The Queen

“Who is she?” Elle asked. “What’s her name?”

Kingsley held the book in his hand out to her and pointed to an illustration of a beautiful woman in an eighteenth-century gown. Elle glanced at the title of the book and back at the page.

“Milady...” Elle said, studying the face of the woman on the page. The book was Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, and the woman in the illustration was the infamous Milady de Winter.

“That’s what your rival calls herself. No first name. No last name. Milady. Nothing else.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“I know nothing about her and not for lack of trying. She claims to be the illegitimate daughter of a Japanese geisha and an English lord. She also claims she went to Harvard but didn’t graduate because she was caught topping one of her professors. Oh, and she says she married an Italian knight—they do exist, by the way, I’ve met a few—but he was fifty years her senior and when he died, he left her a wealthy widow with a villa in Tuscany. And if any of that is true, I’ll eat my vest.”

“You think she’s lying?”

“I do but I have no proof of it. She’s careful. Even wears gloves all the time so no one can get her fingerprints. When in the city she stays in a hotel under an assumed name and pays in cash. That level of paranoia and fear makes me suspicious. But her story makes for wonderful marketing. Her English is flawless, not a trace of an accent, but she also speaks Japanese flawlessly with no trace of an accent. She’s well educated and intelligent. She’s also mysterious, seductive, painfully beautiful and terribly cruel. Men throw themselves at her. There are rumors she secretly tapes her sessions so that if a client wishes to leave her, he either pays her a huge sum of money for the tapes or he stays with her. Most of them stay.”

Kingsley snapped the book shut and placed it back on his shelf.

“Have you tried sleeping with her?” Elle asked. Knowing Kingsley as she knew him, it wasn’t an unreasonable question.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t met her yet.”

“Is she good?”

“Very good from what I hear.”

For Kingsley to call a domme good was quite a compliment. The man could take more pain and wanted more pain than anyone she’d ever known in the scene.

“But...”

“But what?” Elle asked. Kingsley took her chin in hand and tilted her face up to him. He smiled.

“You’ll be better.”

“Will I be better than him?”

“No one is better than he is at sadism,” Kingsley said. “But...”

“But?”

“You’ll be a close second. Considering you’re untrained, and he’s been studying pain since he was born, there’s a very good chance you could put even him on his knees.”

“I don’t ever want to see him again, on his knees or off.”

“You say that now.”

“I’ll say that tomorrow, too.”

“Very well. I will respect that. For now. He’s not my favorite person either, nor am I his. But ours is a small world. You can’t avoid him forever.”

“Have you seen him?”

“I have.”

“How is he?” she asked.

“Not the question someone usually asks about someone she hates.”

“I want to know he’s hurting.”

“Then you’ll be happy to hear he is.”

“Good,” she said. That made her happy. So happy. So fucking happy she wanted to cry. “He’s still a priest, isn’t he?”

“He is.”

“I was afraid he’d leave the church.”

“He didn’t.”

“That’s good then.” She exhaled a breath she’d been holding for over a year. “He... Whatever his faults, he’s a good priest, isn’t he?”

Kingsley put his hands on her shoulders.

“Yes, he’s a very good priest.”

“I’m glad I left, then. He...he would have regretted leaving the Jesuits for me. I know him. It was good I left him if he’s still a priest.”

She knew she was speaking to convince herself, not Kingsley.

“This life I’m offering you isn’t easy money, Elle. The things dominatrixes do with their clients? Not even the priest would dream of some of it. It will be hard work. You’ll be tempted to return to him. Better to face that temptation head-on instead of running and hiding from it. Tu comprends?”

“Je comprends.” He was right although she hated to admit it. No way could she avoid Søren forever.

“Don’t be afraid. You won’t have to see him right away. He doesn’t know you’ve returned. No one outside this house does, and Calliope and Juliette will keep the secret.”

“What’s the plan? How do we ‘depose’ this Milady of yours?”

“In six weeks’ time, there will be a party at The 8th Circle. The summer solstice party—the Midsummer Night’s Fling. Everyone will be there. I will let it be known that I have a new domina who will make her debut that night. I will warn the world that she is the most dangerous, most sadistic and most beautiful domme they’ve ever seen. A domme who will put the great Milady in the shade. She will come, of course. If she doesn’t, she’ll be seen as a coward.”

