CHAPTER 18
Nora woke up in the dark in her bed at Griffin’s. Stretching out under the covers, she massaged an ache in her lower back. Taking turns with Griffin and Michael had been both erotic and exhausting. Of course, her two boys had nothing on Søren and Kingsley. Together those two had given her some of the most intense sexual experiences of her life. Tonight’s little play hadn’t really been about sex, however. She’d enjoyed it. Who wouldn’t? But for six weeks now she’d watched Griffin staring at Michael when Michael wasn’t looking and Michael staring back at Griffin the second Griffin looked away. All the angst-ridden pining had started to get to her. Those two needed to get their shit together, man up and admit what they wanted, and get the fuck on with it.
With a sigh, Nora sat up and rubbed her forehead. She found Griffin sitting next to her in bed with his chin resting on his knee. Next to Griffin, Michael lay sound asleep on his stomach with the covers tucked up under his chin.
Nora rested her head against Griffin’s strong bicep. He reached out and laid a hand on her leg in a gesture of pure and simple friendship.
“That bad, huh?” she whispered. Griffin’s eyes were trained on Michael and didn’t glance away even to look at her.
Slowly Griffin nodded.
“Yeah…that bad.”
For a moment she said nothing, merely watched Griffin watching Michael.
“It’s weird,” Griffin said. “Did you notice he’s clinging to the sheets like his life depended on it?”
Nora grinned. Michael always bunched his fingers into the sheets when sleeping.
“I know. I teased him about it.” Nora raised her hand and ran her fingers through Griffin’s hair. His darks eyes glanced her way once before looking again at Michael. “He said he thought his subconscious worried that gravity would be revoked in the middle of the night. He wanted to be prepared.”
Griffin covered his mouth to stifle a laugh. But the laugh quickly faded and Nora saw no mirth in his eyes anymore.
“I can’t have him.” Griffin stretched out his hand and let his fingers hover an inch or two above Michael’s bare shoulder blade before pulling his hand back and leaving Michael untouched. “Søren—”
“Søren is protective of Michael. But he’s not some kind of monster you can’t reason with. Go talk to him.”
Griffin finally turned and met her eyes full-on.
“Talk to Søren? Yes, as if that ever worked for me before. He’ll say no, and even if he didn’t, Mick’s dad…his dad would kill him if he got involved with another guy. The stuff he’s told me about his father… Nora, that bastard actually hit Mick. Hit him. God, it makes me…”
Griffin’s jaw tightened and his hand curled into a fist. Nora knew in his mind Griffin was exacting beautiful revenge on Michael’s conservative homophobic asshole of a father. She, like Søren, didn’t condone any kind of violence except of the consensual bedroom variety. But somebody would eventually have to teach Michael’s father a lesson or two about how to treat a kid like Michael. Preferably a lesson that didn’t land Michael’s father in the hospital and Griffin in jail.
“I know. I understand, Griff. I do. But—”
“But nothing. I want him so much it hurts. Like physically hurts, Nora. And not just sex. It isn’t that. I can’t explain what it is but I just…”
“Wesley,” Nora said and stopped. Where had that come from? Griffin looked at her.
“Wesley?”
She smiled but the smile didn’t reach her eyes or touch her heart.
“Wesley…he has this problem. Type 1 diabetic. Scared the shit out of me, that kid did with his needles and his blood-testing. Every single night, I’d have to look in on him when he was sleeping. I can barely sleep at my own house anymore because he’s not there to keep me up at night. Which makes no sense at all.”
“No,” Griffin said. “It makes perfect sense.” He glanced up at Nora again. “Does this ever go away?”
Something wet and warm ran down her face, and she swiped it off with her forearm.
“No,” she whispered. “Never.”
* * *
Suzanne gasped and spun around. Standing in the doorway of Father Stearns’s bedroom was a man she’d never seen before. Tall and frighteningly handsome, he had shoulder-length dark brown hair, near-black eyes and a Mediterranean complexion.
“Who are you?” she demanded, stepping back but finding her way of escape barred by the bed.
“I suppose I should ask you that. After all, I am allowed to be here. I’m not certain you could say the same. Oui? Non?”
