The King

Kingsley threw open the door to the music room.

He stopped.

He stared.

He did not breathe.

It couldn’t be...

But it was.

The room was dark, but Kingsley could see who played his grand piano. And even if he couldn’t see, he would still know it was him. Only one man he’d ever known could play so skillfully without sheet music, without even seeing the keys. A sliver of streetlight penetrated the room and cast a circle of light around the pianist’s hair.

His blond hair.

Søren.

Frozen in place, Kingsley could do nothing but stand and listen and watch and wait and wonder. Why? How?

The music—Beethoven, Kingsley believed it was—set the room afire, and the sound moved like smoke over the floor, up the walls and across the ceiling. Kingsley breathed it in like incense.

The piece ended. The final note rose like a burning ember before falling to the floor and fading into ash.

Shock had stolen Kingsley’s courage, but now it returned to him. He couldn’t get to the man fast enough. He rushed forward as the pianist closed the fallboard and stood. Over ten years had passed since Kingsley had seen him, had looked on him with his own eyes. Kingsley had almost given up hope he would ever see him again. They’d caused each other too much pain, and someone had paid the highest price for their secrets. But that was all in the past. It would be better now between them. No hiding. No lies. Kingsley would give him his heart and his body and his soul, and this time he’d ask for nothing in return.

But as the pianist rose, Kingsley noticed something different about him. He looked the same, only older now. How long since they’d last stood face-to-face, eye-to-eye? He would be twenty-nine years old, wouldn’t he? God, they were grown men now. When had that happened? If it was possible, he was even more handsome than Kingsley remembered, and taller, too. How was it possible he was taller? His clothes, however, were far more severe. He wore all black.

All black but for one spot of white.

A square of white.

A square of white at his throat.

The pianist smiled at him, a smile of amusement with only the barest hint of apology. And not the least bit of shame.

Fuck.

Kingsley stared, incredulous. He took a small step back.

No...not that. Anything but that. Whatever hope had been in Kingsley’s heart a second earlier shattered and died like the last stray note of a symphony.

The old love, the old desire coursed through his veins and into his heart, and there was no stopping it.

He met the blond pianist’s eyes—the priest’s eyes—and released the breath he’d forgotten he’d been holding.

“Mon Dieu...”

My God.

4

FOR A SILENT eternity they only looked at each other.

Finally Kingsley raised his hand.

“Wait here,” he said and turned around. He turned back around again. “S’il vous plait.”

Søren said nothing. Even if Søren wanted to speak, Kingsley left before he could say a word.

Kingsley strode from the music room and shut the door behind him.

As soon as he stood alone in the hallway, Kingsley pushed a hand into his stomach. A wave of dizziness passed over him. He fought it off, ran upstairs to his bedroom and changed from his rain-soaked clothes into dry ones. He grabbed soap, a towel. He scrubbed at his face, rinsed the taste of Justin out of his mouth, toweled the rain from his hair and slicked his hands through it. In less than five minutes he looked like himself again—shoulder-length dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin inherited from his father. Did he look like he did ten years ago? Was he more handsome? Less? Did it matter to Søren anymore what he looked like?

“Søren...” He breathed the name like a prayer. How long had it been since he’d said that name out loud? What was he doing here? Last year Kingsley had been dying in a hospital in France, dying of infection from a gunshot wound. He remembered nothing of those days after his surgery but for the few minutes Søren had visited. He’d been too ill, barely conscious. He’d only heard Søren’s voice speaking to a doctor, demanding they treat him, heal him, save him. Kingsley thought it only a dream at the time, but when he awoke to find he’d been left a gift—access to a Swiss bank account with more than thirty million dollars in it—he knew it had been real.

That should have been it. That should have been the last time they’d seen each other. Kingsley knew that bank account had been blood money—Søren’s way of saying he was sorry for what had happened between them. The second Kingsley spent the first cent he’d accepted that apology. They were even now. No unfinished business.

So why was Søren here?