“Six weeks? You think I’ll be ready in six weeks?”

“We’ll start your training tomorrow. I’ll work on a plan of attack, and we’ll build your dungeon.”

“I get my own dungeon? At the club? Seriously?”

“You will have the best dungeon in the house.”

Elle couldn’t repress a grin at that thought. Her own dungeon—she’d dreamed of such a thing but never spoke that fantasy aloud. That alone would be worth all the work Kingsley would demand of her.

“Okay. Six weeks. Milady shows up to this party. Everybody’s there. I turn up. And then what?”

Kingsley looked at her without smiling and the look on his face both scared and excited her.

“Then you will do what you do best.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“Hurt men.”

Elle laughed, her first real laugh since she’d set foot in this house.

“Hurt men? With pleasure,” she said. “Theirs and mine.”

“And mine,” Kingsley said and he knelt on the floor at her feet, sitting between her knees. He cupped her face with his hands and brought her mouth to his. A kiss... The very last thing she expected him to do was kiss her. And not a simple, benign, friendly kiss between ex-lovers greeting each other after a year living separate lives. No, this was a kiss that meant something. His lips pushed hers apart, his tongue slipped between her teeth, his thumbs brushed her cheeks. She returned the kiss, pushing close to him so that her legs wrapped around his back and her hands found their way to his hair. She dug her fingers into the soft dark waves and pulled, tilting his chin up, taking control of the kiss.

“I’m glad you came back,” Kingsley said between kisses, his voice low and intimate, his French accent thick and his erection pressing against her thigh.

“Why is that?” she asked, aching for more than a kiss.

“Because,” he said, kissing her neck under her ear and breathing the words so that she felt them brush across her skin like fingertips, “I’m your first client.”

5

Flogging Lessons

“HARDER,” KINGSLEY SAID. Elle did it harder, hard as she could. “You call that harder?”

She threw the flogger down and turned to Kingsley.

“How do you know how hard I’m hitting when I’m not hitting anyone?” She pointed at the towel on the wall. “That is a bath towel, not a person. No matter how hard I hit it, it’s not going to scream.”

“It’s still hanging on the wall. And if it’s still hanging on the wall—” Kingsley picked up the flogger, threw it once with a practiced snap, and the towel fell to the floor landing in a soft pile at their feet “—you aren’t hitting it hard enough.”

Elle exhaled heavily and scooped the towel off the floor to pin it back in place. They were in Kingsley’s playroom. It boasted a red St. Andrew’s Cross, a leather kneeling bench, two dozen floggers, canes and enough rope to truss up an entire herd of cattle. From the ceiling hung an elegant glass chandelier, which gave the playroom that touch of class everyone expected from the King of the Underground. For the past two weeks Kingsley had brought her here for four hours a day, training her in the various arts of pain. Caning was a breeze. Clamps were a blast. Flogging, however, had proven to be more difficult than it looked.

Once the towel was back in place, Elle held out her hand. Kingsley gave her the black-tailed elk-hide flogger, slapping the handle into her palm.

“I could knock it off with a whip,” she said.

“No whips. No single-tails. You could kill someone with one of those. You get to touch the whip when you’re ready and not a moment sooner.”

“I like whips.”

“Don’t we all, but you’ll use floggers more often than whips. No whipping until you’ve mastered flogging. Then I’ll find you a whip master. Now do it again,” he said, his voice calm and steady. “Make it hurt.”

“I’ll make it hurt.” Elle narrowed her eyes at the towel. “I can make it hurt. Who knows more about pain than the submissive of a sadist?”

“You are not a submissive. You never were.”

“Then what the hell was I doing the past decade of my life, King?”

“Wasting everyone’s time?”

She glared at him. “Look, I want to do this right. I loved topping you. I loved hurting you. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love submitting, too.”

“You have to let that part of your life go. You aren’t her anymore.”

“I’m still Elle Schreiber. No matter which end of the whip I’m on, I’m still Elle Schreiber.”

Kingsley narrowed his eyes at her.

“That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“You need a new name,” he said.

