The King

“I’m sure I will,” Søren said. “We’ll be fine, Kingsley. Have a lovely evening.”

Kingsley patted Blaise’s shapely bottom, and she stood up and let him out. On his way from the dining room he heard Blaise asking Søren, “So what do you really do?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Søren answered.

Kingsley chuckled on his way upstairs. He needed to grab a few things. That was it. Think about what he needed to take with him, not what he had to do. Just a job. He’d done hundreds of jobs in his life. He’d get a file, a mission, a plane ticket, a target. This was child’s play in comparison.

Digging his keys out of the pocket of his jeans, he opened a locked box in his closet and took out his Walther P88. He removed the clip and pulled the slide, checking that no bullets remained in the chamber. He snapped the clip in, shoved it into his holster on his jeans and pulled on his leather jacket.

Kingsley left the house and neither hailed a cab nor took a car. On foot he made it to the apartment in twenty minutes. He rang the doorbell, and a housekeeper let him in without a word. No words necessary. The look of disgust and disdain said everything. Fuck her. Kingsley wasn’t here to make the housekeeper happy.

He raced up the stairs right as Phoebe Dixon stepped into the hallway in her long silk bathrobe. She had a towel to her wet hair and walked toward her bedroom at the end of the long hall. She didn’t look back or speak. She hadn’t seen him.

Good.

Kingsley took a quick and silent breath and pulled his gun out. Careful of the creaking floor, he stalked her down the hall. When she reached for the door handle to her bedroom, he put the gun to the center of her back.

“Don’t scream,” he ordered as he slapped a hand over her mouth. “Not if you want to live.”

8

PHOEBE’S ENTIRE BODY stiffened like a corpse. She whimpered but didn’t scream.

“Open the door. Now.”

She opened it, and he pushed her inside, pushed her so hard she landed on the floor, her bathrobe coming open to reveal her naked body underneath.

He grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into the floor again.

“Don’t...” she begged, her voice breaking with tears. “I have children.”

“Are you offering them?” he asked, ripping the robe from her body and wrenching her to her feet.

“Please, don’t kill me. My husband’s an attorney. He has money—”

“Keep begging. It won’t work,” he said as he bent her over the bed and kicked at her ankles until she parted her shaking thighs. He pressed the barrel of the gun into her throat. “But I like how you do it.”

Tossing the gun aside, he opened his pants and slammed inside her. Her body clenched around him tighter with each thrust. Despite her pleas and her protests, she grew wetter the more he rammed into her, the harder he worked her. But he couldn’t come, not yet. Although he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Sex with Phoebe was business, not pleasure, and he hated the work.

As she moaned underneath him, crying against the intrusion, Kingsley closed his eyes and disappeared to another place, another time. The elegant and well-appointed bedroom he stood in disappeared and dissolved. The hunter-green walls and the modern art prints faded away and rough wood took their place. The king-size bed adorned with silk sheets and pillows was gone, and now a small cot sat on the floor near a fireplace. And Kingsley lay on his side facing the fire.

“You have a bruise on your neck under your ear,” Søren said, touching the sensitive spot with his fingertip. “It’ll go above your collar.”

“If someone says anything, I’ll tell them a tree hit me.”

Søren laughed softly and kissed the bruise.

“I don’t think they’ll believe a tree hit you. Maybe they’d believe you hit a tree.”

“Why would I hit a tree? A tree never did anything to me.”

“Perhaps it likes being hit.” Søren kissed Kingsley’s neck again, his shoulder, his throat.

Kingsley remembered this night. It had a been a Sunday. Everyone at their school went to bed early on Sunday nights. They’d woken early for Sunday Mass and had to wake early again for Monday morning classes. Once everyone had gone to bed, he and Søren had sneaked out to the hermitage to spend a few perfect hours alone together.

“Aren’t you worried someone will find out what we’re doing out here?” Kingsley asked as he covered Søren’s roving hand with his own.

“They’d never believe it even if we told them.”

“What? They’d believe I’d sleep with a teacher, but they wouldn’t believe you’d sleep with a student?” Kingsley tried to sound outraged. He wasn’t sure if he pulled it off or not.

“Precisely.”

“Because I’m a slut, and you’re perfect?”

“Because you have friends, and no one likes me,” Søren said.

