Carnival of Hearts: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (2 page)

Well, that wasn’t promising.
What now?

Promise you won’t go crazy.

Clara gulped from her glass of wine.
I’m not crazy
.

Instead of a reply, Mariel sent her a picture. Clara frowned, squinting down at it, but when she blew it up, her heart sank into her guts and she almost choked on the mouthful of wine still working its way down her throat.

It was a flier, pinned to a telephone pole on the highway: CARNIVAL D’ORFEO, THREE NIGHTS ONLY, OCEAN ISLE FAIRGROUND.

Ocean Isle was a few towns over. The date on the flier was
next week
. The carnival was coming back and, Clara realized with a wish in her heart so big it nearly burst her chest open, that meant so might Marcus.

It was sometime after midnight when the caravan crossed the border of South Carolina into North Carolina. The horizon was a straight, flat run of night sky and coastline all along the highway, broken by marshes and soggy forest as far as the eye could see. Marcus Zane sat in the cab of the Ringmaster’s truck, the passenger-side window cracked just enough so he could inhale the familiar sea air. It stirred his sense and his heart and his memory all at once, and as he exhaled, he saw the Ringmaster glance his way in the reflection cast by the window’s glass.

“Don’t even think about it,” D’Orfeo muttered, returning his eyes to the road ahead.

“Too late.”

“I forbid it, Marcus.”

“Fuck you, D’Orfeo.”

Marcus saw the Ringmaster’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel of the truck, and then relax again.

“If you disobey me again, there will be dire consequences.”

Marcus said nothing to that, because anything he might have said would’ve resulted in those consequences more immediately, and he knew it. But it didn’t matter. They were back in North Carolina; they were
so close
to her that Marcus imagined he could catch her scent on the wind, and they both knew that Marcus was going to find her. Now it was just a matter of time, and whether Marcus would be able to bring himself to leave her again, or if he would die here. He’d spent too long ashamed, too long stuck under the Ringmaster’s thumb, and if he found Clara again, he had resolved that he would be stronger this time.

Whether she still wanted him or not, he would be stronger. Death would be a welcome relief after life in the carnival. He just hadn’t realized how much more he could have had until he’d met her and had to leave her behind. He rolled the truck window all the way down, the roar of the wind rushing into the cab to drown out whatever else D’Orfeo might try to say.

He’d been three years in servitude to D’Orfeo when he met Clara, and he’d thought his heart was a useless stone in his chest. He’d lost too much to believe that it could still be stirred—and yet, the mere sight of her had seen it suddenly thundering in his chest. At first, he’d thought it was some sort of attack, but as she approached him, covered as she’d been in the powdered sugar of the carnival’s treats and the sweat of the evening, he realized that it wasn’t any kind of physical ailment at all. It was lust, long forgotten, desire and a hunger that he hadn’t felt in years.

She was beautiful, and of course that had struck him first. Not tall at all, but her figure had filled out that daisy dress, an abundance of soft curves and a generous bosom, rounded bottom and legs he had imagined wrapping around his waist almost immediately, in spite of himself. But she wouldn’t even look at him, so he’d taken her hand hoping that it would inspire her eyes to meet his, and it had. Her skin was soft. Her eyes were a deep, dark brown and the blush in her cheeks was delicious. He’d been done before he started. He wanted to sink his hands into the dark fall of her hair. She carried a scent that mingled the sharp sea air with something softer and uniquely her own, floral and feminine, and Marcus had gotten a bit drunk on it even before he’d learned her name.
Clara
.

After that first interaction, nothing else had mattered. The laws of the carnival, the Ringmaster’s threats, the doom he brought upon himself. None of it meant anything to him, because Clara meant everything. But that had been foolish, he knew now. The days and nights he’d spent with her had been stolen, and he would have to pay for them for the rest of his life, however long that might be. It was up to the Ringmaster. Marcus was a prisoner of war. Well, he was a
spoil
of war, he reminded himself. Prisoners were released after the conflict resolved itself. D’Orfeo had won Marcus after killing the rest of his people, the rest of his den, and now Marcus belonged to him. At least, his body did. But his heart had belonged to Clara for two years now, and always would.

