The Prince

“Kingsley was right. I should have kept you as just a paycheck.”

With a well-placed swat of her riding crop, she hit Talel squarely in the testicles with brute force. He lay on the floor in the fetal position, writhing. He’d be down there for the next hour or two.

Good.

All the way back to The Rails, Nora’s conscience gnawed at her—a strange sensation, as up to that point she hadn’t been entirely certain she had a conscience. What else could she have done? she asked herself over and over again. Turn in Talel? He’d be fined for killing his horse and perhaps banned from Thoroughbred racing. Proving intent to commit fraud would be a case no one would bother making, especially since admitting to electrocuting Spanks for Nothing would mean the insurance claim was null and void, anyway. A slap on the wrist…no more. What she’d done to him had been a far more severe punishment than any racing commission could impose on him. Kingsley Edge had a far reach. Banning Talel from the Underground meant no legitimate establishment of kink would ever let him through their doors again. For a man like Talel who couldn’t be himself in his world, cutting him out of hers was akin to a death sentence—a spiritual one, at least. She’d felt something like it during her year in hiding after leaving Søren. For those like her and Talel, their sexuality was almost a sixth sense. Being cast out from their dark paradise would be like losing one’s sight or hearing. Without Søren, without the Underground, Nora had felt blind for a year. Her eyes hadn’t worked. As deeply as she grieved, she hadn’t been able to cry.

Nora returned to The Rails. Instead of driving straight to the guesthouse, she went to the main house, knocked politely on the door and waited. Wesley’s father himself opened the door.

“Weird,” Nora said the second she saw him.

“Good morning to you, too, young lady,” Mr. Railey said with confusion, but not his usual animosity.

“I’m sorry. Just thought you’d have a housekeeper or secretary or something to answer the door.”

“Don’t need one. Learned how to open a door a long time ago. Never forgot how.”

Nora laughed. “It’s just like riding a bike, I guess. Never learned that, though.”

“You don’t know how to ride a bike?”

“Do motorcycles count?”

“No, they do not.”

Nora sighed. “Damn. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Mr. Railey stared at her before taking a step back and ushering her into the house.

“Ohh…beautiful. Nice chandelier.”

“Thank you. It’s from Versailles,” he said as she followed him upstairs.

“I thought it was pronounced Ver-sayles?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her and raised his eyebrow.

“Oh,” Nora said, wincing. “The real Versailles.”

“That’s a fact. Now what can I do for you?” Mr. Railey asked as they entered what had to be his personal office. He waved at a chair as he sat behind his desk.

“Nice house,” she said, making the understatement of the century.

“We try to keep it up.”

“So far so good.” Nora glanced around the office and took in the various photographs of horses draped in blankets of roses. So many of the pictures included Wesley. In four feet of wall he aged from eight to eighteen. He got taller, got broader, but those eyes of his never changed—sweet and innocent in every last photo.

“I suppose asking you for a favor is a bit presumptuous of me,” she began without further preamble. “But I promised I would do it. And keeping promises is, for me, incredibly uncomfortable. I treat them like Band-Aids and let them rip.”

“A good philosophy, I suppose.” He leaned back in his chair and studied her. “Go on.”

“Talel killed his horse. He admitted it to me. Wasn’t an accident. He’s getting out of racing for good and selling all his horses. Getting him in trouble with the racing commission won’t do any good and would just cause a lot of trouble where none needs to be. Would you be willing to make a phone call or two to get the investigation called off?”

“Why would we call the investigation off? And why would you want them to?”

“Talel is an old, dear friend of mine. And he’s in some trouble. Serious, dangerous trouble that could get him killed. And that trouble will go away if we all pretend Spanks for Nothing died by accident and no other reason. Horses die pretty easily, right?”

“On occasion. They’re fragile animals.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Sons are fragile, as well.”

“I’ve noticed that, too.”

Nora stopped talking. She had a feeling saying another word would work against her cause. Instead of speaking, she merely braced herself for the inevitable.

“I don’t like you, Miss Sutherlin.” Mr. Railey looked her dead in the eyes as he said the words. Nora kept silent, neither questioning nor complimenting his taste in women. “But I don’t hate you.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” she said, and closed her mouth again.

“You did something last night I’d never seen before. That took nerves of steel and an iron will to get our Track Beauty back on her feet again. I’ve registered Bastinado’s name already. And I haven’t said a word to my wife about how close we came to losing her four-legged baby.”

“I’m glad everything turned out okay.” Nora clenched her jaw. This not saying everything she wanted to say was more painful than getting flogged. Would this be life at The Rails? Behaving herself? Not talking back? Not making waves or causing trouble? Perhaps it really was for the best that