Chapter Two

The snow came that night. Neve usually had to wake up before the sun rose, so she liked keeping the curtains open to catch the dawn. The night looked blue when it snowed. The layer of white reflected midnight into full-moon brightness, which angled into the bedroom, falling upon the half-empty bed. It felt so much larger without Joseph there.

It had taken her a while to get used to sharing a bed with another person, but after six months, she missed having someone there. She reached out but encountered nothing except more sheets and the duvet. She spread her legs like she was making snow angels, but there was nothing there. She didn’t take up much space while sleeping. Having room to stretch out was overrated.

Especially since she desperately wanted someone in that bed. She’d put his pillow and a quilt on the sofa, and he’d showed penitent initiative by using the guest bathroom instead of the master. She couldn’t call Joseph in now and reward him for his indiscretion. She still saw him with Maya every time she closed her eyes, which was not conducive to sleep, nor had it been beneficial to her appetite that evening. But while she usually preferred to sleep cocooned in the duvet and clothed in warm pajamas when it was so cold outside and in the bedroom, she kept having to fold the covers back to let her skin breathe.

Neve finally just took everything off but her panties. But being naked under the sheets, while cooler, made the sensitivity of her skin all the worse.

If she’d thought that the feelings in Arcanium were an anomaly caused by some kind of love potion aerosol that would temporarily induce sexual arousal in even the most impenetrable of asexual individuals, that doubt could now be set aside. Her instinct-driven desire hadn’t abated. Just as she couldn’t control imagining Joseph fucking the tightrope walker, she kept imagining herself in Maya’s place, sometimes with Joseph, sometimes with Bell. The thoughts eddied around and around and around in her head.

When she tried touching herself, smoothing her hands over her abdomen and plumping her breasts, Neve bit her lip. Touching herself tonight was like touching herself for the first time, or how she imagined normal people felt touching themselves for the first time. As it had been with Bell, the feelings were so much bigger than she could have anticipated. But unlike when she was with Bell, it didn’t quite turn off her mind. She overthought everything—every movement of her fingers, every intensified sensation. Although she’d slept naked in this bed before, she couldn’t convince herself to take her panties off and touch herself there, though everything ached in what could have been pain if she hadn’t wanted more of it.

She might as well get used to this, though—this ache, this dissatisfaction, this near distress. She was still married, and unlike Joseph, she believed in that vow. People dealt with sexual frustration every day, right? It was just distressing for her because it was new. And if this wasn’t going away, she’d surely get used to it just like everyone else.

Neve flopped over onto her stomach and forced her eyes closed, leaving her top half and one leg uncovered to cool her down.

She’d always thought herself so distant from this particular vice. She hadn’t believed she was judgmental about those who succumbed to it, and perhaps she wasn’t as bad as some. But now she knew that the reason she’d always been able to withstand this temptation was because she simply hadn’t been tempted. Chocolate cake and pizza, a warm bed on a cold morning when there were things to do, idleness in boredom… All of these things had been more tempting to her than sex.

People believed in divine retribution, karma, the Rule of Three and other moral laws like them for a reason. People wanted to believe justice would prevail, one way or another. They wanted to believe that even if a murderer wasn’t convicted, something horrible would happen to them anyway. People liked balance, fairness, even if they didn’t want to contribute to it themselves.

But most religions didn’t have a system of retribution meant to occur in a person’s lifetime. Karma was applied to the next life. For those who only lived once, judgment came after the life lived, and if one believed the Gospels, it had nothing to do with sin. Levels of hell and purgatory had been developed because of man’s innate sense of justice, not God’s. Yet God had conquered cities for slights, and Jesus cursed the fig tree because it wouldn’t bear fruit out of season. People wanted to believe in the lightning.

Science had its own law of returns, albeit an oft-misunderstood one—that for every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. Of course, most physics principles were only true in a perfect vacuum, and as Bell had mentioned before, nature abhorred a vacuum.

