“You like pain?” he whispered as he thrust again, right into the core of her.
“Yes...please...” she breathed. Oui...s’il vous plaît.
“So do I.”
“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”
How she knew, he didn’t know. He didn’t care either, now that he was inside her. He placed his hands next to her shoulders and rode her with long, slow, hard thrusts.
“I want to fuck every part of you,” he said as the heat of her surrounded his cock, enveloped it.
“You can.”
“Does he fuck you like this? Does he make it hurt?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You like it?”
“Yes...”
“Does it feel this good?”
“Nothing feels this good,” she said, and he heard a note of regret in her voice. Regret? But why? He was too far gone in lust to ask.
He grasped her breasts in both hands and squeezed them. Her fingers caught into the white fabric under her and inside her a muscle pushed back against him. It was too much. He almost came from that alone. With a grunt of frustration, he pulled out of Juliette’s body and brought his mouth down onto her, licking and kissing her wet seam. The lips parted for him and he pushed his tongue up and into her. She writhed under his mouth, twisted and groaned. He knew he was hurting her. He also knew she wanted him to hurt her. Her clitoris swelled against his tongue even as he bruised her hips with his hands as he pinned her hard to the bed.
He yanked her to him and shoved his cock back inside her, impaling her hard and deep. She rewarded him with a cry of pleasure tinged with pain. When she slammed her hands against his chest he grabbed them, pinned them behind her back and pushed into her with a punishing thrust.
“You want this,” he said, fucking her with abandon now. Every muscle in his hips had coiled into the tightest knot of need and pressure.
“No,” she said, even as she pushed back against him to take him deeper.
“Liar.” He pushed her onto her back once again and forced her legs even wider. It wasn’t enough. Not matter what he did he couldn’t fuck her hard enough, get into her deep enough. He forced her legs around him, rose up over her and mounted her again. It was so rare that he could let himself go entirely with a woman, let himself fuck her as roughly as he wanted to. But whatever he gave her, she took. She came with a cry as he filled her and came again not long after. He dug his hand into her hair at the nape of her neck and pulled, bending her body, forcing it into greater submission to his.
They were a tangle of limbs on the bed, limbs and flesh and bodies entwined so fully, joined so deeply, that it was as if they were sealed together. The heat had melted and merged them. They weren’t even human now, but sex in its rawest, purest form. Juliette had gone silent underneath him even as she worked herself against him with hungry thrusts of her hips. When she came again with a shudder and inner contractions so hard they hurt him, he rammed his own orgasm into her.
At last they were still. His body. Her body. Neither of them moved for any reason but to breathe. He was still inside her, reluctant to leave her even though he needed to. He needed to pull out, pull away, remember who he was and why he was here. He needed space, time, rational thinking, something.
Or he could just fuck her again.
He lifted himself off her, stood up and threw the condom away. Juliette remained on the bed, flat on her back, staring at him. Her legs were still splayed wide. An open invitation.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked when he rejoined her on the bed. The mosquito netting surrounded them like a cloud. It was all too easy to believe they were alone in the world.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
She slipped a hand between her legs and when she held it up to him, he saw a blood smear on her fingertips. He’d fucked her so hard he’d made her bleed. There were two ways to respond to such a situation. One was to apologize. That was the vanilla way. He didn’t respond the vanilla way. He responded the Kingsley way.
“Good thing you have two other holes,” he said.
“I’m yours,” she said with a tired smile. “Make me yours in every way.”
“But only tonight?”
She nodded and whispered, “Only tonight.”
“What if tonight isn’t enough?”
“It has to be,” she said.
“Then start praying,” Kingsley said.
“Praying for what?”
“That this night never ends.”
Juliette came to her knees in front of him. She touched his naked chest with her hands, kissed the scar over his heart, looked up at him.
“That is my only prayer,” she whispered.
Kingsley took her face in his hands and forced her mouth to his. He kissed her with a hunger he’d forgotten he could feel for anyone who wasn’t Søren or Elle. He’d thought with them he’d reached the end of his passion, that he’d bottomed out in them and given all he had. But with Juliette he found a new reserve of desire, a deeper hunger, a longing to have something with her he had with no one else. He pushed his tongue past her lips and into her warm mouth. She tasted of salt and ocean water and the more he drank of her the more he needed to drink. He would never be quenched of his thirst for her.
