He walked out of Fuller’s building and to his car. Nothing productive had come from his meeting with Fuller. No secrets were uncovered. No truths revealed. And yet…
Fuller was scared and Kingsley had seen it. Fear meant one thing only—Fuller did have something to hide. And Kingsley was going to find it.
But something else had come of the meeting. Kingsley had a leak in his personal security. Five people had his private line number. Five suspects. Sam, Blaise and Søren were out. Sam hated the Fullers more than he did. Blaise was actively campaigning against them. And Søren wouldn’t betray Kingsley to Fuller if someone put a gun to his head.
So that left his lawyer and his friend on the force. Kingsley would give them both a call very soon.
But not right now. He had better things to do with his time. And if not better, than certainly more enjoyable.
He made it to Wakefield an hour before the game started and found Søren working in his office. He had his collar and clerics on and had stacks of books piled high on the desk, note cards marking pages. The only photograph in the office was on Søren’s desk—him in his white vestments standing next to a lovely blonde woman gazing on him adoringly. Søren and his mother on the day of his ordination. A small but elegant office. A sacred space devoted to learning and prayer. It couldn’t have been more different than Fuller’s. Not a golf club in sight.
“If you came for confession,” Søren said, glancing up at him from his notes, “do it now. I will not be in a state of grace after this game if we lose.”
“We aren’t going to lose.”
“Do you know what their pastor said to me after the last game? He said their team was predestined to win. Now I understand how holy wars get started.”
Kingsley laughed and sat in the chair opposite Søren’s desk.
“Can I ask you a stupid question?” Kingsley asked.
“You just did,” Søren said, making a note on a white card.
Kingsley paused and laughed.
“What?” Søren glanced up from his writing.
“Déjà vu. Anyway, you didn’t give anyone my private phone number, did you? Write it down? Give it to your secretary?”
“No. I have it memorized, and I’d never tell anyone unless it was a life-and-death situation. Why?”
“No reason. Are you ready to go?” Kingsley asked. “We should warm up.”
“I suppose. It’ll be a better use of my time than this.” Søren slipped his legal pad into his top desk drawer.
“What are you working on?”
“My Ph.D. dissertation.”
“I can think of a nearly infinite number of things that would be better uses of your time. And surprisingly, only half of them are sexual.”
“Only half ?”
“Two-thirds,” Kingsley said. “Let’s go.”
“Going,” Søren said. “I need to stop by the house and change. I’ll meet you at the field.”
“Do you have to wear the collar on Saturdays, too?”
“No. But it’s for the best I do.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Eleanor’s here today, and I need as much armor as possible around her.”
“She’s here?” Kingsley sat up straighter.
“No.”
“You just said—”
“Pretend I didn’t.”
“Can I see her?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“She’s busy, and I don’t want you distracting her.”
“She’s sixteen. What’s she doing that’s so important?”
“Youth group.”
“Is that as horrible as it sounds?”
“We have a seminarian here today. He’s speaking to a group of teenagers about discerning God’s will in their life. Eleanor’s under orders to pay very close attention.”
“You ordered your teenage girlfriend to go to youth group on a Saturday morning during summer break?”
Søren smiled fiendishly as he stood up and came around his desk.
“Sometimes the depths of my sadism surprises even me.”
“That makes one of us,” Kingsley said, standing to leave the office.
Søren replied with a swift slap to the center of Kingsley’s back, making hard quick contact with a cluster of welts.
A f linch and gasp gave it away, and Kingsley had to grab the door frame to steady himself as pain washed over him.
“I remember that sound,” Søren said, shutting his office door and locking it.
“What are you—”
“Hold still.”
He hadn’t belonged to Søren in eleven years, but an order was an order. Søren had said, “hold still.” Kingsley held still.
Søren grasped the bottom of Kingsley’s T-shirt and pulled it up and off of him. Kingsley heard a whistle of appreciation.
“Jealous?” Kingsley asked.
“Only impressed. You have bruises on top of bruises. Who did the work?”
“No one you know.”
