Summer On The Tightrope

"Where are we going? We're not leaving already, are we? Where's Amber?"

"I just need to get something from the truck," Nick answered. He was coming close to herding Emily out of fairgrounds entrance and into the increasingly darkened area of the parking lot, out toward the outer fringe where he'd parked the double-cab Dodge Ram truck. He hovered over her, seemingly twice her size in his Nordic muscular bulk. "We'll be just a bit. Amber saw Tony, and she's gone off with him for a while."

Tony, Emily thought. So this was why Amber was so anxious for Emily to come with her and her brother, Nick, on the last day of the Peru Amateur Circus festival, augmented by a traveling carnival. Amber wanted to meet up with Tony without her parents knowing she had.

"You're so pretty I don't think I can resist," Nick said as they reached the truck. He backed her up against the fender, crowding her in and dipped his face for a kiss.

"Nick, please," Emily said moving her face to the side but not before they'd kissed and she'd shown signs of liking it well enough.

"Come on, sugar, don't be standoffish. You know I've been sweet on you. We'll go back to the circus, but no reason to do it right away. I've given you a chilly dog and a beer and some cotton candy already."

And so you think that's all I need to lay down for you, Nicholas Stinson? It's what she thought, but she didn't say it. She supposed that was all Nick did, indeed, think he needed. He was one hunk of a young man who'd had most of the girls in the country, and she had a reputation she couldn't deny. She moaned through the next kiss and let him have tongue as he put a hand on her breasts. The other one was gripping one of her hips, holding her against the fender of the truck.

"Nice. So nice. Let me see them and feel them," he murmured as they came out of the kiss.

"Nick," she said again in a thick voice. She didn't pull the halter top up above her breasts herself and jerked away from him a bit when he said, "Every other guy in the county has seen them," but she made no effort to counter him when Nick pulled the top above her breasts.

"Oh, god, you got beautiful tits," he muttered as he buried his face in them.

She was lost to him, just as she'd been to so many other guys in the county. She embraced his mop of blond curly hair with her arms and ran her fingers into the hair on the back of his head as his mouth feasted on her breasts. Her mind transported her away from Miami County, from Indiana, from Earth even, and she was in the clouds, walking a tightrope, knowing that once more she wouldn't make it to the other side before falling off into the abyss. She only slowly became aware that he had a hand between her legs, squeezing and rubbing, making her wet. She pressed herself into his hand, and he laughed, the laugh of someone who knew he had won.

If only she didn't make it so easy each time—and then be so disappointed at the one-sided nature of it. All of the guys in Miami County were self-centered pigs.

"Come into the back of the truck with me, sugar," Nick muttered in a lust-filled, hoarse voice.

"Nick," was all Emily said, which could have been taken by Nick in several different ways. Nick's way of taking it was to open the door to the backseat of the double cab and to lift Emily up onto the seat.

He was heavy on top of her, and her head was pushed painfully into the far door until he put a beefy, tattooed arm under her neck to lift it and cushion her head. He was more interested in sucking on her nipples than kissing her on the lips as he fucked her, her skirt bunched up around her waist, his knees between her spread legs. Her right leg was bent and pressed against the backseat and her left calve was hooked onto the passenger back of the front seat. Her panties were dangling on her left ankle, and it was these she concentrated on watching when he entered her, causing her to arch her back and groan deeply to match his groan muffled in the crevice of her breasts.

He held there momentarily, the breath of both of them ragged and racing, and then, as he started to move inside her, she moaned and felt herself going into a long fall off the tightrope. Her eyes were glued to the panties on her ankle as they took on a life of their own, alien to Emily's emotional input into this scene but in direct synch with Nick. The panties were jerking and twirling a bit in rhythm to his thrusts inside her. She'd only taken one step out onto the rope this time before going into her fall. His jeans had been so tight when he and Amber had come to pick her up that she's clearly seen the outline of the condom disk in his back pocket.

She'd known what Nick would want for driving her and Amber to the circus even before she'd gotten into front seat of the truck and Nick had put a hand on her knee in greeting her.

