“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Ah, we had twelve good years before I lost him again. I was hardly more than a child when we married. The girl in me despised him like a child despises a cruel father. But when we came together again, I was a grown woman and then some. The woman’s heart in me did find a way to love him, even if the girl could not ever truly forgive him.”
She fell silent and took a labored breath.
“But better,” she went on, “to love and hate the man on the pillow next to mine than to have no one asleep on the pillow next to me at all. But you know how that is, don’t you? Kingsley loved you, hated you, forgave you. And you were once only boys.”
“When we met he was a boy. I was a beast. When we met again, I was twenty-nine, and he was twenty-eight. Then I was almost human. Almost.”
“Are you human now?”
“For your sake, Madame,” he said, “I will pretend to be.” His voice held none of the rancor he’d expended on Colette. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, no, I’m fine for a dying woman. Here. Sit close so I can see you. My eyes aren’t what they were.”
Kingsley heard Søren’s footsteps and a chair being lifted and moved. While Kingsley had sound to cover his own sounds, he sunk to the floor and peered through the keyhole into the room.
He saw Madame in a bed. A large bed, big enough for two, with a tufted silk headboard and a dozen thick white satin pillows propping Madame up. She looked so small and thin, with her long white hair in a braid over her shoulder. And yet, still lovely in a way, still striking. Good cheekbones never went out of style.
Søren sat in the club chair he’d moved near her bed.
Madame looked at him and he looked at her. If this turned into a battle of wills, Kingsley knew they might be there for days. But no, Madame was looking at Søren for the same reason everyone did.
“You’re as handsome as he said you were,” she said. “Søren.”
“Thank you, Alice.”
“I didn’t say you could address me by my first name.”
“I didn’t say you could address me by mine. In fact, I don’t believe I told Colette my name. How did you know it was me?”
“Who else would he bring here? Only you. To gloat, I suppose.”
“No.” Søren shook his head. “I would not have allowed him to come if that had been his intention.”
“Allowed him? So you are his master?”
“I am.”
“So sorry.”
Søren smiled. Even Kingsley smiled in his hiding place.
“Why did he come then?” she asked. “To apologize? To ask forgiveness?”
“To pay his respects. You helped him work through a few things, I believe. But he can tell you that.”
“And you both came all the way from America to visit me here. I’m touched.”
Madame didn’t sound very touched.
“Kingsley’s grown son Nicholas lives in France. They’re spending a day together in Paris this week while I’ll be exploring Notre-Dame and Sacrê-Cœur. And a few of Kingsley’s parents’ things are in storage. He’s been meaning for years to come back and see if there’s anything worth salvaging. I’m only along for the ride, as they say.”
“Don’t pretend you weren’t curious about me.”
“I’m here, aren’t I? I could have let Kingsley come alone.”
“But you couldn’t do that, could you? You say he’s not here to gloat, but he does want me to see who he chose over me.”
“Perhaps,” Søren said.
“Why did he choose you? Your pretty face?” She raised her hand and patted Søren on his cheek. And Søren, shockingly, allowed it.
“You’ll have to ask him why.” Søren took her hand in his and gently pressed it into the covers.
“I’m done with him. I am asking you.”
“I won’t tell you.”
“I’m dying,” she said.
“Aren’t we all?”
Kingsley laughed again behind his hand.
“Søren,” she said again. “Swedish?”
“Danish,” he said.
“But you’re also Marcus if I remember correctly.”
“You do,” he said. “You have an impressive memory.”
“Where the weaknesses of men are concerned, I have a photographic memory.”
“I have no doubt you do,” Søren said. “Your husband was a lucky man, wasn’t he?”
Kingsley knew she’d been a world-class spy in her younger years as she’d amassed blackmail material galore to force her husband to come to heel. A spy had to listen to conversations while pretending not to listen, had to remember everything while betraying nothing, had to hold secrets in her head until she could write them down. Oh, yes, Kingsley didn’t doubt for one second Madame remembered every single thing he’d told her about Søren, banking it in a vault for the day she could spend that knowledge like a child in a candy store.
Seemed Madame still had a sweet tooth.
“How is it that you’re both a Marcus and a Søren?”
“That topic is not open for discussion.”
“You’re not much fun, Søren.” She waved her hand, swatting his protestations away like a fly.
“Why should I be? It’s cruel of you to refuse to see him. I’m only here for him, not you. I could leave now, spend the rest of the night inside Kingsley, and we’ll both have forgotten you exist by morning.”
Silence.
Silence except for Kingsley’s madly beating heart. He had to cover his mouth with his hand to muffle the shattering breath he took at Søren’s words. To hear that...his heart nearly left his body. He’d never felt so owned.
Finally, Madame spoke.
“Deep calls unto deep. I feel like I’m seeing my soul in the mirror. I never thought I had a soul and now here I find out it’s a handsome blond. Such a pleasant surprise.”
Madame laughed to herself but the laugh quickly turned into a horrific cough that came from deep within her slight body.
The cough finally subsided.
Poor lady. Kingsley hated to think of her in this kind of pain.
“If you need your rest, Madame,” Søren said, “I can leave you to it.”
