скачать книгу бесплатно
After she’d gotten over the shock of seeing Wesley again, she’d tried talking him into staying with her in her house in Connecticut. But he’d been unusually insistent.
“Kentucky,” he’d said.
“Please,” he’d said.
“I lived in your world. Come live in mine for a while,” he’d said.
She’d finally acquiesced, unable and unwilling to ever again see sadness in those big brown eyes of Wesley’s. But at her insistence they’d driven in separate cars—he in his Mustang, she in the Aston Martin Griffin had delivered to her. After all, Nora never went into any situation without an escape plan. She’d learned that lesson well back in her days as a professional Dominatrix. She hadn’t commanded her exorbitant fees by simply being more beautiful or more vicious than other pros. She did what few others of her kind did. Instead of working from a guarded, well-staffed dungeon, she went to her clients’ houses, their hotel rooms, wherever they paid her to go. Back then she’d joked her motto was Have Riding Crop, Will Travel. And travel she had. From New York to New Orleans, from Midtown to the Middle East, she went wherever Kingsley sent her. And for her own safety she relied on two things—her notoriety as the most dangerous Domme in the world, and Kingsley’s reputation as the last man in America anyone wanted to cross. She had only to say her name or his and the Underworld toed the line.
Now Nora prayed that where she went no one would have heard of her. Especially Wesley’s parents. Surely, as conservative as Wesley painted them, they’d never even been in the erotica section of a bookstore, much less heard the name Nora Sutherlin.
But it didn’t hurt to ask. She fished her cell phone out of her bag and called Wesley.
“Yes, we’re almost there,” he answered before she even said hello. Every hour on the hour she’d called to him to ask, “Are we there yet?”
“That’s not why I’m phoning this time.”
“Sure about that?”
“Nope. So you never told me what your parents think about me coming to visit.” Nora turned on her blinker as they veered onto exit 81.
“They’re fine with me having visitors. A lot of my college friends came by over the summer.”
Nora pursed her lips. She would have stared Wesley down had he not been in the yellow Shelby Mustang two cars ahead of her.
“Nice nonanswer there, kid.”
“It’s fine.” He laughed and Nora couldn’t help but smile. God, she’d missed that boy’s laugh in the fifteen months they hadn’t seen each other, hadn’t spoken. Wesley’s absence from her life had been a void no amount of sex or money or kink or fame had been able to fill.
“Seriously, Nor. My parents are nice people. They like all my friends.”
“Friends. Good. Let’s go with friends for introductions. Let’s practice. You’ll say, ‘Ma, Paw—’“
“You’re getting my family confused with the Waltons again.”
“Hush, John-Boy, we’re practicing. You say to them, ‘Mother, Father—this is my friend Nora. I used to work for her back at Yorke. She’s come to visit and not cause any trouble.’“
“Not going to be able to say that with a straight face.”
“Which is why we’re practicing, Your Highness.”
Wesley groaned, and now it was Nora’s turn to laugh at him.
“You’re never going to drop that, are you?”
Nora could easily envision him rubbing his forehead in amused frustration.
“I kind of like it—the Prince of Kentucky. Very sexy title.”
“One stupid reporter called me that three years ago in one article—”
“Yeah, in an article about you hanging out with Prince Harry at the Kentucky Derby. Crazy that he’s turned into the sexy one now. Can you get me his number?”
“We didn’t stay in touch.”
“So, if you’re the Prince of Kentucky,” Nora continued, unwilling to drop a thread of conversation that made Wesley so delightfully uncomfortable, “who’s the Princess? Are you supposed to marry the governor’s daughter or something?”
“God, I hope not.”
“What? She a dog?”
“She’s a very cute nine-year-old girl,” Wesley said as the first of the stars showed themselves at the edge of the southern sky. At the pace they were going, they’d be at Wesley’s house within the hour. “She also happens to be my cousin.”
Now Nora had to groan. Of course Wesley couldn’t just be the son of rich horse farmers. He had to be related to the governor, as well. Her poor little intern … She’d once thought had no money, no connections, no nothing … What else didn’t she know about him?
“Well, hey. You know what they say about Kentucky …”
“You’re disgusting.”
“True. But I’m also winning.” Nora hit the gas and passed Wesley’s Mustang. He apparently didn’t take kindly to her doing so on his home territory. Nora glanced in her rearview mirror and saw his car speed up. “Don’t worry, kid. I have no idea where I’m going. You’re gonna win this … oh, holy shit. Was that a castle?”
Nora craned her neck to look at the turreted building they passed.
“No. Sort of. It’s a hotel now. But it is a castle. Some lunatic built it for his wife years ago. Was her dream to live in a castle. She never got to do so.”
Nora frowned. “That’s sad. She died before they finished it?”
“Nope. Divorced.”
Laughing, Nora glanced back one more time at the strange sight of a castle situated in the middle of Kentucky bluegrass.
“Women. Just can’t please them sometimes. I think I’d stay married to a guy who built me a castle. Especially one that pretty.”
