“I know how to pass your test. I figured it out with a little help from a friend.”

“Well, you do look the part.” He raked his eyes up and down her body. “You have the attitude.” He tapped her under her chin and she raised it a millimeter higher. “But something’s still missing...”

“Something is missing. Your wallet.”

Kingsley slapped his hand over his breast pocket.

“You don’t think I kissed you just for the fun of it?” she asked. Kingsley cocked his eyebrow at her. “Okay, it was fun. But it also distracted you while I was going through your pockets.”

“I will kill Søren for teaching you how to pick pockets.”

“It’s a good trick,” she said, opening his wallet and extracting two thousand dollars in cash. “This should more than cover tonight’s session.”

And even better, it would pay for her new laptop.

She tossed his wallet back to him, and tucked the wad of money into her corset between her breasts.

“King or commoner, everybody pays up front. Right?” she asked.

Kingsley bowed gallantly. “Maîtresse, I am yours.”

“Well...it’s about fucking time.”

“I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“So have I,” she admitted. “You want to know how much I’ve wanted this?”

“How much?”

Nora slapped him.

Hard.

Kingsley clearly hadn’t been expecting the slap. The look on his face was so stunned by it she laughed.

“That much,” she said.

“Fuck.” He already sounded breathless. The King of the Underground did not get slapped.

“Good. Because it’s the first and last time I’m going to hit you tonight.”

“If you aren’t going to hurt me, then I want my money back.”

“Oh, I’ll hurt you. I’ll even break you. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging to be inside me.”

“If you can accomplish that without hitting me, I’ll give you a thousand-dollar tip.”

“Deal,” she said, grabbing his tie. Using it like a leash, she drew him into the dungeon portion of her suite. She stood him in the center of the room, a room she’d had painted red, red as passion, red as blood.

“Stand here, and don’t move.” She pointed to a spot on the floor, a spot marked by a painted black X. Kingsley put his feet where she’d indicated and Nora began to undress him.

She pulled off his jacket and hung it on a hook on the wall, untied his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Methodically and efficiently she removed his clothes, every stitch, right down to his boots.

“I know you said you liked it when Our Mutual Friend threw your clothes on the floor and stepped on them. But I’m not him. I may do such things to my other clients, but not to you. You’re my king and I will accord you all due respect even as I’m beating you into the hospital.”

“But not tonight?”

“No...tonight is special,” she said running her hands over his naked chest. She pushed her fingers against one of the old scars on his chest. “So many wounds. So many scars. Outside and in. Do they hurt?”

“Only the ones on the inside, Maîtresse.”

“Those are the ones I’m interested in tonight.” She touched his face, his lips, his eyelashes. Gentle touches, designed to soothe, not scare. “I’m going to blindfold you now. Do you have a safe word?”

“Non.”

“Do you want one?”

“Non.”

“I think, my King, you will regret that.”

With that, she wrapped his own tie around his eyes and knotted it in the back. She picked up a lighter and flicked it in front of his covered eyes. He didn’t flinch. Good. She needed total blindness for what she planned on doing to him. Once he was blindfolded completely she strapped leather cuffs to his wrists. From the ceiling she pulled down a hook and rope and secured Kingsley’s wrists to the hook. She pulled the cord and hoisted his hands in the air over his head and knotted the rope. He stood naked and bound, completely and utterly vulnerable. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t leave. Perfect.

“I have to get something in the other room,” Nora said. “I’ll be right back.”

She walked to the bedroom and shut the door behind her. From under the bed she pulled out a cheap glass jar and a baseball bat.

Showtime.

“Who the fuck are you?” Nora yelled. “How did you get in here?”

Nora turned and threw the jar against the door so that it shattered, making a sound like a lamp breaking. She hit the door frame with the baseball bat. She screamed as if she’d been hit.

Then...silence.

“Nora?” Kingsley’s voice called out through the door. He sounded terrified for her.

She smiled.

She counted to thirty. She heard Kingsley’s voice again calling her name. She didn’t answer him.

“Nora? Mistress?” Kingsley asked. “This isn’t funny.”

She reached into her corset for the tiny bottle of perfume she’d bought an hour ago.

Chanel No. 5.

She walked over to the CD player hidden under a shelf and hit Play.

The familiar strains of Swan Lake permeated the air.

Nora walked up behind Kingsley and put her mouth to his ear.

“Bonsoir, petit frère,” Nora whispered. Good evening, little brother.

“Stop it, Nora. This isn’t funny,” he said.

“Did you miss me?” Nora asked, still speaking in her very best French accent.

“I know what you’re doing.”

Nora spritzed one spray of the perfume into the air over Kingsley’s head. It settled around him like radioactive fallout.

He inhaled it deeply.

“I want this to stop,” he said.

“But I just arrived...” Nora purred in her best faux French accent, the one Kingsley said made her sound exactly like his dead sister. “And I have missed you, petit frère, even if you haven’t missed me at all.”

Kingsley yanked on his bonds above his head.

“Let me out, Nora. Right now.”

“Nora? Was that her name? She’s sound asleep in the other room. I think she’ll wake. Peut-être. Or not...”

“You’re dead. Nora isn’t.”

“I’m not dead,” Nora said. “You can’t really die until you’ve finished all your business on earth. And you and I, mon frère, we have unfinished business, don’t we? Oui? Non?”

Kingsley didn’t answer at first. Nora held her breath. She knew he was close, almost there...so close to giving in...he didn’t want to...but he did...

“Oui,” he said at last.

“I thought so. Now answer my question—have you missed me?”

“Je ne sais pas.”

“You don’t know if you missed me or not? How could you not know?”

“I was angry with you.”

“Pourquoi? What did I ever do to you?”

“You married Søren.”

“It was his idea.”

“You knew he didn’t love you. He told you he didn’t love you.”

“He would love me. In time he would have loved me. Everyone loved me. Tout le monde. Oui? The most beautiful girl anyone has ever seen? I think you called me that once. Every boy at your school adored me.”

“It was an all-boys school. You weren’t special. You were just there, and they wanted to fuck you.”

“Oh là là, such language.” Nora walked around him, letting him hear her footsteps. “Were you jealous? Did you want to marry him? That would have been cute, you two standing at the altar.”

“Don’t be absurd. I didn’t want to marry anyone, not then or now. But I didn’t want him to marry you.”

“But he did. He must have wanted to marry me if he did it. He does everything for a reason.”

“You tell yourself that,” Kingsley said. “He fucked me, not you.”

“He respected me. He wanted us to wait until we knew each other better. That was all.”

“If you believe that, you’re crazier than I ever thought you were. You disgusted him. The way you threw yourself at him. The way you touched him when he slept, groping him, trying to arouse him. Not even I would ever touch him while he slept.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“He didn’t like it,” Kingsley said. “It reminded him of his sister, and he didn’t want to remember her. The same way I don’t want to remember you, you vile bitch.”