thought so long before she’d known he was the devil.

“Not many have seen my true face, just as most never see what the Ringmaster becomes. In spite of running and working a circus, I much prefer being overlooked.” His good humor faltered for a moment, but he rallied quickly, drawing himself back to the moment. “But if you’re a good girl, I might one day grant you the fortune of a glimpse. And that’s very good, pet.”

She worked open the laces to his leather trousers of her own accord. He helped her peel them away, leaving him more naked than her and somehow even more intimidating for his nudity rather than more vulnerable.

He gave her no warning. To warn her would be to let her prepare.

He purloined her body, snatched complete control from her as easily as when he’d still had to pull her from bed to work. Then he took control of her mind.

She brought herself against him, raised up on her knees and all four hands occupied with his body as though in worship, but none as reverently as where he applied her mouth.

She licked up his thigh, breathing in his scent, not as dark and wild as the Creature’s, yet not simply that of man. There was spice like ancient incense, as though centuries of burnings in his name had suffused the skin. But a man like him shouldn’t have smelled quite so much like a man she wanted to taste. Dez had been the same, chemistry that complemented hers, and while that hadn’t made her helpless to him, it had made her much easier to ensnare. He’d brought her many other men with many different smells, some decent, some revolting. But there was no mistaking the right scent, the kind that made even new sweat appealing.

She curled her fingers around Bell’s cock, larger now that it had room to grow, as impeccably sculpted as the Creature’s. Under his influence, she took one side of his sac in her mouth then the other, teasing with her teeth, stroking his cock as though it were a holy relic seeking satisfaction. She already would have been aroused by the act, even if she’d done it reluctantly, but he made her pleasure to serve him nearly excruciating in her mind, yet the arousal of her body much slower and hotter—as though she would have a mental orgasm long before another physical one.

He physically guided her up to the base of his cock, and she lavished a line up the prominent vein to the head. Her mouth was as wet as her cunt. She let saliva drip down him before moaning her way over the head and down—wanting, needing, desperate to take as much of him into her as she could. And unlike Dez, no matter how far she took him, he didn’t block her throat. She seemed to expand to accommodate him, though her mouth and neck felt the same size.

The demons and the human women they distracted themselves with made so much more sense to her now.

Bell’s breath hitched as she pulled back up, running the very tips of her teeth over the flesh, her fangs tight on either side of him. She hadn’t lost her breath, but she coughed and gasped in reflex as she came off from his cock, stroking over the gleaming shaft as a new, unexpected wave of arousal made her throw her head back with a whimper. The worst part was that she thought that one hadn’t come from Bell.

Taking him back into her mouth, moving over him first slow and tight, then quickening her pace with her tongue softer over him, though… That was all Bell. To her commandeered mind, every slide and stroke over her tongue was like a caress through her folds and into her cunt. She craved him more than food, more than air, and she succumbed to his puppeteering with pleasure—except for that one part of her mind that was so fucking turned on and horrified by her actions and feelings in equal measure.

With his control over her, she withdrew her secondary hands from his thighs and forced them underneath the leather bottoms where he’d tormented her. As sensitive as she was, every gentler stroke of her fingers through her folds and over her clit was heightened, more intense and more wanted than anything she’d ever done for herself.

He could do so much more damage than Dez. If he wanted to, he could make her crave him more than pleasure. He could make her his slave, and she would happily serve him. The more she feared his control over her, feared what monster she might have created by allowing him the freedom to use her, the hotter her cunt felt as she slid a finger, then two, inside.

But he knew better than to let her believe that anything she did to herself would be better than his fingers over her or his cock inside her. He gave her that knowledge even as she masturbated to the nearly spiritual oral experience he manipulated her through. The more she feared him, the more he rewarded that fear with pleasure, in the same playbook that had shaped her so long ago.

He withdrew, his cock sliding out of her mouth to snap back against his hip. She nearly cried. She pleaded with him wordlessly, chasing it with her mouth as he held her back by her hair, a makeshift leash. When he allowed her tongue to reach the head, she shivered in brief delight.

This was so much worse than the crawling, and he fucking knew it.

