The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(33)

“I was a prisoner,” he continued. “I was tortured. And…”

“And what?” S?ren’s voice was gentle now, probing, but not demanding.

“It wasn’t just torture.”

He gazed up at S?ren and met his eyes for one second before lowering them again in humiliation.

“Oh, God, Kingsley.”

“I was unconscious,” Kingsley said. “I guess you’d call it a blessing that I don’t remember it happening. I only remember waking up and knowing it had happened.”

“Kingsley…”

Kingsley raised his hands to his face, pressed his palms against his eyes. He couldn’t bear to hear the pity and the sorrow in S?ren’s voice.

“It’s funny.” Kingsley’s eyes burned. He wanted to blame the chlorine. “I loved Lawrence of Arabia as a boy. He was my hero. I read all the books I could about him. Now I can say Lawrence of Arabia and I have something in common.”

“Two things in common.”

“Two?”

“T. E. Lawrence loved a good f logging.”

Kingsley opened his eyes but couldn’t look at S?ren.

“Is he dead?” S?ren asked as Kingsley watched the water. “The man who hurt you?”

“Very dead,” Kingsley said.

“Good.”

“Good? Aren’t you supposed to love your enemies?”

“Put me alone in a room with him, and I could conveniently forget that command.”

“He’s in hell now,” Kingsley said. “Then again, so am I.”

S?ren took a long deep breath. Meanwhile Kingsley considered falling asleep. Falling asleep and never waking up. The dead don’t dream.

“Can I touch you?” S?ren finally asked.

“Toujours,” Kingsley said, laughing again. Always.

S?ren reached out and cupped the side of his face. Water ran down Kingsley’s cheek. He hoped it was water from the pool and nothing more.

“It shouldn’t have happened to you. You didn’t deserve it.”

Kingsley smiled. “You’re good at this. They should make you pope.”

“A Jesuit pope? It’ll never happen.”

Kingsley closed his eyes again, cupped water into his mouth and spit it out. He couldn’t remember when he’d been this tired, and yet he never wanted to sleep again.

“There’s something I never told you,” S?ren said. “Something I wanted to tell you, but never found the words or the reason to tell you.”

Kingsley opened his eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“The semester before you started St. Ignatius, a visiting priest came to teach church history. I was in his class. He was a young priest, thirty-five. Charming, Irish, handsome. He taught me Gaelic in his free time.”

S?ren fell silent. Kingsley let the silence stand.

“Three weeks before Christmas we were alone in his office working on a translation of the Fiannaidheacht. In the middle of a sentence, Father Sean simply stopped talking. And he shut the door to his office and locked it. He knelt in front of me on the f loor and begged me in the most hushed and desperate whispers to take him. He said ‘Anything… You can do anything to me, Marcus. Anything you want. Anything at all.’ He tried to touch me.”

Kingsley had no words. His mouth was dry, and he couldn’t swallow.

“I was almost seventeen then. It was growing more difficult all the time to control myself. I ran miles every day, worked myself into exhaustion, cut myself in secret trying to cool the fever in my blood. And I could have had everything I wanted right then and there with Father Sean. I could see in his eyes he would have let me destroy him right there on his office f loor.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him to stop touching me or I would kill him. It shames me to admit I meant it. If he touched me again, I would have killed him. I told him to stand up. I told him to find an excuse, any excuse to leave St. Ignatius, because if he returned next semester, I would tell Father Henry he’d tried propositioning a student for sex.”

“You wanted him?”

“I wanted to hurt him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t love him,” S?ren said.

“You hurt me. The next semester you—”

“I loved you.”

“Well…” Kingsley said. “Now you tell me.”

Kingsley met S?ren’s eyes. It was past tense, the word he’d used. Loved, not love. But it was enough. Tonight it was enough.

“Here’s my confession,” Kingsley said. “I f*ck for money.”

S?ren looked at him in shock and dismay.

“Why?” he breathed. “You have all the money in the world.”

“It’s not the money. It’s the paper trail. Makes it easier to blackmail people if I have the paper trail. That’s where I was going when I left you alone with Blaise. A DA’s wife. The DA I paid off to get your Virgin Queen her ‘Get Out of Jail’ card.”

S?ren didn’t say anything at first. The silence was the purest hell.

“How much do you charge?” S?ren finally asked.

“Why? You want to buy an hour with me? I’ll give you the friends-and-family discount.”