Kingsley took a steadying breath, but it did nothing to quell his light-headedness. He was almost giddy with shock. He laughed for no reason. As much as wanted to, he couldn’t leave Søren alone in the music room all night waiting for him. He had to go back, talk to him, look him in the eyes again and find out what he wanted. And he would. He could do this. Some of the most dangerous men in the world pissed themselves at the mere mention of Kingsley’s name. People feared him. They should fear him. He feared no one.

He took one more breath and readied himself to leave the bathroom and go to Søren. But then he stepped back, kicked the seat of the toilet open and vomited so hard his eyes watered.

Once he was certain he’d fully emptied his stomach of all its contents, he sat on the cold tile floor and breathed through his nose. He laughed.

Here he was, eleven years later, and Søren could still do this to him without saying a word. God damn him.

Slowly he stood and washed his mouth out again. He could run. He had money. He could leave. Go out the back door, fly away and run forever.

But no, Kingsley had to face him. He could face him. His pride demanded it of him. And if Søren had found him here, he could find him anywhere.

Outside the music room Kingsley willed his hands to stop shaking, willed his heart to slow its frenetic racing.

He threw open the door with a flourish and stepped inside.

At first he didn’t see Søren. He’d expected to find him waiting on the divan or on one of the chairs. Or perhaps even standing by the window or sitting at the piano. He hadn’t expected to find Søren bent underneath the top board of the piano. He’d turned on a lamp now, and warm light filled the room.

“What are you doing?” Kingsley asked as he came to the piano and peeked under the open lid. He spoke with a steady voice.

“Your bass notes are flat.” Søren hit a key and turned a pin inside the piano. “You shouldn’t have the piano near the window. The temperature fluctuates too much.”

“I’ll have it moved.”

“When was the last time you had it tuned?” Søren asked.

“Never.”

“I can tell.” Søren hit another key, turned another pin. Kingsley watched Søren’s hands as he worked. Large, strong and flawless hands. His clothes had changed, he’d grown taller, more handsome, and now he was a priest. But his hands hadn’t changed. They were the same hands Kingsley remembered.

Søren stood up straight and lowered the lid of the grand piano back down.

“The action is stiff. Has it not been played very often?”

“You were the first. No one’s allowed to play it.”

“No one? Then I apologize for playing it.”

“Don’t apologize. When I say no one is allowed to play it, I meant...no one but you.”

Søren glanced up and met Kingsley’s eyes. It took all of Kingsley’s resolve, fortitude and the alcohol left in his bloodstream not to break eye contact. Søren always had this way of looking at him that made Kingsley want to confess everything to him. Even back when they were teenage boys in school together, he’d had that power. But Kingsley kept silent, kept his secrets. They weren’t boys anymore.

“I’ll call someone,” Kingsley finally said. “I’ll have it tuned.”

“Call a music store. They’ll be able to recommend a good tuner.”

Kingsley and Søren studied each other over the top of the piano.

“Do you want to keep talking about the piano, or should we have a real conversation?” Søren asked.

Kingsley gave him a halfhearted smile and sat down on the piano bench. The adrenaline had subsided, but the disorientation remained. If he awoke to find himself in bed and all this was a dream, he wouldn’t be surprised.

“So...parish priest? Dominican? Franciscan?” he asked, the old words coming back to him like a language he used to be fluent in but hadn’t spoken in years.

“Jesuit,” Søren said, taking a seat on the white-and-black-striped sofa across from the piano bench.

Kingsley rubbed his forehead and laughed.

“A Jesuit. I was afraid of that. I knew they wanted you in their ranks.”

“I wasn’t recruited. It was my choice.”

“So it’s real? The collar? The vows? All of it?”

He clasped his hands in front of him between his knees.

“It is the most real thing I’ve ever done.”

Kingsley raised his hands in surrender and confusion.

“When? Why?” He gave up on his English and fell back into his French. Quand? Pourquoi?

“I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I’ve wanted to be a priest since I was fourteen,” Søren answered in his perfect French. It felt good to speak his first language again, to hear it again, even if every word Søren said stabbed his heart like a sword. “I converted at fourteen, so I could become a Jesuit. It was all I ever wanted.”

“You never told me.”

“Of course not. When I met you...”

“What?”

