kissed the wound. He’d broken the skin but only a little.
“Don’t apologize. I love it when you give me presents.”
He pulled out of her and collapsed into his office chair.
“Your turn to handle cleanup.” He waved his hand at her, shooing her off his desk. She hopped off and pulled a box of tissues out of his desk.
“It’s always my turn to handle cleanup.”
“You’re so good at it.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that.” She knelt in front of him and used her tongue to gently lick him. It hurt. It always hurt to be touched after an orgasm. Pleasure and pain all in one act. He wasn’t satisfied until he’d had both.
When Blaise finished, she cleaned herself off with the tissues in his desk, got dressed and kissed him goodbye.
“That was fun. Want to go for round two tonight?” she asked.
“Please.”
“You’ll be sober?”
“No promises.”
Blaise rolled her eyes, kissed him again and left him alone in his office. Kingsley finished straightening his clothes and pulling himself back together. And then it happened the way it always happened. Thoughts. Memories. Things he wanted to forget but couldn’t all came rushing back into his mind. Life would be so much better if he could keep the blood in his cock and out of his brain all the time.
Kingsley unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk—the large one made to hold files—and took inventory of its contents. Eleven bottles of bourbon, two grams of cocaine, one ounce of marijuana, two bottles of pure codeine, ninety pills— one-hundred milligrams each—and one bottle of ketamine, because sometimes only a tranquilizer made for horses and the magical Wonderland it sent him falling into would do.
He reached for a bottle of the codeine, but his office door opened. Kingsley slammed the drawer shut and sat back in his chair.
“Do you never knock?” Kingsley asked.
“The moaning and groaning had stopped, and the walls have stopped rattling,” Søren said. “I assumed the coast was clear.”
“Clear for what? What are you doing here?”
“Fulfilling my end of the deal, like I said I would.”
“Are you here to yell at me again?” Kingsley asked as Søren walked in.
“I didn’t yell,” Søren said, taking a seat opposite Kingsley’s desk. “At no point did I raise my voice at you.”
“It felt like yelling.”
“Even the lightest touch can hurt an open wound. You can’t blame me for being worried about you.”
“Stop worrying. You aren’t my father.”
“I should hope not,” Søren said, furrowing his brow. “If so, my infant self has some explaining to do.”
“You aren’t my priest, either,” Kingsley said, although Søren didn’t look like a priest today. He wore his usual off-duty uniform of a long-sleeved black T-shirt and black pants.
“Why, Kingsley, aren’t we looking very defensive today.”
“Leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that. You asked me to teach you the whip trick. Here I am.”
“I asked you to teach me a whip trick?”
“I can’t say I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
“I remember.” Kingsley narrowed his eyes at him. Now that Søren had reminded him about it, he remembered.
“I can go if you’ve changed your mind,” Søren said, standing up.
“No. Sit. Don’t go.”
Søren looked at him and sat back down.
“I don’t do coke very often,” Kingsley said. “I was having a bad night. That’s all.”
“How many bad nights do you have?”
“One or two. Not many,” Kingsley said.
“I know I gave you the money with no strings attached. But I never suspected you’d use it for drugs.”
“You want the money back?”
“No. I want you to take better care of yourself. That’s all.”
“Take better care of myself? An interesting statement coming from the man who used to beat me black-and-blue on a regular basis. I see you’ve found some new whipping boys.”
“Whipping girls.”
“Only girls these days?” Kingsley asked.
“Only women. I’m less likely to go too far.”
“I loved it when you went too far.”
“And now,” Søren said with a smile, “you know why I don’t play with you.”
Kingsley lowered his head and rested his chin on his crossed arms.
“Kingsley?”
“What happened to you? You’re different,” Kingsley said.
“You want to know the truth?”
“I asked.”
“Her name is Magdalena.”
“Secret girlfriend?”
“She’s the madam of a Roman brothel. She and her employees cater to a very specific clientele.”
“Masochists?”
“Mostly.”
“That’s where you’ve been going to…” Kingsley waved his hand.
“It is.”
“Normal men join a gym to work off their extra energy,” Kingsley said. “So I’ve heard.”
“I’m not normal men. And don’t pretend you are, either.”
Kingsley rolled his eyes, waved his hand again. “So she’s your friend and…?”
“My first two years of seminary were difficult. I’m not sure I would have made it without Magdalena. I owe her, but she refused to accept any form of remuneration from me.”
“I’ve known a lot of prostitutes. Never heard of one refusing money from a john. Of course, it’s you, and I’d pay you money for another—”
“Kingsley, she and I never slept together. We were friends. I learned from her.”
“You learned how to knock a cigarette out of someone’s mouth with a whip?”
“One of the first skills she taught me, yes,” Søren said.
Now Kingsley knew what Søren’s “other hobbies” were. He’d learned the art and science of sadism over the past decade. Sounded far more useful to Kingsley than a degree in theology.
“I traveled a great deal while in school,” Søren continued, “but when I was in Rome, not a week passed that I didn’t find myself at her home.”
“She let you hurt her?”
“She did,” Søren said. “Although she herself is a sadist. And a very good one.”
“How good?”
Søren looked away and smiled at something before looking back at Kingsley.
“She was very mean to me,” Søren said.
Kingsley pointed at him. “Good. Someone needs to be. Is the reason for all this…” He waved his hand again.
“This what?”
“Good behavior?”
“I just told you I went to a brothel every week in seminary to learn sadism from a madam. You have an interesting definition of good behavior.”