Kingsley sat up and looked down at Søren.

“I like you,” Kingsley said.

“No, you don’t,” Søren said with a half smile. “You want me. There’s a difference.”

“You don’t like me, either,” Kingsley chided. He ignored the unwelcome pang of sympathy Søren’s placid “No one likes me” declaration gave him.

“It isn’t that I don’t like you,” Søren said with a playful sigh. “It’s only I like me so much more than I like you that, in comparison, it looks like I dislike you.”

“I might suffocate you tonight with a pillow,” Kingsley said.

“You’ll have to teach my French classes, then. Lesson plans in my desk.”

“Forget it. You get to live.”

“I thought as much.”

Kingsley collapsed on to Søren’s chest with a sigh. Søren lifted Kingsley’s hair and pressed a kiss under his ear.

“Well, I’m worried they’ll find out about us,” Kingsley said, turning on to his side away from Søren. Søren wasn’t deterred. He ran his hand down the center of Kingsley’s back and pressed a kiss to the top of his spine. Kingsley relished these moments, after the fire of Søren’s sadism had burned itself out. The gentle touches and kisses hurt almost more than the blows from the belt and the cane did. They hurt his heart, and yet he treasured the ache. It was his favorite pain.

“Why are you worried? We’re always careful. No one ever sees us together. I don’t care if they find out about me. I have places I can go. But I don’t want you...”

“Don’t want me what?” Kingsley asked.

“I don’t want to embarrass you,” Søren said, and Kingsley laughed out loud at the abject absurdity of that statement.

“You don’t want to embarrass me? An hour ago, you stripped me naked, told me to get on my knees and confess to you the most shameful sexual fantasies I’ve ever had in my life, and you say you don’t want to embarrass me?”

“That’s different. Who we are in private has nothing to do with who we have to be out there. Do you want people to know what you are?”

“Your lover?”

“Not that.”

Kingsley thought about the question. Alone with Søren he became a slave, a slut, a groveling nobody who submitted to sexual torture and said thank you for the privilege. Having sex with another boy didn’t embarrass him. It was everything else that did.

“Non, it’s true. I don’t want people to know I like being hurt. They wouldn’t understand it, and they wouldn’t understand you. They’d think you were a monster.”

“I am a monster,” Søren said as he bit the center of Kingsley’s back.

“Yes, but no one knows that but me. It’s our secret. But...” He sighed heavily and pressed his back against Søren’s chest. “I’m afraid they’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

“And why is that?” Søren demanded.

“Well, you see...” He braced himself for Søren’s wrath. “I’m pregnant.”

Kingsley bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing as Søren sighed so heavily with disgust the cot vibrated. Then Kingsley felt something in his back, something that felt like a foot.

That foot pushed, and Kingsley landed hard on the floor right on his ass.

“Oh, no,” he said as he hit the hardwood beneath him with bruising force. “I lost the baby.”

When he looked up over the edge of the mattress, he found Søren’s face buried in the pillow. He’d never seen Søren brought to tears by laughter.

“Don’t cry,” Kingsley said, rubbing Søren’s heaving shoulder. “We’ll try again.”

Kingsley couldn’t hold off coming anymore. Surely enough time would have passed by now. He came inside Phoebe with such force he grunted in near discomfort.

He pulled out of her and grabbed her robe from the floor to wipe himself off.

“Hey, that robe cost a thousand dollars,” she said as she stretched out on the bed, naked and happy. One hand teased her own nipples while another slipped between her legs. His semen dripped out of her, leaving a wet stain under her hips. If she didn’t care about the silk sheets, he knew she didn’t actually care about the robe.

“Now it’s a thousand-dollar cum-rag.” He tossed it back on the floor as he zipped himself up.

“You’re terrible.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and she lazily sat up. “I hope that was to your liking.”

“I like that you laughed.”

He grabbed the gun and shoved it in the waistband of his pants again.

“What?”

“I said...” She left the bed and came to him, putting her arms around his neck. “I liked that you laughed while you were fucking me. It made it feel dirtier, like you really were some psycho maniac raping me.” She grinned up at him. He should have found her attractive, this thin, graceful beauty who looked twenty-five but had probably said hello and goodbye to thirty-five a long time ago. Once upon a time he found her attractive, but today she repulsed him. He wanted to take her arms off him, but it wouldn’t do to upset her. He needed her. More accurately, he needed her husband. Robert Dixon was working his way up. He’d be mayor someday if he continued on his current career trajectory. Kingsley would love to have a mayor in his pocket.

