Circus VI
FF
I take Madame Zora's hand, and her grip is firm for her age, the stones of her rings pressing into my palm.
"A flying bird needs plumage. Let the Tattooed Lady dress you as she sees fit."
I clutch only the camisole, useless, against my front as we walk.
We pass wagons where canvas flaps stir in the breeze, revealing glimpses of lives in motion—a woman in a corset lacing another's stays, a man with greasepaint still smeared across his jaw shaving at a small mirror. The smell of coffee and wood smoke mingles with the animal scent of the lions pacing in their cage.
I keep my eyes on Madame Zora's back, on the sway of her peacock shawl, and try not to think about how every step shifts the ache between my legs, how the cool air touches places that have only known heat and pressure.
The Tattooed Lady's wagon sits apart from the others, painted a deep crimson that has faded to rust in places, with curtains of beaded strings hanging in the doorway that click and whisper as we approach.
Madame Zora does not knock. She pushes through the beads, and I follow, the camisole still crushed against my breasts, into warmth and the scent of sandalwood and an overload of male musk.
"Zora." The voice comes from the shadows, rich and amused.
"You bring me a fledgling."
The woman who emerges into the lamplight makes me stop breathing. She is perhaps thirty-five, her dark hair pinned up in elaborate coils that reveal the full canvas of her skin.
And it is canvas—every visible inch of her is marked with ink. Snakes coil around her arms, their scales rendered in such detail I expect to see them pulse. A phoenix spreads across her chest, its wings cupping breasts that are heavy and natural, the nipples dark and pierced with small gold rings. Lower, across her belly, I see figures intertwined in sex acts I cannot name but recognise in the arch of backs, the curve of rude splayed limbs.
She wears only a silk wrap tied low on her hips, and when she moves, the fabric shifts to reveal more ink—a mermaid's tail curling around her thigh, words in languages I cannot read tracing the muscle of her calf.
"Matilda," Madame Zora says, her hand between my shoulder blades, pushing me forward.
"She has known the flight of women and the flight of flesh. Now she must be prepared for the Ring Master."
The Tattooed Lady—she gives no other name—circles me, and I feel her gaze like touch, cataloguing the marks Goliath left on my thighs, the wildness of my hair, the camisole I still clutch like modesty itself.
She stops behind me, and I feel her breath on my neck, warm and smelling of cloves.
"Drop it," she murmurs, and her hand closes over mine on the camisole, guiding it down, away, until I stand naked before her as I stood before the sisters, before Goliath, before the watching crowd.
"Good. You learn quickly."
She takes my hand—her own is soft—and leads me to a low pallet covered in velvet the colour of washed-out blood. A basin of steaming water sits nearby, and I see the glint of implements I do not recognise, the curve of something leather and polished.
"Lie down," she says, and her voice has dropped, become something else, a tone that reaches into my belly and pulls.
"On your stomach first. We begin with the back."
I obey, stretching myself across the velvet, and it is cool against my nipples, my cheek, my spread palms. The Tattooed Lady moves to the basin, and I hear the splash of water, the ring of metal against ceramic. When she returns, her hands are warm and wet, and she begins at my shoulders, kneading the tension from muscles I did not know I held clenched.
Her thumbs find the base of my skull, and I groan, the sound escaping before I can catch it. She laughs, low and pleased. "You carry the world here," she says, working her way down my spine, pressing into each vertebra until I feel liquid, boneless.
"The sisters taught you to fly, yes? But flying requires surrender. You must learn to give your weight to the air, to trust that it will hold you."
Her hands reach my lower back, and she pauses, pouring more warm oil from a small glass bottle. The scent of jasmine rises, mixing with the sandalwood, and then her breasts—those heavy, inked weights—press against my skin as she leans over me, using her whole body to work the oil into my flesh.
Her huge boobs slide over my back. They are milk jugs. No watermelons. The size that wins prizes at country shows.
I gasp. The sensation is unlike anything I have known—the softness of her, the weight, the way her nipple rings press cool and hard against my shoulder blade before she shifts.
