As he gasped and coughed and forced his arms to straighten again, he heard Elle’s voice from behind him.
“You were saying?”
“Nothing,” Kingsley said. “I was saying nothing.”
“Good. Shut up. Stand there. And don’t talk. Unless you want to say ‘ouch.’ That you can say.”
Ouch was the least of the exclamations she dragged from him that night. She wrung every French curse and every English curse he knew out of him. The crop was as vicious as a bamboo cane and in no time she had him welted from shoulder to shoulder, neck to knees. The back of his body burned as if it had been stung by a thousand angry wasps instead of one very calm young woman who was having too much fun tearing his body to pieces.
She hit the same spot three times in a row at the bottom of his rib cage. One, two, three vicious strikes with the thin wooden crop, and he released a cry of utter agony.
“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, his fingers digging into the bed. He saw red, all red. The red light of pain flashed in front of him and he’d never see any color other than red again. “Do they teach all Catholics how to hurt people like this? Or is it just you two monsters?”
“Søren’s sadism is self-taught,” she said. “And I learned from Søren.”
“No one’s ever hurt me as much as he has,” Kingsley said.
“Good.”
“Why is that good?” Kingsley asked.
“I love a challenge.”
She hit him again. By the time she tired of beating him, his back was a solid red knot of burning welts. His cock was excruciatingly hard and throbbing with the need for release. If she even touched it, he would come. He breathed to calm himself. He was still angry he’d come so fast the first night she’d hurt him. He wanted to savor his arousal, let it build to the breaking point before coming anyway and anywhere she ordered him to. On her, in her, he didn’t care as long as it pleased her.
It pleased her now to lay the riding crop on the bed and run her hands up and down his broken body.
“Your skin is hot to the touch,” she said. “The welts are on fire.”
“I’m on fire,” he said, forcing the words out between rasping breaths.
“You’re beautiful like this.” Elle pressed her palm to his lower back where she’d concentrated her most vicious attentions. “Did you know that? When you’re submissive and suffering and so turned on your cock is dripping? It’s beautiful.”
“Merci,” he said, flushing slightly. Praise like that was a balm to his soul.
“Remember that night I told you about Wyatt, my college boyfriend for like a week? Well, you and I were in the music room. You unbuttoned your vest and your shirt and put my hand against the scar on your chest. I had this fantasy right then about pushing you onto your back and riding your cock into the ground.”
“I would have let you.”
“I was a virgin.”
“Only because he saw you first.”
Elle kissed his back between his shoulders. She reached around his hips and grasped his cock with two hands.
“What do you think would have happened if you’d seen me first?” she asked, stroking him so that he groaned.
“I’ve wondered that myself,” he confessed. “I know one thing—if I had seen you first, you wouldn’t have been a virgin at twenty. You would have been lucky to make it to sixteen.”
“Lucky is not the word I would choose,” Elle said, stroking him harder now. “Would you have shared me with Søren the way he shares me with you?”
“I would have shared you, but not in the same way.”
“How then?”
“I would have let him beat you and fuck you. And then let him watch while you beat me and fucked me.”
“You want him to watch me hurt you?”
“Oh, oui.”
“So he can see what he’s missing?”
“No.” Kingsley shook his head. “So he can see who you really are.”
“And who am I?” she asked, massaging his cock so that his eyes rolled back with the dizzying ecstasy of it.
And Kingsley grinned. She might be beating him and he might be submitting to her right now but that didn’t mean he’d given up all his power.
“That’s for me to know, and for you to beat out of me.”
And she did.
* * *
Kingsley opened his eyes and stared out upon the ocean before him. It had been a week since he’d seen Juliette coupling with her lover in their garden. A week since she told him to go. A week since he’d chosen to stay for no reason he could think of except he wasn’t ready to go back yet. He’d tried to push thoughts of Juliette out of his mind, but thoughts of Elle had come and taken their place. Every evening he walked alone on the beach at sunset, a slow ramble from his hut to the edge of the bay and back again.
Kingsley took a deep breath. The vastness of the ocean spoke to the submissive in him. He was nothing compared to the endless waters. Their power and might humbled him as nothing else could. Vaguely he wondered if this was how Søren felt when he contemplated God. Small. Humble. Unimportant and yet loved despite all that. No. Surely Søren never felt small or humble. Not even God could humble that man.
