He raised his hands, surrendering the battle of innuendo. Good. Nora was too tired to play it tonight anyway.
“Where?” he asked.
“Right there,” she said, nodding toward the package she was wrapping. “Put your finger on the twine so I can tie a bow here. Consider it an order.”
“You don’t have to order me to help you wrap my Christmas gifts.”
Nora bumped her shoulder into his. “It’s more fun for me if I pretend it’s an order.”
He laughed drunkenly although he was only on glass of wine number two. Then again, Nora had very large wine glasses.
With the help of Kingsley’s finger, she tied the bow on the box.
“Who is this one for?” Nora asked as she picked up the package tags.
“What was it?”
“The Canon? The big fancy camera?”
“Simone,” Kingsley said.
Nora’s eyes widened. “That’s a two-thousand-dollar camera, King. Have you been fucking her lately without telling me?”
“She’s been you-know-who’s personal whipping girl for months now. He left bruises big as your hand on her back two weeks ago. I caught her in my drawing room taking pictures of them.”
“To show the cops?”
“She’s making a scrapbook of her favorite bruises. That’s why I bought the camera with the tripod and timer. The girl deserves hazard pay.”
“I never got hazard pay,” Nora said under her breath. She finished writing out the tag—To Simone, Thank you for your service. Love, Mr. King—and tied it to the gift.
“You’re frowning,” Kingsley said. Nora heard a touch of mockery in his tone.
“Am not.”
“Green is a Christmas color.”
“I am not jealous,” she said and meant it.
Kingsley scoffed. “I am.”
“Slut,” she said. Kingsley rolled onto his back on her floor and balanced his wine glass—still half full—on his stomach. If he spilled red wine all over her new rug, she would flog him within an inch of his life. As sexy as he looked lying there in his jeans, fitted black pullover, and bare feet, she might flog him within an inch of his life anyway. The best part—well, one of many good parts—of being Kingsley’s domme was getting to see him like this—relaxed, off-duty, dressed casually. He’d had to go out into the “vanilla world” today finishing his Christmas shopping and had come to her straight after, bags in hand, begging her to save him from the hellish task of wrapping his own gifts. She could never resist a pouty Frenchman. Who could?
She plucked the wine glass off his stomach and took a long deep drink of it before putting it down again. On a coaster, because she, unlike Kingsley, was not a savage. She’d recently moved into her new house, and she wasn’t about to let Kingsley break or stain anything when she’d finally gotten everything exactly the way she wanted it.
“Is it the wine or do you look sexier than usual tonight?” Kingsley asked.
“Both.” She had her new black silk pajamas on and even she had to admit, they did look damn good on her. Her cleavage was looking, in King’s words, magnifique.
“I thought so. Shall we fuck?” he asked. “If yes, I want to be on top. I’m in a toppy mood.”
Nora glared at him. “And they say the French are the romantic race.”
“With Juliette, I am a romantic. With you,” he said, grinning his devil-may-care grin that made the underwear of every woman in the tristate area evaporate on sight, “I am an unrepentant whore. You got the better deal, Maîtresse. Any man can be romantic. Only an elite few of us have mastered the art of true whoredom.”
“Did you ask me to wrap your gifts just so I’d let you into my house and my vagina?”
“It might have occurred to me. But you are much better at wrapping presents than I. Than I? Than me? Fuck, I hate English. I’m shit at wrapping gifts. That is what I’m saying. Women are better. In general. At all things always and forever.”
“Yes, that day they take us out of class and you boys thought we were learning about tits and periods? They were actually teaching us how to wrap presents.”
Kingsley narrowed his eyes and nodded. “Ah…I always suspected.”
Nora stood up. She had to twist and stretch her back after spending two hours on the floor wrapping Kingsley’s gifts to the 8th Circle crew.
“Merci,” he said, still on his back.
“For what?” she asked.
“Wrapping my gifts for me. Thank you.”
“That’s what friends are for,” she said.
