The King: The Original Sinners Book 6 (6 page)

7

April

“HIT ME,” KINGSLEY
said as he tapped the table.

“I’m not going to hit you,” Søren said.

“You have to do what I say. And I say hit me.”

Søren glared at him. Kingsley glared back.

“You have an ace and an eight,” Søren said.

“Which means I have nine or nineteen. I’m calling it nine. Hit me.”

“You want another card because you want to say ‘hit me’ to me as many times as possible tonight.”

“I’m not disagreeing with that.” Kingsley tapped the table again. “Hit me.”

Søren gave Kingsley another card—a second ace. Now he had twenty or ten, depending on how he wanted to play it. He and Søren weren’t playing blackjack for money, so he didn’t care much if he won or not. In fact, he didn’t care at all. But he couldn’t deny the fact he was enjoying himself. Kingsley needed time to stop and stop completely. He hadn’t felt this... He couldn’t even find the right word. He hadn’t felt this
something
in years. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to lose it, and he’d found it the instant Søren had stepped through his front door.

“Kingsley?”

“I’m thinking.”

“You have twenty. You should stand.”

“I’m not going to take the strategy advice of my enemy.”

“I’m the dealer, not the enemy.”

“When did you start playing blackjack anyway?” Kingsley demanded as he perused his cards again. One more ace and he’d have blackjack. “Do they teach this in seminary?”

“Cards were an extracurricular activity. An entire household full of men who aren’t allowed to have sex? We find other hobbies.”

“So, blackjack?”

“Among other things.”

Kingsley gave him a searching look.

“Care to tell me what these other hobbies of yours are?” Kingsley asked.

“They’re on a need-to-know basis. You don’t need to know,” Søren said, fanning the cards in front of him.

“I need to know everything,” Kingsley said. “If I’m going to keep you from getting excommunicated or going to prison for seducing and/or kidnapping a teenage girl—”

“Seduce her? I haven’t even seen her for a full month.”

Kingsley cocked an eyebrow at Søren.

“She quit church?”

Søren cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter.

“She’s grounded.”

Kingsley dropped his head on to the table.

“Why didn’t I defect to Russia when I had the chance?” Kingsley sighed.

“Are you going to make a decision about your cards, or are we going to be here all night?”

“We’re going to be here all night.” Kingsley sat up again. Søren shook his head in disgust. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one with a girlfriend young enough to be grounded.”

Exhaling with exasperation, Søren swept up his cards and Kingsley’s. With his agile pianist’s fingers, he shuffled the cards one-handed. Kingsley watched the display of casual grace and dexterity with envy and longing. Once, those skillful hands had owned every inch of his body. He’d never wanted to be a deck of cards so much in his life.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” Søren dealt the cards.

“King?” came a woman’s voice behind Kingsley. Without looking back, he raised his hand and beckoned her into the dining room. A beautiful young woman in a forties-style skirt and blouse stood next to his chair and waited.

He wrapped an arm around her hips and dragged her down to his lap.

“You’re interrupting,” he said to her. “Can’t you see how busy I am?”

“Oh, forgive me. I didn’t mean to interrupt your—” she glanced down at the table and back into Kingsley’s eyes “—card game?”

Kingsley pointed at Søren.

“Blaise, I would like you to meet my oldest and dearest friend...” He paused and looked at Søren when he realized he didn’t know if he was allowed to tell anyone Søren’s name. Out in the world Søren had gone by the name his father had given him—Marcus Stearns. Even now he was
Father Marcus Stearns, SJ
, according to church records. Søren was the name his mother had given him, and few called him that.

“Who the hell are you again?” Kingsley asked.

Søren stretched out his hand and took Blaise’s.

“Søren. Kingsley and I went to school together.”

“I’m Blaise,” she said, and gave Søren her brightest smile and the most unapologetic bedroom eyes Kingsley had ever seen. So unfair. Why did Søren always turn every head in the room? Kingsley looked at Søren who today wore normal clothes. Normal? Black slacks, a fitted black long-sleeve T-shirt. They’d be normal clothes on anyone but Søren. In them, Søren looked like something out of a fever dream. He couldn’t blame Blaise for looking at Søren the way she did.

But he did wonder why Søren looked at her the same way.

“Blaise, might I inquire what you’re doing interrupting this incredibly important card game of mine?”

“Against my better judgment, I answered the phone and took a message for you. But don’t get any ideas that I’m your new secretary, although you need to get a new secretary—”

“I will,
chouchou
. I promise.”

“You said that last week.”

“I got a new secretary last week.”

“Where is she?”

“She quit.”

“Did you fuck her?”

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

Blaise turned her attention back to Søren.

“Can you please tell your oldest and dearest friend to stop seducing his secretaries so they’ll stop quitting on him when they catch him fucking someone else?”

“Kingsley,” Søren said, shuffling the cards again. “Stop seducing your secretaries so they’ll stop quitting on you.”

“Thank you.” Blaise gave Søren a smile.

“My pleasure,” Søren said. Kingsley mentally slapped them both.

“Don’t pretend you don’t like playing secretary,” Kingsley said.

“That’s different.” Blaise shook her head. “If I’m pretending to be your secretary so you’ll fuck me on your desk—that’s one thing. But I don’t actually want to
be
your secretary.”

“Just give me the message,” Kingsley said, running his hand up her thigh and caressing the bare skin above her flesh-tone stockings.

Blaise reached into her nearly translucent pale pink blouse and produced a folded note from inside her lace-trimmed bra.

Kingsley unfolded the note, still warm from her body, and read.

Tonight at nine. —Phoebe

Kingsley tensed when he read the words and briefly considered lying his way out of the situation. But no...Phoebe was not the sort of woman one said no to.

“I have to go,” Kingsley said to Blaise and Søren. “I won’t be gone long—an hour or so. You’ll keep my guest company, won’t you?” he asked Blaise.

“Happily.” Her thousand-watt smile brightened a few more watts. With her on his lap, he could feel the heat emanating from between her legs.

“Good. You two have so much in common, so much to talk about. Blaise, tell Søren what you do.”

“I run a nonprofit,” she said, leaning forward on the table and resting her chin on her hand. The move allowed everyone in the room to get a much clearer view of her soft, ample cleavage.

“A nonprofit?” Søren continued shuffling the cards while never once looking away from Blaise.

“Tell him what it does.” Kingsley pinched her on the thigh, and she shuddered in pleasure. “Our Blaise is
très
altruistic.”

“It’s called Slut Pride. We educate people about women’s sexual freedom, especially in regards to women’s participation in BDSM activities. Some people like to tell us that it’s not feminist to enjoy being flogged. I say it’s not feminist to tell a woman what she can and can’t do. But enough about me. What do you do?”

“I’m a Catholic priest.”

Blaise said nothing. She gawked at Søren with her full red-lipped mouth agape. And then she laughed, a warm throaty sound that filled the room.

“You’re terrible,” she said. “You had me there for a second.”

Søren winked at Kingsley. Kingsley had never guessed Søren had this flirtatious side to him. Back in their school days Søren had been feared and envied by all the other boys, and Søren had almost never spoken to anyone but the other priests. Kingsley realized that, other than his sister, he’d never seen Søren around a beautiful woman before. Interesting. The man was human after all. Even if he was a priest.

“I must be off. You two chat, become friends. Blaise,
peut-être
you should take my friend upstairs and show him what BDSM looks like in action. I’m sure he’ll find it fascinating.”

“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.”