Søren didn’t answer at first. Weighing his words? Or simply torturing Kingsley with silence? Kingsley remembered those long pauses before Søren would speak, as if he had to examine every word like a diamond under a jeweler’s lope before allowing it to be displayed. Kingsley could live and die and be born again waiting for Søren to answer one little question.

“When I met you,” Søren said again, “it was the first time I questioned my calling.”

Kingsley let those words hang in the air between them before tucking them inside his heart and locking them away.

“Did you think I would try to talk you out of it?” Kingsley asked once he could speak again.

“Would you have tried to talk me out of it?”

“Yes,” Kingsley said entirely without shame. “I’ll try to talk you out of it now.”

“You’re a little late. I’m ordained. You know religious orders are sacraments. They can’t be revoked. Once a priest...”

“Always a priest,” Kingsley finished the famous dictum. He wasn’t Catholic, but he’d gone to a Catholic school long enough to learn all he needed to know about the Jesuits. “But a Jesuit? Really? There are other sorts of priests. You had to join an order that takes a vow of poverty?”

“Poverty? That’s your problem with the Jesuits? Not the celibacy?”

“We’ll get to that. Let’s start with the poverty.”

Søren leaned back on the sofa and rested his chin on his hand.

“It’s good to see you again,” Søren said. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”

“The last time you saw me I was dying in a Paris hospital.”

“Glad you got over that.”

“You’re not the only one, mon ami. I should thank you—”

Søren raised his hand to stop him.

“Don’t. Please, don’t thank me.” Søren glanced away into the corner of the room. “After all that happened, after all I put you through, terrifying a doctor on your behalf was the least I could do.”

He gave Kingsley a tight smile.

“You did more than terrify a doctor. I shouldn’t tell you this, but my...employer at the time had decided to burn me.”

“Burn?”

“Remove me from existence. Letting me die in the hospital was a nice, clean way to get rid of me and everything I know. The doctors, they’d been encouraged to let me die peacefully. I would have, if you hadn’t shown up and given the counter order.”

“I’m good at giving orders.” Søren gave him the slightest of smiles.

“How did you find me? At the hospital, I mean.”

“You listed me as your next of kin when you joined the Foreign Legion.”

“That’s right,” Kingsley said. “I had no one else.”

“You had our school as my contact information. A nurse called St. Ignatius, and St. Ignatius called me.”

“How did you find me today?”

“You don’t exactly fly under the radar, Kingsley.”

Kingsley shrugged, tried and failed to laugh.

“It’s not fair, you know. I couldn’t open my eyes that day in the hospital. You saw me last year. I haven’t seen you in...too long.”

“I was in Rome, in India. I’m not sure I want to know where you’ve been.”

“You don’t.”

“What are you doing with yourself these days?”

Kingsley shrugged, sighed, raised his hands. “I own a strip club. Don’t judge me. It’s very lucrative.”

“I judge not,” Søren said. “Anything else? Job? Girlfriend? Wife? Boyfriend?”

“No job. I’m retired. No wife. But Blaise is around here somewhere. She’s the girlfriend. Sort of. And you?”

“No girlfriend,” Søren said. “And no wife, either.”

“You bastard,” he said, shaking his head. “A fucking Jesuit priest.”

“Actually, a nonfucking Jesuit priest. They haven’t rescinded the vows of celibacy yet.”

“How inconsiderate of them.”

Kingsley tried to smile at Søren, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

“Celibacy.” Kingsley pronounced the word like a curse. It was a curse. “I thought you were a sadist. When did you become a masochist?”

“Is that a rhetorical question or are you looking for the exact date of my ordination? I’m a priest. Once you’re firmly convinced that God exists, it’s not that great a leap to ask him for a job.”

Kingsley stood up and walked to the window. Outside, Manhattan had awoken and stirred to life. He had CEOs and Nobel Prize winners and heiresses as his neighbors here on Riverside Drive. They were the men and women who owned the city. And yet the only person in the entire borough who meant anything to him sat on his sofa in the music room and didn’t have a cent to his name. Søren once had a cent to his name. A few billion cents to his name. And he’d given every last one of them to Kingsley.