Søren...for months now Kingsley had kept thoughts of Søren at bay. They’d intruded, of course. There was no escaping them entirely. But now Kingsley invited the thoughts in, let them swim to the shore and walk along the beach beside him.
“I miss you, mon ami,” Kingsley said to the silent shadow that strolled beside him. “But I am still so angry at you.”
The shadow didn’t speak. Kingsley kept walking.
“With Elle...it wasn’t like you and me. Or you and her. I had to work to love her. It didn’t come easy. You chose her over me and it hurt, and it will always hurt. But I learned to love her despite all that, and that should tell you how close we are that I could overcome how much I wanted to hate her. You were right about her, about what she could be to us. But I was right, too. I was right about what she is and what she needs. I was right, and you didn’t listen to me.”
Kingsley paused and faced the waters. The wind blew through him and he inhaled the clean salt air. The sound of the surf drowned his every word, his every breath. He could hear nothing but the ocean.
“And now she’s gone. And it’s your fault. And it’s my fault.”
The shadow at his side bowed its head. Kingsley pulled a length of carved bone from his pocket. A broken piece of what had once been an antique riding crop.
“What happened between me and Elle...it was between me and Elle. Not you,” Kingsley said, readying himself to toss the bone fragment into the ocean. “You had no part of it. And that’s why you were angry, no? That’s why you did what you did and made her run away from you, away from us?” He lifted his arm to throw it as far into the water as he could. “Because there is a part of her that has nothing to do with you and you were...”
And then Kingsley understood. He lowered his arm.
“And you were scared.”
From behind him he heard Juliette’s voice.
“Who was scared?”
20
Upstate New York
“PREGNANT?” KYRIE REPEATED. “You were pregnant?”
“I was,” she said.
“And you...”
“Had an abortion.”
“I see.” Kyrie’s voice was calm. Elle gave her credit for that.
“I’m not making this easy for you, am I?” Elle asked. “Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse...”
“It’s okay,” Kyrie said. “I’m still here. Is that why you don’t go to Mass?”
“I’m excommunicated.”
“You can still go. You’re just not supposed to take communion.”
“Consider me quietly protesting that aspect of Catholicism.”
Kyrie said nothing and Elle pitied her. The poor girl, a virgin, a nun, and here she was fighting off sexual, possibly even romantic feelings for a woman who’d fucked a
priest and had an abortion.
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you about me, about why I’m here,” Elle said. “It’s a lot for one person to carry.”
“Too much for one person to carry,” Kyrie said. “That’s why I want you to tell me.”
“Regret asking yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You might if I keep talking.”
“Keep talking,” Kyrie said. “I want to know it all.”
“Not here. Not tonight. It’s cold out.”
“Tonight,” Kyrie said. “Before you change your mind. We can go to my room if you want somewhere warmer.”
“No. We should go to mine. They put me up on the third floor away from everybody else.”
“What? Do they think pregnancy is contagious?”
“I think Mother Prioress thinks sin is contagious, and I’m a carrier.”
“We’re all carriers. Original sin, remember?”
Elle laughed. “If you saw the crowd I used to run with...let’s just say we put the original in original sin.”
“Who were they? Your crowd?” Kyrie asked as they walked back to the abbey.
“I don’t know what you’d call us. There’s this man—Kingsley Edge. He has a town house on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. That’s where all the rich people live, if you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know. So he’s rich?”
“Filthy.” Elle smiled. So many memories flooded her mind—good and bad. “He owns and operates a big S and M club. There’s a group of us who practically live at that place.”
“S and M? Like hitting people and stuff?”
“Pain and bondage and sex parties. Kink. Kingsley’s our king, of course. He wouldn’t have it any other way. But he has a court all around him. I was part of the court. Life is pretty luxurious inside Kingsley’s inner circle.”
They stopped talking when they reached the back door. They entered the abbey in silence and tiptoed up three flights of stairs. Elle’s cell was near the end of the hall. The abbey had once boasted nearly one hundred sisters. Now their numbers were halved and dozens of cells on the third floor sat empty.