He spoke in beautiful English tinged with an unmistakable French accent. He stepped across the threshold and for the first time she noticed his clothes. He wore black trousers and a black vest embroidered with some sort of beautiful swirling silver pattern, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms, and knee-high riding boots.
“I’m…” she began. “I was…”
“You are Suzanne Kanter, the reporter who has been dogging my dear friend’s steps for two months now. Twenty-eight years old. A freelance journalist who usually spends her days in war zones. I don’t see any wars anywhere.”
“Then you aren’t looking hard enough,” she countered.
“Congratulations on graduating cum laude from your journalism school. A wonderful phrase—cum laude. I’ve always thought it should refer to something else.”
“How do you know so much about me?”
The man smiled, a roguish, dangerous smile that set every nerve in her body on end.
“My name is Kingsley Edge.”
Suzanne gasped and tried to take another step back and nearly fell onto the bed in the process.
“From your reaction,” he said, coming closer, “I will assume you’ve heard of me.”
“I’m a reporter. Of course I’ve heard of you. You destroyed a friend of mine. Gwendolyn Black? Remember that name? You put a sex tape on repeat on every computer in her son’s school. She’s been in therapy for two years because of what you pulled.”
Kingsley shrugged.
“Pas moi. I was in Tahiti at the time. Although I did hear about that unfortunate incident. Pity. But still…she was attempting to make a name for herself by exposing the private life of a man who’d never hurt a fly, a human-rights lawyer who’d saved thousands of lives and put dozens of murderers behind bars. Your friend thought his interest in alternative sexual experiences meant he did not deserve his privacy. I disagree. And so did someone else apparently.”
“Someone else who worked for you.”
Kingsley Edge only grinned.
“Perhaps.”
Suzanne stared at him in silence as she tried to formulate an escape plan, or an attack plan if that failed. So much time in war zones had taught her how to defend herself. But she had no weapons on her, and Kingsley Edge, despite his relaxed posture and elegant attire, definitely had a dangerous air. She’d seen generals in their dress uniforms at cocktail parties who looked more deadly than infantrymen in their desert BDUs. Kingsley Edge had that look about him too. Something in the eyes. Something glinting and fearless. He looked like a man who’d seen so much blood he had the Grim Reaper on speed dial.
“You’re afraid of me,” he finally said as he took another step into the room. “You don’t have to be, Suzanne.”
“Everyone’s afraid of you. Everyone in my world.”
He grinned and the smile overtook his face and rendered him so handsome she could scarcely breathe.
“Then come into my world for a little while and you won’t have to be afraid.”
“What…” She looked around. “What are you doing in Father Stearns’s bedroom? Hell, in his house?”
“He was called away. One of his parishioners is dying. The family needs him. He might not return for a day or more.”
“So what? You’re here to water the plants?”
He laughed, a deep, warm, rich laugh. A fearless laugh.
“I like to get away from the city sometimes. From the phone that won’t stop ringing. The endless decisions I have to make. The senator’s son wants to bottom tonight but his favorite dominatrix is with the famous lead singer. My tailor is out of the country, and I need a new suit for the slave auction. And I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to properly violate my lovely Juliette in days.”
“Juliette?”
“My secretary.” He sighed luxuriously with a put-upon air.
“Poor you.”
He nodded.
“My life is difficile. I come here for some silence.”
“You just like breaking into the houses of priests?”
“I was invited. I am family, after all.”
Suzanne’s eyes went wide with shock.
“Harrison…” The pieces started to fall into place. “You?” She nearly shouted the question. “You’re the French brother-in-law?”
“Oui. That box that fascinated you.” He nodded at the carved rosewood box. “You wish to open it?”
“I do. But it’s locked. Can you open it?”
Exhaling heavily, Kingsley reached out and took the box from her hands. He pulled a small set of keys from a pocket in his vest, stuck one in the lock and turned.
“You women…all of you are Pandora. You cannot leave well enough alone, can you? Here.” Kingsley gave her the now unlocked box back. “There’s the answer to your mystery.”
With shaking fingers she opened the lid. Inside on a bed of bloodred velvet lay two golden bands, one large, one small.
She pulled the smaller one out.
“Wedding rings?” she asked.
He nodded.