Neve didn’t think the world was that simple. She didn’t believe in consistent or instant karma. She didn’t trust a justice system run by people. She believed humans placed the weight of sins on scales, not God. But she was a human animal like everyone else, and she couldn’t help but discern patterns—real and false—like the rest of them.

It was difficult for her to view gaining the experience of pleasure right before her husband cheated on her so that she couldn’t use it as a mere coincidence. Perhaps this carnal frustration was punishment for not being wife enough to her husband, that he would stray from her just to fulfill the need that she now denied him on principle. And she couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d been cursed with the very thing she hadn’t understood was so difficult for other people to control, just so she could finally understand—and then some.

With her brain well into contemplating the cosmic and scientific implications of the last twenty-four hours, she doubted she was going to get much sleep. If there was any justice in the world, she hoped Joseph was having just as much trouble, if not more.

She punched her pillow then flipped around onto her back again.

“Well, aren’t you just the tastiest little thing?”

Neve gave a little scream, hurriedly covering her top half with the duvet.

Part of her expected to see Bell, although she didn’t know why she would expect him at her bedroom window in the middle of a snowy night well after the circus had closed, when he was probably too tired to do anything but sleep. She didn’t know how she could expect anyone at her second-story bedroom window. And she’d sign a sworn affidavit that she would never have her window open in late January.

Yet her bedroom window was open, and a man perched on its edge like a hybrid between a gargoyle, an owl and a very creepy person.

At first she thought the reason for the smoothness of his color was because of the shadows. But then he shifted and her eyes adjusted at the same time. In addition to sitting on the edge of a previously unopened window in the middle of winter, he was completely naked. The dim, blue, reflected moonlight illuminated the steam that emanated from him. Though his knee was propped up to conceal his front, the extent of leg and buttock exposed proved he wasn’t wearing a stitch.

She bit back the part of her that wanted to invite him in out of the cold, a perfectly rational act of hospitality. But a strange man at her open window at midnight was not a perfectly rational thing at all.

Neve wasn’t a hundred percent sure she was awake. This seemed like the kind of dream she’d have, trying to fall asleep as she had been—a tall, large, dark stranger with eye sockets so black, they were the darkest part of midnight.

“I usually don’t visit someone while they’re awake, but I so rarely sense sexual frustration as keen as my own. It’s an awfully big bed, and it smells like a man. Does he not satisfy you?”

“Who the hell are you?” She wasn’t fond of swearing, but she was tired, angry and, yes, unsatisfied. “How did you even get up here?”

There was a baseball bat under the bed and a gun in the closet safe, but to get them, she’d have to either emerge nearly naked from under the covers or drag the heavy duvet with her. He’d be able to catch her either way. She considered yelling for Joseph, but she still wasn’t certain any of this was real, and she didn’t want to need him for anything right now.

“It’s his loss if he cannot satisfy a woman like you.” He spoke in chocolate—warm, dark, rich, with the hint of a foreign accent she couldn’t place, although it resembled the mild Middle Eastern accents she’d encountered at school and sometimes heard at work. “Let me in. I’ll show you how a man should treat a woman. With me, you’ll know satisfaction. With me, you’ll never again be satisfied by another.”

“I have my phone. I’m calling the police. And if you come any closer, I’m going to get the baseball bat and crack your kneecaps right after I hit a homerun on your balls.”

“You don’t have your phone.” He spoke with absolute certainty. “And if you were going to go for a weapon, you would have already. I don’t think you’re afraid of me. I think your body is so distracted that you don’t have enough in your head to be afraid. And that’s good, woman. Shall I take up more of your mind?”

He lowered his bent leg. And though Neve couldn’t see details, she didn’t need to. She could see clearly enough to notice that he was definitely without any kind of covering, and the winter cold had done nothing to diminish his sexual frustration.

In such little light, Neve couldn’t be positive. It could have been some kind of trick to the angle, but his full, high erection looked like it was the width of his wrist. She didn’t think that was anatomically possible—and certainly not something that would be comfortable going into anyone.

