Текст книги "The Queen"

Автор книги: Tiffany Reisz

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

17

A Wicked Game

NORA TOOK A shower in her new dungeon bathroom and dressed in clothes from her new wardrobe—red skirt (leather), red-and-black-striped corset (silk), black boots (leather with red laces) and since Kingsley was the client tonight and no rule stayed unbroken for long around Kingsley, she put nothing on under the skirt except for one dot of perfume at the top of her thighs.

Two hours before the scene was to begin, she still didn’t know exactly what to do with Kingsley. She knew how to pass his test, yes. But after that? Her first session with her first client, it had to be good. No, not good. It had to be bad. Wicked. She wanted to ruin Kingsley so that he never looked at another dominatrix again. Fuck that. She wanted him to look at Søren and think him an amateur compared to her. Funny...she almost wanted to knock on Søren’s door and ask him for advice. Hey, she’d say, I’m about to top Kingsley, and I want it to be evil. Any suggestions? Oh, yes, that conversation would go over well, wouldn’t it? Nora laughed at the very thought of it.

But...

Maybe she didn’t need to call Søren. She already knew what he would do to Kingsley.

He would strip me naked and drop all my clothes onto the floor. Then he’d walk on them. With shoes on.

I worshipped him for it.

He would sometimes pretend I wasn’t there even when I spoke to him...

I worshipped him for it.

He would tell me he didn’t want me anymore and then as I was ready to kill myself in agony, 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 and you know what he did...

Then Nora knew what she would do to him.

He’d either love her for it or hate her for it, but the man would get his money’s worth.

When nine o’clock arrived, Nora was ready. She heard a rapping on the door and opened it.

Kingsley waited outside her door looking every inch the gentleman he wasn’t in his dark suit with his French cuffs and silk tie.

“Bonne nuit, Maîtresse,” he said. “You summoned me?”

“I did,” Nora said, putting her hands on his chest and kissing him on both cheeks before giving him a long deep kiss on the mouth. A special kiss. The kind of kiss to drive a man to distraction. “Come in.”

He slipped past her into her new dungeon and she locked the door for privacy. Kingsley kept his submissive and masochistic side a secret from the rest of the Underground—only she, Søren and Juliette knew about it.

“Excellent work,” he said, taking a stroll of the bedroom and the dungeon, casual as an English lord taking his morning constitutional through Hyde Park. “I like the cross. Nice selection of toys. A dungeon worthy of a queen.”

“And you’re my first prisoner,” she said.

“Not yet.” He wagged his finger at her. “You said you know how to pass my test and you haven’t passed it yet. Until you do, you can’t have me. Although I don’t blame you for trying.”

“I know how to pass your test. I figured it out with a little help from a friend.”

“Well, you do look the part.” He raked his eyes up and down her body. “You have the attitude.” He tapped her under her chin and she raised it a millimeter higher. “But something’s still missing...”

“Something is missing. Your wallet.”

Kingsley slapped his hand over his breast pocket.

“You don’t think I kissed you just for the fun of it?” she asked. Kingsley cocked his eyebrow at her. “Okay, it was fun. But it also distracted you while I was going through your pockets.”

“I will kill Søren for teaching you how to pick pockets.”

“It’s a good trick,” she said, opening his wallet and extracting two thousand dollars in cash. “This should more than cover tonight’s session.”

And even better, it would pay for her new laptop.

She tossed his wallet back to him, and tucked the wad of money into her corset between her breasts.

“King or commoner, everybody pays up front. Right?” she asked.

Kingsley bowed gallantly. “Maîtresse, I am yours.”

“Well...it’s about fucking time.”

“I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“So have I,” she admitted. “You want to know how much I’ve wanted this?”

“How much?”

Nora slapped him.

Hard.

Kingsley clearly hadn’t been expecting the slap. The look on his face was so stunned by it she laughed.

“That much,” she said.

“Fuck.” He already sounded breathless. The King of the Underground did not get slapped.