He was moving faster, gripping her harder, grunting deeper when he exclaimed, held for a slight second, and then relaxed in a hiss of release inside her. At the point of ejaculation, the panties worked their way off Emily's ankle and fell to the front passenger seat. She had been building up to an explosion of her own, but Nick hadn't waited for her. None of this was about Emily in Nick's mind. In her mind, Emily hit the net below the tightrope. One of these days there wouldn't be a net, she knew. One of these days, she would commit to a man and he was likely to be just another Nick or one of every other guy she'd been with in Miami County.

"A circus performance should be starting up in a few minutes," Nick said, looking at his watch. "Let's get back there."

He was still inside her, but he already was far, far away.

* * * *

"What color are my eyes, Nick?" Emily suddenly blurted out. Her eyes weren't turned to Nick, sitting beside her on the small set of bleachers in the tent beside the Wabash River, though. They were plastered to the wire running overhead halfway between the ground and the curve of the tent ceiling, where a young woman was nervously and gingerly making her way across a tight rope. This wasn't a big, professional circus like had wintered here in Peru, Indiana, in the heyday of the town. This was the tail end of the third-week-in-July Peru Amateur Circus festival that celebrated the era of the big circus. The emphasis here was on the word "amateur."

The girl on the tightrope didn't look like she was going to make it across. She was an amateur at it, though. This unabashedly was a circus for amateur performers. She had a net under her, so the thrill of the danger just wasn't there. At least it wasn't there for most of those on the bleachers in the tent, although they were good-naturedly pelting the tightrope walker with words of encouragement. The girl had been standing close to where Emily and Nick sat before she climbed the ladder, and Emily had seen the color of the girl's eyes, an unusual shade of hazel, going toward the green, like her own. She'd also seen the fear and a touch of desperation—a lack of confidence and self-esteem—in the young woman's eyes. And thus Emily had identified with the girl. Emily wouldn't have made it across the tightrope. Of this she was sure. She didn't think the young woman would be making it across either.

Nick hadn't been watching the tightrope act. His gaze had been roaming the bleachers, picking out girls who appealed to him. He wasn't looking at Emily.

"Huh, what? What'd you say?" he asked. He'd heard her say his name, but he still didn't look at her.

"I said, what are the color of my eyes?"

"Blue?" The question was obvious in his response. He still didn't look at her. Emily felt she had a right to be upset by that. Twenty minutes earlier, he'd been on top of her—inside her—in the backseat of his double cab Dodge Ram truck in a dark, remote row of the parking lot of the Miami County fairgrounds. He'd been all sweet talk and attention when they'd arrived at the carnival and had plied her with a chilly dog and beer before luring her to his truck.

"My eyes are hazel, Nick. They're almost green. They always have been. They were hazel when you were on top of me in your truck."

"Whatever," he said, not anywhere close to being tuned in to her.

She stood in the stands and brushed off her skirt, giving him plenty of time to see that she wanted to leave. But he wasn't looking at her. He'd made eye contact with a redhead on the stands on the other side of the tightrope that the nervous girl was teetering on, not yet a third of the way across.

Jessica. Jessica Martin, Emily thought, recognizing the other young woman. Not that that was a challenge. Peru was small enough that everyone knew everyone else. Floozy, Emily thought. But then she bit her tongue. No one thought any less of Jessica in this town than they did of Emily. She knew she'd earned that reputation. It was, she now knew, why Nick had brought her to the last day of the circus carnival. And she'd delivered.

She worked her way down from the bleachers. A few of the guys who helped guide her way through the seats having already had their turns touching her more intimately, over the last couple of years since she'd graduated from high school in Peru and had just remained here. Nick was busy communicating in winks and lip licking with Jessica across the tent and didn't see her go.

When she got to the tent entrance, a gasp that floated over the bleachers caused her to turn and look. The girl on the tightrope—the scared-looking girl with the hazel eyes—had fallen into the net. She hadn't even made it halfway across the rope.

"It figures," Emily muttered and turned and walked out onto the midway lane that was lined with game booths and side shows under the uneven and flickering lights strung overhead on poles. The flickering light also figured, she thought. Here in the town that had been the first one in the world with electrified street lights, the light couldn't even remain steady until the end of the circus carnival. The town was slowly dying, and Emily was slowly dying right along with it—each and every time she fell off the tightrope.

