“Fair play,” Søren said.
A few minutes later, Søren locked up the church, and they started off down the path that led them through the small snow-shrouded woods and to the rectory.
In the last rays of daylight, the trees shimmered like diamonds.
“Stop,” Kingsley said. “I need a picture of this. For Juliette.” He took out his phone and snapped a few pictures of the scene—the light on the white trees, the little rectory hidden behind snowy branches.
Søren was staring at him as he took his pictures, studying him.
“What?” Kingsley said in French. “It’s pretty.”
“Yes, it is. It’s pretty every year. First time you’ve ever bothered to notice.”
Kingsley heard a question in that statement, but he refused to answer it. “Everything’s different this year.”
“That it is.” Søren seemed to accept that as a good enough answer. They carried on, ducking under a canopy of tree branches and deeper into the little dark forest, made silver with snow. The moment they were out of the sunlight, the temperature dropped, but Kingsley didn’t hurry toward the house, though it looked as cozy and inviting as a cottage out of a children’s storybook. He inhaled the icy air, so clean and pure and cold, listened to the sound of the crisp snow breaking and crunching under his boots, a sound like no other. He even slipped his bare hand out of the pocket of his wool coat to gather snow off a low-hanging limb and feel it turn to water in his palm. If Søren hadn’t commented about Kingsley’s sudden interest in photography, he would have tried taking a few more pictures—the dark trees, the snowy path, the cottage with the gray stone chimney patiently waiting for a fire.
And Søren… He wanted a hundred, a thousand, a million pictures of Søren. Especially the picture of him he was tattooing onto his memory, Søren just as he was right then and there—tall and blond (with a touch of silver, just like the trees), and starkly handsome in his black coat with his Roman collar peeking out of the open top button.
He wanted to record everything, every sight and sound, every taste and smell. Not for Juliette, as he’d said. For himself. A king and a priest walking through a snowy wood… It sounded like the beginning of a story. The beginning, not the end.
They entered the rectory through the kitchen door, and Søren shucked off his coat with one casual move, slipped his finger under his dog collar and popped it out of his shirt. Kingsley hung his own coat on the hook.
“Where did you want to go to dinner or—” he started to say but then was cut off by Søren pushing his back against the door and kissing him.
The kiss was hot as summer but tasted like winter—that pure electric taste of ice-cold air that made the blood wake and the skin shiver. The kiss was possessive, and Kingsley let it possess him. He surrendered his weight against the door and lifted his chin to give Søren more of his mouth. There they were, those hands on his neck, holding him in place. Those hands he’d spent years wanting, dreaming of, remembering like a man in prison remembers the best meal he ever had in his life…
Kingsley returned the kiss—with his mouth, with his tongue, with his hands seeking Søren’s skin at his throat, his beautiful bare throat. Kingsley found that perfect hollow with his fingertips.
The kiss broke, leaving them standing at the door close together, breathing each other’s breaths.
“No dinner,” Søren said. “You. Upstairs.”
“Here?”
Søren smiled. “Why not?”
“We’ve never…here.”
“Yes, we have.”
“With Nora. Not alone.”
“Really? Never?”
“Never,” Kingsley said.
“I thought for sure…”
“You must have imagined it.”
“I did imagine it,” Søren said. “More times than I’ll admit to.”
“Admit to it,” Kingsley said. “Please.”
Søren laughed softly, though Kingsley wasn’t joking. They had gone to bed together at the rectory many, many times over the years, always with Nora there between them. Never alone, never just the two of them, not here. There were two things Kingsley wanted in his life, wanted so badly he would have sold everything he owned down to his very soul: to have Søren, and to have children with Juliette.
And now, as if by magic, the universe had handed him both at the same time. But it was a trick, he realized. He was given both. He could keep only one.
“How many times?” Kingsley asked again. “I want to know. I spent too many years thinking you didn’t want me at all. No more secrets, no more lies. I’m asking—how many times did you want to call me and ask me over, but you told yourself no?”
“I didn’t count,” Søren said, still smiling as if Kingsley were joking. But then, as if he finally saw how serious Kingsley was, he said, “Not even I can count that high. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now are we going to stand here in the kitchen while you ask me questions all night, or are you going to come upstairs with me so I can beat and fuck you?”
And while Kingsley did want answers…
Reader, he went upstairs with him.
Chapter Four
Tonight would be the first time they played alone together in Søren’s bedroom. And eventually, one night would be their last time. So when Kingsley followed Søren up the stairs of the rectory to his bedroom, he counted the steps—eleven. And he memorized the particular shade of sunlit gold that gilded the dark hardwood floors. And the smell… The rectory was tended by the world’s most Italian Catholic grandmother, and it always smelled clean, like pine and fresh linens. And winter, of course. It always smelled like winter, even in summer, because the man who made this little cottage his home smelled like winter. His skin like snow. His hair like ice. And, once upon a time, Kingsley would have said his heart was frosted over like a windowpane on a January morning, but what man with a heart of ice could say something like, “Not even I can count that high,” when asked how many times he’d imagined them making love in his bedroom?
Once inside that bedroom, Søren went to the window and drew the white curtains open. There was nothing like the last light on a winter’s day, the way it filled a room with a strange and sacred silence.
Kingsley felt almost light-headed. He leaned against the bedpost to steady himself.
“I still can’t get used to it,” Kingsley said breathlessly when Søren turned to face him.
“What can’t you get used to?”
“That we’re doing this again,” Kingsley said. “You want something for your whole life, and you get so used to wanting it, you don’t know how to get used to having it.”
Kingsley stood at the bedpost nearest the door, as if he couldn’t bring himself to accept he was here, really here, an invited guest, a wanted guest.
Søren came to him. “I sent you away too many times. I shut you out too long. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me, if you walked out the door right now to punish me.”