The Prince

He tensed when they reached the door to the grounds. Søren opened it for them and Kingsley bowed his head in thanks as he walked past. The door shut behind them. They were alone outside under God and all the stars.

“Where are we going?” Kingsley asked as they tread carefully across the cool, dewy grass. Luckily, September in Maine was still warm enough that only their toes would get cold tonight. Kingsley breathed in the night air and tried to memorize the scents on the breeze. Pine…so much pine. Hard to smell anything other than pine. But he could detect a trace of the not-too-distant ocean on the air, and the faraway smoke from someone’s fire. Beautiful, this perfume the night wore—he would remember it always. He told himself that as he followed Søren to the edge of the forest and down a well-trodden path.

“There’s a place I go and read sometimes. You’ll be safe there.”

“You’re concerned about my safety?” Kingsley almost laughed.

Søren paused and turned around. “Of course I am,” he said, and started walking again. “That night…I won’t apologize.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I want…it’s hard to explain what I want.”

“Can you try?”

Søren exhaled and Kingsley winced. He didn’t really care why Søren wanted what he did or why, as long as Kingsley was somewhere in the wanting. But he was curious.

“I need to cause you pain. For years now pain has been the only pleasure for me. Or at least the only way into pleasure. I think what happened when I was younger made it impossible for me to be…normal.”

“Good,” Kingsley said, and meant it. “I spend too much time with normal. I like that you aren’t normal. I like that you want to hurt me. I’ve had so many girls. You can’t believe how many girls I’ve had. Fifty, maybe? Not all girls. Women, too. A teacher once, even. Now, I suppose, two teachers.”

Kingsley grinned as Søren laughed softly.

“I suppose you’ve never been with a girl. Doesn’t matter. You haven’t missed much, really. She lays there and giggles and sighs while you stick it in her. I can do better most nights with my own hand. Only…sometimes, if she’s a little scared of me, or a virgin and very scared of me…then I enjoy it more. That fear—I could drink it.”

“I feel the same,” Søren agreed as he veered off the main track and down a narrower path dense with trees. “But with pain. The thought of doing what you just described with anyone…it leaves me dead inside, cold. I don’t believe I could ever be with anyone like that. Not without hurting them first. But you should know something. I have been with another person.”

“Who was he?” Kingsley winced as he stepped on a sharp rock. Søren glanced over his shoulder with a smile and kept walking. This was it, part of the plan—Kingsley without shoes on a path he’d never walked before. His feet would be bloody by the time they made it to the end. And he knew Søren would grow more and more aroused with every wince and gasp of pain he heard fall from Kingsley’s lips.

Kingsley stopped watching where he stepped and let the forest floor eat his feet.

“It wasn’t a he.”

“A girl? I thought you lived here for years?”

“I’ve been here since I was eleven.”

“Eleven? The only girl I talked to when I was eleven was my own sister.”

Søren paused and turned around. He said nothing, but he didn’t have to.

“Mon Dieu…” Kingsley whispered. “You…and your sister?”

Søren turned back around and resumed walking. “Stop wasting time.”

Despite his rabid curiosity, Kingsley closed his mouth and kept going, wincing with each stick or rock his foot landed on. If they didn’t get there soon, Søren would have to carry him back to the damn school.

The path opened up onto a clearing. A huge flat rock jutted out from the hilly forest, overlooking a steep drop into a valley below. Kingsley set his overnight bag by a spindly tree and stepped onto the stone plateau. The sky exploded with stars all around them. Kingsley walked to the very edge of the cliff until he stood with his toes overhanging the abyss. Stretching out his arms to the left and right as far as he could reach, he gave up, surrendered, let go of himself and let the night have him.

His peaceful surrender lasted as long as it took for Søren to wrap an arm around his chest, drag him back from the edge of the cliff and throw him hard onto the ground. The force of the fall knocked the wind out of his lungs. As Søren stripped him naked, Kingsley could only lie there gasping painfully for breath, like a fish washed up on a sandy beach.

Air. He needed air. The stone beneath his torso felt like an iron lung. He knew tomorrow his back would be a mass of bruises from how forcefully Søren had thrust him to the ground. Tomorrow he’d barely be able to move…if he survived tonight.

“Breathe,” Søren whispered in his ear. Kingsley nodded, still unable to speak.

Søren dipped his head to the center of Kingsley’s chest and kissed him over his racing heart. The touch of Søren’s lips to his bare skin was all he needed. Once more he went calm and slack in Søren’s arms.

“Good. Relax for me.” Søren spoke quietly, almost gently, but Kingsley knew these were orders, not requests, and he sensed the punishment for disobedience would be as severe as the reward for compliance.