Текст книги "The Queen"

Автор книги: Tiffany Reisz

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

14

Reign of Terror

NORA DRESSED IN her own bedroom. It took an act of will to go back to the playroom and face him. At least she had one tiny victory under her belt. He’d tempted her with his body, and she’d walked away. Miracles did happen.

When she opened the door to the playroom, she found him fully dressed again, his hair still wet but otherwise he’d returned to his neutral state of clothed and calm and clean.

“What exactly are you doing here?” she asked from the open doorway, not sure she wanted to go back inside.

“Teaching you to use a whip. I thought that was obvious.” He held up the whip coiled around his hand.

“Why you?”

“Whether or not you acknowledge you’re still mine, I know you are. As long as you are mine, your safety is my primary concern and responsibility. This career path you’ve chosen is not an easy one. We’d like to think everyone in this community is simply a pervert with a heart of gold, but there are dangerous men out there who will hire you for less than pleasant reasons. I’ve known hard-core masochists who are as dangerous as sadists. If you fail to give them what they want and what they’ve paid for, they can and will turn on you. You need to know what you’re doing. Doing your job well will be your best defense. As long as your clients are afraid of you, you’ll be safe. Safer.”

“Kingsley is trying to turn me into the Queen of the Underground,” she said, taking the whip from his hands.

“Make it a reign of terror, then. For your sake and theirs.”

The whip lesson started off easy. Søren demonstrated how to hold the whip and explained the different sorts of cracks—a forward crack, the sidearm crack, the coachman’s crack. She’d never paid any attention to the techniques Søren had used before. She’d always been content to simply enjoy watching him in action when he beat someone else. But now she longed to understand everything—how to flick the whip in such a way to make the sonic boom, how to strike someone in such a way you didn’t rip their back open, how to strike someone in such a way you did rip their back open.

When it was her turn he stood behind her to one side, helping her get comfortable with the swing of the whip and how to control it.

“Can I crack it?” she asked.

“You can. Let me leave the room first.”

“What? You don’t trust me?”

“Your first time with a whip? No. Absolutely not.”

“That’s probably smart. Okay, back off. I’m going to crack it.”

“Put your safety glasses on first, or you’ll put your eye out.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

She said it mockingly, without thinking, simply answering sarcasm with sarcasm. But this was Søren and no such remark could go unremarked.

“Are we playing that game again, Eleanor?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, lightly throwing the whip, doing her best to ignore him.

“I could read you a bedtime story.”

She whirled and faced him. “Are you trying to make this more difficult than it already is?”

“What is ‘this’ you’re referring to?”

“Us. Us not being an us.”

“Then, yes, I am. I am trying to make it more difficult for you. It couldn’t possibly be more difficult for me than it already is.”

“You seem fine to me.”

“Fine?” Søren laughed as if she’d said the most absurd thing in her life, as if she’d said the sky was green and two plus two equaled cat. “Eleanor, I had to take a leave of absence after you left. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t pray. Everything I’ve gone through in my life—with my father, my sister, being separated from my mother for thirteen years—in a heartbeat, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye I would have happily gone through that again before I went through the hell you put me through when you left me. I consoled a parishioner recently whose wife just died and when I told him I was a widower and could sympathize with his agony, I wasn’t speaking about Marie-Laure. I meant you.”

Nora swallowed. She raised her chin and met his eyes. They were blue now, not gray, and they blazed with something—rage. Against her? Himself? God?

“I’m not dead, Søren.”

“You were gone. How was I to know how you were, if you were? It was agony, and I don’t use that word lightly. They talk of Christ’s agony on the cross. Now I know of agony.”

Anyone who didn’t know Søren as intimately as she did wouldn’t have been surprised by the passion in his voice, the anguish. But she’d known him since she was fifteen. Søren was a brick wall and the mortar was made of iron, and he did not crack. He never cracked. He’d always been her wall, an impenetrable fortress, and no matter how hard she threw herself against that wall, she’d never broken it down. But when he said the word agony she saw a hairline fracture, and she knew the whole wall could come down any second.

She knew what he kept behind that wall. God help them all if it came tumbling down.

Last night she’d stepped in front of a man being whipped and put her body between him and the whip. Today she stepped between Søren’s pain and the wall.

She reached up and touched his face. That was all she did. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her hand.

“I didn’t leave you to hurt you,” she whispered.

“But it did.”

