Circus II
FMM
I'm lured by the sideshow spruikers, the caged menagerie of monkeys, and exotic birds. The smell of spun sugar and salted popcorn. I should walk toward the paddock gate. Toward home.
My mother will wonder where the mending money went, and I have no lie prepared that would satisfy her.
But my feet carry me deeper into the circus buzz. The Strong Man readying to lift impossible weights. Past the trapeze girls' wagons where sequins catch the failing light like trapped stars.
I am still warm where Madame Zora touched me.
Still tender. Still changed in ways I cannot name but feel pulsing in my blood with every step.
"Miss! Oh, miss!"
The voice cracks like a whip, high and strange, and I turn to find two men painted white from hairline to collar. Their faces are masks—cracked around the eyes and mouths where their real skin shows through, pink and sweating.
They wear baggy trousers held up by suspenders, striped shirts with the sleeves rolled, and battered bowlers perched on matted wigs.
"You dropped something," the taller one says, and produces from nowhere a red silk handkerchief that he makes vanish, then reappear from his ear.
"I didn't—"
"Your smile," the shorter one interrupts, stepping close enough that I smell the greasepaint and something underneath—tobacco, stale beer, the musk of men who live in wagons.
"You dropped your smile in the dust, miss. Shall we help you find it?"
They flank me without seeming to move, and suddenly I am walking between them, herded toward a smaller tent that sags at one corner like a tired eye. The canvas is painted with stars and crescent moons, all peeling, and from within comes the clatter of wooden objects being dropped and caught.
"We're jugglers," the tall one announces, holding the tent flap aside with a bow so deep his bowler falls off. He catches it on his foot and kicks it onto his head without straightening.
"The finest in the Southern Hemisphere."
"Finer than the jugglers in the Northern Hemisphere," the short one adds, pushing me gently through the opening.
"They juggle balls. We juggle—"
"Everything," the tall one finishes.
Inside, the tent smells of mildew and sawdust, with light filtering through the patched canvas in shafts that show dust motes dancing. A wooden chest sits against one wall, open to reveal clubs and balls and rings painted in bright, chipped colours.
In the centre, a low platform serves as a stage, barely a handspan off the ground.
"Show her the cascade," the short one says, and the tall one mounts the platform with surprising grace for such a lanky frame.
He produces three balls from his pockets—where did they come from? —and sends them looping through the air in a figure-eight pattern that seems to defy the space between his hands.
"Now you," the short one says to me, and before I can protest, he has lifted me onto the platform. My boots find the wood, unsteady, and I reach for the tall one's shoulder to steady myself.
"Juggling," he says, his voice dropping the theatrical pitch to something rougher, more real, "is about knowing what to catch."
His hands move to my chest—not the balls, but me, cupping my breasts through my dress, my corset, my camisole.
The pressure is sudden, shocking, and I gasp as he begins to knead, to lift, to move my flesh in rhythm with the phantom balls still dancing in the air before my eyes.
"One," he counts, his thumbs finding my nipples through the layers, pressing hard enough that I feel the jolt between my legs. "Two."
The short one has mounted the platform behind me. I feel his thighs against my skirts, his breath hot on my neck where the collar of my dress buttons tight. His hands slide around my waist, finding the row of buttons that fasten my dress from throat to hip.
"Costume change," he whispers, and begins to undo me.
My fingers clutch at the tall one's wrists, but I do not push him away.
My breasts feel swollen, heavy, the nipples aching points that throb in time with my heartbeat.
The short one's fingers work deftly—he has done this before, I realise, undone women's dresses in tents, in wagons, in the dark spaces between performances—and soon my dress hangs open, the corset laces visible beneath, the camisole's ribbon tie a pale bow between my breasts.
"Juggler's helper," the tall one says, and lifts my breasts in his hands, weighing them, pushing them together so the cleavage deepens above my corset's edge.
"Softest marshmallow puffs in the show."
The short one has my skirt now, gathering it, lifting it. His hands find my drawers, the split seam that opens between my legs. I feel the air on my thighs, the exposure, and I should be ashamed—I was taught to be ashamed—but Madame Zora's voice echoes in my head: What do you want?
I want this. The filth of it. The crude hands and the painted faces and the tent that smells of men, sawdust and sin.
"New trick," the short one says, and I feel something press against my cunt—not his fingers, not his cock, but something hard and smooth.
Wood. His truncheon, the polished club that hangs at every clown's belt, used for comic blows in their routines.
He pushes it against my slit, not entering, just rubbing, the rounded end finding my clit through the fabric of my drawers, pressing in steady circles that make my hips jerk forward, seeking more.
