Forbidden, Tempted Series (Book 1) (4 page)

Flint’s fingers were strong enough to smash walnuts in her closed fist, but nowhere near nimble enough to do something pretty with her hair. She’d finally given up on her hair as a lost cause, pulled it back into a tight ponytail, and tied a blood-red satin ribbon around it.

“You’re awfully quiet.” Her dad glanced at her. He was still dressed in the spandex suit but now with black combat boots on his feet.

She hadn’t had the nerve to tell him he looked ridiculous.

“Just thinking,” she mumbled, eyeing the ghostly silver-white moon as it became visible in the sky.

It was silly maybe, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Cain. Her gut reaction to him was intense; even now her body tingled with just the thought of him and his woodsy musk, his full lips so close that she could smell the mint on his breath. Not to mention the anger radiating off him in waves.

The sane thing would be to run scared—most girls would. But she wasn’t most girls. For years she’d stared death in the face, defying the laws of gravity with some of the stunts she’d performed. Fear could not exist in her vocabulary, not if she wanted to live. That didn’t mean she thought he was likable. What she thought of Cain was the complete opposite. Pompous. Arrogant. And...
bastard
pretty much summed up her feelings about Goth Boy.

And then there was gorgeous, heart-pounding, and mesmerizing. Her stomach twisted in a hard knot when she thought about the almost-kiss she’d given him at lunch. Flint bit the corner of her lip; it was like she couldn’t control herself around him. Some magnetic force was pulling her in. She didn’t like him, didn’t want to like him, but couldn’t stop whatever train wreck was headed her way.

But that wasn’t the only thing obsessing her.

The note. Had he really sent her that? And when did he stick it in her book bag that she hadn’t noticed? What in the world did it even mean? She picked at a loose thread in the hem of her tank top.

“About what?” her dad asked, cutting her off from her thoughts.

She wrinkled her nose, trying to shake the moody weight of all those questions. It was Dad’s time and she wouldn’t ruin it by acting like a silly girl.

“School. Homework. I think my chem teacher hates me.”

He flicked the blinker on and turned left down a gravel road. Rocks pinged like a symphony against the bumper.

He laughed and again it was really good to hear that sound. She’d almost forgotten how infectious his laugh could be.

“So, lots of detention this year again you think?”

Flint rolled her eyes. “Gah, I hope not. I wasn’t even talking. I was just staring at a...”

Twitching, heart going nuts, she clamped her mouth shut, realizing what she’d almost admitted.

But her father wasn’t dumb; he figured it out in less than a second. “A guy?”

Flint wiggled on the leather seat, hauling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms under her thighs. “Dad, I really don’t want to...”

He held up a hand. “I know, I’m your dad. It’s not cool to talk about boys with me.” He sighed and she gnawed on the inside of her cheek. “Your mom was so much better at this than me, but you know. Be safe. Okay?”

“Oh my God, Dad, seriously!” A hot trickle ran down Flint’s spine as heat spread through her belly. “I so don’t want to have this conversation.”

He frowned. “Just promise me, Flint. We can’t have any babies right now.”

She groaned, hiding her flaming face against her knees.

“I do a crappy enough job taking care of you. We can’t have another human being to be responsible for.”

“Dad!”

“Just promise, honey.” His voice dropped to a sad whisper.

It took everything she had to return his sincere gaze.

She’d never even been kissed. Sex was so beyond the realm of possibility at this point. It wasn’t like she even knew anyone she’d want to lose her virginity to. Then a pair of dark shades and a body built like an NFL lineman popped into her head, calling her a liar. She nodded as her heart pounded. “I promise.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, he stared back at the road. “Good. That’s good.”

Wishing she had some bleach to scrub the past ten seconds from her brain, she contented herself with gazing out the window. Her eyes widened as it finally dawned on her that they were here. Or at least at the entrance of the circus.

Though it was nothing like what she’d expected.

She’d been looking for a red-and-white-striped tent, half-drunken clowns parading around their trailers, and the yip-yapping of house dogs.

