Subs?
That was kind of odd. When Dree had been working as a nurse, she had subbed for other nurses on the schedule. Everybody called her to sub because she could slip right into any of the departments. “Yeah, I’m a good sub. I’m really flexible.”
Mairearad pointed at Dree with a forkful of salad topped with Thai chicken. “I can tell that about you. You’ve got that sweet aura around you that subs have. This salad is fantastic, by the way. You were right.” She stuffed the food in her mouth and chewed with her eyes closed with happiness.
“I work hard at it.”
“I’ll bet. And I never thought anything different, you know. Both sides take work.”
“Right.”
“Especially with someone like Maxence Grimaldi.”
“Yeah,” Dree said.
Mairearad toyed with her wine glass. “So, when I worked at the Devilhouse, we spent a lot of time with our clients. Maxence came in up to a couple of times a month for over a year. One time, he came in four days straight until I told him his skin needed to heal before we could do any more.”
Dree nodded sympathetically. “I suppose that’s a problem in your profession.”
Mairearad nodded. “More than you’d think. Some people just want to go again and again.”
“I was an ER nurse. I have seen people’s skin all marked up like you would not believe. It really is a beautiful art form.”
Mairearad glanced up at her, her eyes a little wider with a little bit of hope in them. “So, you are into the lifestyle.”
“I think it’s really cool.”
Mairearad leaned over her salad a little bit at Dree. “I shouldn’t ask this, but with all the consultations and talking before we actually do our work, people in my profession get attached to clients. We can’t pursue relationships with them, and I would never, of course, but we worry about them after they’ve left.”
“I imagine you have to instruct them about aftercare, so they don’t get infections.”
Mairearad’s nod was more ardent. “That’s more of a problem than you would think, too.”
“I’m sure I saw some of yours or the other Devilhouse artists’ clients in the ER who didn’t take care of their skin properly. Everything was usually solved with topical antibiotics.”
Mairearad tilted her head and smiled. “Artists?”
Dree nodded vehemently. “Absolutely. Your kind of work is absolutely art. The lines, the colors, the textures. I’ve always admired it.”
Mairearad sighed happily and toasted Dree with her wine glass. “Most people don’t understand that, but it is art. Art causes an emotional change in the person experiencing it, and my line of work certainly does that.” She chuckled. “I’m so glad you see that, especially if you’re with Maxence.”
Dree grinned at her. “He certainly was your canvas.”
Mairearad raised her wine glass. “So to speak.”
“Right.”
Mairearad scooted forward on her chair and rested her arms on the table around her salad, leaning in to ask Dree quietly, “So, I didn’t mean quite that. I shouldn’t ask this because of HIPAA and everything else, but is he okay? I’m completely out of that line of work now. I love my work with Second Sun. Using my master’s in social work this way is just so rewarding. I wouldn’t go back. But—is Max getting what he needs, either from you or from somebody else? Because if he doesn’t get it from someone, Maxence punishes himself.”
It almost sounded like she meant sex instead of tattoos, but that couldn’t be right. Maxence had said he had never had sex with Mairearad, so she must be talking about tattoos or something else.
Dree did her best to answer anyway. “I think he’s had enough for now. He hasn’t complained or said he wanted any more.”
Mairearad’s eyes widened a little bit, and she looked down and pressed her lips together. “Guys like that don’t just quit cold turkey. He’s got a lot wrapped up in his head that it was taking the pressure off of.”
While that was true, it kind of didn’t make sense. They seemed to have veered off subject or something, but now they were too far down this conversational path for Dree to admit she had no idea what they’d been talking about for half an hour.
Mairearad rolled her wine glass against her cheek and said, “Dominant masochists are so rare. It’s definitely a case of turning your trauma into kink, but I didn’t think he’d be able to change his natural personality. He’s one of the few guys I’ve ever worked with who was really able to top from the bottom. I might’ve been the one holding the whip, but he was in charge.”
—whip?
Dree stopped chewing the bite of salad in her mouth.
They were not talking about tattoos.
She studied her salad and did not let her confusion show in her eyes or expression.
Dree resumed chewing the lettuce and chicken in her mouth, her teeth mashing the food.
The Devilhouse was not a tattoo parlor.
It was a—
Dree had made a mistake, getting Mairearad to talk about Maxence like this. “So, did you ever eat at The Spaghetti Factory in Tempe? Their homemade ranch dressing on their salads is amazing. I think they put fresh mint in it.”
Mairearad said, “I felt bad about messing up that exquisite tattoo on his back. I made him sign extra liability waivers before it got that rough.”
The angel wings.
Dree drank the rest of her wine in one gulp.
Mairearad shook her head. “I was just worried about him. Don’t mind me. I’m sure you two are great together. The pain was how he coped with the stuff in his head because people who do that get a dopamine rush from it, and also it takes their mind off what’s going on up in their skulls. It’s a counter-irritant, like how people with chronic physical pain will cut or whip somewhere else on their body to take their focus off the part of them that hurts. It works, but it’s rough on them. It just seems like he’s had a lot happen in his life, but he never talked about it with me.”
