The King

“You’re going to make me beg for it, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t I always?”

“Always,” she said. “Please, fuck me.”

“Not good enough.”

Blaise sighed heavily. “Please, monsieur, fuck me. You’re the most beautiful man in New York City and maybe the entire tri-state area.”

“That’s a new one.”

“I love your hair, how soft it is, and your dark eyes. And you have the sexiest hands on any man ever.”

“Hands?”

“I like hands,” Blaise said. “It’s a girl thing.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Um...I love your accent, and your cock is magnificent, and if you don’t put it in me soon I will cry and it’ll ruin my makeup and it’ll be all your fault, so please fuck me now, right now, this second, or I swear to God I will forget I’m the submissive in this relationship.”

Kingsley penetrated her with one hard stroke. Blaise’s head fell back, and she lifted her hips off the desk taking him all the way into her. With a jerk of his hips he pulled out and slammed into her again. He grasped her breasts in his hands and squeezed them, lightly pinching her nipples as she writhed beneath him. She was burning up on the inside and wet enough he could hear it as he moved in her. He watched himself fucking her. With the pad of his thumb he rubbed her where their bodies joined. Blaise stiffened with pleasure and grasped the edge of his desk to steady herself. Her skin flushed red, and her nipples hardened. Inside her and all around him she pulsed with her building climax.

He was nothing now but a body. Nothing now but sex. He didn’t think, didn’t remember, didn’t need, didn’t doubt himself because he didn’t exist—not when he was fucking. He’d fuck constantly if he could. Anything to keep the memoire at bay. Anything to keep the world at bay.

With a quick yank of his hands, Kingsley dragged Blaise closer to the edge of the desk. He pushed her thighs back, wider and closer to her chest. When she was as open for him as she could be and he as deep inside her as possible, he ordered her to come for him. She grabbed his wrists and squeezed them to the point of pain the way he liked, and she came hard, her shoulders rising off the desk, her hips moving wildly against him, her voice nothing but a series of sharp desperate breaths. When she was done, Kingsley wrapped his arms around her, pulled up and pressed her chest against his. She kissed him and he kissed back, a desperate hungry kiss between lovers who knew exactly what the other one wanted. He fucked her as he kissed her, fucked her without mercy, and she took every thrust like his good girl should. He had to come, but he didn’t want to, not yet. He wanted to stay inside her hot wet hole all day and all night and until he’d died fucking her, and then he’d never have to think or remember or feel anything but the welcoming inside of a woman’s body again.

So much pressure...he could barely breathe... His thighs were shaking from the endless thrusting, his cock so sensitive it ached... In his ear Blaise whispered erotic encouragements. Come inside me, my King...I want it dripping down my thighs all day...as hard as you want...as hard as you can...

As hard as he could was hard enough that his eyes watered from the force of his own orgasm. He came with a rush, with a fierce deep spasm, and a rush of hot fluid inside her. In the back of his mind somewhere he heard Blaise crying out in what sounded like pain.

Far too quickly he came down from the high of his climax. He rested his head on Blaise’s shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and laughed.

“You’re laughing at me?” Kingsley asked, slowly disentangling himself from her arms.

“I am. Look.” She raised her shoulder to show the bite mark on it. “You vampire.”

“I don’t remember doing that. My sincerest apologies.” He kissed the wound. He’d broken the skin but only a little.

“Don’t apologize. I love it when you give me presents.”

He pulled out of her and collapsed into his office chair.

“Your turn to handle cleanup.” He waved his hand at her, shooing her off his desk. She hopped off and pulled a box of tissues out of his desk.

“It’s always my turn to handle cleanup.”

“You’re so good at it.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that.” She knelt in front of him and used her tongue to gently lick him. It hurt. It always hurt to be touched after an orgasm. Pleasure and pain all in one act. He wasn’t satisfied until he’d had both.

When Blaise finished, she cleaned herself off with the tissues in his desk, got dressed and kissed him goodbye.

“That was fun. Want to go for round two tonight?” she asked.

“Please.”

“You’ll be sober?”

“No promises.”