But the sight of it bobbing near his thigh made her ache—and not in preemptive pain. Her lips went dry even as she salivated. Her clit twitched in odd little pulses that felt like some kind of atavistic signal, a primitive I want with which her cunt agreed. Her panties had already been damp from frustration, but she felt new wetness drip out.

“I’ll create oblivion between your thighs, bring poetry to your lips, fire to your skin. Your body is a finely crafted instrument, and I am a master musician. Invite me into your cool, empty bed.”

He brought his hand to the base of his cock, stroked himself slowly. It didn’t feel like the kind of frantic perversion of a public voyeur or peeping tom. He was deliberate, the action a supplement to his words, a display of his wares.

“I have everything you’ve ever desired, everything you’ve ever fantasized about. Let me in, and I will be the fulfillment of every dream, any dream. Even now, your body makes itself ready for me, craves me. You are starving, but I am a feast, and I offer myself to you. No woman should ever go as unsatisfied as you are right now. I can practically taste the salt on your skin, the sweetness between your legs. It fills the very air, no matter how the cold tries to chase it away. You needn’t suffer any longer. Let me in.”

If it was a dream, it was the most intense sex dream she’d ever had. Even she had sex dreams now and then, of subjects that seemed eminently unsexy upon waking. She was capable of orgasm, so she would sometimes suffer through a meaningless one, clutching the sheets and willing it to be over.

If this wasn’t a dream, it was utter madness. She’d had time to grab her phone from the nightstand drawer. She’d had more than enough time to get the baseball bat from under the bed, even with the duvet. She could do it now. He’d trip over that cock on the way to her.

But his words caressed her as though they were fingers, awakening every part of her that he spoke of. She remembered when she’d thought Bell was hypnotizing her. Neve couldn’t shake the idea that this man might be doing the same thing—that he was more than just a man murmuring sweet nothings to her as he masturbated.

“Let me in. Or cast me away. But do something, woman. Don’t torture me like this, able to see you, smell you, taste the mist of you but not touch, not feel you against my body. I’m as hungry as you are. So very hungry, my love. Please…” He bowed his head. The silhouette of his hair suggested it was loose and long, tangled into locks that draped past his elbows. Neve thought he was almost familiar, but she couldn’t think of anyone she knew who looked like that, or anyone who could possibly be packing what he had between his legs. Scrubs and lab coats could hide a lot, but she wasn’t sure anything could hide that.

Neve felt frozen, mesmerized by his strokes, by the way he seemed clearer and clearer to her each time he passed his hand over the shaft, as though lust attuned her senses to him.

Her breathing was loud but shallow. She’d fallen slightly forward, still using one hand to hold the duvet over her front, the other one braced on the bed between her knees. The position made her feel even more sexual, waiting for him to come up from behind and push her panties to the side, push every huge inch of that impossible cock into her cunt, where she’d take it—and gladly—because her need was even closer to painful, her wetness soaking through and smearing against the tops of her thighs. All this was impossible, but it felt so damn real, too strong to be a dream, too strange to be a dream, even as strange as dreams could be.

Every time she thought she’d regained control of her tongue to tell him to get out of her room, to go away, that she was definitely calling the police now, that her husband was just downstairs, he would stroke himself again, and the action would erase the board of her mind.

“At least let the covers fall. Let me see more of you. I crave the sight of your body as much as the sensation of it against my flesh. Show yourself to me.”

In spite of the cold, sweat dripped down the back of her neck and the valley of her spine. She struggled to gain control over these all-too-strong, all-too-new aches and pangs of what seemed like unfiltered, unadulterated lust—just as dangerous as anything else pure. Whimpers spilled from her pressed-tight lips as she tried to hold back.

“I cannot enter unless you allow it. I cannot harm you or even touch you if you don’t let me in. What harm would there be in showing yourself to me? You want to. Your nipples harden and your belly tightens at the thought of me seeing you—the thought of another man seeing what your man cannot appreciate. Even my gaze upon you will be better for you than twenty hours under his hands.”

This is not normal. She didn’t know what normal was, but this couldn’t be it. People weren’t prostrate on the ground at concerts by their favorite bands. People weren’t moaning in ecstasy when their favorite song came on the radio. I really don’t think this is normal.