So he smiled at her, played nice and let her kiss him.

“I laughed because I was remembering something.”

“What were you remembering?”

“I don’t remember,” he lied.

She went to a chest of drawers, opened the top drawer and pulled out a leather makeup case. She opened it and laid out two lines of cocaine. She’d probably been on it while he’d fucked her. Would explain why she couldn’t shut up now.

“I heard you and Robert went shooting together,” Phoebe said.

“I had to discuss something with him.”

“Me?” she asked with a saccharine smile.

“Work,” Kingsley said. “Just work. Your name didn’t come up.”

“Good,” she said. “Just checking.” She handed him the rolled up bill. “Have some. We’ll go for round two.”

Kingsley tried to look enthusiastic about the prospect of fucking her again. She laid out two more lines for him. He hated coke, hated how much one hit made him want another hit half an hour later. But maybe if he couldn’t get it up again for round two, he’d have the drugs to blame.

Phoebe got on her knees in front of him and took his cock in her mouth. He breathed deep and tried to think of the most erotic images he could conjure, anything to get him back in the mood. For some reason all that came to mind were memories of Søren and those stolen nights together when they were teenagers. Luckily that worked, and he felt himself starting to grow hard again.

“Mom?” A small boy’s voice called out in the hallway. Phoebe pulled back and exhaled with frustration.

“Give me a minute, Cody. Mommy just got out of the shower.”

“I got sick at Tyler’s. They brought me home.”

“Wait there, baby. Mommy’s coming.”

Phoebe rolled her eyes.

“He’s supposed to be with friends tonight. Sorry,” she whispered to Kingsley as she stood to her feet. She started to pick her robe up off the floor but then noticed the semen stain. She grabbed a terry-cloth bathrobe from inside her closet and pulled it tight around her.

“I’ll go. It’s fine,” Kingsley said, relieved to have such an easy out.

“I’ll call soon. I promise.”

“Take your time,” he said, wishing she’d never call him again.

“You’re amazing.” She gave him a long deep kiss that Kingsley returned with no enthusiasm whatsoever. “The sexiest man on earth. See you soon? Please?”

“Bien sûr.”

“I love the French. Rape me in French next time.” She kissed him again and pointed at the nightstand. “It’s in there. I’ll call.”

She left him alone in the room. Kingsley waited until the voices disappeared from the hallway. He opened the drawer she’d pointed to, and he found the envelope. He slipped out the door, down the stairs and grabbed a cab. All he wanted to do was take a quick shower, wash Phoebe off him and get back to his blackjack game with Søren.

He raced up the stairs to his front door, his heart pounding as the coke hit his bloodstream.

When he strode through the foyer, he noticed two well-turned ankles shod in a pair of beige pumps resting on the arm of his sofa in his sitting room.

“Blaise?” He peered over the back of the sofa and found a rather euphoric-looking Blaise laying supine and looking sublime. She had a bowl of strawberries balanced on her chest.

“Bonne soir, monsieur.” She gave a tired happy laugh and popped a strawberry in her mouth. Her usually perfectly coiffed hair was now mussed, and it appeared she’d gotten undressed and redressed at some point. “I love your house. It’s the best house in New York. Have I ever told you that?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Are you stoned?”

She shook her head and giggled. “Nope. This is all afterglow.”

“Afterglow?”

“You know what’s amazing, King? He didn’t even lay a hand on me. But that was easily—” she made a huge sweeping gesture with her arm “—easily the best pain I’ve ever experienced.”

“Pain?”

“A little B, a little D and a lot of S&M. I was the M.”

“You were the M, were you?”

“It was amazing. Your friend is a god of pain.”

“Who? Who’s a god?”

“Your blond friend. Søren.”

Kingsley glared down at her.

“You had sex with Søren while I was gone?”

“No, Silly. I said he hardly touched me. He didn’t have to. His soul touched me. His pain touched me.”

“You’re out of your mind. How did this happen?”

