“You had me at sexually deviant. And escapades. And teenage boys and Catholic boarding school. All of those.”
Kingsley opened his mouth to speak, to tell the story, but the words wouldn’t come out.
“Kingsley?”
“Forgive me,” he said. “It’s… They’re powerful memories.”
“I understand,” Sam said. She traced circles around one of his uglier bruises with her fingertip. “I loved someone when I was a teenager. She smelled like apple. It was her shampoo, nothing mystical, but I think about her every time I smell anything apple-scented. I can almost orgasm from eating one.”
“Søren…he smells like winter. Did you notice that?”
Sam shook her head. “I haven’t gotten that close to him. He makes me nervous.”
“You know when it first gets cold, bitterly cold, and the air has that bite to it? That sting? And the world smells clean and pure? That’s what he smells like.”
“I’ll sniff him someday.”
“You should,” Kingsley said, although he almost wished he hadn’t told Sam about it now. To know the scent of someone’s bare skin was to know that person in the most intimate, primal way. “I would breathe him in when we were in bed together. Drove him crazy. If he caught me doing it, he would pinch my nose and hold it. Bastard.”
Sam rose up and smiled down at him. She pinched his nose and held it.
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you? Still in love with him?”
Kingsley nodded. She released his nose.
“I understand. Continue your story.”
Kingsley wrinkled his nose. Sam had a vicious pinch.
“You have to know something about Søren,” Kingsley began. “He had a bad childhood.”
“Didn’t we all?”
“I didn’t,” Kingsley said. “I had a beautiful childhood. My parents were in love with each other, and they adored my sister and me. There is no better city than Paris to grow up in. The City of Light? The City of Love? Nothing bad happened to me. Until everything bad happened to me. My parents died, and I was sent to live with my grandparents in Maine. It was bad. I hated my school. I stayed sane by sleeping with as many girls as possible.”
“That’s my recipe for sanity, as well.”
Kingsley grinned. “My grandparents sent me to an all-boys school. No girls to seduce. And then I fell in love with a sadist who…”
“Who did what?” Sam asked.
Kingsley had almost said “put me in the infirmary” but decided to keep that part a secret. He wasn’t ashamed, wasn’t protecting Søren. But that first night he and Søren had had sex, that night on the forest f loor, had been the most important night of his life. He’d been having sex since age twelve, but in his mind, his heart, that was the night he had lost his virginity.
“A sadist who was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. Love at first sight. Or lust. Hard to tell the difference when you’re sixteen. Hard to tell the difference when you’re twenty-eight.”
“I have that problem, too.”
“Søren and I had sex one time the first semester I was there,” Kingsley said, summing up the most meaningful night of his life in a few words. “And then I went home for the summer. When I came back for the fall semester, he’d graduated and was teaching. We started sleeping together then. For the first month of school, it was once a week maybe. Then two, three, four times a week. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I’d wait until the students in my dorm were asleep, then I’d sneak out and run for it. He’d already be there in the hermitage waiting for me. We had to sneak around all the time. Exhausting but worth it. We had to sneak around even more after my sister, Marie-Laure, came to visit.”
“What did you do?”
“Got off campus one day. Søren had gotten a letter from his sister, Elizabeth, and he needed to take care of some family business. He asked Marie-Laure to take over his French classes that Friday so he could deal with it.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“When the teenaged sadist in the family is the relative you turn to for help, you know there’s a problem.”
Sam winced. “Sounds like it. What was the problem?”
“Elizabeth learned their father had gotten remarried, and his second wife had another daughter. She asked Søren to warn the new wife what kind of monster she’d married.”
“Dad was bad?”
“Søren had the father of all bad fathers,” Kingsley said. A joke, yes, but neither of them laughed at it. “Since my sister was substituting for him that day, I skipped class and went with him. I couldn’t believe he’d let me skip, but we’d had so little time together since she showed up. He said yes.”
“Where did you all go?”
“New Hampshire, to his father’s house.”
“How did you get there?”
Kingsley grinned. Grinned hugely. Grinned ear to shiteating-grin ear.
“His father had money. Lots of it. I didn’t even believe he had so much money until that trip. Elizabeth sent a car for him to take him to his father’s house. But not just any car.”
“Oh, God, don’t tell me,” Sam said. “I see where this is going.”
“It was a Rolls Royce.”
