Cirque Du Minuit (Cirque Masters 1)

“I dunno, Wayne. Does that get you hot?” she asked, wiping her mouth.

“You fucking bitch!” he groaned. “How fucking dare you?”

“No, how fucking dare you, you asshole? You don’t have a clue what I want. What I like. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Kelsey opened the refrigerator door again and located the pineapple. She momentarily considered flinging it at his head, but then decided it would be a waste of good pineapple. If she couldn’t have Licky Stix...

She took the pineapple upstairs and shut herself in her room, still a little shaky and freaked out. She tried not to believe the things Wayne had said about Theo, since her former friend obviously had greater issues, but… Was it true that Theo talked smack about her? After all she’d given him? Part of her wanted to deny it, but part of her knew he could be heartless and cruel. And had she really changed that much since Laguna Hills? So much for the worse?

No, she wasn’t worse. Just different.

A moment later, she heard a knock on her door. She stayed where she was. If it was Wayne, she wouldn’t open it. If it was Theo, he’d walk right in, which he did a second later. “What’s the matter?” he asked, noticing the woebegone expression on her face.

“Wayne. He’s a total asshole.”

“I’ve told you this forty-five times before. Now you finally realize?”

“It’s not funny. I mean, we really fought. We’re not going to be friends anymore.”

“He was never your friend. I told you.”

“Just shut up.”

“It’s for the best. Just imagine, if you ended up together, you would have these children…so blond, so pale…they would practically be invisible. You would have to put bells on them.”

Kelsey didn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. She didn’t know why her friendship with Wayne had gone so wrong...and then there was her relationship with Theo. He was scarfing her pineapple right out of the bowl in her hand.

“Have some pineapple, Theo.”

“Thanks. I am.” He sat down on the bed beside her. She looked up at him, searching his face. Do you really talk bad about me when I’m not around?

“What is it?” he asked, sobering. “Did you like him so much?”

“No, I didn’t like him that much,” she admitted. “Not really.” Not the way I like you. Kelsey sighed and stretched, resting her head on his shoulder. “So...” So how do you feel about me? What’s going on with us? Do you feel anything for me, besides professional interest and lust? “So, did you need something? Or did you just want to finish off my fruit?”

Theo popped the last piece of her pineapple into his mouth. “Do you believe?” He gazed at her with his gypsy dark eyes. “Do you believe the things Wayne says about me?”

“What things?” For a moment she thought he’d overheard their conversation in the kitchen, but then she realized he was talking about the gossip Wayne spread around concerning Minya’s death. She and Theo had never talked about the cut safety cable, not openly, not even after he’d gone to Paris those two days. His steady stare pinned her, and she was too cowardly to ask any of the questions she wanted to. Instead she shrugged. “Well, I thought that had all been sorted out.”

Theo pursed his lips and looked away. “The investigation is over. But still, people talk. Do you believe what he says? Some people believe it.”

“How do you know?”

“The way they look at me. There are some, even here, who won’t say my name. They won’t talk to me or meet my eyes.”

Kelsey looked down at her empty bowl. “Does that bother you?”

“It only bothers me what you think. If you believe. Or...if you doubt.”

Kelsey sighed. She didn’t exactly doubt him, but she knew she didn’t know everything about that night. There was some secret, some reserve in his eyes whenever they came anywhere near the subject. Like right now.

But that didn’t mean guilt. No. He couldn’t have had anything to do with her death. It was an accident. Sometimes she had horrible visions of Theo in a Chinese prison, Theo behind bars. Theo, would could fly so beautifully, trapped in a tiny cell.

“I know you didn’t do anything,” she said. “You never would have done anything to intentionally hurt her.”

He turned to her with a kind of violence. “I hurt her many times. Don’t you know--” He made a frustrated, distraught sound. “It doesn’t matter.” He took her bowl and set it aside, seeming to search for calm.

She wanted to plead with him for answers, but she was afraid of what she might hear. She stared at his profile, his hard jaw. She wanted to give him softness, comfort. “May I serve you, Master?” she whispered.

