pillows was gone, and now a small cot sat on the f loor near a
fireplace. And Kingsley lay on his side facing the fire. “You have a bruise on your neck under your ear,” Søren
said, touching the sensitive spot with his fingertip. “It’ll go
above your collar.”
“If someone says anything, I’ll tell them a tree hit me.” Søren laughed softly and kissed the bruise.
“I don’t think they’ll believe a tree hit you. Maybe they’d
believe you hit a tree.”
“Why would I hit a tree? A tree never did anything to me.” “Perhaps it likes being hit.” Søren kissed Kingsley’s neck
again, his shoulder, his throat.
Kingsley remembered this night. It had a been a Sunday.
Everyone at their school went to bed early on Sunday nights.
They’d woken early for Sunday Mass and had to wake early
again for Monday morning classes. Once everyone had gone
to bed, he and Søren had sneaked out to the hermitage to
spend a few perfect hours alone together.
“Aren’t you worried someone will find out what we’re
doing out here?” Kingsley asked as he covered Søren’s roving
hand with his own.
“They’d never believe it even if we told them.” “What? They’d believe I’d sleep with a teacher, but they wouldn’t believe you’d sleep with a student?” Kingsley tried
to sound outraged. He wasn’t sure if he pulled it off or not. “Precisely.”
“Because I’m a slut, and you’re perfect?”
“Because you have friends, and no one likes me,” Søren said. Kingsley sat up and looked down at Søren.
“I like you,” Kingsley said.
“No, you don’t,” Søren said with a half smile. “You want
me. There’s a difference.”
“You don’t like me, either,” Kingsley chided. He ignored
the unwelcome pang of sympathy Søren’s placid “No one likes
me” declaration gave him.
“It isn’t that I don’t like you,” Søren said with a playful
sigh. “It’s only I like me so much more than I like you that,
in comparison, it looks like I dislike you.”
“I might suffocate you tonight with a pillow,” Kingsley said. “You’ll have to teach my French classes, then. Lesson plans
in my desk.”
“Forget it. You get to live.”
“I thought as much.”
Kingsley collapsed on to Søren’s chest with a sigh. Søren
lifted Kingsley’s hair and pressed a kiss under his ear. “Well, I’m worried they’ll find out about us,” Kingsley
said, turning on to his side away from Søren. Søren wasn’t
deterred. He ran his hand down the center of Kingsley’s back
and pressed a kiss to the top of his spine. Kingsley relished
these moments, after the fire of Søren’s sadism had burned itself out. The gentle touches and kisses hurt almost more than
the blows from the belt and the cane did. They hurt his heart,
and yet he treasured the ache. It was his favorite pain. “Why are you worried? We’re always careful. No one ever
sees us together. I don’t care if they find out about me. I have
places I can go. But I don’t want you…”
“Don’t want me what?” Kingsley asked.
“I don’t want to embarrass you,” Søren said, and Kings
ley laughed out loud at the abject absurdity of that statement. “You don’t want to embarrass me? An hour ago, you
stripped me naked, told me to get on my knees and confess
to you the most shameful sexual fantasies I’ve ever had in my
life, and you say you don’t want to embarrass me?” “That’s different. Who we are in private has nothing to do
with who we have to be out there. Do you want people to
know what you are?”
“Your lover?”
“Not that.”
Kingsley thought about the question. Alone with Søren
he became a slave, a slut, a groveling nobody who submitted
to sexual torture and said thank you for the privilege. Having sex with another boy didn’t embarrass him. It was everything else that did.
“Non, it’s true. I don’t want people to know I like being
hurt. They wouldn’t understand it, and they wouldn’t understand you. They’d think you were a monster.”
“I am a monster,” Søren said as he bit the center of Kingsley’s back.
“Yes, but no one knows that but me. It’s our secret. But…”
He sighed heavily and pressed his back against Søren’s chest.
“I’m afraid they’ll find out soon enough anyway.” “And why is that?” Søren demanded.
“Well, you see…” He braced himself for Søren’s wrath.
“I’m pregnant.”
Kingsley bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing as Søren
sighed so heavily with disgust the cot vibrated. Then Kingsley felt something in his back, something that felt like a foot. That foot pushed, and Kingsley landed hard on the f loor
right on his ass.
“Oh, no,” he said as he hit the hardwood beneath him with
bruising force. “I lost the baby.”
When he looked up over the edge of the mattress, he found
Søren’s face buried in the pillow. He’d never seen Søren
brought to tears by laughter.
“Don’t cry,” Kingsley said, rubbing Søren’s heaving shoulder. “We’ll try again.”
Kingsley couldn’t hold off coming anymore. Surely enough
time would have passed by now. He came inside Phoebe with
such force he grunted in near discomfort.
He pulled out of her and grabbed her robe from the f loor
to wipe himself off.
“Hey, that robe cost a thousand dollars,” she said as she
stretched out on the bed, naked and happy. One hand teased
her own nipples while another slipped between her legs. His
semen dripped out of her, leaving a wet stain under her hips.
If she didn’t care about the silk sheets, he knew she didn’t actually care about the robe.
“Now it’s a thousand-dollar cum-rag.” He tossed it back
on the f loor as he zipped himself up.
