“And you told them no?” If Søren wouldn’t leave Sacred Heart for a cushy teaching position in Rome, he’d never… Kingsley pushed the rest of that thought aside.
“After everything we’ve just been through, I could hardly ask Eleanor and you and Juliette to uproot yourselves and come with me, could I? And I wasn’t going to leave without you.”
Kingsley ignored a pang of guilt. “Did you want to take the job?”
“I miss teaching. Being the only priest at a parish this size is exhausting. In a perfect world, I’d be teaching, but we don’t live in a perfect world.”
“If you weren’t planning on taking it, why keep it from Nora?”
Søren met his eyes briefly, then looked away. “She’s fragile right now,” he said. “Doing better than most people would after what she went through, but she’s not quite there yet. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve called her over the years and said I needed her to come over and be with me. Never once has she called to say she needed me.”
“And now?”
“Three times in as many months. Which isn’t many on paper but it’s a lot for her. Most of the time, she swears she’s fine, and I believe her. But sometimes when she’s alone…sometimes she just can’t be alone.”
“You like that, don’t you? That she needs you now.”
“It’s gratifying, yes. I wish the cause were different, but since we’re being honest, it means...” He paused and smiled. “It means everything to me. Just mentioning to her the possibility I might go away—even if I’m not planning to, which I’m not—it would worry her. And worry is the last thing she needs, especially since she’s starting to get back to her old self.” He smiled. “Any other brutally personal questions?”
“One million. Give or take.”
“How about one more, and then we go to bed? Surely we could save the other 999,999 for tomorrow?”
“What’s something you never told me? Something about us.”
Søren raised his arms and clasped his hands behind his head, the picture of deep contemplation. Kingsley would have killed to be inside that blond head, seeing all those memories flashing across his mind’s eye like a montage from a black-and-white film.
“I got you a Christmas present,” Søren said.
“That’s not a secret. We get each other Christmas presents every year.”
“Not this year. Back then.”
“When we were in school?”
Søren nodded. “By the time it finally arrived, you were already gone and not coming back.”
Kingsley sat up straighter, looked at him. “What was it?”
“You used to brag that you were scouted by Paris Saint-Germain FC.”
“I had been, I swear.”
“I believed you. That’s why I wrote Elizabeth and asked her to buy a PSG football shirt when she was in Paris for Christmas that year and ship it to me. She did, but the post was slow, and it didn’t arrive until a week after you were gone. It sat wrapped in brown paper with twine—the only wrapping paper we had at school—until the end of the term. Sat on my dresser taunting me every day, reminding me you’d left and weren’t coming back. When I went to France to look for you after the term ended, I took it with me, but I never found you. When you join the Jesuits, you have to give up all your worldly possessions. That shirt was the very last thing I gave away. A homeless man was begging for change across the street from the building. He looked about your size.”
Kingsley stared at Søren and didn’t speak at first. In the silence, a branch from the frozen elm tree outside scratched the frosted window. The wind blew softly, but he felt it creeping through the cracks in the old and drafty cottage. The moment was already becoming a memory, one of his most important, one that would keep him warm in any season, safe in any storm.
There was nothing you could say to a confession like that, that the man you loved more than your own life had clung to a scrap of fabric for months and months and had only let go at the very last second, like a bride turning back one last time before walking down the aisle to make sure the man she truly loved wasn’t coming to claim her. Or like Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom before being turned into a pillar of salt.
Since there was nothing to say, Kingsley said nothing. He went over to Søren, sitting in his office chair, and he went down onto his knees on the rug in front of him and rested his head in Søren’s lap.
Søren put his hand in Kingsley’s hair and just held his head against his thigh. Kingsley inhaled deeply and smelled the scent of winter, the scent of trees encased in ice, but earthy and bursting with life within.
“I have a problem,” Kingsley said. “I’ve gotten used to it.”
Søren laughed softly. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I told you, it’s not going away.”
No, maybe not, Kingsley thought. Maybe Søren’s love wasn’t going away.
But Kingsley was.
Chapter Nine
“Come to bed,” Søren said, and Kingsley obeyed.
Kingsley went first, and Søren walked behind him. Once inside the bedroom, Søren shut the door. Kingsley heard the click of the door latch, his new favorite sound.
Talking was over. All the secrets that would be told that night had been told. As soon as the door shut and the world was outside it, Søren took Kingsley’s face in his hands, possessively, forced his head back, and kissed him like he owned him. He did own him, had every right to him.
Quickly, roughly, Kingsley’s clothes were stripped from his body. Buttons unbuttoned. Shirt tossed aside. He was hard already from the kiss, but his penis stiffened even more when Søren pushed him onto his back on the bed and crawled on top of him.
Even six months pregnant, Juliette was light as a feather compared to the sheer breathtaking mass of the six-foot-four man on top of him. Was there anything like being kissed while fighting for air that made one feel more used? More owned?
The quilt was soft against Kingsley’s skin and cradled his body as he sank into the bed.
White hand-made quilt, antique bed, light from an old brass lamp. It was like making love in another time, another world, a world so removed from the real one that Kingsley was able to forget that their nights like this were numbered.
Søren rose up on his knees, straddling Kingsley’s waist. “Do you want to leave marks on the bed?” he asked.
Kingsley answered, “I would carve my name across your headboard if you let me. I’d leave teeth marks in your footboard. I’d let you bleed me into the mattress so deep the stain would never come out. I’d…”
Kingsley paused as Søren’s eyebrow reached his hairline.
“So that’s a yes,” Søren said.
Søren left the bed to go to his steamer trunk, his box of tricks. While he was gone, Kingsley moved fully onto the bed, lying in the middle, head on a pillow. Søren returned with two sets of steel handcuffs. Two? Søren straddled him again, putting one set on each wrist. The snapping of the lock into place and the cool touch of the metal on his already tender wrists made Kingsley desperately hard. His cock throbbed, wanting to be touched. Once the cuffs were on, Søren turned him onto his stomach. Kingsley lay there, prone and defenseless as Søren cuffed each wrist to a bedpost, his arms locked in a wide V.