“There,” he said, admiring her graceful neck now adorned by the black leather collar. “Perfect.”
He slipped his finger between the leather of the collar and her skin. Tugging it, he brought her forward, closer...closer... She took the hint, slid out of bed onto her knees and took him into her mouth.
It was going to be a good week.
At midnight, after he and Juliette had surrendered to sleep at last, Kingsley awoke from his sex-and kink-induced stupor and had the shockingly pleasant sensation of being happy to be awake. Juliette was sound asleep next to him in his bed, the chain around her ankle dangling out from under the sheets and onto the floor. She was his. Tied to him, chained to him, collared to him...all his. And she’d promised to have his children someday when she was ready.
He touched Juliette’s face and she stirred in her sleep and smiled. There...if he could keep his eyes on her and what they could have together, maybe in time the emptiness he felt in Elle’s absence would scab over and heal and she would be one more scar in a long line of scars he bore on his body and in his heart.
But Kingsley didn’t want her to be a scar. A scar was a memory of pain. He wanted the pain.
To sleeping Juliette he whispered a promise. “My Jewel, I can’t give you my whole heart. But the part of it I can give you is the part that isn’t scarred and isn’t broken. I’ll give you the best of me and protect you from the worst for the rest of my life.”
He moved to kiss her. He wanted to wake her with kisses and fuck her again. He’d warned her he’d take her whenever he felt like it, and he was determined to keep that promise.
Before his lips could touch hers, he heard something.
His doorbell.
Kingsley rolled onto his back and groaned.
Who the fuck was at his door in the middle of the night?
And when had he turned into the sort of man who asked himself who the fuck was at his door in the middle of the night?
Calliope was right. It was too quiet around the town house. He should change that.
Kingsley dragged himself reluctantly away from Juliette’s body. He pulled on his pants and his shirt and left his bedroom. On his way to the stairs, he glanced left at a closed bedroom door. Behind the door sat an empty room that had once been Elle’s. It had been Søren’s idea for her to move in, not that Søren had told her that. He wanted her protected, watched, wanted her somewhere safe. A fool’s quest, and Søren should have known that better than anyone. Safety was an illusion. One moment you were having some of the best sex of your life on the roof of a luxurious Riverside Drive town house. The next moment you’re throwing your guts up in a toilet and facing the scariest decision of your life. He would do better with Juliette. He’d take better care of her. No one knew how much she meant to him, and so no one would be tempted to take him from her.
On his way down the stairs he saw Calliope in her bathrobe walking to the door.
“I got it,” she said, calling up to him. “You can go back to bed.”
“Best idea I’ve heard all night,” he said, glad to see Calliope was safe at home from her date already. He turned around and started up the stairs again.
Then he heard a laugh, and such a laugh it was. A laugh that turned the lights back on.
“Good to see you again, too, kid,” Elle said. Kingsley slowly turned around and saw Elle wrapped in Calliope’s arms being hugged half to death.
His stomach dropped and he had to grab the stair railing for support. Behind him he heard Calliope talking in rapid, breathless tones. Her voice had gone up an entire octave. She’d wake the dogs if she didn’t calm down.
He stood on the first-floor landing and looked down on the sight of Elle in his house. Right there. Before his eyes. She looked up at him and gave him a smile.
“Hi,” she said to him.
“My office,” he said. “Now.”
Her smile disappeared and the mask of obedience she wore when submitting came down over her face. She started up the stairs following behind him, not speaking.
Once in his office he turned on a small Tiffany lamp. He pointed at the chair in front of his desk.
“Sit,” he ordered. He wasn’t sure why he was being so imperious and dictatorial except that he couldn’t bear the thought of her running away again.
Elle sat in the chair. He sat on the edge of the desk in front of her. He wanted to tower over her, and he did.
“Why are you back?” he asked.
“I need a job.”
“You’re here asking for a job?”
“King, I—”
“You don’t get to leave and then show up almost a year later and call me King. Call me ‘sir’ or don’t call me anything.”
He saw her clench her jaw tight.
“Yes, sir,” she said, and he heard her struggle to say the words.
