Page 45 of Backstage at the Freak Show
“Right there with you, mate.”
Arjun’s hand returned to my clit and I knew I was done for. Those last few swipes were the cherries on top of the layers of touch, heat, their sounds, and their hard cocks penetrating me. I exploded into a shaking, shivering mess, my throat going raw from screaming the release of pleasure. And just as the wave crashed, it rose again as my men emptied themselves into me, their muscles stiffening and hard grips making my skin red.
Raz released me, his breaths deep and greedy for air as he realized his fingers left marks curled into the flesh of my waist. “Sorry,steluta.”
“Don’t be.” I turned, bringing one arm to wrap around his neck as I kissed him deeply. My other hand reached forward for Arjun, who caught my fingers and placed a breathless kiss on my palm before placing my hand over his stampeding heart.
When Raz and I separated, I breathed out a small plume of my dragon’s smoke. We wore matching grins as our foreheads rested on each other, my fingers caressing over his scalp.
“Don’t ever be sorry for loving me the way you do,” I whispered.
Part V
Out with the Girls
15
MELODY
“Stop checking your phone, girl.” Jeanie May playfully slapped her hand down on the screen I was staring at. “You too,” my sister jokingly chastised Miriam who had snuck a peak on her own device. “Forget your men for once, it’s a girls’ night out!”
“It’s not the guys I’m worried about,” I told her. “But the baby.”
This wouldn’t even be my longest time away from Mason—Raz, Arjun and I did four more Vegas shows in the past six months. But even still, that was work. This, going out for happy hour with my sister and friend, was supposed to be…fun?
“Who is under the watchful eye of four fathers who will tear a man limb-from-limb, then light his corpse on fire, if he so much as smells suspicious. Relax, Mel.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t get nervous about being away from the littles,” I shot back at her, sliding into a barstool at a pub table. We were still underage, me at twenty and her almost nineteen. But neither of us would drink booze and this divey place wouldn’t care about checking our IDs.
“Melody, how do you think I fed them? Kept a roof over our heads?” A waiter dropped a basket of chips and salsa on our table, and Jeanie crunched loudly on a chip. “I left them alone all the time. They knew how to fend for themselves.”
I nodded knowingly. Jeanie and I learned how to fend for ourselves too when we were Bella and Joey’s ages. We got creative with our hiding places, with barricading the flimsy plywood doors so our mother’s boyfriends wouldn’t stumble drunk and high into our rooms. We took that knowledge and passed it down to our siblings for their own survival. They never got a chance to be kids. It was slow-going, but now I was hopeful they had a chance to relearn childhood in our home, with my guys as examples of good role models, of a healthy family.
Miriam came back from the bar, precariously holding three drinks in her hands. A virgin daiquiri for me, an Italian soda for Jeanie, and the only drinker out of all of us, a mojito for herself.
“How are things going with the wolves, Mir?” my sister asked the other shaman, our neighbor in a relationship with Hunter’s two brothers, and some kind of situationship with a curious shifter she met at our wedding.
“Fine.” Miriam sucked loudly at her straw, obviously not fine. She drained half of the mojito in a single gulp.
“Tak still hasn’t gotten back to you?” I asked as gently as I could.
She shook her head, long dark waves shimmering over her shoulders. “Today marks a week. He’s never gone so long without contact before.”
“No wonder you wanted to go out and drink.” Jeanie rubbed her back sympathetically. “What do Colt and Gabe think?”
Miriam blew out a long breath. “Gabe wants me to write him off. He’s cutthroat like that. Colt says don’t lose hope, that he loves me and wants to be with us. He just needs time to get his shit settled back in Alaska first. Sell his house and stuff.” She propped her elbows on the table and dragged her fingers through her hair with a groan. “I swear those two are like my heart and mind arguing with each other.”
“Hey, no matter what,” I placed my hand on her arm, “at least you still have them. They’ll support you through this, whether Tak comes back or not.”
“I know you’re right,” Miriam sighed, poking at the ice in her drink with a straw. “It just sucks so bad. Tak and I just had this instant chemistry from the beginning.”
“He scared the shit out of everyone at the wedding,” Jeanie chuckled. “Looking back though, it was crazy hot. Watching you two dance and everything, whoo!” My sister fanned herself dramatically.
Miriam smiled at the memory. “That was an amazing night. For multiple reasons.”
“Sure was.” I gazed down at my wedding band, resisting the urge to check my phone again should Jeanie take it upon herself to steal it.
“He told me he was serious about us,” Miriam pouted over her drink. “That his home was with me. Everything he’s ever told me is just running through my head and I’m wondering if it was all true.”
