Magic Mansion by Jordan Castillo Price

Author:Jordan Castillo Price [Price, Jordan Castillo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: erotic MM, Romance MM
Publisher: JCP Books LLC
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

RINGS AND SILKS

Ricardo couldn’t have been more stunned if Monty had marched up and bitch-slapped him.

“Are you okay?” Sue whispered. “Iain just said for you to go stand on your mark.”

Ricardo stood. His feet felt numb. His hands, too. And he wasn’t sure he remembered exactly how to breathe.

Jia waited for him at the gaffing tape X. Although she was just over five feet tall, she managed to look a foot taller, imperious and stern. Ricardo belatedly reminded himself that his stretchy outfit wouldn’t allow for sloppy posture, and he squared his shoulders as he tried not to be too obvious about swallowing past the lump that remained in his throat.

“Miss Lee,” Monty said, “you’re known for taking the traditional acts of magicians like Ching Ling Foo and Tchin-Chao, and performing them with a modern twist. Even today, these rings are sometimes called Chinese Linking Rings. Do you think that will give you any advantage?”

Jia stared at Monty coolly for a long moment, and then said, “I guess we’re going to find out.”

Ricardo looked at Jia, and then at the rings. And then he realized that she had a linking ring routine in her own wildly popular act, Apple Blossom Vanish.

And she was good.

“Magicians, you will have three minutes to see exactly how many of these rings you can link together. But to make things a little more interesting….”

No—I don’t want interesting. I want to perform with my linking rings!

“You’ll do it…wearing mittens.”

Ricardo attempted to smile gamely for the camera…but he simply couldn’t do it. Early on in the competition, he’d told Amazing Faye that Magic Mansion had nothing to do with talent. It was about spectacle. But now, as he truly felt that sentiment deep in his gut, his disappointment was overwhelming.

Maybe Faye had been right. Maybe it really was all about humiliation, so the viewers could bask in their schadenfreude as they picked each magician off, one by one.

As the thought crossed his mind, he heard the minuscule whir of a handheld lens zooming, and he felt someone lurking just to his side. Closeup. He forced himself to smile.

Assistants brought out the fleece mittens—one gold pair and one red—and Ricardo and Jia were positioned face to face in the center of a great spread of silvery rings. And even as Ricardo was balking at the thought of groping through them with ridiculous mittens on, as well as the cameras and the humiliation and the pressure (and the strangely sickening relief that he was not actually competing against John after all, at least not today)…Ricardo realized that he could feel something.

Cool. Round. Shiny. Filled with that delightful chimey sound they’d make if he struck them together.

Their familiarity calmed him. And so he was able to meet Jia’s eyes, and wait for the signal.

“Ready? Set?” The buzzer bleated. “Go!”

Jia and Ricardo both dropped to their knees. It hurt when his kneecap struck metal. He ignored the pain.

The whole trick of linking rings was that some had a small slot in them that allowed another ring to pass through.

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