“Normally, I find this quite distasteful, but your fear is exquisite to him. How he keeps from latching onto you every minute of every day speaks to greater discipline than I might have in his place.”

She tried to calm herself down in the panic-ridden part of her mind he’d left free. Tried to remind herself that she was safe, because he’d tried to remind her of that, too. But it was difficult to feel safe when she only had a dangerous man’s word for it. All it would take was a change in whim for him to decide that what he wanted most was his very own harem to use and abuse to his heart’s content. He could do more than rewrite her anatomy. He could rewrite her right out of her own brain, leaving behind nothing but a pliant, lustful shell.

He threaded his other hand through her hair and used the mass of it to guide her up from his cock to her feet. She kept trying to get nearer to him, to have her mouth and hands and her hips against him, but he held her back, occasionally yielding long enough to lick the tip of her tongue playfully, to kiss her neck, to let her knuckles brush his cock as he led her back with him toward the chaise.

She tried to reach for him with her secondary hands as well.

“Don’t you dare stop,” he said with uncharacteristic harshness. “You’re not allowed to come if I’m not inside you, but don’t you fucking stop trying to make yourself come. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Master.” God, that ingratiating, desperate tone was physically painful to hear.

Bell grimaced, so it must have been unpleasant for him as well, but he followed the reaction with a laugh as he whirled her around and shoved her toward the chaise.

He knocked her primary hands away from him when he reached her again. She obediently held them behind her back as she continued to furiously work her fingers over her clit and inside her cunt. With her secondary arms, the angle for the latter wasn’t easy, but it was amazing what a woman could do when she needed it badly enough.

And she was close again. Following his warning, she didn’t let herself orgasm, though she wanted so much to increase the pressure over her clit, wanted so much to rub just a little bit deeper in her pussy to reach the right spot, but she denied herself. For him. Everything for him.

He grabbed her corset, arms flexing with inhuman strength. A man wouldn’t have been able to rip the thick leather to pieces, but he did. She nearly collapsed back onto the chaise, but he pulled her up again and ripped away the bottoms as well. His gaze crawled over her as though he’d never seen her before, and in a way, he hadn’t. This was the first time he’d seen her completely naked without her tattoos.

His amber eyes went dark, his desire for her as fresh, raw and exposed as her. Like the Creature, she didn’t think his erection was the best way to measure how much he wanted her. He had complete control over that, as much control as he had over her lack of control. But his desire… She didn’t think he could control that, only how much of it she could see. And he let her see all of it.

“Make me mark you.” He stopped trying to keep her away from him, giving her primary hands free rein once more. “You don’t get to have me inside you until you make yourself filthy with me.”

His cock needed no additional lubrication after being in her mouth. She worked both hands over his erection as he took her hair in his fists again, the flex of his forearms in her periphery.

Even with her long fingers, she couldn’t cover all of him at once. She still had plenty of his length to twist her hands over, smearing her saliva and his pre-cum. He was hotter than a man under her palms, as hot as the monster, and even with the heat he sent through her, she thought she’d feel his when she had him inside. She dug her fingers deeper in her cunt in spite of the warning not to come. Three fingers weren’t enough, but four wouldn’t work at this angle, and she wanted him—his girth, his length, his heat, his firmness. God, how she wanted him.

Bell traced her lips. “I love your mouth, Lizzie.” He canted his hips into her experienced hands that stole some of the strength from his voice. “I love your teeth, the danger I created as well as the danger that is yours alone. I’d kiss you again, because I could kiss you for days, but you haven’t earned that yet. I’ll give you something else to occupy it.”

He curled his fingers into her mouth, hooked over her canines the way he had when he’d given her the spider’s fangs and venom. He drew her head back and forth, pressing hard into the soft palate, then turned them around to probe over her tongue, where he’d slid his cock minutes before.

Just the two fingers at first, but as she savored them, the taste of her arousal still strong, he inserted a third, then a fourth, stretching her lips. She didn’t magically accommodate his fingers the way she did his cock. It was a strain, yet she took him down to the bottom knuckles, not once letting up on the manual worship of his cock. Her nipples, lips, tongue ached with the same intensity as the nerves being constantly stimulated between her legs.

He brought her head closer to him with his grip on her hair and his fingers in her mouth. “Do you have any idea what you look like right now?”