“That was my sister’s, my Marie-Laure. The other one was his.”
Suzanne touched the larger band but didn’t take it from its bed of velvet.
“I still can’t believe he was married before he was a priest. He must have been so young.”
Crossing his arms, Kingsley leaned against the bedpost and gazed out the dormer window.
“Neither can I sometimes. We were just children playing foolish children’s games. We were at school together, le prêtre and I. Marie-Laure and I were separated after our parents died—I was only fourteen and sent to stay with my American grandparents. She came to visit…I was then seventeen, he was eighteen. She barely twenty-one. I couldn’t stand to lose her again, but she did not have dual citizenship as I did. He married her to keep her here. He married her for me.”
“He didn’t love her?”
“He tried. For her sake. When she realized that he would never feel for her what she felt for him…”
“I know she died. I’m sorry.”
“She didn’t die,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “She killed herself.”
Suzanne nearly dropped the box.
But she held on to it despite her shaking hands.
“I’m…I’m so sorry, Mr.—”
“You may call me Kingsley. Or sir. Or monsieur. But please do not call me Mr. Edge.” He rolled his eyes and laughed again. The reaction seemed so incongruous to their topic that she laughed too out of sheer confusion.
“Okay, Kingsley. I’m sorry about your sister. My brother, he—”
“I know.” Kingsley said the words softly, kindly, and with a look of the profoundest sympathy in his eyes.
“Right. Of course you know…. So you and Father Stearns…you’re related.”
“By a long-gone marriage only. But we’ve remained friends all these years. I daresay I know him better than anyone.”
“Better than Nora Sutherlin?”
Kingsley raised his eyebrow and took the box from her hand. Carefully he arranged the two wedding bands back on the velvet before closing and locking the lid once more.
“He said she knows him better than anyone.”
Something in Kingsley’s eyes went cold and deadly at her words, and Suzanne immediately regretted them.
“What he says and what is the truth are not always the same thing. He may seem omniscient but where she is concerned…well, have you ever heard the phrase willful ignorance?”
“They’re lovers, aren’t they?” Suzanne asked, hoping to shock him into answering.
Kingsley only laughed.
“Ah…Pandora never learns. Does it matter if they are? Really?”
“Of course it matters,” Suzanne said, rage welling up inside her. “He’s her priest. Has been her priest since she was fifteen. If he’s been sleeping with her, or was when she was a kid? Hell yes, it matters. Only a monster would do that. A sexual predator. A—”
Kingsley raised his hand and shook his head.
“You have no idea who he is, Suzanne. If you judge him by his actions, you will never know him.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“That makes no sense. There’s no way to judge any man except by his actions.”
“You see only a sliver of the truth. And a lie can tell you more than a partial truth.”
Suzanne took a deep breath.
“Then tell me all. You say you know him better than anyone. I want to know him too.”
Kingsley set the box back down on the bedside table and stepped toward her until he stood so close a whisper couldn’t even slip between them.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” He raised his hand to her face and caressed the arch of her cheekbone with his fingertips. “Trying to know him is like wrestling with God. You remember what happened to Jacob, no? He grappled with God and limped away the next morning.”
Suzanne nodded slowly.
“I’ve been limping since the day Adam died. Please…I know you can help me.”
Gently Kingsley pressed a kiss on her face right by her ear.
“I can help you. But I give nothing away. If you want to cross the river Styx, you must pay your coin to Charon.”
“I don’t have a lot of money. Just a reporter.”
“I have more money than I know what to do with. It isn’t your money I desire.” Kingsley’s hand dropped to her neck. He pressed his thumb lightly into the hollow of her throat. “But if you are willing to pay, I am willing to answer.”
Suzanne swallowed and felt the pressure of his thumb on her neck.
Was she willing to pay? She had no doubt in her mind what form of currency he traded in. Apart from Father Stearns, from Søren, she’d never seen a more alluring man in her life. Everything about him…his clothes, his sensual mouth, his voice and that accent…in truth, it wasn’t such a terrible price to pay. Even without the promise of answers, she would be tempted….
“I wanted to believe there was one good priest in this world,” she whispered. “But if he—”
“He is a good priest. And a good man. And I can supply the proof you need of it. If that is what you wish.”