He knew he couldn’t best D’Orfeo in a fight, not now. He had no den and no family, no power, had been too long enslaved. But he could run. Marcus was already concocting a plan in his head, trying to figure out how to escape the fairgrounds so that he could hunt down Clara and convince her to run away with him. He didn’t care if she’d moved on; he would remind her that they were meant to be together. They had to be together. And until the Ringmaster bled his body dry, Marcus would fight to make that happen. What was a living body worth if the heart of it was dead? Marcus knew the answer now: nothing. It was worth nothing at all. And neither was he if he couldn’t have Clara. He watched the horizon skate by and counted the mile markers to Sandy Isle, begging any and all gods he could think of, with every part of his being, that Clara was still there and that she still loved him.

Clara had been scheduled to work the first night of the carnival, but she swapped shifts with another bartender and just had to work the afternoon. It crawled by so slowly that she could’ve sworn there was a gnome running around turning all the clocks back. For the first time since she’d moved here, she cursed the slowness of Southern life. People ambled in and out of the little beachfront bar, quaffing pints at a glacial pace and often just sitting, for hours, staring out at the ocean and enjoying the fried oysters and the overhead fans. Clara wanted to clap her hands and usher them all out, but instead she just slumped behind the bar, her rear end on the beer cooler, and willed the afternoon to trundle by more quickly. It didn’t.

Then Mariel and Daniel came bustling into the bar, and Clara wanted to crawl right
into
the beer cooler rather than dealing with their wide and worried smiles. Mariel was exactly what one might imagine when one thought of a Southern belle who grew up beachside: blonde, thin, in an American flag bikini top and fringed cut-offs, perfectly tanned, not a stitch of makeup on a beautiful face. Daniel was a good ol’ boy in camo swim shorts and a tank top, a baseball cap permanently shading his eyes, and a drawl that was impossible to parse after he’d had a couple. But he was also a Princeton graduate and owned his own fleet of fishing ships, which Clara thought surprised
him
as often as it surprised other people. She’d met them both here at the bar, Sunny’s Bait, right after she’d started working. For whatever reason, they’d gotten close and stayed close, despite their differences. Sometimes friendships did that.

Mariel dropped her beach bag onto a bar stool and shoved her sunglasses up into the sloppy knot of blond hair atop her head. “Look, just for the record, don’t go tonight.”

Clara rolled her eyes. “I’m going.”

Mariel put up her hands. “I know. I just needed to be on the record saying
don’t
.”

Clara got to her feet and pulled two beers from the cooler, popping the caps off the top with her church key before she set them on the bar. She looked at Daniel. “And you?”

He shrugged and took one of the beers, smiling. “I just hope you find what you’re lookin’ for, sugar.”

Clara sighed, but smiled back at both of them. “Guys, listen. I get it. I hear you. But I have to go. I have to see if he’s there. Because otherwise I’ll sit at home for the rest of my life wondering if he
was
there and I missed him. Okay?”

They bobbed their heads in almost perfectly timed nods.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Mariel asked. Again.

“No, I’m good.”

“I’d go too,” Daniel added. “But I promised Amy a date night and she hates carnivals.”

Clara laughed. “She’s afraid of clowns. There weren’t any clowns at this one, though.”

“That we
saw
,” Daniel pointed out. “I swear I cased the joint with y’all but she doesn’t believe me. Sorry, Clara.”

Clara shrugged and wiped down the bar a little to give her hands something to do. “It’s fine. I said it’s fine. I’m going to go for like an hour and just…see. That’s all.”

“It might even be a whole different carnival,” Mariel pointed out. “I mean, who knows how these things operate? Seasonally? So it could be like all different people.”

“Yeah, I know,” Clara assured her. “I’m just going to
see
.”

“Will you
promise
to text me as soon as you get home?” Mariel pressed, eyebrows arching expectantly. “Promise promise promise?”

Clara crossed her heart. “Promise.”

She could tell that Mariel wasn’t satisfied and that Daniel was worried, but they both seemed to relax after that, and the afternoon went by a little faster with them hanging out at the bar. Still, when Terry walked in the door to take over the night shift, Clara practically jumped over the bar to hand over her drawer and scramble upstairs. She hugged Mariel and Daniel and promised
again
to text as soon as she got home, and then bolted as fast as she could out of the bar and up the stairs to her little apartment.