“Good. Because it’s the first and last time I’m going to hit you tonight.”

“If you aren’t going to hurt me, then I want my money back.”

“Oh, I’ll hurt you. I’ll even break you. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging to be inside me.”

“If you can accomplish that without hitting me, I’ll give you a thousand-dollar tip.”

“Deal,” she said, grabbing his tie. Using it like a leash, she drew him into the dungeon portion of her suite. She stood him in the center of the room, a room she’d had painted red, red as passion, red as blood.

“Stand here, and don’t move.” She pointed to a spot on the floor, a spot marked by a painted black X. Kingsley put his feet where she’d indicated and Nora began to undress him.

She pulled off his jacket and hung it on a hook on the wall, untied his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Methodically and efficiently she removed his clothes, every stitch, right down to his boots.

“I know you said you liked it when Our Mutual Friend threw your clothes on the floor and stepped on them. But I’m not him. I may do such things to my other clients, but not to you. You’re my king and I will accord you all due respect even as I’m beating you into the hospital.”

“But not tonight?”

“No...tonight is special,” she said running her hands over his naked chest. She pushed her fingers against one of the old scars on his chest. “So many wounds. So many scars. Outside and in. Do they hurt?”

“Only the ones on the inside, Maîtresse.”

“Those are the ones I’m interested in tonight.” She touched his face, his lips, his eyelashes. Gentle touches, designed to soothe, not scare. “I’m going to blindfold you now. Do you have a safe word?”

“Non.”

“Do you want one?”

“Non.”

“I think, my King, you will regret that.”

With that, she wrapped his own tie around his eyes and knotted it in the back. She picked up a lighter and flicked it in front of his covered eyes. He didn’t flinch. Good. She needed total blindness for what she planned on doing to him. Once he was blindfolded completely she strapped leather cuffs to his wrists. From the ceiling she pulled down a hook and rope and secured Kingsley’s wrists to the hook. She pulled the cord and hoisted his hands in the air over his head and knotted the rope. He stood naked and bound, completely and utterly vulnerable. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t leave. Perfect.

“I have to get something in the other room,” Nora said. “I’ll be right back.”

She walked to the bedroom and shut the door behind her. From under the bed she pulled out a cheap glass jar and a baseball bat.

Showtime.

“Who the fuck are you?” Nora yelled. “How did you get in here?”

Nora turned and threw the jar against the door so that it shattered, making a sound like a lamp breaking. She hit the door frame with the baseball bat. She screamed as if she’d been hit.

Then...silence.

“Nora?” Kingsley’s voice called out through the door. He sounded terrified for her.

She smiled.

She counted to thirty. She heard Kingsley’s voice again calling her name. She didn’t answer him.

“Nora? Mistress?” Kingsley asked. “This isn’t funny.”

She reached into her corset for the tiny bottle of perfume she’d bought an hour ago.

Chanel No. 5.

She walked over to the CD player hidden under a shelf and hit Play.

The familiar strains of Swan Lake permeated the air.

Nora walked up behind Kingsley and put her mouth to his ear.

“Bonsoir, petit frère,” Nora whispered. Good evening, little brother.

“Stop it, Nora. This isn’t funny,” he said.

“Did you miss me?” Nora asked, still speaking in her very best French accent.

“I know what you’re doing.”

Nora spritzed one spray of the perfume into the air over Kingsley’s head. It settled around him like radioactive fallout.

He inhaled it deeply.

“I want this to stop,” he said.

“But I just arrived...” Nora purred in her best faux French accent, the one Kingsley said made her sound exactly like his dead sister. “And I have missed you, petit frère, even if you haven’t missed me at all.”

Kingsley yanked on his bonds above his head.

“Let me out, Nora. Right now.”

“Nora? Was that her name? She’s sound asleep in the other room. I think she’ll wake. Peut-être. Or not...”

“You’re dead. Nora isn’t.”

