Crimson.
Finally, something clunks into place. Oh, motherfucker. This is for our act?
“Well, uh, say something.” Ryah attempts a smile, but it collapses a second later. Over her shoulder, Elke and Anouk are flanking her like a couple of bodyguards. They’re both glaring at me.
I scramble to fill the silence. “You look, um. That’s a fantastic costume. Very eye-catching.”
“But you do like it?” she asks.
I don’t know if I like it. I’m hyperaware that every man in the circus currently has his eyes glued to Ryah’s body. When we step under the spotlights, everyone in the audience is going to be staring at her, too.
My eyes drop to her high-heeled red boots. Jesus fucking Christ. “It’s a little…mature, isn’t it?”
Ryah’s cheeks flame as red as her costume.
Elke steps forward. “For heaven’s sake, Cale. Ryah’s not a child. She’s nearly eighteen, and she looks fantastic. Tell her she looks fantastic.”
Embarrassment is starting to fill Ryah’s eyes, and she crosses her arms tightly across her chest.
I’m really messing this up. I can’t seem to separate my feelings about Ryah from the work we’re trying to do. It’s a costume, and it’s meant to be eye-catching. Even daring. That’s what the whole act is about.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “The costume is perfect. I could probably walk out and chuck my knives at the ground and we’d still get a standing ovation.”
Ryah ducks her head, her mouth twitching. “Silly,” she mutters, but there’s a smile on her face now. “If you’re sure it’s not too gaudy or whatever. I can always change it?”
I squeeze her shoulder. “Don’t change a thing. You look amazing.”
Ryah heads back into her wagon to take her costume off, and I watch her go, my teeth clenched. Really amazing. Ridiculously fucking sexy. If anyone catcalls her from the audience it’s going to take all my willpower not to hurl a knife right at their heart.
“You all right there, Cale?” Elke asks me.
“Fine, thank you,” I say through gritted teeth. I don’t doubt that the catsuit was entirely Elke’s idea. Goddamn troublemaker. “But I wish you’d waited till she was older before dressing her like a showgirl.”
She shakes her head pityingly. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who thinks a woman in revealing clothes is asking for it.”
“Of course I’m not. It’s just…” I lift an arm, pointing in the direction that Ryah disappeared, and then drop it. I don’t know what it’s just. My mind has short-circuited again.
Elke finishes my sentence for me. “It’s just that you just didn’t want anyone to notice that Ryah is gorgeous except you.”
I glare at Elke through narrowed eyes. “Goodnight, Elke. See you in the morning.”
Though it’s only half-past eight, I stride up the steps of my wagon and slam the door behind me. My chest feels tight whenever I remember the faces of Gorran, Poul, Arvid and Tanno as Ryah stood in front of me. All their eyes were trained on her ass and chest. I clench my fist and press it against the wood, wishing I could punch through it and relieve some of the anger that’s revolving through my body.
It’s just for the act. It’s perfect for the act.
Yes, if she was twenty-four and worldly and knew how to tell a creep who grabbed her ass to go fuck himself.
If she was twenty-four.
My mind takes that thought and runs with it. If she was twenty-four, I would find a way to approach her in a dark corner of the tent and kiss her. I live in that alluring image for a moment. My mouth on hers. Her responding to me as I slide my hands down over her hips to her thighs, and then up to cup that pert little ass of hers. My fingers dipping into her cleft and feeling her gasp against my mouth.
But she’s not twenty-four. She’s seventeen. People shouldn’t be looking at a girl that age that way. It’s ten kinds of wrong, and yet here I am, looking her in that way and thinking about her that way. You don’t fool around with underage girls. You don’t hurt them, heart or mind or body. You just don’t mess with them, ever.
I sink down onto my bed, my head in my hands. The old grief burns as hard as it did that first day. You don’t leave them dead on Red Hill, strangled and raped.
I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets until I see stars in the darkness. I have to get my mind right, or the haven that the circus has been for me all these years is going to become my hell. Ryah’s one of my performers, and she can’t ever be anything more. Even after she turns eighteen, she’ll still be too young for me. I can’t give her any stability or security. All I have is the circus.
All any of us has is the circus.