The Return (The Original Sinners)

by Tiffany Reisz

  The Original Sinners return to The Chateau in this sequel novella to Tiffany Reisz’s bestselling romantic suspense novel.

  When Kingsley left Madame and her château of sexual wonders, he never expected to set foot within her looking-glass world of pleasure and pain again. He’d turned down Madame’s offer to serve at her feet—tempting as it was—and was thus forbidden from ever returning. Even if he wanted to go back, he didn't know its location.

  Over twenty years have now passed. Kingsley has built his own empire of pleasure and pain...but when his lover Søren tracks down the location of the unassuming château in the French countryside, he feels compelled to return. This time, however, he won’t be going into Madame's world alone...he’ll be bringing his own sadist along with him.

  Previously published under the title “The Story of Ø” in the limited-edition, signed-and-numbered hardcover edition of The Chateau.

  “A surprisingly engrossing erotic thriller... Reisz writes sadomasochistic scenes that are charged with love and care alongside the sex and suffering, and Kingsley is an engaging hero…” — The New York Times Book Review on The Chateau

  Praise for “The Chateau”

  “Masterly and rich... Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (Starred Review)

  “A surprisingly engrossing erotic thriller... Reisz writes sadomasochistic scenes that are charged with love and care alongside the sex and suffering, and Kingsley is an engaging hero…” — The New York Times Book Review

  “Fantastic... The characters are strong, and there is enough mystery that the twists feel well earned... Highly recommended to both new readers and those who are already familiar with Kingsley’s world.” — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

  “Feminists are once again making a stand in the world and the timing seems quite perfect as this novel is an intriguing look into the world of a strong, sadistic and mysterious woman.” — Kelsey’s Korner Blog

  “Simply stunning. It’s bold, kinky, romantic, and I highly recommend it.” — Read All the Romance

  “Compulsive, erotic, suspenseful. A must read!” — A Woman and Her Books

  “The first of the Original Sinners books to make me gasp more at the plot reveals than the sex scenes.” — Chaton’s Shelf

  “Five stars.” — Reading Keeps Me Sane Blog

  “I just can’t get enough of Tiffany Reisz.” — Caro, Collector of Book Boyfriends

  “Kinky... [Keeps] you on the edge till the end.” — Sweet & Spicy Reviews

  “[Will] satisfy the insatiable needs of The Original Sinners fans.” — Warhawke’s Vault Book Blog

  Author’s Note

  The Return is a sequel novella to the Original Sinners novel The Chateau.

  It was previously published under the title “The Story of Ø” in the limited-edition, signed-and-numbered hardcover edition of The Chateau.

  Chapter One

  When Kingsley had been whipped within an inch of his life, and the sex after had nearly taken the other inch, he lay across Søren’s stomach, ready to greet Death with a smile.

  “Move,” Søren ordered.

  “I can’t. You killed me.”

  Kingsley’s head rose and fell like driftwood on an ocean wave with the force of Søren’s sigh.

  “Why is it always my stomach?” Søren asked. His tone was rhetorical...and disgusted. “There are organs in there. Delicate organs. Namely the diaphragm which controls breathing. Your head on my diaphragm makes it more than slightly difficult to breathe.”

  “You have a sexy stomach. Not my fault.” Kingsley turned his head and kissed said sexy stomach which inspired another disgusted, yet resigned, sigh on Søren’s part. Another ocean wave. An icy winter ocean.

  “Eleanor at least has the common decency to wallow around on my chest where there is a ribcage to keep me from dying of slow suffocation. You have to lay ten pounds of French cranium onto my stomach. Where’s a guillotine when I need it?”

  “Decapitation is my hard limit.”

  “So he finally finds a hard limit,” Søren said. “Only took a few decades.”

  Smiling, Kingsley kissed Søren’s stomach again...kissed that pale smooth hard stomach and the firm elegant curve of ribcage...and his sternum, hard as iron, and up and down the center of his chest and then, finally, one kiss over the heart, if there was a heart in there. Sometimes Kingsley still wondered...

  But Kingsley did feel the slow steady thrum of something heart-like in there. After the sustained, back-lacerating whipping Kingsley had just endured, he had a feeling it was a clock there. A ticking clock attached to a brick of C-4 explosives.

  “Are you about to blow?” Kingsley asked.

  “You? Or in general?”

  “Me.”

  “Try asking nicely for once in your heathen life.”

  “Will you please blow me, Sir?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I asked nicely.”

  “I told you to try asking nicely. I never promised it would work.”

  “Bastard.”

  “You came twice. Don’t be so greedy.”

  Kingsley was greedy though. He’d had a perfect day and when that wasn’t enough, he’d demanded a perfect night as well. And it had been a perfect day. They lived in New Orleans now, all of them. Kingsley, his lover Juliette, their daughter Céleste. Søren, too, and his lover Nora. They’d come to give Céleste a better, happier childhood than they could have given her in Manhattan. And they had. Earlier that day, he and Juliette had taken Céleste to the nature reserve where she’d marveled at the playing otters and lumbering alligators, giggled madly at the flittering blue butterflies and flat-footed penguins.

