Kingsley pulled a penlight from his pocket and flashed it at his feet. He didn’t need to see, only to hear, but if there were rats in the hall, he wanted to be prepared. One stray sound could mean the death of him and Nora both.
No rats in the hall, only dust. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand, trying not to breathe the decaying air.
Every few feet was a narrow door, back entrances into the larger bedrooms. Søren’s father had been some sort of minor aristocracy back in England—a baron with no money and a useless title. But his marriage to millions of American dollars had given him the arrogance of a king. He couldn’t live in a normal mansion. No, he had to have a manor house like the ones he’d coveted in England, complete with servants and their hidden passageways.
Kingsley paused when he saw the floor change color from dark wood to dingy white. He stopped and studied. Nothing but a sheet on the floor. Where had it come from? Then he saw the rust-colored stains on the white sheet—old blood. Kingsley stood up again and stepped over the sheet, leaving it on the floor, the forgotten shadow of a secret game two broken children had once played.
As he moved toward the end of the hall, Kingsley started to hear voices. His heart quickened at the sound even as his feet slowed. When the voices reached the highest volume, he stopped, pressed his ear to the wall and listened.
“I knew immediately. I knew Søren had given him those bruises. They looked like mine. I had to bury my face in the pillow to keep from laughing. And then not long after Kingsley f**ked me, Søren kissed me. They had gone to get wine, they’d said. But I didn’t taste wine on Søren’s lips. I tasted Kingsley. I tasted blood.”
Kingsley closed his eyes and listened harder. He knew this story that Nora told—the first night all three of them had spent together. Why was she telling it? And to whom?
“Whose blood was it?” came a voice Kingsley hadn’t heard in thirty years but he still knew as well as his own. Light, feminine, forever flirtatious...the accent was mostly gone, however. She’d been living elsewhere for decades. Where? Australia possibly, the perfect place for a fugitive to flee and start a new life. Perhaps South America. With her olive skin she could blend in easily with the Latin population. She could have gone anywhere but France, where Kingsley had fled to, or Italy, where Søren had gone to school after Saint Ignatius.
“Kingsley’s, I assume. I didn’t see a bite mark on Søren’s lip but there was one on Kingsley’s back.”
“My brother’s blood on my husband’s lips...fitting. And my blood on their hands.”
“Are you going to keep interrupting or are you going to let me finish the story? You’re the one making me tell them. So do you want to hear it or not?”
“Carry on...by all means, please.”
So that was it. Marie-Laure was forcing Nora to tell stories of their life. At least that was a game Nora could play and win. She could stay alive a thousand nights from the power of her stories alone.
He closed his eyes and listened to Nora’s story, to Marie-Laure’s questions that interrupted her at every turn. Strange to hear about that night in Nora’s voice. He and she never spoke of it. After all, she belonged to Søren and it was Søren who controlled the flow of information, what secrets his Little One was allowed to know and not know. Kingsley had known a secret about Eleanor that he kept from her, as well. Even as young as fifteen, sixteen, he’d seen the signs of it. He tried to tell Søren but Søren would have nothing of it. He’d forbidden Kingsley from telling Eleanor what he suspected.
If she is, she’ll figure it out for herself, Søren had said, putting his foot down.
There is no “if,” mon ami. It does take one to know one, and I know what she is. Your pet is no submissive, and you’re lying to yourself if you think she is.
You’re trying to define the indefinable. She is who she is.
You’re trying to put a collar on a tiger. It won’t turn it into a house cat.
Why do you think I love her so much?
And you call me a masochist.
If she is what you say she is...we’ll cross the bridge when we come to it.
She’ll cross that bridge when she runs from you. Then she’ll burn the bridge behind her and leave you on the other side.
Then it’s a good thing I know how to swim.
Swim? As far as she’ll run from you and as fast, pray you learn to fly.
It had been a dream of theirs when they were boys in school. A dream to find a girl wilder than the two of them together. But had it been a dream? Or a nightmare? No true Dominant could submit forever to chains. Kingsley knew a Dominant when he saw one, and he saw one the second he saw young Eleanor Schreiber for the first time. A sixteen-year-old girl who’d made even him nervous? At age eighteen he’d taken her to her first S&M club. Now that had been true love. He’d never seen anyone’s pupils dilate like that, with such intense immediate desire. Before them a woman stood strapped to a Saint Andrew’s Cross. Behind her a man whipped her with a singletail, a flogger, a cane.
I want to do that, Kingsley, Eleanor had said, a wild-eyed Cheshire cat smile spreading across her face.
But which one? The girl on the cross, or the man with the whip?
All of it.
No submissive, that one. A switch, perhaps. Maybe something more.
He kept listening to the story Nora told. She remembered the night as well as he did. It had been such a relief to finally get his hands on her. Søren had kept her to himself for months and Kingsley had started to fear the worst—that he would lose Søren to her completely. Monogamy was the enemy of their kind. He’d seen it over and over again, a Dominant and his submissive falling in love, getting married, falling prey to the pressures of society to give up the lifestyle that had brought them together. Søren couldn’t give it up, thankfully. He needed to give pain like he needed air to breathe. But Kingsley couldn’t bear the thought of Søren loving her so much that he kept her to himself. Kingsley devoured Eleanor that first night she spent in his bed. He’d rejoiced every time he f**ked her. That Søren allowed Kingsley to be with her meant something, meant Søren deemed him worthy. It wasn’t the love that he craved, but it was enough. And truth be told, he’d never had more fun bedding a woman in his life. Not until Juliette.