A large, black-spiraled gate loomed like a specter before them. The carnival was completely enclosed, set within the massive field. Black and dark red tents lifted like steeples above the gate. A wooden sign read:

Welcome to Carnival Diabolique

The words looked like they’d been clawed into the wood and then painted over in black.

The wrought-iron Gothic framework opened on soundless hinges.

“Wow, this is different,” her dad muttered before slowly creeping inside.

“Where’re the people?” Flint stared out the window in open-mouthed wonder as the enormous scope of the place revealed itself to them.

A giant tent took up the center of the massive square. It loomed like a giant, drawing the eye and making her muscles tense with something sort of like shock. A spiderweb network of smaller tents surrounded it.

There were a couple of rides, one that might have been a carousel, but instead of horses there were wolves, bats, and something that even resembled a serpentine dragon with its golden scales and sharp-toothed mouth open in a silent scream.

Flint could clearly make out the cages of a Ferris wheel and a spacecraft-looking shape. None of the lights were on, and more than that—apart from the carousel—they weren’t even colorful. Everything looked painted black. But instead of it being flat and dull, this black gleamed like obsidian in flame. There was a rich sparkle to the scene as their headlights bounced off the shapes.

Silver-bullet trailers sat at the fringes of the clearing—lights off, looking empty and devoid of life. Just like everything else around here.

Flint shivered as a terrible sense of foreboding crashed into her. “Dad, this place is—”

“Creepy, huh?” A frown furrowed his thick brows. “Yeah.”

He parked the truck in front of the only building that was lit, cutting the lights. His rabbit’s-foot key chain jangled as he bounced his foot on the floorboard.

Flint unlocked her seat belt, twisting to stare out the back window. “It doesn’t even look like it’s been run in a while. Where’re the customers? The performers?”

Scrubbing a hand down his smooth jaw, his brown-eyed stare was wide. “Should we go? Too much?”

He was asking. But she could hear the desire still trembling in his words. He’d leave if she asked him to, she knew that. “Are you sure your meeting was today? Maybe they said tomorrow?”

“No, I’m sure they said today.”

Shadows flexed and swayed between the trailers, a sudden stirring of movement that made her stomach drop to her knees. This place was just creepy. The circuses they’d worked at before were always obscenely colorful. As if they felt the need to scream, “We’re a circus!” This was dark, and dangerous, and mysterious.

Words that’d been running through her mind all day.

Flint jerked her head. “No, we should go look, Dad. There’s probably someone in there.” She pointed at the lit metal frame in front of them.

Something thrilling and exciting coursed through her veins. The unknown. There’d been a time in her not-too-distant past when she’d thrived on the heady rush of adrenaline. It was still in there, that desperate desire to skate the fine line between life and death, never knowing which side of the coin she’d land on.

Since Mom’s death, she’d tamped it down, but now the seedling of that need stirred a tendril of longing that gave her feet wings. She opened the door and hopped out.

Dad grinned, grabbed the keys, and followed her up the rickety wooden steps.

Pulse hammering, she looked around. The light shining like a beacon inside the quiet, humming office was the only sound of life around. Gripping the base of her skull as it tightened with a ball of tension, she knocked on the door.

Somewhere an owl hooted, and the wind whistled so loudly through the trees the branches shook.

Cold sweat dotted her upper lip. Suddenly her need to be reckless paled in comparison to the need to get back in the truck and drive as far and fast away as possible. This didn’t feel right.

A bird called and she stiffened as the quiet buzz of energy filled her limbs. Someone was watching her.

Them.

Flint glanced over her shoulder. Dad had his arms crossed, a sure sign he felt the same sense of unease she did.

Blackened trailer windows were the only things she saw. Like vacant eyes in silver faces.

“Do you think we should...”

Whatever her dad might have said died the moment the door swung open and the hottest man she’d ever seen stepped up to the door. He looked her dad’s age, late thirties. Early forties, maybe. His hair was dark and lightly dusted with shades of silvery gray at the corners. Stubble dotted his cheeks and jaw, forcing the eyes to the full lips and harsh planes of his razor-blade cheekbones. But it was his eyes that really captivated Flint—they were the bluest depths of an ocean, almost black, and at their centers, molten swirls of silver light danced within. Where had he gotten those contacts?

