The Mistress (24 page)

“He said don’t underestimate you.”

“Good advice.”

“We took it.”

The world went black.

26

THE KING

K
ingsley parked the car far from the house and walked silently through the woods, moving in a different direction than he’d gone before. They had come this way, Marie-Laure and whatever crew she’d brought with her. He saw the troubled earth beneath his feet, the footprints in the marshy soil. She would have two men with her at least. Maybe three. Not much more. She’d need to pack light and take as few risks as possible. The more people involved, the more danger of one fucking something up or turning on her. Less was more in certain operations. Back in his days working for the government, when he was sent on a mission alone, he knew that was when the stakes were the highest. And they couldn’t get any higher than this.

So he went alone.

Upon reaching the edge of the woods he paused. He’d have to cross an acre of open lawn to get to the house. Best to stay back and avoid detection. He waited for a wind to come through. When it did and the trees rustled, he slung his rifle across his back, climbed a tree and perched on a heavy branch. With binoculars he surveyed the house. One window and one window alone was illuminated from within—a bedroom on the second floor. Marie-Laure could have been a world-class sadist herself. She certainly had the mindfuck mastered. She taunted them by giving a hint to her location and yet demanded they not come unless they wanted to die.

No one seemed to be outside. He surveyed every inch of ground and saw no one on patrol. They were inside, all of them. Though God only knew where in that massive house. Nora had been the target, the one taken. Wherever Nora was, that’s where Marie-Laure would be. There would be a guard inside the room most likely, but there was no way he could get a shot off from here. Not unless they all conveniently showed up in one room and decided to stand at the window. He had to go in.

The wind rustled again and Kingsley dropped back to the ground. On the darkest edge of the woods, he took a deep breath, and jogged across the open field to the house. He didn’t sprint—too dangerous. He had to at least go slow enough to see where he stepped. He reached the house and pressed his back to the outer wall under the west side where he could remain hidden even from moonlight. Had this been his mission, Kingsley would have contracted a thief to disable all the alarms, the motion-sensor lights. Seems he and Marie-Laure thought alike.

Now at the house, Kingsley remembered Søren’s instructions.

There’s a window by the servants’ entrance. It will probably be the safest way in. Once through the window you’ll be in a butler’s pantry that no one uses anymore. The entrance to the servants’ hallway is outside the pantry. It runs behind the bedrooms on the second floor. There aren’t entrances into every room but most of them. At the very least you should be able to hear them, hear where they’re hiding her.

Kingsley had asked him if he was sure. A servants’ hallway could be the miracle they needed. If he could even hear into the rooms without them knowing he was there, he’d have the advantage.

I’m certain. The servants never used the halls. But Elizabeth and I did. We hid in those hallways when the servants were about.

Kingsley had left his rifle in the woods. It would be useless at close quarters. He’d strapped several handguns to himself when he’d left the car. He prayed he wouldn’t have to use them. The first shot fired would kill one of them. The second shot fired would kill Nora.

Kingsley used a corner of his shirt and brute force to break the lock on the window. Without hesitating or pausing to look around, Kingsley dropped into the butler’s pantry. The stairway was not much wider than the span of his shoulders and the hall only wide enough for one adult at a time. One adult or two children.

Kingsley pulled a penlight from his pocket and flashed it at his feet. He didn’t need to see, only to hear, but if there were rats in the hall, he wanted to be prepared. One stray sound could mean the death of him and Nora both.

No rats in the hall, only dust. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand, trying not to breathe the decaying air.

Every few feet was a narrow door, back entrances into the larger bedrooms. Søren’s father had been some sort of minor aristocracy back in England—a baron with no money and a useless title. But his marriage to millions of American dollars had given him the arrogance of a king. He couldn’t live in a normal mansion. No, he had to have a manor house like the ones he’d coveted in England, complete with servants and their hidden passageways.

Kingsley paused when he saw the floor change color from dark wood to dingy white. He stopped and studied. Nothing but a sheet on the floor. Where had it come from? Then he saw the rust-colored stains on the white sheet—old blood. Kingsley stood up again and stepped over the sheet, leaving it on the floor, the forgotten shadow of a secret game two broken children had once played.