  A perfect day. Strangers complimented Kingsley on his beautiful family, on Céleste’s sweet temper and infectious laugh. Another family with a daughter of about twelve asked Kingsley to take their photograph in front of the flamingos. And he had as if he were a normal husband and father and not one of the more notorious men in the BDSM communities of New York and New Orleans.

  Happiness had swollen in his chest like a red balloon, about to burst. Home again that afternoon, he put Céleste down for her nap, and found Juliette in the kitchen, baking bread for their dinner.

  “I think today was one of the best days of my life,” Kingsley told her as he held her from behind, hands on her stomach, lips at her ear. “Top ten, at least. Who knew being vanilla could be so fun?”

  “Céleste wants a girls night tonight so we can do our hair and nails. You should call Søren.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?” Kingsley had teased her, though he’d had the thought himself.

  “I’m trying to save you from yourself before you really do turn vanilla,” she said. “If you buy a grill and start wearing boat shoes, mon roi et mon amour, I will leave you and never look back.”

  “What’s wrong with boat shoes?” Kingsley asked.

  She swatted him with a spatula.

  “Call Søren right now.”

  So Kingsley had called Søren. It required humbling himself. Well, whoring himself really, which he was more than willing to do. But it had been such a good day and every gambler knew to ride a hot hand. And had anyone ever said they were “too happy”? Was there such a thing?

  Søren had made it more difficult, of course.

  “It’s a school night,” Søren said when Kingsley had asked to see him.

  So Kingsley had replied, “School me, then.”

  “Eight o’clock. Your apartment.”

  Eight o’clock came.

  And so had Kingsley.

  Twice.

  Kingsley’s “apartment” didn’t really deserve that name. It wasn’t much mo
re than a grand bedroom suite with a bathroom on the second floor of the house he’d purchased for the sole purpose of building a friendly little BDSM society in town. And because he did not lack a sense of irony or sense of history, his new place was in the French Quarter.

  The Marquis Club was intimate, elegant, and exclusive—so very exclusive most people in New Orleans wouldn’t know it existed even if they tried looking for such a place, which is exactly how Kingsley wanted it.

  As much as he’d loved The 8th Circle in New York, he vastly preferred The Marquis Club. A double gallery historic home with six bedrooms—now converted to dungeons—it had once served as a New Orleans brothel. The back balconies overlooked a courtyard shielded by a high wall for private parties. And downstairs one would find an exquisitely-appointed reception room where the well-heeled perverts of Louisiana came to mingle before slipping off to a private playroom. In a gilded frame on a wall in that reception room hung a portrait of Donatien Alphonse François, AKA the Marquis de Sade.

  Even now as he dozed on his lover’s stomach, Kingsley could hear the murmur of voices below them in the drawing room and the gentle din of the jazz trio that played at The Marquis Club every Friday and Saturday night. Juliette’s idea...make The Marquis Club appear to be nothing more than another jazz club. To which the infamous dominatrix Mistress Nora had to add, “Brilliant—hide your jizz club inside your jazz club.”

  Kingsley hadn’t laughed but only because he was pissed he hadn’t thought of the joke first.

  “Are you asleep?” Kingsley asked Søren when several minutes of silence had passed.

  Kingsley had simply been marinating in his good fortune. God only knew what went on in Søren’s mind when quietly ruminating.

  “Awake,” Søren said. “Not easy to sleep when I have a human skull compressing my lungs.”

  Kingsley lifted his head from Søren’s stomach.

  “Thank God.” Søren took a deep melodramatic breath.

  “Does it really hurt that much?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Søren, without warning, lightly chopped Kingsley in the diaphragm with the side of his hand.

  Two minutes later Kingsley took a deep breath for the first time in two minutes.

  “I don’t know what’s more humiliating,” Kingsley said as he took another breath. “That I didn’t see that coming or that I enjoyed it.”

  “You are the whore of whores. Whores who have spent the past twenty years on their backs look at you and say, ‘Have some dignity, man, for God’s sake. You’re making us all look bad.’”

  Kingsley laughed though it hurt. Or perhaps...because it hurt.

  “The sadist of sadists has no room to talk. Even my Madame would tell you, ‘Pace yourself, boy. No use beating a dead whore.’”

  Kingsley expected a reaction to that. One of his better plays on words that evening. A laugh? A smile? Søren didn’t even blink.

  Unforgivably rude.

  Søren left the bed and walked naked across the floor to the chair that held his clothes. He wore his naked body like other men wore tailored Armani suits, with the casual confidence of someone who knew he was the best-dressed man in the room.

  Kingsley forgave Søren. Ah, puns were the lowest form of humor.

  He watched his lover dress with nearly the same pleasure he’d watched him undress. The flex of long legs and steely quads, the taut tensing of biceps, the stretch and flash of back muscle...best show in town.

  Now dressed apart from socks and shoes, Søren returned to the bed. He stood over Kingsley who lay on his back, still naked, hands clasped behind his head.

  “Speaking of Madame,” Søren said. “I have to tell you something.”

