21. Ivy Jade
Ivy Jade
Inever realized sneakers could be just as loud—if not louder—as heels. Each step I took, another squeak.
Damn—sorry.
I snuck through the chateau, hiding behind one of the marble pillars at the top of the staircase.
My room was just across the hall. I looked left, then right, but nobody was here.
I didn’t want to run into a single soul, especially not Mami.
I was out longer than expected, and I worried my family would bust me for being gone.
It was so obvious at this point that I couldn’t even hide it.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
Stupid shoes!
“Ivy Jade!” I heard Tallulah yell after me. I turned around and made eye contact. Big mistake, Ivy Jade!
Why did she look like some Gothic ghost roaming down the hall in her white gown? She was just missing the candlelit candelabra.
My only way out of this was to keep running towards my room.
“Ivy!” Tallulah yelled once more.
Resist saying anything back right now.
I skirted away like a fancy rat, racing to my room like I was none the wiser. Tallulah continued to say my name–again and again.
Ignoring her, I almost started sprinting, but felt too embarrassed and compromised with some horrible speed walk that made my shoes squeak even louder.
Before she could say my name again, I reached for my door, yanked it open, and slipped inside. Slamming it shut, I held my breath to stay silent. Then Tallulah knocked. “Is everything okay in there?” she asked.
With my hand placed on the center of the large door, I replied, “I’m fine. Everything’s okay! Don’t worry about me.”
“It’s almost midnight. Where have you been?” she persisted.
“I didn’t realize you were my mom, Tal. Like I said, everything is fine. Go… I don’t know… have sex with my brother to entertain yourself.” I shuddered internally. Ew. I was that desperate to get her to leave. I just wanted to be by myself.
“Fine. I’ll figure out what you’re doing eventually. I’m here if you need me, byyyyye!”
I locked the door. Thank the entire freaking universe she left.
My room was fairly dim, and while normally I would have turned every single light on, I didn’t want to tonight. The dark ambiance stirred within me. Especially because I needed to scratch the itch that’d been High Jynx.
He’d been nonstop on my mind from the moment we rode the carousel together, and I convinced myself that any kind of feeling toward him was just a horrible misunderstanding.
I didn’t have a crush on a clown from a Scare Park! I was a lady! A dignified one, with specific tastes and expectations. And this? This thing High Jynx and I shared? Well… it was just unreleased tension manifesting into psychosis.
Duh! Of course it was. It was so obvious now.
I paced around the room, dissecting each and every emotion pouring out, reminding me of every lingering glance and smirk High Jynx beamed my way. Those moments weren’t real. They were just me compartmentalizing my scrambled thoughts into little boxes that made more sense.
“You’re just stressed about the rings. And the stress is trying to leave your body. Right?” I stopped pacing and looked in the mirror. Oh god, I was talking to myself now.
I was so immersed in this fantasy with High Jynx that I allowed myself to get sucked into a world wholly different from mine.
It’s okay. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just harmless flirting.
Our interaction was as benign as turning the page to another steamy chapter of ‘Unmasking My Bright Knight.’ I mean, Roman Knight had this same effect on me—he also gave me that incurable itch that needed to be scratched.
But was that real? Of course not. Because once the deed was done—the itch scratched—my thoughts were free.
And the same would be true with High Jynx.
I had to get over him.
I wanted him out of my head and back into the category of creepy clown.
Frustrated, I kicked off my shoes, unzipped my pants, and pulled them down.
That’s when I gasped.
“Are you kidding me?!” I reached between my legs, feeling the dampness through my panties—my favorite pink and frilly pair that matched my bra. I swallowed dryly. It’s just a phase, a blip in my judgment of men. I touched myself again, then wiped my soaked fingers off on my shirt.
This was serious.
Practicing discretion was an art form most people constantly lacked.
Like Gustav and the obnoxious emo music he played while growing up.
Nobody wanted to hear that, let alone be around it.
It left such an impression on me that I became the complete opposite of whatever it was that possessed him to be so loud with his interests.
Clearly, my desire to be inconspicuous popped up in peculiar ways, and not just with the dust jackets I used to hide my books.
Pulling off my shirt, I unhooked my bra and tossed it aside. I didn’t even bother taking off my socks as I frantically reached for my makeup bag, searching for my secret companion that I hid within the inner pocket.
I pulled out my special tube of lipstick: Candy Apple Red.
I tossed its cap off and twisted its base.
The red silicon nub at the tip began to buzz quietly.
Fully charged. I sighed in relief. Normally, this was reserved for Roman Knight, but tonight, dammit—excuse me—it was reserved to get High Jynx out of my system.
On the emerald satin bed, I undid the top layer of sheets and got inside.
Propping my head on a pillow, I searched through the social media app for the videos Hollie showed me earlier of my ultra-famous clown.
I barely typed his name into the search bar before it autofilled an entire description of what I was looking for: Hot as Hell High Jynx the Scary Clown.
I clicked it, and my room grew bright.
A page of videos covered my screen: images of him lurking in the shadows, chasing women, and sliding at their feet.
How did it come to this?
Me alone, stalking him online.
Just an hour ago, I was riding a carousel with him, now I was lying naked under the light of a phone and buzzing with adrenaline.
I clicked on a video, a slow-motion clip of him walking through the fog, glaring right into the camera—my eyes.
“Scream for me, darling,” his voice gritted through the phone and into my hand. I turned my toy on and slipped it between my legs, focusing on his stare. This was what I wanted. To wring him out of my mind like a sponge, to free myself from the weight of everything I absorbed.
God. What was it about those diamond eyes? Those dark painted lips—lips that were close to mine tonight, begging to be touched. I nearly lost myself in that moment, spinning around, melting onto a pink plastic horse that lifted me to his face, his chest, and his arms.
