The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(20)

“I don’t think they’ll believe a tree hit you. Maybe they’d

believe you hit a tree.”

“Why would I hit a tree? A tree never did anything to me.” “Perhaps it likes being hit.” S?ren kissed Kingsley’s neck

again, his shoulder, his throat.

Kingsley remembered this night. It had a been a Sunday.

Everyone at their school went to bed early on Sunday nights.

They’d woken early for Sunday Mass and had to wake early

again for Monday morning classes. Once everyone had gone

to bed, he and S?ren had sneaked out to the hermitage to

spend a few perfect hours alone together.

“Aren’t you worried someone will find out what we’re

doing out here?” Kingsley asked as he covered S?ren’s roving

hand with his own.

“They’d never believe it even if we told them.” “What? They’d believe I’d sleep with a teacher, but they wouldn’t believe you’d sleep with a student?” Kingsley tried

to sound outraged. He wasn’t sure if he pulled it off or not. “Precisely.”

“Because I’m a slut, and you’re perfect?”

“Because you have friends, and no one likes me,” S?ren said. Kingsley sat up and looked down at S?ren.

“I like you,” Kingsley said.

“No, you don’t,” S?ren said with a half smile. “You want

me. There’s a difference.”

“You don’t like me, either,” Kingsley chided. He ignored

the unwelcome pang of sympathy S?ren’s placid “No one likes

me” declaration gave him.

“It isn’t that I don’t like you,” S?ren said with a playful

sigh. “It’s only I like me so much more than I like you that,

in comparison, it looks like I dislike you.”

“I might suffocate you tonight with a pillow,” Kingsley said. “You’ll have to teach my French classes, then. Lesson plans

in my desk.”

“Forget it. You get to live.”

“I thought as much.”

Kingsley collapsed on to S?ren’s chest with a sigh. S?ren

lifted Kingsley’s hair and pressed a kiss under his ear. “Well, I’m worried they’ll find out about us,” Kingsley

said, turning on to his side away from S?ren. S?ren wasn’t

deterred. He ran his hand down the center of Kingsley’s back

and pressed a kiss to the top of his spine. Kingsley relished

these moments, after the fire of S?ren’s sadism had burned itself out. The gentle touches and kisses hurt almost more than

the blows from the belt and the cane did. They hurt his heart,

and yet he treasured the ache. It was his favorite pain. “Why are you worried? We’re always careful. No one ever

sees us together. I don’t care if they find out about me. I have

places I can go. But I don’t want you…”

“Don’t want me what?” Kingsley asked.

“I don’t want to embarrass you,” S?ren said, and Kings

ley laughed out loud at the abject absurdity of that statement. “You don’t want to embarrass me? An hour ago, you

stripped me naked, told me to get on my knees and confess

to you the most shameful sexual fantasies I’ve ever had in my

life, and you say you don’t want to embarrass me?” “That’s different. Who we are in private has nothing to do

with who we have to be out there. Do you want people to

know what you are?”

“Your lover?”

“Not that.”

Kingsley thought about the question. Alone with S?ren

he became a slave, a slut, a groveling nobody who submitted

to sexual torture and said thank you for the privilege. Having sex with another boy didn’t embarrass him. It was everything else that did.

“Non, it’s true. I don’t want people to know I like being

hurt. They wouldn’t understand it, and they wouldn’t understand you. They’d think you were a monster.”

“I am a monster,” S?ren said as he bit the center of Kingsley’s back.

“Yes, but no one knows that but me. It’s our secret. But…”

He sighed heavily and pressed his back against S?ren’s chest.

“I’m afraid they’ll find out soon enough anyway.” “And why is that?” S?ren demanded.

“Well, you see…” He braced himself for S?ren’s wrath.

“I’m pregnant.”

Kingsley bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing as S?ren

sighed so heavily with disgust the cot vibrated. Then Kingsley felt something in his back, something that felt like a foot. That foot pushed, and Kingsley landed hard on the f loor

right on his ass.

“Oh, no,” he said as he hit the hardwood beneath him with

bruising force. “I lost the baby.”

When he looked up over the edge of the mattress, he found

S?ren’s face buried in the pillow. He’d never seen S?ren

brought to tears by laughter.

“Don’t cry,” Kingsley said, rubbing S?ren’s heaving shoulder. “We’ll try again.”