27
KINGSLEY DIDN’T LIE, BUT HE TOLD ENOUGH HALF truths to Marie-Laure to constitute a lie. He’s meeting his father’s new wife. Needs to talk to her about a family situation. She’s never met him before, might not believe he is who he says he is. He asked me to go with him to vouch for his identity. You’ll be fine without us for one day, won’t you? Oh, yes, she said. Bien sûr. Go with him. Anything for him, she said, already obsessed with Søren only a week after meeting him.
Kingsley barely slept the night before. He’d fought the temptation all night to go to Søren’s tiny apartment in the priests’ quarters. But that would have been pushing his luck. He still couldn’t believe Søren had agreed to take him along on this trip. Trip? More like a mission, from the way Søren explained it. I have to go to my father’s house. He’s finally out of state on a trip. This is my chance to meet his new wife and talk to her without him anywhere near. I have to get his wife and my sister away from him. I need her to believe me.
“I promise I’ll vouch for your sanity and good character,” Kingsley said.
“Thank you,” Søren said.
“Even if I have to lie.”
The insult had earned him a quick hard slap to the back of the head.
At 4:37 a.m., Kingsley left the dorms with his bag over his shoulder and waited in the chapel. Everyone was still asleep, even the priests. He cracked open the front door and watched. Ten minutes later a streak of silver glinted into view, and even in the moonlit morning darkness, he could see Søren’s blond hair as he walked from his building to the car. Kingsley walked out then, too, and got into the car as if it were the most natural thing in the world and no one could or should question why he did it.
The driver held the door open for Søren, but Kingsley entered the opposite side. He sat there on the leather bench seat vibrating with nervous excitement. Søren, as usual, was the picture of genteel sophistication. Through the window that separated the backseats from the driver, Søren calmly gave the driver his instructions. Søren was three weeks away from turning eighteen, and the driver must have been fifty, but he bowed and scraped to Søren as if he were royalty.
The driver closed the window. Søren closed the curtain. And now, here, at last, they were alone in a Rolls Royce. Kingsley hadn’t remembered dying, but somehow he’d found his way into heaven. And heaven had a hand-stitched gray leather interior.
“Don’t even think about it,” Søren said as Kingsley pulled his coat and gloves off.
“I’m always thinking about it,” Kingsley said. “I brought the lube.”
“Kingsley, it’s not even five in the morning yet.”
“You beat me this early before.”
“I was attempting to wake you up.”
“Wi
th your alarm cock?”
“Go back to sleep.” Søren unbuttoned his coat and removed it. “We have a long drive ahead of us.”
“In a Rolls Royce? This is nice. You can pay for this?”
“My sister Elizabeth arranged this trip. She’d go herself, but I’d prefer our father blame me for this than her. For her sake, I hope he doesn’t find out at all.”
“What are you doing?” Kingsley asked as Søren reached into his distressed leather messenger bag. He pulled out a file folder and a red pen.
“Grading papers.”
“Then I’m definitely sleeping.” He couldn’t think of anything more boring than watching Søren grade Spanish homework for the next five hours. Still, he’d do it if he thought he could get some sex out of the deal. Unfortunately, beating and fucking Kingsley didn’t seem to be on Søren’s agenda today.
Kingsley stretched out his legs and balled up his jacket like a pillow. But before he could find a sleeping spot, Søren grabbed him by his shirt collar.
He froze, his body going stiff—every part of it.
“Not there,” Søren said. He dragged Kingsley across the seat and across his lap. “Sleep here. I need a desk.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly,” Søren said, his tone dry and light, which was far more unnerving than if he sounded threatening. Kingsley groaned and turned on to his stomach, giving Søren his back to use a desk. He stuffed his jacket under his head and tried to get comfortable.
The low purr of the car’s engine and the early hour eventually lulled him into a deep and restful sleep even if he did have to contend with Søren’s thighs against his ribcage and the scratch of the pen against his back. If he could admit it to himself, he liked playing Søren’s desk for him. Søren always used him in bed. Being used out of bed was a pleasant change of pace.
When he woke up, the sun had risen, and pale winter sunlight filled the car through the tinted windows.
“Are we there yet?” Kingsley asked. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept, but he sensed several hours had passed.
“Almost,” Søren said. And that’s when Kingsley realized Søren’s hand lay on his back under his shirt. Sometime while he’d slept, Søren had finished his work, but instead of waking Kingsley up and ordering him to move, he’d let him sleep. And now Kingsley felt fingertips on the small of his back. He didn’t move, didn’t want to move. He feared if he moved, Søren would stop touching him like that. Søren could be gentle and had been gentle with him, but only after the beating and the fucking. No beating or fucking this morning, and yet Søren lightly caressed Kingsley’s back under his shirt, following the line of his spine all the way to his neck and back down again. He traced the edge of Kingsley’s rib cage, the sides of his stomach, the sensitive skin between his shoulder blades.