“But we aren’t friends,” Kingsley said. “You’re my Maîtresse.”
“This is true,” she said. Calling her and Kingsley friends would be like calling Bonnie and Clyde a cute couple. “Which has me wondering why you asked me to do it. Calliope usually does this stuff for you, right? Did she quit? Oh, God, did you fuck Calliope and make her quit?”
“Calliope still works for me and adores me and no, I didn’t fuck her. She’s too young. I don’t fuck women under the age of twenty-five anymore.”
Nora raised her eyebrow at him.
“Admittedly, it’s a rule made to be broken,” he said. “However…you are too suspicious. I wanted to see your new house now that you are moved in.”
“You did?” Nora did not buy this excuse for one second, but she enjoyed watching Kingsley lie. “I thought you hated my house.”
“Not true. I hate that you live in your house instead of in my house. The house itself is fine. It’s nice. It’s…”
“What?”
“It’s quite…Christmas…y?”
“It is Christmas Eve. It’s supposed to be Christmassy. Do you think I overdid the decorating?” Nora asked, glancing at her eight-foot-tall Christmas tree. Real, not artificial.
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Not at all. Only…I have to ask, when exactly did you schedule the gangbang with all the Macy’s Santa Clauses? I want to be here to film it. You know, for the children.”
Nora yanked a stuffed reindeer ornament off her tree and lobbed it at Kingsley.
“My house does not look like a Santa Claus gangbang,” she said sternly, and if Nora ever thought saying “Santa Claus gangbang” with a straight face would be easy, she quickly revised that assessment.
“It’s a little much.” Kingsley sat up cross-legged and ran a hand through his hair. “That is all I’m saying.”
“Why? Because I live alone? Just because I’m single, and I don’t have living relatives within a ten-hour driving radius doesn’t mean I don’t get to do a little Christmas decorating.”
“A little decorating? You have two trees, Maîtresse. Two. You have a candle in every single window. You have been playing Christmas music non-stop since I arrived. You have even hung red curtains.”
“Red is my color.”
“They have snowflakes on them. Big ones. And you have Christmas coasters, towels, lights on the front of the house, lights on the back of the house. You even have one of those stupid Christmas villages set up in your kitchen.”
“They’re cookie jars. I like cookies. Everyone likes cookies.”
“Is that eggnog in the refrigerator or did Santa come—”
“Stop it, asshole,” she said, laughing. She grabbed another reindeer off the tree, looked at it, then realized having multiple reindeer ornaments on her tree was not helping her case any. “We do not talk about Santa’s semen on Christmas Eve.”
“Did you buy that big black snow globe just because it matches your hair?” he asked, pointing at the snow globe on her side table.
Nora put the reindeer back onto her tree before collapsing into the big gray armchair. She picked up the snow globe with the white-frosted Christmas tree inside it, smiled at it, and put it back down again carefully.
“Søren’s mother sent it to me. She must not know we’re not together anymore. I guess he hasn’t told her yet.”
Kingsley got up and sat on the coffee table directly across from her. She put her feet in his la
p, and, without having to be ordered, he began to gently rub them like the good man-slut he was. He might have a point about her overdoing the Christmas decorating. Next to the mantel clock stood a nutcracker, the traditional Victorian kind, not the sort she kept in her toy bag upstairs. The house did look nice though. Even Martha Stewart would have approved of the final product.
“When I was a little boy,” Kingsley said, caressing the dips and divots around her ankles with his thumb, a touch more comforting than erotic, “I think I was eight… Maman, she decided we had to have the best Christmas ever. Big tree. Three times as many presents as the year before. Lights. Candles. Christmas concerts. Walks in the park when it snowed. Christmas cookies every single day. A few years later I told my sister that was my favorite Christmas we ever had. She laughed at me. It was not a nice laugh. She said I was a stupid little boy because that year, she said, was the year our father confessed he’d gotten drunk at a business lunch and kissed his secretary. Infidelity is more accepted in France than in America but my mother, she was very American. She didn’t take it well. She almost left Papa over it. And she was going to take us with her back to Maine to live with my grandparents. It could have been our last Christmas with our father in France. And I had no idea. But…I am not eight years old anymore.”