* * * *

It wasn't a date. She wouldn't have come here with Nick on a date, so she didn't really have a kick that he was back there in the circus tent making goo-goo eyes with Jessica Martin. And he hadn't dragged her kicking and screaming to his truck. She'd always wondered what it would be like to be with Nick, and she'd figured, considering how she was being passed around, that she eventually would be with Nick. It was telling that she went with him just for having gotten a chilly dog and a beer—and, oh, yes, some cotton candy and a little less than half of a funnel cake. But she'd gone with him too because that's what she did, what was expected from her in this town. The only times guys in this town gave her any attention was when they were sniffing around her, wanting something. And Nick was a strapping young Swede—broad shouldered, blond, and good looking even if not all that bright. She didn't, at the moment, think she had much on him in the not-all-that-bright department, though.

But he was like so many other guys born and raised in Peru—content with farming or construction jobs until they could break away and go to a bigger city or, worse, content with staying what they were in Peru and growing old but never growing up—marrying only when they'd knocked some girl up and could weasel out of marrying her. She didn't know what other kind of guy there was in Peru, but she'd tried all of these guys and she wanted the other guy. The problem was that she also wanted to be wanted—to be noticed and given attention and some credit for something other than her willingness to "put out"—which wasn't turning out all that well.

Emily had wanted to come to the amateur circus held every year here in Peru, the home also to the International Circus Hall of Fame because so many major circuses had wintered here, but she was making an effort to change her life. Guys had asked her to come with them, but they all were guys who would want what Nick got as part of the deal. Emily hadn't thought she was coming here on a date. Her girlfriend, Amber, had suggested they come together, a simple girls' night out that had snowballed. Unknown to Emily that meant they'd hitch a ride with Amber's older brother, Nick. And, beyond that, Amber, who was still living with her parents, although she had a job, like Emily did, was using Emily as a blind. She was a room maid at the Cole Porter Motel that Emily lived behind in one of the cabins that had been the motel before the one was built in front. Amber's plan was to meet up at the carnival with the boyfriend, Tony, her parents didn't like. Within moments of arriving, Emily suddenly was here just with Nick.

Emily would have it out with Amber come Monday morning at the motel, but that didn't help her much tonight. Amber was a rat. Thinking of that made Emily smile, if only a bittersweet smile. It was Tony who was the rat—more of a ferret. Emily agreed with Amber's parents on Tony. Nick didn't, though. For some reason he and Tony were buds. They couldn't be more different—Nick blond and tanned, both hulking and a hunk, working under the sun in construction, and not all that bright. Tony was small and dark and like a ferret, but clever and scheming, and working as a garage mechanic. Greasy, but Amber was head over heels for him. Nick wouldn't squeal on them to his parents and he hadn't seemed to object to the chance to get Emily alone.

Emily had more than half a notion to tell Amber's parents, but she didn't have much ground to stand on—she'd willingly lain under their son in his truck while Amber and Tony were doing who knows what where? And Emily didn't think the Stinsons had much good to say about her either.

Emily heard her name being called and drifted over to one of the permanent open-sided sheds on the county fairgrounds, where a red-hot flame, leaping out of the maw of a metal oven, lit up an area extending out into the midway. Two men, one younger and one older, were inside the railing, stripped to the waist and putting on a glass-blowing demonstration. She hadn't recognized the voice, but as she drew to where people were standing around three sides of the shed watching the process, she recognized the muscular younger man, who had a glob of molten glass at the end of a four-foot-long-stemmed blowpipe and was working at forming the molten mixture into a vase. He'd blown it out into a bulb on a narrow stem and was spinning the pipe and working the shape with a paddle.

"Come on over here, little darlin'. I'll make something just for you."