“Who are you?” It was all she could manage to say before another pang of need cramped through her abdomen. She shook her head against another whimper.

“I’m the best sex you’ve ever had.” His answer came to her as a promise. “Let the covers go. Lose your inhibitions. I uncovered myself, showed you my lust. I’ll show you more if you show me yours.”

She let the hand holding the duvet drop to the bed, hoped that giving in a little would ease some of this ache. It didn’t. A sob escaped her.

It didn’t help that when she lowered the cover, he doubled over with a groan of his own, and he quickened his hand over his erection.

He spoke of tasting her, but his own desire seemed to thicken her air as she breathed. As each breath entered her, it weakened her resolve. The snow-strewn breeze fluttered the curtains, struck her newly exposed skin, but though she marbled, her nipples tightening further, it had little effect on the heat inside her. She didn’t need the covers when she had his gaze.

“You are a tasty thing, aren’t you?” The muffled slapping sound of his hand over his cock was loud in the quiet room, unbearably obscene. “Painters and poets dream of such a muse.”

“Neve, is that you? Are you watching something in there?”

Neve had left the bedroom door open a crack. Now the man at the window jerked his head toward Joseph coming down the hall. The door closed on its own, locked with a definitive click.

“I know you’re mad at me, but I thought I heard you crying. Are you all right?”

Neve turned from the closed door to the man in the window.

In the darkness of his eye sockets, she saw Maya’s dark hair, Joseph’s fingers tangled through it. She saw Joseph grasping Maya’s body as though to imprint her upon his memory. She’d known their marriage had cracks, but she hadn’t imagined how broken it was, that she couldn’t swear her husband had been faithful just yesterday or the day before.

“You’re even more beautiful when you’re angry,” the man whispered.

“Neve?” Joseph tried to open the door, with no success.

“He’s not even a man. He doesn’t deserve a woman like you. Do you know what a woman like you deserves?”

Her legs shaking, Neve lowered herself back onto the bed, parted her knees and slid off her underwear. “Come here,” she said softly, “and show me.”

“Your wish is my command.” The man climbed down from the window, his steps muffled by the carpet. But his body whispered, skin brushing skin. She couldn’t deny him as some dream figment. He was too large, blotting out the snow, a looming shape advancing upon her like some kind of monster. But though she thought she might hyperventilate, only a little of it was from fear.

She was going to do this. She had just invited a stranger into her bedroom, a man who otherwise would be considered a total pervert for masturbating himself uninvited at her window. She should have been calling the police—or at the very least, setting aside her anger and shouting for Joseph to help her, save her. But after witnessing her husband break their vows, break their marriage, the marriage was over. She didn’t want Joseph anymore. She wanted this. She wanted this more than she’d ever wanted anything in her whole life.

He stalked toward her bed like a predator, his cock even larger and more daunting the closer it came. He climbed onto the foot of the bed, crawled over the duvet, his knees and fists pressing deep into the mattress with a profound creak at every inch forward. He was shadow and furnace heat. She was afraid that his touch would leave blisters behind, but he arched over her, keeping himself away to the last. Even his cock, drawn down by its weight, didn’t reach her from how he positioned himself above her.

When he stroked along her cheek and into her hair to cradle the back of her head, she somehow didn’t catch fire. He caught her cry just in time, slanting his mouth to slide his tongue along hers. She felt branded, not blistered, by his hands, his lips, his tongue, claimed in a matter of moments.

He might as well have locked a shackle to her neck. Nothing he did would ever be enough.

“Neve, please,” Joseph called through the door. “I’m kind of worried now. Just tell me you’re okay and I’ll go back downstairs.”

The man’s hair waterfalled over his shoulders to brush her chest like fingers. She reached up through the locks, strands clinging to her hands, to hold him in the kiss, to keep him close. She drank the soft groans he gifted her, licked and sucked what he offered. She had no idea what she was doing, and she didn’t care. She’d become the creature, the animal that humans were before civilization demanded its rules and rituals. She didn’t care that it was messy or lacked finesse, and neither did he.