Finally Suzanne nodded.
“Yes, it is.”
“Then come with me.”
Kingsley held out his hand and Suzanne took it with more fear than she’d ever felt on a battlefield. He started off and took her out of the bedroom and down the hall.
“Where are we going?” She’d thought he’d take her in Father Stearns’s bed or even on the floor, but they seemed to be leaving the house.
“Manhattan. I have something to give you…if you earn it.”
They left the house and he guided her around the back where a Rolls Royce waited. A beautiful young woman in a chauffeur’s uniform hopped out of the car and with a sprightly step opened the back door for them. Kingsley entered first and Suzanne followed, already regretting it.
“But I’ve got my car. Well, Patrick’s car.”
“I’ll have it returned to Patrick. He’s still in the Village, oui?”
“Jesus, you do know everything about me.”
Kingsley smiled again as the car started and pulled out onto the road.
“Not quite.” He cupped the side of her face and brushed her lips with his thumb. “I don’t know what sounds you make when you come. Let’s find that out, shall we?”
Before she could answer, Kingsley leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers. He did nothing at first, merely waited on her. Suzanne told herself she was doing this for Adam…before slowly parting her lips. Closing her eyes, she let Kingsley take over the kiss. His hand twined in her hair. He held her neck firmly as if to remind her she belonged to him now and could not escape. As his tongue touched the tip of hers, her desire to escape died and the need to surrender was born. And she wasn’t doing this for Adam or Father Stearns. She wanted Kingsley. She would do this for her.
“Tell me, Suzanne, have you ever had sex in the back of a Rolls Royce?”
Kingsley didn’t wait for her to answer. He pushed her onto her back as he pulled her legs apart and rested his hips hard against hers. Oh, God, she thought, this is really happening. With deft fingers, he unbuttoned her blouse and opened it. He kissed his way from her neck to her navel and up again.
She closed her eyes and let the sensation of a stranger’s hands on her body wash over her. Not just any stranger, she reminded herself. This was Kingsley Edge, the bogeyman who kept even the most hardened of investigative reporters up at night. And now she was one of them. One of the reporters Kingsley Edge kept up all night.
“Don’t pretend you aren’t enjoying this,” Kingsley whispered in her ear. “I know you’re trying not to enjoy this.”
“I’m doing this for information, not pleasure.”
“Liar.”
Suzanne blushed at the truth in his accusation.
Kingsley nipped at her ear, her shoulder. His teeth on her skin sent shock waves of pleasure into her stomach.
“Even when I’m bending my secretary over my desk, I make sure she enjoys it. I’ll see that you enjoy it too, whether you want to or not.”
Before Suzanne could make another protest, Kingsley pulled up and away from her. She started to ask what he was doing but then she saw. He left the luxurious leather of the bench seat in the Rolls Royce and knelt on the floorboard. He snapped his fingers and gestured her to sit in front of him.
Suzanne slid to the center of the seat. Kingsley reached under her skirt, grasped her panties and dragged them roughly down her legs. She wanted to tell him to stop but the promise of so much information about Father Stearns kept her quiet even as Kingsley opened his pants.
He pushed her legs wide and shoved two fingers into her. Wincing, she fought the urge to close her legs.
“Breathe, chérie. I promise you will like this if you let yourself.” He took his fingers out of her and gazed up at her. In the dark of the night, she could barely see him except when the car passed a streetlamp.
With one pull he brought her hips to the very edge of the seat. Again with his fingers he parted her outer and inner lips. He brought his mouth down on her and sucked lightly on her clitoris. Suzanne dug her fingers into the supple leather of the seat as her head fell back.
Up and down the length of her vagina he licked her, teased her with his tongue and lips. Suzanne quickly found herself opening her legs a little wider and pushing her hips forward. His tongue delved deeper until she felt he sought the very core of her. His hands gripped her thighs and Suzanne twined her hand into his hair. Underneath her the car vibrated from the roar of the heavy engine. Her entire body vibrated from what Kingsley was doing to her. The pressure built in her lower back. She leaned back into the seat, grabbed the headrest behind her and came with a low, almost pained grunt.
Before she could even catch her breath, she heard the unmistakable sound of a condom wrapper opening.