“No, no, no, I feel better with you here. It’s been a long time since I’ve played with such a pretty toy.”
“You wish to play with me?”
“Of course,” she said. “As you wish to play with me. Shall we pick a prize?”
“Kingsley’s happiness is my price and my prize.”
“Good. Let’s play for it then. One hour. You answer every question I ask you and you answer it honestly, and I’ll see him, briefly.”
“And if I don’t want to answer one of these questions?”
“Adieu.”
Kingsley pictured Madame raising her hand to wave him goodbye.
“Is this game too rough for you?” Madame taunted.
“I’ve played it before.”
“Shall we play it again?”
“Half an hour,” Søren said. Kingsley rolled his eyes. Cheap bastard.
“Forty-five minutes,” she countered.
“Forty.”
“Forty then. More than enough.”
“In the interest of full disclosure,” Søren said, “anything I tell you that I haven’t told Kingsley...I will tell him as soon as I can. I won’t allow you to know more about me than he does.”
“In the interest of full disclosure,” Madame said, “I don’t give a damn what you tell or don’t tell Kingsley. Shall we play?”
Søren said nothing and in the long silence Kingsley said a prayer to a God he wasn’t certain he believed in.
Play the game. Play the game. God, please let him play the game. I’ll start going to Mass with Juliette and Céleste if they play this fucking game.
“Very well,” Søren said. “Let’s play.”
Chapter Five
“It’s 9:14,” Søren said. “You have until 9:54. Go.”
“Why is your name Marcus and Søren?” she asked.
Fuck. Kingsley already knew the answer to this one. What a waste of time.
“I’m a child of rape,” Søren said. “My father raped my eighteen-year-old mother when she was working for the family as a nanny for my newborn sister. He was wealthy and powerful and sent my mother away when I was five. I’d shown enough promise by then—I learned to read and play piano very early, among other things that caught his interest. He decided to legitimize me in case he never had any other sons. He gave me his name, Marcus. But I already knew myself by the name my mother had given me—Søren, her father’s name. To those I love and who love me, I’m Søren. On my business cards, I’m Marcus. If I had business cards, that is.”
Although Kingsley had known this story, it still hurt him to hear it.
“You told Kingsley your real name the first night you had sex, he told me. That meant something to him, that he was the only one who knew your real name. He said that was why he chose you over me, because you would tell him your real name, and I wouldn’t.”
“I’m sure that isn’t the only reason,” Søren said.
God, what a bastard. Here was Madame dying and Søren was taunting her. Kingsley had never loved him more in his life.
“It’s 9:18,” Søren said.
“Are you faithful to Kingsley?”
Kingsley’s eyes widened in the dark shadows of the bathroom. Couldn’t she asked normal nosy questions like “What do you do for a living?” or “How big is your cock?”
Kingsley leaned in closer to the door. He definitely wanted to hear the answer to this, even though he knew it.
At least...he thought he knew it.
“Yes and no,” Søren said. “Neither of us are monogamous, if that’s your question. But there’s no subterfuge. Kingsley is practically married to a beautiful woman named Juliette who is his submissive. They have a daughter together, three years old and as precocious as her father. I have my Eleanor. She’s also my property and my submissive. And also a masterful sadist herself. As is Kingsley.”
“You’re drawn to switches. Why is that?”
“I fell in love with both Kinglsey and Eleanor without knowing either of them were switches. It was never intentional. But I suppose if I were to put myself under Freudian analysis, you might say that I’m drawn to them because submitting is harder for them. It costs them.”
“You’re drawn to switches because it’s hurts them more to submit to you? You really are a terrible man.”
Søren chuckled. “They don’t complain. Much. And it’s 9:21.”
“What do you prefer more? Men or women?”
“Women.”
“Why so?”
“To paraphrase my Eleanor, ‘Have you ever met men?’”
Kingsley’s face hurt from trying not to laugh out loud.
“Ah, you are entertaining,” Madame said. “Do you ever let Kingsley top you?”
“No. I’m a sadist. He’s a masochist.”
“That’s not when I meant.”
“You mean do I allow him to penetrate me?”
Kingsley winced. This conversation was getting personal fast. If Madame was going to ask intrusive personal questions, at the very least she could be nice enough to ask intrusive personal questions Kingsley didn’t already know the answer to.
“That’s my question, yes.”
“No.”
“Would you?”
“There was a time I considered it, but Kingsley never asked and I never mentioned it, either. And you know Kingsley...he’s happy to be on the receiving end of both pleasure and pain. Both, preferably.”
Both, definitely, Kingsley mouthed silently.
“Ah, very true,” she said. “Your sadism interests me. How does it manifest?”
“Very simply, I get aroused when I inflict pain on a willing partner.”
“How much pain?”
“Desires change from day to day, cravings. But always pain in one form or another. Pain that gives me power over someone. If you’re looking for a formula, then simply this—the more pain I inflict, the more pleasure it gives me.”
“Very dangerous math,” she said. “Though I do sympathize. Have you any particular specialties or fetishes?”
Kingsley also knew the answer to that already. Blood.