Nora heard Wesley laughing softly on the other end of the line. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him laugh like that before—sort of throaty, kind of arrogant and undeniably sexy.
“Wait until you see my castle.”
“Are we there yet?” she asked as they hung up their cell phones.
Nora followed Wesley’s taillights all the way to a town called Versailles, which he mispronounced as “Ver-sales.” They turned onto a dark winding road and had to slow down considerably. The entire way there Nora tried to will herself to be calm. It would be fine. Everything would be fine. She had Wesley back again.
Over the summer, she’d come to accept that she’d have to live without Wesley, that she couldn’t be Søren’s property and Wesley’s … whatever at the same time. Life with Søren seemed like a beautiful prison most days, a prison she chose, a prison she would never leave. Only Wesley’s absence had made it feel like a punishment and not a palace….
“Oh, holy shit,” Nora breathed. “That’s a fucking palace.”
Ahead of her, lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, was the biggest goddamn house she’d ever seen in her life. Kingsley’s three-story town house, Griffin’s estate, even Søren’s father’s New Hampshire mansion … all of them looked like suburban ranch homes in comparison to the stately sprawling ivory box before her. She counted no less than twenty-eight windows on the front of the house alone. Windows, doors, balconies … she’d seen smaller palaces nestled in the Rhine Valley of Europe, palaces that housed real European aristocracy and not just old American money.
Wesley pulled into the circular cobblestone drive and turned off his engine. Nora followed suit. She hoped it was late enough no one would be out and about to witness her wide-eyed, jaw-on-the-ground reaction to Wesley’s house.
Stepping out of her car, she nearly tripped on a crack in the cobblestone. Wesley caught her and pulled her close.
“I only tripped so you’d catch me,” she lied, wrapping her arms around him.
“I only put that crack there so you’d trip.” He smiled down at her and her breath caught in her throat.
Wesley raised a hand and mussed her hair with such easy familiarity that the past year and a half they’d spent apart vanished, as if all the longing and loneliness were merely the residue of a nightmare from which she’d just awoken. In the dream, she’d lost her best friend in a labyrinth and no path she took could bring her any closer to him. But now she’d screamed herself awake and found him right next to her in bed. And when she looked up at him, at those big brown eyes and that too-sweet smile, and asked him, “So what now?” she couldn’t even begin to care what the answer was. She had her Wesley back. Maybe for only a day or a week or a month … but they were together now and she’d go anywhere as long as he went with her.
“What now? We go in the house and grab some food—”
“Grand idea. Totally starving.”
“Then we’ll go to my house—”
“Wait. What? Whoa, you have your own house? Is there a house inside this house that’s your house?”
“Guesthouse. In the back. No food in it, though, right now. We can fix that tomorrow.” Wesley took her by the hand and led her toward the front door of his palace.
“And then?” Nora prompted, eager to figure out exactly what he expected of her. Would it be like old times? Them living under the same roof and trying not to fall into bed together? Or did he want more from her?
Wesley grinned down at her and her heart knotted up in her chest. God damn, she had missed this kid—so fucking much that being back with him hurt almost as much as letting him go had.
“Then …” Wesley said as he ran his hands up her arms, and Nora shivered with a need she thought she’d long buried, a need for hands on her that were always gentle. She shook off the thought and the need. Surely after they’d been a year and a half apart, Wesley’s feelings for her had changed. She couldn’t quite believe how much he had changed. He seemed taller now. His Southern accent had gotten a little thicker. His longer hair made him look older. Now he looked like a man, not the boy she’d known and loved and teased and tortured.
The suspense was more than Nora could handle. Fuck it. She’d kiss the kid and see what happened. Rising up on her toes, she gripped Wesley by the back of the neck and brought his mouth to hers. He didn’t protest.
The front door of Wesley’s castle opened and a man’s voice called out to them. “John Wesley! You know you’re allowed to kiss Bridget in the house.”
Wesley took a step back and turned toward the voice. Nora saw a man standing in the front doorway who looked like every handsome rich white Southerner she’d ever seen on television or movies. Salt-and-pepper hair, broad shoulders, a broader smile … or it had been a broad smile until he got a good look at Nora and saw she wasn’t Bridget.
Nora smiled in a manner she hoped appeared friendly and nonthreatening, as opposed to her usual smiles, which tended to be described as “seductive” and “dangerous.”
“Hey, Dad.” Wesley grabbed Nora’s hand and half escorted, half dragged her forward.
Wesley’s father narrowed his eyes at her. “Who’s your friend, J.W.?”
Nora looked at Wesley and mouthed “J.W.?”
Wesley mouthed back “Eleanor.”
“Dad, this is my girlfriend, Nora Sutherlin.”
Nora’s eyes went even wider than they had at the first sight of the house. Girlfriend? Who? Her?
Wiping the look of shock off her face, she purposefully widened her smile at Wesley’s handsome father.
