Author: Tiffany Reisz

Her pupils widened. She swallowed audibly.

“Oui, monsieur,” she whispered.

“Bon. Now allow me to simply tighten this a bit.”

Kingsley bound her wrists to the bedpost in front of her and shortened the rope that connected her neck to her ankle by a few inches. So far he could tell her boasts had been honest. Her leg stayed up, high and bent, and her breathing remained unconstricted. Of course, once he started fucking her, she might lose her concentration.

He did love this game.

From the bedside table, he pulled out his lubricant and a condom. Her fear and her arousal mingled so powerfully he could smell it from three feet away. Standing behind her, he started to open his pants.

The door to Kingsley’s bedroom opened and Søren strode inside, glanced at them with only the merest arch of an eyebrow before sitting down in the armchair by Kingsley’s bed and throwing his long legs up onto the covers, shoes and all.

“We need to talk.”

Kingsley leveled a stare at Søren that would have sent any submissive at The 8th Circle into paroxysms of panic. Søren only stared back without blinking.

With a sigh of frustration, Kingsley unknotted the ropes, slapped the girl on her bottom and uttered a quick, angry, “Out.”

“But…” She looked first at him, then at Søren, who, thankfully, had come to the town house incognito tonight. No collar. He wore only a black T-shirt, black pants and he carried his black motorcycle helmet in his hand.

“Out,” Søren repeated, and this time she listened. Quickly, she gathered her clothes off the floor and raced from the room. Kingsley started to shut the door behind her, but his second favorite girl, Sadie, slipped inside and sat at his feet.

“You’ve never heard of knocking, have you?” Kingsley asked, dropping into French. He grabbed Sadie, his lone female rottweiler, by the collar and shepherded her to the bed. She hopped up nimbly and onto his covers, making herself at home.

Søren smiled and answered in English. “I’ve heard rumors of knocking. I never believed them.”

“I had a lovely evening planned.”

“Now you have a new plan. I called. Irena answered, not Juliette.”

“Juliette is gone.” Kingsley sat on the bed next to Sadie and scratched her ears.

“Gone. Where has she gone?”

“Haiti. She left today.” He kept scratching Sadie, refusing to meet Søren’s gaze.

“You never let Juliette go to Haiti alone.”

Kingsley raised his chin. “Special circumstances.”

“How special?” Søren pulled his legs off the bed and set his feet on the floor. With one movement Søren signaled their conversation had ceased to be of the casual variety.

“I saw a ghost.”

Søren raised his hand and mindlessly rubbed his bottom lip with the tip of his thumb. Kingsley bit his own bottom lip in a sympathetic response. Those lips…both cruel and sensual…the damage they’d done to him he couldn’t even begin to calculate. And yet he craved them as much now as he had a lifetime ago.

“I don’t believe in ghosts and neither should you, Kingsley.”

“Why not? I’ve been in love with a ghost for thirty years.” Kingsley strolled over to the armchair and sat on the ottoman between the other man’s knees.

Søren narrowed his eyes at him. “The body’s not even cold yet. Eleanor’s been gone one day and you’re already trying to get me into bed again?”

“Again?” Kingsley laughed and rolled his eyes. “Always. Are you surprised?”

Søren shrugged. “Not really. Tell me about your ghost.”

On the nightstand lay a folder. Almost reluctantly, he picked it up and carried it over.

Søren eyed him for a moment before taking the black file folder from him and opening it. He studied the contents before closing the file again and looking back at Kingsley.

“It’s us at Saint Ignatius. Eleanor has a copy of this photograph. What of it?”

Kingsley took the file and opened it. Thirty years disappeared in that foot of space between his eyes and the photograph he gazed at. Thirty years gone in a heartbeat.

Kingsley still remembered the day it was taken. His closest friend at St. Ignatius, a native Mainer named Christian, had gotten a camera for Christmas and decided some day he would work for National Geographic. The first animals he’d stalked with his lens were his fellow students. That day, the day the photo had been taken, Kingsley and Søren had disappeared into the woods by the school and had argued. Underneath his school uniform Kingsley’s body had sported bruises and welts over nearly every inch of his back and thighs. The only marks visible were two small fingertip-shaped bruises that remained on his neck from the act that had ended the fight.

“I have a copy of the photograph, too,” Kingsley confessed. “I’ve kept it all my life.”

“And?” Søren crossed his ankle over his knee and waited.

“And…” Kingsley slid the photo out of the file and turned it over. On the back someone had inked their initials. The white of the celluloid had faded and yellowed. “This isn’t my copy. This is the original.”

Søren narrowed his eyes at Kingsley. “The original?”

Kingsley nodded. “I received this in the mail yesterday. No note. No letter. No return address on the envelope. The photograph in the folder and nothing else.”

Søren said nothing for a moment. Kingsley waited.

“Postmark?”

“New Hampshire—your home sweet home.”

Søren came slowly to his feet and walked to the window. Pushing back the curtains, he gazed out onto the Manhattan skyline. Kingsley would have written the man a check for a million dollars then and there to know what he was thinking. But he knew Søren too well. Money meant nothing to him. Secrets were a far dearer currency.

