The King

by Tiffany Reisz

  “I still don’t have a kingdom.”

  “You will,” Søren said. “Someday you will. I have faith in you. Do you?”

  Kingsley looked at his hands, the red stains in the center of his palms.

  “If you do, I do.”

  Søren took Kingsley’s face in his hands and touched his lips to his forehead. It wasn’t a kiss so much as a blessing. To be kissed by Søren was to be blessed. Søren rose up on steady feet.

  “Where are you going?” Kingsley asked.

  “To bed.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it be like old times?”

  “Yes.”

  It was indeed like old times. Søren took the bed and ordered Kingsley to take the f loor. But better one night on Søren’s f loor than a thousand nights elsewhere.

  “Can I at least have a—”

  A pillow landed on Kingsley’s face.

  “Merci,” Kingsley said from underneath the pillow.

  “Velkommen.”

  “No Danish,” Kingsley said. “Not unless you tell me what you said.”

  “I said ‘you’re welcome.’”

  “Not now. I meant in the car.”

  “You seem to be getting more drunk and not less. What car?”

  “The Rolls Royce we took to see your sister that day back at school. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, I think I would remember the day I met Claire for the first time.”

  “Do you remember what you said to me in the car while we were—”

  “I remember,” Søren said, his voice so low it was barely audible. But Kingsley heard it.

  “What did you say to me?”

  “I said ‘Jeg vil være din family. Jeg er din familie.’”

  “What does it mean?” “It means,” Søren said with a tired sigh. “I want to be your family. I will be your family.”

  “You married my sister three weeks later.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “Søren—”

  “It’s ancient history,” Søren said. “Let it go.”

  “But—”

  “Go to sleep, Kingsley. Please.”

  If Søren hadn’t added the please at the end, Kingsley wouldn’t have gone to sleep. But something in the way Søren said “please,” the way another man might say “mercy,” silenced Kingsley’s need to keep talking. Ancient history. Let the dead bury the dead. Instead of digging up the past, Kingsley slept.

  When Kingsley awoke it was five in the morning. He was sore all over, his whole body. Now he remembered why he’d cut back on the drinking. Next time he decided to pass out at Søren’s, he’d do it on the couch, not the f loor.

  He called for his car, splashed water on his face and threw up on principle. Wouldn’t be a good binge without a little purge to top it all off. After his self-induced sickness and drinking half a gallon of water, he felt human, more or less.

  Kingsley found Søren still asleep, lying on his side, the white sheet pulled to his stomach. In his lifetime Kingsley had fucked a thousand people, and he’d yet to meet anyone—man or woman—who surpassed Søren in sheer physical beauty. Unable to stop himself, Kingsley crawled across the bed and brought his face to Søren’s neck. He inhaled and in one breath smelled new snow in the midnight air, ice on pine tree branches, the world frozen still and silent.

  Søren pinched Kingsley’s nose. “I thought you were asleep,” Kingsley said in a pained and nasal voice.

  “I was asleep until a Frenchman started sniffing my hair.” Søren released his nose.

  “You smell like snow.”

  “Snow has no scent.”

  “It’s like the winter all over your skin.”

  “I do not trust the sensory perceptions of a man who, not five hours ago, thought he was on a boat.”

  “Has no one ever told you that you smell like that?”

  “Elizabeth mentioned something about it a long time ago. And someone else. Recently.”

  “Who?”

  “Eleanor.”

  Eleanor. The Virgin Queen. It comforted Kingsley to know Eleanor could smell the winter on Søren’s skin. It seemed portentous somehow—Elizabeth, Kingsley, Eleanor—the three who’d loved Søren, the three who’d been or would be his lovers. Maybe Søren was right about this girl. Maybe she was the one they’d dreamed of all those years ago. Kingsley dipped his head and pressed a kiss on to Søren’s right shoulder. He kissed Søren’s shoulder blade, his neck, the back of his neck, tasting the snow on his skin. Kingsley kissed his way down the center of Søren’s back as he trailed his fingers over his rib cage.

  “What do you think you are doing?” Søren asked.