“I spent seven years on the receiving end of pain. I’m ready to be on the giving end.”

“Did you have to start with me?”

“Yes.”

He nodded his head, and she met his eyes. The crack remained, but the wall held. For now anyway.

Nora lowered her hand and picked up her whip.

“Will you show me the coachman’s crack again? I think I’m going to like a shorter whip with a longer handle.”

“If you can control a shorter whip, you can control a longer one. It’s best to learn on a shorter whip,” he said, his voice stronger than before, sturdier.

“Then let’s get back to work.”

They worked for an hour and at the end of the hour, Nora had learned the forward crack. He left for a moment and returned with a bundle of socks which he rolled into tight balls. First she tossed them up in the air for him and Søren knocked them out of the air—an impressive display of good aim. Then he threw them for her and she was able to hit one out of fifteen. A decent start.

“Unfortunately,” Søren said as he gathered the socks for a second round, “there’s no chance you’ll master the whip in time for this party Kingsley’s planning. You’d have to work ten hours a day from now until then and you’d still not be as good as I am or Kingsley is.”

Or Milady.

Nora sighed. “Well, I’ll figure something out. Whips aren’t the only way to hurt someone. I know me. I’m creative.”

“Yes, you are. You always have been.”

“It’s funny you say that,” she said. “You know, that I’m creative.”

“Why is that?”

“I...” She hesitated for a moment. “While I was away I wrote a book.”

“You did?”

“I did. A whole book. A big one. Like, four hundred and fifty pages. Amazing what you can get done when you’re trapped in a convent with nothing else to do. But I didn’t just write it. I sent it to a literary agent, and she’s representing it. Me. We’re doing some final fixes on it, and then she’s going to try to sell it. Crazy, right?” She laughed nervously.

“Eleanor, that’s wonderful.”

“It’s just a dirty romance,” she said, shrugging.

“So was Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

“I don’t know if this is quite D. H. Lawrence, but...I’m really happy with it. I keep running to the library to play with it. Gotta make it perfect. I’m going to use the first money I make to buy a laptop—a really fancy one so I don’t have to work at the library anymore.”

“Is this why you’re working for Kingsley? For money?”

“Money is the reason everybody works,” she said.

“Kingsley has all the money in the world.”

“I want my own money, my own house. Freedom. Money is freedom.”

“I’m under a vow of poverty. Do you think I’m not free?”

“No, you aren’t. You have people you have to answer to. If you want to buy a car, you have to ask permission. If you want to go on a trip, you have to beg the Jesuits or the diocese for time off and you have to find someone in your family to pay for you. If you hadn’t donated so much money to the Jesuits and the diocese after your father died, they would have transferred you already five times. That doesn’t seem like freedom to me.”

“You think I should leave the priesthood?” he asked, a hint of dark mirth in his eyes.

“We are not having this conversation again. I will walk again, and I won’t come back this time.”

“You will walk the circumference of the entire globe and find yourself right where you started. Here,” he said, taking her into his arms.

Søren bent his head and kissed her. She didn’t return the kiss at first. Her dignity wouldn’t allow it. But in a fight between her dignity and her desire, her desire won every time.

Nora heard someone clear his throat.

“Ahem. Am I interrupting the lesson?”

They pulled away from each other and found Kingsley standing in the playroom doorway.

“No, we’re done for the day,” Nora said.

“Bien. And progress? It was made?”

“I’m okay at it,” Nora said. “But it’ll take months to be as good as I need to be.”

“We don’t have that much time,” Kingsley said.

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you decided to put Eleanor on display to the entire world before she was ready.” Søren scowled at Kingsley.

“She’ll be ready one way or another. I have faith in her even if you don’t. Shall I show you out?” Kingsley asked, stepping into the room to leave the doorway empty and open. The air crackled between Kingsley and Søren, not with their old playful sexual tension but with true animosity. She’d wondered if they’d made peace with each other but clearly today was nothing but a temporary détente.

“I know my way out.” Søren released her hand and walked toward the door. “Eleanor. I hope to see you soon. You should come back to church.”

“I’m excommunicated.”

“I spoke to the bishop. You’re welcome to return anytime. Always.”

Eleanor had no words for that. She had no idea how to feel. She’d gotten used to being an outcast and sleeping in on Sundays.

