The Last Good Knight (5 page)

“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 ass, 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 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.”

“We have no proof he isn’t, either.”

“Stop being rational when I’m horny,” she demanded.

“I’m sorry, Mistress,” he said with far more amusement than contrition.

Nora exhaled and shook her head.

“Lance, if we’re working together and not fucking, you have to stop calling me ‘Mistress.’ It’s too much of a turn-on. My name is Nora,” she reminded him.

“Is it?”

“It is and you know it.”

“Then why did that eight feet tall blond guy call you ‘Eleanor’ last night?”

“He’s only six-four. He only seems eight feet tall because his ego is eight feet tall.”

“Who is he?”

“That’s Søren, the priest I told you about.”

“The best sadist in the world? That guy?”

“Him.”

“He’s too pretty. I don’t like pretty boys.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t think he liked you much, either.” Nora tried not to smile but she couldn’t help but enjoy a glimpse of Lance’s possessive streak. Male subs could get very possessive of their Dommes. She knew quite a few male submissive/female Dominant couples that were actually monogamous. Horrifying thought.

“Why did he call you Eleanor?”

“The same reason I call him Blondie and/or Asshole sometimes—because it’s annoying.”

“So Eleanor isn’t your real name?”

“Oh, it is. My friend Griffin told me years ago that he thought ‘Eleanor’ sounded too prissy. He started calling me Nor or Nora. When I became a Dominatrix we used that as my Domme name. Very few of the pros use their real names. Kingsley doesn’t use his real last name. I don’t. None of the subs do, either. Easier to keep a line between the real world and the kink world. Even
Søren
is not Søren’s legal American name.”

“What is his legal American name?”

Nora ran a finger over her lips as if zipping them and tossed the invisible key out the window.

“I see...” Lance said.

“Sorry. Blondie is eight feet of arrogant and annoying, but he’s also pretty important to—” She almost said “me” before catching herself. “Us. The Underground, I mean. Only about three of us know his legal name, the name he pastors under. Helps keep him safe from scandal.”

“A priest fucking a bunch of girls in a kink club probably should cause a scandal.”

“Yes, because the people he ministers to while they’re dying really care who he fucks in his free time.”

“Did I just hit a sore spot?” Lance asked.

“I’m Catholic,” Nora said. “The entire church is a sore spot with me. But, for the record, he doesn’t fuck a bunch of girls in kink clubs. He’s a sadist who plays with masochists but he never has sex with any of them.”

“None of them?”

“Well...” she said. “One of them.”

“Isn’t that against the church’s rules or something?”

“Isn’t it against the Navy’s rules to have gay Navy SEALs?”

“It is.”

“Did you serve with any?”

“Several.”

“Were they bad SEALs?”

“No. They were excellent SEALs and honorable men.”

“You didn’t turn them in to the Navy brass?”

“I see where you’re going with this. I’m not Catholic. I don’t care who he fucks as long as it’s legal and consensual.”

“No one should. He’s the best man on earth. He should be able to sleep with whoever he wants, get married, have kids if he wants them...”

“Do you like kids?” he asked.

“In small doses,” she said. “Why?”

“No reason,” Lance said and she heard a strange note in his voice. “So what’s your agenda for the day?”

Nora sensed he was attempting to change the subject. She let him.

“My agenda is not pissing off my clients. I see very wealthy and important men.”

“Kingsley told me that.”

“Yes, and they like their privacy. They aren’t going to be happy to have some man they’ve never met before or heard of hanging around. Let me do the talking. You act mute.”

“My lips are sealed, Mistress...I mean, Nora.”

“Better.”

“Thank you. Who’s on deck?” Lance asked as they turned into a residential neighborhood.

“First up today is the right Honorable Judge Melvin P. Bollingen.”

“A judge?”

“Sixty-two years old. Foot fetishist. Absolutely adorable. He looks like a wizard when he has his robes on.”

“Where are you meeting Gandalf?”

“His house. Every Saturday at noon. Standing appointment. Not literally. I sit down so he can play with my feet.”

“What kind of judge is he? Retired, I guess?”

Nora turned down the judge’s street.

“Nope. Still active. He’s some family court bigwig.”

“Family court?” Lance repeated the words with some interest. “Does he—”

“Hold that thought. I have to run,” she said, parking on a side street two houses down from his brownstone. She started to open the car door but Lance grabbed her arm.

“Whoa there. You can’t go without me. I’m not being paid to stay in the car.”

“Lance...listen to me. I have scary clients, and I have not-scary clients. Judge B. is of the not-scary variety. There are day-old kittens more threatening than he is. I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to do my job and my job is to stick by you.”

“I’m in too much of a hurry to argue with you or make the obvious ‘stick’ joke. Come on. You can hang with Mrs. B. while I’m working.” Nora walked briskly to the front door, Lance right behind her.

“That’s fine,” Lance said as Nora rang the bell. “Wait...Mrs. B.?”

The door opened before Nora could answer. A sweet older lady in an apron greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

“Hi, Mrs. B. I’m sorry if I’m late. Rough weekend.”

“It’s fine, dear,” she said. “We aren’t doing anything special today. Who’s your friend?”

“This is Lance. Be nice to him. He’s a veteran,” she said in a stage whisper and Mrs. B. gave Lance an approving look. “He’s babysitting me today. Would you mind babysitting him while I’m upstairs with the judge?”

“What branch of the service, young man?” Mrs. B. asked Lance.

“The Navy, ma’am.”

“Oh, he called me ‘ma’am,’” Mrs. B. said to Nora. “I like him already. He can help with my cookies any day.”

Nora slapped Lance on the arm. “Go on with Mrs. B. there, seaman. Those cookies won’t bake themselves.”

Before Lance could protest, Nora skipped up the stairs to the guest bedroom where she and the judge always played together. Mrs. B., his wife of forty years, was one of the rare understanding types. She’d been the object of his foot fetishism from day one of their marriage. She could hardly complain about getting weekly foot rubs even if they did culminate in him ejaculating on her ankles. Not knowing any differently, the virginal new bride had assumed this was what all husbands liked to do and had gamely played along. It seemed to work as they had four children and nine grandchildren and were still very much in love. In the past few years, however, Mrs. B. had been stricken with bunions and arthritis and hated having her aching feet touched. Hiring Nora had been Mrs. B.’s idea, not the judge’s, although the right Honorable Melvin P. Bollingen hadn’t put up much of a fight, especially after seeing Nora in her short skirt and her strappy stiletto heels.

She knocked on the guest bedroom door and didn’t wait for answer before entering.

“Have you missed me?” she asked as she let the judge give her a kiss on the cheek.

“I have. I even got you a present, Miss Nora.” Judge Bollingen squeezed her hand with avuncular affection as Nora took a seat in the large burgundy armchair. She never made the judge call her Mistress, and the
Miss Nora
rolled off his tongue so naturally, she’d never dreamt of correcting him. The judge had no desire to be dominated in the way Lance did and certainly had no interest in pain. His foot fetish he’d described as a “brain itch” he needed to scratch once a week. Once scratched, it disappeared for days at a time and let him go about his life.

“It’s not even my birthday,” she said as she extended her leg and put her right foot on his thigh. The judge ran his hands down the top of her foot to her toes and all over her high heel. With the utmost care, he unbuckled the many straps on her elaborately laced shoes.

“I couldn’t resist when I saw it in the store. Made me think of you the moment I set eyes on it. I think it’s supposed to be for equestrians.” The white-haired and smiling judge pulled a long velvet box out from under the chair and handed it to Nora. She opened it and found a silver ankle bracelet inside with a riding crop charm attached.

Laughing, she pulled it from the box.