Just his mouth, hand and hair brought her to the edge then pushed her over to fall, body clenching and tensing in a primitive rhythm she recognized but had never experienced like this. He bit her lip, sucked it with relish, then covered her mouth again to muffle her cry as she came. Her hips lifted from the bed, but he still kept himself away from her, laughing as he avoided the contact she instinctively sought, her need to fill the hollowness made unbearable by her orgasm.

“It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it, if just my kiss can bring you to your climax? I barely have to try. How long has he left you unsatisfied?” He nudged her nose with his then dipped down to her neck. He covered her mouth with his hand before she could cry out. “Shhh, woman, unless you want him to hear. Of course, if you do, I can make you scream louder.”

“I’ve never… It’s never felt like…”

“Tragedy, tragedy. His shame is my delight.”

She ran her tongue over his palm, taking in the salt of his pre-cum and the strong musky scent of him caught under the curtain of his hair. “Let him hear.”

“With pleasure.” His smile warmed his words further.

Then he kissed her neck, using his teeth to call a flush to his tongue. He lowered his hand to stroke her lips with two fingers. She anticipated his intent and opened her mouth for him again. He stroked his fingers over her tongue, a mimicry of what he would do to her, either in her mouth or her cunt. Not that two fingers were enough to compare to his cock, but the comparison was apt enough for her palate. Her mouth watered as he thrust to the knuckle, where she ran the tip of her tongue across the creases before his palm.

He bit her neck then the swell of her breast above her nipple, but he avoided the taut, aching bud to bite the underside. A pained groan followed when he abandoned her breasts to bring his mouth lower.

Oh God. Just thinking about it felt dirty. Joseph had performed oral for hours on her, employed every trick he already knew and a number of them he’d had to look up. But in the end, they’d given up on that and contented themselves with using a vibrator if he needed her to come. From the strange man’s kiss alone, she’d already experienced a tremblor multiple orders of magnitude greater than one of her old orgasms.

He was gentler on her abdomen, little deliberate licks down her to navel, to the soft belly below. He inhaled like a dragon preparing to breathe fire.

“Your skin is sweet, love, but you smell dark and wicked where you want me. Shall I taste such wickedness from its source? Would you make your angel fall for you?”

He still hadn’t brought his body against hers, hadn’t given her the closeness and intimacy she needed more than sex, had needed all of her life and knew so much better than the pleasure torturing her like a sadist with thorns under her skin. Before she could beg for more than the parts of him he’d allowed her, he licked a line up her inner thigh to her folds. He swiped through them with the tip of his tongue, dragging his lips along, before closing his mouth over her clit and pressing his deft tongue to the hood in a soft, luxuriant suck.

She clapped her hand to her mouth to contain her cry on her own, not quite ready for her husband to hear her, despite what she’d said to the man making the music he’d promised. Her flesh flamed, prickled with the intense heat emanating from his expert mouth. If she had wick, he would have lit it and melted the wax down in a matter of minutes, like Bell’s truth candles.

Neve clawed at the sheets with her free hand. The other she made into a fist, gagging herself, though she dug her teeth into her fingers. She tried to find an anchor for what she was feeling, for the swell of emotion and sensation, but there was nothing to hold, no way to hold it in. Her cry sounded like crying, like sorrow keening through her fist. Underneath the nails of her other hand, she tore through the sheets as though she had claws. Tears seeped from under her eyelids, and her arousal dripped out of her to dampen his chin. He broke away from her clit to nudge her thighs wider with his shoulders and probe her cunt with his tongue. Whatever he tasted there, it made him moan, a more powerful vibration than anything mechanical she’d tried.

“I can’t.” His pained admission sounded as much like sorrow as her cries. “Damn it, I can’t wait anymore.”

He raised his head from her cunt, wiped his mouth like a cat after a feast. Up close, she could see him a little more clearly, and the sense she knew him became stronger, but the fog from their bodies in the cold room had grown thicker, obscuring him in waves.

