Kingsley entered his office a few minutes later with a grim look on his face. Voices exploded in questions at the sight of him, but Nora whistled hard and loud over the din.
“Quiet,” she said and the women of the room went silent. No one countermanded an order from The Red Queen, Nora’s Underground nickname.
“Merci,” Kingsley said, nodding in Nora’s direction. He stood at the edge of his desk surveying them all. “You’ve heard what has happened. Two weeks ago, Mistress Natasha left my employ and went to work on her own. I think many of you know her personally.”
Simone nodded against Nora’s shoulder. She knew Simone and Natasha were close.
“The first thing you all need to know is that she will live,” Simone said. “She has a severe concussion and was unconscious when they found her. She’ll likely be in the hospital several days.”
“Where did they find her?” Nora asked, wanting to know all the details, wanting to know who to blame, who to punish.
“She’d been renting dungeon space at Black Forest. When Mr. Wolfe went to check on her at the end of her session, no one answered the door. He found her bleeding and unconscious on the floor. The dungeon had been destroyed. He called for help first. Then he called me.”
“Did Brad see anything? Hear anything?” Nora asked, making a mental note to call Brad Wolfe herself for more details.
“Non,” Kingsley said. “He was with his own client at the time. And Mistress Natasha preferred to work alone.”
Kingsley’s tone was neutral but Nora sensed the bitterness lurking under the words. He had been furious when Mistress Natasha had left the fold. He hardly cared about the fifteen percent he took from each of her sessions. The money he made off his pro-dommes and pro-subs was a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue from his nightclubs. No, what infuriated him was what he considered Natasha’s arrogant refusal to admit that the work she did was dangerous and required the protection of Kingsley’s security detail.
“Mr. Wolfe always checked on her after each session,” he said. “It’s good that he did, as he possibly saved her life.”
Simone’s body shook with silent tears. Nora pulled her closer, held her tighter.
“Do they have any idea who did this?” Nora asked. “Did she keep a calendar or appointment book?”
“She did, but like yours, it has only initials and codes—no names. The attack might have been motivated by some sort of vengeance. The perpetrator took the time to destroy her dungeon and to leave a note behind.”
Nora narrowed her eyes at Kingsley. “What did the note say?”
Kingsley sighed heavily, his handsome brow furrowing with worry. “It said, ‘All the whores like her will die.’“
A collective gasp could be heard throughout the room. Whore was a word reserved for lovers at play in their world. A dominant man might whisper it in his lover’s ear to give her an illicit thrill, but no man would dare call any of them a whore as an insult. Not unless that man wanted Kingsley on his doorstep.
“The threat might have been a ruse,” Kingsley said. “Taking the time to write a note like that might simply be an attempt to cover the real motive of the crime.”
“What motive?” Nora demanded. “He sounds like a psycho and we’re analyzing his motives?”
“Natasha worked alone,” Kingsley reminded her. “She kept large amounts of cash on her. This could be a robbery. It might not have been a client at all, but a spurned suitor seeking revenge on her alone. And yes, he could simply be a psycho, as you say, who thought he’d hired a prostitute but became enraged when she told him she wasn’t.”
Nora couldn’t argue with that logic. She’d had a few clients who’d come to her expecting sex. They had convinced themselves that the “dominatrixes don’t have sex with clients” rule was merely a cover shielding them from the law. She’d disabused a few men of the notion that a few extra hundred dollars could buy sex from her. There was only one client she’d ever slept with, and he stood in this very room.
“And there’s something else,” Kingsley added. “No one can find Natasha’s keys. If her attacker has them, then he has keys to Mr. Wolfe’s club and several of mine as well.”
“Shit,” Nora said, grimacing. Changing the locks wasn’t an option. Members of The 8th Circle used their keys to get in and out. Kingsley couldn’t change the club locks without getting new keys to over a thousand people. And that would take time. “So what now?” She asked the question that she knew was on the minds of everyone in the room. “What do we do?”
“Nothing,” Kingsley said. “Rien. All appointments are canceled with all clients until the perpetrator is caught. I cannot police what you all do on your own, but I highly recommend you stay with friends for the time being. Safety in numbers. Don’t take anyone home you don’t already know and trust. If you hear anything, see anything that makes you the least uncomfortable or suspicious, you call me immediately. Oui?”
The women of the room nodded their understanding.
“I realize not working might cause a financial hardship for some of you. You’ll all be compensated for your time off. The police believe that Natasha will likely be able to identify her attacker when she awakes.”
“Someone should go to the hospital,” Simone said.
“I’ll go,” Søren said from behind them. “You can come with me if you like.”
Simone smiled her gratitude at him. Søren had everything to lose if someone outed him as a sadist. Technically he was related to Kingsley by a long-ago marriage, and that gave him an excuse to be in Kingsley’s house. But certainly, it was no excuse for being in Kingsley’s club. The danger of discovery never stopped him from taking risks like this, however. One of their own had been attacked and badly hurt. Dominatrix or nun, Søren didn’t care.
