The Prince (12 page)

He’d fallen in love with her instead. And whether she realized it or not, because of his love for her, she owned him as much as he owned her.

But then the night came that Søren brought Eleanor to the town house, to Kingsley’s bed. He’d had to talk to her first. She’d been so scared to let any man but her owner touch her that the heels of her shoes had vibrated audibly against the tile floors.

Alone in the music room of his town house, Kingsley had talked to her, teased her, promised her he wouldn’t harm her. And she’d finally relaxed, finally smiled. And the minute they’d entered his bedroom, she’d become the siren Søren had described to him.

“Which one of us first?” Søren had asked over Eleanor’s shoulder.

And Kingsley seized the opportunity to torture her as Søren had tortured him so many times.

“Lady’s choice, of course.”

The glare Eleanor gave him nearly burned a hole into Kingsley. And made him want her even more.

Still angry that her owner had decided to share her with another man, Eleanor had answered, “Kingsley.”

And the fun had begun.

Eleanor dropped to her knees in front of him and opened his pants. Once she took his cock in her mouth, he immediately realized why Søren had fallen so hard for this girl. She would submit to anything. And although she protested, complained, fought back, in her soul she wanted to submit, loved to submit, needed to submit.

So Kingsley made her submit. First to his cock and then to his crop.

After the beating, Søren had taken Eleanor to the bed and tied her hands over her head. Sitting in front of her, Kingsley slid a single finger inside her and pulled forward, opening her up. And when Søren began to push into her, Kingsley left his finger inside. She’d been so wet from the shared penetration of his finger and Søren’s that the fluid had dripped over his hand and stained the cuff of his shirt. He’d kept the shirt hanging in his closet…never worn again, never washed.

Then the time came. Søren lay on his back, propped up against a mountain of pillows. He pulled Eleanor—naked but for a pair of white high heels—back against his chest.

And as Søren held her in his arms, Kingsley had fucked her. Never before or since had he fucked a woman so hard or so thoroughly. She’d moaned in her pleasure, winced in her pain and closed her eyes in her ecstasy. And when her eyes shut, Kingsley looked at Søren, who looked back at him. And Kingsley knew it would happen that night.

They exhausted Eleanor after an hour and let her rest.

Wine…Søren had said he wanted wine.

No…
Kingsley furrowed his brow. The fog of memory cleared. Kingsley had suggested the wine. Søren had agreed to it readily. He’d kissed his Eleanor and tucked her into bed. Side by side they’d left the bedroom.

They never got the wine.

Once out in the hallway, Kingsley felt a hand on the back of his neck, fingers pressing into his skin. He remembered that hand, those fingers...

Søren brought his mouth to Kingsley’s ear. “Stop me right now,” he’d ordered, and Kingsley had suppressed his smile.

“Stop what…sir?”

“This.”

And Kingsley suddenly found himself pushed against the door of one of the many guest rooms, Søren’s chest pressed to his back.

“I’ll hurt you if you don’t stop me.” Søren dug his hand into Kingsley’s long hair, twisted it and bared the side of Kingsley’s neck. When Søren’s lips touched the throbbing vein under his ear, Kingsley knew nothing he said or did would stop either of them now.

Kingsley opened the door to the guest bedroom.

Søren closed it behind them.

“Bed,” Søren had ordered, and Kingsley obeyed without question. He’d always obeyed Søren without question, and always would—in the bedroom if nowhere else.

Kingsley had learned early on about Søren’s…tastes. It didn’t take long to learn that the young man he’d fallen in love with at school had been broken. But broken in such a way that when he’d healed, he’d become stronger than before the break. Because of that brokenness, only inflicting pain could arouse him. Physical pain preferably, but brutal humiliation would also do. So when Søren wrenched Kingsley’s arm behind his back, Kingsley knew not to suppress his gasp of pain. Those sounds—the gasps and whimpers, the sobs and tears—they were what Søren lived for. Kingsley had accepted it as a young man, understood it instinctively. It wasn’t until he began to play the game himself that he understood the erotic power of inflicting pain on a lover and watching him or her accept it, revel in it, even love it.