Bell abruptly jerked his fingers from her mouth and wiped them over her breasts, pushing and tweaking her nipples as though he couldn’t care less what he was touching. When her breasts gleamed with her own saliva, he slapped her face, this blow not as strong but with a sharper sound.

“Harder,” he grunted, his hips moving with less purpose and more need.

She wrung his cock, twisting up with one hand and caressing the head with the other, panting as she worked herself at the same furious pace. Taking care of both of them at the same time kept her from being able to slow herself down. She was going to come.

Elizabeth bit her lip, forgetting she still had her fangs extended. They pierced through the delicate flesh just to the sides of her silver rings, wresting an unexpected moan from her. Blood coated her tongue, dripped down her chin onto her breasts.

That did it for him. He brought his forehead to hers and groaned through his climax, as irresistible to her as when the Creature did, because it was a choice to allow himself that moment of vulnerability—and even for them, these greater and more powerful beings, it was a moment of vulnerability.

His cum spilled over her worshipping hands first, molten, then came a stronger pulse over her breast, over her abdomen. It could have been like what Dez had done, but the way he looked at her lacked any of the contempt. He may have spoken with the haughty demand of a dominant jackass, but his regard didn’t lie. His cum diminished to a trickle, which she smoothed over his cock for the last few pumps that brought him to completion.

Bell broke his self-imposed ban, licking a line from her bloodstained chin to her lower lip, where he sucked the blood, traced her silver hardware with his tongue, then kissed her thoroughly and soundly. She thought he’d push her down onto the chaise again, but instead, he whirled them around and pulled her over him as he reclined, held up by the pillows at the closed end.

Fuck, he kissed well, and this time he let her into his mouth, sucking her tongue, catching her aching lip with his own teeth to gently heal it and take away the pain. He nudged her secondary hands from between her legs with his knee, drawing her against his thigh instead.

Her skin heated as his magic swept over her, cleansing the mark he’d sought to make, the saliva over her chest, the wetness on her fingers. But he didn’t take the sweat she’d worked for and the heat their bodies conjured, despite the fact that it was nearly as cold backstage as it was outside it.

Their legs tangled, half on the chaise and half off. From this position, she could almost claim dominance, with more room to maneuver and two legs on the ground to give her more leverage. But he moved her, far more capable of multitasking than she. He had her riding his thigh, though not nearly the focused, forceful stimulation she needed to come. He wanted to keep the fire burning, but he still didn’t want her coming until he was inside her.

And now he wouldn’t be in any hurry, not the way he was kissing her as though that was really all he would do to her for the rest of the night—and she didn’t think she’d mind. He mesmerized her, every touch meant to enhance the kiss rather than anything else. She couldn’t help how she moaned, this time with desire rather than discomfort, lust as keen as anything anyone had ever given her.

He cupped her breast, rolled the nipple between his fingers without pinching. He stroked over her thighs, as enamored of the secondary as the primary, and both as sensitive as the other. He traced the valley of her spine to her nape and took hold of her hair again. She had no dignity when he kissed away from her mouth, her cries loud and unmistakably sexual.

“You’re right, my dear,” he whispered into her neck. “Hair is better for you.” He pulled her head back, lifting her up to look her over. “It’s time, or don’t you want me inside you?”

He laughed as she scrambled up, grabbing the top edge of the chaise with her primary hands and positioning him with one secondary hand on his chest and the other on his cock. He hadn’t softened at all.

But he stopped laughing as she came down around him. He groaned, arching up to meet her, and for a moment, their moans mingled. It wasn’t just the semen and saliva on his cock and her own arousal that made it so easy to take him all the way to the base. The Creature didn’t enter her nearly so well. Bell was a measure bigger, yet there was nothing to stop him as he rolled his hips up to fill her.

She started slow, her strong shadow over him, her eight limbs giving her more strength and more control. This time it was she who hovered over his mouth, tormenting herself with the brief distance it would take to let him kiss her again, even though her mouth cried out to be taken, plundered as completely and deeply as her cunt.