  “I’m trying to find out what a priest sleeps in,” Kingsley said as he slipped his hand under the sheet.

  Søren caught his hand and held it in a vicious, viselike grip.

  “This priest sleeps in a bed.”

  “You’re going to break my wrist,” Kingsley said, not the least bothered by the prospect. The pain from Søren’s grip sobered him up, cleared his thinking and aroused him.

  Søren tightened his grip and Kingsley winced. Nice to know Søren hadn’t been lying—the wolf was still there. Søren wasn’t less dangerous at all. Kingsley just wasn’t afraid anymore.

  “Break it,” Kingsley said.

  Søren’s grip tightened even more. But only slightly and then he let go.

  “You didn’t have to stop,” Kingsley said. “You can break me all you want.”

  “I might be tempted to play with you if you had any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.”

  “Self-preservation is for the weak. I loved getting destroyed by you.”

  “You remember high school much differently than I do,” Søren said. “I’d killed someone at my last school and was terrified I’d do it again. And then you came along and practically asked me to kill you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to kill me,” Kingsley said. “I begged you.”

  “And you wonder why I prefer to play with people who have limits.”

  “You know you miss me,” Kingsley said, running his hand down Søren’s side from his shoulder blade to his waist. He felt every muscle in Søren’s body tense, and Kingsley lifted his hand.

  “Did that hurt?” Kingsley asked, confused by Søren’s sudden recoil.

  “No, do it again.”

  Warily Kingsley placed his hand f lat on Søren’s back again and ran it down his body.

  “Again?” Kingsley asked.

  “Yes.”

  Kingsley knelt at Søren’s side and, with both hands, rubbed his back from neck to hip. Slowly the tension eased. Søren had a beautiful back—long, lean and with broad shoulders etched with taut muscle. With his eyes closed, Kingsley ran his fingers down the line of Søren’s spine. Søren released a sigh of pleasure.

  “You like this?” Kingsley asked.

  “I do.”

  “Why did you never make me give you back rubs?”

  “I didn’t know I liked them until now.” Søren stretched out on his stomach and turned his head on the pillow to face Kingsley. “I was always wary of being touched. Which is fine. Apart from handshakes, priests are never touched.”

  Kingsley’s heart clenched in sympathy. He forgot sometimes how much damage Søren’s childhood had done to him. One night in their hermitage back at school, Søren had confessed to him everything that had happened between him and his sister when he was eleven and she twelve. No wonder Søren had shied away from being touched when even simple pleasures were tainted with shame.

  “But this…this doesn’t bother you?”

  “No,” Søren said. “But stay above the waist.”

  Kingsley laughed. “Yes, sir.”

  With more force now and confidence, Kingsley massaged Søren’s back. It was almost better than sex, knowing he was the first person to ever touch Søren like this. Almost.

  “You know,” Kingsley began, “when I went to see your friend Magdal
ena in Rome, she insisted on telling my fortune.”

  “She did that to me, too.”

  “You know what she said?”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Søren said. “But I’m sure you’ll tell me even if I don’t.”

  “She said you and I would be lovers again.”

  “Well, fortune-tellers make their living telling us what we want to hear,” Søren said in a pointed tone. “Thus creating the likelihood of the prophecy coming true because of its self-fulfilling nature. We want it be true, so we work to make it happen.”

  “Is that so? What did she tell you that you wanted to hear?”

  Søren exhaled heavily, and Kingsley felt the breath moving through Søren’s chest and back.

  “Among many other things, she told me I would have a son someday. I had to remind Magdalena that the vow of celibacy made this an unlikely occurrence.”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “She said it would happen by the grace of God. Whatever that means.”

  “I think it means you want a family, too.”

  Søren rolled over on to his back, and Kingsley kept his hands to himself, a show of self-restraint he felt he deserved a medal for. If given permission, Kingsley would have spent the entire day kissing and touching every inch of Søren’s body, which was without f law but for the small round crater on his upper arm where he’d gotten vaccinated for smallpox as a child. Such a little thing, but it reminded Kingsley that Søren was human. All too easy to forget sometimes.

  “I have a family,” Søren said, looking Kingsley in the eyes.