“You have no idea how angry at you I am,” Kingsley said, realizing his anger at the moment he admitted it. She’d disappeared and hadn’t written, hadn’t called, hadn’t told him she was alive. “After everything we went through—”
“We?” She looked up at him and met his eyes, a clear violation of every protocol a submissive was supposed to follow. “What did we go through? Sir.”
There it was. She’d asked the question. They could talk about it, the pregnancy, the decision she’d made, and the mistake he’d made letting her go through with it alone.
Or he could let it go, drop it. It was in the past and they should leave it there.
“How are you?” he asked instead.
“Surviving. You?”
“The same.”
He waited for her to ask about Søren. She didn’t. Either she already knew or she didn’t want to know. He’d put his money on the latter. He wished he didn’t know.
“Where did you go?”
“My mother’s.”
“You were at her convent the whole time?” he asked.
“I was. I left.”
“Did you—”
“I don’t want to talk about the convent.”
He raised his hands in surrender.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I told you. I need a job. I’m doing something with my life. I think. Maybe.” She laughed to herself. “But I’m broke and I’m homeless and I need help.”
“It must have hurt to admit that.”
“Look at me. You think I have any pride left at this point?” she asked him. He looked at her as ordered. She looked thin and tired and very pale. But the beauty was still there, and her eyes burned with a new light he’d never seen before. She had walked through Hell these past months and had survived the flames but carried the fire out with her.
“I think you have nothing left but pride.”
She looked him in the eyes, a cold and penetrating stare that bore into him. If he had words written on his soul, her eyes could read them.
“I wrote a book,” she finally said. “Someone is interested in it. But I need a job. Got any openings at Cuffs?” she asked. Cufflinks, Kingsley’s private bondage parlor he’d opened three years ago.
“I sold Cuffs for ten million dollars while you were gone. Very valuable real estate.”
“Fine. What about Le Cirque?”
“Sold. Twenty million.”
“Your empire is shrinking.”
“Au contraire. Merely reinventing itself.”
“Can I help?”
“Perhaps you can. But first...tell me exactly what you need.”
“Money.”
“I could give you money.”
“I don’t want you to give it to me. I want to earn it. It’s not really mine unless I earn it.”
“And she says she has no pride.” Kingsley laughed but Elle didn’t. She glared, a cold and cruel sort of glare as merciless as any Søren had ever used on him.
“I’ll go,” Elle said, moving to stand. Kingsley put his foot on her thigh.
“Stay,” he ordered. He knew if he let her walk ou
t of his home tonight, he would never see her again.
“Staying, sir,” she said. Every time she said “sir” it felt as if she was mocking him. She was mocking him and he liked it.
“Tell me this...what do you want to do?”
“Anything that’ll pay the bills,” she said.
“Anything, chérie? Anything at all?”
She winced at the chérie. Clearly she was in no mood to be charmed.
“Just a job, King. I’ll cocktail waitress at the club, I’ll scrub floors—I don’t care.”
He bent and took her chin in his hands. For a second she looked afraid. But then the fear was gone again.
“Non. Not a waitress, not a maid.”
“Then what?”
“You want money. You’re already worth a fortune,” he said. With her face, her body, her reputation and with the right training she was sitting on a gold mine and didn’t even know it. Men would give their right arm to kiss this woman’s feet. And even better, they’d give over their entire wallets. Everyone in their world knew of her as Søren’s submissive. Which meant everyone in their world knew of her. The curiosity factor alone would have them lining up around the block.
“What do you mean?”
“Kink is a kind of currency. You’d be surprised what it can buy you.”
“You want me to sub for money? Fine. Like you say, if you’re willing to get beat up for free, you might as well get paid for it.”
He shook his head, tsk-tsked with his finger right in her face.
“No subbing. Not if we both want to live,” he said, and Elle smiled knowingly. Søren would kill them both with his bare hands before he let his Little One submit to other men for money. He might kill them both with his bare hands anyway, so if they were going to die, might as well go out with a whip and a bang.
