Master's Flame (Cirque Masters 3)

“No, it’s not enough,” Jason said, talking over him. “I stood by and watched you rip your daughter’s heart out. That’s on me, letting that go on as long as it did. I won’t let you do it to Valentina. And to yourself, you fucking lunatic. You love her.”

“I think I get to decide who I love. That is, if I wanted to love anyone romantically, which I don’t. Do we have anything else to discuss?” Michel was sure his strident tones could be heard throughout the entire floor. At this point, he didn’t care. “Do you have anything else to say to me before you fucking get out of my office, you fucking prick?”

Jason stood, scowling at him with an expression that would have lesser men ducking back. “I do have one last thing to say to you. Someday you’re going to be sorry you sat by and watched fourteen guys gangbang the woman you love. You’re gonna really fucking hate yourself for it, and you’re going to deserve every fucking iota of angst you feel.” He went to the door, then turned back, poking a finger into the air. “You won’t ever forget these things you’re doing to her, Michel. And you know what? Neither will she.”

*** *** ***

The evenings were the hardest time for Valentina. Even with the noise and bustle of the dormitories all around her, she felt lonely. She read books, she worked on her art, and practiced French a little bit, not because Mr. Lemaitre spoke it, but because she lived in France now and it would be a good language to know. She had lots of friends to help her practice the language, people who had been so nice to her ever since...

Well, she didn’t want to think about that, but with all the gossip, it was hard to get away from it. People looked at her differently. Nicely, but differently. They were sorry for her. It sucked.

She ate ice cream when she felt really sad. She watched movies late into the night curled under a blanket on her couch, and sometimes she slept there because she felt too lazy—or lonely—to sleep in her bed.

She was having just such an evening when someone knocked at her door. She pulled the blanket up a little. She was already in her fuzzy pajamas, settled in for the night.

“Valentina?”

Another knock, sharper. Jason Beck. She considered not answering but he could probably hear the television and he’d just keep knocking. She switched the maudlin movie to a cartoon channel, then shuffled over in her slippers and opened her door. She kept it locked now that Mr. Lemaitre had had the deadbolt replaced, and her key.

“Were you sleeping?” he asked.

“No. Not yet.” She stood back to let him in.

He looked around at the mess that comprised her life, the mess that had only grown in scope during the past few days as she tried to forget about her broken heart.

“Wow,” he said quietly. The last time he’d been here, she’d had everything packed up so she could run away from the circus. So many things had happened since then. He walked over to her bird made of matchsticks and lightly touched one of the wings. He turned around and bumped into a bust made of plaster and colored tiles. He grabbed for it, barely rescuing it from a crash to the floor.

“I’m sorry.” He placed it back on its wobbly pedestal, a laptop table Valentina had scavenged from someone’s trash heap. “I hope I didn’t mess it up.”

She shrugged. “If you did, I’ll fix it. There’s more room over on the couch.”

Jason moved across her living room and sat, still looking wide-eyed around her apartment. Why did her life and her work always elicit that reaction in people? Because you’re a freak. Obviously.

She tried to think what normal people did when guests came over. “Can I get you something?” she asked, heading for the kitchen. “Some coffee? A glass of water?”

“Will you come sit with me? I want to talk to you about something.”

She stopped en route and turned back around. “I know what you want to talk about, and I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“I do. Come and sit down.”

Jason wasn’t her Master. He didn’t have the right to issue her orders, but he was her development director and she usually listened when he used that tone of voice. She came back to the couch and collapsed beside him with a sigh. She didn’t want to look at him, so she looked at the TV where a cartoon cat and mouse were embroiled in an endless chase. In her peripheral vision, she could see Jason’s hands tighten on his knees.

“So, I guess the first thing I want to know is, are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. I’ve been working, haven’t I?”

His gaze swept her apartment again, all the scraps and odds and ends, and stuff hanging from the ceiling. She was glad she’d left her painting of Jason and Sara at Mr. Lemaitre’s house. There was nowhere to hide it here and it would have ruined the surprise.

“You can work and still not be okay,” he persisted. “I heard about the Citadel incident second hand, but what I heard was enough to worry me.”

Valentina forced a brittle smile. “Now I’ve been involved in two Citadel incidents. I think it’s best if I stay away from that place.”

“What he did to you was wrong.”

The certainty in his voice ruffled her a little. “Who are you to judge our kink, Jason? How do you know I didn’t enjoy it?”

He gazed back at her, saying nothing. She felt angry, confused. Defensive. She didn’t like being depicted as a victim. She didn’t like that she probably was the victim in Friday night’s scenario.

“I liked it at first,” she said, lifting her chin. “I like when he makes me do vile, perverted stuff. I like being humiliated by him, and feeling used by him. That is my kink and I don’t want to be judged for it.”

Still, nothing from Jason, just that steady gaze. She looked down at her hands, then started tracing the panda faces on her pants. The rest of the words spilled out like a dirty confession.

“I did it because he asked me to, and with the first couple of guys, I enjoyed it. I’m not ashamed.” The fact that she was saying she wasn’t ashamed kind of gave away the fact that she was struggling with shame, but her coach didn’t call her out on it. “It turned me on, him watching me while other guys fucked me. The fact that he could make me do anything—even that. That he had that much control over me. It felt kind of hot.”

“I c

an see that side of it,” Jason said.

“But then...then it started to feel bad and I didn’t know how to stop it.” This was where the shame really ate at her. She had reached a point in the scene where she didn’t know what to do, where it had progressed past eroticism to something ugly, and she had felt powerless to make it beautiful again. “Everyone was watching and really...I didn’t...I didn’t want to mess up the scene. I didn’t want to challenge him in front of everyone. I wanted it to be exciting for everyone, and hot and sexy.” Her voice trailed off as Jason leaned forward, burying his face in his hands.

He looked up at her a moment later. “I want to fucking kill someone right now.”

“It was just...just a scene that went bad. It’s not this big disaster everyone is making it out to be. I could have stopped it, but I didn’t because...”

“Because you’re such a good slave,” he said in a derisive tone.

“No. Because I thought he’d be able to save the scene. Up until the end, I thought he’d figure out some way to make it better, and hotter, because he’s Le Maître and he’s really good at this stuff.”

“He usually is,” said Jason grudgingly. “But in this case he fucked up.”

Valentina hugged herself, feeling the same unsettled angst she felt every time she hashed over the events of that night. “Up until the end, I thought he’d do some magic to make it all mean something, to bring us closer together. To make it about some connection between us. But afterward, I realized there was no connection between us, that I’d been making it up in my head because that’s what I wanted. And that’s when I really felt devastated. That’s when I really felt embarrassed and ashamed.”

“A relationship with Michel Lemaitre is not for the faint of heart.” Jason reached over and stroked the back of her hand. She wondered if he could feel it trembling. “I told you once, at the very start of all this, that it was a game. That it was supposed to be fun. Do you remember?”