Blaise rolled her eyes, kissed him again and left him alone in his office. Kingsley finished straightening his clothes and pulling himself back together. And then it happened the way it always happened. Thoughts. Memories. Things he wanted to forget but couldn’t all came rushing back into his mind. Life would be so much better if he could keep the blood in his cock and out of his brain all the time.

Kingsley unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk—the large one made to hold files—and took inventory of its contents. Eleven bottles of bourbon, two grams of cocaine, one ounce of marijuana, two bottles of pure codeine, ninety pills— one-hundred milligrams each—and one bottle of ketamine, because sometimes only a tranquilizer made for horses and the magical Wonderland it sent him falling into would do.

He reached for a bottle of the codeine, but his office door opened. Kingsley slammed the drawer shut and sat back in his chair.

“Do you never knock?” Kingsley asked.

“The moaning and groaning had stopped, and the walls have stopped rattling,” Søren said. “I assumed the coast was clear.”

“Clear for what? What are you doing here?”

“Fulfilling my end of the deal, like I said I would.”

“Are you here to yell at me again?” Kingsley asked as Søren walked in.

“I didn’t yell,” Søren said, taking a seat opposite Kingsley’s desk. “At no point did I raise my voice at you.”

“It felt like yelling.”

“Even the lightest touch can hurt an open wound. You can’t blame me for being worried about you.”

“Stop worrying. You aren’t my father.”

“I should hope not,” Søren said, furrowing his brow. “If so, my infant self has some explaining to do.”

“You aren’t my priest, either,” Kingsley said, although Søren didn’t look like a priest today. He wore his usual off-duty uniform of a long-sleeved black T-shirt and black pants.

“Why, Kingsley, aren’t we looking very defensive today.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I can’t do that. You asked me to teach you the whip trick. Here I am.”

“I asked you to teach me a whip trick?”

“I can’t say I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

“I remember.” Kingsley narrowed his eyes at him. Now that Søren had reminded him about it, he remembered.

“I can go if you’ve changed your mind,” Søren said, standing up.

“No. Sit. Don’t go.”

Søren looked at him and sat back down.

“I don’t do coke very often,” Kingsley said. “I was having a bad night. That’s all.”

“How many bad nights do you have?”

“One or two. Not many,” Kingsley said.

“I know I gave you the money with no strings attached. But I never suspected you’d use it for drugs.”

“You want the money back?”

“No. I want you to take better care of yourself. That’s all.”

“Take better care of myself? An interesting statement coming from the man who used to beat me black-and-blue on a regular basis. I see you’ve found some new whipping boys.”

“Whipping girls.”

“Only girls these days?” Kingsley asked.

“Only women. I’m less likely to go too far.”

“I loved it when you went too far.”

“And now,” Søren said with a smile, “you know why I don’t play with you.”

Kingsley lowered his head and rested his chin on his crossed arms.

“Kingsley?”

“What happened to you? You’re different,” Kingsley said.

“You want to know the truth?”

“I asked.”

“Her name is Magdalena.”

“Secret girlfriend?”

“She’s the madam of a Roman brothel. She and her employees cater to a very specific clientele.”

“Masochists?”

“Mostly.”

“That’s where you’ve been going to...” Kingsley waved his hand.

“It is.”

“Normal men join a gym to work off their extra energy,” Kingsley said. “So I’ve heard.”

“I’m not normal men. And don’t pretend you are, either.”

Kingsley rolled his eyes, waved his hand again. “So she’s your friend and...?”

“My first two years of seminary were difficult. I’m not sure I would have made it without Magdalena. I owe her, but she refused to accept any form of remuneration from me.”

“I’ve known a lot of prostitutes. Never heard of one refusing money from a john. Of course, it’s you, and I’d pay you money for another—”

“Kingsley, she and I never slept together. We were friends. I learned from her.”

“You learned how to knock a cigarette out of someone’s mouth with a whip?”

“One of the first skills she taught me, yes,” Søren said.

Now Kingsley knew what Søren’s “other hobbies” were. He’d learned the art and science of sadism over the past decade. Sounded far more useful to Kingsley than a degree in theology.

“I traveled a great deal while in school,” Søren continued, “but when I was in Rome, not a week passed that I didn’t find myself at her home.”

“She let you hurt her?”

“She did,” Søren said. “Although she herself is a sadist. And a very good one.”