“Why do you think I’m here?” He pressed her down to the bed and gave her one of his hot gypsy kisses, the ones that left her gasping and feeling dirty. She clung to his muscular shoulders, burying her fingers in his hair. She didn’t want to let him go. She felt him fumbling between them. He yanked down her pants, freed his cock and slid it into her with a ragged sigh. Through all this, he never stopped kissing her. There were just his lips and his hands and his hugeness filling her. When he was done with her, gone for good, what could ever replace such a presence? Such a force?

Theo... She didn’t realize she was saying his name out loud until he looked down at her. It was a gaze of such mystery, such intensity. He would never let her in; she realized that now. But she would treasure what she had, what he gave her. Somehow she understood he gave her more than he’d ever given anyone else. They climaxed together in a shuddering press of bodies. He kissed her again, more tenderly, licking her lips before he leaned away.

“That’s what I came for,” he said. “Not pineapple.”

Kelsey smiled and relaxed in the circle of his arms, enjoying these moments of closeness. She wished he wasn’t always moving away from her, just out of her reach, as soon as they got out of bed. She wished she had no doubt, no questions. “You know what? I trust you, Theo,” she said, more to convince herself than anything else. “I believe in you, no matter what other people think.”

“Well, that makes you a stupid girl,” he said quietly, pulling her closer and resting his chin against her hair.

*** *** ***

Stupid girl. Stupid girl.

Kelsey sat in the chairs at the theater watching the other acts. Theo was a few rows down, talking to a friend. What was he saying? Something about her?

She didn’t know why she let Wayne’s words poison her psyche so much. But they had. She looked at all the other performers with suspicion now. She saw judgment in a glance, derision in what was probably a harmless smile. She noticed how some of them really did avoid Theo. How some of them avoided her.

Wayne avoided her. He was with his own friends near the edge of the stage. When his group of acrobats went on to do their act, Kelsey watched with grudging admiration. They really were good--powerful, dramatic, entertaining. Wayne was good. He’d always been good, always talented. How she’d crushed on him those many years ago. Why did she have to grow up and face reality in all its brutal truth? Wayne had never noticed her then, and he’d only seen her as a conquest now. All his friendly solicitousness was a lie.

Theo had told her, but she hadn’t believed.

She didn’t know what to believe now. It was a terrible place to be. She told herself she just had to concentrate on work. Do her job. She would perform, and she’d exchange power with Theo. She’d go to the Citadel, because that was truth, raw and unfettered. Michel Lemaitre lived truthfully. With him, you knew where you stood because he told you, point blank. In his back room at the Citadel, he showed you. Truth.

“Kels. Come.”

Kelsey looked up to see Theo beckoning. Their part was coming up. Since their act was last, everyone else was done. They were all sitting and watching. Kelsey found it excruciating in her newfound paranoia. Theo’s friend stared at her as she approached the stage, while Wayne pointedly avoided eye contact. One of the Chinese contortionists frowned

and turned away too, while another gave her an openly vicious look. Two women jugglers whispered behind their hands.

Kelsey looked at Theo. It only mattered what he thought. She loved their act, loved flying with him. She loved him. For now, it had to be enough.

They climbed the silks together, following the choreography. As usual, Guy stood near the stage calling out directions on his loudspeaker, mostly stuff they already knew. Theo had told her that in time the silks would feel like part of her body, the act like part of her bones. It was true. Each arch, each grasp unfolded like clockwork for her. Theo was doing his own thing, both of them telling their tale six stories above the floor.

But suddenly something felt wrong. Some tension was missing. Kelsey gripped her silk, but it was slipping, sliding, far too loose. A scream caught in her throat. She was still swinging, but the silk was ripping away under her weight. She looked at Theo in panic, confused. He looked back with an expression of horror. In the seconds it took her to digest all this, she started to fall. It didn’t make any sense. He had told her, long ago, “Silks don’t rip. Ever.”

She clutched at the fabric, trying to climb but finding no foothold. Time seemed to stand still. She heard shouts and screams, and her own rasping breath, her pounding pulse in her ears. Her body flipped around, out of control. She couldn’t even identify her position in space, a situation that terrified her as a gymnast, but terrified her even more, now, so far off the ground.

Go limp. Don’t fall head first. She had no idea how she would land. The silks were supposed to be her safety line. He’d told her that. He’d made her think this was safe.