fucking brilliant blond monster. Now it all made sense.
“He told me his name, remember?” She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, how much have you had to drink?”
“Enough to put me in the mood, but not enough to ruin it. Now I’m going to get very drunk so you should go unless you want to make yourself useful.”
“Maybe I want to make myself useful,” she said, lifting up his shirt. She pressed her lips into his stomach, and the soft curling tips of her hair tickled his skin. Yes. This. Right now he needed this. Distraction. Desire. Anything to keep from remembering. “I like it when you scare me like that.”
“And that,” he said, caressing her cheek, “is why you are my chouchou.”
She kissed lower, deeper, and with one hand she unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. He wasn’t hard yet, but if she kept doing what she was doing, he would be any second now. She took him in her hand and massaged him lightly. When he stiffened, she bent her head and licked the tip. For a few minutes it was all she did, kissing, licking, teasing, focusing all her attention on that one part of him. Blood rushed through him, and he grew hard in her hand. He sighed softly as she stroked him before bringing her mouth down on to him.
Perfect… Her mouth was so wet and warm. She rubbed him with her talented tongue and sucked hard. The pressure built in him, and he lifted his hips into her mouth, small undulations that set every nerve inside him alight. He wove his fingers into her hair, seeking connection with the woman who did this erotic kindness to him.
She paused and used her hand on him, rubbing the shaft from base to tip, squeezing and stoking him to greater pleasure.
“I love your cock,” she whispered before lapping at the wet tip. “I love how big it is. I love how it tastes.”
“You’re too kind. Keep it up, chouchou, and I’ll give you the honor of swallowing.”
Blaise grinned seductively at him. “You keep it up, and I’ll keep it up.” She gave him a dirty wink before resuming her task. She sucked even harder now, deeper, and he grew painfully hard. She swirled her tongue around him, up and down, over and over. With her gentle fingertips she eased his foreskin back and lapped at the tip so skillfully his back arched in the shock of pleasure.
A deep muscle tightened in his lower stomach. He felt blood pooling, pressure building. His heart raced, and his fingers dug into the fabric of the chaise lounge. For a few more seconds he held off, trying to prolong the release, wanting to put off as long as possible the return to bitter reality. Blaise sucked him, stroked him, coaxed him, pulled him to the depths of her throat. He hovered at the edge of orgasm, breathing through his nose as Blaise continued to work on him, taking ownership of him with her mouth. She took him deep and massaged his testicles with her tongue. She pulled back to the tip again, and Kingsley came hard into her mouth, spasm after spasm of pleasure washing over him as he spurted his semen into her welcoming throat.
Like the good girl she was, Blaise swallowed every drop of him before releasing him from her mouth. She kissed her way up to his lips, and he tasted himself on her tongue.
“Are you in a good mood now?” she asked, wiping her mouth with one of the towels stacked next to them. “Better,” Kingsley said. “For now.”
Blaise groaned in frustration.
“You are the king of top drop.”
“You’re making up words again.”
“Top drop. It’s that funk dominants fall into after the scene’s over. You brood.”
“Brooding is my version of afterglow.”
“Call the priest. You’re in a better mood when he’s around. He doesn’t brood like you do.”
“He invented brooding. He holds the patent on brooding. He gets royalties whenever anyone broods. You just haven’t seen him do it yet.”
“Call him,” Blaise said, poking him in the chest.
“I don’t want to. I don’t like him anymore.”
Blaise exhaled and shook her head in abject disgust.
“You lying French asshole. You called him your ‘oldest and dearest friend’ right in front of me. I was there.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Then what is he?” Blaise asked, annoyed. He did love to ruff le her glamorous feathers.
“My dead sister’s widowed husband.”
Blaise’s eyes widened hugely.
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“I don’t anymore. Told you, she’s dead. He was married to her for a few weeks before she f lung herself off a cliff, and her body broke into two pieces. Sheered her face off, too.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Blaise clapped a hand over her mouth as if she were about to be sick.
Kingsley picked up his bottle of bourbon.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”
“Kingsley…I had no idea.”
“And now you know why I drink.”
He took a sip, then a second one.
“I hoped it was because you loved the taste of bourbon.” She tried to smile at him, tried and failed.