There she spent the most agonizing hour of her life trying to figure out what to wear. She probably tried on every outfit in her tiny closet, twice, but ultimately settled on a sundress similar to the one she’d worn on the night she’d met Marcus. Tulips, this time, instead of daisies. She pulled on a pair of flat, strappy sandals, grabbed her purse and keys and phone, and headed down to her car, ducking past the bar window in case Mariel and Daniel were still there, waiting to try one more time to talk her out of it. Once she was on her way to the Ocean Isle fairground, she felt a thrill of exhilaration and terror snake through her, and rolled all the windows down as though she could chase it away with the howling of the wind.

The first night of the carnival was upon him, and Marcus was determined to escape. He’d been searching for an opportunity all day, but the Ringmaster had given him none. Moreover, he’d put Liam on to guard him, and the man had eyes in the back of his head, so far as Marcus could tell. The day had been spent preparing to open, which would have been the perfect hectic time for him to sneak away, but every time Marcus turned around, Liam was standing there with his big arms folded across his broad chest, beady black eyes locked right on him.

The members of the carnival were running around, all hard at work, as the sun began its descent. Marcus helped put up the big top, a dozen men all heaving to get the giant tent up and tied into place. The acrobats were arranging their set. Mabel was hanging the lights that would illuminate her bearded face on cue. Baptiste, the lion and bear tamer, was in his trailer ironing his tails, which Marcus thought laughable, even if just the sight of the slight, narrow-faced man made his stomach turn. He might not have looked like much, but he knew how to use his whip, as Marcus knew firsthand.

The game runners were setting up their booths, and there went little Kitty-Katelyn darting between the lanes, carrying messages for D’Orfeo himself. Everyone in the carnival worked as hard they could, and Marcus knew that not all of them were horrible people. They just weren’t
his
people. They’d killed his people. And the only person he had left that he could think of as his own, that he could hope might one day be, was Clara.

He’d wanted to tell her everything, but there simply hadn’t been time. And if he was being honest with himself, Marcus knew that he didn’t think she’d believe him. Or worse, he’d feared that she would, and it would terrify her, and she’d run from him. And he’d been too afraid of losing her to risk it, too willing to think that they would have more time. Now he knew that he’d have to tell her, and quickly, and that he would have to somehow make her understand and accept him. He’d never had to explain what he was to a human before. It went against all the laws of his people, in fact. But then, he’d never been in love with a human before either. And he was far beyond caring about laws, by now. His people’s, or the carnival’s, or D’Orfeo’s.

He had just finishing laying down fresh straw in the lion cage when he heard the dinner bell sound. He looked up to see the sky purpling towards twilight, and thought that perhaps now, while everyone ate, he would finally get his chance. He wiped his hands on the dirty thighs of his jeans and turned towards the mouth of the cage, but there was Liam, a grim smile on his face.

“You’re on tonight, mate,” Liam said.

Marcus rushed to the door even as Liam slammed it shut and slid the bolt home, hooking the lock into place and snapping it shut, trapping him in. Marcus gripped the bars, trying to shake them.

“Let me out!” he roared. “Dammit, Liam, let me out!”

Liam shook his head, big shoulders rolling. “Can’t. Ringmaster’s orders.”

“I’m not a
performer
,” Marcus growled. He felt his rage begin to build, clutching with icy fingers at his heart. “Let me out.”

“You are tonight,” Liam told him. “Now change. And stay that way until we close.”

“No.”

Liam slammed a meaty fist into the bars. The contact sent a resounding
clang
all around the cage and Marcus backed up, but only a step.

“
Change
,” Liam hissed. “Or I’m to put a bullet in your brain, Zane. There’s be no escape for you, lad. Not tonight, not ever. You surrendered to D’Orfeo as alpha, and here you’ll stay until you can remember that on your own.”

“
Please
, Liam,” Marcus begged, holding out his hands. “Please, I don’t deserve this. He won. He won! Let me go!”

“Dunno what you’re so keen to escape to anyway,” Liam muttered, turning away from the cage. “No human girl would even have you. Change. Don’t make me tell you again.”

Marcus grabbed the bars again, his cheek pressed to them as he watched Liam walk off into the activity of the carnival, and saw the sun blaze against the horizon as it set. His heart thundered in his ears, the beast that lived inside it howling to be set free, and he slumped against his cage and put his head between his knees, giving himself over to the rage and the agony and the loneliness that came with captivity and loss. It was not a man’s howl of fury that hit the air as the carnival lights bounced on to illuminate the fairground, but a bear’s.