Nora blinked back tears. Kingsley lifted her leg to his lips and gently pressed a kiss onto the top of her foot.
“You’re right,” Nora said. “We should fuck. Right now. But I’ll be on top. You just lay there and stay hard.”
“You can tell me,” he said. “I tell you when I’m miserable.”
“You’re French. Even when you’re miserable you’re still sexy,” she said, saying “miserable” in an exaggerated French accent, as the word should be said. “Miserable doesn’t look nearly as good on the Germans.”
She wiped another tear from her eye. When did she turn into such a sap? She’d listened to Joni Mitchell’s song “River” on repeat all yesterday and today while decorating. The broken-hearted woman’s Christmas anthem.
“It’s not fair, you know,” Nora said, as Kingsley continued to press soft kisses onto the top of her foot and her ankle. His dark wavy hair fell over his eyes and he paused in his worshiping only to tuck that wayward strand behind his ear. “No man should be as sexy as you and as good in bed and smart. I shouldn’t be sad and wet. It’s a weird combination is what I’m saying.”
“Now you know how it feels to be French,” he said. “I could go down on you while you cry. I don’t mind. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I’m never letting Juliette leave you alone again at Christmas,” she said. “Babysitting your cock while she’s visiting her mother is exhausting. I better get a good present.”
“I’ve been trying to give you your gift all night,” he said, his eyes glinting.
“A sub giving his mistress an orgasm is not a gift. A sub should give his mistress orgasms every day that ends in Y.”
“Ah, very true,” he said. “But perhaps I wrapped a forty-thousand-dollar diamond tennis bracelet around my cock?”
“Did you?” she asked, suddenly feeling very Christmassy.
“I did, but for Jules. That was her Christmas gift.”
“That’s a big gift,” Nora said.
“I had to do something big. That fucking asshole Brad Wolfe sent her diamond earrings from Tiffany’s just to piss me off,” Kingsley said.
“Clearly it worked.”
“Of course it worked,” Kingsley said. “But I made her wear the earrings while I flogged her and fucked her. Then I called him and told him all about it.”
“It was your bright idea to fall in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. These things will happen.”
“Don’t blame the victim,” Kingsley said. “It’s a good thing I’m rich. Keeping up with all of Juliette’s suitors is expensive.” While his tone was annoyed, his eyes were shining with pleasure. Spoiling Juliette was his new favorite hobby.
“Did you get Søren anything for Christmas?” she asked.
“Socks,” Kingsley said.
“You got a sadist…socks?”
“When you spend forty grand on your lover at Christmas, someone else is going to get socks. I bought you some, too.”
Kingsley dug into a shopping bag from Saks and tossed her a small red box. Nora opened it and found red-and-white candy-cane striped socks nestled in tissue paper.
“These are very cute,” she said. “I hope you got Søren the same kind.”
“Plain black boring socks,” Kingsley said. “Not that I’ll even see him until New Year’s, if then.”
“When did you last talk to him?” she asked.
“Two months ago? Almost?”
“Two months?” Nora said, stunned. She thought Kingsley and Søren talked all the time.
“It was right after my birthday,” Kingsley said. “He was at the club to meet Simone. I nodded at him when I saw them leaving for his dungeon. That was it. How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Three months. He called me, said he needed me. I dropped everything like I always do and went over. It was a good night until your name came up,” she said.
“Moi?”
“Toi,” she said.
“Now you have to tell me the whole story if I’m in it.”
Nora rubbed her forehead. “He beat me and it was lovely. He fucked me and it was lovely. We were in his bed and it was lovely. I said something about how sometimes—not often, for the record—I miss being the one on the receiving end of the flogging. Søren said he was surprised I didn’t let you top me anymore. I said I was your domme now, and we didn’t switch very often. He asked me if I fucked you.”