“Do you remember the last time our wills were as one, Lizzie? I haven’t been forcing you to do or feel anything for some time.” Bell tasted the corner of his mouth as she paused halfway down his cock. “We really must do it more often. Did you ever imagine we’d be so similar?”

The sudden sensation of her heart and stomach dropping had Bell raising his hips to finish what she’d started. She couldn’t help a whimper and couldn’t convince her hips back up. She kept him deep inside her, her clit throbbing with pleasure. It didn’t give a fuck about the destruction of worlds, or maybe just a small handful of beliefs. It wanted exactly what it had and took the swirl of fear in the same stride as ever.

Bell looked up and curled his fingers to beckon the Creature. “I believe this is your time, Creature. Terrified enough for you?”

The Creature spread his wings and glided down to the chaise, his cock as rock hard and taut as Bell’s. His chest heaved, his nostrils flaring for that which she couldn’t detect except for the whirlwind in her mind. Not even his presence could comfort her until he pressed his lips to the nape of her neck to draw a small measure of her fear in, leaving an equally small measure of relief in its wake.

“Yes,” the Creature breathed into her, his answer like the groaning of the wind.

“Oh, we aren’t nearly finished.” Bell slipped his hand down her spine, dipping between both sets of thighs to trace the lips stretched thin around his cock. She twitched helplessly. “I’ve no inclination to relinquish her just yet. We’re both going to have you, Elizabeth. We’re both going to lose ourselves in your body, use you for our own pleasure, though with him feeding on you as he fucks you, you might not have the good sense to fear it the way you should.”

“You slimy bastard,” she said through gritted teeth, but she followed it with another whimper as some kind of lubrication entered her ass, the magic effortlessly stretching her at the same time. He wouldn’t want to make any of the three of them wait, not when the Creature was pressed close, a growl through his quick pants like an animal.

“Kiss me, Spider,” Bell said. “Let me drink your screams. Don’t hold back on my account.”

She couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to.

The Creature pressed in above Bell’s cock, and though magic had prepared her for him, it hadn’t prepared her for both of them together, both unbearably thick, the Creature not nearly as smooth to take in as Bell. The way he fucked her was more artless, more real, and to her red-faced shame, she did scream, muffled by Bell’s possessive kiss.

Elizabeth had been double-penetrated before, sometimes two cocks in her pussy at once, but she still felt ragged at the edges, stretched to her breaking point. Why the hell didn’t she just break? If she broke, she’d never have to be stretched this far again. Why did she have to be so goddamn resilient?

As soon as the Creature had seated himself as far as he could go, he pulled her hair away from her neck and brought his mouth close.

It took only a single manipulative nudge from Bell to get her moving over him again, fucking herself on both of them until she was riding them, the warmth of the Creature’s feed and the heat of lust combining until she thought she might burst into flames.

Or at least she thought it was Bell who got her moving, who made her so high and hot that she felt like she was going mad.

“Oh no, this is your desire that burns, your own will that takes me and that monster of yours in. This is you who needs to kiss me, who needs to be given freedom to fuck anything that comes in her path. Do you really think Dez is the reason you are what you are?”

The Creature could barely keep up with her, his groans against her neck almost like those of distress, though his hips quickened to try to meet her furious ride. He caught her flesh between his teeth, sucking at her skin as though it could draw the fear from her faster if he just took more of her in.

“He created the associations, but he wouldn’t have been able to do that if you hadn’t already had this raw sensitivity, this capacity for desire—‘resilience’, as you call it. This is all you, Lizzie. And I won’t say what that makes you, as much as you want me to, because you say it enough of yourself. I wouldn’t be so cruel as to agree.”

Elizabeth tore her mouth away from Bell’s, gasping for breath as though she couldn’t survive without his air, but she grabbed his throat between her secondary hands, still bracing her primary hands on the chaise for greater leverage as she tightened her grip around his neck.

“That’s right, my dear. Kill me harder. Murder me well. It won’t change how much you need me, because I let you be the woman you should have been from the beginning—the one your family and your ex tried to bury, because they knew how powerful it would be if they set it free. And it’s not that different at all from a demon.”

She dug her thumbs in, clutched at him hard enough to snap chicken bones. He just laughed again, as unabashedly cruel as he professed he didn’t want to be, his dark golden eyes glowing. The goddamn fucker didn’t need to breathe, and he kept meeting her as she rode him, at the same pace as the Creature.