“It isn’t Elizabeth,” Søren said. Kingsley stood next to him and watched his gray eyes watch the city.

“Are you certain of that?”

“What possible motive would she have for this? For stealing Eleanor’s file from your office? For sending you that photograph?”

“You know Elizabeth better than I. She’s devoted her whole life to helping abused children.”

“And?”

“You and your Little One? How would she feel if she learned about you two?”

“Eleanor is thirty-four.”

“She wasn’t thirty-four when you fell in love with her. I know you did nothing wrong with her. I know you kept her safe and protected her even from yourself, even when your own pet begged you not to. But would Elizabeth see it that way?”

Søren exhaled and furrowed his brow.

“No. No, Elizabeth would not. She’d assume the worst, assume I was like our father.”

“Your sister is even more damaged than you are, Père

Stearns. She would destroy you first and not even bother to ask questions later.”

“Possibly. But she certainly wouldn’t go to these lengths to do it, not when a phone call would suffice.”

“Elizabeth would do everything in her power to destroy you if she knew about you and your pet. But yes, this doesn’t seem to be her style. Or your pet’s.” When he said “pet” Sadie lifted her massive head and stared at him with worshipful devotion. If only all the women in his world were so easy to control…

Kingsley glanced at the photograph one more time. Elizabeth, Søren’s sister…a beautiful woman even at age forty-eight. Beautiful but broken. No, far more than broken—shattered. Kingsley had been in her presence only a few times, and he’d met French soldiers—war veterans, men who’d liberated death camps and watched the Nazis put Paris under their heels—with fewer ghosts in their eyes than Søren’s sister. If she’d merely been raped by her father as a child, she might have survived without the damage she carried inside her. But she’d turned her darkness onto her own brother. When she’d ceased to be a victim and become a perpetrator herself…there was no telling what such a broken soul was capable of. Kingsley knew broken souls—he possessed one of his own, after all.

“Who else then?” he asked, sliding between the window and Søren. Søren glared down at him. Kingsley only grinned and waited for him to move. He didn’t.

Søren stood in silence. Kingsley knew not to speak, knew not to rush the answer. It would come in time. Patience. Søren always rewarded patience. Eleanor had learned that as a girl. Had she tried to force his hand, Søren would have walked away from his obsession with her. She seduced and teased, challenged and defied, but all the while she waited, wanting answers but never demanding them. Until the day Søren told her everything and gave her everything. And then she’d had the audacity to walk away from it all. Søren laid out feasts for her that she merely picked at, while Kingsley lapped up the crumbs that fell to the floor.

“It’s not Elizabeth,” Søren said again. “But she might know something. After all, Lennox is entirely populated by Elizabeth and her two children. If it was postmarked from there, then…”

“Then what, mon père?”

Kingsley waited, hoping Søren would say exactly what he wanted him to say. Eleanor gone. Juliette gone. Just the two of them once more. It could be perfect again, like it was when they were boys in school together. If only Søren would say what he needed him to say.

“Then we should go talk to her—you and I.”

Kingsley nodded. “Oui.”

Perfect.

SOUTH

At moments like these Wesley wished he was as fluent in profanity as Nora. A good “fuck” would have summed up his feelings pretty well right now. From the look on his father’s face Wesley could tell that this wasn’t the first time he’d heard the name Nora Sutherlin. But how did his dad know who she was? Two types of people knew that—erotica readers and kinky people. Wes didn’t like to think his father fell into either of those camps.

“Um…Dad?”

“J.W....where’s Bridget?”

Wesley glanced down at Nora. He hadn’t quite told her about Bridget yet.

“I don’t know. At her house, I guess. We broke up.”

Wesley’s father gave him that look—that skeptical, eyebrow-half-cocked look that never boded well for anybody on the receiving end.

“When? You two were out here on the porch a week ago, laughing so loud I thought I’d have to turn the garden hose on you both to cool you down.”

Wincing, Wesley immediately stopped looking at Nora. Last thing he wanted was to see the expression on her face at that piece of news. But she must have taken it well, for Wesley felt her palm on his lower back. She gave him a quick pat before sliding her hand into the rear pocket of his jeans. As much as he liked having her hand on his Levi’s, her groping his ass might not be the best way to say hi to Dad tonight, given the mood he was in.

“We broke up after that. It wasn’t working. It—”

“Mr. Railey, I’m sure this is kind of a shock to you, me showing up out of nowhere,” Nora said, pulling her hand away from Wesley and taking a step forward. “The whole thing’s something of a shock to me, too. But Wes and I have known each other a long time. And—”

“My son is twenty years old, Miss Sutherlin. He hasn’t known anybody for a long time.”

Wesley watched Nora plaster a smile on her face. He’d seen that smile before. She usually used it on men she was trying to con into performing for her. That smile had gotten her out of more speeding tickets than Wesley could count—two on this trip alone. He wished he could communicate telepathically with Nora. The first thing he’d tell her would be stop smiling. Trust me on this.