The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(70)

“Why do you care?”

“She knows I’m in Connecticut. She knows about your sister. Did you tell her my real name?”

Kingsley stalled by taking a sip of his Syrah.

“Kingsley?”

“She needed to know,” Kingsley said. “If anything happened to me, someone needs to be able to find you.”

“I understand that. And I don’t object to you telling her anything you need to tell her if you have good reason for trusting her so implicitly. If you do have good reason, I have no issue with it. I’m curious why you trust her so implicitly when you know so little about her.”

“I told you, I know what I need to know about her.”

“Someone knows quite a bit about the both of us,” S?ren reminded him.

“I trust Sam. You can trust her, too.”

“Are you in love with her? Is that why you trust her?”

“I’m not in love with her,” Kingsley said truthfully. What he felt for Sam was different than love. Or maybe it was love but a different sort than what he felt for S?ren.

S?ren raised his glass of wine to his lips.

“Good.”

“Hello, Father,” Blaise said, appearing out of nowhere. Kingsley had never been so glad to see the girl in his life. She rose up on the tips of her toes to kiss S?ren on the cheek. “How’s my favorite kinky Jesuit priest?”

“He’s still kinky,” Kingsley said. “And still a Jesuit. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

“So I have to ask, what is a Jesuit?” Blaise said.

“We’re an order of priests founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola,” S?ren said. “We began as a missionary order.”

“He says missionary. I say military,” Kingsley said with a wide grin. “They did so much political maneuvering in the 1700s, the order was disbanded by the pope.”

“I still haven’t forgiven Pope Clement the Fourteenth over that one.”

“So Jesuits are bad priests?” Blaise asked, seeming pleased by this revelation.

“They are,” Kingsley said. “Naughty priests, then and now.”

“At least we aren’t the Legion of Christ.”

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” Kingsley began. “A man walks up to a Franciscan and a Jesuit and asks, ‘How many novenas must you pray to get a Mercedes-Benz?’”

“I’m stopping you,” S?ren said.

“So the Franciscan,” Kingsley continued, “asks the man, ‘What’s a Mercedes-Benz?’ And the Jesuit asks the man…”

Kingsley waited. Blaise looked up at S?ren expectantly.

“‘What’s a novena?’” S?ren finished, his tone dripping with disdain. “For the record, every Jesuit I know can tell you what a novena is.”

“What is a novena?” Blaise asked.

“Take her upstairs and tell her,” Kingsley said to S?ren. “Give her a good hard Catholic schooling.”

“I did spend ten years in seminary,” he said. “It would be a crime to waste all that training.”

“With your permission, monsieur…” Blaise looked at Kingsley with pleading eyes.

“Have a fun scourging, chouchou,” Kingsley said. Blaise kissed him on the cheek. She then took S?ren’s hand and led him through the crowd and up the stairs. Kingsley looked into his half-finished glass of wine and fought the urge to take it down in one swallow. Where did S?ren get off questioning him about Sam? Sam was none of S?ren’s business. And who cared if he didn’t know much about her? He knew what he needed to know. Sam cared about him. She was on his side. Whatever her secrets, that wasn’t one of them.

Irritated with both S?ren and whoever the f*ck it was sending the tapes, Kingsley left the party behind and headed upstairs to his bedroom, taking the steps two at a time. He’d throw the tape into his wall safe, change clothes and find Dixon. He would beat the man into a bloody coma if he had to, but before this night was over, Kingsley would have answers. As he strode down the hall to his bedroom he heard cries of pleasure and pain emanating from within the rooms he passed. Sometimes pleasure and pain came from the same room. He ignored them. He was a man on a mission.

Kingsley threw open the door to his bedroom. A woman stood by the foot of his bed. She was dark-skinned, thin and regal. Her boots, corset, skirt and opera gloves—all leather. Her shoulders were bare, and ample cleavage spilled out over the top of the corset. She wore a lace choker around her neck, and her thick braided hair was coiffed in an elegant knot, and behind her right ear she wore a pale pink rose.

In her hand she held something long, black and thin. He recognized it immediately.

A riding crop.

Kingsley waited in silence, waited for the domme to speak.

“I received your lovely messages,” the woman began in a posh English accent. “And the f lowers.”

Kingsley’s eyes widened.

He’d sent only one woman f lowers lately. Twelve dozen red, white and pink roses in the hopes she would take his interest in seeing her seriously. Apparently it had worked.

“Mistress Felicia,” he said at last.

“I do have a fondness for f lowers from men who aren’t afraid to beg.”

Mistress Felicia Tryst had been all over the newspapers when he first came to the city. She’d been named as the offending party in a divorce between a business magnate and his socialite wife. The story had been a bloodbath, a feeding frenzy. Salacious reporters couldn’t get enough of the white American billionaire who was sexually enslaved to a black British dominatrix. Mistress Felicia had risen above the fray and refused to testify on the grounds she never spoke about her clients. She’d languished in prison and kept her vow of silence until the parties settled out of court. He’d once seen her photograph in the Post, but it did not do this dark beauty justice.