“Then I’ll walk with you, if you’ll allow it.”
“I will,” she said, and started off walking again. Kingsley walked at her side and readjusted his strategy.
“I’m Kingsley,” he said.
“Are you?”
“I am. That’s my name.”
“Just Kingsley?”
“I have a last name. Two of them actually. Do you have a name? First? Last? Middle?”
“Yes.”
“Good. If you didn’t have a name I would have given you one. I have extras.”
That got a smile from her. A small one but he’d take what he could get.
“Juliette,” she said. “My name is Juliette.”
“Beautiful name. Do you have a last name?”
“I do.”
When she didn’t volunteer it, he gave up that line of conversation. He needed a new strategy.
“Your French is perfect, by the way.” A compliment usually worked in these situations, Kingsley had found.
“Yours isn’t,” she said. “You must live in America.”
“I do. Haven’t been back to France in years. You can tell?”
“I can tell.”
“Keep speaking your perfect French to me and perhaps my French will improve.”
“I have nothing to say.” She went silent again.
She had nothing to say? Well, fuck. Kingsley could have respected that statement, and they could have walked on in silence. But he didn’t like silence, especially not from this woman with her voice and her perfect French. So instead of respecting the silence, he broke it. Dramatically.
“I fucked an eighteen-year-old girl this morning,” Kingsley said. “And last night, although I was too drunk to remember much of it.”
“Are you still drunk?” She sounded utterly disgusted with him, but at least she was speaking, so disgust was better than nothing.
“Look, I’m not proud of myself. I didn’t mean to fuck her. It was an accident.”
“Accident?” she repeated. She had a low voice and everything she said sounded like a secret. “Isn’t that the excuse men use when they do something stupid and don’t want to take full responsibility for it? That sort of accident?”
“She didn’t tell me her age.”
“Did you ask?”
“No...” he admitted.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Thirty-nine.”
“Old enough to know better.”
“I should. I do. I won’t ever do it again,” he said, hoping to wheedle a smile out of her.
“I don’t care,” she said. “What you do doesn’t matter to me.”
“I want it to,” he said.
“Why?”
“I want you to like me,” he admitted. “Do you?”
“Not yet. Why do you want me to like you?”
“Because you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She stopped and turned to face him.
“That’s a stupid reason to want someone to like you.” She shook her head and walked off again.
Kingsley stared after her a few seconds before catching up with her.
“I know,” he admitted. “But I’m male and feeling eighteen today for some reason.”
“Did that eighteen-year-old girl infect you with her immaturity?”
“I have only myself to blame for this.”
“You’re honest. I can appreciate that at least,” she said, taking long purposeful strides. A woman who didn’t mince or waste time. He liked that about her.
“You like honesty? I can tell you more horrible things about myself if you like. I have a list.”
“I think I have enough to work with here already.” Juliette reached a point where the path forked and she took the fork to the right.
“I’ve made a bad first impression.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Can you tell me what I can do to make a better impression?” he asked. “Gifts? Quests? Orders? I can take orders.”
“Priestly orders?”
He glared at her.
“Not those kinds of orders. Order me to do something for you, and I’ll do it to prove my worth.”
Juliette faced him again. She gave a heavy sigh as if he’d found her very last nerve and had stomped on it.
“Take your clothes off,” she said.
“Here?” They were standing on a path near a village and two hundred tourists on a beach.
“Here.”
“If I’m arrested for public indecency, will you get me out of jail?”
“No.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“If you were serious about me, you’d be naked already.”
Was he serious about her? She was unbearably beautiful, yes. And she’d stoned an obnoxious spoiled white American child. And she seemingly loathed him, which made her all the more intriguing. And if she walked away from him now he’d be wondering about her for the rest of her life.
Kingsley pulled his shirt over his head, kicked his shoes off and dropped his beach-battered khakis to the ground.
To be as naked as humanly possible, he also pushed his sunglasses up to his head so she could see his uncovered eyes.
Juliette didn’t look him up and down. She stared straight into his eyes and ignored every other part of his body, including his semi-erect penis.
“Are you lost?” she asked.
“Completely.”
“I can’t help you find yourself. I can’t help you with anything.”
“I don’t want your help,” he said. “I only want your body.”
Juliette apparently liked that answer. She put her canvas tote bag on the ground. Kingsley glanced down and saw it was full of nothing but rocks. Why would a woman carry a bag of rocks with her?
He would have asked but before he could say a word, she’d stepped forward, put a hand in his hair at the nape of his neck and kissed him.
He kissed her back, greedy for anything and everything he could get from this exquisite mysterious woman. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t ask why she kissed him. He let her kiss him and he kissed her back because there was nothing in the world he’d rather be doing at the moment.
Her lips left his and she took a step back. Kingsley slowly opened his eyes.
“‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for his love is better than wine...’” Juliette said softly, almost under her breath, but Kingsley heard.
“Song of Solomon,” Kingsley said. Juliette looked at him.
“Put your clothes back on,” she said, and he obeyed quickly before anyone noticed the naked man standing on the beach. “You know the Bible?”
“A little,” he said. “I went to Catholic school. I know the Song of Solomon when I hear it. It was my favorite.”
“Mine, too,” she said, her voice far away as if it had got caught in a wind. “‘I am black but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem.’”
“‘Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon,’” Kingsley continued the verse. “I like the verse, but it needs improvement.”