“I’m not dead,” Nora said. “You can’t really die until you’ve finished all your business on earth. And you and I, mon frère, we have unfinished business, don’t we? Oui? Non?”

Kingsley didn’t answer at first. Nora held her breath. She knew he was close, almost there...so close to giving in...he didn’t want to...but he did...

“Oui,” he said at last.

“I thought so. Now answer my question—have you missed me?”

“Je ne sais pas.”

“You don’t know if you missed me or not? How could you not know?”

“I was angry with you.”

“Pourquoi? What did I ever do to you?”

“You married Søren.”

“It was his idea.”

“You knew he didn’t love you. He told you he didn’t love you.”

“He would love me. In time he would have loved me. Everyone loved me. Tout le monde. Oui? The most beautiful girl anyone has ever seen? I think you called me that once. Every boy at your school adored me.”

“It was an all-boys school. You weren’t special. You were just there, and they wanted to fuck you.”

“Oh là là, such language.” Nora walked around him, letting him hear her footsteps. “Were you jealous? Did you want to marry him? That would have been cute, you two standing at the altar.”

“Don’t be absurd. I didn’t want to marry anyone, not then or now. But I didn’t want him to marry you.”

“But he did. He must have wanted to marry me if he did it. He does everything for a reason.”

“You tell yourself that,” Kingsley said. “He fucked me, not you.”

“He respected me. He wanted us to wait until we knew each other better. That was all.”

“If you believe that, you’re crazier than I ever thought you were. You disgusted him. The way you threw yourself at him. The way you touched him when he slept, groping him, trying to arouse him. Not even I would ever touch him while he slept.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“He didn’t like it,” Kingsley said. “It reminded him of his sister, and he didn’t want to remember her. The same way I don’t want to remember you, you vile bitch.”

Nora didn’t speak at first, shocked by Kingsley’s rancor. She had to remind herself that it wasn’t her he was angry at, but his long-dead sister.

“Do I really deserve that?” Nora asked. “Your sister?”

“Non,” Kingsley said. “No, you don’t. Forgive me.”

“Why are you so angry at me? Is it because he picked me over you? He did it again, didn’t he? With his little girl who is bleeding from her ear out in the bedroom? He picked her over you, oui?”

“Non,” Kingsley said.

“He didn’t?”

“Non. She left him. Do you know why?”

“Tell me, mon frère.”

“She left him because he wanted to leave the priesthood for her. But you know something?”

“I’m waiting...”

“He offered to leave the priesthood for me, too.”

Nora’s eyes widened in shock. She almost gasped but she controlled herself. If she broke character for one second it would all fall apart.

“Did he?” She kept her voice light and curious.

“It was years ago, not long after he came to the city. He’d met his little girl, his little virgin queen, and he’d fallen in love with her. It hurt to know he loved her so much when I wanted him still. After eleven years I wanted him. And I told him I wanted him, and he asked me if he left the church for me, could I be faithful to him. I pretended at the time he was joking, but I know he wasn’t. He doesn’t make jokes like that. If I had said yes, if I’d agreed to be faithful to him and her, he would have done it.”

“You said no?” Nora asked, more stunned by this than anything else.

“I did.”

“Pourquoi? Why would you say no to his offer if you loved him so much?”

“Because I’m not sixteen anymore. He can have me on my terms or he can’t have me at all. And you know what else? I left him first. And it made me happy to do it. I took your broken, bloody body back to France and buried you next to our parents. And I knew he was in Maine waiting for me to come back to him. We’d pick up where we left off. He had his trust fund, all those millions of dollars were his because his wife was dead. I would go back, and we would be together, me and him. Lovers. Rich. Free. I didn’t go back.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t know at the time. I thought I was punishing him. But now I know I was saving myself. I wouldn’t have been his lover. I would have been his slave. I’d been his slave, and I didn’t want his chains anymore. But you can’t be in his bed without wearing his chains.”

