Just as he started to feel real sympathy for the girl, she nearly strangled him with the measuring tape while checking his neck size.
As she jotted down his numbers, Daniel studied her face. A shame she disliked him so much. He’d rarely seen a more beautiful girl in his life. A straight nose and soft, kissable skin. Long, lush eyelashes and an oval face. If he were an artist, he could spend his life sketching that face in every possible light. But preferably by candlelight. One candle right by the bed and her naked underneath him. Now that would make for a pretty picture.
“You’re staring at me.” Anya slammed her notebook and pencil onto the table as she picked up her measuring tape again.
“You’re beautiful. Of course, I’m staring.”
Anya released another disgusted sigh. “You rich dominants…you think women exist for your pleasure alone.”
Daniel started to protest, but Anya suddenly dropped to her knees in front of him. He swallowed as his stomach contracted hard. In the mirror, he could see her skirt ride up just enough to catch a flash of garter and pale thigh.
“Spread your legs,” she ordered. “And if you say, ‘That’s my line,’ I will shove my pencil into your testicles.”
“Never even occurred to me.” Daniel obediently spread his legs hip-width apart while Anya unfurled the measuring tape. “So, is this how you met Kingsley? Working for Vitale?”
“Yes.” Anya placed the end of the tape at the underside of his crotch. Daniel closed his eyes and thought of the festering bite wound of a Patagonian lancehead viper he’d seen on the leg of a tourist in Argentina. It helped. “He tried to make me measure his inseam twice. I told him I’d use his balls as a pincushion. He hired me on the spot.”
Daniel laughed. Typical. “Not many women can resist Kingsley. It must have impressed him that you did.”
Anya glared up at him from the floor. “I work sixty hours a week for the Signore. I don’t have time to date.” She made a note of his left leg measurement.
“Kingsley doesn’t date, either. He acquires.”
“He won’t acquire me. He said I could keep my full share at the auction. He won’t even deduct his fifteen percent. The last virgin made two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Yes, but one of the other women he auctioned off a few years ago got bought by a psycho who choked her so hard she ended up in the hospital.” In a perfect world, kink was entirely consensual and nobody ever got hurt more than they wanted to get hurt. This was far from a perfect world.
“Kingsley promised that wouldn’t happen to me. And even if I got hurt, it would be worth it. That’s enough money to get my brothers and sisters our own place to live. Getting them away from my father is all I care about.”
Anya pulled the measuring tape away and stood. Looking down at her notes, she chuckled mischievously, almost flirtatiously.
“What?” Daniel asked.
She raised her eyebrow at him. “Kingsley’s inseam…it’s an inch longer than yours.”
Daniel glared at Anya. “You’re in trouble now, Celine.”
She giggled nervously. She sounded her age for once, like a young woman enjoying herself.
He stepped toward her using his superior size to corral her into the bend of the three-way mirror. God, he wanted to turn her around, raise the back of her skirt, and fuck that chip right off her shoulder. He’d watch her face in the mirror while inside her, and before he’d let her come, he’d make her say something nice about Canadians.
Him specifically.
Daniel raised a hand to her face. With the tip of his finger, he traced her bottom lip.
He waited for her to bite his finger off. She didn’t.
“You should tell me to stop,” he said.
“I should? I mean...I should, yes.”
He stroked her jawline with the back of his fingers. She shivered. He felt it, saw it. “Are you going to?”
“Soon.”
Ah, he knew it. She might hate him, but she also liked him whether she wanted to or not.
He bent his head and put his mouth to her ear. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
Anya’s skin flushed. She breathed in quick and sharp and then seemingly forgot to breathe out again. A good sign. He looked down at her, blushing and trembling and beautiful beyond belief.
“I have to work. Kingsley wants a new suit for the auction, and now I have to start on your wardrobe. You can afford the time and money to eat dinner. I can’t.” She sounded unsure, as if she were trying to talk herself out of it.
“I’m buying. I’ll take you anywhere you want, buy you anything you want.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flashed, and she stepped to the side, escaping him. She turned her back to him and jotted down more numbers in her notebook.
The spell was broken.
“You go buy your own dinner. I’m not on the menu.”
Daniel left Signore Vitale’s and headed to Kingsley’s. They needed to talk. Specifically, they needed to talk about Anya. Somewhere past the facade of the wicked King of the Underworld, Kingsley had a heart. It was hidden and hidden deep, but Daniel was sure it was there. He’d seen a glimpse of it the night Kingsley had come to see Maggie before she died. If Daniel could find that heart again, maybe he could talk Kingsley into taking Anya out of this stupid auction. This wasn’t fun and it wasn’t funny. She was selling herself to the city’s most hardened deviants—Daniel knew many of them personally—to take care of her five younger siblings. There had to be a better way to help her. A way that didn’t make him picture a lamb wandering blindly into the path of a wolf.
And once that discussion ended, they might discuss Daniel’s participation in this idiotic auction and how it wasn’t going to happen until he got to see Eleanor.