“You think you can improve on the Bible?”
“I can. It says ‘I am black but lovely.’ The woman I see is ‘black and lovely.’”
“You’re trying to seduce me.”
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m glad I could improve upon my dismal first impression.”
“Come back to this place tomorrow at nine. I’ll give you a chance to make a better impression.”
“Why? Did you see something you liked when I took my clothes off?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Desperation,” she said.
“You like desperation?”
Juliette didn’t smile when she answered. She merely picked up her bag of rocks and turned on her heel.
“I like that we have something in common.”
12
Upstate New York
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ELLE REMOVED A load of sheets from the dryer as soon as the cycle ended. As quickly as she could, she folded them before a single wrinkle could set in. Ten sheets in three minutes. If folding laundry had been a sport, Elle would be on a box of Wheaties by now.
How had it come to this? Elle wondered, as she stacked the sheets in a neat pile on the counter. Once upon a time she’d been the most well-known submissive in Kingsley’s grand and infamous court of Manhattan kinksters. If she wasn’t tied to Søren’s bed, she was on Kingsley’s arm somewhere—at a club, at a party, at his home where he hosted the rich and the infamous. On a regular basis she’d enjoyed erotic beatings, threesomes with Søren and Kingsley and enough notoriety to get her into any club in town.
And now here she was, spending her days doing laundry for a convent. And the most excitement she had was timing herself every day to see if she could beat her previous record. She reminded herself the lack of excitement was exactly why she’d come here. No men allowed. No men meant no Kingsley and no Søren and no temptation to misbehave. Of course she couldn’t avoid misbehaving entirely. With so many rules it was impossible to not break one or two. But her sins were venial—she stayed up after everyone was supposed to go to bed, went to the library after lights-out, stole the occasional extra dessert from the fridge when no one was looking. She masturbated too, which was considered a sin here. Elle didn’t consider it a sin. She considered it an act of self-preservation.
The buzzer on the washer sounded and Elle removed the wet sheets and threw them in the dryer. She’d washed the sheets, she’d dry the sheets, she’d fold the sheets. And in a week, she’d do it again. She’d wash habits, dry habits, hang up the habits on their fancy wooden hangers. And in a week, she’d do it again. Fifty women under one roof made laundry an endless eternal chore.
“Sisyphus, Sisyphus.” Elle sighed after starting the dryer. “I feel your pain.”
“Who’s Sisyphus?”
Elle looked toward the door and saw a nun standing there, one she hadn’t seen before. But no, she had seen her before.
“It’s you,” Elle said.
“Is it?” The nun looked down at herself. “You’re right. It is me.”
“Sorry. You’re the girl I saw entering the order last week. Right?”
“Yes, and you’re the ghost.”
“I’m the what?”
“I saw you standing in the window. They said the only people in the abbey were nuns and you obviously weren’t a nun so I assumed you were a ghost. And you work in the laundry room with all these white sheets, which are very ghostly. So...are you a ghost?”
“No, I’m not a ghost,” Elle said slowly, as if talking to someone very young or slightly off her rocker, and this girl seemed to be both.
“Which is exactly what a ghost would say, isn’t it?”
The young nun looked at Elle expectantly. She batted her eyelashes and Elle noticed the girl’s baby blue eyes.
“I don’t know,” Elle said with a sigh. “Maybe I am a ghost.”
“Thought so,” she said.
“Can I help you with something?” Elle asked, ready to end this conversation as soon as possible so she could get back to work, back to being a ghost.
“You can tell me more about Sisyphus. Is he also a ghost?”
“Sisyphus, the mythological figure. The guy who had to roll a stone up a hill for eternity. Laundry is the ultimate Sisyphean task—clean, dirty, wash, rinse, dry, repeat ad infinitum.”
“You know what would help?” the young nun said in her light and airy tone. “Nudism.”
Elle stared at her.
“You are a weird nun,” Elle said.
“I know. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You’ll fit right in with all the other weird nuns here.”
“You think we’re all weird?”
“If you met a homeless person on the street who claimed to be the bride of Jesus Christ, what would you say to her?”
“I’d ask her if her husband was a good kisser.”
Elle did something she hadn’t done in so long she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done it.
She laughed.
“Wow,” the nun said. “Good laugh. Do it again.”
“I can’t laugh on command.”
“I’ll have to keep saying crazy stuff then and hope for the best. I’m Kyrie, by the way. What’s your name?”
“It’s Elle. And you’re not Kyrie. You’re Sister Mary Whatever.”
“Sister Mary George.”
“George?”
“He slayed a dragon. How cool is that?”
“Can I call you Sister George?” Elle asked.
“Call me Kyrie.”
“I’m not supposed to,” Elle said.
“I won’t tell.”
“Okay then, Kyrie. What can I do for you?”
“Sister Agnes told me to come see you. I have a boo-boo.”
“A boo-boo?” Elle repeated. “Are we talking about a small injury or a tiny bear?”
“Neither.” Kyrie held up her arm. “I spilled candle wax on my habit. Can you get it out?”
Elle examined the stain. It was about the size of a half-dollar and right in the middle of her sleeve.
“Hold still,” she ordered Kyrie, and pulled a knife out of the utility drawer.
“It’s only a stain. I don’t think you have to kill me for it,” Kyrie said.
“I have no choice. Stain on the habit is punishable by death.