“Love it? I hate this shit.”
Blaise leaned over and kissed him again—not on the mouth but on his forehead like a mother kissing her child.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered before slipping off the chaise and leaving him alone by the pool. A gentle and sensitive soul, she’d probably run off to cry somewhere. Good thing she left. Last thing he wanted to see was a woman in tears. He’d seen more than enough of that in his life.
Alone again with his bourbon he drank. He drank until he felt safe enough to sleep. The alcohol never turned off the nightmares, but it did mute them. Tonight, however, he hadn’t drunk quite enough to achieve the desired effect. This time he was back in the hospital, his mind alive and active, his body motionless, inert, dying. If he could get a word out, then maybe someone would realize he was aware inside the tomb his body had become.
All he wanted to do was scream.
In his nightmare, his mind screamed, and his mouth remained mute.
He woke up covered in water.
Water?
11
KINGSLEY COUGHED AND SPUTTERED. HIS EYES FI nally f lew open as water rose and thrashed all around him. “What the fuck?” He wasn’t sure if he spoke in English or French, wasn’t sure he even spoke out loud.
“Kingsley. Look at me.”
“Non.”
“Kingsley. Right now. Do as I say.”
“I don’t take orders from you anymore.” Kingsley sank
down into the water before a strong hand hauled him back up. Søren gripped his neck hard enough to penetrate the shield his body had become.
“What do you want?” Kingsley’s eyes f luttered open again. He saw Søren waist-deep in the water. Søren grabbed Kingsley by the shirt and backed against the edge of the pool.
“I want you to live.”
“That makes one of us.” Kingsley tried to pass out again, but Søren shook him awake once more.
“Are you hearing anything I’m saying?”
“I hear you.” Finally Kingsley had the strength to open his eyes and keep them open. He saw Søren again, saw his face. He looked angry and scared, almost human. He had his clerics on again, his white collar. “Why are you wearing that?”
“I’m a priest, remember? How many brain cells did you kill tonight?”
“Not enough of them.”
A wave of nausea passed through him. He coughed again, and Søren hauled him up and over the edge of the pool. Into a large white towel, Kingsley threw up.
“Get it all out,” Søren said calmly. Kingsley felt a hand on his back, rubbing the heaving muscles. He wasn’t drunk enough to be sick from the alcohol. The dream had done it to him.
Kingsley’s body complied with the order. For what felt like eternity, he threw up again and again. Søren held his hair back, rubbed his shoulders, offered encouragements that Kingsley could barely hear over the sound of his own wrenching sickness.
Finally Kingsley stopped. He
knew better than to move, lest he get sick again. He shivered and took shallow breaths.
“You threw me in the pool?” Kingsley asked when the nausea finally passed.
“You were screaming and thrashing. I couldn’t get you to wake up.”
“Bad dream,” Kingsley whispered. “I have them sometimes.”
Kingsley pulled away from Søren and sat on the steps that led into the pool. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the water that surrounded him. Water. Only water. It wouldn’t hurt him. Nothing here would hurt him. Not even Søren. Not anymore.
“Why were you drinking tonight?” Søren asked, standing in front of him. He didn’t seem to mind that he was fully dressed in his clerics and soaked to the skin. If Kingsley passed out and fell forward, Søren’s chest would break his fall.
“Same reason I drink every night.”
“Which is?”
“It helps me sleep.”
“A sleeping pill would help you sleep. Tell me the truth.”
Kingsley raked his fingers through his wet hair, slicking it back. He breathed into his hands before looking at Søren with a half smile.
“You don’t want to know.” He shook his head. “You think you do, but you don’t.”
“I know I don’t want to know,” Søren said. “But you need to tell me.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I care.”
“That’s a tautology. You like the word? I remember philosophy class at St. Ignatius.” Kingsley released a weary, mirthless laugh.
“I care about you, because I care about you is a fact.”
“You don’t give a shit about me. I took her back to France alone.”
“I offered to go with you, and you said no. You didn’t want me with you.”
“You let me go, and you forgot all about me.”
“I never forgot about you.”
“You did. You let me go to France and you forgot—”
“I never forgot you.” Søren shouted the words. They echoed off the tile f loor, off the walls, and slammed into Kingsley like a fist, sobering him up instantly. He’d never heard Søren raise his voice like that. Ever.
