The Prince

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer…preferably in bed.

That’s always been Kingsley Edge’s strategy with his associate, the notorious New York dominatrix Nora Sutherlin. But with Nora away in Kentucky, now it’s Kingsley’s chance to take her place at the feet of the only man he’s ever wanted—Søren, Nora’s on-again, off-again lover—until a new threat from an old enemy forces him to confront his past.

Wes Railey is still the object of Nora’s tamest yet most maddening fantasies, and the one man she can’t forget. He’s young. He’s wonderful. He’s also thoroughbred royalty and she’s in his world now. But Nora is no simpering Southern belle, and her dream of fitting into Wesley’s world is perpetually at odds with her dear Søren’s relentlessly seductive pull.

Two worlds of wealth and passion call to her and whichever one Nora chooses, it will be the hardest decision she will ever have to make...unless someone makes it for her...

Selected Praise for Tiffany Reisz

“Tiffany Reisz’s The Original Sinners series is painful, prideful, brilliant, beautiful, hopeful and heartbreaking. And that’s just the first hundred pages.”
—
New York Times
bestselling author Courtney Milan

“This book is amazing and is definitely a favorite read so far this year.”
—
USA TODAY.com
on
The Siren

“
The Siren
is one of the most incredible books I’ve read... What unfolds is this crazy, amazing story of pain and love, acceptance and forgiveness, beginnings and endings. I literally was absorbed in this story from the first chapter....Tiffany Reisz writes amazing dialogue and emotional depth. Witty, sharp, smart characters that will completely suck you in.”
—
Smexy Books

“The Original Sinners series certainly lives up to its name: it’s mindbendingly original and crammed with more sin than you can shake a hot poker at. I haven’t read a book this dangerous and subversive since Chuck Palahniuk’s
Fight Club.
”
—Andrew Shaffer, author of
Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love

“A beautiful, lyrical story…
The Siren
is about love lost and found, the choices that make us who we are... I can only hope Ms. Reisz pens a sequel!”
—Bestselling author Jo Davis

“Tiffany Reisz is a smart, artful and masterful new voice in erotic fiction. An erotica star on the rise!”
—Award-winning author Lacey Alexander

“Daring, sophisticated and literary…exactly what good erotica should be.”
—Kitty Thomas, author of
Tender Mercies

“Dazzling, devastating and sinfully erotic, Reisz writes unforgettable characters you’ll either want to know or want to be.”
—Miranda Baker, author of
Bottoms Up
and
Soloplay

Also by Tiffany Reisz

The Original Sinners

THE ANGEL
THE SIREN

To Miranda Baker, who always makes me ask, “What would Nora do?” when I really want to ask, “What would Miranda Baker do?”

Four things greater than all things are
women and horses and power and war.

—Rudyard Kipling

Contents

Prologue

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

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North-The Present

South

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North-The Present

South

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North-The Present

South

North-The Past

North-The Present

South

Acknowledgments

Prologue

File #1312—From the archives

SUTHERLIN, NORA

Née Eleanor Louise Schreiber

Born on March 15, 1977 (beware the Ides of March)

Father: William Gregory Schreiber, deceased (you’re welcome, ma cherie), formerly incarcerated in Attica on multiple counts of grand theft auto, and possession of stolen property. Had connections with organized crime—see file #1382.

Mother: Margaret Delores Schreiber, née Kohl, age fifty-six, currently residing near Guildford, New York, at the Sisters of Saint Monica convent (cloistered), known now as Sister Mary John.

Daughter and mother—estranged but currently in détente.

Age 15, Eleanor met Father Marcus Lennox Stearns (Søren, born to Gisela Magnussen). After her arrest for stealing five luxury vehicles in one night to aid her father in paying off a debt, Sutherlin was sentenced to probation and twelve hundred hours of community service supervised by Father Stearns. It was during these years that Sutherlin learned to submit. At age eighteen she became his collared submissive. At age twenty-eight she left him after terminating a pregnancy (father—me). For a year she lived with her mother at the convent upstate, before returning to the city and becoming a dominatrix in the employ of the devastatingly handsome Kingsley Edge, Edge Enterprises. At the time of this filing she has had five books published, four of which have been bestsellers. (See attached for financials. Her editor is Zachary Easton, publisher Royal House. See file #2112, drawer seven for Easton’s file.) At age thirty-three, after spending five years apart, she returned to her owner and has been with him ever since.

Sexual preferences—Sutherlin is bisexual although she generally shows a preference for men. A true switch, she tends to top with anyone but her owner (because, as we all know, he would break her if she tried).

Weaknesses—Blondes—men and women, younger men, tiramisu.

