The Fortune Teller's Daughter (26 page)

She melted bodily into his rigid arms, becoming the
pliant little lion she’d been the night before, moaning against his hungry
mouth and darting, seeking, tasting tongue. She obediently turned her chin up
so that he could plunge his tongue into her open, waiting mouth, pressing and
licking and kissing her senseless.

She released her modest hold on her breasts and they
pressed into his shirt and he could feel her hardening nipples through the
fabric, peaked buds he wanted to taste. She whimpered when he broke the kiss
and bent her back into his arms to capture one in his mouth, tiny candies in
her vanilla sugar flavor.

While he lapped at them, he took her hands in his and
pulled them up around his neck to hold him and she complied, folding her arms
across his shoulders, burying her fingers into his hair. He loved the way she
touched his neck, scraped her fingernails across the sensitive skin beneath his
collar.

He rumbled, snaked his arms across her back to support
her and very slowly lowered her into the soft velvet of the back of the couch.
Her head rolled until she was nearly upside down, her spine arched, presenting
her big round breasts to him in their pale, lovely glory. He played with them,
touched them, fondled them. He couldn’t get enough of them or of her. Her eyes
stayed closed but her mouth smiled, pressing and opening mouthing her wants and
soft noises of pleasure. She was extraordinary.

Eli broke away suddenly, leaving her panting and
grasping to drag him back. He lifted her out of the awkward shape, but released
her as soon as she’d righted herself.

“Kneel, Sera.”

She gave him a curious look but slid down the back of
the couch to kneel. He expected her to fall into a proper kneeling position,
straight back, knees together, but instead they turned out, spread, and sank so
she almost touched the floor. She settled her hands, fingers splayed wide,
between her thighs on the floor. The pose, so fluid and self-possessed and so
her took his breath away. Without knowing why at first, he plucked the orchid
from her hair and let her long mane fall across her shoulders.

He stepped back and lost all sense of control.

His little lion, wild and untamed and completely
lacking in discipline had never looked more beautiful gazing up at him
expectantly beneath her red eyelashes. He imagined her collared in diamonds and
blue velvet even though the mischief in her eyes promised not to follow
directions or do as she was told. No, Serafine did not have a submissive bone
in her body, but she still looked damn beautiful on her knees.

The Magician petted her, ran his fingers into her mane
of curls and stroked her temple with the pad of his thumb. She made a noise of
pleasure that almost sounded like a purr.

“I could stare at you all day.”

“Is that all you want to do to me? Stare?”

He scoffed. “Absolutely not.”

She stretched her chin up to him, elongating her neck
and bringing all of his attention to her eyes, then, down to her breasts framed
and plunging between her elbows. She licked the bow of her mouth. “I want to
see magic.”

He barked a laugh as he pulled his shirt up over his
head and left it somewhere behind him. Her eyes followed his body hungrily and
in her eyes he felt powerful. There was nothing he couldn’t do, no trick he
couldn’t conjure, nothing out of his reach.

“Extraordinary. On your knees and still so demanding.”
He circled his palms and conjured a long, wide ribbon spooled in the palm of
his hand. “For you, my little lion.”

She canted her head curiously and he unfurled the
ribbon so she could see at hits center dangled a small silver charm in the
shape of a crescent moon with a raven set inside. He crouched and wrapped it
around her neck and tied it into a small bow at the back of her neck, letting
the leads of ribbons trail down her naked back. Then he lifted her chin up to
gaze at him.

“Because you belong with
Imaginaire
, and
because you belong with me.”

She smiled, touched the charm, cool against her skin,
and then returned her hands to the floor.

“Flowers and jewelry. I could learn to like this.”

He took her chin in his hand, firm but gentle, and
tilted her head back so he could look down at her. “So, very, demanding. We’ll
have to do something about that.”

She bit her bottom lip to keep from smile. “Oh yes
please.”

The Magician growled and stood, swiftly unfastened his
pants and dropped them so that only her underwear stood between him and what he
wanted immediately. He crouched and in one fluid movement he lifted her by her
knees and swept her back onto her back. She gasped and caught his shoulders,
but he was already on top of her. He captured her hand, threaded his fingers
through hers, and held it to the floor while he kissed her.

He had no intention twenty minutes before of taking
her so informally on the floor of his stage, the cold, hard floor, but if she
noticed she didn’t let it stop her. She held him, whispered her sweetest
nothings against his skin. He stripped off her underwear slowly, lazily drawing
it down her thighs and over her knees, brushing his fingers through her soft,
tidy curls as he kissed her soundly. He captured her sighs, each of her
breaths. Against her temple, the curve of her ear, he told her how beautiful
she was, how she bewitched him. How she held all the power, everything he
wanted.

Do you want me
, she whispered.

Do you need me?

He could not slake his want of her, even as he took
her on his stage, even as he impaled himself upon her, grinding against her
soft body because he did not want to pull out or away. He kissed her lush mouth
each time she said his name, asking him questions he couldn’t find the right
words to answer. Yes, I want you, all of you. Yes I need you, now, today,
forever. Sera. Serafine…my gorgeous girl…

They caught in his throat, so afraid of what they
might do, or change, what tomorrow held.

With a growl, his little lion pushed him and he was so
surprised by it he rolled with her until she was on top of him, straddling his
waist, her fingers digging into the dragon on his chest.

“Do you
want
me, Eli?”

