“You don’t even know me.” I curled my body into his.
“Maybe that’s part of the fun,” he murmured, before he let me go.
A bolt of longing hit me. How I wished he’d show this side of himself to me in the outside world. I mean, I knew there had to be a nicer side to him, otherwise he wouldn’t be so popular, but I’d only ever been the recipient of his hate. I swallowed the lump in my throat at the thought that once he found out who I was, it was game over.
Needing a minute, I turned back towards the carnival, the lights blinking on and off enticingly and the sounds of music, laughter and screams filling the air. I sighed before I even realised what I was doing.
Carter’s head whipped around in my direction. “Shit,” he muttered. “I’m taking you away from all the fun, aren’t I?”
I stared at him in shock. “N-no. I’d rather be here with you. I’ve just…I’ve never been to anything like this before,” I told him truthfully.
He took my hand again and began tugging me back towards the carnival. My mouth fell open in stunned disbelief as he said, “Pick something. We have time.”
Once I’d convinced myself that I hadn’t been hallucinating and he was actually serious about taking me back, a huge smile spread across my face. Not that he’d be able to see it. I looked around me, at the rides and stalls illuminated by the lights cycling between colourful flashing neons to white strobes, then back again. What to pick? “Nothing with clowns. They freak me out.”
I hadn’t realised I’d said that aloud until he laughed. “No clowns. Got it. Anything else?”
“What would you pick?” As time went on, I grew bolder in speaking to him. He hadn’t recognised my voice yet, so I was more or less sure that I was in the clear.
“Me?” He seemed surprised that I’d asked. “Other than getting you back in the haunted house again?” His voice dropped to a low rasp as he pulled me closer.
“Something different,” I murmured. I didn’t think I’d survive another go inside there.
“Maybe that.” Letting go of my hand, he pointed towards the same shooting game that Captain America had been trying his luck at when I’d first arrived. “But we can do something else, if you want to go on the rides.”
I looked to the left of the shooting game to the neon blue Ferris wheel, standing tall among the other rides. “Do we have time for two things? The big wheel might be fun.”
“Really?” I heard the scepticism in his tone. “Are you sure?”
“Never mind. It was only a suggestion.” I turned away from the Ferris wheel and began walking in the direction of the shooting gallery.
Carter stopped me with a hand on my arm. “If that’s what you want to do, we’ll do it.” Before I could say another word, he dragged me towards the wheel. We stopped at the bottom, staring up, and I heard him swallow hard. A sudden thought struck me. Was the fearless Carter Blackthorne afraid of heights? No. I dismissed that thought as soon as I’d had it. Something told me that there was a story behind his reluctance, though.
“We don’t have to do this,” I murmured softly, going up on my toes so I could speak in his ear.
“We do.” Without another word, he paid the man in the booth, waving away my offer of payment. He led me over to the car, and I slid inside. The attendant clicked the bar into place, and Carter tugged me into his body. “Good thing you’re so tiny,” I heard him say under his breath as he sprawled out in the cramped space. The ride juddered to life, and he clutched the bar with the hand that wasn’t around me. We ascended slowly as the other cars filled, and I heard him groan quietly as we got higher, his leg bouncing restlessly.
“Are you okay?” I ventured.
“Fine,” he muttered brusquely, and I shrank back. He huffed out a breath. “It’s nothing. Just a stupid fucking…never mind.”
“Tell me,” I commanded softly, tentatively placing my hand on his thigh, his powerful muscles tense under my palm.
“When I was a kid, my dad made me read this story in the paper. No idea what his thinking was behind it; he said he wanted to warn me of the dangers, but why he had to make me read it, I don’t know. Whatever. It was an article about a local boy dying at a fairground. He was on a big wheel, and he fell from the top and snapped his neck. I think he’d been fucking around in the car or something, standing up. For some reason the story stuck in my head, and I had nightmares about it for about a month straight. Never been on a big wheel since. Stupid, right?”
I hadn’t been expecting that. For someone like Carter, so confident and untouchable, to admit to any kind of vulnerability—honestly, I was at a loss for words.
“No, it’s not,” I said finally. I was totally out of my depth here. My hand squeezed his leg lightly. There was something strangely intimate about being here with him in this swaying car. It felt like the rest of the world didn’t exist. Just us, here, suspended in the air, hidden behind our masks. I decided that distracting him might be the best option. “Tell me about the cove. You said the girls were being taken there?”
“You’re not from around here?”
I bit my lip. “No,” I lied through my teeth. Of course, I knew about the cove, not that I’d ever been there.
“Down the coast, past the pier and the beach, there’s a cove at the bottom of the cliffs. Most of the tourists don’t know about it. There’s a party there later. Exclusive. Select.”
I deflated a little. Of course. Only the elite, hand-selected by Carter and his friends, would be invited. “You’re coming with me,” he added, oblivious.
Before I knew it, the ride was coming to a stop at the bottom. The bar lifted and I climbed from the car, my feet a little unsteady, and Carter took my hand again. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” I could practically hear the smirk in his voice as he continued. “Of course, I did get to have a hot as fuck girl draping herself all over me, distracting me from the thought of plummeting to my death.”
I didn’t even know how to respond. I was so out of my depth tonight, I couldn’t even see the bottom. The whole evening felt completely surreal, like I’d fallen into a dream. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to require a response from me because he continued talking. “Want to take the masks off for now? I want to see your face.”
“Not yet.” I shook my head frantically. “Later.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to hide something.”
There was suddenly so much suspicion in his voice, and I panicked, trying to come up with a good enough reason to keep them on. “Isn’t the whole point to remain anonymous? So no one knows who we are?”
“Yeah.” His voice hardened. “We’re taking them off when we go to the cove, though, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed softly. I needed to leave before that happened. Before he found out who I was.
I should have left already, or even better, come clean, but I didn’t want to stop. He’d said there was something addictive about me, but the Carter Blackthorne I was experiencing tonight? The guy who flipped between scarily domineering and sweet, who’d given me an orgasm in a haunted house of all places, then shown me his vulnerable side? I was already addicted to him, and I couldn’t even explain why.