  “What?” Kingsley instantly sat up.

  “I don’t know if you’ll want to know this, but I admit I couldn’t help myself. Curiosity got the better of me,” Søren said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Søren took a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his black jeans and held it out to Kingsley who only stared at it.

  “I believe I found your château.”

  Chapter Two

  Kingsley and Søren flew into Charles de Gaulle Airport where they picked up their car—a sleek black Peugeot RCZ—for their long drive to the château.

  The decision to go had been an easy one for Kingsley. He’d done the math. Madame, if she were still alive, would be seventy-four now. If he wanted to see her again, he shouldn’t wait. He hadn’t even realized he’d wanted to see her or the château again until Søren had presented him with the possibility.

  Although the decision had been immediate, they’d had to delay the trip for two weeks.

  “I’ll go with you,” Søren had said the night of his bombshell revelation that he’d found Madame’s address. “If you can wait until my Spring Break.”

  Kingsley recalled shaking his head, too bemused to laugh.

  “Only you would want to visit an elderly sadist on your Spring Break.”

  “Would you prefer Miami Beach?”

  Kingsley would not. He was fifty and though he barely passed for forty and still turned the heads of women of all ages, the only thing Kingsley ever wanted a college girl for these days was as a babysitter for Céleste.

  And so the trip was planned and here they were, driving into the Aube region of France to a small village near Troyes.

  Troyes, where according to the records of the Catholic Church in France, an eighteen-year-old girl named Alice Olympia de Lacy married Captain Edouard Masson in the winter of 1959.

  The marriage certificate included the address for the Masson family château.

  “Do I want to know how many favors you called in to find the address?” Kingsley asked as they sped along the autoroute where, twenty-six years ago, Kingsley had been taken blindfolded in a burgundy car, his head on Madame’s thigh.

  “Only one.” Søren turned his head from the passenger window. “I know the priest who has been working for years to digitize parish records before all the old registers crumble to dust. Took him a month but he found it.”

  “What do you owe him?”

  “You owe him a week’s vacation in Nice at a five-star resort with an ocean view.”

  “Done,” Kingsley said.

  “You could have found the address yourself,” Søren reminded him.

  “I could. I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” Kingsley admitted. “Like I told you last winter, it didn’t feel real. Not until I told you about it. After...I thought about looking but knew I wouldn’t go back. Not alone.”

  “You aren’t alone.”

  Kingsley smiled to himself. Were there any three words more beautiful than those? You aren’t alone?

  “I can’t believe I’ll see the place again tonight.” Kingsley shook his head.

  “Caveat—all I have is the address. If the documents were forged or altered, if Madame is dead, if she’s moved…”

  “It’s fine,” Kingsley said. “Whatever happens, it’s fine.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I’m in France with you. Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted this?”

  “A long time?”

  “I used to dream about it,” Kingsley confessed. “Back in school. You and me, running away to live in France together. Stupid teenage fantasies.” He almost blushed.

  “You never asked me to run away with you,” Søren said.

  “I knew you would have said no. Wouldn’t you?”

  Søren didn’t answer. Not out of sadism, it seemed, but because he saw something.

  “There.” Søren pointed out his window. Kingsley brought the car to a sudden stop. He peered through the dark and saw a break in the forest, a long winding drive, the outline of an elaborate iron gate, and behind it, a château.

  “That’s it,” Kingsley said, the words unnecessary. For no other house would he have slammed on the brakes.


  His heart leapt into his throat. He turned the engine off and got out of the car. For a moment he stared but then walked to the edge of the drive and stood there. There, but barely there. One step forward, and he’d be on the property of the château. One step only. Søren came and stood at his side.

  “That’s where I chose you,” Kingsley said.

  “You chose me over Madame, a woman you barely knew.”

  “I chose you over everything else I ever wanted, even children. I chose you when I hadn’t seen or heard from you in seven years.”

  “Why did you do that again?”

  “Fuck, I have no idea.”

  They both laughed, the tension broken. The Kingsley noticed something.

  “Look.” He pointed at a window, glowing red from inside. “That’s Madame’s playroom. She has to be alive, right?”

  It was then that Kingsley realized exactly why he’d come back after twenty-six years and why he’d waited two weeks for Søren to accompany him on this pilgrimage.

  “I can’t wait to introduce you to her,” Kingsley said.

  “You think she’ll approve of me?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Shall we?” Søren asked.

  “We came all this way. Might as well. But...” Kingsley turned around and glanced at the car. “Let’s leave the car here.”

  “In case we have to make a run for it?” Søren asked.

  “You never know with sadists. They’re fucking crazy,” Kingsley said. Søren slapped him on the back of the head.

  “Come on, whore. It’s getting late.”

  Søren strode ahead through the iron gate, which was unlocked and open wide enough to admit foot traffic. Kingsley took a deep breath then caught up with Søren. As they neared the château, Kingsley felt a wave of regret. Was this a stupid idea, coming here? Probably. He could be at home right now, in bed with his Jules. He imagined her wrists tied to the headboard and her long lovely dark legs wrapped around his hips as he fucked her insensate.