“When I started at St. Ignatius, everyone was terrified of you. Everyone. Tout le monde. Even the priests were afraid of you, and they liked you. You didn’t even speak to other students. You were this impenetrable blond fortress, and everyone hated you—for good reason. What happened?”
“I grew up,” Søren said. “I’m not in high school anymore. That does wonders for a person.”
“I don’t like it,” Kingsley said.
“You don’t like me?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know,” Kingsley admitted. “When we were in school, we were all like scared puppies, and you, you were a wolf. I don’t like seeing you…”
“What?”
“Domesticated. They even put a collar on you.”
“I put on my own collar.”
“You used to scare me.”
“Have you considered the possibility that the reason I don’t scare you now is that you aren’t a puppy anymore?”
Søren waited.
Kingsley looked at Søren and barked. Søren only looked at him. Maybe he should try a bite next time.
“If
it makes you feel any better,” Søren said, “the wolf is still there, but he’s on a stronger leash.”
“You let the wolf off the leash with me.”
“Which is why I needed a stronger leash.”
“I don’t know if I want to pay this Magdalena person for making you boring.”
“What she did was make me take myself less seriously, which is, as you know, the first of three miracles she’ll need to qualify for sainthood.”
“I envy her,” Kingsley said. “She had you in her life. I never thought I’d see you again.”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t for her,” Søren said. “I wouldn’t have been able to face you without her help.”
“Then I suppose I owe her, too. Even if you do yell at me.”
“I don’t yell.”
“What’s her address?” Kingsley asked.
“Why?”
“I’ll send her a check. If she’s the reason you’re here right now, then I owe her and you both.”
Søren sighed, picked up a pen and a scrap of paper off Kingsley’s desk and wrote the address. He held it out, and Kingsley reached for it. Søren pulled it back out of his grasp.
“I know what you’re doing,” Søren said.
“What am I doing?”
Søren glanced to the right and looked pointedly at Kingsley’s filing cabinets.
“Blaise has a big mouth,” Kingsley said. “One of her better qualities. Usually.”
“Here,” Søren said and gave Kingsley the address. “You should visit her. She could help you like she helped me.”
“I’m fine,” Kingsley said. “You act like I’m falling apart.”
“You were shot last year and almost died.”
Kingsley shrugged. “Worked out well for me, didn’t it? Someone came to my death bed and left me an ‘I’m sorry’ gift.”
“It wasn’t a gift. And it wasn’t an apology. It was a payment.”
“Payment? For what?”
Søren reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a tiny clear plastic tube. He sat it on Kingsley’s desk.
“What is this?” Kingsley asked as he picked up the small tube. A few f lecks of metal danced in the afternoon sunlight. “If you were a cat, that would be one of your lives.” “This is my bullet?” Kingsley asked in shock.
“What’s left of it.”
“Why do you have it?”
“I wanted it,” Søren said. “I took it. I paid you for it. So now you don’t owe me anything.”
“They gave it to you in the hospital?”
“I asked for it.”
Kingsley spun the tube, pretending to study the shrapnel. In truth, he couldn’t care less what it looked like. All that mattered was that Søren had kept it. Why? Was it a talisman? A memento? A reminder of the last time they’d seen each other? Kingsley thought about reaching into his pocket. In it was a small silver cross on a broken silver chain—the one memento he’d keep from his first night with Søren. The cross and the memories.
“You kept this? All this time you’ve had my bullet with you?” Kingsley asked.
“I have. If you want it back, you’ll have to pay for it.”
“I will never understand you,” Kingsley said.
“Then stop trying.” He held out his hand, and Kingsley dropped the tube with the bullet fragments into his palm. He liked the idea of Søren having this piece of himself in his possession. Was there an object in the world more intimate to a victim than the weapon that had nearly killed him? These bullet fragments had been inside Kingsley’s body and had almost destroyed him. Instead of ending his life, that shot had changed his life. No wonder Søren felt such a kinship to those deadly remnants. They had much in common.
Søren pocketed the tube that held Kingsley’s bullet fragment.
“Are you ready?” Søren asked.
“Yes. For what?”
At that Søren smiled—a devilish sexy smile that made Kingsley completely forget for a moment that it was a Catholic priest who sat in his office and not the Søren of old who had used him as a human target on a regular basis.
He lifted his hand, crooked a finger at Kingsley.
“Now?” Kingsley asked.
“You had plans?” Søren asked. “My free time is limited, as you know.”
“Hosting an exorcism tonight?” Kingsley asked.
“Worse. Couples’ counseling.”
“Same thing,” Kingsley said. “It’s all your fault. No one told you to get a real job.”
Kingsley stood up and came around the desk.
“I like my job,” Søren said as he followed Kingsley from the office. “You should think about getting one, too. You’ll be surprised how enjoyable it is to be useful to society.”
“You know what else is enjoyable?”
“What?”
“Not having a job.”
Kingsley led Søren to his personal playroom.
“This is my real office,” Kingsley said, opening the door. He had a St. Andrew’s Cross, a rack, an X-bar, several spreader bars, all the bondage cuffs and equipment one man could ever need.
“Like it?”
“It’ll do,” Søren said, although Kingsley could see Søren eying everything with interest.
Every one of the bedrooms in the house had kink equipment in it. Vanilla sorts were not welcome in his home. And on the rare occasion they did infiltrate the town house, they were not vanilla after they left.
“How often do you play?” Kingsley asked.
“Whenever I can,” Søren said. “When it’s safe. If I go longer than a month, I get… What’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Lethal?”
“Unpleasant. You?”
“As often as I can. Once a day at least.”