Daniel didn’t bother going to the front door this time. Instead, he had the cab drop him off at the side entrance, which led to the back stairs of the old servants’ quarters. Most of the Underground didn’t even know the townhouse had a side entrance. As a handful of Kingsley’s clients weren’t just rich but also famous, they needed a way to sneak in and out of the house anonymously.
Daniel climbed the back stairs and found Kingsley in the hallway outside a door engaged in a profoundly passionate kiss with a dark-skinned goddess almost as tall as Kingsley himself. Kingsley apparently noticed Daniel waiting. Somehow, he managed to give Daniel a questioning look and slip the goddess a little more tongue at the same time.
The goddess finally pulled away and disappeared into Kingsley’s bedroom.
“Your timing is impeccable, mon ami.” Kingsley straightened his crushed cravat.
“Sorry for the interruption,” Daniel said without a trace of actual contrition.
“I’m not. The girl’s insatiable. I’m French. Not a machine.”
“She’s gorgeous.”
Kingsley nodded. “Tahitian. The newest member of—”
“Yes, the Imperial Collection. Right. That’s why I’m here.”
“You know my Collection is like your library.” Kingsley led them toward the back staircase. “You are welcome to check anything out as long as you return it in time.”
Daniel’s stomach dropped a few inches at his joke. Of course Kingsley didn’t know how close those words hit to home. Suddenly that day in the library after his first night with Eleanor came back to him with crystal clarity.
So you are a librarian. What does that make me then? A seven-day loan? Eleanor had asked, flashing her eyes at him. And then she laughed. That laugh like a champagne cork popping. He still heard that laugh in his dreams.
“I don’t want to borrow anyone from your collection. I want to talk about Anya.”
“Really? What about Anya?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?” Kingsley shrugged innocently, oh-so-innocently.
“You could have warned me she worked for Vitale.”
“Did you need to be warned? She’s a pretty girl who doesn�
��t like you, not a criminal.”
“What game are you playing here?”
“One where nobody loses,” Kingsley said. “So what’s the harm?”
“The harm is Anya getting hurt. Did you know she has five brothers and sisters she’s trying to rescue from her father?”
“I knew she came from a big family. She never told me she was afraid for her family. Interesting she confided in you and not me. Isn’t it?”
It was a little interesting, but Daniel didn’t have time to analyze her motivations. “I don’t want her in this auction. Find someone else to be your token virgin.”
“That’s her decision, not mine or yours,” Kingsley said. “She volunteered. No one forced her. And I warned her several times that what she was signing up for might not be worth the money.”
“I’ll give her some money. As much as she needs.”
“You think she’d take it from you?”
“No, but you can say it’s from you.”
“She won’t take it from me, either. She won’t take charity. I’ve offered. Too much pride.”
“Why are you so determined to ruin her life?”
“Why are you so determined to run her life?”
Daniel was silenced. Kingsley had a way of punching one in the stomach without lifting a finger. He could do it with a single question.
Why was he so determined to run her life? He barely knew her.
“I know you’re trying to be a good man,” Kingsley said. “You’ve always been a good man. Too good for the likes of us around here. I knew that the day Maggie brought you to us, that you would never quite fit in. Your halo would keep getting caught on our pitchforks.”
A small smile crossed Daniel’s lips—quickly, then was gone just as quickly.
“You have a hero’s heart,” Kingsley said. “And you’re always looking for someone to rescue. You rescued Maggie from loneliness and now you’re hooked on rescuing women, like it’s a drug. You tried to rescue Eleanor from him. You saw how that worked out? Hmm? Now you want to rescue Anya, and I don’t remember hearing her asking anyone for help.”
Daniel glanced at the ground.
“Just because someone needs help, doesn’t give you the right to force them to take it,” Kingsley continued. “And if there’s one sin in this house—it’s forcing someone to do something against their will. The second Anya asks to be let out of the auction, she’ll be out. And if she doesn’t, she’s in. And if she won’t say it to you, I will—mind your own business. Tu comprend?”
With extreme reluctance, Daniel replied, “Je comprends.”
“Good man. Come on. I’ll walk you out.”
They started down the stairs, but when they hit the first landing, Daniel stiffened in shock. A sound he hadn’t heard in a year and a half echoed up to them.
But not just any sound.
A laugh.
A laugh like the popping of a champagne cork.
Daniel froze and met Kingsley’s dark, watching eyes.
“Eleanor’s here?” Daniel whispered.
Kingsley didn’t answer at first. The charming French rogue had disappeared again and the dangerous guardian of the Underground gave him a steely warning stare.
“Non, mon ami,” he finally answered. “They are here.”
5
Daniel didn’t move, couldn’t move. And as long as Kingsley stood there watching him, he wouldn’t move. But he listened. He heard a man’s voice, low and stern, a voice he hadn’t heard since that one perfect week with Eleanor. Then he heard her laugh again. That laugh, so joyous and lusty…it floated up the stairs and passed through him, chilling him to the core.
The voices retreated and Kingsley raised his hand, beckoning Daniel to follow him in silence. At the next landing, they stopped and waited. From their post, he and Kingsley could stay hidden in the shadows and still look into the private drawing room at the back of the townhouse.
There she was. The girl he’d been thinking of non-stop, even while inside other women, for the past year and a half.