“You’re terr ible.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and she lazily sat up. “I hope
that was to your liking.”
“I like that you laughed.”
He grabbed the gun and shoved it in the waistband of his
pants again.
“What?”
“I said…” She left the bed and came to him, putting her
arms around his neck. “I liked that you laughed while you
were fucking me. It made it feel dirtier, like you really were
some psycho maniac raping me.” She grinned up at him. He
should have found her attractive, this thin, graceful beauty
who looked twenty-five but had probably said hello and goodbye to thirty-five a long time ago. Once upon a time he found
her attractive, but today she repulsed him. He wanted to take
her arms off him, but it wouldn’t do to upset her. He needed
her. More accurately, he needed her husband. Robert Dixon
was working his way up. He’d be mayor someday if he continued on his current career trajectory. Kingsley would love
to have a mayor in his pocket.
So he smiled at her, played nice and let her kiss him. “I laughed because I was remembering something.” “What were you remembering?”
“I don’t remember,” he lied.
She went to a chest of drawers, opened the top drawer and
pulled out a leathe
r makeup case. She opened it and laid out
two lines of cocaine. She’d probably been on it while he’d
fucked her. Would explain why she couldn’t shut up now. “I heard you and Robert went shooting together,” Phoebe
said.
“I had to discuss something with him.”
“Me?” she asked with a saccharine smile.
“Work,” Kingsley said. “Just work. Your name didn’t come
up.”
“Good,” she said. “Just checking.” She handed him the
rolled up bill. “Have some. We’ll go for round two.” Kingsley tried to look enthusiastic about the prospect of
fucking her again. She laid out two more lines for him. He
hated coke, hated how much one hit made him want another
hit half an hour later. But maybe if he couldn’t get it up again
for round two, he’d have the drugs to blame.
Phoebe got on her knees in front of him and took his cock
in her mouth. He breathed deep and tried to think of the most
erotic images he could conjure, anything to get him back in
the mood. For some reason all that came to mind were memories of Søren and those stolen nights together when they were teenagers. Luckily that worked, and he felt himself starting
to grow hard again.
“Mom?” A small boy’s voice called out in the hallway.
Phoebe pulled back and exhaled with frustration. “Give me a minute, Cody. Mommy just got out of the
shower.”
“I got sick at Tyler’s. They brought me home.” “Wait there, baby. Mommy’s coming.”
Phoebe rolled her eyes.
“He’s supposed to be with friends tonight. Sorry,” she whispered to Kingsley as she stood to her feet. She started to pick
her robe up off the f loor but then noticed the semen stain.
She grabbed a terry-cloth bathrobe from inside her closet and
pulled it tight around her.
“I’ll go. It’s fine,” Kingsley said, relieved to have such an
easy out.
“I’ll call soon. I promise.”
“Take your time,” he said, wishing she’d never call him
again.
“You’re amazing.” She gave him a long deep kiss that
Kingsley returned with no enthusiasm whatsoever. “The sexiest man on earth. See you soon? Please?”
“Bien sûr.”
“I love the French. Rape me in French next time.” She
kissed him again and pointed at the nightstand. “It’s in there.
I’ll call.”
She left him alone in the room. Kingsley waited until the
voices disappeared from the hallway. He opened the drawer
she’d pointed to, and he found the envelope. He slipped out
the door, down the stairs and grabbed a cab. All he wanted
to do was take a quick shower, wash Phoebe off him and get
back to his blackjack game with Søren.
He raced up the stairs to his front door, his heart pounding
as the coke hit his bloodstream.
When he strode through the foyer, he noticed two wellturned ankles shod in a pair of beige pumps resting on the
arm of his sofa in his sitting room.
“Blaise?” He peered over the back of the sofa and found a
rather euphoric-looking Blaise laying supine and looking sublime. She had a bowl of strawberries balanced on her chest. “Bonne soir, monsieur.” She gave a tired happy laugh and
popped a strawberry in her mouth. Her usually perfectly
coiffed hair was now mussed, and it appeared she’d gotten
undressed and redressed at some point. “I love your house.
It’s the best house in New York. Have I ever told you that?” He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Are you stoned?”
She shook her head and giggled. “Nope. This is all afterglow.”
“Afterglow?”
“You know what’s amazing, King? He didn’t even lay a
hand on me. But that was easily—” she made a huge sweeping gesture with her arm “—easily the best pain I’ve ever experienced.”
“Pain?”
“A little B, a little D and a lot of S&M. I was the M.” “You were the M, were you?”
“It was amazing. Your friend is a god of pain.”
“Who? Who’s a god?”
“Your blond friend. Søren.”
Kingsley glared down at her.
“You had sex with Søren while I was gone?”
“No, Silly. I said he hardly touched me. He didn’t have to.
His soul touched me. His pain touched me.”
“You’re out of your mind. How did this happen?” “I don’t know.” She raised both hands in the air to stretch.
“After you left he asked me how I spelled my name. I said like
Blaise Pascal, and then he told me about how Blaise Pascal, he
was a mathematician who—”
“He hated the Jesuits. Wrote all sorts of slanderous, and
therefore true, things about them.”