“How magnanimous,” Kingsley said, almost sneering. “A priest and a bishop got together, had tea and decided you were worthy enough to attend their worthless relic of a church on Sundays. You must be so honored they’re going to let you back into the Dirty Old Men Who Like to Fuck Little Boys and Tell Grown Women What to Do with Their Bodies Club.”

Søren turned his attention from her to Kingsley.

“Might I have a word with you?” Søren asked.

“Bien sûr.”

It happened so fast Nora could do nothing but gasp as Søren grabbed Kingsley by the neck and slammed him into the wall. With his body, Søren had Kingsley pinioned like an insect on display in a glass case. His mouth was at Kingsley’s ear, close enough to kiss him.

“You go too far,” Søren said, biting off each word. “You make choices you later regret and then blame anyone but yourself for what you suffer at your own hand. You don’t need me to hurt you. You do that to yourself. You can blame me and you can punish me for all my crimes, real and imagined. But you leave Eleanor out of this petty plan of yours to get your revenge on me. She is my heart. If anything happens to her because of you, I will castrate you. I know how much you want children. I will take that dream from you with my bare hands and a rusty knife. You know what I’m capable of. And you know I know how, because I have done it before. My father survived the procedure. You’ll be lucky if you do.”

“Søren, let him go,” Nora said. “He can’t breathe.”

“He’s probably enjoying it.”

“I’m not. Goddammit, Søren, let him go,” Nora ordered.

Kingsley was struggling, pushing back against Søren, his feet fighting for purchase, his lungs for air.

This wasn’t a game. This wasn’t kink. Søren could kill him any second.

Søren held on and held on. Kingsley struggled and struggled.

Finally, Søren let him go.

Kingsley inhaled hugely, his hand on his neck. Nora started over to him but he raised his hand to stop her.

“It’s fine. I deserved that.” Kingsley expelled the words between breaths.

“No one deserves that,” Nora said, furious.

Søren looked back at her over his shoulder.

“No?” Søren asked, and punched Kingsley in the center of the stomach so hard Kingsley slid down the wall and to the floor.

Søren walked out without another word.

“King?” Nora ran to him and knelt at his side.

“Fine,” he said, his head back, his eyes streaming with tears. “I’m fine.”

“Are you going to tell me you deserved that, too?”

“I did, oui. I absolutely had that coming to me.”

“Don’t take this personally, but I believe that,” she said. If Kingsley said he had it coming to him, then he had it coming to him. Kingsley half laughed, half grunted.

“Did that hurt as much as it looked like it did?” she asked.

“More. Le prêtre is in a bad mood. We’ll have to get used to it.”

“He usually doesn’t go around choking people who piss him off.” Nora shook her head. “Or punching them. I’ve never seen him like this before.”

Kingsley sighed.

“I have.” He grunted again as he moved. “God, it’s like being back in high school again. If he was going to put me in the hospital, he could at least get me off first.”

“You don’t have an erection right now, do you?”

“Not a full one.”

Nora groaned and leaned her forehead against Kingsley’s.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“We’ll figure something out. I know you...you’re ten times the domme Milady is.”

“I can’t whip like she does, though.”

“There are other ways to hurt people. As you see.” He laughed a little and tried to stand, then thought better of it and slid back to the floor.

“Yes, there are, aren’t there?” Nora grinned.

“That’s not a good smile.”

“It’s the best smile, King.”

“Why are you smiling when I’m down here dying?”

“Because I can’t learn how to whip like she does by Midsummer. But you can teach me how to throw a punch like that, can’t you?”

Kingsley smiled the same scary smile she wore.

“Milady will never know what hit her.”

15

The Black Box

ONE WEEK LATER, Nora experienced the particular torment of having good news and no one to tell it to. She made a phone call or two and when it was time, she borrowed Kingsley’s car and drove to the club. Since returning to the city, Nora had avoided The 8th Circle. By now everyone knew she’d left Søren but no one knew why and she didn’t want to face those questions yet, not until she had a good answer.

Upon arriving at the club, she went to the room that would be her new dungeon. When Kingsley had told her which dungeon was to be hers in the Hall of Masters—as someone had dubbed it—she nearly killed the man.

“You put me right across the hall from Søren?” she’d demanded.

“I did.”

“How much do you hate him, King? Seriously, answer me. On a scale of one to ten, how much?”

“This isn’t about hate. I’m angry with him, yes, but it’s not hate.”

“Then what is it?”