Eleanor…she looked as beautiful now as the day he first saw her. She wore a white summer dress that showed off her legs, her black hair was pulled high on her head in a messy knot, and around her graceful neck was her white collar. At the liquor cabinet, she poured two glasses of white wine, then carried them back to a table where she offered one—with a curtsy—to a tall blond man in black trousers, black jacket, and a white shirt open at the collar.
Him. Søren.
Daniel watched as Eleanor sat opposite Søren at a small game table, a chessboard between them. They spoke in low tones. Daniel couldn’t hear what was said, but it made her smile.
Even cowering in the shadows on the staircase landing, looking far down into the sitting room, Daniel could see the radiant happiness shining in her eyes as she feigned luxurious, yawning boredom. Søren casually reached out and snapped his fingers in her face to get her attention. Instantly sat up straighter. With reluctance, Daniel dragged his eyes from her to gaze at Søren, a man he once considered a friend but now, since losing her, thought of as a rival. He hated himself for the bitterness he harbored in his heart toward Eleanor’s owner. But no amount of reasoning and rationalizing could help him swallow the bitter pill that remained lodged in his throat since the moment he’d asked her to stay with him and she’d said, “No.”
“He’s a priest,” Daniel said in a voice so soft he doubted Kingsley heard.
“He is.”
“How can she be that happy with him?” Looking at her face, her eyes, he had no doubt he was looking at a woman completely and utterly in love. “He can’t marry her. Can’t give her children…not without getting excommunicated.”
“She doesn’t want marriage. She doesn’t want children.”
“What does she want?”
“Him,” Kingsley said simply. His laugh was the low rumble of a distant train. “Trust me, my friend, there’s no way to break them up. Even I know they belong together.”
Daniel heard something in Kingsley’s voice, a note of bitterness that matched his own. Together they stared at the couple in the drawing room—the tall man in all black—handsome, distinguished, intimidating.
And her—that wild black hair, those black and green eyes, those full lips…lips designed for acts more intimate than simply kissing other lips.
Daniel noted that while his own eyes studied every line and curve of Eleanor, Kingsley’s gaze focused elsewhere, onto the face of the man who owned her, onto the face of Kingsley’s best, and some would say only, friend.
The sight of them together, so content, briefly overwhelmed him. Closing his eyes, Daniel found himself hurtled into the past, further than he wanted to go.
Back to the day of his wife’s funeral.
How he’d even gotten dressed that morning remained a mystery. He’d been able to knot his tie but only from muscle memory.
“I’m burying my wife today,” was the refrain that echoed through his mind. “I’m a widower at thirty-four…and I don’t know why.”
He must have spoken the words aloud because he heard an answer from the door to his and Maggie’s bedroom.
“I’m certain it will be of no consolation to you, but I don’t know why either.”
Daniel turned and there stood a six-foot-four blond priest. Søren.
“Actually, it is a consolation. I don’t want to live in a world where Maggie’s death makes sense.”
Søren studied Daniel with kind, searching eyes. Kingsley had come by earlier with a gift from his medicine cabinet, and the combination of the tranquilizer and the shock were the only two forces keeping Daniel vertical.
“I won’t insult you by asking you how you are. I will only ask you what I can do to help you today.”
Daniel remembered the rush of gratitude, knowing that he didn’t have to dissemble. He could tell Søren anything, confess any secret and it would be absolved.
“If I asked you to kill me, would you?”
The priest smiled. “No, though I won’t judge you for wanting to die. I would, too, in your shoes.”
That helped. It helped that this man who seemed to know all the answers to all the questions that had ever been or would ever be asked…it helped to know that he, too, would want to die if he lost his wife. Except he was a Catholic priest and so would never have a wife. Daniel felt almost sorry for the man.
“Perhaps there’s something else? Something other than a mercy killing?”
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t think I could stand it…” Daniel paused and tried to put his words in order. “If anyone touches me today or talks to me, I won’t make it. And I have to get through this. For her.”
Søren clasped his hands in front of him at the wrist. Daniel didn’t recall ever seeing the Priest of the Underground in his long medieval-looking cassock before. Usually, he was in layman’s clothes at Kingsley’s house—jeans and a white button-down shirt and jacket, or black pants and black t-shirt. In the floor-length black cassock with the tie around the waist, Søren appeared even more intimidating than usual, like a being from an ancient world.
“You want me to keep everyone away from you then?” Søren asked.
Again Daniel nodded. Or tried to. His body and mind seemed to be working independently of each other.
“That I can do for you.”
For the next two hours, Daniel stared straight ahead—he heard nothing, saw no one but for a blur of black behind him hovering like a dark angel. If anyone came to speak to Daniel, Søren would raise his hand to stop them, then he’d lower his head and whisper into their ear. What he said, Daniel didn’t hear. But it worked. Everyone nodded, turned, walked away.
Only at the graveside did Daniel come back to awareness again. He stood staring down at the coffin as friends and family made their way back to their cars. Even the minister and his own parents finally gave up waiting on him and walked away. Only his dark angel remained—not speaking, not consoling, merely present.
The Auction (The Original Sinners Pulp Library) Page 4