“Now you may go,” Kingsley said. “I’ll be in touch with any news as it becomes available. If any of you prefer to stay here during the crisis, you know my home is always open to you. Dismissed.”
The women rose and filed out of the room. Nora overheard Nikki asking if she could stay with Irina. Tessa and Jai decided they would crash together in one of Kingsley’s guest rooms. They weren’t scared to go home, but they much preferred staying at Kingsley’s where they could better stay abreast of what was happening.
Nora told Simone she was welcome at her house in Connecticut. Simone thanked her and said she’d think about it, but tonight she’d stay at the hospital in case Natasha woke up.
Nora watched them all go. Søren gave her a last long look before leaving the room. She smiled at him as a reassurance that she was okay. It didn’t seem to convince him any more than it convinced her.
Once alone with Kingsley, she exhaled heavily and collapsed into a chair in front of his desk.
“What the fuck is going on, King?” was all she could ask.
“Je ne sais pas.” He put his booted foot on the chair next to her thigh. “I’ve spoken to the police commissioner, Detective Cooper, and everyone I know. They’ve all assured me that they’ll do whatever they can as quickly as they can.”
“Nice. Lovely. Now tell me what’s really going on.”
Kingsley met her eyes for a moment before glancing away. “Two weeks ago Natasha offered herself to me. I turned her down. She quit the next day.”
Nora nodded, a delaying tactic while she decided how to respond. “First, can I say I’m impressed you turned her down?”
“Elle.”
“Sorry. But please don’t tell me you’re blaming yourself for this. You have the right to say no if you don’t want to fuck somebody.”
“I did want to fuck her.”
“So you turned her down because…?”
“The usual reason,” he said. And that was all he said and all he needed to say. Three people in Kingsley’s world knew he was a switch. Apparently, Mistress Natasha had sensed his proclivities, and instead of succumbing to her advances, he’d rejected her.
“It’s not your fault she got hurt
, Kingsley. We all get hurt around here.”
“I know,” he said, slipping tiredly into French. Je sais.
“I know you know. And I also know you know I can’t cancel on my clients. That’s fine for Irina and the subs. They have normal clients. My clients run the world. They’re not going to be happy if I say, ‘Sorry, busy,’ without any notice like this.”
“They’ll survive a week or two without you.”
“That’s the problem. They will survive because they’ll find a new domme. You and I have worked way too hard to build my career. This could kill it.”
“It’s not going to help it, non. But your life is more important than your career.”
Nora stared him down hard. “My career is my life.”
“What would you have me do? I let you keep working and le prêtre will kill me and lock you in a cage.”
“Søren’s not into cage-play.”
“It won’t be for erotic purposes, I promise.”
Nora growled under her breath. She didn’t know what to do but she knew not working wasn’t an option.
“I can’t let the girls think I’m spooked,” she told Kingsley. “If I’m scared, they’ll be terrified. I have to keep working.”
“Then you’ll have a bodyguard with you. C’est ça.”
“Bodyguard? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“It’s either a bodyguard or no work. Your decision.”
“Fucking hell…All right. Whatever. It’s only until they catch the guy, right?”
“Oui.”
“Good. I’ll call Griffin.”
“Not Griffin. You two know each other too well. Far too well.” He gave her a meaningful look.
“So?”
“He’s a personal trainer, not a bodyguard. You need someone with experience.”
“Griffin’s very experienced.”
“Experienced at fucking you. I’ll find someone and send him to your house tomorrow. Someone you haven’t slept with.”
“That narrows our options.”
“Elle.”
“Fine. Bodyguard it is. You’re the boss.”
Kingsley raised a single finger and pointed it right at her.
“No fucking him,” he said, his tone cold and authoritative. “No sex. No kink. This is not playtime. I’ll pay his salary. You leave him alone so he can concentrate on his work.”
“Like I would ever fuck some big dumb muscle-bound no-neck overpaid bouncer. Don’t worry. Not my type.”
“Bon. Now go home, lock your doors, get some sleep. He’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
She stood up and headed to the door. Before she got there, her conscience pricked at her and she turned around.
“King, are you okay?”
He gave a very French sort of shrug. “I should never have let Natasha leave. If she’d been on my staff, if she’d been in my club…”
“She hit on you and you turned her down. She quit for her own reasons. Brad Wolfe guards those dungeons like a hawk and this happened on his watch. It could have happened on yours, too. Jesus, Natasha could have gotten mugged on the sidewalk or hit by a bus. You can’t blame yourself for every bad thing that happens to every kinky person in New York.”
“I can try.”
“Stop being so damn Catholic. That’s Søren’s job.”
She walked back over to him, dug her fingers into his hair, and gave it a gentle tug the way Kingsley liked. “Where’s Juliette?”
“Safe,” he said and that was all he said. Kingsley protected Juliette, his private secretary, as if her life meant more to him than his own. Probably because it did.
“Do you need me tonight?” Although alone in the office, she whispered the words. No one but Nora, Juliette, and Søren knew about Kingsley’s secret submissive and masochistic side. She’d given a lot of herself to Lance tonight and part of her wanted to race back to the club and see if he’d stayed there. She wanted more time with Lance, but if Kingsley needed her attentions, she would give him whatever she had left and not charge him a cent for it. They fought like brother and sister most of the time, but when he needed her, she was his without question and without mercy.
