The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(119)

“What do you think you are doing?” S?ren asked.

“I’m trying to find out what a priest sleeps in,” Kingsley said as he slipped his hand under the sheet.

S?ren caught his hand and held it in a vicious, viselike grip.

“This priest sleeps in a bed.”

“You’re going to break my wrist,” Kingsley said, not the least bothered by the prospect. The pain from S?ren’s grip sobered him up, cleared his thinking and aroused him.

S?ren tightened his grip and Kingsley winced. Nice to know S?ren hadn’t been lying—the wolf was still there. S?ren wasn’t less dangerous at all. Kingsley just wasn’t afraid anymore.

“Break it,” Kingsley said.

S?ren’s grip tightened even more. But only slightly and then he let go.

“You didn’t have to stop,” Kingsley said. “You can break me all you want.”

“I might be tempted to play with you if you had any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.”

“Self-preservation is for the weak. I loved getting destroyed by you.”

“You remember high school much differently than I do,” S?ren said. “I’d killed someone at my last school and was terrified I’d do it again. And then you came along and practically asked me to kill you.”

“I didn’t ask you to kill me,” Kingsley said. “I begged you.”

“And you wonder why I prefer to play with people who have limits.”

“You know you miss me,” Kingsley said, running his hand down S?ren’s side from his shoulder blade to his waist. He felt every muscle in S?ren’s body tense, and Kingsley lifted his hand.

“Did that hurt?” Kingsley asked, confused by S?ren’s sudden recoil.

“No, do it again.”

Warily Kingsley placed his hand f lat on S?ren’s back again and ran it down his body.

“Again?” Kingsley asked.

“Yes.”

Kingsley knelt at S?ren’s side and, with both hands, rubbed his back from neck to hip. Slowly the tension eased. S?ren had a beautiful back—long, lean and with broad shoulders etched with taut muscle. With his eyes closed, Kingsley ran his fingers down the line of S?ren’s spine. S?ren released a sigh of pleasure.

“You like this?” Kingsley asked.

“I do.”

“Why did you never make me give you back rubs?”

“I didn’t know I liked them until now.” S?ren stretched out on his stomach and turned his head on the pillow to face Kingsley. “I was always wary of being touched. Which is fine. Apart from handshakes, priests are never touched.”

Kingsley’s heart clenched in sympathy. He forgot sometimes how much damage S?ren’s childhood had done to him. One night in their hermitage back at school, S?ren had confessed to him everything that had happened between him and his sister when he was eleven and she twelve. No wonder S?ren had shied away from being touched when even simple pleasures were tainted with shame.

“But this…this doesn’t bother you?”

“No,” S?ren said. “But stay above the waist.”

Kingsley laughed. “Yes, sir.”

With more force now and confidence, Kingsley massaged S?ren’s back. It was almost better than sex, knowing he was the first person to ever touch S?ren like this. Almost.

“You know,” Kingsley began, “when I went to see your friend Magdalena in Rome, she insisted on telling my fortune.”

“She did that to me, too.”

“You know what she said?”

“I’m afraid to ask,” S?ren said. “But I’m sure you’ll tell me even if I don’t.”

“She said you and I would be lovers again.”

“Well, fortune-tellers make their living telling us what we want to hear,” S?ren said in a pointed tone. “Thus creating the likelihood of the prophecy coming true because of its self-fulfilling nature. We want it be true, so we work to make it happen.”

“Is that so? What did she tell you that you wanted to hear?”

S?ren exhaled heavily, and Kingsley felt the breath moving through S?ren’s chest and back.

“Among many other things, she told me I would have a son someday. I had to remind Magdalena that the vow of celibacy made this an unlikely occurrence.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She said it would happen by the grace of God. Whatever that means.”

“I think it means you want a family, too.”

S?ren rolled over on to his back, and Kingsley kept his hands to himself, a show of self-restraint he felt he deserved a medal for. If given permission, Kingsley would have spent the entire day kissing and touching every inch of S?ren’s body, which was without f law but for the small round crater on his upper arm where he’d gotten vaccinated for smallpox as a child. Such a little thing, but it reminded Kingsley that S?ren was human. All too easy to forget sometimes.

“I have a family,” S?ren said, looking Kingsley in the eyes.

A horn honked discreetly outside the house.

“That’s for me,” Kingsley said, wishing he hadn’t called the car. He wanted to stay with S?ren and talk. Talk? Yes, even more than pain and sex, he wanted to talk. But they had plenty of time for that. The rest of their lives. S?ren had pledged his fealty to Kingsley, and nothing would tear them apart ever again.