“What?”

“A new name. A scene name. Everyone already knows you as Eleanor Schreiber. Everyone already knows you as his submissive, his property. But you aren’t his anymore. You need a new name.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

“You’re going to give me a new name? Do I get any say in this?”

“You can pick out the font on your business cards after I decide on your new name. Now flog.”

Elle took a few steadying breaths and focused her attention. She could do this. How many times had she been flogged in her life? First time when she was twenty, eight years ago. She’d spent at least one night a week in the company of the most infamous sadist in their vast kink community during all those years. Sometimes two. Two times fifty-two times seven equaled a lot of fucking floggings. And that didn’t include all the ones Kingsley had given her.

With one more heavy breath she placed her feet in position and raised the flogger over her head. With her right hand she held the handle, with her left hand the tips of the tails.

She pulled the tails taut and then let it go with a flick. It was a good hit, a strike right down the middle. And yet, the towel stayed pinned in place.

“Fuck.”

Kingsley gave a low chuckle, and she nearly flogged his French face.

“You’re finding out that being a dominant is more work than you ever imagined, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I need more practice. These floggers are heavier than they look.”

“And you’re a woman and you’re five foot three, and you don’t possess one-tenth of the upper body strength I do.”

“I swim laps.”

“Not enough.”

“Fine. I’ll join a gym.”

“Yes, you will. But you’ll never be as strong as I am, or as strong as he is or as strong as the average healthy man on the street is. This job isn’t about muscle strength. The physical part of dominating someone is the smallest part of it. Your clients will be men, and they will be bigger and stronger than you are. You’ll never outweigh them, and you’ll never be able to beat them at arm wrestling.”

“So...shoot them?” she asked.

Kingsley smiled.

“They want to submit to you. They want you to hurt them. They won’t want to hurt you, because that’s not their nature. They want to be dominated by a woman because they don’t feel alive or sexual or aroused until they’re beaten, used and treated like objects. But if you want that respect, if you want their lips on your boots and their souls at your feet, you have to earn their respect. And you earn it by showing them you aren’t afraid to hurt them. Milady hurts them. You’ll hurt them more. Now do it again.”

She did it again. And again. And again. She did it until her back burned and her muscles screamed and she thought she’d die if she had to lift her arms over her head again. But she did it again, and she didn’t die. She wanted to die, but unfortunately she didn’t get her wish.

After half an hour Elle dropped her arms to her sides. Sweat poured from her forehead and down her back. Her heart pounded and she gulped down an entire bottle of water in a few swallows.

She pulled the towel down—she still hadn’t managed to knock it off the wall—and raised it to her face.

“Why are you doing that?” Kingsley asked.

“Wiping my sweat off? Because I’m sweaty.”

“You have a man in this room. Why not use his clothes to wipe your sweat off?”

“You want me to wipe my gross sweat on one of your Signore Vitale custom-made shirts? You’d kill me.”

“Would I?” he asked.

“I would if someone did that to me.”

Kingsley smiled at her and her stomach tightened in unwanted wanting. Every night she waited for Kingsley to come to her bedroom like he used to do, but not once had he slipped under her covers and whispered sexual orders to her like he had so many times in the past.

“When we were lovers in high school,” he began and she knew who he meant by we, “it was my job to undress him many nights, but his clothes must be folded neatly, precisely, reverently, and then placed on a chair. No mess, no wrinkles. But he...he would strip me naked and drop all my clothes onto the floor. Then he’d walk on them. Not barefoot, either. With his shoes on most of the time. And you know what?” Kingsley asked as he stepped closer to her, close enough she could kiss him if she wanted to.

“What?”

“I worshipped him for it.” Kingsley smiled at her, a Mona Lisa smile that hinted of secrets but didn’t reveal them. “He would sometimes pretend I wasn’t there when I spoke to him...and I worshipped him for it. He would tell me he didn’t want me anymore and then at the moment I was ready to kill myself in despair, he’d smile to show it was all a joke...and I worshipped him for it. I mocked him once for what happened between him and his sister Elizabeth, and you know what he did?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“He blindfolded me, tied me to the cot and made me say my sister’s name over and over again while he gave me the most intense erotic pleasure of my life with his hands and his mouth. When I stopped speaking he stopped pleasuring me. Then he made me say my own sister’s name when I came. And you know what?”