She moves down my body in waves, breasts gliding over my ribs, the small of my back, and I am making sounds I do not recognise, my hips pressing helplessly into the velvet.
"Oohh, mmm, mmm," I coo.
"You like this," she observes, not asking, and her hands follow where her breasts have been, kneading my buttocks with firm, deliberate pressure.
"The sisters are artists of the air. I am an artist of the flesh. Every inch of you is a story waiting to be told, Matilda. Every inch must be prepared."
Her breasts meet my butt cheeks. Jiggle meets wobble. Boob bounce melds into buttock flounce and jounce. Softness paired. Softness cushioning into giving flesh. Her nipple pushed into my cheek ravine.
"Oooh, mmm, that's nice," my cushy release.
Slick oiled breasts sliding over polished oiled butt cheeks.
She spreads my cheeks, and I feel the cool air on places no one has seen, the vulnerability of it making me tremble. But her touch is matter-of-fact, professional, as she works oil into the cleft of me, around the tight ring of muscle that still aches from Goliath's thickness.
I flinch, expecting pain, but she only hums, massaging in circles, pressing until I feel myself soften, open, a heat building that has nothing to do with shame.
"Turn over," she commands, and I do, rolling onto my back, and now her breasts hang above me, the phoenix seeming to breathe as she moves, its wings spreading as she leans down to pour oil across my collarbone.
"The front tells a different story."
She begins at my throat, her thumbs pressing into the hollow above my breastbone, and I arch into her touch, into the weight of her breasts as they drag down my chest, over my own smaller, tighter curves.
She captures my nipples between her fingers, rolling them until they ache, until I am panting, my hips lifting from the velvet in silent plea.
"Aahh! Aahh! Yes! Yes!"
"Patience," she murmurs, but she is smiling, the inked snakes on her arms seeming to writhe as she works her way down my ribs, my belly, her breasts leaving trails of oil and heat.
Her fingers hit where I am most desperate, most wet. But the unexpected is when she spits on her nipple and guides her erect, pebbled hardness directly into my folds.
"Shheez! Uuh! Uhh! Yes! Oooh! Yes. Aahh! Aahh!"
She nipple fucks me!
Her nipple enters my centre. Firm and steady.
Mini vertical insistence meeting my sensitive core leaking fem-slick.
She rubs her teat and the broad marshmallow gentleness of her huge melon from my opening's base to lift my cowl and expose my clit.
Her nipple then circles my clit. Rubs my clit. Her bud and my nub join and polish each other's perfect aching desire with a combination of spit and girly crème-fluid.
"Mmm, Mmm, mmm."
Finally, she moves to my thighs, pressing them apart with her palms. It's a near dream as she works my Inner thighs, before massaging my ankles and toes, kneading them to exquisite relief.
"The sisters taught you the flight of women," she repeats, her breath warm on my inner thigh. "Goliath taught you the flight of flesh upon flesh. I will teach you the flight of preparation. The Ring Master requires vessels who are ready, who have been opened, who have surrendered every barrier."
Her hands slide beneath my buttocks, lifting me, and I feel something else now—the leather I glimpsed earlier, being fastened around her hips. She stands, and I see it: a strap-on, polished wood carved to resemble a man's length but smoother, darker, with a curve that makes my breath catch. She adjusts it against her body, and the sight of her—inked, breasted, cocked—sends a pulse through me that is pure, primal want.
"On your knees," she says, and her voice has changed again, carrying the weight of command. "Face down, hips up. Show me what Goliath taught you."
I move as she directs, my cheek pressed to the velvet, my knees spread wide, my back arched to present myself. I feel ridiculous, exposed, and then I feel her hands on my hips, steadying, and the press of the wood against my entrance, still slick with oil and my own wetness.
"Breathe," she instructs, and pushes.
The stretch is different from Goliath—smoother, more deliberate, the curve of the toy finding places inside me that make my vision pictures cocks and tits pressing into me from every direction.
She moves slowly, inch by inch, until I feel the press of the leather harness against my buttocks, until I am full, impaled, my fingers clawing at the velvet as she begins to move.
