The Queen

Kingsley opened the door to the sitting room and Elle followed him inside. When she turned on the Tiffany lamp she saw nothing had changed in the room while she was at the convent. Same bookshelves filled with leather-bound classics in French and English. Same red velvet fainting couch. Same gilt-framed portraits of naked nymphs at play. Same everything and on a night of upheaval and change, the sameness comforted her.

“Sit,” Kingsley ordered.

Elle sat.

“Where was I?” he asked, stalking about the room like a caged wolf, more rather than less dangerous because of the cage. Energy contained is energy focused and she felt almost afraid to be alone in the room with someone this dangerous. She had been at the convent so long she didn’t know how to be alone with a man again.

“Three ways to be a queen.”

“Yes. First, you can marry a king. That won’t work in this instance. Mainly because I already have a consort, and she might not like it if I took on another.”

“Wait. What? You have a new girlfriend?” He’d been so heartbroken over his ex-girlfriend Charlie’s defection she never dreamed he’d take on another 24/7 submissive again.

“Not a girlfriend. Consort. Her name is Juliette, and she is the perfect submissive. She’s also currently chained by her ankle to my bed so I wouldn’t go in my bedroom for at least a week.”

“Chained to your bed? King, you can’t leave her alone chained to your bed. What if something happens to her?”

“I left a bell by the bed to ring if she needs me, and the phone, of course. And the key if she wants to unlock herself. She can get out the second she wants to get out. But I know her—she’ll stay there until I unlock her.”

“Can’t wait to meet her.”

“You’ll love her. I met her in Haiti.”

“Special, is she?” Elle asked.

Kingsley grinned ear to ear, a rare sight and a breathtaking one.

“I’m in love with her. I think she will be with me all my life.”

“It’s good to see you happy. You deserve that.”

“I most certainly do. Now, the second way to become a queen,” Kingsley said, taking a book down off the shelf and flipping through the pages, “is how I became a king. I claimed a territory, called myself a king, acted like a king, and soon everyone simply accepted that I was. But you will become a queen the third way.”

“Which is?”

“By deposing the current queen and taking her realm away from her.”

“There’s a queen? We have a queen? We never had a queen before. Jesus, how long have I been gone?”

“Too long,” Kingsley said with real feeling. They were so much alike, she and King. Too much alike. Impossible to be friends. Impossible to be enemies. But partners in crime? Yes, they could be that.

“Nature abhors a vacuum, they say. When I left and you left, it created a power vacuum. A dominatrix appeared on the scene and started scooping up the best and richest clients. Half of Irina’s clients deserted her. So did Mistress Vee’s.”

“Ballsy woman. I wouldn’t want to get on their bad sides.”

“She’s on my bad side. One of Irina’s clients came back to her, begging forgiveness and asking to be hers again. His new domme sent pictures she’d taken during their sessions to his wife. Thankfully he’d already told his wife about his submissive side, and she’d given him permission to explore with a professional. But it was a petty, vile thing she did, and she won’t get away with it. She keeps her clients in line through fear, not love and devotion. She abuses her power, and I won’t stand for that in my city.”

Elle winced. Kingsley had his reams of blackmail material on anyone in the city who mattered and many people who didn’t, but he used it to protect the citizens of his kingdom, not humiliate and ruin them for their proclivities. And to destroy his enemies, of course. Sounded like he’d made a new enemy.

“Who is she?” Elle asked. “What’s her name?”

Kingsley held the book in his hand out to her and pointed to an illustration of a beautiful woman in an eighteenth-century gown. Elle glanced at the title of the book and back at the page.

“Milady...” Elle said, studying the face of the woman on the page. The book was Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, and the woman in the illustration was the infamous Milady de Winter.

“That’s what your rival calls herself. No first name. No last name. Milady. Nothing else.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“I know nothing about her and not for lack of trying. She claims to be the illegitimate daughter of a Japanese geisha and an English lord. She also claims she went to Harvard but didn’t graduate because she was caught topping one of her professors. Oh, and she says she married an Italian knight—they do exist, by the way, I’ve met a few—but he was fifty years her senior and when he died, he left her a wealthy widow with a villa in Tuscany. And if any of that is true, I’ll eat my vest.”

“You think she’s lying?”

“I do but I have no proof of it. She’s careful. Even wears gloves all the time so no one can get her fingerprints. When in the city she stays in a hotel under an assumed name and pays in cash. That level of paranoia and fear makes me suspicious. But her story makes for wonderful marketing. Her English is flawless, not a trace of an accent, but she also speaks Japanese flawlessly with no trace of an accent. She’s well educated and intelligent. She’s also mysterious, seductive, painfully beautiful and terribly cruel. Men throw themselves at her. There are rumors she secretly tapes her sessions so that if a client wishes to leave her, he either pays her a huge sum of money for the tapes or he stays with her. Most of them stay.”

Kingsley snapped the book shut and placed it back on his shelf.

“Have you tried sleeping with her?” Elle asked. Knowing Kingsley as she knew him, it wasn’t an unreasonable question.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t met her yet.”

“Is she good?”

“Very good from what I hear.”

For Kingsley to call a domme good was quite a compliment. The man could take more pain and wanted more pain than anyone she’d ever known in the scene.

“But...”

“But what?” Elle asked. Kingsley took her chin in hand and tilted her face up to him. He smiled.

“You’ll be better.”

“Will I be better than him?”

“No one is better than he is at sadism,” Kingsley said. “But...”

“But?”

“You’ll be a close second. Considering you’re untrained, and he’s been studying pain since he was born, there’s a very good chance you could put even him on his knees.”

“I don’t ever want to see him again, on his knees or off.”

“You say that now.”

“I’ll say that tomorrow, too.”

“Very well. I will respect that. For now. He’s not my favorite person either, nor am I his. But ours is a small world. You can’t avoid him forever.”