Kingsley smiled tiredly.
“Now you are yelling at me.”
“You want me to yell at you? Fine. I will yell at you, Kingsley. Maybe if I yell, you’ll finally hear me. I never left you. And when you went back to France, I tried to find you.”
“You tried to find me?” Kingsley’s eyes slowly focused on Søren’s face. “When?”
“I waited for you to come back to school. When you didn’t, I went to find you. I left two days after the semester ended. I didn’t even tell my own sisters I was leaving the country. I packed, ran one very important errand and left for Europe. I went to Paris, Lyon, Marseilles—every city you ever told me you’d visited in France. I went to your old neighborhood. I found your father’s former business partner. I hunted down every single fucking Boissonneault in France.”
Kingsley blinked. Søren said “fucking”? He must be furious.
“You looked for me?” Kingsley repeated, not quite able to believe Søren’s words.
“I looked everywhere for you. I looked for you before I even looked for my own mother whom I hadn’t seen since I was five years old.”
“You looked for me,” Kingsley said again. This time it wasn’t a question.
“And I didn’t find you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you looked for me?” Kingsley asked.
“What does it matter?” Søren was quiet now, but his voice still resonated. “I didn’t find you.”
“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t find me.” Kingsley shook his head. “It matters that you looked.”
“After six weeks of searching in five different countries, I gave up,” Søren said. “I assumed you were hiding because you’d didn’t want me to find you. I took it as a sign from God that I was supposed to become a priest like I’d dreamed of since I was fourteen. My last and final prayer to God the night before I entered seminary in Rome was, ‘God, if this is not your will for me to become a priest, then let me find him tonight.’ I didn’t find you. I became a priest. And you…” “I joined La Legion.”
“I never considered you the military type. Although in retrospect, I should have. You were certainly good at taking orders.”
“My commanding officers had nothing on you. You should have been in the army.”
“And follow in my father’s footsteps? No, thank you.” Søren’s voice was cold and bitter. “Why did you join the military?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was the next best thing to suicide.” Kingsley laughed, although he wasn’t joking. “Anyway, it was good not to have to think for myself for a while. I needed that.”
“Believe it or not, I understand,” Søren said. “The discipline of a religious order has the same comfort of routine. My own thoughts scared me after everything happened, after you were gone. It was better to let someone else direct my existence for a few years.”
“I was too good at taking orders. And too good at hitting targets. And too good at speaking English without an accent. Someone in the government thought I’d be more useful working in a less official capacity.”
“What did you do?” Søren’s voice was even and calm, but Kingsley heard the smallest note of suspicion hiding under the surface of the words.
“Everything they ordered me to. I hunted who they told me to hunt. Spied on who they told me to spy on. Killed who they told me to kill. And then someone caught me. I was a prisoner for a month. See? I still have scars from the shackles.”
He held up his wrists. Two matching swaths of scar tissue marred the skin on the sides of his wrists. They rubbed against the bone, the shackles had. Like a trapped wolf, he’d wanted to gnaw off his own hands.
“I was a prisoner,” he continued. “I was tortured. And…”
“And what?” Søren’s voice was gentle now, probing, but not demanding.
“It wasn’t just torture.”
He gazed up at Søren and met his eyes for one second before lowering them again in humiliation.
“Oh, God, Kingsley.”
“I was unconscious,” Kingsley said. “I guess you’d call it a blessing that I don’t remember it happening. I only remember waking up and knowing it had happened.”
“Kingsley…”
Kingsley raised his hands to his face, pressed his palms against his eyes. He couldn’t bear to hear the pity and the sorrow in Søren’s voice.
“It’s funny.” Kingsley’s eyes burned. He wanted to blame the chlorine. “I loved Lawrence of Arabia as a boy. He was my hero. I read all the books I could about him. Now I can say Lawrence of Arabia and I have something in common.”
“Two things in common.”
“Two?”
“T. E. Lawrence loved a good f logging.”
Kingsley opened his eyes but couldn’t look at Søren.
“Is he dead?” Søren asked as Kingsley watched the water. “The man who hurt you?”
“Very dead,” Kingsley said.
The King Page 12