The Fortune Teller's Daughter (22 page)

“What do you want?” My voice came out sharper than I
meant, all too aware of the hardness of his body pressing into mine.

“Tell me you’re lying,” he begged softly against my
hair. “Tell me it’s not fine. Tell me you can’t sleep, that you lay awake
through the same hours as I do. Tell me you’re lying or I’ll go mad. Tell me
it’ll never be him. Tell me. Now.” He exhaled, desperate fingers holding me
surely to his body. I closed my eyes and sank willingly into his arms and he
folded around me, brought his warmth and strength and we stood there for a long
time not answering or questioning. It was pleasure. Pure, untempered pleasure
to be held by him.

Like fate, but not the silly kind. Not the
meant to
be
kind. The kind that broke even the strongest people violently, even as
they were unwilling to let go.

Before that could happen, I withdrew from him with a
shove. “That’s not fair. You have no right to ask that of me. If you won’t kiss
me, then someone else…”

The Magician caught my arm and spun me towards him.
Before I could fight loose he had my shoulders against the side of a wagon,
pinned by the cage of his arms.

“No one else,” he exhaled, shaking, his eyes gunmetal
aggression and unrestrained want. It stopped my words, made them lose meaning
and left me helpless in his grasp. Eli caught my face in one large hand,
fingers threaded into my hair, and dragged my mouth to meet his.

His mouth destroyed me.

His kissed me hard, all animal and hunger and
aggression both frightening and exhilarating. The sharp of his teeth grazed my
lips, pushed them open to accept his tongue and breath and furious little
growls as he claimed me. My first hesitation gave way to need and my hands
found his chest, slid across the stretch of his suspenders and up across the
back of his neck.

The Magician stole my breath, caught one hand under
the curve of my buttocks and lifted and pinned in one smooth movement. His hips
ground me against the rough wagon, fit perfectly between my legs. He palmed my
thigh, dug his fingers in for grip.

We struggled for control, my need and his want, his
power and my hunger. His tongue pushed mine back into my mouth and licked and
sucked possessively. His fingers in my hair tightened to hold me still and I
obeyed.

Giving in, giving control, lowering into his arms gave
me the euphoric rush I’d always dreamed of but never had. Softening to his
clawing, grasping hands, his hard, rough body sent waves of dizziness and
pleasure into my core where it heated and swelled.

His desperation ebbed but his power didn’t lessen as
he kissed me and kissed me and kissed me in the darkness.

__________________

Eli

That night, they did not sleep.

The memory of her mouth yielding to his, soft and
giving as water, kept his thoughts spinning.

Eli had her in his bed, one of his shirts hiding half
her body from him, the rest open to his wandering touch. He leaned over her,
his head propped in one hand, the other drawing shapes across her right thigh.
Everything about her was supple, plump, and touchable. He liked her soft,
something delicate but unbreakable in a way he hadn’t known women could be. He
craved every one of her freckles, patterns of copper on her arms, her thighs,
her pert little nose. He kissed them when he thought he could get away with it,
eliciting laughter, as sweet as candy in his dark bedroom. He couldn’t remember
the last time he’d had a girl laughing in his bed, stretched out and not naked
and not nameless.

He watched her face, her mouth in particular. There
was something hypnotizing about watching her breathe. Something erotic. She
explored his tattoos, tapped a fingernail against the snake on his left bicep.
It wrapped around twice and squeezed to hold a tarot card,
The Magician
,
in its coils.

“I recognize this deck,” she murmured as she traced
the top hat. His skin jumped with the sensation of her caress. “My mother had
one like it.”

“It’s from the carnival’s private deck.”

Her eyes widened a fraction, so green he could have
believed they were lit from within. “Is this you?”

The Magician smiled and touched a kiss to the corner
of her eye. He could feel her skin crinkle there in barely suppressed laughter.
She seemed particularly amused whenever he kissed her someplace odd.

“Perhaps. Depending on the reading I suppose. That’s not
really my kind of magic.”

“There are different kinds? Really?”

“Many different.”

“The Page of Cups is my card,” she confided. “
It
appeared in all my readings. She’d hold it up and say,
Look at her,
Serafine. Her cup is full of nothing but possibilities. She can have anything
she wants. She will never want for love
.” For a moment sadness filled her
eyes, but it was only there for a moment before she locked it away where she
could protect it with sarcasm and quick wit. Before he lost her to memories, he
kissed her and brought her back to him.

With her
eyes on him, he ran his fingers across his arm, covering the tattoo, and when
he pulled away The Magician had become the Page of Cups. A little gasp of
surprise came to her lips and she reached out to touch it, to see if it was an
illusion.

She curled
up and kissed his arm, her soft, wet mouth leaving a trail of kisses down his
bicep.

Distracted by the hem of her shirt, he watched as he
pulled the shirt up her body to reveal her full thighs and plain, but cute blue
underwear. He kept raising it until her stomach was bared to him, pale and
spattered with more freckles. Like stars painted on her skin.

“Don’t look,” she pleaded softly and tried to push her
shirt down. He caught her wrist and pinned it to the mattress. Her
self-consciousness made him smile - though around her those came easier every
day. His mouth hurt from the number of smiles she’d dragged out of him that
night.

“As if I could keep myself from it. I like to look at
you.” He caressed his hand down the slight swell of her belly and across the
lacy band of her panties. “I like to touch you, even if I should stop. Even if
it’s not right, this.”

Sera frowned and started to pull back but he stopped
her with a kiss. She sighed into his mouth.