As he moved toward the end of the hall, Kingsley started to hear voices. His heart quickened at the sound even as his feet slowed. When the voices reached the highest volume, he stopped, pressed his ear to the wall and listened.

“I knew immediately. I knew Søren had given him those bruises. They looked like mine. I had to bury my face in the pillow to keep from laughing. And then not long after Kingsley fucked me, Søren kissed me. They had gone to get wine, they’d said. But I didn’t taste wine on Søren’s lips. I tasted Kingsley. I tasted blood.”

Kingsley closed his eyes and listened harder. He knew this story that Nora told—the first night all three of them had spent together. Why was she telling it? And to whom?

“Whose blood was it?” came a voice Kingsley hadn’t heard in thirty years but he still knew as well as his own. Light, feminine, forever flirtatious...the accent was mostly gone, however. She’d been living elsewhere for decades. Where? Australia possibly, the perfect place for a fugitive to flee and start a new life. Perhaps South America. With her olive skin she could blend in easily with the Latin population. She could have gone anywhere but France, where Kingsley had fled to, or Italy, where Søren had gone to school after Saint Ignatius.

“Kingsley’s, I assume. I didn’t see a bite mark on Søren’s lip but there was one on Kingsley’s back.”

“My brother’s blood on my husband’s lips...fitting. And my blood on their hands.”

“Are you going to keep interrupting or are you going to let me finish the story? You’re the one making me tell them. So do you want to hear it or not?”

“Carry on...by all means, please.”

So that was it. Marie-Laure was forcing Nora to tell stories of their life. At least that was a game Nora could play and win. She could stay alive a thousand nights from the power of her stories alone.

He closed his eyes and listened to Nora’s story, to Marie-Laure’s questions that interrupted her at every turn. Strange to hear about that night in Nora’s voice. He and she never spoke of it. After all, she belonged to Søren and it was Søren who controlled the flow of information, what secrets his Little One was allowed to know and not know. Kingsley had known a secret about Eleanor that he kept from her, as well. Even as young as fifteen, sixteen, he’d seen the signs of it. He tried to tell Søren but Søren would have nothing of it. He’d forbidden Kingsley from telling Eleanor what he suspected.

If she is, she’ll figure it out for herself,
Søren had said, putting his foot down.

There is no “if,”
mon ami.
It does take one to know one, and I know what she is. Your pet is no submissive, and you’re lying to yourself if you think she is.

You’re trying to define the indefinable. She is who she is.

You’re trying to put a collar on a tiger. It won’t turn it into a house cat.

Why do you think I love her so much?

And you call me a masochist.

If she is what you say she is...we’ll cross the bridge when we come to it.

She’ll cross that bridge when she runs from you. Then she’ll burn the bridge behind her and leave you on the other side.

Then it’s a good thing I know how to swim.

Swim? As far as she’ll run from you and as fast, pray you learn to fly.

It had been a dream of theirs when they were boys in school. A dream to find a girl wilder than the two of them together. But had it been a dream? Or a nightmare? No true Dominant could submit forever to chains. Kingsley knew a Dominant when he saw one, and he saw one the second he saw young Eleanor Schreiber for the first time. A sixteen-year-old girl who’d made even him nervous? At age eighteen he’d taken her to her first S&M club. Now that had been true love. He’d never seen anyone’s pupils dilate like that, with such intense immediate desire. Before them a woman stood strapped to a Saint Andrew’s Cross. Behind her a man whipped her with a singletail, a flogger, a cane.

I want to do that, Kingsley,
Eleanor had said, a wild-eyed Cheshire cat smile spreading across her face.

But which one? The girl on the cross, or the man with the whip?

All of it.

No submissive, that one. A switch, perhaps. Maybe something more.