“Juliette...” he murmured against her lips. “My Juliette, my jewel.” She shivered in his arms.
“Your name is Kingsley?” she asked. “It’s your real name?”
“It is.”
“Are you a real king?”
“Yes,” he answered. He was. He had a kingdom. He had dominions. He had a court who served him. Yes. He was a real king.
“Then let me serve you, mon roi.”
She kissed her way down the front of his body, taking her time as she kissed every inch of him except the inches that most craved her kisses. As she neared his cock she blew softly on his penis. The cool air from her mouth washed over him. Then she breathed hot air and set his blood boiling again. With her tongue and lips she teased his lower stomach, his hips, his inner thighs. When he reached the point of desperation, she wrapped a hand around his length. He’d come only minutes ago, but he was already hard again. She’d got in his blood, made it burn, made it boil. He was lost in his lust for her.
“Tell me if you don’t like this,” Juliette said.
“Like what?”
She didn’t answer with words. Her mouth was too occupied to speak. She’d cupped the head of his penis and pulled the foreskin to the tip, making a sort of halo with it. Then she licked around the center with her hot wet tongue. Kingsley died. The visual coupled with the sensation—that glorious carnal salacious voluptuous sensation—nearly did him in. He saw stars and he saw the heavens and he might have seen God but only if God looked like Juliette. Every part of him throbbed.
“I’ve never seen a more beautiful man,” she said, looking up at him as she cradled his testicles gently in the palm of her hand. “You’re so beautiful I wish I’d never seen you.”
He would have answered her, but she brought her mouth down onto him again and his words were gone. She went deep, taking him all the way into her throat. Her full lips on his cock sent him straight to the edge and left him there, tense, taut, his body one pulsing nerve of need. Juliette worshipped him with her mouth, showering him with hot wet kisses, licks, hard strokes of her hand that made him gasp wide-eyed with the shock of pleasure. She lavished every inch of him endlessly with her tongue. She stretched out over him and rested her hands on his chest as she buried her face into his hips, sucking him all the way into her mouth. He’d never been so fully taken before for so long, so deep, so much. Too much. He grasped her wrists in his hands and came so hard his shoulders rolled off the bed, his stomach bowed. Somewhere he heard a cry, almost a shout, and knew it had to have come from him.
She swallowed his semen, even licking the last drops off the tip. When he winced, she stopped.
“Don’t stop,” he said. “Take it all.”
“It hurts?” she asked, dipping her lips to lick him again.
“Yes.”
She asked no more questions. She obeyed him as if she’d been born to obey him. And he wanted to believe she had. Was this what Søren had felt the day he met Elle? That he’d found the one woman created for him? Designed for him? If his desire for her had burned anything like Kingsley’s for Juliette, it wasn’t a surprise the priest had waited four years to fuck her. It was a miracle.
“Arrête,” he said. Stop. Juliette stopped.
Kingsley closed his eyes and merely rested. Juliette slid up his body and lay next to him on the bed.
“I want to beat you,” he said.
“We can’t. He’ll see the marks.”
“But you want that?”
“I do,” Juliette said. “I want everything from you.”
“One night isn’t enough.”
“How many nights would be enough?”
Kingsley opened his eyes and gazed at her face, met her eyes.
“All your nights.”
“You’re drunk on sex.” She started to roll up. “On pleasure. You found a new girl to fuck, and you’ve convinced yourself she’s different from all the other girls you’ve fucked. You don’t mean what you say.”
“I’m not a teenage boy in love for the first time. I’ve been with hundreds of women.”
“Congratulations. I’m sure your parents are very proud.”
“My parents are dead.”
“Is it because they heard what a whore you are?” she asked.
He grabbed her by the back of the neck and dragged her back down to the bed.
“Behave,” he said, sliding on top of her. “And keep a civil tongue with me.”
She glared up at him.
“You want to pretend you don’t feel the same,” Kingsley said. “You want to pretend this was just sex so it won’t hurt as much when you never see me again.”
“Tell me more about what I feel. Tell me more what I think. Tell me what it is I want, since you think I don’t know.”
“This,” he said, and grabbed her hair, pulling it hard enough to force her back into a bend. He dropped his mouth to her breast and sucked deeply on her nipple.
“He gives this to me. He gives everything to me.”