Ultimate weakness—Unknown. Possibly John Wesley Railey, born September 19, Versailles, Kentucky. Heir to the Railey Fortune (estimated at $930 million as of 2010) and The Rails Farm (Thoroughbreds, saddlebreds), Railey, known to friends and family as Wes or Wesley, lived with Sutherlin from January 2008 until April 2009. As the sole heir to the largest horse farm in the world, Wesley is known colloquially as the Prince of Kentucky. Six feet tall, a type 1 diabetic, boyishly handsome, not sexually active at the time of his filing (Railey file #561, drawer 4). Sutherlin has displayed intense emotion, affection and loyalty (and possibly even love) where Railey is concerned.

Strengths—Extremely intelligent, IQ 167, physically strong, cunning, highly manipulative when necessary, extremely beautiful (see attached photographs), Sutherlin is far more dangerous than she appears.

The final line in the file the thief read over and over again.

In all things involving Nora Sutherlin, proceed with caution.

Three months…for three long and sleepless months, the thief toiled over the file, which had been encrypted in layer upon layer of cipher. The thief knew French and Haitian Creole, but merely knowing the languages wouldn’t crack the code. One had to know Kingsley Edge, and luckily, the thief did—intimately.

The file thief read through all four pages of notes on Nora Sutherlin a thousand times until the words were as familiar as the thief’s own name. And as the thief read the pages until they grew tattered from wear, an idea began to form and grow until it gave birth to a plan.

The thief closed the file for the final time, and then and there decided the best course of action.

The thief would proceed…cautiously.

NORTH

The Past

They’d sent him here to save his life.

At least that was the line his grandparents laid on him to explain why they’d decided to take him out of public school and send him instead to an all-boys Jesuit boarding school nestled in some of the most godforsaken terrain on the Maine-Canadian border.

They should have let him die.

Hoisting his duffel bag onto his shoulder, he picked up his battered brown leather suitcase and headed toward what appeared to be the main building on the isolated campus. Everywhere he looked he saw churches, or at least buildings with pretensions of being one. A cross adorned every roof. Gothic iron bars grated every window. He’d been wrenched from civilization and dropped without apology in the middle of a medieval monk’s wet dream.

He entered the building through a set of iron-and-wood doors, the ancient hinges of which screamed as if being tortured. He could sympathize. He rather felt like screaming himself. A fireplace piled high with logs cast light and warmth into the dismal gray foyer. Huddling close to it, he wrapped his arms about himself, wincing as he did so. His left wrist still ached from the beating he’d taken three weeks ago, the beating that had convinced his grandparents that he’d be safe only at an all-boys school.

“So this is our Frenchman?” The jovial voice came from behind him. He turned and saw a squat man all in black beaming from ear to ear. Not all black, he noted. Not quite. The man wore a white collar around his neck. The priest held out his hand to him, but he paused before shaking it. Celibacy seemed like a disease to him—one that might be catching. “Welcome to Saint Ignatius. Come inside my office. This way.”

He gave the priest a blank look, but followed nonetheless.

Inside the office, he took the chair closest to the fireplace, while the priest sat behind a wide oak desk.

“I’m Father Henry, by the way,” the priest began. “Monsignor here. I hear you’ve had some trouble at your old school. Something about a fight…some boys taking exception to your behavior with their girlfriends?”

Saying nothing, he merely blinked and shrugged.

“Good Lord. They told me you could speak some English.” Father Henry sighed. “I suppose by ‘some’ they meant ‘none.’
Anglais?
”

He shook his head.
“Je ne parle pas l’anglais.”

Father Henry sighed again.

“French. Of course. You would have to be French, wouldn’t you? Not Italian. Not German. I could even handle a little ancient Greek. And poor Father Pierre dead for six months. Ah,
c’est la vie,
” he said, and then laughed at his own joke. “Nothing for it. We’ll make do.” Father Henry rested both his chins on his hand and stared into the fireplace, clearly deep in deliberation.

He joined the priest in his staring. The heat from the fireplace seeped through his clothes, through his chilled skin and into the core of him. He wanted to sleep for days, for years even. Maybe when he woke up he would be a grown man and no one could send him away again. The day would come when he would take orders from no one, and that would be the best day of his life.

A soft knock on the door jarred him from his musings.

A boy about twelve years old, with dark red hair, entered, wearing the school uniform of black trousers, black vest, black jacket and tie, with a crisp white shirt underneath.

All his life he had taken great pride in his clothes, every detail of them, down to the shoes he wore. Now he, too, would be forced into the same dull attire as every other boy in this miserable place. He’d read a little Dante his last year at his lycée in Paris. If he remembered correctly, the centermost circle of hell was all ice. He glanced out the window in Father Henry’s office. New snow had started to fall on the ice-packed ground. Perhaps his grandfather had been right about him. Perhaps he was a sinner. That would explain why, still alive and only sixteen years old, he’d been sent to hell on earth.