“Why are you here?” Kingsley finally asked the question of the night.

“You might regret asking that.”

“I do already. I’m guessing this is more than a friendly reunion? And I’m guessing you aren’t here to pick things up where we left off?”

“Would you really want to?”

“Yes.” Kingsley answered without hesitation. It didn’t seem to be the answer Søren expected.

“Kingsley...” Søren stood and joined him by the window. Dawn had come to Manhattan. If dawn knew what she was doing, she’d take the next bus back out of town.

“Don’t say my name like that, like I’m a child who said something foolish. I’m allowed to want you. Still. Always.”

“I thought you would hate me.”

“I did. I do hate you. But I don’t... How can I truly hate the one person who knows me?” Kingsley studied Søren out of the corner of his eye and ached to touch Søren’s face, his lips. Not even the collar could stem the tide of Kingsley’s desire. Not even all the pain and the years between them.

“Do you remember that night we were in the hermitage and—”

“I remember all our nights,” Kingsley whispered.

Søren closed his eyes as if Kingsley’s words hurt him. Kingsley hoped they had.

“It was a night we talked about others. We were wondering if there were others like us out there somewhere.”

“I remember,” Kingsley said. And as soon as Søren conjured the memory, Kingsley was a teenager again. He stretched out on the cot on his back, naked, the sheets pulled to his stomach. Søren lay next to him. Kingsley could feel the heat of Søren’s skin against his. No matter how many times they touched, it always surprised him how warm Søren was. He expected his skin to be cold, as cold as his heart. Kingsley’s thighs burned. Søren had whipped him with a leather belt, then they’d made love on the cot. He knew it was teenage romantic foolishness to consider the sort of sex they had “making love,” but he needed to believe that’s what it had been—to both of them. He needed to think it had been more than mere fucking.

“Do you remember what you said to me?” Søren asked. “You said you would find all of our kind and lay them at my feet.”

“And you said you didn’t need hundreds. But...” Kingsley raised both hands as if he could conjure the memory between his palms and look into it like a crystal ball. “One girl.”

“‘A girl would be nice,’ I said.”

Kingsley laughed. “We were trapped in an all-boys’ school. ‘A girl would be nice’ might have been a radical underestimation of how much we wanted to fuck a girl for a change.”

“I didn’t want you to think you weren’t enough for me. You know I’m—”

“I know,” Kingsley said.

Kingsley knew Søren wasn’t like him. For Kingsley, sex was sex, and he had it when he wanted with whomever he wanted. Male or female or anything in between was simply a question of strategy. Søren had told him once he considered himself straight, that Kingsley was the sole exception to the rule. “That girl we dreamed of—I wanted black hair and green eyes. But you wanted green hair and black eyes? I assume you mean the irises would be black, not that you planned on punching her in the face.”

“I’m not that much of a sadist.” Søren smiled, and the world turned to morning from the force of that smile. Had Kingsley ever seen him smile like that? “And this girl of ours, she would be wilder than both of us together.”

“We dreamed beautiful dreams, didn’t we? But a girl like that? Impossible dream.”

Kingsley had once dreamed he and Søren would spend their lives together. They’d travel the world, see it all, wake up together, sleep together and fuck on every continent.

“Nothing is impossible,” Søren said.

“What do you mean?”

Søren turned his eyes from the sun and gazed directly at Kingsley.

“Kingsley,” Søren began and paused. Whatever words would come next, Kingsley felt certain his world would never be the same again once they were spoken.

“What is it?”

“I found her.”

5

KINGSLEY COULDN’T SPEAK at first. What was there to say to that? What do you say to an otherwise reasonable person who suddenly looks at you and says he saw a unicorn on the side of the road or met Saint Peter while out for a walk?

“You found her. You’re certain?”

“I have never been more certain of anything in my life. And that includes my call to the priesthood. It’s her. Black hair and green eyes. Green hair and black eyes.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Her eyes change color in the light. Green to black and back again. When I first saw her, she had streaked green dye through her black hair. She’s violent and foul-mouthed, and she told me I was an idiot. Not only did she say that to me, it was the first thing she said to me.”