He was gorgeous.

And intimidating.

A long jagged scar cut a path from the corner of his right eye, narrowing down to a fine point at the edge of his lip.

He was also huge.

His body was as big as Cain’s. Bigger even. He wore a black shirt tapered and cut to his frame, revealing the impossibly thick expanse of burnished biceps.

“Holy sh—”

“Flint, we don’t talk like that,” her father hissed. And she knew he’d been standing in awe of the behemoth himself.

Whoever the man was, he commanded attention.

After brushing his right hand on his pants, her father held it out. “Hi, I’m Frank DeLuca. I called about the flier position that was available.”

The man stared at the hand for a while, and Flint shifted on the balls of her feet. Was he really just going to leave her dad hanging? Fire burned in the pit of her gut. Big or no, she had to bite her tongue just to keep from giving him a piece of her mind.

“Are you Adam?” Her father tried again, and she was proud that his voice didn’t waver despite his nervousness. She knew he was tense by the way he kept flicking the rabbit’s foot around and around on his finger.

Finally the giant nodded and clapped hands with her father, a powerful movement that nearly made her dad lose his balance. He wasn’t a big man—fliers normally weren’t. But he was strong and Flint couldn’t help but wince at the way Adam flung her dad around like he was little more than a gnat.

“Come on in.” His voice was cordial, deep, and smooth, and made Flint’s body rush with a flood of tingles.

What was in the water out here? First Cain, now Adam. Even Abel had a nice quality to his voice.

Adam was obviously trying to be less intimidating, choosing to sit behind his desk and gesturing for them to sit also. But Flint really just wanted to go. This was a super hugely bad idea.

Her dad smiled, taking a seat and dragging Flint down next to him. He tossed the advertisement from the paper onto the desk and proudly pointed to his chest, in full salesperson mode now.

“I’m the best catcher around. I’ve been doing it for over fifteen years. I know my way around the wires—rigging isn’t a problem. I can set up and take down...”

Flint stared at the dark teal carpet, toeing it with her foot and nibbling on the edge of her thumbnail. She should have told him not to talk too much, to take deep breaths during his sales pitch, but she hadn’t and her stomach kept sinking lower and lower as her father continued to nervously chatter.

She could feel Adam’s gaze on her face.

“Is that so?” Adam’s deep voice made her mouth dry.

Her father shut up, catching the condescending note behind the question just as she had. Flint squeezed her eyes shut. If it wasn’t so important to her dad, she’d leave and beg him to go too. They didn’t need this. They could get a job at a burger joint, just until they could find a more suitable situation. He didn’t need to put up with this. She placed her hand on her father’s arm and her heart clenched at the trembles vibrating up her fingertips.

He wanted this position desperately.

“Why is this place so dead?” She cursed herself for being all sorts of stupid.

She didn’t want to ruin it for her father, but Adam was being a douche.

Adam’s lips rolled into a slow grin, stealing the breath from her lungs. There was something about this man that wasn’t right. She felt it in every fiber of her soul. Something dark and dangerous emanated from him.

“This circus operates from dusk till dawn. We’re a midnight show.” He glanced at her. “Which means it’s mostly for grown-ups.” The snobbery was thick.

“Funny,” she almost snapped. Almost. It took every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep that comeback on her tongue. God, she was really coming to hate this backward hovel called Whispering Bluff.

Dad scrubbed his jaw. “So work starts—”

“At midnight. Yes.” Adam sat back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head. “Is that a problem?”

“Baby?” He looked at her. “I’d never get to see you. I couldn’t... it wouldn’t, be right. Right?”

He hardly saw her anyway. There was a time when they’d been close, really close. But times had changed. She gave him a weak smile. “I’m not a kid anymore.” She glared at Adam before turning back to her dad. “I can handle myself.”

He seemed relieved.

Still irritated, Flint pinned Adam with what she hoped was haughty disdain. His eyes sparkled, a cat-ate-the-canary grin on his face. She hated him already. Why would her father want to work here? For this guy?

“Where are all the people? I see the tents, but where’re the performers? Even if it starts at midnight, they should already be here, right?” she asked again, this time determined to get a proper answer.