"Balance," the tall one instructs, and pinches my nipples hard enough that I cry out, the sound echoing in the canvas space.
"Hold the pose."
I am trembling, impaled on sensation—the wooden club grinding against my most sensitive place, the fingers twisting my nipples, the breath of two men hot on my skin.
My drawers are soaked, I know, the wetness spreading, and the short one laughs against my neck, a wet sound of appreciation.
"Eager pupil," he says, and pushes the truncheon harder, the fabric of my drawers stretching, the pressure building toward something I recognise from Madame Zora's tent—the edge, the precipice, the shape of my climax.
"Let's keep the pace dancing," says the shorter.
Holy Hell! They both drop their dacks.
They guide my fingers to their hanging nut sacks.
"Time to learn to juggle balls."
My fingers wrap silky pouches. Skin folds that are a strange mirror of my private own. Skin that slides between my fingers. Stretches and creases. Containing acorn-sized swellings.
I fondle. I rub. I fondle. I caress. I'm juggling nuts.
Before I grab their burgeoning meat truncheons, they are both slapping my cheeks.
Before I can create to my flushed cheeks and their heated meat on my cheeks. My mouth is double cramped with cock.
I dreamed of one. My mouth suddenly copes with two. One in each cheek.
Gug, gug, gagging, gug, gug.
Spit spreading everywhere. Saliva coating pecker.
Drool dripping down my chin.
That gug, gug, gurgling gagging sound.
My mouth overloaded with cock.
Yet I don't expel this man meat. I seek to retain, contain and embrace it.
"She's a natural," manages the tall one.
The shorter one just groans and groans.
I don't know if it's consideration, or just plain male preference.
I'm jerking off the short one with my hand.
I'm tossing off the tall one with my expanded gob.
Schlong in hand, schlong in mouth. Beyond a nineteen-year-old's wildest outrageous dream.
"Whoa! Hold on!" I yelp as I'm sandwiched between two clowns.
Frickin hell! One wants my pussy. The other intent on my arse.
This isn't how I pictured surrendering my virginity!
Before I'm double penetrated, the tent flap is torn open with a sound like ripping canvas, and a voice cracks through the humid air like a whip.
"Enough."
I blink, dazed, my body still arched toward pleasure that has been snatched away.
Okay, I was going to lose my virginity in a memorable double way.
Instead, two clowns were left waving the stiffest peckers imaginable.
In the doorway stands a man unlike any I have seen in the circus or out of it. He is tall, lean, dressed in black from throat to boot, with silver studs catching the light along his belt and cuffs. His hair is dark and swept back, and in his hands, he holds three knives, their blades catching the dying light from the tent's openings.
The Knife Thrower.
His eyes—grey, I think, though the light makes them seem almost colourless—move over the scene with a calculation that makes me feel more naked than I am. His gaze lingers on my naked form.
"Collecting strays again?" he asks the clowns, and his voice is soft, almost gentle, but with an edge that makes the short one step back from me.
"She wanted to learn juggling, Viktor," the tall one says, and there is something nervous in his tone now, the theatrical bravado stripped away.
"Juggling." The Knife Thrower turns the word over, examining it.
One of his knives disappears into his sleeve, then reappears in his other hand. "Is that what you call it?"
He steps into the tent, and the space seems to shrink around him. He moves to the platform, and before I can react, he has lifted me down—one arm around my waist, the other still holding two knives—and set me on my feet.
"Cover yourself," he says, but he does not turn away.
His eyes hold mine, grey and steady, and I feel the command in them more than the words.
"Unless you want to be the next act in my show."
"The next act?" My voice is rough, unused, my throat dries from gasping.
He smiles, and it is not kind, but it is not cruel either—it is the smile of a man who knows exactly how dangerous he is, and enjoys it.
"I throw knives," he says, and one blade appears at my throat, the flat of it cool against my racing pulse. "At people. While they stand against wooden boards. Sometimes—" the blade traces down, over my collarbone, between my breasts, stopping at my corset's edge "—I miss on purpose. Just a little. Just enough to remind them that death is always close."
I should be terrified. The knife is sharp; I can feel it, can feel the promise of pain in its edge. But my body is still humming from the clowns' hands, still hungry, still wet and wanting, and the danger in his eyes makes something coil tight in my belly, a recognition that this—this edge, this risk—is what Madame Zora meant when she spoke of hunger.
"You're shaking," the Knife Thrower observes, but he does not lower the blade. "Fear? Or something else? Let's find out."
Slung over his shoulder, he takes me through the circus precinct.
In my pocket, the reversed Lovers card presses against my hip, and I remember Madame Zora's word: Soon.