The Prince

By midnight they finally returned to Kingsley’s town house. Although Søren hadn’t touched him with anything other than a finger to his lips, Kingsley felt he’d been flogged. Seeing the rock on which his sister had died…sitting in the hermitage where Søren had nearly killed him so many times…being back at the school that had been the home to his greatest heartbreaks…

Kingsley trudged up the stairs. He knew only one thing could help him right now. But it was the one thing denied to him. So he planned on drinking himself into a stupor instead.

Kingsley and Søren walked to his grand bedroom at the end of the hallway on the second floor.

“I’m thinking Amontillado tonight,” Kingsley said as he opened the door to his bedroom. “I have a vintage as old as Poe. It would make him proud to see us drink it.”

Søren stood at the end of Kingsley’s bed, his shoulder against the bedpost, his arms crossed. “Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin when he was twenty-seven. Should we really endeavor to make him proud?”

Kingsley peeled out of his jacket and tossed it on the floor. He couldn’t wait to get back into his normal clothes—his dark gray suit and embroidered vest. His riding boots. His cravat. This Armani nonsense felt like a costume to him. In it he could blend into a crowd of well-heeled businessmen and disappear. Anonymity did not suit him.

“I don’t think either of us has the right to judge Poe. Or anyone. Your Eleanor was only fifteen, remember? And me…we both know my crimes.”

Søren said nothing, merely looked away as Kingsley started to strip off his clothes. He did that always. Even as teenagers. Even when Søren had been inside Kingsley’s body only moments earlier, out of something—discretion, respect, denial, perhaps—Søren always turned away when Kingsley dressed and undressed in his presence. Kingsley had to wonder if he did the same with Eleanor or if he watched her, devouring every second of her naked curves. Kingsley knew he held a privileged position in Søren’s life. Technically, they were related, or had been, by marriage. Søren and Kingsley could spend all the time alone together they desired and no one from outside their world could judge them.

Kingsley pulled his riding boots on, but left his shirt off for a few minutes longer. A childish trick to pull on Søren, but he couldn’t help himself sometimes. Not when the priest stood with his jaw tight and his eyes looking anywhere but at Kingsley.

“Are you staying?” Kingsley asked as he moved to stand directly in front of Søren, trousers and riding boots on and nothing else. Usually he appreciated when the many men and women who visited his bedroom didn’t stare at his chest. His body was riddled with old scars and bullet wounds from his days working for the French government under the auspices of a captainship in the French Foreign Legion. Lovers always stared at his chest right before beginning the interrogation process.

How did you get the bullet wounds?

I was shot.

Who shot you?

All the husbands. Yours isn’t armed, is he?

Kingsley always deflected the questions with his wit, and his lovers loved him even more for it. Only Søren knew the truth of his wounds. Kingsley never converted to Catholicism at Saint Ignatius as Søren had. But he did tell the priest all his secrets. How did he get the bullet wounds? The people he was paid to shoot sometimes shot back. How did he get the pale scars on his back? He’d been held hostage for one month by a foreign terror cell and tortured. How did he get the poorly healed cuts on his wrists? He’d nearly ripped his own hands off trying to get free from the manacles that they’d shackled him with.

Of course, those scars meant nothing to him. He had them; they’d healed. His scars gave him an air of mystery and danger in the Underground. The wounds that mattered to him were the ones Søren had left. Kingsley’s one regret about his year as Søren’s lover was that no matter how brutally Søren beat him and tortured him, he had no scars at all from their time together.

At least none anyone could see.

“I should go,” Søren said. “It’s late. I’m hearing confession tomorrow morning. And I want to pray about your theory, Father Christian’s theory.”

“Pray all you want. I’m certain there’s something to it. To even know about that photograph of us…you know it must have been a student there. Or one of the priests.”

“So you say, and you may be right. Sleep well.” Søren met his eyes for only a moment. “Lock the doors.”

“I never lock the doors,” Kingsley reminded him as Søren started to leave.

“I know, and that’s why Eleanor’s file is missing from your office.”

“I never lock my doors for a reason. If it appears that I’m afraid of this city, then I will have to start being afraid of this city. Everyone knows I don’t lock my doors, and that scares them more than any security force in the world could.”

Søren leveled a stern stare at him. “This isn’t about your image, Kingsley. It’s about your safety. Do as I say.”

Kingsley strode toward Søren. “I don’t answer to you anymore. I’d sell what’s left of my soul for one more night with you. But until you decide to take off that damn collar of yours and take ownership of me and what you’ve done to me again…” Kingsley paused and drew a breath, hoping to tamp down some of his anger. Only Søren ever dared to tell him what to do. Not even his Juliette took such a liberty. “I will not obey your orders until you’ve earned the right to give them to me again. Now you should go. And I’ll be certain to leave the doors unlocked behind you.”