“Which you do,” Kingsley said.
“Which he knows,” Nora said. “But I said that was between your asshole and my strap-on. And he said something like, ‘You know, he’s only using you to hurt me.’ ”
“Not at all true,” Kingsley said. “I’m using you for pain and sex. And to hurt him.”
“Which we all know,” Nora said. “But instead of saying that to him, I said…something not nice.”
“What did you say…?” Kingsley asked, his lips twitching into a smile though his tone was scolding.
“I said, ‘At least I know how to fuck King without putting him in the hospital for three days after I’m done with him.’ ”
Kingsley blinked, slowly, twice.
“I know,” she said. “That was bad.”
“Do you have a death wish?” Kingsley asked. “You really said that to him?”
“Yeah,” she said with a regretful sigh. “And it is true. I do know how to fuck your ass really well.”
“You’re the goddess of sodomy, but that is not the issue,” Kingsley said. “You threw my past with him in his face. That’s my job.”
“He pissed me off,” Nora said, raising her hands in exasperation. “First of all, it’s none of his business what you and I do in private together. Second, it’s none of his business why I top you and you let me. And third…”
“Yes…?”
“He pissed me off!” Nora groaned and then laid her head on the soft squishy chair arm. “After that, I just…I stormed out. That was the last time we talked-slash-fought.” She smiled apologetically at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought up your past with him. That’s between you and him, not me.”
Nora still regretted that fight and her closing argument. It had been a low blow, especially since Kingsley’s first time with Søren was his most precious memory, not the sort of thing she ought to be wielding as a weapon. If not for Søren’s sake, then Kingsley’s.
“It’s very sweet, you defending me,” Kingsley said. He bent and kissed her on the forehead. “And it’s even sweeter, you picking me over him.”
“Oh, but I’m not.” She wagged her finger at him. “I’m picking me over him.”
“Do you regret it yet?” Kingsley asked.
“Sometimes. Occasi
onally. Except…”
“What?”
“When I’m beating you,” she said and gave him her own devil-may-care grin, the one that made male submissives all over the world hard as bricks.
“Good thing I’m here then. And good thing you are. We can pretend we don’t wish we were with him tonight.”
“I don’t,” she said. He raised his eyebrow at her. She was a very good liar, but Kingsley was even better at seeing through her lies. She picked up a pile of Christmas cards from off the side table. The pile wasn’t very thick. A card from her bank. A card from her doctor’s office. An exquisite Joyeux Noël card from Juliette, which Kingsley likely signed under duress. And one other card.
She handed it to Kingsley.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“What’s it look like?”
“A boring Christmas card with a church on the front,” he said. “What is it?”
“A boring Christmas card with a church on the front.” She smiled. “It’s the annual Sacred Heart Christmas card. I got it in the mail a week ago. I am embarrassed by how excited I got when I saw it was from ‘Rev. Marcus Stearns, SJ.’ I knew it was the church’s Christmas card. I knew I got it because I’ve always been on the mailing list. I just thought…I thought maybe he’d write a special message in the card for me. I was shaking when I opened the envelope. I had to sit down.” She waved her hand in front of her chest, miming how her heart fluttered.
Kingsley opened the card.
“Just a signature,” he said. “His and his secretary’s.”
“Right. Just a signature. And the same boring card a thousand other people got this year. Including his bishop, the mayor of Wakefield, and Pope Benedict.”
“I would have been hurt, too,” Kingsley said.
“My throat’s been hurting ever since I got this card in the mail. But it’s not a cold. I’ve been trying not to cry for a week. Hard on the throat.”
“Elle…” Kingsley said, his tone pitying.
“I did all this decorating for him,” she said. “I have this recurring fantasy that one evening I’ll be in my office writing, I’ll hear a knock on the door, and he’ll be there. And I wanted the house to be beautiful so he’d see it and…”
Winter Tales Page 10