“What made these?” Søren traced half circles on Kingsley’s upper back. The light touch on his abraded skin hurt enough to arouse him. He had to breathe to avoid getting a massive erection in a priest’s office. He wasn’t Catholic, but he assumed that was frowned upon.
Then again, maybe not.
“Electric cable looped in half,” Kingsley said. “Feels like getting punched by fire.”
“No cuts.”
“Not with her. She prefers impact-play. A little candle-wax when she’s in the mood.”
“She?”
“She’s a dominatrix I know.”
“You know her intimately,” Søren said, his voice low. The skin on Kingsley’s back was so sensitive he could feel the breath from Søren’s words brushing over his wounds.
“Very intimately. We’re sleeping together.” Kingsley turned around and showed Søren the welts on his chest.
“Good.”
“Good?” Kingsley repeated, playfully aghast. “Did a priest just tell me it’s good I’m engaging in sadomasochism and fornication?”
“I took the vow of celibacy, not you. And I’m pleased to hear you’re feeling more yourself again. I can’t imagine you being content to only top.”
“You should meet her. You two can talk shop.”
“Did you have a f lashback with her?”
“A few times,” he confessed, still embarrassed about the one he’d had in front of Søren. “They’ve mostly stopped. Not completely, but they aren’t stopping me anymore.”
Søren pressed the f lat of his hand into the knot of welts on Kingsley’s rib cage. He winced and inhaled sharply.
“It hurts coming back to life,” Søren said. “It’s a brutal, dirty business. Paddles on the chest pushing electric current into the dead heart, Dr. Frankenstein shooting lightning through his monster’s corpse. Life is a force so strong it can blow a stone off a tomb. It’s never easy—resurrection. It’s violent and it hurts.”
“It’s better than the alternative, non?” Kingsley asked, turning around to face Søren. He pulled his shirt down. “Staying dead?”
“It’s good to have you back.”
“I’ve missed me,” Kingsley said.
“You were always very fond of yourself.”
“I charmed the pants off of me,” Kingsley said as they walked out of Søren’s office.
“I’ll blame you if we lose today because you’re bruised all over. There will be consequences, possible eternal.”
“We aren’t going to lose. Go, change. I’ll meet you at the f ield.”
When Søren was gone, Kingsley considered heading straight to the field. He considered it for one split second before deciding on an entirely different course of action.
Somewhere in this church was Søren’s Virgin Queen. And Kingsley was going to see her.
Once outside the sanctuary Kingsley poked around until he found the breezeway that led to the attached annex. Once inside the annex, he heard
voices—loud, obnoxious voices— and knew there were teenagers ahead. He found a door and peeked inside. About two dozen teenagers ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen sat in folding chairs arrayed in a semicircle around a very young and scared-looking man. Søren had called the man a seminarian, so he must have been a priestin-training. Apparently his training included being subjected to a trial by fire. Kingsley nudged the door open a little wider and heard the seminarian attempting to talk over the din of three teenage boys who seemed determined to punish him for ruining their Saturday.
Behind the three rowdy boys sat a girl in black combat boots, a ratty denim skirt and a black low-cut shirt. She ran her fingers through her mass of wavy black hair and stretched luxuriously in her seat with the decadent unapologetic laziness of a cat that’d been forced out of bed too early. Had to be her, right? All the other girls looked like girls. This girl looked like a woman. She had a woman’s curves, a woman’s confidence and a woman’s utter boredom with the boys who surrounded her. She wore gobs of black eyeliner, which gave her eyes a smoky, seductive look, and Kingsley couldn’t stop staring at her.
He’d already mentally put the girl in his bed and made her come five times before he discerned that an argument had broken out in the room. One of the boys, a tall skinny punk in a Terminator 2 T-shirt, was telling the seminarian that there was no reason for him to listen to a man who was never going to get married, have kids and wasn’t even a real priest yet. What did he know about God’s plan for his life or anyone else’s? And the girl, that strange seductive girl with the creamy skin, was politely telling the Terminator to shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. The Terminator ignored Combat Boots in favor of standing to give a high five to a boy two seats over.
That was a mistake.
Combat Boots gracefully raised her foot, hooked an ankle around the leg of the chair and swept it to the side as the Terminator went to sit down again.