A part of him had wanted the old affection, at least for this act. And if not affection, then at least some measure of mercy. But Søren was in no mood for mercy that night, and Kingsley hadn’t had to fake his initial cry of agony at the first penetration. He’d had to bite down on the sheets to stifle his own scream. Søren had nearly wrenched Kingsley’s shoulder from its socket from the sheer force of his thrusts. And after, there’d been blood, and Kingsley had savored the sight of it.

Proof. He held out his fingers toward Søren.

“You can’t deny this,
mon ami.
Can you?” He brandished his bloodstained hand. “You still want me.”

Søren had been standing by the door then, waiting for Kingsley to finish dressing, to pull himself back together.

“I never denied that I wanted you. I only denied taking you.”

“Pourquoi?”
Kingsley demanded. “Why? You take
her
every way you can, every chance you have. Why her and not me?”

Søren hadn’t replied, and for that Kingsley had been forever grateful. He knew the answer, but to hear it would have broken the one last unbroken part of his spirit.

They’d returned to Kingsley’s bedroom, and Søren hadn’t turned on the lights. If he had, Eleanor would have seen the bleeding bite marks on Kingsley’s chest, the bruises on his hips, the welt on his lower back. Kingsley had sunk into Eleanor’s body and relished the ease of it, of fucking a woman so supple and so willing. But not submissive. Kingsley had seen something in Eleanor that night—a spark of violence in her eyes, a flash of rebellion and defiance. Søren thought he’d found the perfect match in her, the perfect submissive. Perhaps she was as perfect as he; surely she was as beautiful. But no submissive. Not at all. Kingsley knew a switch when he saw one. After all, he looked at one every day in the mirror.

Again and again, that night they’d taken Eleanor, until she could barely stay awake. And even then it didn’t matter. Kingsley had slid onto her unconscious body, pushed inside her and slowly thrust. She’d woken up for a moment, softly laughed and lapsed back into sleep. And Kingsley still fucked her. Anything to prove to Søren that while he’d been hurt by their interlude, he hadn’t been harmed.

And in the hour before dawn, while Eleanor slept, Kingsley knelt on his hands and knees at the side of the bed. With his mouth, Kingsley showed Søren his gratitude that the priest had shared his most precious possession with him that night. Kingsley swallowed and relished the semen in his stomach. What he’d had with Søren had died once, and for one night been resurrected. The evening would not have been complete without a final communion.

Eight years later he discovered that Nora had seen it all. And eight years later it had been her he’d knelt in front of. If he couldn’t have the master he wanted, he could at least serve the master’s slave.

“Kingsley?”

“Oui, mon ami?”
Kingsley opened his eyes.

“I don’t want to know what you’re thinking about, do I?” Søren asked.

“You already know.” Kingsley tried and failed to mask the bitterness in his voice.

“Don’t hate her,” Søren ordered. “It’s me who hurt you. Hate me.”

The Rolls-Royce arrived at their destination—the airport, where a private plane awaited them both. The photograph of them that Kingsley had been sent…the original had been stored at Saint Ignatius, their old school. Not knowing where else to go, what else to do, Søren had decided to travel there and make discreet inquiries. Kingsley refused to let him go alone.

The chauffeur brought the car to a stop at the gate, got out and opened the door for them.

“Don’t worry,
mon ami,
” Kingsley said to Søren. “I do.”

SOUTH

Nora made a mental note that the next time she asked someone, “Have you seen Wesley Railey?” and they answered, “He’s in the stables,” she would follow up with, “Which of the seventeen goddamn stables are you referring to?” For two hours she wandered from barn to barn—all of them white with elegant red trim—seeking out Wesley and not finding him. The kid knew how to hide better than she did.

Kid... Nora made a second mental note, to stop thinking of Wesley as a kid or the kid or any kind of kid. She wouldn’t be hunting him through seven thousand identical stables if she could wrap her mind around the idea that Wesley was an adult now. Last night in his bed…she should have gone through with it. It’s what he’d wanted, what he deserved. But she’d been so shocked by the fact of his virginity that she’d freaked out last night, like she’d freaked out a year and a half ago, the last time they’d tried having sex. Supposedly, she was the one with all the sexual experience. So why was she the one who kept getting scared?

Finally, in barn number two million and thirty-five, she found Wesley in a stall, brushing the mane of the fattest horse she’d ever seen.