“I don’t know.” She raised both hands in the air to stretch. “After you left he asked me how I spelled my name. I said like Blaise Pascal, and then he told me about how Blaise Pascal, he was a mathematician who—”

“He hated the Jesuits. Wrote all sorts of slanderous, and therefore true, things about them.”

“That. Anyway, we were talking, and then I did what you said I should do and I took him up to the playroom—the one with the Francis Bacon painting over the bed—and suddenly I’m getting flogged and whipped, and then I had an orgasm from the pain alone. Then I was down here with my skirt on backward. I raided your fridge. You know kink makes me hungry.”

She lifted her bowl of strawberries and offered him one. Kingsley ignored them.

“Do you think you and your friend would tag-team me someday?”

“No. Eat your strawberries. I need to talk to the god.”

“Tell him I want to kiss his feet. Again.”

“I’ll pass that along.”

She waved her hand, shooing him from the room.

“Søren?” Kingsley shouted as he ran up the stairs.

“I’m in my room,” Søren called back. Kingsley had given him his own guest room to stay in whenever he wished. So far he hadn’t slept any nights in it.

“All rooms are my room.” Kingsley threw open the door to the guest room. Søren stood on the opposite side of the bed, an open silver suitcase in front of him.

“Very well, then. I’m in your room.”

“Can I ask you one question?”

“Ask.”

“What did you do to Blaise?”

Søren looked up at him.

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“Did you fuck her?”

“That’s two questions, and no, I didn’t. Are you upset we played? She said she’s allowed to be with anyone she wants.”

“I don’t care who she plays with. I want to know why she’s lying on my couch in a stupor claiming you gave her the best pain of her life?”

“The best? I’m sure that’s an exaggeration, but I’m pleased she enjoyed herself.” Søren smiled as he dug through the suitcase of kink toys Kingsley kept under every bed in the house. “I certainly enjoyed her.”

“So all that about not breaking your vows was, quoi?”

“There was no sex, and I didn’t marry her. Nor did I take money from her or refuse to obey a direct order from the pope.”

“What about—” Kingsley made a specific hand gesture.

“Well,” Søren said. “I did do that, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But we Jesuits aren’t nearly so hard-line or heavy-handed as the Curia when it comes to masturbation. My God, there are at least three puns in that last sentence. Entirely unintentional.”

“Stop joking. This is serious.”

“It’s not serious. Calm down, Kingsley.”

“I’m perfectly calm.”

“You’re speaking in tongues, Kingsley. I heard French and English, and some Spanish mixed in, and you’re speaking them all at the same time.”

“You’re a priest. A Jesuit priest. And I left the house for one hour and come back, and I’ve got a girl with afterglow on my couch eating strawberries claiming my ex-lover who is now a Catholic priest gave her the best pain of her life. I can’t ever leave my house again.”

“You know from personal experience it’s in the world’s best interest I beat someone on a regular basis. I spoke to my confessor, and he gave me leave to deal with this side of myself as long as I don’t break any vows. So there.”

“So there? No, not there. We’re not there yet. You—” Kingsley pointed at Søren. “You’re in a good mood all the time. And you talk. And you’re...nice. Well, nicer.” The word nice hurt coming out. “You’ve changed.”

“Kingsley—”

“It’s the girl, isn’t it? The Virgin Queen. I should have known.”

Søren eyed him with suspicion. “Kingsley, are you—”

“Give me a second.” Kingsley paced the room. His mind reeled. What had happened under his own roof? He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out tobacco and rolling papers.

“What are you doing?”

“I need a cigarette to calm my nerves. They’re frazzled.”

“You’re not a dowager duchess. You shouldn’t have frazzled nerves at twenty-eight,” Søren said. “And you shouldn’t be smoking, either.”

“My house, my rules. It’s a smoking house. Everyone has to smoke in my house. I won’t quit smoking, and if you stay here you have to start.” Kingsley quickly rolled a cigarette and licked the rolling paper to seal it.

“Then I’ll go back to the rectory.”

Kingsley flicked his lighter, lit his cigarette, took a long drag and glared at Søren.

“How do you give someone the best pain of their life without touching them?”

Kingsley raised the cigarette to his lips again.

He heard a snapping sound, and the cigarette no longer had a flame.