“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here,” he whispered against her skin. “Or here.”
He pushed four fingers deep into her wetness.
“I’d never been with anyone but him,” she panted as he opened her body with his fingers. He felt her inner muscles pushing against him, fluttering with pleasure, pulsing with need.
“Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you lying?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want me to fall in love with you?” Kingsley asked.
“He loves me,” she said. “Love is the last thing I need from you.”
“Tell me what I can give you that he can’t.” Kingsley pushed in deeper until she enveloped his hand.
“It doesn’t matter. You won’t give it to me.”
“How do you know until you tell me what it is?”
“I know. I promise you, I know already,” she said, and Kingsley heard despair in her voice. “Fuck me. That’s all that matters.”
He did as he was told. He pushed her onto her stomach and dragged a pillow under her hips. She tensed at first when he pushed his tongue into her tightest hole but relaxed after a minute and opened up for him. He rolled on a condom and entered her again. The tightness was ecstasy around him. He lasted only a few thrusts before he came.
But he didn’t pull out. He wasn’t ready to pull out. He would never be ready to leave her body. Kingsley lay on top of her, his naked chest to her naked back, his cock still buried in her, and their breaths intermingling.
“Anything,” he whispered. “I’ll do anything you ask of me.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Ask it.”
He slid out of her and turned her onto her back.
“Tell me what it is I can give you that he can’t.”
“You won’t give it to me.”
“Tell me,” he ordered again. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Any price, any prize, anything you want—I will find a way to give it to you.”
He cupped her face, caressed her hair.
She looked up at him with tired, hooded eyes.
“Death,” she said.
Kingsley sat up and looked down at her in utter horror.
“You’re right,” Kingsley said. “That is the one thing I can’t give you.”
She only smiled.
“I told you so.”
15
Upstate New York
AFTER ALL THE sisters went to bed at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock, Elle crept down the stairs to the library. Every night she made this little pilgrimage. She’d go stir-crazy if she had to lie in her tiny bed in her tiny cell and stare at the ceiling while she waited for sleep. Only in the library did she feel a little like her old self. She threw wood in the fireplace, switched on a lamp or two and sat and read anything she could find that wasn’t the Bible.
Surrounded by books, Elle could pretend she was at her old job at Wordsworth’s where she’d worked part-time during college and full-time until she was twenty-five. She’d hated to quit her job, but things were so busy at Kingsley’s that working by day and helping him manage a stable of submissives, Dominatrixes and various Fetishists who worked on and off his clock became too much for her. She didn’t need her minuscule paycheck anyway. Kingsley let her live in luxury at his town house for free. He’d even given her a credit card that he’d ordered her to use for everything she wanted or needed. But she was no kept woman, no pampered princess. She trained the submissives for Kingsley, kept his house in order and did anything he asked her to do, in and out of the bedroom. And not a week passed that she didn’t go to bed with Kingsley and Søren and give her body up to them both, all night long. Oh yes, she earned her keep.
The physical memories of all those nights threatened to flood her senses. Elle pushed them out of her mind as she pulled a book off the shelf—a decaying copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology. Elle carefully turned the dry and yellowed pages as she hunted for an entry. She and Kyrie had talked mythology a few days ago—Sisyphus specifically. She knew in the legend Sisyphus had been given his meaningless task as a punishment, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what he’d done wrong. It hadn’t been the act of giving the secret of fire to humanity. That had been Prometheus, not Sisyphus. And the gods had punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and having an eagle peck out his liver for all eternity.
Which was worse? Pushing the rock up the hill or being attacked by a bird? If she had to choose, she probably would pick the eagle. At least she wouldn’t be alone then. Even if the bird was hurting her, at least there would be another living creature there. All Sisyphus had was the rock.
“Can I share your fire?”
Elle looked up from her book. Kyrie stood in the doorway in her long white bathrobe. Her white veil covered her hair but Elle could see wisps of blond and brown at her temples.
“You’re not supposed to be talking,” Elle whispered. “Great Silence, remember?”
“Mother Prioress said the sisters aren’t supposed to talk to each other during the Great Silence.” Kyrie stepped into the library uninvited. Elle noticed she wore nothing on her feet. Bare feet. Bare ankles. When was the last time she’d seen anyone’s bare feet but her own? “You aren’t a sister.”