“I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care if it’s a
thousand ways wrong. But I am a self-destructive fool.” He grazed his thumb
down the center of her stomach to her belly button, then spelled his name over
her skin with his fingertip. “You’re young, still practically a girl. I haven’t
been young for a very long time. Don’t argue. For once.” He held up a hand to
silence her already argumentative mouth. “With you in my bed, I sleep. For the
first time in twenty-two years, I sleep and I have beautiful dreams, dreams I
could hardly describe to you. You should be home, somewhere warm, in your own
bed, somewhere safe. Instead I want you in my bed, where you are anything but.”

He searched for words that seemed to elude him. He
struggled, clasping and unclasping his grip on her.

Hesitantly she touched his face, cautious and curious
and sweet. She stroked the shape of his jaw, all the way to his mouth. He
kissed her offered fingertips, each of them, one after another, until they’d
all been lavished in his affections. She smiled and drew her kissed fingers
across his brow, releasing the tension there.

As if by magic.

“I think time is the most irrelevant of our problems.”

“Ok.” He turned serious and took her hand in his,
knowing the next part would hurt her. “I take women to my bed. Often. Plenty.”
He tightened his grip on her hand when she tried to pull away, her eyes
crinkling with hurt. “But I don’t
want
them there. They pass the nights
I can’t sleep.”

“Stop.” She inhaled and hugged herself with her free
arm. “I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. We just sleep.”

He stayed her retreat with a skeptical glance. “I feel
your thoughts. I know that’s not all we do.” He kissed her wrist, right where
her pulse beat out his name. “I wish you could hear mine…well,” he paused.
“Maybe it’s better that you don’t.”

“What have I been thinking?” Her hesitation gave way
to a smile, a teasing, coy shape he wanted to cover with his mouth and lick
speechless. “Tell me what you’ve heard in my head.”

He growled and took a kiss from her mouth, surprising
her so he had easy access to her parted lips. He licked at her teeth and
stroked the tip of her tongue with his. She mewled kittenishly, giving up all
pretense of her tough exterior.

“I heard you tonight,” he whispered against her cool
skin. “You watched the show, watched Daniel,” he could hardly get the name out
without grimacing, “dominate the girls on stage for a room full of hungry,
powerful men. I could feel you thinking about it, picturing yourself there. You
liked what you saw.”

She shivered and clung to him. “Very much. But I
wasn’t thinking about Daniel.”

Her admission pierced right through him, through his
heart to his groin and the erection she inspired.

Eli hesitated for only a moment before giving into his
basest, most wicked desires of her. He captured her wrists and hauled his body
on top of hers. He pushed open her thighs with his knee, spread them and tucked
her knees up high to her waist and held her still, contorted and pinned beneath
his weight. He could feel her crushed, panting for breath, immobilized by the
size of him.

“Me,” he exhaled and towered over her upturned face.
Her wide, lovely green eyes took him all in, locked on his, awaiting orders.
“Pretty girl, sassy and mouthy and bossy and pushy girl, just waiting for a man
like me to take control of her. Is that what you want?”

She gasped as he lowered his hips between her legs,
too much clothing keeping them separate, but the sensation of his thickness
pushing into her softest, sweetest spot almost destroyed his control. He shuddered
over her and she writhed, stretched, and tested the tiny bit of space she was
allotted.

“Not a man
like
you,” she panted. “Just you.
Only you.”

“Mine.” He lowered himself to lie on top of her. He
kissed her open, panting mouth. Tiny little sounds escaped her throat as he
took her kiss and pushed her into her pillow. He withdrew enough for her to
suck in a lungful of his air. “Say it, Serafine. Promise it to me.”

“Yours.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and dug
her fingers into his shoulders.

As if she were afraid of falling.

His mouth turned up against her ear. He inhaled her
honey and cinnamon scent. Rich and dusted with vanilla sugar. “I think you’ve
been mine since that first night on my stage.”

She hesitated a long time, warring over some important
decision. Finally she lifted her green eyes to meet his and he tightened his
hold on her. The tip of her tongue snaked across her lips, wetting them, making
them shiny and inviting in the moonlight.

“You’re not going to believe me. I hardly believe me,”
she said, shivering against his body. “But I think I’ve been waiting a long
time for you to find me.”

Her admission weakened him. He’d never, not in the
long, long span of his life did he think he’d be for any woman. Take them,
pleasure them, enjoy his own pleasure, yes. They were perfect for that. But
he’d never needed one the way he needed this one. He’d never thought,
mine
,
with such possessive, jealous need as he did when he gazed at his lion-haired
lovely. She may not have had the flair and painted beauty of so many of the
show girls who threw themselves at his feet every night. It was her simple,
unique prettiness that made her so irresistible. There was no one else like her
in the whole carnival, none like her in the audiences, or the cities he’d
lived. In the world. He held a rare thing in his hands and she was
his
.

Eli traced his hand up her arm, her soft, supple flesh
to thread with her fingers. He held her gaze so that she would understand his
full meaning.

“Open your legs.”

She obeyed without hesitation and he snaked his free
hand between them to find the cotton triangle guarding her heat. He stroked
her. Long, deep strokes from the front of her panties, between her legs and
behind. Her eyes darkened, lost their focus, and she pressed into his hand
suddenly delirious.

“Good girl.” He released her hand and leaned back far
enough to free her shirt from his weight. “Take it off. I want to see if your
freckles really are everywhere.”

She smiled, a feverish, excitement brightening her
face. She squirmed and got the shirt over her head and tossed it beyond his
closed curtains.

And then, she was bared to him.

Seeing her sucked the air out of his lungs and left
him momentarily drowning in her. Her skin was so pale, as pale as cold milk,
warmed by the copper dots that patterned the tops of her full, heavy breasts
but left their underside blemish free. Everything soft and curvaceous about her
body thrilled him. He wanted to grab hold of her and stroke her and dig his
fingers into her tender skin. He wondered if she’d let him tie her to his bed,
leave rope marks against this perfect skin. If she’d really enjoy being
dominated as much as she dreamed about it.