For a long time he looked at his cigarette before slowly turning his head toward Søren who held a bullwhip in his hand. Casually Søren coiled it.

Cigarette lit.

Bullwhip snap.

Cigarette not lit anymore.

He held the stub in his hand split in two.

“Any other questions?” Søren asked with an arrogant lift of his eyebrow.

Kingsley pointed at the whip, pointed at his hand, pointed at Søren...

“Can you teach me to do that?”

“I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”

Søren threw the whip down on the bed and came around to Kingsley. He raised his hands to Kingsley’s face and lifted his eyelids.

“What are your questions?” Kingsley asked, trying to blink.

“Why do you smell like a brothel? Why do you have a gun in your pants? And most importantly, what drugs are you on right now?”

9

WHEN IN DOUBT, Kingsley fucked.

And ever since Søren had caught him taking drugs, he’d been drowning in self-doubt. Now he was drowning in Blaise’s body, a vastly superior body to drown in. She’d made the mistake of looking much too attractive today when she stopped by his office to say good morning. But she hadn’t complained when he’d slipped his hand under her skirt, and she certainly wasn’t complaining now that he had her straddling him in his large leather desk chair.

“You’re in a good mood today,” Blaise said as she unbuttoned his collar. She dipped her head and kissed his lips, his neck.

“I have you on top of me. Of course I’m in a good mood.” He skimmed his fingers down her throat and into the V of her blouse.

“If you were inside me, you’d be in an even better mood.”

“Are you sure about that?” Kingsley asked. He slid his hands under her skirt and massaged her soft thighs.

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Blaise bit his earlobe and whispered. “S’il vous plait, monsieur.”

“Since you ask so nicely...”

Blaise laughed as Kingsley stood up without warning and sat her down hard on the edge of his desk. He hiked her skirt up to her hips, and Blaise tensed.

“Something wrong, chouchou?” he asked.

“I love this skirt. Just don’t tear it. Please?”

“If I did, I would replace it for you.”

“It belonged to Bette Davis.”

“You and your outfits...”

Kingsley dragged her off the desk and turned her back to him. Carefully, so as not to tear the vintage fabric, he pulled the tiny zipper down and slid the skirt down her legs. She stepped out of it, and he laid it over the back of his chair.

“Are you wearing anything else that belongs to a dead actress?”

“Everything else on me or in me is fair game.”

“Good.” Kingsley tore her panties off but left her still wearing her stockings and garters. Then he spanked her hard on her bare bottom, hard enough she yelped. He did love that sound. He swatted her again even harder this time, then snapped her garter against the back of her thigh. Her skin pinked beautifully. But he preferred red, so he spanked her again.

“You’re evil,” Blaise said as she hung her head and panted in pain. “How do you make a spanking hurt that much?”

“Practice,” Kingsley said, and swatted her again. “You know you love it.”

“I hate it.”

“Are you sure about that?” Kingsley pressed her legs apart and pushed a finger inside her. “This doesn’t feel like hate to me.”

She was wet inside, very wet, and hot.

“My pussy loves you. Every other part of me hates you right now.”

“Every other part?” He brought his arm around her waist and found her swollen clitoris. He kneaded it gently.

“Okay...maybe not every other part,” Blaise said breathlessly, her lips parting. She braced herself against his desk while he touched her, one hand inside, one outside. He pushed a third finger into her vagina and opened her up for him. Blaise let out a groan of pleasure that was likely heard by everyone in the entire house. Good. He hadn’t bothered to lock his office door. Blaise’s inability to stay quiet during sex worked better than any tie on a doorknob.

“Where’s my camera when I need it?” Kingsley asked as he pushed deeper into her body until her inner muscles flinched around him. “You make quite a picture right now.”

“How’s this for a pose?” Blaise parted her legs even more, giving him a better look at all her assets.

“Très jolie,” he said with appreciation. “But this would make a better picture.”

“What would?”

Kingsley picked her up and sat her on top of his desk. He stripped her of her blouse and bra and pushed her thighs open. She had nothing on now but her stockings, her garters and a pair of high heels. Kingsley admired her body so open and ready for him.

“Parfait.”

Kingsley unzipped his pants and stroked himself to his full hardness. He let the wet tip of his cock rub against Blaise’s clitoris. She moaned and lifted her hips.