“If I had the endurance, I would take all night to have you. I’d savor you slowly, make it last. But I’ve waited too long, held myself back from so many. I can’t hold back from you anymore, not when you taste so dark, my delicious, rich pomegranate. How I’d make you last…if I wasn’t so fucking hungry.”

Her skin felt the truth of his words as he bit his way back up her body, growling and leaving marks. Sharp pain was something she already knew she liked, and she arched into every bite. But more importantly, he dragged his body against her. Every fine hair and cell of her flesh nearly screamed in its own miniscule orgasm. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, urged him up, urged him against her, curved her body to fit his.

Holding him was like holding hot marble covered in a thin layer of velvet. He was unexpectedly hard, heavy, impossibly dense, though he moved with the ease of someone half his weight. His flesh yielded just enough for her to believe he was a man.

The darkness in his eye sockets burned as he looked down at her, his hips slotted against hers and the base of his cock settled between her folds. It was even hotter than the rest of him, nearly as hard, somehow bigger when she couldn’t see it and measure it for herself. She trembled as he canted his hips in simulation, watching her reaction with something like curiosity.

“You can take me. You can take all of it, love. Don’t fear that.”

She’d only had her husband, and not often, not long when he was inside her. All men seemed small in comparison to this stranger, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. A woman was made to pass much bigger through the canal, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful to endure, and that kind of pain might just be too sharp for her.

Even plastered against her as he was, he somehow found space to smooth his hand up her side to her breast, taking a moment to enjoy the give of her, far more yielding than him, all of her softness and curves pressed to the hard planes of his large body.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“For what?” There was so much of him to touch, and though he was hot and heavy over her, she didn’t mind how she’d sunk into the mattress, didn’t mind how shallow her breathing was. She wished she could see him, wished she could have him underneath her, facedown, to study the play of muscle in his back, his shoulders, the flex of his buttock and thigh. She used her sense of touch as well as she could in lieu of sight.

“For this.” He didn’t have to reach down and position himself. He shifted back, tightened his muscles as though he could direct himself by will alone and pressed the head of his cock to her entrance.

It was like he’d brought a fist there, and she tensed, in spite of the rest of her body wailing and pleading for the god on top of her to lavish her with every inch of generosity he offered. She was sure he’d apologized because he was going to rip her open from the inside, rip apart his promise just like her husband and leave her torn after exorcising his pleasure and denying her her own—a victim for her cuckold and cheating husband to put back together, the last insult.

But as he shifted forward, the weight of his cock sank him into her, and though she felt strain, there wasn’t tearing or stinging or pain. Far from it, the deeper he went, the tighter she clenched around him, not just around his cock but around his body. Her mouth dropped open as she tore lines down his back.

He dominated her with his kiss once more, savage as a counterpoint to the patience of his cock, which seemed to take forever to reach the base. She expected him to have to hold back, only enough room for a few inches to fit comfortably, especially as tight as she felt around him. She was stretched thin, with agonizing arousal alight across nerves she hadn’t known existed. But he kept entering her, and she kept opening for him. He filled her emptiness, a hollow always waiting just beyond where he entered her.

This isn’t normal. He was too big, and he was too far in. He should have hurt her, through microtears or something bigger at a part of her so rarely used, or just from him hitting her cervix, lengthened though her cunt was from arousal alone.

But she could hardly complain when it felt like the ecstasy written about in books that never described reality. She kissed him with her own hunger, her own starvation, raised her hips to take him deeper, deeper, deeper, until finally he reached his end.

Air shuddered from her lips as he pulled back from her again.

“I’ll hold out as long as I can,” he whispered.

“Neve, if you don’t answer me, I’m going to find the key and break in. I value your privacy, but I’m seriously worried.”

“I’m sorry.” The man didn’t let her ask why again.

He peppered her with kisses, shallower this time, less possessive, so she could focus all her attention on the possession he’d taken between her legs. He wasn’t slow anymore, although he started gentler, just a rolling of his hips to snap him back all the way inside. But as she realized he wouldn’t hurt her, she parted her thighs more, lifted them to bring her knees to the back of his ribs, and his thrusts grew stronger. Each one nailed pleasure deeper inside her flesh, driving her breathless, head spinning, eyes fluttering shut, though she didn’t want to close her eyes to him.