  A horn honked discreetly outside the house.

  “That’s for me,” Kingsley said, wishing he hadn’t called the car. He wanted to stay with Søren and talk. Talk? Yes, even more than pain and sex, he wanted to talk. But they had plenty of time for that. The rest of their lives. Søren had pledged his fealty to Kingsley, and nothing would tear them apart ever again.

  “Goodbye, Kingsley,” Søren said. Kingsley pulled away. Reluctantly. Very reluctantly.

  He left Søren’s bed. But before Kingsley walked out of the room, he looked back.

  “Did you mean it?” Kingsley asked. “The oath? That you would sleep well knowing I was a king?”

  “Vive le roi,” Søren said and rolled on to his stomach.

  Long live the king.

  “Did you mean the other thing you said?”

  “Which was?”

  “Your confession?”

  Søren adjusted his pillow, straightened his sheet and settled down back into his bed.

  “I suppose we’ll never know, will we?” Søren asked.

  Kingsley decided to take that as a “maybe.”

  “Did you find the gift I left you?” Søren asked.

  “Gift? No. What gift?”

  “You’ll find it.” Søren rolled over on to his stomach and pulled the sheets up to his neck—by far the most sadistic thing he’d ever done in Kingsley’s estimation.

  On the drive back to the city Kingsley heard Søren’s words echoing in his mind. Vive le roi. If Søren, the one man on earth Kingsley respected and loved with all his heart and all his strength and all his soul…if that man could swear his allegiance and loyalty to Kingsley, then how could he doubt his worthiness to be a king to their kind? If Søren was for him, who could be against him?

  By the time he arrived at his town house, Kingsley had made a decision. Fuller or not, Renaissance or not, Sam or not, he would build his kingdom. He would find a place, a different place, a place he and Søren and all their kind could go and be safe and be themselves, and the rest of the world would be locked outside in the cold.

  He wouldn’t waste another day. He would do it for Søren because Kingsley would do anything for Søren. And he would do it for himself because a king must have a kingdom.

  He would have started right that second if it weren’t for the alcohol lingering in his system. He should sleep more, wake up with his head on straight. His kingdom deserved his best, and so he would give it his best. He wouldn’t even drink again until the night the club opened. He still had the bottle of champagne he had bought from Sam. He and Søren would drink it. It wouldn’t be right, drinking it without Sam. But he would do it anyway, no matter how much he missed her, no matter how much he wished she was back, no matter how much he wanted to hear her voice.

  Kingsley stepped inside his bedroom, turned on his lamp and pulled the covers down on his bed.

  From behind him he heard a voice.

  “Look what the pussy dragged in.”

  He spun around, suddenly sober.

  “Sam?”

  37

  “DON’T KICK ME OUT,” SHE SAID, HOLDING UP HER hands in surrender. “Please.” Kingsley couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He gazed at her in shock, more curious than furious.

  “Kicking you out was the last thing on my list of an infinite number of things to do right now. Asking you what you’re doing here was the first.”

  “I stopped by the Möbius,” she said, her words halting and nervous. “I wanted to say hi to Holly and the other girls. It was shut down. I called Holly, and she told me what happened.”

  “You happened,” Kingsley reminded her, torn between fury at seeing her in his house and relief at simply seeing her again.

  “I know,” Sam said. “But, please, hear me out.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Sam took a breath. “I heard about Irina. They said she got arrested again, and they’re going to deport her.”

  “My attorney’s waving the white f lag for me. I surrendered. But that should be enough to get Irina’s paperwork un-lost.”

  “I can’t believe you gave up.”

  “What choice did I have?”

  “You could have not given up and let everyone suffer,” she said, taking a step forward.

  “What kind of king would I be if I let my people suffer for my mistakes?”

  “You might not believe me, but you have to trust me.” She ran her hands through her hair. She didn’t have a suit on now. She wore jeans, a white shirt and black suspenders. She’d gotten her hair cut, and now she looked even more boyish than before. Boyish and beautiful as always. “I know what it’s like to take the fall for someone else’s sins.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you should get ready. Fuller’s coming over here, and