“Wild, is she?”

“I’d go so far as to use the word feral.”

“Feral. A wild cat, then. With claws?”

“Sharp ones. Sharp mind, too. Very intelligent. Cunning. Quick and clever. Almost fearless.”

“My type of girl. Where did you meet her?”

“I was sent to pastor at a small parish in a town called Wakefield in Connecticut. She’s in my congregation. I recognized her the second I saw her. You would have, too.”

“What’s she like?”

“Dangerous. She doesn’t even know how dangerous.”

“How dangerous?”

“She...” Søren stopped and laughed. “She made me make her a promise.”

“Made you? No one makes you do anything.”

“She did. I needed her to agree to something, and instead of being cowed like every other person I’ve ever attempted to terrorize before, she refused to accept my terms. Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“I promised to break my vows with her.”

“Is that so? Which vows? Poverty? Obedience? Will she make you buy expensive things and tell the pope to go fuck himself?”

“She wants us to be lovers.”

“Are you?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Kingsley repeated. “So you plan to?”

“She made me promise I would.”

“So, why haven’t you?” Kingsley asked. He tried to keep his voice light, airy, amused. But he’d never had a more serious conversation in his life. If this girl was real, if she was the one he and Søren had dreamed of, and Søren had found her, that meant something. What it meant, he didn’t know. But something. Something that terrified him and aroused him all at once.

“Because,” Søren said, “I’m a priest. And she’s a virgin.”

“A dangerous virgin? I didn’t think such a being could exist.”

“You’ll believe it when you meet her. But that’s not all you should know about her.”

“What else?”

“She’s fifteen.”

Kingsley inhaled sharply.

“Fifteen. Are you insane? Do you know what they do with priests who—”

“Which is why I haven’t done it. As much as I’d like to.”

“Beautiful, is she?”

“Kingsley, you have no idea...”

Kingsley heard pure aching need in Søren’s voice. He hadn’t heard desire like that since the last night they’d spent together.

I own you...you are mine...your body is mine, your heart is mine, your soul is mine... Søren had whispered that in Kingsley’s ear as they’d fucked on the cold hard floor by the small hermitage fireplace. You want me? Kingsley had asked, taking every inch of Søren into him. So much, Søren had said. You have no idea how much.

“I should meet our little princess,” Kingsley said.

“Not a princess, a queen.”

“Take me to her, then.” Kingsley didn’t actually want to meet her. He felt sick again at the thought of it. This was a dare. You saw a unicorn? Prove it, then. You say you’re Christ back from the dead? Show me the wounds.

“I can’t,” Søren said.

“Why not?”

“She’s in police custody.”

Kingsley laughed.

“Now I know why you’re here. Your Virgin Queen has gotten herself into trouble. You expect me to help her?”

“I’m asking you to. Begging you to if I must.”

“Even when you’re begging, it sounds like an order.”

“Would you rather I ordered you to help her?” Søren asked, stepping away from the window. “I can still play the game.”

“It was never a game to me.”

Søren turned and faced him, his eyes cold and steely.

“No. It was never a game to me, either.”

Kingsley sat down on the black-and-white sofa. He crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned his head back against the fabric. He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. God, what a night.

“Do I want to know what she’s in police custody for?”

“She stole five cars. Her father apparently owns something called a chop shop.”

“They steal cars, chop them up and sell the parts. Good money in it.”

“He made her steal for him. The police caught her in the act. Her father ran for it.”

“I hope they catch him and give him the chair.”

“Death is too good for him. But he’s not my concern now. She is. She’s facing serious time in juvenile detention or worse. I can’t let that happen. I found her a week ago. I can’t lose her already.”

Kingsley looked up at him through narrowed eyes.

“You...” Kingsley said. “You’re in love with her.”

Søren didn’t deny it. Kingsley respected him for that.

Honesty was its own special brand of sadism.

“I am.”

“Well, then,” Kingsley said, laying his head back again. “Maybe all hope is not lost.”

He expected Søren to laugh at that, but when he looked up he saw the steel in Søren’s eyes.

“We have to help her,” Søren said. “Please.”