"Good," she murmurs, her hands sliding up my back to grip my shoulders, using the leverage to thrust deeper. "You take it well. But this is only preparation, Matilda. The Ring Master will require more."
She fucks me with steady, relentless rhythm, and I am moaning into the velvet, my hips pushing back to meet her, the sound of our joining wet and obscene in the small space. The phoenix on her chest must be flying now, wings spread with each thrust, and I imagine what I must look like—nineteen, blonde, marked by a giant, now being opened by a woman covered in sin.
Her hand reaches beneath me, finds where I am swollen and desperate, and begins to rub in circles that match her thrusts. I am climbing, climbing, the sensation of being filled and touched at once too much, too perfect, and then she stops, still buried inside me, her fingers stilling.
"Not yet," she says, and I whimper, actually whimper, my hips bucking against nothing. "You do not come until I say. This is the lesson of preparation. The Ring Master decides when pleasure is given. You learn to wait, to hold the edge, to trust that release will come."
She withdraws slowly, and I feel empty, aching, my flesh clenching on nothing. She moves to the basin again, and I hear water, the snap of a cloth being wrung out. When she returns, she is gentler, cleaning the oil from my skin with warm, wet strokes that feel like tenderness after the roughness of her use.
"Now," she says, her hand resting on my mons, where my hair is still damp with sweat and oil and my own desire. "You will be shaved. The Ring Master prefers flesh bare, smooth, without barrier or disguise."
I tense, my hand moving instinctively to cover myself, but she catches my wrist.
"You have surrendered everything else," she says softly.
"Will you keep this last vanity?"
I look into her eyes—dark, knowing, surrounded by inked patterns that seem to shift in the lamplight. I think of my mother's house, the mending, the tea service, the life I have left. I think of the train whistles I let pass day by day; tomorrow one could be carrying away the girl I become.
"Do it," I whisper.
She smiles, and it transforms her face from commanding to something almost tender.
She retrieves a straight razor from a leather case, stropping it against a strip of leather hung from the wagon's ceiling until it sings. Then she returns with a bowl of warm, scented lather and begins.
The brush is soft against my skin, working the lather through my curled, matted hair, and I watch her face as she works—concentrated, absorbed, an artist preparing her canvas.
The razor's first stroke is a revelation, the pull of it against my skin sending shivers up my spine, the cool air touching places that have rarely known air.
She works carefully, stretching my skin taut with her free hand, removing every trace of stubble until I am bare, smooth, exposed in a way that feels more intimate than any penetration.
When she finishes, she rubs oil into my newly bare flesh, and the sensation is overwhelming—every touch magnified, the slide of her fingers against skin that has never been touched directly. I am panting again, my hips lifting, and she laughs, low and knowing.
"Sensitive now, yes? Every nerve awakened. This is how the Ring Master will find you—open, bare, ready to receive whatever is given. Your shape is a delight. Look down."
Holy Mother of Mary! I have spread pink butterfly wings.
She eases my head to my chin, and I look down at myself, at the spread crinkled pinkness of my flesh, the way my arousal glistens without hair to hide it. I feel new, remade, as if the razor has scraped away not just hair but some part of my former self that held me back.
"Why?" I ask, my voice rough from moaning, from the morning's use.
"Why all of this—the massage, the... the preparation, the shaving? What does it mean?"
The Tattooed Lady sets down her implements and takes my face in her hands, her thumbs tracing my cheekbones. Her breasts press against my shoulder, the phoenix's eye seeming to watch me.
"No one really joins this circus," she says, her voice carrying the weight of ritual, of words spoken many times before, "until they spend time with the Ring Master."
She releases me, and I am left kneeling on the velvet, bare and smooth and aching, the morning fully risen outside the crimson wagon.
I think of what awaits me, this mysterious figure who requires such preparation, such surrender, and I feel fear and hunger twine together in my belly like the snakes inked on her arms.
"For now, take a nap," as she covers me with a wool blanket.
Much later, afternoon sun warms my eyes as I stretch.
The beads at the doorway click, and I see that Madame Zora has returned, that my next threshold waits.