The Prince

After she’d gotten over the shock of seeing Wesley again, she’d tried talking him into staying with her in her house in Connecticut. But he’d been unusually insistent.

“Kentucky,” he’d said.

“Please,” he’d said.

“I lived in your world. Come live in mine for a while,” he’d said.

She’d finally acquiesced, unable and unwilling to ever again see sadness in those big brown eyes of Wesley’s. But at her insistence they’d driven in separate cars—he in his Mustang, she in the Aston Martin Griffin had delivered to her. After all, Nora never went into any situation without an escape plan. She’d learned that lesson well back in her days as a professional Dominatrix. She hadn’t commanded her exorbitant fees by simply being more beautiful or more vicious than other pros. She did what few others of her kind did. Instead of working from a guarded, well-staffed dungeon, she went to her clients’ houses, their hotel rooms, wherever they paid her to go. Back then she’d joked her motto was Have Riding Crop, Will Travel. And travel she had. From New York to New Orleans, from Midtown to the Middle East, she went wherever Kingsley sent her. And for her own safety she relied on two things—her notoriety as the most dangerous Domme in the world, and Kingsley’s reputation as the last man in America anyone wanted to cross. She had only to say her name or his and the Underworld toed the line.

Now Nora prayed that where she went no one would have heard of her. Especially Wesley’s parents. Surely, as conservative as Wesley painted them, they’d never even been in the erotica section of a bookstore, much less heard the name Nora Sutherlin.

But it didn’t hurt to ask. She fished her cell phone out of her bag and called Wesley.

“Yes, we’re almost there,” he answered before she even said hello. Every hour on the hour she’d called to him to ask, “Are we there yet?”

“That’s not why I’m phoning this time.”

“Sure about that?”

“Nope. So you never told me what your parents think about me coming to visit.” Nora turned on her blinker as they veered onto exit 81.

“They’re fine with me having visitors. A lot of my college friends came by over the summer.”

Nora pursed her lips. She would have stared Wesley down had he not been in the yellow Shelby Mustang two cars ahead of her.

“Nice nonanswer there, kid.”

“It’s fine.” He laughed and Nora couldn’t help but smile. God, she’d missed that boy’s laugh in the fifteen months they hadn’t seen each other, hadn’t spoken. Wesley’s absence from her life had been a void no amount of sex or money or kink or fame had been able to fill.

“Seriously, Nor. My parents are nice people. They like all my friends.”

“Friends. Good. Let’s go with friends for introductions. Let’s practice. You’ll say, ‘Ma, Paw—’“

“You’re getting my family confused with the Waltons again.”

“Hush, John-Boy, we’re practicing. You say to them, ‘Mother, Father—this is my friend Nora. I used to work for her back at Yorke. She’s come to visit and not cause any trouble.’“

“Not going to be able to say that with a straight face.”

“Which is why we’re practicing, Your Highness.”

Wesley groaned, and now it was Nora’s turn to laugh at him.

“You’re never going to drop that, are you?”

Nora could easily envision him rubbing his forehead in amused frustration.

“I kind of like it—the Prince of Kentucky. Very sexy title.”

“One stupid reporter called me that three years ago in one article—”

“Yeah, in an article about you hanging out with Prince Harry at the Kentucky Derby. Crazy that he’s turned into the sexy one now. Can you get me his number?”

“We didn’t stay in touch.”

“So, if you’re the Prince of Kentucky,” Nora continued, unwilling to drop a thread of conversation that made Wesley so delightfully uncomfortable, “who’s the Princess? Are you supposed to marry the governor’s daughter or something?”

“God, I hope not.”

“What? She a dog?”

“She’s a very cute nine-year-old girl,” Wesley said as the first of the stars showed themselves at the edge of the southern sky. At the pace they were going, they’d be at Wesley’s house within the hour. “She also happens to be my cousin.”

Now Nora had to groan. Of course Wesley couldn’t just be the son of rich horse farmers. He had to be related to the governor, as well. Her poor little intern … She’d once thought had no money, no connections, no nothing … What else didn’t she know about him?

“Well, hey. You know what they say about Kentucky …”

“You’re disgusting.”

“True. But I’m also winning.” Nora hit the gas and passed Wesley’s Mustang. He apparently didn’t take kindly to her doing so on his home territory. Nora glanced in her rearview mirror and saw his car speed up. “Don’t worry, kid. I have no idea where I’m going. You’re gonna win this … oh, holy shit. Was that a castle?”

Nora craned her neck to look at the turreted building they passed.

“No. Sort of. It’s a hotel now. But it is a castle. Some lunatic built it for his wife years ago. Was her dream to live in a castle. She never got to do so.”

Nora frowned. “That’s sad. She died before they finished it?”

“Nope. Divorced.”

Laughing, Nora glanced back one more time at the strange sight of a castle situated in the middle of Kentucky bluegrass.

“Women. Just can’t please them sometimes. I think I’d stay married to a guy who built me a castle. Especially one that pretty.”

Nora heard Wesley laughing softly on the other end of the line. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him laugh like that before—sort of throaty, kind of arrogant and undeniably sexy.

“Wait until you see my castle.”

“Are we there yet?” she asked as they hung up their cell phones.

Nora followed Wesley’s taillights all the way to a town called Versailles, which he mispronounced as “Ver-sales.” They turned onto a dark winding road and had to slow down considerably. The entire way there Nora tried to will herself to be calm. It would be fine. Everything would be fine. She had Wesley back again.

Over the summer, she’d come to accept that she’d have to live without Wesley, that she couldn’t be Søren’s property and Wesley’s … whatever at the same time. Life with Søren seemed like a beautiful prison most days, a prison she chose, a prison she would never leave. Only Wesley’s absence had made it feel like a punishment and not a palace….

“Oh, holy shit,” Nora breathed. “That’s a fucking palace.”

Ahead of her, lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, was the biggest goddamn house she’d ever seen in her life. Kingsley’s three-story town house, Griffin’s estate, even Søren’s father’s New Hampshire mansion … all of them looked like suburban ranch homes in comparison to the stately sprawling ivory box before her. She counted no less than twenty-eight windows on the front of the house alone. Windows, doors, balconies … she’d seen smaller palaces nestled in the Rhine Valley of Europe, palaces that housed real European aristocracy and not just old American money.

Wesley pulled into the circular cobblestone drive and turned off his engine. Nora followed suit. She hoped it was late enough no one would be out and about to witness her wide-eyed, jaw-on-the-ground reaction to Wesley’s house.