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“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 well-turned 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.”
“That. Anyway, we were talking, and then I did what you said I should do and I took him up to the playroom—the one with the Francis Bacon painting over the bed—and suddenly I’m getting flogged and whipped, and then I had an orgasm from the pain alone. Then I was down here with my skirt on backward. I raided your fridge. You know kink makes me hungry.”
She lifted her bowl of strawberries and offered him one. Kingsley ignored them.
“Do you think you and your friend would tag-team me someday?”
“No. Eat your strawberries. I need to talk to the god.”
“Tell him I want to kiss his feet. Again.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
She waved her hand, shooing him from the room.
“Søren?” Kingsley shouted as he ran up the stairs.
“I’m in my room,” Søren called back. Kingsley had given him his own guest room to stay in whenever he wished. So far he hadn’t slept any nights in it.
“All rooms are my room.” Kingsley threw open the door to the guest room. Søren stood on the opposite side of the bed, an open silver suitcase in front of him.
“Very well, then. I’m in your room.”
“Can I ask you one question?”
“Ask.”
“What did you do to Blaise?”
Søren looked up at him.
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Did you fuck her?”
“That’s two questions, and no, I didn’t. Are you upset we played? She said she’s allowed to be with anyone she wants.”
“I don’t care who she plays with. I want to know why she’s lying on my couch in a stupor claiming you gave her the best pain of her life?”
“The best? I’m sure that’s an exaggeration, but I’m pleased she enjoyed herself.” Søren smiled as he dug through the suitcase of kink toys Kingsley kept under every bed in the house. “I certainly enjoyed her.”
“So all that about not breaking your vows was, quoi?”
“There was no sex, and I didn’t marry her. Nor did I take money from her or refuse to obey a direct order from the pope.”
“What about—” Kingsley made a specific hand gesture.
“Well,” Søren said. “I did do that, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But we Jesuits aren’t nearly so hard-line or heavy-handed as the Curia when it comes to masturbation. My God, there are at least three puns in that last sentence. Entirely unintentional.”
“Stop joking. This is serious.”
“It’s not serious. Calm down, Kingsley.”
“I’m perfectly calm.”
“You’re speaking in tongues, Kingsley. I heard French and English, and some Spanish mixed in, and you’re speaking them all at the same time.”
“You’re a priest. A Jesuit priest. And I left the house for one hour and come back, and I’ve got a girl with afterglow on my couch eating strawberries claiming my ex-lover who is now a Catholic priest gave her the best pain of her life. I can’t ever leave my house again.”
“You know from personal experience it’s in the world’s best interest I beat someone on a regular basis. I spoke to my confessor, and he gave me leave to deal with this side of myself as long as I don’t break any vows. So there.”
“So there? No, not there. We’re not there yet. You—” Kingsley pointed at Søren. “You’re in a good mood all the time. And you talk. And you’re...nice. Well, nicer.” The word nice hurt coming out. “You’ve changed.”
“Kingsley—”
“It’s the girl, isn’t it? The Virgin Queen. I should have known.”
Søren eyed him with suspicion. “Kingsley, are you—”
“Give me a second.” Kingsley paced the room. His mind reeled. What had happened under his own roof? He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out tobacco and rolling papers.
“What are you doing?”
“I need a cigarette to calm my nerves. They’re frazzled.”
“You’re not a dowager duchess. You shouldn’t have frazzled nerves at twenty-eight,” Søren said. “And you shouldn’t be smoking, either.”
“My house, my rules. It’s a smoking house. Everyone has to smoke in my house. I won’t quit smoking, and if you stay here you have to start.” Kingsley quickly rolled a cigarette and licked the rolling paper to seal it.
“Then I’ll go back to the rectory.”
Kingsley flicked his lighter, lit his cigarette, took a long drag and glared at Søren.
“How do you give someone the best pain of their life without touching them?”
Kingsley raised the cigarette to his lips again.
He heard a snapping sound, and the cigarette no longer had a flame.
For a long time he looked at his cigarette before slowly turning his head toward Søren who held a bullwhip in his hand. Casually Søren coiled it.
Cigarette lit.
Bullwhip snap.
Cigarette not lit anymore.
He held the stub in his hand split in two.
“Any other questions?” Søren asked with an arrogant lift of his eyebrow.
Kingsley pointed at the whip, pointed at his hand, pointed at Søren...
“Can you teach me to do that?”
“I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”
Søren threw the whip down on the bed and came around to Kingsley. He raised his hands to Kingsley’s face and lifted his eyelids.
“What are your questions?” Kingsley asked, trying to blink.
“Why do you smell like a brothel? Why do you have a gun in your pants? And most importantly, what drugs are you on right now?”
9 (#ulink_ff06401b-2aaf-55f8-b76f-9e8438a27e20)
WHEN IN DOUBT, Kingsley fucked.
And ever since Søren had caught him taking drugs, he’d been drowning in self-doubt. Now he was drowning in Blaise’s body, a vastly superior body to drown in. She’d made the mistake of looking much too attractive today when she stopped by his office to say good morning. But she hadn’t complained when he’d slipped his hand under her skirt, and she certainly wasn’t complaining now that he had her straddling him in his large leather desk chair.
“You’re in a good mood today,” Blaise said as she unbuttoned his collar. She dipped her head and kissed his lips, his neck.
“I have you on top of me. Of course I’m in a good mood.” He skimmed his fingers down her throat and into the V of her blouse.
“If you were inside me, you’d be in an even better mood.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kingsley asked. He slid his hands under her skirt and massaged her soft thighs.
“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Blaise bit his earlobe and whispered. “S’il vous plait, monsieur.”
“Since you ask so nicely...”
Blaise laughed as Kingsley stood up without warning and sat her down hard on the edge of his desk. He hiked her skirt up to her hips, and Blaise tensed.
“Something wrong, chouchou?” he asked.
“I love this skirt. Just don’t tear it. Please?”
“If I did, I would replace it for you.”
“It belonged to Bette Davis.”
“You and your outfits...”
Kingsley dragged her off the desk and turned her back to him. Carefully, so as not to tear the vintage fabric, he pulled the tiny zipper down and slid the skirt down her legs. She stepped out of it, and he laid it over the back of his chair.
“Are you wearing anything else that belongs to a dead actress?”
“Everything else on me or in me is fair game.”
