“Vampire,” he teased, touching the bite mark on his shoulder.

“Not a vampire,” she said. “A tiger, remember?”

Kingsley touched her face and pressed his lips to the top of her breasts.

“Certainly not a kitten anymore...”

When they had both come to their senses again, Nora ordered Kingsley to dress. In front of her, of course, while she watched the show.

“I’m going to enjoy being a dominatrix,” she said, taking the two thousand dollars out of her corset and fanning herself with it. “Torturing men, orgasms, money—my three favorite things.”

“No fucking your other clients,” he reminded her. “I’m a king, not a pimp. Don’t get me arrested for pandering.”

“Speaking of sex for money... Thorny came to see me today.”

“Did he?”

“He says Milady is planning on fucking with me.”

“I could have told you that.”

“What do you think she’ll do to me?”

“I don’t know, but if she’s anything like you, she’ll find your rawest wound and pour salt on it.”

“Søren’s my rawest wound.”

“Then I think you’re safe,” Kingsley said. “He gave away his entire family fortune to me and his sisters. If she thinks she can buy his obedience for a few thousand dollars, she doesn’t know who she’s dealing with.”

“Speaking of a few thousand dollars... I believe you said something about a tip if I broke you? Didn’t you? I think it’s fair to say I broke you.”

“Because I wanted to be broken.”

Nora waved her hand, beckoning him to pay up.

Kingsley sighed, pulled out his wallet and passed her ten more hundred-dollar bills.

“My best friend is named Benjamin,” she said. “I do so love that man.”

“Enjoy that tip. I probably won’t ever tip you again. The French don’t tip.” He pulled on his trousers and left them open while he tucked in his shirt. Watching Kingsley get dressed was almost as erotic as watching him get undressed.

“You know I earned it.”

“You earned it by being a sick, twisted mind-fucker. I’d kill anyone else who tried that trick on me, including le prêtre.”

“It’s all your fault for telling me I sound like your sister when I use a French accent. You should have known I’d use that against you in a session someday.”

“Maybe I wanted you to.”

“Did you?”

“Fuck, no. But I’m glad you did,” he said, taking his jacket off the hook. “I wouldn’t talk to anyone but you about it, but I think of her more than I want to. Especially when he and I are fighting. It brings back bad memories, and she’s in many of my bad memories.”

“I’m proud of you,” she said, watching as he pulled on his jacket and flipped the collar and lapels into place. He looked so much younger than his forty years now, vibrant, bright-eyed and thoroughly fucked.

“For what? For surviving your little mind game?”

“For not letting Søren leave the priesthood for you when he offered.”

“It wasn’t me he was offering to leave the church for. It was some old idea of me he must have had. Kingsley, his sixteen-year-old slave who would have died for him. I love him,” Kingsley said, pulling on his jacket. “You know it. I know it. He knows it. I was born to fall in love with him, and I lived in love with him and I will die still in love with him. But fuck him if he thinks that means I’m willing to be someone I’m not for him.”

“Same here,” Nora said, raising an imaginary wineglass in a toast. “He told me I wasn’t allowed to see you anymore. We all have our breaking points. That was mine.”

“Good girl,” Kingsley said. “Maybe someday that blond prick will learn we don’t exist for his pleasure.”

“If he does learn...then what?”

“Then we’ll need a bigger throne. One that’ll hold a king, queen and a god. Or at least a man who thinks he is.”

Nora laughed. “Glad I got the throne. It’s nice and sturdy. Good for bondage. Good for fucking.”

“Oh, speaking of the throne, Mistress Nora...”

“Yes?” Nora asked as Kingsley finished pulling on his boots.

“It cost ten thousand dollars.”

“Quality isn’t cheap. And Ikea does not sell thrones. I’ve looked.”

“It put you over budget. By...” He paused as if counting in his head. “Three thousand dollars.”

He snatched the money out of her hand.

“Kingsley!”

“Don’t forget, mon canard,” he said, “you aren’t the only sadist in this room.”

With a wink, he was his old self again, arrogant and lewd.

“Oh, you bastard.”

“I am,” he said without shame. “But this may cheer you up. You’re ready.”

“You sure about that?” she asked.

“Considering the Midsummer Night’s Fling is in two nights? You better be.”

“I will be. I hope.”

“I’ll show myself out.” He strolled from the dungeon as casually as he’d entered it. He called back to her, “Sweep up this fucking glass you broke before someone gets hurt.”

“Yes, boss.” She sighed.

Nora looked down at her now empty hand.

Well, so much for her new laptop.

19

The Glass Locket

THE EVENING OF the Midsummer Night’s Fling, Nora went to her dungeon at The 8th Circle to wait for Kingsley. Once he arrived, they would go upstairs to the elevator and make their descent into the pit where the party already raged. When Nora entered her suite, she lit a lamp on the bedside table and found a box on her bed.

A rectangular box, it was wrapped in plain brown paper and string. Warily, fearing a trick or trap from Milady, Nora pulled the little white card from the little white envelope and read the words written on it.

“Finish your Ruth and Boaz story.”

It wasn’t signed.

Ruth and Boaz story? Oh, yes, her Ruth and Boaz story. She’d been a senior in high school when a priest, subbing in for their AP English teacher, had given them busy work while he wrote his homily for that Sunday. “Compose a short story with characters from the Bible” was the entirety of Father Jones’s assignment.

Nora, still Eleanor back then, chose to write about Ruth and Boaz from the Book of Ruth because two days earlier she and Søren had been talking about it. Eleanor had asked if there were any books of the Bible that were as sexy as the Book of Esther, and Søren replied that some interesting erotic things happened between Ruth and Boaz on the threshing floor. When Eleanor read the book, she’d walked away disappointed and gone to Søren’s office to complain.

“What the fuck did I just read?” Eleanor demanded. “Was that entire book about wheat?”

Søren looked up from his work and eyed her with amusement.

“You have to read between the lines,” he’d said.

“Ruth and Naomi are poor.”

“Yes.”

“Naomi is Ruth’s mother-in-law and Ruth’s husband is dead, right?”

“Correct.”

“Naomi thinks Boaz, the rich farmer, has a crush on Ruth because he gave her extra wheat.”

“Not quite a dozen roses but when you’re nearly starving, wheat makes for a more welcome bouquet. It was Boaz’s way of showing he cared about Ruth and her needs.”

“So Naomi says Boaz is Ruth’s closest relative so she should pretty herself up and go to Boaz and take off his shoes while he’s sleeping? None of that made any sense.”

“Boaz was related to Ruth’s late husband, and according to the Levirate law, it was the male next of kin’s duty to marry a childless widow and give her sons. Another man was a closer relative than Boaz, but it was Boaz who Naomi wanted for Ruth. She sent Ruth to seduce Boaz so Boaz would marry Ruth and not the other kinsman. If Ruth and Boaz had already been intimate, it gave Boaz an incentive to marry her quickly.”

“But what about the shoes thing? Naomi told Ruth to go to the threshing floor where Boaz is sleeping and ‘uncover his feet.’ Feet are not sexy.”

“It is if you know the word ‘feet’ is a euphemism in this instance.”

“For what?”

“Use your imagination.”

“I’d rather you demonstrate,” she said. “Again.”