“You worshipped him for it?”

Kingsley nodded.

Point taken. To show Kingsley how thoroughly she’d absorbed her lesson she walked over to where he stood by the St. Andrew’s Cross, his arms folded over his chest. He wore camel-colored breeches and dark brown Hessian riding boots, a snow-white shirt held together at the throat with a gold pin and a dark brown vest with little gold fleurs-de-lis embroidered on it. Kingsley looked magnificent, like a Regency-era fever dream. If Jane Austen had set eyes on Kingsley, she would never have written her genteel comedies of manner.

She would have written porn.

Elle wiped her sweaty forehead off on his shoulder.

“See?” she asked, smiling up at him. “I can be taught.”

He looked down at the wet smudge she’d left on his pristine shirt and back at her.

“I could have you flogged for that.”

“I’m not a submissive anymore, remember?”

“I’m glad you’re starting to realize that,” he said and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Finally.”

“I know I’m a dominant. I know I am.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I’m sure.”

“Then you aren’t sure. Elle, what we’re doing here... I need all of you for it. Your heart, your soul, your strength, your guts. All of you. If you can’t give me all of you, then you are, yet again, wasting everyone’s time. Now tell me...do you want this? Do you want to be my Queen?”

“I want it.”

“It? What is it you want? Money?”

“Yes,” she admitted without shame. She needed a good job that didn’t take up all her time if she were going to do something with her writing.

“Power?”

“Definitely.”

“Me?” he asked.

“You did say you’d be my first client,” she reminded him.

“I will be.”

“You said I won’t be having sex with my clients.”

“Are you asking me if we’re going to have sex again?”

“Yes,” she said without shame or apology. She wanted him. She knew he wanted her. Why hadn’t they fucked yet?

“Would you like to?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove it? How?”

“By acting like the domme I know you are. Once you are a domme, I will be your client, and you can do anything you want to me.”

“Anything?”

Kingsley met her eyes and whispered, “Anything.”

“You’re going to regret that.”

“I can’t wait to regret it.”

“This is a test, isn’t it? You’re testing me?”

“Of course I am.”

“And if I pass this test, what do I win?”

“Me.”

“Good prize.”

“When I am done with you,” he said, taking her face in his hands, “there will not be a man in the world who wouldn’t take a bullet to lick your boots.”

“It’s not my boots that need licking right now.”

Kingsley smiled at her, a sensual, mysterious smile. It did not bode well.

“I’ll give you a hint about how to win your prize. Do you know a woman by the name of Theresa Berkley?” he asked.

“If I met her I don’t remember.”

“You’ve never met her. She died in the 1830s. But before she died she worked as a dominatrix. I doubt she used that term, but that’s what she was. She invented a sort of standing table she called a chevelet. It was used to torture men on one side of their bodies while another woman could sexually stimulate them on the other side. We have the freestanding St. Andrew’s Cross for that now, but it was quite an ingenious bit of furniture.”

“Sounds like my kind of girl.”

“A client coming to London wrote a letter to her once requesting a session on her chevelet. These were the conditions he offered. He would pay her ‘a pound sterling for the first blood drawn, two pounds sterling if the blood runs down to my heels, three pounds sterling if my heels are bathed in blood, four pounds sterling if the blood reaches the floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness.’ His words, chérie.”

“Lose consciousness? Jesus.”

“Don’t be vanilla,” he said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We masochists love our beatings. But that’s not the moral of this story.”

“Then what is the moral, King?”

“The moral is that if you want my pounds sterling or any other sort of pounds, you’ll have to earn it.”

Kingsley turned his back on her to leave and without thinking she raised the flogger over her head. She threw it across his back hoping to impress him with one hard hit. But Kingsley turned at the last second and caught the tails in his hand. She’d put the handle strap around her wrist thus making it all too easy for him to yank her to him and shove her back against the wall.

“What the fuck was that?” he demanded, squeezing her wrist to the point of pain. “Don’t put the fucking cord of the fucking flogger on your fucking wrist. That’s how you fucking hang the flogger on the fucking wall. And if you fucking put it on your fucking wrist, someone like me can fucking grab you and fucking fuck you up, you fucking rookie.”