The video repeated, echoing his words. I caught myself holding my breath.
I couldn’t let it go. My limbs grew numb as my vibrator skirted along my clit, aching against my wetness that leaked out onto the satin sheets.
He did that to me. He made my entire body feel like static on a TV, tingling with sounds and light that blocked everything out from the world until nothing was left but him.
I think I hated that. Or maybe I loved how he tipped my world upside down and shook me loose.
Twisting the base of my vibrator, I increased its speed, throbbing all over as my breathing grew ragged. I clicked on the comments to see what others said. There were thousands of them. All women like me, just as terrified and enthralled by High Jynx.
“The only clown I want hiding in my closet,” one said.
“Scare me harder, Daddy!” Another mentioned.
“I want to lick his makeup off!” There were exclamation marks everywhere. Hashtags for hotclown and sexyscaryfreak.
A twinge of jealousy fluttered in my stomach, my leg stiffening along the satin sheets as I moaned.
One girl wrote, “Fuck me, High Jynx! I’ll let you do whatever you want to me!
” I clicked out of the comments and scrolled through the videos.
Him running. Him slipping his suspenders off.
I went back to the old video and looked at that comment again.
Reading it. Swallowing it until it reached the back of my tongue.
Would High Jynx like it if I spoke to him like that?
That comment had twenty-three thousand likes. My nipples stood on point as I grazed my vibrator across them.
What was he doing to me?
“Fuck me, High Jynx,” I whispered softly, testing it out in my own voice.
It was so not like me to say that, or to even entertain that vocabulary, but it made my face flush and my neck warm with anticipation.
I read the comment again, and High Jynx stared back through the top of the screen, swooping back his hair.
“Fuck me. Fuck me…” I repeated, biting into my words, each time a little harder, a little more indulgent.
It made me feel inexplicably guilty, like I was bad for saying it in the best kind of way.
I think this was what he wanted from me.
To leave me aching and wet, quivering below my phone, pressing the lipstick harder against my clit.
It made me so puffy and raw, like I had gone for too long, but I wasn’t ready for it to be over.
I wanted to build up for him, to be twisted up to the edge where I would eventually fall.
I turned the volume up on my phone, listening to his voice as I let go of my lipstick.
It rolled off the bed and vibrated onto the wood floors as I writhed in the sheets, slipping my fingers down the slope of my stomach, then between my folds as I rocked my hips.
I wished it were him instead.
Him filling me up, making me drip as I grasped at anything I could to feel more consumed.
“Yes… Take me!” I rolled to my side, digging my face into my pillow.
“Fuck me. Fuck me all you want, High Jynx,” I said, saying it how a hot, mischievous clown would want to hear.
My mind was shattering, and a flood of feelings and thoughts I had never possessed before came shooting out like word vomit.
“Fuck my wet pussy with that fat fucking cock…” I gritted.
I was stunned as the utterance sent a wave of heat between my legs.
Did bad words secretly get me off?
This wasn’t me.
What the fuck was going on?
My wrist ached as I bucked my ass forward, humping the pillow, fingering myself until I leaked over my knuckles.
This was it. It was like a baptism, purging myself of all the dirty thoughts and language, getting it out like bile. My clit lush and needy, as I writhed against my palm, squeezing one of my breasts.
High Jynx spoke over the phone on a video, repeating over and over again. “Do you want a photo? You can have one since I scared you so good,” he said with a smirk in that tone. A group of women giggled in the background as I scratched my nails up my stomach, sucking the wetness off my fingers.
I wanted to take his cock into my mouth.
I’d never done that before. Not once. But I wanted it so bad that I licked my own slickness clean off my fingers, gagging as I reached too deep.
I opened my mouth fully, letting him slip in and out, wetting it entirely.
I pictured him so vividly. Legs spread apart and over me, thrusting achingly slow into my mouth, then out with a pop.
I lurched as I touched myself again, feeling open, curling my fingers along the walls of my slit. My eyes fluttered. I was getting closer and closer as I listened to the depth of his voice. “Scream for me, darling…”
I moaned, loving his attention on me. Needing it. Biting my bottom lip. I was ready to come undone, my legs and toes stiffening with the first pulsing contraction.
“Fuck me, Romeo…” I began to shudder, unable to stop myself.
Wait. What? Why… why was I thinking of Romeo right now?
An image of Ro popped into my head, urging me to come.
His steely blue eyes and dark smoldering expression made me clench between my fingers.
I couldn’t speak a word. Oh god. I was coming to them both, and I couldn’t stop it.
White stars grew in and out in size, blinding me as my knees pinched together.
I cried out to Romeo like a maniac, my orgasm spilling loose as I rooted my knuckles deep inside, holding them still as little tremors of pleasure rippled through my body.
My breathing slowed, my fingers dripping as I pulled them out and wiped them clean off my breasts. There was a moment of sweet silence, my mind blank as my vibrator skidded away on the floor, escaping the craziest orgasm I ever had.
Cooling down, I rolled onto my back, staring up at the chandelier, trembling, realizing nothing had changed.
High Jynx was still on my mind. His face and voice ricocheted off the wall of my chest, like he was there for good, standing in the spot where my heart was.
I think I made it worse… because not only was High Jynx still there, but Romeo as well, appearing like a zombie out of the ground where I buried my old crush.
Fuck, I said a lot of swear words.
Oops…
I laughed, feeling a wave of panic. This situation was much worse than I even imagined.
These feelings weren’t just tension.
They were real.
And they weren’t going anywhere, not any time soon.
I liked High Jynx. And I liked Romeo Scott. And whatever that meant, it paled in comparison to the fact that I was supposed to marry Antonio.
I leaned over the bed and picked up my lipstick, placing it on my temple to soothe the new headache I had over the impossible situation I had just found myself in.