Elle opened her cell door for Kyrie but didn’t turn on the light.
“Sister Luke walks the halls at night,” Elle explained in a low whisper. “If she sees the light, she might listen at the door.”
Kyrie sat on the bed. Elle pulled up her desk chair and sat close but not too close to her.
“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” Elle said.
“You, either. They wouldn’t kick me out. They might kick you out, though.”
“That’s the last thing I need,” Elle said. “I have no idea where I’d go if they kicked me out.”
“Why can’t you go back to your friends?”
“I could,” Elle said as she took her shoes off and shoved her cold toes under the blanket on the bed. “I could go back tonight if I wanted. I was living at Kingsley’s house.”
“You lived with someone? That sounds serious.”
“Not really. I had a room there. My own room. My own bathroom. I wasn’t living with Kingsley. I was living at Kingsley’s. Subtle difference.”
“So you two are friends?”
“More than friends.”
“But what about your priest?”
“Søren’s a Jesuit but he’s also a parish priest. He lives alone in his rectory, but it’s not safe for me to be there all the time. I’d go over after dark and hide my car. I’d almost always leave before morning. I had to live somewhere, and I couldn’t afford my own place. I moved in with King. King and Søren are best friends. And brothers-in-law. But that is a long story. And trust me, you don’t want to get into that long story.”
“If you say so. So what happened? You got pregnant and your priest, Søren, made you have an abortion?”
“No. It was nothing like that. Søren was out of the country for ten weeks, in Rome finishing his dissertation on Canon Law. I wasn’t pregnant when he left. I know that because I was having my period. And then I got sick. Fever, stomach and back pain.”
“What was wrong?”
“A kidney infection. Two weeks of antibiotics. My regular doctor couldn’t get me in so I went to Søren’s. When she asked me if I was sexually active I lied and said no. I didn’t want her asking me any more about my sex life. So she didn’t tell me that antibiotics can mess with your birth control. As soon as I felt better, Kingsley and I had sex.”
“Wait. You cheated on your priest with Kingsley?”
“It wasn’t cheating. Søren and Kingsley...” Elle stopped and took a breath. If Kyrie hadn’t looked so confused and so beautiful, she would have laughed. “This is really hard to explain. No. Wait. It’s very easy to explain. I was sleeping with both of them. There. I explained it.”
“But how is that not cheating if you’re having sex with two different men?”
“We’re in an open relationship. Sort of. I’m...I was Søren’s submissive, and he—”
“What’s a submissive?”
“It’s like being someone’s property. But not exactly.”
“But how can you be someone’s property? Isn’t that illegal?”
Elle raised her hand.
“This isn’t working.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t sit here and try to explain my life to you with you saying ‘but’ every five seconds after I’ve said something weird like, ‘My priest is a sadist, but that’s one of his most endearing qualities.’ And you’ll say?”
“What’s a sadist?”
Elle laughed. “We’re going to be here all year if we keep this up. You and I, we speak different languages.”
“Please try, Elle. I want to know.”
“Why?”
“Because...” Kyrie took a ragged breath. “I’ve wanted to be a nun for so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to want anything else. And then you...I met you and now I know what it’s like to want something else. But I don’t know you. You don’t tell me anything so I don’t even know what it is I want, and it’s driving me crazy. Please, Elle...who are you?”
“Who am I?” Elle repeated. “I wish I knew who I was. I wish I knew how to tell you.”
“Can you show me?” Kyrie asked.
Kyrie looked at her in silence and then pulled the veil off her head. She ran her fingers through her long blond hair and let it fall down her back where it belonged.
Elle reached out and touched a lock of Kyrie’s hair. It was soft, so soft, like a baby’s hair. But Kyrie was no child. In the moonlight streaming through the window and with her hair down, Kyrie looked like a nymph, beautiful and ethereal. She didn’t seem real. More like a shadow or a shade from a dream. Elle had been dreaming her memories for months. Was she now living in her own dreams?
“If you can’t tell me,” Kyrie asked again, “can you show me?”
Elle laughed. Could she show her? One easy way to do it.
“Give me your hand,” Elle said. Kyrie obeyed without question. “I’m going to bite your wrist. Is that okay?”
The Virgin Page 24