No one knew the truth of that better than Nora.

“Do you regret it? Not going back to him?” she asked and wondered what her own answer to this question would be.

“Non,” Kingsley said. “I miss him, I love him, I want him. Je ne regrette rien.”

I regret nothing.

“Even my death? Do you regret killing me?”

“I didn’t kill you. You killed yourself.”

“Because you slept with my husband behind my back.”

“I would have let him fuck me in front of your face if I could have talked him into it.”

“I knew you hated me.”

“I hated your arrogance. You thought you could have any man in the world. You didn’t even love Søren. You wanted him because he didn’t want you. He wasn’t a man to you. He was a challenge. And you lost.”

“And look at us...neither of us has him now. Poor us.”

“Poor us? Do I look poor to you?” Kingsley demanded. “I’m rich. I have Juliette. She’s going to have my children someday. I have my home, my life. Work I love. And you’re lying in a grave in two pieces because you were so angry at your husband for wanting me instead of you, you killed yourself.”

“And you don’t miss me at all...” Nora put as much hurt into her voice as possible. Real hurt. Remembered hurt.

“That’s not true,” he said, his voice breaking—a crack, a chip in a wineglass, but still...a break.

“Isn’t it?”

“I loved you before... I did. We played together on the beach as children. You buried me in sand. When you cut your foot on the rock in the water, I carried you to Papa. You were so scared. You thought a shark would bite you because you bled in the ocean.” Kingsley laughed to himself. “There are no sharks off the coast of France.”

“I was a child. Children think silly things.”

“Why did you die?” Kingsley asked. “I didn’t want you to die. I wanted you to be angry. I wanted you to throw things at me. I wanted you to scream and hit me and hit him and tell us we were sick and disgusting. I wanted you to see he loved me, not you, and to have the marriage annulled. That’s all I wanted. You weren’t supposed to die. You weren’t supposed to run away. I know you. You were a fighter. You didn’t run when you were angry. You stayed. You fought. You didn’t run. Why did you run?”

“Je ne sais pas,” Nora whispered, touching the tears on Kingsley’s face. “I don’t know why I ran that day. But I regret it. We could have worked it out, you and I. It would have taken time. It would have hurt for a long time. But we could have loved each other again. I shouldn’t have died. And I’m sorry, Kingsley. Mon frère. Petit frère. I’m so sorry.”

“I am, too,” he whispered in French. Moi, aussi.

Nora kissed him on the cheek, both cheeks, and then she kissed his lips softly. As she kissed him, she reached behind his head and untied the blindfold. His eyes flew open and when he saw it was her, he kissed her back.

“Who am I?” Nora asked, making sure he saw her for who she really was. She dropped the French accent. The game was over.

“Nora. Mistress Nora.”

“And who are you?”

“Kingsley Edge.”

“And where are we?”

“Your dungeon in the club.”

“Good. Just checking,” she said, stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. “You did so good, King. So good.”

“You...” He exhaled heavily, as if he’d been holding his breath all this time. “You sick, sadistic bitch.”

“Who’s your queen?” she asked, batting her eyelashes.

“You are.”

“Now do I get my tip?”

“Majesty,” Kingsley said between breaths, “you get more than the tip. You can have every inch.”

18

Creating a Monster

NORA WRAPPED THE tie around Kingsley’s neck and drew him to the throne. She pushed him down into it and with three lengths of rope, tied his hands over his head to the back of the chair and his ankles to the legs. His chest rose and fell with his heavy breaths. She could see the muscles in his stomach, tight and fluttering. Even bound to the chair he looked powerful, strong, dangerous, desirable.

“A throne fit for a king,” Nora said, running her fingers over the ridges of muscle in his stomach. Her fingers traveled from his stomach over his hip. She took his cock in her hand and stroked his full length from base to tip and back down again with a firm grip, just the way he liked it. “I hope you don’t mind my little game I played on you.”

“Mind what? What we were talking about again?”