“How good?”

Søren looked away and smiled at something before looking back at Kingsley.

“She was very mean to me,” Søren said.

Kingsley pointed at him. “Good. Someone needs to be. Is the reason for all this...” He waved his hand again.

“This what?”

“Good behavior?”

“I just told you I went to a brothel every week in seminary to learn sadism from a madam. You have an interesting definition of good behavior.”

“When I started at St. Ignatius, everyone was terrified of you. Everyone. Tout le monde. Even the priests were afraid of you, and they liked you. You didn’t even speak to other students. You were this impenetrable blond fortress, and everyone hated you—for good reason. What happened?”

“I grew up,” Søren said. “I’m not in high school anymore. That does wonders for a person.”

“I don’t like it,” Kingsley said.

“You don’t like me?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know,” Kingsley admitted. “When we were in school, we were all like scared puppies, and you, you were a wolf. I don’t like seeing you...”

“What?”

“Domesticated. They even put a collar on you.”

“I put on my own collar.”

“You used to scare me.”

“Have you considered the possibility that the reason I don’t scare you now is that you aren’t a puppy anymore?”

Søren waited.

Kingsley looked at Søren and barked. Søren only looked at him. Maybe he should try a bite next time.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Søren said, “the wolf is still there, but he’s on a stronger leash.”

“You let the wolf off the leash with me.”

“Which is why I needed a stronger leash.”

“I don’t know if I want to pay this Magdalena person for making you boring.”

“What she did was make me take myself less seriously, which is, as you know, the first of three miracles she’ll need to qualify for sainthood.”

“I envy her,” Kingsley said. “She had you in her life. I never thought I’d see you again.”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t for her,” Søren said. “I wouldn’t have been able to face you without her help.”

“Then I suppose I owe her, too. Even if you do yell at me.”

“I don’t yell.”

“What’s her address?” Kingsley asked.

“Why?”

“I’ll send her a check. If she’s the reason you’re here right now, then I owe her and you both.”

Søren sighed, picked up a pen and a scrap of paper off Kingsley’s desk and wrote the address. He held it out, and Kingsley reached for it. Søren pulled it back out of his grasp.

“I know what you’re doing,” Søren said.

“What am I doing?”

Søren glanced to the right and looked pointedly at Kingsley’s filing cabinets.

“Blaise has a big mouth,” Kingsley said. “One of her better qualities. Usually.”

“Here,” Søren said and gave Kingsley the address. “You should visit her. She could help you like she helped me.”

“I’m fine,” Kingsley said. “You act like I’m falling apart.”

“You were shot last year and almost died.”

Kingsley shrugged. “Worked out well for me, didn’t it? Someone came to my death bed and left me an ‘I’m sorry’ gift.”

“It wasn’t a gift. And it wasn’t an apology. It was a payment.”

“Payment? For what?”

Søren reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a tiny clear plastic tube. He sat it on Kingsley’s desk.

“What is this?” Kingsley asked as he picked up the small tube. A few flecks of metal danced in the afternoon sunlight.

“If you were a cat, that would be one of your lives.”

“This is my bullet?” Kingsley asked in shock.

“What’s left of it.”

“Why do you have it?”

“I wanted it,” Søren said. “I took it. I paid you for it. So now you don’t owe me anything.”

“They gave it to you in the hospital?”

“I asked for it.”

Kingsley spun the tube, pretending to study the shrapnel. In truth, he couldn’t care less what it looked like. All that mattered was that Søren had kept it. Why? Was it a talisman? A memento? A reminder of the last time they’d seen each other? Kingsley thought about reaching into his pocket. In it was a small silver cross on a broken silver chain—the one memento he’d keep from his first night with Søren. The cross and the memories.

“You kept this? All this time you’ve had my bullet with you?” Kingsley asked.

“I have. If you want it back, you’ll have to pay for it.”

“I will never understand you,” Kingsley said.

“Then stop trying.” He held out his hand, and Kingsley dropped the tube with the bullet fragments into his palm. He liked the idea of Søren having this piece of himself in his possession. Was there an object in the world more intimate to a victim than the weapon that had nearly killed him? These bullet fragments had been inside Kingsley’s body and had almost destroyed him. Instead of ending his life, that shot had changed his life. No wonder Søren felt such a kinship to those deadly remnants. They had much in common.

