The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(27)

“It wasn’t a gift. And it wasn’t an apology. It was a payment.”

“Payment? For what?”

S?ren reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a tiny clear plastic tube. He sat it on Kingsley’s desk.

“What is this?” Kingsley asked as he picked up the small tube. A few f lecks of metal danced in the afternoon sunlight. “If you were a cat, that would be one of your lives.” “This is my bullet?” Kingsley asked in shock.

“What’s left of it.”

“Why do you have it?”

“I wanted it,” S?ren said. “I took it. I paid you for it. So now you don’t owe me anything.”

“They gave it to you in the hospital?”

“I asked for it.”

Kingsley spun the tube, pretending to study the shrapnel. In truth, he couldn’t care less what it looked like. All that mattered was that S?ren had kept it. Why? Was it a talisman? A memento? A reminder of the last time they’d seen each other? Kingsley thought about reaching into his pocket. In it was a small silver cross on a broken silver chain—the one memento he’d keep from his first night with S?ren. The cross and the memories.

“You kept this? All this time you’ve had my bullet with you?” Kingsley asked.

“I have. If you want it back, you’ll have to pay for it.”

“I will never understand you,” Kingsley said.

“Then stop trying.” He held out his hand, and Kingsley dropped the tube with the bullet fragments into his palm. He liked the idea of S?ren having this piece of himself in his possession. Was there an object in the world more intimate to a victim than the weapon that had nearly killed him? These bullet fragments had been inside Kingsley’s body and had almost destroyed him. Instead of ending his life, that shot had changed his life. No wonder S?ren felt such a kinship to those deadly remnants. They had much in common.

S?ren pocketed the tube that held Kingsley’s bullet fragment.

“Are you ready?” S?ren asked.

“Yes. For what?”

At that S?ren smiled—a devilish sexy smile that made Kingsley completely forget for a moment that it was a Catholic priest who sat in his office and not the S?ren of old who had used him as a human target on a regular basis.

He lifted his hand, crooked a finger at Kingsley.

“Now?” Kingsley asked.

“You had plans?” S?ren asked. “My free time is limited, as you know.”

“Hosting an exorcism tonight?” Kingsley asked.

“Worse. Couples’ counseling.”

“Same thing,” Kingsley said. “It’s all your fault. No one told you to get a real job.”

Kingsley stood up and came around the desk.

“I like my job,” S?ren said as he followed Kingsley from the office. “You should think about getting one, too. You’ll be surprised how enjoyable it is to be useful to society.”

“You know what else is enjoyable?”

“What?”

“Not having a job.”

Kingsley led S?ren to his personal playroom.

“This is my real office,” Kingsley said, opening the door. He had a St. Andrew’s Cross, a rack, an X-bar, several spreader bars, all the bondage cuffs and equipment one man could ever need.

“Like it?”

“It’ll do,” S?ren said, although Kingsley could see S?ren eying everything with interest.

Every one of the bedrooms in the house had kink equipment in it. Vanilla sorts were not welcome in his home. And on the rare occasion they did infiltrate the town house, they were not vanilla after they left.

“How often do you play?” Kingsley asked.

“Whenever I can,” S?ren said. “When it’s safe. If I go longer than a month, I get… What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Lethal?”

“Unpleasant. You?”

“As often as I can. Once a day at least.”

“Once a day? Who’s the lucky recipient of that honor?”

“Trust me, you don’t have time for the list of people I play with. I’ve probably f*cked every submissive in Manhattan. I may have to move to Brooklyn.”

“Only submissives?”

“Only submissives.”

“That’s unusual for you, isn’t it?” S?ren crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Kingsley.

“Why? Because I bottomed for you, I have to do it for the rest of the world?”

“Not the rest of the world. One person at least. I remember.”

“What do you remember?”

“How much you needed it, wanted it.”

“I needed you, not it.”

“You loved submitting to pain. Why the change?”

“I don’t bottom anymore. Fin,” Kingsley said. “The end.”

S?ren studied Kingsley’s face as if looking at an alien specimen.

“Are you going to teach me the whip trick or not?” Kingsley demanded.

“I will, but this conversation isn’t over yet, whether you fin-ed it or not.”

“Show me the trick.”

“There’s no trick to it,” S?ren said as he scanned the rows of singletails on the wall. He took one down, pulled it taut, coiled it again and hung it back on the wall. A second singletail whip proved more to his liking. “It takes a great deal of practice. And I’m not the teacher Magdalena is. She could have you f lipping quarters in midair with a singletail in two weeks.”