With the word
want
she rolled her curvaceous
hips into him and dragged a gasping moan out of him. He caught her hips,
prepared to still them, but couldn’t bring himself to do anything but let her
have what she wanted. Who was he kidding? He’d relinquished control to her the
night he met her.

“Want you?
All
of you.”

“And you need me?” Another roll of her hips. She
lifted and slid back down upon him until he was fully seated inside her, so
tight it took his breath away. He squeezed his eyes and his hands and urged her
to do that again.

“Yes, my gorgeous lion, I need you. I want you. If you
want magic, I will give you all the magic in the world. If you want it to snow,
I will make it snow. If you want rain, I’ll bring you a thunderstorm. Ask, ask
for anything and you’ll have it.”

He gasped as she curved herself back so that he had a
perfect view of where he entered her, where he disappeared inside her. He ran
his hands up her stretched thighs to her belly and all the way up to cup her
presented breasts. This, having her here on his stage, was exactly what he’d
been thinking when he’d captured her on stage that first night. He’d thought
the vision was an inappropriate response to the intensity of her eyes, but he
knew better. Sometimes wants were all-consuming, propriety be damned.

Eli arced up into her to meet her downward thrust and
brought her moaning and bouncing back upon him. She was deliciously wet,
everything fitting together as if they were made for one another. It wasn’t the
first time the thought had occurred to him.

Sera caught his wrists to steady herself, her big eyes
drowning in pleasure, lush and luxuriant. “I want snow. Big soft flakes. Lots
of them. Give me snow, magician.”

“Anything, my God, Sera yes, ride me like that.” He
rolled his head back as she sped up, taking her pleasure, giving him his,
panting and glistening with sweat.

So he brought her snow. Big crystalline flakes that
slowly drifted around her steaming body. She caught them on her tongue, let
them kiss her eyelids and bare breasts.

“I want flower petals, all the colors, orchids and
roses and daisies. I want stars. I want the sky and fireworks and blue
diamonds.”

He gasped and spun her in his arms so that she was
back on the ground, beneath him, writhing in ecstasy as he took her, harder
now, building up with each want, each word that spilled from her mouth. He
watched her lick her lips until they shined and with her eyes closed he
ravished her mouth for wet kisses he couldn’t get enough of. They threaded
their fingers together and he held her down and she held him to her and he thrust
maddeningly to the brink of total destruction. She broke herself against him,
slick with sweat and emboldened by his want. Around them fell petals and jewels
of light and star dust that glittered as it powdered her skin.

She lifted her hips and gasped for breath when he let
her mouth loose. The whole of her thrust away from the floor into him to meet
his pounding hardness, growing in aggression, taking her with near crazed need
to slake his hunger on her skin.

She panted as she begged. “Give me rain and thunder
and dancing lights. I want paper cranes and feathered hats and satin dresses.”
The pulse in her throat beat erratically until she was screaming his name
between wants, gripping his hands fiercely as she crested to the brink of her
pleasure, teetered, and fell crashing over the edge.

Give me the moon, Eli,
she begged.

Give me your heart…

Frenzied with the urgency of her orgasm she screamed
and clutched at him and lost her final words to her emotions. He could barely
contain the power of her pleasure and released her hands and held her body to
him as she shook and whimpered and begged with each cresting release.

Moments into hers he bit her shoulder impulsively to
strangle his bursts of uncontrolled gratification.

The lights on the stage exploded in a shower of
fireworks and sparks, dropping them into darkness and eradicating the rest of
the world.

__________________

Before.

The morning my mother was killed we woke up late. I’d
gone out the day before against her wishes and didn’t come home until well
after midnight. Somehow I’d become an adult without any idea what that meant
because my mother kept me in a snow globe of her own making, winding me like a
clockwork doll to do her chores and her bidding, squandering my life as nothing
more than the fortune teller’s daughter.

We hadn’t got along in so long that our fights had
grown tiresome to the point that we went through the motions most days, biting
and snarling the same insults, the same demands.

I want out.

You can’t, not yet.

Let me go. I am not your pet.

No, you’re my daughter. It’s for your own good. Please
believe me.

I hate you. I do not want to stay with you anymore. I
want my own life. I’m not staying.

You don’t mean that.

Why won’t you just disappear?

She insisted I had to work with her a little longer,
but I was done. The day before she died I went to apply for a secretary job,
ready to get out from under her, but found that I couldn’t answer most of the
questions on the application. I had no work experience, no permanent residence.
I barely had a high school diploma. Being smart wasn’t enough, I had to prove
it with history and we had no history. I didn’t have a social security number.
I didn’t have a phone number.

I realized that day that she’d kept the whole world
from me.

The morning we woke up on her last day she made
coffee. She sat at the breakfast table and I sat on the couch with my feet on
the coffee table and a book between my knees. She said, get your feet off the
table and I said, you can’t control everything. She said, Serafine, just listen
for once. And I said, make me.

And then, without looking up from my book, I said,
I’ll go with you today, but tomorrow I’m leaving.

She looked out the window beneath the mobile of
origami cranes. It never sold and the colors had faded. One of the birds was
missing.

You always say that, but you never go. I need a little
more time.

And I said, there is no more time.

That’s when she noticed my bags by the door. I plucked
my bookmark from my book and tossed it onto the table between my feet. It was a
bus ticket. Greyhound.

And I said, I’m not yours anymore. We’re done.

Two hours later a man in a grey suit approached the
tent, handed me his money and ducked inside. I didn’t see his face, just his
suit, because I was busy looking at a map of the places I would go. The things
I would see. The people I would meet.