With his chair gone, the boy hit the f loor and landed on his back. He coughed as if the impact had knocked the wind right out of his lungs. Everyone gasped in shock, everyone but Combat Boots. She stretched out her legs and rested her feet on the center of the boy’s chest. She leaned forward and smiled down at the now defeated Terminator.
“God’s plan for your life is for you to shut the fuck up.” Hers was a throaty voice thick as honey and drugging as wine. Sitting back, Combat Boots pointed at the stunned young seminarian and crossed her legs. She made certain to bounce her feet a time or two on the boy’s chest. “You have our attention now.”
If he’d landed a little harder, the boy might have cracked his skull on the hard f loor. This possibility didn’t seem to bother Combat Boots in the least. She gave the boy on the f loor a smile entirely devoid of apology or remorse.
“You little sociopath,” Kingsley said under his breath. Not even Søren was so blithe about inf licting pain as this girl. “Fuck me until I forget I’m French.”
There was no way, none, not a chance in heaven, hell or the purgatory they were living in right now that girl was a submissive. Søren had fallen in love with a baby domme who had a sadistic streak in her as wide as her smile. This girl would have men at her feet all her life by her will or theirs and whether they liked it or not.
Most of them would like it.
He walked—fast—away from her. If Søren were smart, he’d do the same. But no one in love was ever very smart.
Kingsley made it to the field before Søren did, but when Søren arrived, Kingsley couldn’t stop smiling.
“What are you laughing at?” Søren asked as they ran laps around the field to warm up.
“I don’t think you want to know…”
Even in the heat with the sun beating down on them, Kingsley couldn’t suppress his grin.
“I think I do. In fact, I’m certain I do.”
“If you must know, I’m starting to believe in God,” Kingsley said.
“What brought this on?”
“I foresee a miracle occurring in the future.”
“Which is?”
“You,” Kingsley said as the team gathered on the sideline. “Being humbled.”
“And what makes you say that?” Søren asked, sounding both imperious and skeptical.
Kingsley only smiled on and said three words.
“I met Eleanor.”
29
August “TELL ME TO CLOSE MY EYES AND THINK OF EN gland,” Kingsley said to Sam when she walked into the office holding a Styrofoam bowl in her hand.
“I’ve been to England. Great country, nice people. I tried to get Princess Di in bed.” She sat on his desk in front of him and took a bite of whatever it was in the bowl.
“How did that work out for you?” he asked.
“My attempted seduction involved me staring longingly at Buckingham Palace until a man in a funny hat politely told me to move along. Do I want to know why you’re closing your eyes and thinking of England?” she asked, taking another bite from her bowl.
“I think I have to seduce Lucy Fuller.”
Sam screwed up her face in disgust.
“Oh, God, don’t do that,” she said. “There has to be a better way. I have to go puke up my ice cream now.” She set the bowl on his desk in disgust.
“If I fuck her and get it on tape, I can use it as leverage to get Fuller to sell me his building.”
“She’s horrible, King.”
“I know. She’s got a new book coming out about how to turn your gay children straight. Forced fasting and prayer vigils. And if that doesn’t work—exorcism.”
“I don’t think your dick is going to solve this problem,” Sam said.
“Why not? It solves all my other problems.”
“Can’t you trick Fuller into committing a crime and get it on tape?”
“That’s entrapment. That can blow back on us. What we need is a real crime. A scandal. A secret. He has to have a secret.”
“I’m sure he does,” Sam said. “And you’ll find it. You stick to Reverend Fuller.” She picked up her bowl again, held out her spoon, and Kingsley took a bite. He tried for a second bite but Sam wouldn’t give it up. “I’ll stick to Lucy Fuller. And this ice cream. I should have gotten the bigger size.”
“Why are you so hungry today?”
“It’s a secret.”
“I’m in the business of secrets.”
Sam narrowed her eyes at him and then took a seat in Kingsley’s lap.
With unabashed pleasure he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight to him. She wore a new suit today—tight tailored white blouse, skinny tie, black trousers and suspenders.
“You want to know my secret?” she whispered in his ear. “I am bleeding like a stuck pig.”
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