“Good Lord, what are you feeding that thing?” Nora gaped at the huge stomach on the red beast.

“Other horses.” Wesley didn’t even look at her.

“Please tell me you’re kidding.” She’d heard of cows being fed other cows, but she prayed horses didn’t eat other horses.

“I’m kidding. She’s only got one other horse in her.”

Nora sighed with relief. “Knocked up, huh?”

“Very. She’s due this week. Any minute now.”

Wesley ran the thick bristle brush over the mare’s back and the animal shivered in obvious pleasure.

“What’s her name?” Nora opened the stall door and stepped gently inside. Last thing she wanted to do was spook a pregnant horse.

“Track Beauty. Mom named her. She’s our top broodmare.”

Nora reached out and touched Track Beauty’s nose, smiling at the feel of velvet under her fingertips.

“She is a beauty…apart from the stomach.” Nora tried smiling at Wesley. He didn’t smile back.

“She’s Mom’s baby.”

“Mom’s other baby?” Nora teased.

Wesley shook his head. “Not even my mom sees me as a baby anymore. That’s just you.”

Nora exhaled heavily. “Wes…I don’t see you as a baby. Or as a kid. Or as anything other than a twenty-year-old drop-dead gorgeous guy who I adore.”

“You have a weird way of showing it.”

“And you have a weird way of…”

“What?” Wesley asked.

“Everything.” Nora ran her hands down Track Beauty’s back and over her swollen stomach. She couldn’t even imagine what this poor horse felt like, carrying another horse inside her body.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means…you, Wesley, are weird. You had a girlfriend, right? This Bridget person? How long were you together?”

Wesley shrugged. “A few months.”

“And you didn’t have sex with her?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

Wesley walked around Track Beauty and started brushing her other side. Nora rose up on her tiptoes to look at him over the horse’s back.

“Wesley…why didn’t you sleep with your girlfriend while you were with her?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Bullshit.”

“What?”

Nora glared at him. “Bull…shit. You are a straight twenty-year-old guy. And I’m guessing this chick was a babe. Yes?”

Wesley paused before nodding. “She was—is—beautiful.”

Nora winced internally at the simple sincerity in his voice.
Yes, she was a babe…
wouldn’t have hurt.
She was beautiful...
That hurt.

“So why not?”

Wesley ran his hands over Track Beauty’s long neck. The mare turned her head and rested her nose against Wesley’s stomach.

“You really have to ask?”

“Guess so, since I’m asking.” Nora came around and stood next to Wesley. His body seemed taut with tension. The need to touch him nearly overwhelmed her, but she feared he’d pull away from her if she tried.

“Bridget was…” He paused and took a ragged breath. “She was something, Nora. Even you would have been all over this girl. Woman. Twenty-seven. Like old Hollywood beautiful. What are those skirts you wear to church sometimes? The tight ones that stop right about your knees?”

“Pencil skirts?”

“Yeah, those. She wore those all the time, with these classy shirts that made her look, I don’t know, kind of glamorous. She turned heads like crazy when we went out. I took her to a fundraiser…everybody there worth millions of dollars and Bridget makes maybe forty thousand a year. But no woman at that party got half the stares she did. I barely got to dance with her. She had guys falling all over her. She’s smart, too. Undergrad degree in equine studies, MBA from Harvard. She’ll be running a farm this big someday. Probably sooner than later. For a guy like me who’s going to inherit thousands of acres of horse farm? She was the perfect woman. Mom and Dad were already planning the wedding.”

Nora swallowed. Every single compliment that came out of his mouth about Bridget hit her harder than Søren with a cane in his hand.

“So what was the problem?” Nora tried to ask the question calmly, without emotion. But her voice was barely louder than a whisper.

“The problem is…” Wesley met Nora’s eyes for the first time that day “…she wasn’t you.”

For a moment Nora tried to come up with a clever response, something to make Wesley laugh, something to break the tension. But words failed her and she stayed silent.

“I couldn’t sleep with her,” Wesley continued, “because she wasn’t you. And I have to wonder if the reason you keep turning me down is because I’m not him.”

Finally, Nora understood. Completely understood. For once in her life she knew exactly what the man in front of her felt, what he needed, what he wanted. And for once in her life, she knew exactly how to give it to him.