It was as though his cock was the only thing inside her, filling her beyond its already exceptional girth. Pleasure stretched out from where he fucked her, tendrils of excruciating, exquisite, impossible arousal that seemed to come from him.

Then he climbed onto his knees, changing the angle and forcing her hips up with him. Her breasts shifted toward her chin. She let go of the man to hold them down, not anticipating how the press of her palms over the protruding nipples would awaken them again, happily accepting her in replacement of his chest against them. And without him to kiss her, there was nothing to conceal her moans.

He dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips, used the leverage to thrust himself deeper at this new angle—harder, harder. His thighs struck hers with bruising slaps. His groans were low, as though they originated from all the way down where he took her. Every time he pushed in, however, his cock seemed to reach all the way to her throat, pushing out her moans in time with his claim.

“Neve, what are you doing?” Joseph was right up against the door, rattling the doorknob. Then, after a beat, “Who’s in there with you?”

“Not you,” the man rumbled.

Joseph stopped trying to get in, and footsteps hurried away down the hall. He’d be going for the house key.

“Hurry.” She grasped his forearm, pulling on him to urge him on.

“Don’t worry about him. You’re mine now.” He overlapped her fingers with his to massage her breast then brushed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “There’s nothing he can do. Time to sing for me, love.”

He rocked his hips, forcing her to arch in order to take him all. She shouted, writhed when he brought his thumb from her mouth to her clit to rub the hood and sometimes over the sensitive nub itself. She’d never understood why women would scream unless they were faking, but now she tossed her head from side to side on the pillow, unable to hold back or keep quiet. With the window open, the whole neighborhood had to hear her. Maybe someone would call the police and report a domestic dispute…or a murder. She didn’t care. There was no space for her pleasure with him inside her. She had no choice but to release it.

“I can’t…” He doubled over again, sliding his hands under her back to arch her himself as he thrust harder, and she kept expecting it to hurt, but it never did. Instead, it kept feeling better and better. She gathered sheets up in fistfuls, her breasts moving back up toward her chin without her holding them, but she didn’t need to breathe anymore. She needed to come. She needed it more than she needed air, more than she needed to function, more than she needed to think. She’d give anything, even her soul, for him to make her come as strongly as the storms inside her promised she would.

He slammed in hard enough to hurt now, but as he came, he took her face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers as though in grief, growling like a beast as he snapped his hips, grinding into her.

Neve screamed to wake the dead, her whole body bowed up as though in spasm. Climax was like the thorns from before raking over her insides and outsides, tearing her raw, and still she asked for more. She thrashed as much as she could with him inside her, with him holding her head. He ground into her and she ground herself back over him, clutching, clenching, tightening, but everything about her was soft and everything about him was hard. And he was the one who tightened around her, swallowed her from the inside out, sucked her in—he the black hole and she the star whose light he devoured.

Her heart raced, skipped. Air sucked out of her lungs. For a second, she ceased to exist. She blinkered out, her limbs laden as stone and the light at the end of the tunnel nothing but religious ecstasy—light, heat, lust, a second that lasted forever.

Neve slumped in his arms, at the mercy of his not inconsiderable strength. He panted, great heaving breaths, like a bear after a fight. He closed his eyes, his forehead still on hers. When he withdrew his cock from her, he made a sound as though removing himself from her cunt was physically painful, as though the thorns he’d sent through her had wrapped around his cock as well.

The bedroom door unlocked, flew open. Joseph ran into the room, took in the dim tableau of a giant, wild man over her, both of them naked, the fog in the room still steaming from their skin. Neve couldn’t move yet, shaken to the bone. She wondered what he thought of her, limp on the bed, undignified, tousled, bent upward on the man’s thighs, her breasts heavy along her collarbone, her mouth slack, her legs spread wantonly on either side of the stranger.

The man raised himself up, flipping his hair back, his teeth bared.