Søren pocketed the tube that held Kingsley’s bullet fragment.

“Are you ready?” Søren asked.

“Yes. For what?”

At that Søren smiled—a devilish sexy smile that made Kingsley completely forget for a moment that it was a Catholic priest who sat in his office and not the Søren of old who had used him as a human target on a regular basis.

He lifted his hand, crooked a finger at Kingsley.

“Now?” Kingsley asked.

“You had plans?” Søren asked. “My free time is limited, as you know.”

“Hosting an exorcism tonight?” Kingsley asked.

“Worse. Couples’ counseling.”

“Same thing,” Kingsley said. “It’s all your fault. No one told you to get a real job.”

Kingsley stood up and came around the desk.

“I like my job,” Søren said as he followed Kingsley from the office. “You should think about getting one, too. You’ll be surprised how enjoyable it is to be useful to society.”

“You know what else is enjoyable?”

“What?”

“Not having a job.”

Kingsley led Søren to his personal playroom.

“This is my real office,” Kingsley said, opening the door. He had a St. Andrew’s Cross, a rack, an X-bar, several spreader bars, all the bondage cuffs and equipment one man could ever need.

“Like it?”

“It’ll do,” Søren said, although Kingsley could see Søren eying everything with interest.

Every one of the bedrooms in the house had kink equipment in it. Vanilla sorts were not welcome in his home. And on the rare occasion they did infiltrate the town house, they were not vanilla after they left.

“How often do you play?” Kingsley asked.

“Whenever I can,” Søren said. “When it’s safe. If I go longer than a month, I get... What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Lethal?”

“Unpleasant. You?”

“As often as I can. Once a day at least.”

“Once a day? Who’s the lucky recipient of that honor?”

“Trust me, you don’t have time for the list of people I play with. I’ve probably fucked every submissive in Manhattan. I may have to move to Brooklyn.”

“Only submissives?”

“Only submissives.”

“That’s unusual for you, isn’t it?” Søren crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Kingsley.

“Why? Because I bottomed for you, I have to do it for the rest of the world?”

“Not the rest of the world. One person at least. I remember.”

“What do you remember?”

“How much you needed it, wanted it.”

“I needed you, not it.”

“You loved submitting to pain. Why the change?”

“I don’t bottom anymore. Fin,” Kingsley said. “The end.”

Søren studied Kingsley’s face as if looking at an alien specimen.

“Are you going to teach me the whip trick or not?” Kingsley demanded.

“I will, but this conversation isn’t over yet, whether you fin-ed it or not.”

“Show me the trick.”

“There’s no trick to it,” Søren said as he scanned the rows of single-tails on the wall. He took one down, pulled it taut, coiled it again and hung it back on the wall. A second single-tail whip proved more to his liking. “It takes a great deal of practice. And I’m not the teacher Magdalena is. She could have you flipping quarters in midair with a single-tail in two weeks.”

“Then why isn’t she teaching me?”

“She’s in Rome. Have you used a whip before?”

“On the back—large target.”

“Then you’ll need to practice on a smaller target. Not a person.” Søren had one of Kingsley’s business cards in his hand. He stabbed it over a hook on the wall.

“You want me to hit that?” Kingsley asked. “A business card?”

Søren put his hand on the center of Kingsley’s chest and pushed him back...back...back until he was against the wall.

“No,” Søren said. “I’m going to hit it. You’re going to watch. From a safe distance.”

Søren stepped away, coiled the whip, put his right foot before his left foot and then released the whip with a quick snap. With the tip of the whip, Søren cut the business card neatly in half.

Kingsley applauded as he walked up to the card. The cut sliced the card right down the middle between the word Edge and Enterprises.

“Such a good trick,” he said, impressed.

“Whips are multipurpose,” Søren said. “Good for pain. Good for bondage.”

“Bondage?” Kingsley asked, reaching for the card.

Søren lightly flung the whip at him. It wrapped around Kingsley’s wrist. He laughed even as it tightened, and Søren tugged on it, pulling him closer.

“Nice,” Kingsley said, his breath quickening. “What else?”