His name was David. He had been one of Emily's last-year men. She hesitated, in no way in the mood to be reminded of men of her past, but those in the gathering around the shed had turned to her, smiling, and had parted for her to approach the railing. He also was stripped to the waist, showing a musculature that he must have spent months in a gym to sculpt. It had been his beautiful body that had attracted Emily to him in the first place, led her so easily to cover her body, and held her in thrall long after she realized what a selfish pig he was in sex. She was disgusted with herself for going wet between the thighs now to see him bare-chested again, but that did prevent her from being drawn over to him at the shed railing.

"Hello, David," she said—forming the words tentatively as she approached.

"Do you like the color orange?" he asked, giving her a smile and extending the long metal pipe toward her.

"Not that much," she admitted.

"How about trimmed in green, like your eyes?" He turned and gestured to the other man, who pulled a long metal spike out of the furnace. The molten glass glob at the end of this was an emerald green. He extended it to hover over the orange vase form on the end of David's tube, dripping small globs of green on the orange, which David was swirling around on the orange with his paddle, making a lace effect on the surface of the forming vase. A good-sized glob dropped onto the ground. The crowd let out an "Aww" sound at seeing that and then an even louder "Aww" sound as, David, too much of his attention going to Emily, let the orange vase collapse into itself.

"Oh," Emily said. Her eyes went to the circular glob that had dropped to the ground in a raised circular pattern.

"Too bad," David said. But as he saw where Emily was looking, he smiled, grabbed a long, sharp spike from the maw of the oven, and spiked the emerald-green glob, boring a hole near the rim of it before the glass had hardened.

"But maybe you like a green pendant then," he said.

"Yes, I love emerald green," she said and smiled, as he raised the glob of glass.

"Then you must have it, little darlin'," he said. "You can touch it. It's just warm now. Here, I have a strip of leather we can use to make a necklace out of it."

She took it in her hand. The people around were watching them, but she didn't see them. All she saw was a lovely piece of glass—and, more important, a gift. A freely given gift. She'd had damn few free gifts given to her in her lifetime. She watched, almost in tears, as David wove the leather strip through the hole in the glass slug, knotted it, and lifted it to put over her head.

She shuddered in remembrance of his embrace as he brought his bare chest close to her and put his arms around her shoulders to put the necklace in place. His animal magnetism was making her think only of the good parts of having sex with him—her breasts pressed into his bulging pectorals, with her hands caressing his biceps, and him inside her, thick and long, demanding. He brought his lips close to her ear and murmured to her as he pulled the necklace over her head. "You need me inside you. You need to be fucked as only I can do. Meet me behind the shed."

The smile froze on her face. She was back to where there were no freely given gifts. He wanted something for the "gift." He wanted everything for the pendant. She didn't lose her smile and, falling off that tightrope yet again, wanting the necklace, she nodded her assent to David. But she pulled away from the railing and slipped out of the gathering around the shed and into the dimmer lighting of the carnival midway. Not now, not this moment. She wasn't sure if the net would hold if she fell again so quickly.

She meant to escape, down the midway, looking for Amber and Tony. Tony must have gotten there somehow on his own. Tony could take her home. But her feet didn't take her down the midway. Her feet took a step out onto the rope. They took her to the dimness behind the midway sheds, where the light was shadowy, distorting the objects around it, and the music of the carnival sounded harsh and judging.

She leaned into the back wall of the glassblower's shed, palms pressed into the rough boards, buttocks jutting out, panties down to her knees, skirt lifted over her back, and, once more, her halter top lifted above her breasts, as, moving his hands from her breasts to her hips, to hold her in place, David worked his thick cock inside her and began the rhythm of the pump.

Neither said anything. There wasn't anything, really, to say. They both had a primeval need to mate—to be satiated. As David increased the pace of the fuck, he got lost in his own need, not even pretending to care whether Emily also was being taken care of. Emily's cheek had been pressed to the wall of the shed, but he grabbed a yank of her hair and arched her head back to him. She gave a little yelp and was reduced to sobs as he changed the hole he was invading and pumped thick and relentlessly. She had known it was coming. He'd worked her anus open with wetted fingers while he was fucking her in the vagina, and he'd always liked to finish there. His need met in a jerk and an exclamation, he pulled out of her with just a slap on the buttocks and was gone—leaving her nowhere close to having had her need met. Once again she hit the net under the tightrope.