“Don’t tempt me,” he said, closing his eyes.
“I have to,” she whispered, her fingers tracing the strong line of his jaw. “It’s my job.”
He raised his lips to hers for a kiss. She kissed him longer and deeper than she’d intended to, but such things happened around Kingsley. He pulled back from the kiss and gave her a tired smile.
“Go home and sleep, Maîtresse. I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”
“Oui, Monsieur.” She dropped another kiss on his cheek and whispered a quick and true “Je t’adore, mon roi” in his ear. Kingsley had money, power and respect, but with all that came enormous responsibility. He ran a dangerous business and had the safety of all his staff weighing on his heart. Some days it was good to be the king. Days like this it sucked, and not in the fun way.
Nora caught a cab back to the club and tried to find Lance. Max, the bartender, said she saw him leave not long after Nora had skipped out with Søren and Simone. Goddammit. She wondered if she’d ever see him again, or if this craziness had scared him off for good. She hadn’t gotten his last name, his phone number…nothing. He’d given her one of the best evenings of her life since leaving Søren, and now he was gone. Fuck. She could ask Kingsley for his information, but she’d feel a little pathetic and desperate trying to hunt the man down. If he wanted to see her again, he knew where to find her.
C’est la guerre, as Kingsley would say. It was for the best, anyway. She liked him and she didn’t like that she liked him. Like led to love and love led to nasty complications. Although with Lance at least there were no foreseeable nasty complications that involved the Vatican. One more check in the plus column for that guy.
Exhausted by a night of great kink and terrible news, Nora drove home to her house in Connecticut. She stripped naked and crawled into her big, empty bed. She put her private and work cell phones on her pillow in the event Kingsley or Søren called with any updates on Natasha.
At ten the next morning she woke up and ate breakfast. Her first appointment was at noon that day, so she dressed in her kinky best. At 10:45 she heard a brisk knock on her door followed by the ringing of her doorbell and another round of knocking.
“Jesus H. Christ, I’m coming,” she said as she headed to her door. She threw it open ready to chew out her new no-neck overpaid bouncer bodyguard for excessive door knocking. “Dude, seriously, holy shit.”
Lance stood outside her door on her front porch wearing an awkward smile on a face made even more handsome by daylight.
“Hello, Mistress. Shall we?”
Nora remembered Kingsley’s words from last night. No sex. No kink.
“God-fucking-dammit.”
Ten minutes later, they were in her car heading to the city. She’d insisted on driving.
“Any reason why you lied when I mentioned Kingsley last night?” Lance asked as Nora turned south toward Manhattan.
“I’ve been trained to disavow all knowledge of Kingsley Edge. You get my name, rank and serial number only.”
“If I had known you were Kingsley’s top dominatrix, I might have checked with the boss first before going to bed with you.” Lance put on a pair of dark sunglasses, which annoyed the hell out of her. First, it made it harder to read his eyes. Second, they looked so damn sexy on him she wanted to pull over and fuck him right on the side of the road.
“Under normal circumstances, he doesn’t care who I sleep with.”
“Maybe,” Lance said, “but this hardly constitutes normal circumstances.”
“Did you tell him we fucked last night?”
Lance’s answer to that was to give her a look that suggested she might have just asked him the most insulting question he’d ever been asked in his life.
“So that’s a no,” she said.
“Yes, it’s a no.”
Nora groaned loudly, loud enough Lance pushed his sunglasses down to give her a What the fuck? look.
“Sorry,” she said. “I had an amazing time last night.”
“Yeah, well, so did I.”
“And now you’ve gone and fucked it up by getting hired as my bodyguard.”
“This is my fault?”
“Yes. You know King will kill us both if we sleep together while you’re working as my bodyguard.”
“Worse. He told me if I laid a hand on you while I’m supposed to be guarding you, I’d be fired completely—from the bodyguard job and my real job running security. And if you laid a hand on me—”
“What? He’ll fire me? I don’t get fired.”
“No,” Lance said, turning his head to gaze out the window. “He’ll fire me for that, too.”
Nora winced. “That man needs to be flogged. He’s only doing this to piss me off.”
“And maybe so I won’t get distracted while I’m supposed to be protecting you?”
“Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a sadist. This is the sort of shit he pulls on me. Probably payback for the time I started a rumor Kingsley wore a toupee. He was really confused by all the women who wanted to suddenly play with his hair.”
“You two have an odd relationship.”
“Welcome to the Underground,” Nora said. “I’m seriously going to beat the hell out of him for telling me who I can and can’t fuck.”
“Yeah, let’s not do that. Sorry, Mistress, but I need this job. And more importantly, I need you to be safe. If some lunatic out there is stalking dominatrixes—”
“One dominatrix. He hurt one of us. Everyone’s overreacting. We have no proof he’s coming after any of the rest of us.”
The Last Good Knight (The Original Sinners Pulp Library) Page 4
