Master's Flame (Cirque Masters 3)

“Oh. By serving you...you mean...”

“Giving me pleasure, satisfying my whims. Taking my cock in your holes. A job you were born to do, don’t you think?” He looked at his watch, cool and distant again. She scrambled out of the car and tried to match his long strides as they walked to her door.

“My place is kind of a mess,” she warned him at the threshold.

“I expected it to be.”

She turned the knob. He frowned as she pushed it open.

“No key? You don’t lock your door, Valentina?”

“I needed the key for something else. I have nothing valuable to steal, anyway.”

He made an annoyed sound and insisted on entering ahead of her to check things out. It was a kind, protective thing for him to do, but she never locked her door and thus far, no intruders had ever come in.

While he prowled her small living room, she turned on the light, embarrassed by the clutter. All her mess was here and there...her clothes and sketches and silly things she put together for fun. She had boxes of scraps and tools on the table, and worst of all, a half-completed likeness of Mr. Lemaitre. She furtively placed the red cellophane into a box with other bits of things.

“You see,” she said when he turned to her. “Nothing is disturbed. I needed the key for that.”

She pointed to a collage she was working on, a portrait of Jason Beck constructed of bottlecap eyes for his hardness and brown and gold leaves for his hair. She used papier-mâché to create the form of him, and the key to represent his heart. Mr. Lemaitre stared at it hard.

“I can get another key,” she said, following his gaze. “Or maybe find another one and take that one off.”

“What is it?” His voice sounded sharp. “Explain it to me.”

She walked closer to her work. She’d been putting it together for weeks now. “It’s Jason. You see, the eyes and the hair...”

His lips twitched. “The hair is a good likeness.”

“I collected the leaves in the fall.”

“Naturally.” He reached out as if to touch it, but he didn’t. “This fascinates me. I like it, but at the same time I find it disturbing.” He turned to her with a reproachful glare. “You never told me you were an artist.”

“Oh, I’m not an artist. I only do this for fun.”

He backed up and bumped into a bird made of matchbooks. It fluttered over his shoulder until he reached to make the wings still. “How long have you been doing this…for fun?” he asked.

He tilted his head to read the matchbooks. She’d collected them from all over Italy, traveling with her family’s circus. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ve always liked to take things that feel special to me and make them into something new. It’s a way of keeping memories.”

“But these leaves and paper scraps, my dear, they will not last forever.” He crept around her small apartment, being careful not to jostle her things, even though he was much bigger than she was and she jostled them all the time. He stopped at a sculpture of a woman she’d made of slender branches, a dancer she’d seen at the Cirque. He scrutinized the wood, tracing a finger over the body’s delicate joints. “Why make art this way? These sticks are weak and breakable.”

“I know,” she said sadly. “It doesn’t stay.”

“It’s a shame. It’s beautiful work.”

“Well, beauty doesn’t stay either.”

He straightened and turned to her, thinking. Considering. She didn’t understand what puzzled him. If anyone should know about the vagaries of art and creativity, it would be him. Like a circus act, the things she made were delicate and ephemeral. Laden with meaning and sometimes difficult to process. She could tell he didn’t know the work on the table was him. It was large and bold, obviously made in his likeness, but so often people didn’t see what they looked like through other people’s eyes.

Ah, well. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t nearly finished.

His attention caught on her self-portrait, a canvas in mixed media. Eyes, nose, mouth, strong chin and heart shaped face. Hair of ribbon and paper and candy, because it had been the precise color and shape she needed. Pretty soon the ants would come.

“That’s you,” he said, gesturing to it. He recognized her when he couldn’t recognize himself. Strange. She nodded, reaching without thought into the box with the paper scraps. She fished out the scrap of red cellophane and held it up to the outline of the hair.

“This belongs here,” she said. “I will do it later.”

He moved closer, scrutinizing the mish-mash of discovered materials, then looked over at her with an expression that spoke of resignation. “Alors,” he said. “What a remarkable creature you are.”

She put the scrap back on the table, watching the sparkles catch the light. “Is that a good or a bad thing, to be a remarkable creature?”

“It’s very bad for me.”

She looked up at him, then stepped back from the intensity of his gaze. He caught her with his hand and drew her close again. He felt so solid, so warm and bracing, the scent of his cologne a subtle tease. He stared down at her mouth as she studied his face. How intent he looked, how tragic and stern. She couldn’t tell if he was pleased or angry as he wound his fingers in her hair and pressed his lips to hers.

His kiss felt like a storm, like something dangerous. He muttered in the middle of it, then took her lips again, holding and twisting her hair hard. His other hand pressed into her back, hurting her, but she didn’t care. She wished this could go on forever, this violent embrace, but then it ended as abruptly as it had begun and he pulled away from her.

“I have meetings,” he said.

She gazed at him, limp and out of breath. He turned from her, turned in a full circle, then back again. He took her wrist and shook it. “I have meetings, did you hear me? We’ll have time for this later. Go pack up your things.”

*** *** ***

Aside from practical, necessary items—work clothes, toiletries, etcetera—Michel allowed her only one set of drawing pencils and one sketchbook. Thirty days, he told himself. It was only thirty days.

But long after he left her in the care of his houseboy and returned to work, that single sketchbook stayed on his mind. Before today, he’d had no idea she was an artist. A performance artist, yes. A visual artist, no. He stared into space, second-guessing himself. Would he harm her, ta

king away her freedom to create? Keeping her in a cage for thirty days with only one method to vent her artistic impulses? Was he doing it only to see what happened? Whether she would crack, or break somehow? Was he experimenting with her?

He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know.

Twice, he zoned out in the middle of meetings with the artistic heads of Cirque Élémental. Bad behavior, and people noticed, although no one said anything. Jason gave him irritated looks. Michel stared back at the man, imagining a key where his heart was.

Ah, well. He’d pay better attention once he’d worked through the thoughts in his head. He had things to consider, choices to weigh. He enjoyed mulling over conundrums and puzzles, and things that couldn’t be explained.

Like her.

A few hours ago, in her cluttered, messy apartment, he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her in a way he’d never kissed any other slave. He’d breathed her in like a drug, all his senses in overload. He had curled his hands in her hair and pressed her against him and even whispered ma chérie against her cheek. In truth, he’d barely stopped himself from taking her on the floor.

Not even twenty-four hours in, and he’d already made his second serious mistake. The first mistake had been in the white room, when he’d fallen on her and fucked her without the least bit of control over his impulses. He was disgusted with himself. He’d shaken it off, determined that would be his last weak act as her Master, and then he’d followed it up with the kiss of the ages beside her ridiculous self-portrait.

Not ridiculous. Fascinating, and half made of candy.

He might have withstood the temptation if it was only her beauty and her physical talent that attracted him. He knew scores of people who were beautiful and physically talented. He was rich in that currency, perhaps too rich. He might have withstood her sensuality and bubbly personality, her daring. He loved risk-takers, but even that he might have dismissed as a dearth of common sense.