“Wait,” she panted but Kingsley only pulled her down off the seat and onto him, impaling her. He’d made her so wet that she took every inch of him inside her in one stroke.
“God—” she gasped as her body strained to accept all of him.
“I said you could call me Kingsley,” he whispered into her ear.
Suzanne couldn’t help but laugh.
“You must be the most arrogant man alive.” She wrapped her arms around his back for stability as he grasped her by the hips and started slowly thrusting up and into her.
“Only the second. You’ve met the first.”
She shook her head and started to speak. But Kingsley found her clitoris with the tips of his fingers and rendered her momentarily speechless.
As he nibbled at her lips, her neck and shoulders, Suzanne could only hold one thought in her addled mind. She was being fucked by Kingsley Edge. The one and only Kingsley Edge.
And she was enjoying the hell out of it.
Kneeling on his lap, she moved her hips forward and back in time with his precision movements. Everything he did sent currents of heat and electricity surging through her whole body. She came close to another climax but Kingsley stopped her with a kiss.
“Turn around,” he said into her ear as his left hand did marvelous things to her right nipple.
Nodding, Suzanne lifted herself up and turned her back to him. He pressed in close to her back and bit her shoulder hard enough she winced.
“How much do you want to know about le prêtre?” He pushed three fingers into her from behind and Suzanne inhaled sharply at the sudden shock of pleasure.
“Everything.” She parted her thighs even more and pushed back into his hand. A fourth finger joined the others. She’d never felt so open before. God, the man knew what he was doing.
“You will never know everything about him. Not if you searched the world until the end of time.” He pulled his hand out and slowly penetrated her again. He sunk in deep and Suzanne moaned audibly from the incredible sensation of him filling her so completely. “But I can only tell you what I know if you tell me one thing, ma chérie…”
He started to thrust again, hard this time, viciously hard. Suzanne grabbed the door, the seat, anything to hold her steady as he used her body so thoroughly. She couldn’t believe how much she loved this, loved being taken like this…. Kingsley found her clitoris again and as he pushed into her she came again with a loud cry as pain-sharp pleasure exploded in her back and hips. Kingsley thrust a few more times before coming with a shudder that shook them both.
Kingsley lingered inside her a moment as they both caught their breath.
“What?” she panted. “What do I have to tell you before you’ll tell me about him?”
Kingsley kissed her hair, the tip of her ear as he continued to pulse inside her. She could get used to erotic attention like this.
“Tell me—” he pushed into her once more “—why you want to know.”
“I…” Why did she want to know? Was it still about Adam? Would Adam be happy she was doing this? Proud? For one moment she was glad he was gone so he couldn’t see what kind of person she’d become, what she’d do in pursuit of a story. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I just have to know. I have to. If he’s hurting children—”
Kingsley pulled out of her so quickly she winced. He straightened his clothes and threw himself across the length of the bench seat and crossed his feet at the ankles. Suzanne felt suddenly embarrassed and ashamed of her half-naked state. In the dark she found her panties, buttoned her blouse and sat gingerly on the seat across from him.
“He does not hurt children,” Kingsley said in a voice as cold as winter, as sharp as a knife. “Eleanor Schreiber was never his victim. And for the record, she was never really a child. I’ve known her almost as long as he has.”
“So what? She was a flirt as a teenager? So she deserved to be seduced by an older man? By her priest?”
“Nora Sutherlin, Eleanor Schreiber, whatever you call her or however you know her…you must know one and only thing about her. She seduces. She does not get seduced.”
Suzanne took a deep breath and met his eyes in the dark.
“I don’t know why I need to know. But I have to. He…” She stopped speaking and searched for the words, any words, to explain what she felt, what she wanted. “I believed in him like I once believed in God. I don’t want to believe in either of them…unless I should.”
Kingsley exhaled heavily as he pulled a booted leg into his chest and draped his arm over it casually.
“To believe or not to believe…only you can answer that question for yourself,” he said as the Rolls pulled in front of an elegant black-and-white town house. “But I can help you on your quest. I can point you in the right direction at least. Come.”
The door opened and Kingsley left the car. She smoothed her blouse and skirt and followed him through a wrought-iron gate and up the stairs.