“Now I know how women become the power behind the throne. We just give the king a reach-around.”

“A whore, a whore, my kingdom for a whore,” Kingsley said, and Nora laughed. He grinned broadly, his dark eyes shining with happiness and pleasure.

“Catharsis looks good on you, King,” Nora said, dropping to her knees in front of him. “And since you’re a king on a throne, I suppose I should kneel. I’d kiss your signet ring, but since you aren’t wearing one, I’ll have to find something else to kiss.”

“I have a suggestion...”

Nora needed no suggestions and no encouragement. She licked Kingsley in his favorite spot to be licked—right under the head. With a firm hand she held and massaged the base while her tongue worked up and down him and all around. He panted and pulled against his bonds.

“No coming,” she said, looking up at him. “That’s an order.”

“What if I do?”

“I’ll get out the cock ring and force you to get hard again, and if I do that, one of us is going to have fun with your cock, and it’s not going to be you.”

“I was wrong about you. I thought you would be almost as bad as the priest to play with.”

“And?”

“You’re worse.”

Such a compliment could only be rewarded with a round of passionate, thorough and vigorous cock-sucking. She stroked him as she sucked him, running her hands over his thighs and his scarred chest. It must have been the worst sort of torture to experience so much pleasure—pleasure that left him breathless and groaning—knowing he couldn’t come lest he face a very unpleasant consequence. Kingsley hated cock rings almost as much as he hated collars. But they weren’t a hard limit, which meant she could use one on him if he misbehaved.

She almost hoped he misbehaved.

But not yet. No coming yet. She wanted to enjoy this night for herself, for her own private reasons. Something bad had happened between her and Kingsley and she feared the rift between them would always be too vast for either of them to traverse to the other side. But here they were, baring their true selves to each other again, his masochistic side, her dominant side.

Nora saw Kingsley’s fingers clench into fists. A thousand nights with him had trained her to recognize that meant he was close to coming. She stopped sucking him and sat back on her knees.

Slowly he opened his eyes.

“I hate you,” Kingsley said.

“That hurts, King. That stings.”

“Do you know what hurts? Having an erection and being two seconds from coming and your domme stops sucking you off.”

“That is a very sad story. Tell me more.”

“I’ve created a monster.”

“You didn’t create a monster,” she said, leaning forward and putting both hands on either side of his head. She kissed his earlobe and bit it hard enough to make him flinch. “You just let her off her leash.”

She kissed him on the mouth before he could answer. From inside the top of her right boot she pulled out a condom. Kingsley’s head fell back, and he muttered a heartfelt “Dieu merci.” Thank God.

Nora left the throne and grabbed her lube and a small vibrator that fit over her finger.

“Oh...tingly,” Kingsley said as she rubbed him with the lubricant. She massaged him for a long time, long enough he started panting again. “How much longer are you going to torture me?” Kingsley asked, half smiling, half grimacing. He was brutally hard and still pulling on his wrist restraints. She wondered idly what he would do to her if he managed to escape his bonds. Probably a sex act still illegal in thirty-nine states. Too bad she’d tied him up so well.

“For the rest of your life, most likely,” Nora said. “In one way or another.”

“Good.”

“Now sit there like a good boy while I use your cock to get off.”

“Use me,” Kingsley breathed. “Use all of me.”

The throne was large enough for the both of them and then some. She straddled his lap, took his erection in her hand, and inch by inch, lowered herself onto him, sighing with pleasure as he filled her. He felt so good inside her, so big and hard and deep, it almost seemed like a crime to take money for this.

Not that that would stop her. She had a laptop to buy, after all.

Nora turned on the finger vibrator and pressed it to her swollen clitoris. Kingsley inhaled sharply.

“What did you feel?” she asked, as breathless now as he.

“You clenched,” he said. “I could feel it all around me. Felt like being squeezed by a hand.”

“You mean this?” She clamped her vaginal muscles down on him again and he gasped.

