Master's Flame (Cirque Masters 3)

Because she’s sexy. Because she signed an agreement.

Because he led a bleak and colorless life, and he had wanted her to paint it rainbow-colored for a while.

She could get back to her artistic endeavors soon enough, and her other endeavors too, like sleeping with lots of men and throwing temper tantrums whenever life didn’t suit her. They only had one week left, seven days for him to wallow in his mastery and control. Had he changed her at all? He didn’t think so.

At last they made their way to their seats. More than a few heads turned. The Paris art community was large, but so was the Cirque, and people knew who he was. Their eyes passed from him to the pretty young thing beside him, and he knew their thoughts, not that he cared. Age was irrelevant when it came to attraction. He glanced over at Valentina, at her slim knees pressed together beneath the crepe skirt of her dress. Two hours ago he’d spread those knees and fucked her until he came, leaving her unsatisfied. He enjoyed, sometimes, making her smolder rather than bringing her to full flame. Without thought, he reached and slid a hand down between those knees. She let out a slow, small breath.

He could touch her wherever, whenever he wanted. He owned her, an intoxicating thought every time it presented itself. For now, he let her be; there were people all around them. When the lights went down, perhaps he’d caress her again, run a hand farther up her thigh, up to her hot, wet—

Orchestra, Michel. Not sex.

The musicians began to stream in from offstage, settling with their instruments into their carefully laid-out seats. They fussed with music binders and readjusted their stands, leaning to speak to one another in the casual, short check-ins of collaborative artists. Orchestra concerts weren’t so different from Cirque shows. In both cases, everyone had to work together and do their part. Michel was slated to review a few of the acts from Cirque Élémental in the morning, including Valentina’s revamped one. He believed he was perfectly capable of judging her without being influenced by their current relationship. He always put professionalism first...perhaps too much of the time.

Why did he feel like reaching over to hold her hand?

She leaned forward in her chair as the cacophony of tuning and warm-ups began. His spirits rose in anticipation, and she seemed affected too. You’re so similar to me, he thought. Too similar sometimes. The lights dimmed and she sat back again, her lips slightly parted. From the first chords of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major, Valentina was gripped.

He had known she would be. Mozart’s music wasn’t only for the ears, but for the soul. As the music soared and complex melodies played against each other, Valentina’s eyes grew wider and wider. Her hand gripped the armrest, then she looked over at him with an expression of wonder that made every frustration worthwhile. Forty-five minutes later, as the symphony concluded with booming brass and a sweeping crescendo of notes, she still stared in wonder.

The audience broke into applause and so did she, effusive, noisy clapping that was so very Valentina-like. He stifled a smile. “There’s more, you know,” he said when she finally piped down. “It’s only intermission.” He took her hand and propelled her out of her chair, and dragged her down the row, over knees and shoes, not caring.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Wherever I want, yes?” he said, turning back to her with a raised brow.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered. Perhaps she worried he would make her leave. He could be ornery and cruel but he wasn’t that cruel.

“Come this way,” he said when they reached the lobby. He knew the Paris Opera House like he knew his own headquarters. He led her down a corridor and past an usher he silenced with a quelling stare. Another turn, and then he ducked with her into an unused dressing room. He took her over by the far wall. On the other side, one could hear the faint sounds of instrument tuning and casual chatting. She looked up at him, awed.

“It’s them.”

Them. The musicians she saw as amazing, superhuman, when she herself could do things none of them could ever hope to do. “You ought to have gone to a concert before now,” he said, taking her face between his palms. “They have them everywhere.”

“I don’t know why—” she began, but he cut off her words when he pressed his lips to hers. He tasted her, shoving a hand into the mass of her hair, then curling his fingers into her nape. She wasn’t the only one affected by fine music and talent. Her little gasps were new notes, her moans a lovely melody, if a simple one. She arched into him and her hands crept up his front, flattening against the lapels of his suit.

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer, and kissed her harder because he couldn’t fuck her, because he couldn’t do all the things he wanted to do to her before the end of intermission. But later...

He thrust a rough hand between her legs, pushing aside her panties to stroke her pussy. She moaned louder, shuddering in his arms. On the other side of the wall, one of the musicians murmured something and another replied. From farther away, a shout of laughter, then the voice of the stage manager giving the five-minute warning.

“Arrête,” he muttered, and he was talking to himself, because if anyone was out of control at the moment, it was him. He pulled her skirt back down and tore his lips from hers, and shoved his finger in her mouth instead. “You’re all over me now, damn you. Lick it off.”

She sucked his finger with abandon. Dieu, not helping. He pulled it away with an audible “pop” and took her by the elbow. “It’s time to return to our seats. You want to see the rest of the concert, don’t you?”

For a moment, she hesitated, her eyes hazy with lust. But then a long, sweet note sounded from the adjacent room and she remembered where she was.

“Yes, please, Master. I want to see the rest of the concert.”

He could drag her home right now. He could use her to his heart’s content. He was the Master, after all, and she was his slave, existing only to serve his needs. Instead he led her back out to the main floor and to their seats in the third row, feeling hot and confused, and inordinately proud of his self-control.

Chapter Twelve: No

By the end of the concert, he had gone from feeling casually amorous to feeling crazed with desire. He steered her out to the pavement for the twenty minute stroll to his house. They walked along Rue Cambon and through the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, Valentina prattling the entire time about music and notes and how she was definitely going to learn the violin, or perhaps the drums, or perhaps the trumpet, or perhaps... She left off and leaned down to catch a stray leaf blowing by.

“No,” he said.

She straightened, dropping it back again. It was a lovely scarlet red, so out of place in the winter landscape. He relented. One more week.

“Go on,” he said. “You can use it on some self-portrait or other.”

She picked it up with a sheepish expression that made him feel ashamed he’d stopped her in the first place. “Do you have a pocket?” he asked when she looked down, holding the thing between her fingertips.

“No, Master.”

He held out a hand and she placed it in his palm. He slid it inside his coat pocket, then came up with something else...a makeup-smeared handkerchief. Sara’s. He couldn’t remember putting it in this coat but he supposed he had. He jammed it back down again, not before Valentina had seen it with her hyper-observant gaze.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Nothing that concerns you. A keepsake. Something I carry around to remind myself I’m human.”

“I need one of those.”

He looked over at her. “Do you?”

“Doesn’t everyone? It’s a good thing, to remember you’re human.”

She hadn’t the slightest idea what he’d meant, and anyway, she already had a keepsake, a thousand of them probably, one of which rested in his pocket, red and crisp and criss-crossed with tiny veins.

They turned onto Avenue Montaigne and down the side street to his house. “What have you drawn in

your sketchbook this week, ma mignonne?”

“Oh, nothing much,” she said, looking uncomfortable.

“Are there many pages left?”