“You are the former submissive of the most infamous sadist in our little community,” Kingsley said. Little? Several thousand people held keys to The 8th Circle. “People have expectations. We need to subvert those.”

“What expectations?”

“They expect you to go running back to him any day.”

“They do?”

“They’re already taking bets on when you’ll show up in his collar again. When I put you in the dungeon across from his, it’s our way of showing them we aren’t afraid of him. This is business, Mistress Nora,” he said, emphasizing her new name. “It’s not personal. It’s marketing.”

Marketing.

Kingsley could call it that if he wanted to, but she knew the truth. Whether he’d admit it or not, Kingsley was trying to torture Søren by putting her dungeon across from his. Kingsley had her on his side and that gave him the upper hand against his former lover. Calculating and merciless when he wanted to be, Kingsley was willing to press any advantage. Nora was his advantage. So much for being a queen. In the game between Kingsley and Søren, she was still very much a pawn.

Nora opened the door to her dungeon and found it abuzz with workers and a decorator putting everything together for her. The front room of the two-room suite would hold a bed, a table and a sofa, plus an en suite bathroom. The back room was her actual dungeon. Kingsley had given her a twenty-five-thousand-dollar budget to work with, and she’d spent every penny of that on crops, canes, floggers, whips, clamps, sex toys, a medical bed, a St. Andrew’s Cross and the pièce de résistance...a large wooden throne perfect for bondage. The man who’d sold it to her said it came from an ancient castle at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Probably bullshit, but it was a gorgeous monstrosity and she had to have it. It put her a tad over budget, but if Kingsley wanted her to be a queen, this queen needed a throne.

While the workmen and the decorator put her dungeon together, Nora crossed the hall. With no one around and no one watching, she pulled a key out of her pocket and slipped it into the lock on a door, the door opposite her door.

Søren wasn’t in his dungeon. Yet her hands shook as she turned the key and opened the door, feeling like an apostate entering a temple. She shut the door behind her, locked it and leaned back against the door.

She took a ragged breath. The scent of winter permeated the air like the rarest, lightest perfume. With her eyes closed she did nothing but inhale again and again, drinking in the scent like a recovering alcoholic sniffing the mouth of an empty bottle of wine. She walked to the bed—an iron bed with a curved iron headboard and iron bedposts. Snow-white linens covered the bed, and she lifted his pillow to her face and breathed in his scent again. She ran her hands over the downy coverlet. Glancing around she saw nothing had been changed since she’d last set foot in here. On the wall opposite the bed stood a black St. Andrew’s Cross. An actual cross, small and carved of rough wood, hung over the door. A touch of blasphemy? No, although it might seem as such. Kingsley himself had designed this room to his exact specifications. Apart from the bed, which was a full-size, the room resembled the hermitage at their old school in Maine, the hermitage where Kingsley and Søren had carried on their secret affair under the noses of the Jesuit priests and other students who would never have dreamed that the cold, taciturn, no doubt heartless young Mister Stearns had it within him to love or be loved by anyone.

But he did. His aloofness and reserve were his armor. She’d seen it with her own eyes—parishioners at Sacred Heart ached to be close to him. He was their priest and they adored him for his dedication to the church, his love for God and his devotion to their spiritual well-being. But although he would regularly dine in the homes of his parishioners when invited or spend hours with them when they brought their troubles to his office, he never reciprocated by inviting them to his home at the rectory or asking them for help unless it was church-related. The one secret about his personal life he’d ever let slip was the story of his marriage to a young French ballerina when he was eighteen, and that had been a calculated maneuver so that his congregation would know he wasn’t the sort of priest from whom they need hide their children.

Here, however, in this room, all the armor came off. Here he was free. He didn’t hide his passions, his hungers. Hungers few outside these walls would understand. But she did. She understood because they were her desires, too.

Nora wandered the room, touching this and that. A black crop. A white set of leather cuffs that matched the collar he’d given her when she was eighteen. Handcuffs. Rope cuffs. A set of scalpels of various sizes.

On a shelf sat a black lacquer box that she feared to open for the memory she knew lurked inside it. But Nora had Pandora’s self-restraint when it came to secret boxes. She opened it. Anyone who saw the box out of context of this room and its owner would likely assume it held something like jewelry or love letters or a nice set of mah-jongg tiles. They could have guessed for hours without knowing what it actually held, which was a set of surgical steel needles, a set of needle receiving tubes, small clamps of various sizes and a collection of silver rings. Not the sort of rings for fingers, however.