“That...is obscene,” he said between breaths. “Do it again.”

“What do we say when we want our Mistress to use her pussy to massage our cock?”

“S’il vous plaît, Maîtresse? You are the most beautiful mistress in the world and my body belongs to you for the next...” He glanced over her shoulder to the pendulum clock on the wall. “Twenty-three minutes.”

“Better make the most of you, then.”

She rocked her hips forward, the vibrator buzzing against her clitoris. Beneath her, Kingsley lifted his hips, moving with her and against her in slow undulations. Every thirty seconds or so she would concentrate solely on her inner muscles and clench them tight. Every time she did it, Kingsley rewarded her with a sharp intake of air. She cupped the back of his neck and kissed him again. Locked together like this, she couldn’t move much, but she didn’t have to or want to. Right now she wanted to stop time, rush nothing, enjoy every inch and every second and every shuddering ragged breath.

“It’s good to be in you again...” he murmured against her lips. “You stayed away too long.”

“I’m back now.”

“You won’t leave again?”

“Of course not. Who would beat the hell out of you if I did?”

“Life,” he said. And it was such an adorably cynical French thing to say that Nora laughed and kissed him.

The kiss turned passionate, then torrid. Her blood burned in her veins and she gripped Kingsley’s shoulder to ride out the orgasm that tore through her, sending currents of electricity in waves and spikes and delicious tremors.

As she caught her breath, she managed to ask him, “Did you come, too?”

“Non.”

“You didn’t?” As hard as Nora came, she assumed everyone else in the world had orgasmed, as well.

“You haven’t given me permission to come.”

“Oops. I knew I was forgetting something.” She reached above his head and untied his hands from the top of the throne. She lifted herself off him and knelt between his knees. “I’m letting you go but only to change positions.”

“I will fuck you in any position you name as long as you let me come,” he said.

“Don’t tempt me. I have new suspension toys to try out,” she said, glancing up at the ceiling where the suspension rig awaited its first victim. “How do you want to fuck me?” she asked, as she unstrapped both his ankles. Kingsley reached down and held out his hand. She took it and he pulled her to him.

“I can have you? Any way I want?” he asked.

“I think you’ve earned it.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her breasts to his chest. His skin was so hot it burned to the touch. Or was that her? Weeks ago he’d warned her that she’d never have the physical strength of a man, and he proved it by lifting her easily off her feet. She twined her legs around his back instinctively and he turned them both, pushing her back into the throne and draping her legs over each chair arm. She flinched when he penetrated again. He was so deep she felt him against her cervix. When he thrust again, however, he hit every spot she wanted him to hit. He was kneeling on the seat of the throne, pinning her to the back, pushing into her with long but fast thrusts. Nora clung to his shoulders, and he held her in place by her hips. She felt so wet and so open that she would have let him pound her like this all night if he wanted. They were both switches, her and Kingsley, and in this heated moment she thanked God for making her this way. She could be like Kingsley and have it all. Kingsley had a submissive he owned, Juliette, and could play with whomever he wanted as long as he gave his nights to her. In secret he had Nora who would be his Mistress, his Queen of Pain. And she could have that, as well. Clients to dominate, Kingsley to brutalize and use for her own private pleasure. And maybe if and when she needed it, she could ask Kingsley to hurt her and to use her just like this—pushing her back to the wall and fucking her raw. Oh, yes, it would be good to be the queen.

“Please, Maîtresse,” Kingsley said, his voice sounding pained.

“Come,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready, come for me. I want it.”

He increased the speed and pressure of his thrusts and Nora kissed his neck. At the instant she knew he was about to come, she sunk her teeth deep into his shoulder, hard enough to break the skin. Kingsley let out a beautiful wounded cry and shuddered in her arms. Entangled in each other’s arms and legs, they eased into the seat of the throne, the king and queen, spent but united.

“Vampire,” he teased, touching the bite mark on his shoulder.