“Neve!” Joseph pointed at the stranger in accusation. “You bastard, what did you do to her?”

“Get out!” The darkness of the man’s eyes glinted, lightning over a night sky. Joseph flew from the room, striking the wall out in the corridor with a terrible crash that made her suspect the drywall hadn’t survived. The door slammed and locked once again.

The coiled tension in the man’s limbs loosened, but he was far from relaxed. He hung his head, his hair tickling her breasts and belly.

“Not that I’m upset, but how exactly are you doing that?” Neve knew things moving on their own was impossible, but after seeing it twice, it was damn hard to deny that it had happened—which meant she’d met a psychic person who could spontaneously change her sexuality in the span of a second and a wild, sexual beast with the ability to move things with his mind both in one day. What were the odds, really?

All of a sudden, she remembered where she’d seen the man before.

He jerked up in surprise, tension shooting through him once more as he stared down at her. “You’re alive.”

“You were almost that good, but not quite.” She managed to twitch a finger, which snowballed into closing her hands into loose fists. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“You’re alive.”

“You said that already.” As soon as she could prop herself up on her elbows, she did, narrowing her eyes. “Did you expect otherwise?”

“You’re welcome.”

What were the odds that the strongman of Arcanium would be at her window just hours after the fortune teller had made her sexually voracious? She hadn’t recognized him because his hair was loose, and he’d seemed less…animalistic while posing like a bodybuilder for the audience outside his oddity tent. She and Joseph hadn’t lingered long with him. Feats of strength didn’t usually impress her, but the snake charmer appealed to both her and her husband—her because of the snakes, him because of the charmer.

Yes, what were the odds? And what were the odds that the voice she’d heard in her head, clear as day, had come from the aforethought fortune teller mere seconds after said strongman was surprised he hadn’t killed her with his cock?

Something weird is going on seemed like an understatement.

The man in her bed crawled back, tilting his head—a cautious beast.

“Mind telling me what’s happening, or are we just going to freeze to death?” Neve managed to lift herself upright, bent her knees to push herself back, but she still didn’t have the energy for it, so she just sat there on her bed, a damp spot underneath her, her legs parted to a lewd degree, but after what he’d just done, she couldn’t convince herself that now was the time to cross her ankles like a lady.

Her aunt would call her scarlet. Her grandma would call her a slut. She’d call herself a cheater, and she was pretty sure turnabout hadn’t been the proper way to get back at Joseph for doing the same thing to her.

Even now, though, anger flared up inside her at the thought of her husband, despite what he’d entered in on. No, she didn’t think she was getting over this, which meant he’d get his wish, too. He’d get his divorce. He could fuck any woman he wanted. And she could fuck every other man in the world if she damn well pleased. She’d fuck the one in her bed again if he kept looking at her like that while her legs were open, her breasts pressed against her thighs, the nipples still hard and sensitive and the rest of her still on a hair trigger.

“The police are on their way!” Joseph called from outside the bedroom.

“Damn you, Bell.” The man looked over his shoulder, though there was nothing at the window. “Why would you do that to me?”

“You’re welcome. Now, take her. She’s one of ours.”

“What the hell—” she began.

“I’m sorry.”

The last two times the man had said that, he’d followed it up with mind-blowing sex. But given how he’d responded to giving her that mind-blowing sex with the assumption he’d climaxed her to death, Neve shook her head as the man turned back to her, the darkness in his eyes more menace than mystery.

“No—” she began.

He had quick reflexes and long arms, and he placed his hand on her head before she could back away or crawl to the other side of the bed. He could bend cast-iron skillets, pull phone books apart, so he could do anything to her, and maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to invite him in.

But with just his hand on her head, already she wanted him inside her again—this dangerous, savage strongman, a man who thought he could kill her with the power of sex alone. Maybe the next time he’d be right…

All these thoughts passed through her head in a matter of seconds before exhaustion sank upon her and she collapsed to the side. The last thing she remembered was being gathered up in his arms, a burst of cold and a terrible leap from a terrible height.