He ripped the flogger off her wrist and tossed it aside.

“King, sorry—”

Kingsley cut off her apology with a hand over her mouth. Elle started, heart racing in pure fear.

“Shut up,” he said. “You fucked up, and you will be disciplined.”

He dragged her bodily to the bed and threw her down onto it. No amount of pushing and fighting could force him off her.

With knees and feet and arms and hands, Kingsley pinned her down to the bed. He had sixty pounds on her at least and was unbelievably strong. Finally she gave up her struggle. She was flat on her back on the bed and going nowhere until Kingsley let her go.

“This is what is known as a reality check, Elle. Repeat after me,” Kingsley said. “I am a bad dominant.”

A furious growl rose in the back of her throat.

“Say it,” Kingsley said.

“I am a bad dominant.”

“Good dominants do not hit people without their permission. Say it.”

“Good dominants do not hit people without their permission.”

“Are you a good dominant?” he asked.

“I want to be.”

“Let’s find out,” Kingsley said, his face a mask of steely resolve. He might be a masochist, he might be a switch, but right now he was all dom and all terrifying.

Kingsley released one wrist and unzipped her jeans.

“Safe out right now,” he said. “Right fucking now.”

“Or what? You’ll fuck me? Go ahead.”

“You’d like that too much,” he said, pushing his hand into her jeans. “And you haven’t even come close to earning my cock yet.”

He shoved a finger inside her and Elle cried out, not in pain but in pleasure.

“Thought so,” he said.

“What?” She tried squirming away from him but couldn’t move. He had her riveted to the bed.

“You’re dripping wet. So much for being a domme.”

“I haven’t gotten fucked in over a year.”

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

He pulled his hand out of her pants and pushed her onto her stomach. With his mouth at her ear he whispered a warning.

“There’s one man in the world who cares about you more than I do,” Kingsley said. “Just imagine what a man who doesn’t give a fuck about you would do if you fucked up during a session as badly as you fucked up with me.”

“I fucked up,” she said.

“You did.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“We won’t have to have this talk again, will we?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, Kingsley.”

“You aren’t going to call me ‘sir’?” he asked, his voice cold but teasing.

“No,” she said.

“And why not?”

“Because I’m not a submissive anymore. I don’t call anyone ‘sir.’”

Kingsley leaned in even closer, pressed his lips to the back of her neck and kissed her.

“Glad you finally are realizing this,” he said. “It’s about fucking time.”

6

A Special Delivery

ALONE IN HER bedroom Elle stripped out of her clothes—her favorite old Pearl Jam concert T-shirt she’d had since 1994 and a ratty pair of cutoff denim shorts. They’d been her comfort clothes, her lazy-day uniform, when she’d lived here at Kingsley’s before she’d gone to the convent. There she’d had to wear black tights and long skirts and buttoned-up blouses. It had been like wearing a costume every day so it should have been nice to wear her own clothes again. Although they didn’t feel like hers. They felt like a different sort of costume. They belonged to Eleanor. His Eleanor. But if she wasn’t his anymore, was she even Eleanor? Kingsley said he would change her name. She almost didn’t care what he changed it to as long as she could be someone who wasn’t Eleanor anymore. Eleanor was tired. Eleanor was scared. Eleanor missed her priest.

For almost an hour she stood under the scalding water and let the heat seep into her sore muscles but no matter how long she stayed under the water, the pain remained. She dried off on plush white towels she wouldn’t have to wash and dry and fold—Kingsley had a housekeeper. It should have felt like heaven, living in luxury again. And yet...

“You fucked up today.”

Elle stepped out of her en suite bathroom to find Kingsley sitting on her bed, boots crossed at the ankle, looking smug and satiated. His collar was open and the vest unbuttoned. While she’d been in the shower he’d been in Juliette. His new lover received the lion’s share of Kingsley’s erotic attentions lately. Elle didn’t blame him. Juliette was easily the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen in her life, and she’d seen her fair share of beautiful women come and go from Kingsley’s bed. Juliette, however, seemed likely to stick around.