Kingsley had a vision then, a vision of this woman in front of him standing tall in a pair of knee-high black leather boots laced all the way to her thighs, a riding crop in her hand and a sadistic gleam in her eyes. He’d never known a sadist more vicious than Søren, but had never seen a Dominant more beautiful than Elle.
Elle was vicious too in her own laughing way. Søren took pain seriously. Elle didn’t. He’d hurt you because he had to. She’d hurt you because she wanted to. And when she wanted to hurt you, you wanted to be hurt.
“Elle...chérie...Maîtresse,” he said, tilting up her chin to meet her eyes. “No more serving for you.”
“Then what the fuck am I doing?”
Kingsley bent low as if he was about to kiss her. Instead, he put his mouth at her ear and whispered.
“I have a much better idea.”
36
2015
Scotland
“AND THE REST is history,” Kingsley said.
Nora reached out, and she and Kingsley clinked their glasses in a toast.
“One more toast,” Nora said. Kingsley held out his glass again.
“To what?” Kingsley asked.
“You punching the shit out of him.” She laughed and looked at Søren over her shoulder. He glared at her.
“That hurt,” Søren said. “I couldn’t take a full breath for two weeks.”
“You get no sympathy from me, blondie,” Nora said. “I couldn’t masturbate for two weeks after you sprained my wrist that one time in your dungeon.”
“You sprained your own wrist.”
“Because you were tickling me.”
“If you had taken it like a good girl and hadn’t thrashed so much...”
“How have I put up with him for twenty-two years?” she asked Kingsley.
“A divine mystery,” Kingsley said. Still laughing, he looked at Søren. “Now you know. That was the year I met Juliette, almost killed a man over her, came home and got everything back I’d lost and then some.”
“Good year for you,” Søren said.
“Hard year.” Kingsley met Nora’s eyes.
“Very hard year,” she agreed.
“Did you ever speak to Kyrie again?” Søren asked.
“No.” Nora drank the last drops of her wine and gazed into the bottom of the now-empty glass. “I was angry with her for a long time for letting me go without her. Then angry at myself for being stupid enough for expecting her to leave with me. I’d let the Church have you. Maybe I thought God owed me one.”
“Did she remain in the order?”
“As far as I know, she did. When she finished her novitiate she was going back to the Monican abbey in Northern California. She might still be there. She might have left. I asked my agent about her once, but they’re not in touch anymore.”
“Do you ever think about her?” Kingsley asked.
“Sometimes. Not often. It was what it was while it lasted. Then it was gone. As soon as I was back with you at the town house...it all felt like another dream. Honestly I don’t think Kyrie was even kinky. She just wanted to be with someone before she took her final vows and when I decided to leave, she knew she had to lie to get me to go without her. Tonight was the first time in years I’ve thought about her. The castle reminds me of the abbey. Although—” she smiled at her surroundings “—the beds are much bigger.”
“Thank God for that,” Kingsley said. “I can’t fuck in a twin bed. I’m not a kid anymore.” Kingsley glanced at Søren, who only shook his head in playful disgust.
“Do you two need some alone time?” Nora asked. “I could go check on the cake. And taste-test it. All of it.”
“Stay,” Søren said. “If he’s too tired for Juliette, he’s too tired for me.”
“Not true,” Kingsley said. “I don’t have to get it up to bottom.”
Nora groaned, collapsed on her side and covered her head with a pillow.
“I didn’t need to hear that,” she said from underneath her pillow.
Søren pulled it off her face and looked down at her.
“Grow up,” he said.
“Do I have to?”
She sat back up again and started to say something along the lines of “Please don’t make my life any weirder than it is” when a knock came on the door.
“I know he’s in there.” Juliette’s voice came through the door. “You can’t hide forever, you French coward.”
“Come in!” Nora called out before Kingsley could stop her. Juliette came in with Céleste in her arms.
“I wasn’t hiding,” Kingsley said. “We were reminiscing. It’s what you do before a wedding. And what is she doing up?” he asked, taking Céleste from Juliette’s arms. “What are you doing still awake, young lady?” he asked in French.
“Your daughter needs her good-night kiss,” Juliette said. “And so do I.”