As they hit the third floor, the most stunningly beautiful woman Suzanne had ever seen in her life appeared with a cup of tea in her hand and a smile on her face. Almost as tall as Kingsley with ebony skin, charcoal eyes and a playful smile on her full lips, the woman seemed both graceful and severe to Suzanne.
“Aah…my Jules. I’ve missed you,” Kingsley said as he saluted the woman on each cheek with a kiss. “This is Suzanne Kanter, a reporter friend of mine.”
“Bonjour, mademoiselle. Tea?” the woman who Suzanne surmised must be Juliette, Kingsley’s private secretary, asked. Like Kingsley, she too spoke with a rich accent. But Juliette’s sounded different, more Caribbean. She must be from Haiti, Suzanne decided, recognizing the accent. A black Haitian woman working for a rich, white, French man…. Kingsley really was the most arrogant man alive.
“She can’t stay.” Kingsley took a sip of his own tea. “She’s merely here for a file.”
“Which one, monsieur?” Juliette asked. “I’ll fetch it.”
“The mistress…her medical file.”
Juliette’s dark eyes went wide for the barest hint of a second before she composed her face once more into the mask of the perfect submissive secretary.
“Oui, monsieur.”
While Juliette disappeared into a room, Suzanne looked around. So strange. Kingsley’s headquarters seemed as if they’d been transported from another place, another time. She saw huge black rotary phones on the large art deco desks. Wooden filing cabinets, Tiffany lamps…and no computers in sight.
“Such a Luddite,” Suzanne said, taking it all in.
“I’m simply old-fashioned,” Kingsley said with a wicked glint in his eyes.
Juliette returned with a thick black file folder fastened with a burgundy ribbon. Kingsley held it out and Suzanne reached for it, but he pulled it back to his chest.
“For you and you only, mademoiselle, I had a dear friend of mine send this to me. You will be allowed to keep this file for one day. It must be returned to me by this time tomorrow night. Nothing in this file can be recorded or photocopied in any way. No one but you may look at it. I will know if you have disobeyed any of these conditions. The consequences for disobedience will be severe. Do you understand me?”
Kingsley said the words with a conversational air but the threat in them was unmistakable.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Je comprends.”
Kingsley raised his eyebrow at her before passing her the file.
“Now I’ll have my driver take you home.”
Suzanne headed down the stairs and Kingsley followed. Not twenty minutes ago, he’d been buried inside her body. Now he barely spoke to her, although she saw him watching her out of the corner of her eyes. On the first-floor landing he stopped and gestured for her to go on without him.
“Good night,” she said, clutching the file to her chest. “I’ll drop this off tomorrow, I promise.”
“Bon.” He nodded.
Apparently good-night kisses wouldn’t be forthcoming. Suzanne nodded back and headed toward the front door where Kingsley’s chauffeur waited in silence.
The chauffeur opened the door.
“Mademoiselle?” Kingsley called out and Suzanne turned around and looked up at him. “One more piece of advice on your quest.”
“Yes, please? What?”
“Go see the sister. Talk to her.”
Suzanne blinked.
“Sister? Like a nun? Which nun?”
Kingsley laughed then—an amused, arrogant, infuriatingly French laugh.
“No, Suzanne. His sister.”
“That’s right,” she said, a memory clicking into place. “He has three sisters, doesn’t he? Which one?”
“The one you don’t want to see.”
“I don’t want to see any—”
“And one final thing,” Kingsley said, all mirth and seduction gone from his face and his tone. “About the file in your hands…”
“Yes?”
“It was mine.”
“What was—”
“Au revoir, Suzanne.”
Before Suzanne could ask another question, Kingsley turned on his heel and headed up the stairs.
Suzanne watched him until she could see him no longer.
Holding the file to her chest, Suzanne followed the driver back to the Rolls Royce.
“It’s all right,” Suzanne said, making a sudden decision. “I’ll walk home.”
The chauffeur only looked at her before curtsying and heading back into the house.
Once alone Suzanne headed down the street until she found what she needed—a bench under a streetlamp.
She opened Nora Sutherlin’s medical file, and began to read. An hour later she knew what Kingsley meant when he’d said, “It was mine.”