The tighter she throttled him, the tighter she clenched around their cocks.

“Spider,” the Creature growled into her.

“You need me,” Bell whispered, his words penetrating her mind. “You need Arcanium. You’re mine, my venomous little Spider, as much as Maya is mine. But guess what, Lizzie?” He knocked her arms away and lunged up to lick a hot line up the other side of her neck to her ear. He spoke as much in her mind as for her to hear. “I don’t love you.”

The spike of fear and lust that followed proved too much for the Creature. His teeth pierced her flesh. A burst of warmth followed, a rush of absolute, heady fearlessness that had all three of them bucking fiercely in an orgasm that felt like it was going to explode out through her skin.

Both cocks inside her twitched, pulsed, filled her with cum hotter than her, stroked through flesh that couldn’t stop feeling the pleasure of them as long as they were still moving inside her. She screamed with her teeth bared, punching the back of the chaise as it kept going—the pleasure and the power, the tightrope of safety and danger that she walked not just with Bell but with herself, the warning and the warmth all one in a confusion she had no choice but to withstand.

Bell worked his way back to her mouth, kissing her through the violent aftershocks, easing himself from her. Then it was just the Creature inside, both his cock and his teeth, as he fed from her—not only on fear, but on the blood that sent fear streaming through her. Bell stroked the Creature’s head as he kissed Elizabeth, his possession still total but the domination discarded in favor of feverish languor.

The Creature wrapped his arms around her in his own gesture of possession, his hips still jerking despite his completion, pulling her back against him to feed more and more deeply until Bell had to relinquish her.

But eventually the Creature realized what he was doing. He froze, stopped feeding from her, stopped drinking.

“Carefully,” Bell said, his tenderness back. With his hand on the Creature’s forehead, he helped ease the teeth from her flesh, covered the mark to keep blood from spurting out. “I suspected he might be a breed of vampire. I couldn’t be sure until now. You can try to use the blue potion, but I don’t think it’ll do much to eliminate scarring from this bite. When a parasite like the Creature latches onto a human being… Well, it’ll be fascinating to learn what deeper mark he’s made. There are many different kinds of venom, my dear.”

“What did you do?” Elizabeth said weakly. The wound stitched together under Bell’s magic, but he was right. His healing didn’t reach deep enough—the wound was more than physical.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done it before.” The Creature bucked again inside her then eased himself just as carefully out of her body. Both men’s semen dripped down her thighs, and she felt that unbearable hollowness and loneliness that followed significant penetration. “I think the danger is greater for me, though.”

“What makes you think that?” she asked.

“I think I’m bound to you more than you’re bound to me. I’m not sure whether I can now feed from anyone else.”

Bell pulled his hand back. She touched the scar left behind, smooth and knotted under her fingertips.

“It’s fortunate she has plenty of fear yet to feed upon.” Bell stroked away the hair that had plastered against her cheek with sweat. “But eventually she will leave Arcanium, and eventually she will die. Can you survive such a parting?”

“I don’t know.” In spite of the mystery—and the fear Elizabeth rarely heard from him—the Creature hadn’t released her from his arms. He clung to her, still drawing her subtly away from Bell. She doubted he even noticed he was doing it, but Bell did.

“We really must do this again, Elizabeth.” He raised himself up for one last lingering kiss. “Perhaps we might be more recreational in the future. I think we would do quite well together without the need for absolution.”

Because we want the same things. She shivered. The Creature drew her away again, this time with more purpose.

“Yes, my dear. You needn’t fear it as you do. I’m not the devil you believe me to be. Just because I don’t love you the way Maya enjoys doesn’t mean you are easily discarded. I am willing to kill for you, willing to keep your tormentors alive for you. What more would you ask of me?”

He bowed to her with far more elegance than a naked man should have.

She didn’t protest when the Creature carried her back into the shadows that led beyond the backstage and into the quiet night.

“Let me take it all,” he whispered. “Let me take it all away.”

She nodded, closing her eyes against the darkness. His great wings carried them back to his makeshift bed, where he made her forget what fear was…for a while.