At that smile, Wesley’s handsome father gave her a look of deep, abiding, profound and unremitting disgust.
“Oh, yeah.” She sighed, as her one and only prayer about this trip went unanswered. “He’s heard of me.”
NORTH
The Past
Kingsley ate dinner with the other boys in silence, keeping his mouth occupied with food so as not to let any smirks and smiles betray his knowledge of English. He wasn’t entirely sure how long he could keep up the ruse, wasn’t entirely sure why he even tried. But as he sat in the dining room at a carved, black oak table, the boys on the left, the priests on the right, Kingsley tried to decide what sin he’d committed that had earned him this ice-cold hell on earth.
He wanted to blame Carol, head cheerleader at his old school. Blonde girls were a weakness of his. Or Janice, who sang the National Anthem at every home game. Sopranos with red hair could do no wrong in his book. Susan … Alice … and his blue-eyed Mandolin, the long-haired daughter of unrepentant hippies … He’d started in August and had fucked three dozen girls at his small Portland high school by Thanksgiving break. But he couldn’t blame a single one of them for sending him to this prison.
He blamed the boyfriends.
Naturally strong and quick, Kingsley knew he could take on any boy in the school who came at him. But seven boys all at once? No one could have walked away from that. And he hadn’t walked away.
He’d crawled.
He’d crawled a few feet before passing out in a puddle of blood that had come from a cut over his heart. The cut had likely saved his life. He remembered little from the beating he’d taken behind the stadium, but he did remember the knife. When the knife came out even the other boys who’d been kicking him, punching him, spitting on him as he fought to get back to his feet, took a step back. The boy with the knife—Troy—hadn’t been a boyfriend. Worse, he’d been a brother—Theresa’s older brother—and he took the protection of his sister very seriously. The knife came out and slashed at Kingsley’s heart. And that’s when the other boys had dragged Troy off and left Kingsley bleeding on the ground, broken and bruised but alive.
And as he looked around the dining hall and saw nothing but other boys—boys aged ten to eighteen, tall and short, fat and thin, handsome and unfortunately not so—he wanted to go back to that moment behind the stadium and step into the knife instead of away from it.
He sighed heavily as he took a sip of his tea, dreadful stuff, really. He missed the days when his parents had given him wine with his dinner.
“I know. Tastes like piss, doesn’t it?” Father Henry’s voice came from over his shoulder.
Kingsley almost nodded in agreement, but remembered that he didn’t understand English. Turning toward the voice, he composed his face into a mask of confusion.
Father Henry pointed at Kingsley’s tea and mimed a vicious grimace and a gag. Kingsley allowed himself a laugh then. Everyone spoke the universal language of disgust.
“Come with me, Mr. Boissonneault,” Father Henry said, pulling out Kingsley’s chair and motioning for him to follow. “Let’s see if we can’t find you a translator.”
Translator? As Kingsley stood up his heart started to race. Father Henry had said no one at the school spoke French but Mr. Stearns. And every student in the school seemed to be in the dining room, huddled over steaming bowls of tomato basil soup. Every student but Stearns. Not that Kingsley had been looking for him, watching the door, scanning the room between every sip of piss tea.
Father Henry led him to the kitchen and through a wall of steam. By a hulking black oven a young priest waved a spatula as he repeated a sentence over and over. He seemed to be conducting himself—the words his music, the spatula his baton.
“And now you, repeat this … Você não terá nenhum outro deus antes de mim.”
“Si, Father Aldo.” The words came from a table a few feet away from the stove. “Você não terá nenhum outro deus antes de mim.”
Kingsley almost shivered at the sound of the voice—an elegant tenor, rich and educated, but also cold, aloof and distant. The voice belonged to Stearns, the blond pianist, he saw, when he took two steps forward and peered around a refrigerator. At Stearns’s feet lay a black cat curled up in a tight ball, glaring at Kingsley with bright and malevolent green eyes. He watched as Stearns rubbed the cat’s head gently with the tip of his shoe as he recited the words in a language Kingsley didn’t recognize.
“Muito bom,” said the priest, crossing the spatula over his chest and bowing. “Father Henry, what are you doing in my kitchen? We’ve had this talk.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Father Aldo, Mr. Stearns.”
“No. You are not sorry. You always love to interrupt. It is what you are best at,” Father Aldo scolded with a broad smile on his face. Kingsley tried to place the accent. Brazilian, maybe? If so, it would mean the language he was teaching Stearns was Portuguese. But why would anyone in Nowhere, Maine, want to learn Portuguese?
“Father Aldo, I only interrupt you because you talk so much. I have to interrupt if I’m going to say my piece before sundown.”
“The sun is down, and yet you are still interrupting.”
“You’re interrupting my interrupting, Aldo. And I am very sorry to interrupt Mr. Stearns’s lesson. But it’s his language faculties we need. This is Kingsley Boissonneault, our new student. He doesn’t speak any English, I’m afraid. We’re hoping Mr. Stearns could be of some assistance. If he would oblige …”