“Not a vampire,” she said. “A tiger, remember?”

Kingsley touched her face and pressed his lips to the top of her breasts.

“Certainly not a kitten anymore...”

When they had both come to their senses again, Nora ordered Kingsley to dress. In front of her, of course, while she watched the show.

“I’m going to enjoy being a dominatrix,” she said, taking the two thousand dollars out of her corset and fanning herself with it. “Torturing men, orgasms, money—my three favorite things.”

“No fucking your other clients,” he reminded her. “I’m a king, not a pimp. Don’t get me arrested for pandering.”

“Speaking of sex for money... Thorny came to see me today.”

“Did he?”

“He says Milady is planning on fucking with me.”

“I could have told you that.”

“What do you think she’ll do to me?”

“I don’t know, but if she’s anything like you, she’ll find your rawest wound and pour salt on it.”

“Søren’s my rawest wound.”

“Then I think you’re safe,” Kingsley said. “He gave away his entire family fortune to me and his sisters. If she thinks she can buy his obedience for a few thousand dollars, she doesn’t know who she’s dealing with.”

“Speaking of a few thousand dollars... I believe you said something about a tip if I broke you? Didn’t you? I think it’s fair to say I broke you.”

“Because I wanted to be broken.”

Nora waved her hand, beckoning him to pay up.

Kingsley sighed, pulled out his wallet and passed her ten more hundred-dollar bills.

“My best friend is named Benjamin,” she said. “I do so love that man.”

“Enjoy that tip. I probably won’t ever tip you again. The French don’t tip.” He pulled on his trousers and left them open while he tucked in his shirt. Watching Kingsley get dressed was almost as erotic as watching him get undressed.

“You know I earned it.”

“You earned it by being a sick, twisted mind-fucker. I’d kill anyone else who tried that trick on me, including le prêtre.”

“It’s all your fault for telling me I sound like your sister when I use a French accent. You should have known I’d use that against you in a session someday.”

“Maybe I wanted you to.”

“Did you?”

“Fuck, no. But I’m glad you did,” he said, taking his jacket off the hook. “I wouldn’t talk to anyone but you about it, but I think of her more than I want to. Especially when he and I are fighting. It brings back bad memories, and she’s in many of my bad memories.”

“I’m proud of you,” she said, watching as he pulled on his jacket and flipped the collar and lapels into place. He looked so much younger than his forty years now, vibrant, bright-eyed and thoroughly fucked.

“For what? For surviving your little mind game?”

“For not letting Søren leave the priesthood for you when he offered.”

“It wasn’t me he was offering to leave the church for. It was some old idea of me he must have had. Kingsley, his sixteen-year-old slave who would have died for him. I love him,” Kingsley said, pulling on his jacket. “You know it. I know it. He knows it. I was born to fall in love with him, and I lived in love with him and I will die still in love with him. But fuck him if he thinks that means I’m willing to be someone I’m not for him.”

“Same here,” Nora said, raising an imaginary wineglass in a toast. “He told me I wasn’t allowed to see you anymore. We all have our breaking points. That was mine.”

“Good girl,” Kingsley said. “Maybe someday that blond prick will learn we don’t exist for his pleasure.”

“If he does learn...then what?”

“Then we’ll need a bigger throne. One that’ll hold a king, queen and a god. Or at least a man who thinks he is.”

Nora laughed. “Glad I got the throne. It’s nice and sturdy. Good for bondage. Good for fucking.”

“Oh, speaking of the throne, Mistress Nora...”

“Yes?” Nora asked as Kingsley finished pulling on his boots.

“It cost ten thousand dollars.”

“Quality isn’t cheap. And Ikea does not sell thrones. I’ve looked.”

“It put you over budget. By...” He paused as if counting in his head. “Three thousand dollars.”

He snatched the money out of her hand.

“Kingsley!”

“Don’t forget, mon canard,” he said, “you aren’t the only sadist in this room.”