“Wrists,” Søren said, taking Kingsley’s other wrist and wrapping the supple leather whip around his hands. “Ankles even. The neck, too, but you have to be careful. Do you want to see Magdalena’s favorite trick?”

“Show me.”

Søren had left an eight-inch length of whip between Kingsley’s right wrist and left wrist. He spun Kingsley around quickly and pulled his back to Søren’s chest, bringing the whip hard against Kingsley’s throat.

The world fell out from under Kingsley.

He blinked, and the walls turned to black, the temperature dropped and when he breathed in he smelled sulfur.

He dropped to his knees and yanked at the chain around his neck. If he could get his fingers between the chain and his throat he had a chance. The air went out of the room. He could hear nothing, see nothing. But he could feel, and what he felt was a wet-hole cavern in his chest, bone shattering and a lung collapsing.

No air. None. No matter how he gasped, how he gulped, how he fought, he could get no air.

Someone spoke...Slovakian? Ukrainian? He couldn’t tell. The voice was too far away...and it didn’t matter.

He was dying.

He was dying.

A bullet in his chest. A chain around his neck.

He was dead.

“Kingsley.”

He heard his name but didn’t respond. Dead men don’t scream.

“Kingsley, you’re in Manhattan. You’re home.”

He wasn’t home. He was bleeding to death on a shit-stained basement floor in Ljubljana.

“You’re alive.”

No, he wasn’t.

“Open your eyes. Can you hear me?”

He heard something in his ears. A popping. It startled him. He jumped. His eyes flew open. The world was a haze. But he did see something, a gray light.

“You have to breathe.”

He heard something other than the voice. A deep loud gasping wheeze. Over and over again.

Kingsley felt something on his back, a hand hitting him hard. It should have scared him, but instead the pain and the rhythm brought him back to himself.

“Kingsley, talk to me,” the voice ordered. It was Søren. His voice. His hand.

“I’m fine,” Kingsley said.

“Stop lying to me. You aren’t fine.”

Kingsley looked down. He sat on the floor of his playroom, his back to the wall. His shirt was sticky with sweat and his throat raw from wheezing.

“I’m fine,” he said again.

“Was that a panic attack?” Søren asked, crouching in front of him. “Or a flashback?”

“It was nothing.” Kingsley’s body was tense. His hands shook. “I think I spaced out for a second.”

“Two minutes,” Søren said. “Not one second.”

Kingsley tried to stand, but Søren put his hand on Kingsley’s shoulder and held him in place.

“Stay down. Look at me.”

“I don’t want to look at you,” Kingsley said.

“I don’t care. Look at me.” Søren took Kingsley by the chin, forcing the eye contact. “Tell me where you were.”

“Slovenia.”

“Why?”

“I was shot there.”

“Is that all that happened?”

“I think so.”

He glanced away. It hurt to be looked at like this, with such concern and pity. That wasn’t how he wanted Søren to look at him. He wanted Søren to look at him with lust and desire and want and hunger.

He tried to stand up again, but Søren still wouldn’t let him.

“I touched your throat with the whip, and you started wheezing like you were actually choking,” Søren said. “You fell to your knees and wouldn’t speak.”

“I’m fine,” Kingsley said for the third and final time.

Søren sighed and pushed a damp lock of hair off Kingsley’s forehead.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Søren said, his tone almost, but not quite, apologetic.

“You didn’t scare me. I’m not scared.” His racing heart, his churning stomach made a liar of him.

“Well, this answers my question.”

“What question?” Kingsley asked, dropping his head. He didn’t want to look in Søren’s eyes. He saw fear in them, not of Kingsley but for Kingsley. And something told him Søren wouldn’t be touching him again for a very long time.

If ever.

“Now I know why you don’t let anyone hurt you anymore.”

Kingsley looked up at Søren from the floor.

“Get out of my house,” Kingsley said.

“Kingsley?”

“You said I don’t owe you anything. Get the fuck out of my house.”

Søren got the fuck out.

10

SEVEN DAYS AND seven nights passed, and Søren didn’t come back to Kingsley’s house. He didn’t call, didn’t write, didn’t visit and didn’t once tell Kingsley he needed to get help. He was gone, gone, gone, and that was fine, fine, fine with Kingsley.