What few people realized about Søren was that he possessed a wicked sense of humor. Nora, when she’d still been Eleanor, awoke on a Valentine’s Day years ago to find a card on the otherwise empty pillow next to her. The front of the card bore the words “The club, my room, tonight at 9:00.” That was all. When she opened the card she found a simple hand-drawn heart on the inside pierced by an arrow. But on closer inspection she saw it wasn’t an unfletched arrow as she’d assumed.

It was a needle.

That night she arrived at the club on time. She knew better than to keep Søren waiting. Outside his dungeon door she took off her snowy, sludgy boots and knocked once before slipping inside.

She shut the door but didn’t lock it. No one would interrupt them tonight, not even Kingsley unless he was invited, and then of course it wouldn’t be an interruption—Kingsley was always welcome in Søren’s dungeon. In addition to all the usual furniture in the room—the bed, the cross, one chair—she found a table covered in a white sheet between the foot of the bed and the St. Andrew’s Cross on the opposite wall. Next to the end of the table sat a black lacquer box, closed, lying on a small metal table with wheels, the sort she’d seen in doctor’s offices to hold medical instruments.

She went to the bathroom where she found Søren at the sink, the sleeves of his white button-down shirt rolled up to his elbows while he washed his hands. Not washed, scrubbed. He scrubbed his hands with the dedication of a surgeon.

“Sir?”

He turned his face to her but kept his hands under the steaming water.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Little One.” He kissed her forehead.

“You’re in a good mood, my sir,” she said to his bright smile, his bright eyes. He looked almost feverish. “Should I be worried?”

“I would be if I were you,” he said with a wink.

“My pussy just whimpered.”

“I wondered what that sound was. Now go change. There’s a shirt on the bed. Then sit on the table at the end closest to us.”

The instructions were simple enough. The shirt on the bed was one of his, a black Oxford shirt he must have been wearing earlier today, as she could smell his scent on it. She might have been cold wearing nothing but his shirt, except Søren had turned the heat up in the room. Even when torturing her, he thought of her comfort.

Sitting on the end of the table as ordered, she felt like a child with her naked feet dangling, not able to reach the floor. Soon Søren came out of the bathroom, drying his hands on a small white towel.

He tossed the towel aside and stood between her knees. He kissed her.

“Nervous?” he asked between soft, gentle kisses.

“A little,” she said. “What’s going on, sir?”

“Do you remember a few months ago when Kingsley was reading to us from Story of O?”

She nodded and said nothing. Of course she remembered it. Both of them had taken their turns with her that night and when the kink and the sex were over and done with, none of them could sleep. Kingsley had offered to read a bedtime story and had procured from his library an English translation of Histoire d’O, the most infamous erotic novel in the history of the French language. Was there anything in the world more erotic than to be in bed with a beautiful man who’d beaten and fucked her while another beautiful man who’d also beaten and fucked her lounged in a chair by the bed, wearing nothing but fitted trousers and reading French erotica to them?

“If I recall correctly,” Søren continued, “you were particularly enamored of the scene when Sir Stephen has O pierced.”

“A genital piercing seems more intimate than a collar,” she said. “Something that can’t be taken off easily. Something that you can wear in public that no one can see.”

“Exactly,” Søren said. “Which is why I’m going to pierce you tonight.”

“Pierce me?”

“Don’t be afraid. I learned from the best. Mistress Irina took me through all the steps. I’ll do a simple clitoral hood piercing. A ring. Something you’ll wear always, in public and private. Something, like you said, more intimate than a collar.”

She could have asked questions. Søren often allowed her to ask questions before he hurt her.

She could have asked, Do I have to? Or Will it hurt? But instead she asked, “Can I see the ring?”

“Of course, Little One.” He opened the lacquer box and removed a small plastic bag.

“Mistress Irina has already sterilized everything for me. Don’t touch the ring.”

She looked at the ring—a silver steel circle with a ball for a clasp. Couples exchanged wedding bands when they married. A diamond ring on her finger seemed a hollow symbol compared to this ring. She would wear it not on her body, but pierced into her body, and she would bleed for it. And it would be her own lover who put it in her.

“I’m ready,” she said, returning the ring to him.

“Lie back,” Søren instructed.