“Yeah,” Dree said. “He has had a lot happen in his life, some of which very few people know about.”
Mairearad nodded. “I’ll bet. Most guys with serious power issues, either subs or Doms—”
Dree heard the capital letter that time.
“—have something they’re working through. Maxence didn’t come to the Devilhouse for therapy, though. On quite a few occasions, he paid my rate of ten thousand dollars to talk about social justice issues over a glass of wine for two hours.”
That sounded like Maxence.
Mairearad shook her head. “That first day when he came in, though, he’d taken a razor blade to his forearm just that morning. It broke my heart when I saw that.”
Drew couldn’t stop. “He tried to kill himself?”
“Oh, no. No, he didn’t. I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you. I don’t think he’s ever been suicidal as far as I know. The cuts were too shallow for that, and they were perfectly parallel. They were farther up his arm, not near his wrist.” She rubbed her own forearm over her flexors and brachioradialis muscles. “Evidently, the night before, he’d been Arthur’s designated driver and chaperone on an epic pub crawl in Los Angeles and he hadn’t slipped, as he called it, so he’d taken it out on himself to release the dopamine that morning.”
Dree covered her mouth and closed her eyes.
A gasp. “Dree, did you not know?”
Cover it up. “I didn’t know the extent of it, and I didn’t know about that day.”
Mairearad rushed to say, “He wasn’t my most extreme client, you know. Not by a long shot. He was pretty average. It’s not even that unusual. We’re all just a few odd neuron pairings away from getting turned on by a spanking from a man we call Daddy.”
When Max had bent Dree over his desk last week, taken her panties, and spanked her until her bottom turned pink with sharp, stinging slaps on her ass, she’d wanted the spanking as much as him caressing her clit afterward. He’d whispered that she
was a good girl for letting him do it to her, and he wondered what else he could get away with as his slick fingers had drifted to circle her asshole, but it had all been a tease and he hadn’t let her come.
Her neurons were getting paired, too.
Mairearad mused, “True dominant masochists are so very rare. Maxence was so dominant that he didn’t have a safe word, I did.”
“Oh, okay,” Dree said.
“And because he was so dominant, there was always that element of inversion, you know? There always had to be ‘a reason,’ even though it was always a scene. With Maxence, it was usually about how much he could take. It was a test of strength, a trial by fire. He works out like that in the gym, too, I’ll bet, making his trainer push him harder and harder. You can tell just by looking at him.”
Yeah, you could. Maxence usually went to the gym before Dree got up in the morning, and he always returned exhausted.
“Maxence wasn’t the only dominant masochist I worked with,” Mairearad said. “There was one other guy who sticks in my mind. He nearly went to jail for assault before he found the Devilhouse. He kept getting into bar brawls, because that’s how he got the pain he needed. After he found us, he’d hire four or five girls for the night, and he brought in cast iron frying pans or baseball bats or cricket bats, because cricket bats are flat on the front. And he’d chase us girls around and grab at us, yelling and screaming, but he always ‘missed.’ And then we’d beat the hell out of him. But he stopped getting into bar fights, and he was never arrested for assault again. It kept him out of jail.”
“Oh, that poor guy,” Dree said.
“Yeah, he was more extreme than Maxence, but Max is getting what he needs from somewhere, right?”
Dree didn’t know. She didn’t think so, and now she was worried about him. “He’s doing fine. He’s getting everything he needs.”
The waiter came over with the check.
Dree handed over the credit card Maxence had given her, holding the black rectangle with her fresh scarlet manicure.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Prayer IV
Maxence
Maxence walked into his closet and closed the door behind himself in the dark.
Dree was shopping with Chiara for the wedding. She wouldn’t be back until later.
He parted the clothes hanging on the rod in the back of the closet, exposing the raw, wooden crucifix still hanging there, and he fell to his knees.
Unfurling his arms at the height of his shoulders, Maxence poured every ounce of his soul into his prayer.
I accept this is my path, but is it the right one?
If the power of being the Sovereign of Monaco tempted Marie-Therese and Jules to attempt mass murder, and if it drove Pierre to suicide, should there be a sovereign at all? Pierre was willing to do unspeakable things to gain the throne, and he killed himself when he couldn’t have it.
If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, how long will it be until I am corrupted?
How much lower can I fall?
Tell me whether I should burn it all down.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cutter
Dree
After that enlightening but unsettling lunch, Dree texted Chiara to postpone their shopping and returned to Maxence’s office in the palace. The rest of the day was booked back-to-back-to-back with receiving new ambassadors, taking phone calls and visits congratulating him for being elected sovereign, and working on logistics like security for the enthronement.
The receptionist wasn’t letting the office door swing closed before she shoved the next appointment through.
Dree didn’t find a spare second to ask Maxence what had gone on with Mairearad, so Dree locked up all her concern in one part of her skull, took notes, and did her job for a couple of hours.
