The Queen

Kingsley didn’t answer for a moment. Nora waited. When he spoke again he said, “It’s not personal. But when you speak like that with the accent, you sound just like Marie-Laure.”

“I sound like your sister?”

He nodded. “When she spoke English she had a strong accent. She used it to flirt with the boys at school. It’s how I remember her, playing up her accent to throw herself at Søren. Your voice and the accent together... It’s uncanny. Like she’s back from the dead.”

He gave her a look of apology, a look that asked for mercy.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

Kingsley had never forgiven his sister for marrying Søren, had never forgiven himself what happened after. There was no spot more raw on Kingsley’s soul than the one left by his sister, Marie-Laure.

“It’s not your fault. Anything can bring her back to me. The scent of Chanel No. 5. The music of Swan Lake. I smell it, I hear it, and it’s like she’s standing behind me or in the next room. And when you speak in that accent, I can hear her.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut, then, and you can tell everyone I’m not allowed to talk.”

“Merci.” He put the leash back between her teeth which was a sign to all and sundry that she was off-limits to playing with anyone but Kingsley. If he hung the leash down where anyone could take it, anyone could play with her.

Nora was not here to play.

“That’s Mistress Vee,” Kingsley said, nodding toward a corner of the living room where a woman in a black leather catsuit was painstakingly tying up a middle-aged man in a corset made entirely of silk rope. “She does masterful shibari. I’m hoping she’ll be willing to teach you.”

Nora pulled a fan out of her blue silk reticule and unfurled it as she spat out the leash. Holding the fan in front of her mouth, she whispered, “Who is he?”

“You don’t know?” Kingsley asked.

“No.”

“He’s the governor’s son.”

“King?”

“What?”

“I don’t know what our own governor looks like much less his relatives.”

“You’ll learn what he looks like eventually.”

“Why?”

“He’ll be one of your clients.”

Nora would have rolled her eyes at this pronouncement except it was likely true.

“Is the mayor’s son going to be a client of mine, too?” she asked.

“No. He’s not a submissive,” Kingsley said. “But I did a little cover-up work for the mayor’s wife before the election. She owes me a favor now.”

“Who doesn’t?” she asked. If you were powerful in New York, Kingsley made sure you owed him a favor. She owed him a favor herself. A big one. He’d taken her in after she’d run away from the convent. She had her old bedroom back. No one had touched her things, moved her clothes, packed up her stuff and stored it all away. It had been left in place waiting for her return. Even the book she’d been reading when she left, Villette by Charlotte Brontë, had been left on the nightstand, her bookmark still in place on page 268. When she had returned, Kingsley had opened the door to her bedroom and said, “Welcome home.”

A roof over her head, a bed to sleep in, clothes, food and books. None of which she’d have if Kingsley had turned her away. Which begged the question...

“Why did you take me in?” she whispered behind her fan.

“Why did I take you in?” Kingsley repeated. “Are you truly asking me that?”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d sent me packing.” His anger at her for running away and not telling him where she’d gone, not contacting him once in all those months, had been real. Terrifyingly real.

“I tried to explain you to Juliette. Explain us, I mean.”

“That must have taken all night.”

“It might take the rest of my life. She said you and I, we’re family in a way.”

“I certainly wouldn’t call us friends,” she said, not out of cruelty but mere honesty. Nora was a writer and she took the meaning of words seriously. This man who’d been her lover since she was twenty, who had introduced her to her dominant side, who’d gotten her pregnant and then run for the hills when she’d needed him most, but who had taken her in without question when she’d turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night? To call him a “friend” seemed an insult to what they were to each other. It would be like calling Kingsley and Søren “school chums.”

But family?

“I’m not sure about the ‘family’ here, either,” she said. “No offense.”

“And why ever not?” Kingsley sounded almost insulted.

“Because I’ve never wanted to fuck a member of my own family.”

Kingsley laughed under his breath.

“You aren’t, by any chance, training me to be a dominatrix to punish him, are you?”

Kingsley put his hand over his heart. “You wound me, chérie. Would I really do something like that?”

“Yes.”

Kingsley winked and nodded toward a scene happening on the level below them.

“Showtime.”

Three burly men dressed in leather entered the large living room below and started moving the furniture. Chairs were pushed to the outer perimeter and every other bit of furniture was taken to another room. Someone clearly needed a big space to play. From the other room, they brought out a large black St. Andrew’s Cross and set it near the main wall.

“Her harem,” Kingsley said, leaning close to her ear.

The men tested the cross and found it sturdy. They tested the ankle and wrist restraints on the cross and found them solid. They tested the distance from the cross to the nearest onlookers and found it adequate.

One of the three men disappeared again into the other room. When he returned he wasn’t alone.

A blindfolded man was escorted into the play area and made to stand in front of the cross with his back to it. From her perch on high Nora could see him well. He had a trim and sinewy frame, tall but not too tall. She could see his ribs and his muscles when he inhaled. His arms were covered from shoulder to wrist in vibrant full-sleeve tattoos. Unfortunately he had on pants, black ones that hung low on his hips so she could see the little line of hair leading from his navel down, down, a trail she’d love to follow. Although his face was that of a young man—he looked no older than thirty—he had gray hair. Gray flecked with black, but mostly gray. Kingsley’s teenage assistant, Calliope, said such men were known as “silver foxes.” Nora had never wanted a pet fox before. Now she reconsidered.

“He’s pretty,” she said to Kingsley behind her fan. “Who is he?”

“You like him?” Kingsley asked.