“Cutting. Blood-play,” Søren said. Kingsley awarded himself ten points. “I have a scalpel collection that surgeons would envy.”
This was a fact. Kingsley had seen the scalpel collection. And every year on Easter, Kingsley gave him one more to add to his arsenal.
“Cutting. Very good. You play often?”
“Not as often as I’d like. If only Kingsley and Eleanor could find a way to replenish their blood supply a little faster, I’d be a happier man. Until I was sent to prison for involuntary manslaughter, of course.”
Kingsley smiled to himself.
“Do you ever enjoy receiving pain at all?” Madame asked.
“In certain contexts,” he said. Kingsley’s ears perked up. This could be very useful information. “Eleanor owns a set of metal talons, the sort that dominants put on their fingertips for scoring the skin.”
“I know what they are.”
“Sometimes she’ll wear them when she’s servicing me.”
“You like being clawed at while she’s sucking your cock?”
“It’s quite pleasant, even when she breaks the skin. Especially then.”
Kingsley did not need the picture in his head of Nora wearing sharp little talons on her fingers, blowing Søren and leaving bloody claw marks on his stomach, hips, and thighs.
Kingsley did not need that picture because Kingsley did not need to have an erection right now. He closed his eyes and thought of roomy Ford Explorers with dual-airbags, 401K retirement plans, Dockers, coffee from Starbucks, and ranch houses. It worked.
“And Kingsley? Has he ever inflicted pain on you?”
“He punched me in the face once, and the side. He broke a rib.”
“During sex?”
Søren laughed and Kingsley grinned at the thought of punching Søren during sex.
“During a fight. I deserved it. He also deserved it when I repaid him in kind a few weeks later. All water under the bridge now.”
“Is Kingsley the only man you’ve been sexually or romantically interested in?”
Long pause.
Kingsley stopped smiling.
“No, he’s not the only man.”
Kingsley’s blood turned to ice.
“Who was the other?”
Kingsley’s heart nearly burst from his chest.
“I spent some time in India in my twenties. When I was there, I met a young Sikh doctor. Jassa was his name. We became very good friends in my brief time there.”
“He was handsome?”
“He was magnificent. Tall as I was, handsome, too. Very kind eyes. I’d never met anyone as compassionate as he was. When he tended a patient, he would thank them for letting him heal them. For someone like me who fetishes pain, it was a revelation being so close to someone who considered healing their life and their calling.”
“Opposites attract?”
“Perhaps.”
Kingsley died.
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No.”
Kingsley was almost disappointed.
“He turned you down?”
“I never brought it up,” Søren said. “He did, though, when we were discussing how colonization by the British Empire brought homophobia to India. Jassa believed that as the soul has no gender, same-sex relationships could be holy. I told him I found that a beautiful theology. He said something to the effect of continuing our ‘theological discussion’ later that night in his rooms, if I wanted.”
“Did you want that?”
“I will admit to a fantasy or two.”
“Really?”
“I was twenty-five, lonely, and he carried a sword.”
&nb
sp; “A sword?”
“A kirpan, a large dagger. It’s an article of faith. I admit I might have had sword envy. They don’t give swords to Catholics. Probably for the best.”
Madame laughed softly.
“Not even one kiss?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Kingsley died again. Died and was resurrected. This was the most delicious secret he’d ever overheard in his life. What else was Søren keeping from him? They both needed to have a very long talk about what happened in their twenties when they were separated those ten years. Kingsley needed answers.
And photographs.
Charts and diagrams.
Home videos, preferably.
“You did kiss your Doctor?”
“I might have let him kiss me. It was the night before I was leaving India. We knew we’d never see each other again. Why not?”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“More than I expected to.”
“But no sex? You don’t seem a prude.”
“I can’t get aroused without inflicting pain. Jassa had given me no hints that he had any masochistic tendencies at all. Our respect for each other was as mutual as the attraction. I didn’t want to lose his good opinion of me by telling him what I would have to tell him. Especially since he was a doctor. That’s never an easy conversation for me, which is why I’ve had sex with so few people.”
“How many?”
“I’m fifty-one years old and I’ve had intercourse with four people in my entire life. Kingsley had been with more girls than that by the time he was fourteen.”
This was true. Kingsley would not deny it. Though it excited him more to hear about one clandestine kiss of Søren’s than remembering all of his own high school conquests.
“Do you regret not sleeping with your friend?”
“No. But if I had, I wouldn’t regret that either.”
Madame laughed softly again.
“I’ve never told anyone about that kiss in my life,” Søren said. “Not Eleanor nor Kingsley nor my confessor.”
“Tell me this—who do you love more? Eleanor or Kingsley?”
Kingsley desperately wanted to know the answer to that.
And desperately didn’t.
“Eleanor today, if only because she hasn’t dragged me across the ocean to the bedside of a dying madwoman. Next week when Eleanor is making my life difficult, I’ll love Kingsley more. I’m a terrible father, always playing favorites, and my favorite is the one who is annoying me the least at the moment. They are both well aware of this as I’ve told them in the hopes of improving their bad behavior. It hasn’t.”
The Return (The Original Sinners) Page 3