He kept listening to the story Nora told. She remembered the night as well as he did. It had been such a relief to finally get his hands on her. Søren had kept her to himself for months and Kingsley had started to fear the worst—that he would lose Søren to her completely. Monogamy was the enemy of their kind. He’d seen it over and over again, a Dominant and his submissive falling in love, getting married, falling prey to the pressures of society to give up the lifestyle that had brought them together. Søren couldn’t give it up, thankfully. He needed to give pain like he needed air to breathe. But Kingsley couldn’t bear the thought of Søren loving her so much that he kept her to himself. Kingsley devoured Eleanor that first night she spent in his bed. He’d rejoiced every time he fucked her. That Søren allowed Kingsley to be with her meant something, meant Søren deemed him worthy. It wasn’t the love that he craved, but it was enough. And truth be told, he’d never had more fun bedding a woman in his life. Not until Juliette.

“Almost nothing scares Søren,” Nora continued. “Only the people he loves being in danger, which is why he let Kingsley go. Being with Kingsley scared even Søren. The last thing he wants is for anything bad to happen to me or King.”

“How convenient, then. I hope he’s terrified right now.”

“I can guarantee he’s never been this scared in his life.”

“Good,” Marie-Laure said, laughing. Kingsley closed his eyes tight. His sister’s laugh...it hadn’t changed at all.

“And he loves Kingsley. Deeply. More than even Kingsley realizes, more than Søren will ever tell him.”

Kingsley’s eyes shot wide open.

“My husband has an interesting way of showing it.”

“It’s the only way he can show it. After our night together, I curled up in Søren’s lap in the back of Kingsley’s Rolls Royce. I asked Søren if he still loved Kingsley. He said yes.”

You still love him, don’t you?

Yes. But you must know it takes nothing away from us, away from my love for you, any more than my love for you takes anything away from what I feel for him. Not that he understands that.

I get it. I do. Does Kingsley know how you still feel?

No. It’s for the best.

You don’t want him to know, do you?

Telling him that I still love him and then refusing to be with him? That’s a sort of sadism even I won’t touch. Please don’t tell him. Even tonight...I went too far.

I won’t tell. I’ll never tell.

It’s better he and I...we should be friends only. It hurts him but it would hurt worse to tell him I love him and still keep myself from him. At least this way perhaps he’ll feel free to find another.

So that was it. The truth. The dark and beautiful truth. Søren still loved him, had always loved him, would always love him. But he’d feared inflicting irreparable harm and so had kept Kingsley at arm’s length all this time. It hurt to know the truth and yet it was the sort of pain he most relished—pain inflicted by love. Now he had the truth in his heart, he’d never felt so free.

“You can’t imagine how hard it is to be a sadist with a conscience,” Nora continued. “Søren worries if he’s with Kingsley he’ll hurt Kingsley. He worries that if he’s with Kingsley he’ll hurt me.”

“He should worry. I’m living proof of that.” Marie-Laure laughed, a cold mocking laugh. He hoped she laughed like that when he put a bullet in her heart. And he would put a bullet in her. All this time he’d known Søren still desired him, still longed to use him as he had during their days in school. He thought the priest held back out of love and loyalty to his Little One. Kingsley never considered Søren didn’t touch him out of love for him, out of fear of harming him beyond what even he could take.

He couldn’t quite believe it and yet he knew Nora didn’t lie. She had no reason to lie and every reason to tell the truth.

Søren loved him. Still loved him. And had loved him all this time. His heart reeled, his head spun. Dreams he thought dead and long-buried came back to life again. Hope resurrected itself. He knew he had to do something, anything, to honor this knowledge.

He’d get Søren’s property back to him. That’s what he would do.

Marie-Laure had chosen her room well. No door from the servants’ passageway led into it.

He retreated down the servants’ hallway and entered the kitchen through the pantry. Upon reaching the hallway, he peered down it, waiting for the right moment to proceed. He pulled his gun from his shoulder holster and checked the clip one last time. Søren had said to do nothing that would put himself into mortal danger, do nothing that would put her into mortal danger. A nice thought but being born gave everyone a death sentence. Why fear the inevitable?

From the end of the hallway he heard a commotion. One man and then another disappeared into the room. Quickly and silently he sprinted down the hall and hid himself outside the door in the shadows. There she was, his sister standing with her back to him. After all this time, she still had the same graceful neck, the same thin dancer’s build. On the floor lay someone, a body. A man stood next to Marie-Laure, his back also to the door, blocking Kingsley’s view.