She rolled down onto the table and heard the sound of metal moving. From under the white sheet, Søren had pulled out stirrups like those she’d put her feet in every trip to her gynecologist’s office. Her knees fell open wide as she moved into position. Because he was Søren he also cuffed her ankles to the stirrups. No running away now—not that she wanted to. Much. Søren angled a light at the most intimate part of her body. And yet she wasn’t embarrassed, wasn’t ashamed. Her body belonged to him. She wouldn’t hide his own property from him.

She heard the distinctive snap of latex gloves, and felt the cold touch of the cleansing cloth that he wiped over her clitoris and vulva to disinfect the area. His fingers delicately prodded the tender flesh. He seemed to be measuring, checking position. With the tip of a pen he marked one spot and another. He pressed something small and cold up and under the hood that covered her clitoris.

“Mistress Irina suggests you blow out while I push the needle through.”

She nodded, unable to speak. She was mute from fear and arousal. Around Søren they were inseparable sensations, twin strands of the same cord.

“I’ll count for you. When I say three, you blow out hard. Yes?”

“Yes, sir,” she said between shallow breaths.

“One...two...three,” and on three she pushed her air out as he pushed the needle through, and felt nothing more than a quick pinch. He’d hurt her far worse before. This was nothing.

“Good girl,” Søren said and she rose up and saw his blond head between her wide-open thighs and her feet in the stirrups, a sight that would linger long after that night in her most private fantasies.

Carefully, not moving the lower half of her body at all, Eleanor rose up on her hands to see him finish the piercing. He took the ring and threaded it through the hole made by the needle. With his dexterous fingers, he fastened it with the small steel ball.

“It is finished,” Søren said. She looked down at the ring and into Søren’s eyes. He pushed two fingers inside her and her hands clutched the edge of the table as he opened her up. He still had the gloves on. While he spread her wide they kissed again. When he pulled his fingers out of her, they were quickly replaced with his cock deep inside her. He unbuttoned his shirt, the one she wore, not the one he wore, and held her breasts in his hands, rubbing her nipples until they hardened. Unable to sit up any longer she rolled back and arched into his hands, into his penetration. Her clitoris throbbed as blood rushed to the area. She felt everything, every movement. Her clitoris had never been so sensitive or receptive. She orgasmed quickly, suddenly, before she’d steeled herself for it. A second orgasm closely followed the first. The ring throbbed like a beating heart, and her hips felt heavy and tight. She looked down at herself and saw the ring as much a part of her body as Søren’s cock inside her. The piercing was an act of sadism, of course, putting a needle and a ring through her clitoral hood, but the ring itself was a symbol—not merely of his sadism and ownership of her body, but of her trust in him, her devotion. A wedding band could be yanked off the finger and tossed across the room. There would be no removing this ring in a moment of passion. It was there to stay like an arrow through a heart.

An arrow or a needle.

Or a knife.

“Eleanor?”

Nora slammed the black lacquer box shut and turned around. Søren stood in the doorway of his dungeon looking at her with a question in his eyes.

“Sorry,” she said. “Lost in thought.”

Søren stepped into his dungeon and locked the door behind him. He walked to her and looked down at the box in her hand.

“Good memories in this box,” he said, carefully opening the lid.

“A few,” she admitted. “One or two.”

Søren took a sterilized needle out of its plastic, shut the box and set it aside.

“Or three.” He took her much smaller hand in his large hand and pricked the tip of her index finger with the needle. He did it calmly, deliberately, but she saw his pupils dilate wildly as the needle tip sunk into her flesh. When he pulled it out, a drop of bright red blood pooled on her skin.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Does this mean I’ll fall into a hundred-year sleep?”

“I don’t see any spinning wheels anywhere, Sleeping Beauty.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the blood off her finger. He bent his head to kiss her lips and she pulled away.

“That’s not what I came here for,” she said. “And don’t flirt. I’m still furious at you for almost choking Kingsley to death.”

Søren sighed. “You call it choking. He’d call it foreplay. Kingsley and I aren’t your concern.”

“If you do it again, I’m calling the police. You can sit in an interrogation room and explain to the cops why you assaulted your brother-in-law. Maybe if you’re lucky, this time I’ll come to you and offer to get you out of trouble in exchange for your eternal obedience to me.”

“The police know Kingsley. I wouldn’t get arrested for assaulting him. I’d likely get a medal.”

“I’m serious. Don’t take out your anger at me on him.”