A nurse can’t take personal stuff to work with them. Like all the other nurses at Good Sam, Dree was excellent at shoving any conflict or emotion in her head down hard because those people in the emergency room were having the worst day of their lives, either with their own health or with someone they loved. Her issues stayed outside the doors.
So she did it that day in Max’s office, too.
After office hours, Maxence had a reception to attend.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” He asked her as he finished pulling on the tuxedo jacket that his valet had laid out for him while they were at the office. “You can start attending these anytime you want, or you can decline to attend them as long as you want. Just because you’re marrying me, that doesn’t mean that this needs to be an absolute full-time job for you. There are only a few events per year that I would ask as a personal favor for you to make an appearance. The Winter Ball before Christmas is a big one.”
“I’ll start slow, but I will start soon.” Dree was sitting on the bed, watching Max turn from a hot office-boss man into a smoking-hot debonair billionaire man. “Chiara dropped off some more sample books. Are napkins that important?”
Maxence lifted his hands. “Well, there was that one from the Buddha Bar in Paris.”
Dree cracked up. “I still have it. Oh my God, that whole list of things I was supposed to do in my life, right? I’ve crossed off a lot of them. I was thinking about taking it with me to the wedding as good luck. Oh, also at the wedding, I was thinking—”
“I’m sorry. The car is waiting. We’ll talk later. If it doesn’t need my attention, just do it. You have my full confidence.” He kissed her on her temple and trotted out of the apartment.
Dree tried to concentrate on the sample book, really making an effort to compare the different kinds of napkins—linen versus raw silk versus sustainable bamboo—but they all just seem like perfectly adequate pieces of cloth to wipe sauce off her face. She would have to get Chiara to explain the differences to her tomorrow.
Maxence’s schedule said that he was obligated to stay at the gala until ten-thirty. Ten minutes before that, Dree went to her closet and found a pale pink baby doll negligee that had appeared in there, along with fifty other outfits that she had no idea who’d bought for her.
Some ball gowns were hanging in the back. She could start going to a gala here and there if it helped Maxence. She’d been enjoying the Sea Change Gala right up until the mass shooting.
She had just curled up in their bed wearing the fluffy pink nightgown that barely skimmed the tops of her thighs when Maxence opened the front door of their apartment.
“Chérie?” Maxence called. “Are you here?”
“I’m waiting for you in bed,” Dree yelled back.
Maxence strolled in the open double door to their bedroom, yanking the black bow tie of his tuxedo from under his collar, and it unraveled in his grip. A smile grew on his face. “And what is that you’re wearing?”
Dree shrugged and grinned at him.
Maxence dropped his arm to the side. The fabric of the bow tie dangled from his fingers, and his voice lowered as he said, “Oh, pet. I would have hurried home sooner had I known.”
She winked at him.
“Stand up on your knees and show me.”
Dree did, struggling to turn around while kneeling on the springy bed. The chiffon swished around her body, and the feathery hem brushed her ass and legs.
When she turned back around, Maxence was standing by the side of the bed, still holding his untied bow tie in his fingers. “Come here.”
Dree crawled over the mattress that bent under her hands and knees until she was right in front of him.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
Her eyelids drifted down, shuttering her eyes.
Darkness descended. A red glow shone through her eyelids above and to the left, where the crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling.
The air warmed around her temples first, and the silk of the black bow tie he’d been wearing touched the bridge of her nose. It clung to her face as he tied the soft fabric behind her head.
Maxence said, his voice low, “Hands at y
our sides. Head down.”
Dree squeezed her knees together and did what he told her to, waiting.
Soft susurrations drifted to her ears through the air, and she assumed the dull thuds must be his clothes dropping onto the Oriental carpet under the four-poster bed.
The warmth and humidity of his breath coasted along the side of Dree’s neck and feathered her ear as he placed a soft kiss on the shell.
A rough push on her sternum forced her backward. Her legs flipped out from underneath her as she landed on her back, bouncing on the soft mattress. The glow from the chandelier moved across her darkened field of vision.
Warmth and weight covered her like a cloud sliding over the sun, and Maxence’s cologne—a scent like clean bed linens wrapped around clove-studded oranges and stored in a cedar chest—enveloped her face and filled her nose when she breathed.
Pressure stroked up her arms, lifting them above her head, and then the vice of his hand clamped her wrists and pinned them to the silk comforter.
His mouth was gentle at first, patiently drawing at her lips when he kissed her and trailing down her throat as she arched under him.
But then his bites became harsher on her neck and shoulders, and because she couldn’t see, her gasps grated in her ears. His body was on top of her, a mountain of flesh she was buried under, the smooth skin of his chest sliding upon her chiffon nightgown.
Above her head, Maxence stroked the underside of her palms and fingers, brushing the tips of her fingernails.
He held her down, using his mouth on her throat and breasts and wedging one of his muscular thighs between her legs to press against her and drive her crazy. Even though he was still wearing his tuxedo trousers made of fine silk and wool, the fabric ground against her sheer panties, and the pressure of his thick leg rubbed her delicate skin and nub.
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