The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(57)

“You should be a sadist,” Kingsley said between gritted teeth. “I think getting shot hurt less.”

Anita paused and wiped sweat from his forehead. Her touch was welcome and motherly, which made him feel a little guilty about his massive erection hidden under the blanket.

“You’ll feel like a new man when I’m done with you, I promise. Do you need to stop for the day?”

Kingsley shook his head.

“No,” he said, panting. “You said you’ll make me feel like a new man. Then, make me feel like a new man.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a very high tolerance for pain?” Anita asked.

“Yes. A priest I used to date,” he said. Anita gave him the exact look he expected her to give him.

Anita returned to her work, and Kingsley mentally fired Sam in ten different ways for talking him into this. But he’d come home from Rome yesterday with a stiff back and tightness in his chest so severe he couldn’t take a full breath. Sam had called Anita, the massaging miracle worker, and gotten him an emergency appointment.

Not even getting f*cked raw by S?ren had hurt this badly. He could come any second now.

“Breathe,” Anita ordered, and Kingsley did as commanded. He breathed, she massaged, and every nerve in his body screamed.

The pain suffused him. He was awash in pain, bathing in pain, drinking in pain, breathing in pain. The pain from candle wax-play was something like this sort of steady persistent agony. When was the last time he’d felt the wax? With S?ren, of course. They’d gotten wrought-iron candleholders out of storage at the school and brought them to the hermitage for extra light to play and read by. One cold quiet night, S?ren had ordered Kingsley on to his stomach on the cot and tied his wrists and ankles to each bed leg. For hours S?ren had sat at his hip and dripped the wax on him, burning him one drop at a time. No matter how Kingsley had panted, how he groaned, how he gasped and winced, S?ren never let up. As S?ren had scalded him with the wax, he’d asked Kingsley questions.

What do you want to do with your life?

Where do you want to go?

What do you dream about?

What do you love?

What do you hate?

And he’d answered the questions all truthfully. I want to spend my life with you.

I want to go where you go.

I dream of you.

I love sex.

I love pain.

I love you.

I hate the nights I spend without you.

How small his world was back then. It had been the size of that hermitage. What if his sister, Marie-Laure, had never come to St. Ignatius? Would Kingsley’s world still be that small? He would have willingly, joyfully and blindly devoted himself to S?ren. He would have gone where S?ren had gone, done what S?ren had ordered, slept where S?ren told him to sleep, eaten what S?ren told him to eat and died by his own hand if S?ren had decreed it. Was it possible that it was for the best Kingsley had gotten away from S?ren for a few years? Was it possible leaving and going out on his own had been the right thing to do? S?ren certainly seemed happier now than he did in high school. Maybe being apart from him had been good for S?ren, too, although it rankled to entertain the very idea that S?ren had been better off without him. Kingsley wondered…what would he answer now if asked those same questions?

I want to build a kingdom for our kind and keep us all safe.

I want to go to the Caribbean. I haven’t been there yet. Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Haiti.

At night I dream about being choked, being shot. But during the day, when I’m awake, I dream about finding someone to share my life with and my kingdom with.

I love sex. I love women. I love men. I love this city. I love music. I love my house. I love S?ren still. Always.

I hate…

What did he hate these days? Oh, he knew.

I hate people like Fuller, which is why I’m taking his church from him.

Very different answers from when he was a teenager. Better answers.

Kingsley would never know for certain what would have happened if they’d stayed together. The past was a corpse. He should stop trying to dig it up and reanimate it. He’d been clinging to it for years now because he had nothing else to hold on to. But now he had a vision, a dream, a hope for the future. And no matter what happened, he would see it come to life. Whatever it took.

Anita finished her work on his scar. He rolled on to his stomach, and she spent the next hour working the soreness out of his neck and shoulders. When she finished, she laid a gentle hand on the crown of his head.

“Kingsley, can you take a deep breath for me?” Anita asked, her words penetrating his thoughts.

He rolled on to his back, arched his shoulders and inhaled.

“Again?”

He breathed in again. His lungs expanded, his chest swelled and he took the deepest breath of his life.

And it didn’t hurt.

“Dieu, merci…” He sighed and smiled.

“You feel better?” Anita asked.

“Like a new man.”

Anita left him alone to dress. He said he would have Sam call and set up another appointment. Anita hugged him— hugged him?—goodbye and told him to enjoy the day, go for a walk, breathe fresh air.

He found a pay phone and dialed a number.

“Test results?” S?ren asked as soon as Kingsley spoke. “Not yet,” he said. “I find out tomorrow.”