“What are you doing?” Kingsley asked.
“Touching your back.”
“Why?” he asked. Pourquoi?
“Because I can. I can do anything I want to you. Isn’t that right?”
“Anything,” Kingsley said, releasing a deep sigh of pleasure. “Can I ask a stupid question?”
“You just did.”
Kingsley laughed, and he heard Søren sigh in mock disgust.
“Ask your question.”
“Do you like my body?” Kingsley blushed before, during and after asking it.
“Not at the moment.”
“You don’t?” Kingsley was crushed.
“Not nearly enough bruises on it for my liking.” Kingsley grinned at the answer. “You can make any improvements to my body you want. Welts…bruises…cuts… burns…”
“You’re trying to tempt me.”
“Always. Is it working?”
“It might be,” Søren said, running one fingertip down the center of Kingsley’s back again. He shivered at the touch. “You enjoy that?” he asked. He sounded almost surprised.
“Oui, beaucoup.” Kingsley slid into French. “I like pleasure almost as much as pain.”
“Do you wish I felt the same?” Søren asked.
“Pas du tout. I can find any girl to give me pleasure. Who will give me pain if you won’t?”
Søren laughed softly. Kingsley loved making Søren laugh. Kingsley theorized the whole course of human evolution had led to Søren, and when he laughed, the world knew it had done a good job with its work.
“Turn over,” Søren ordered, and Kingsley obeyed instantly. Now Søren teased the front of his body, his stomach and chest. With his fingertips, Søren lightly scored Kingsley’s ribs, counting them up the left side and down the right. By the time he counted to twenty-four, Kingsley was fully erect.
“You like this, too?” Søren asked as he pushed Kingsley’s shirt up to his armpits. Kingsley did him one better and pulled it all the way off.
“Every second of it. Do you?”
Søren paused. A sign he was thinking deeply, weighing his words.
“It’s interesting, seeing how you respond to different types of touch.”
“Can I touch you, too?” Kingsley asked. “Please?”
“If you insist. Although I won’t enjoy it, so I don’t know why you’d bother.”
Kingsley heard amusement in Søren’s voice. He loved detailing Kingsley’s many inadequacies for him—Kingsley was a waste of Søren’s time. He was too French, not Catholic, too sex-obsessed, not studious enough, not nearly obedient enough, and, of course, beneath Søren in every way— physically, morally and ontologically. Considering Søren said these sort of cruel nothings to him while they were alone together, kissing, touching, fucking, Kingsley questioned if Søren actually meant them. In fact, sometimes Kingsley got the distinct feeling Søren liked him. He had paid to bring Marie-Laure all the way to America to visit him at school. If that wasn’t love—or at least affection—what was it?
“You might not enjoy it,” Kingsley said. “But I will.”
Kingsley sat next to Søren, facing him. Søren turned his head and looked at Kingsley without speaking. No doubt Søren expected Kingsley to touch him in some intimate part of his body. And Kingsley did.
He reached up and touched Søren’s face. In shock or surprise, Søren pulled back an inch. Kingsley waited, reached out again and pressed his fingertips to Søren’s cheek.
“You’re too pale,” Kingsley said. “Every time I touch you I think your skin will be cold like stone.”
“It isn’t easy to get a tan in Maine,” Søren said. “Any other complaints about my appearance?”
“Your eyelashes are too dark.” Kingsley ran the pad of his thumb over the tips of Søren’s eyelashes. “Makes it hard for me to concentrate when I’m around you.”
“I don’t accept my eyelashes as an excuse for your bad behavior.”
“Then you’ll have to keep punishing me for it, then.”
“I intend to.”
Kingsley leaned forward, wrapped his arms around Søren’s shoulders and kissed him. Søren returned the kiss with surprising tenderness and gentleness. Usually Søren’s kisses were of the bruising variety, which Kingsley loved. But he loved this, too; Søren’s hands on his naked back, their lips touching, their tongues mingling… And then, because the kiss was too perfect, Kingsley ruined it by laughing.
Søren pulled back and glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” Kingsley said. “I never thought…”
“Never thought what?” Søren demanded.
“Never thought I’d make out with you in the backseat of a car. Can we go to a drive-in movie tonight, too?”
Søren glared at him.
“Put your shirt on.”
“Don’t stop. We were almost to second base,” Kingsley said, stilling laughing. He didn’t even stop laughing when Søren pushed him on to the f loor of the car.
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