NORTH
The Present
Kingsley stood for a solid hour in his shower, letting the hot water and the steam soothe his aching body. They weren’t quite doing enough for him. He’d either have to give in and soak in the bathtub or ingest a Vicodin and vodka cocktail. Or both.
Both.
He’d wanted this pain, prayed for this pain, he reminded himself. For thirty years he’d craved this pain like a starving man craves food. And he’d been fed pain tonight—a feast of pain so bountiful he’d nearly choked to death on it.
Looking down at his feet, Kingsley saw the water turning from red to pink and then clear again. Søren had been particularly thorough with him tonight. His poor Eleanor—she really had no idea the level of violence her beloved was capable of. Søren kept himself in check with her. He had to. Only five foot three and one hundred twenty pounds at the most, she earned her pet name “Little One.” At the height of her career as a Dominatrix, she’d been deceptively strong. He’d made her strong. A little girl like her had to be strong if she wanted to compete with the other, more physically intimidating Dominatrixes on the market. What she’d lacked in height and weight, she’d made up for in strength and uncommon viciousness. Others of her kind balked at the dark fantasies their clients laid at their feet. If Nora balked she never let on. She only grinned and said, “I’ll do it…if you’re a good boy.” And they were all good boys if they paid enough.
But no amount of personal training could change the fact that Nora Sutherlin was a woman and fragile. At least compared to him. And when Søren gave in finally and beat Kingsley, he held nothing back.
Kingsley turned off the water and grabbed his plushest, softest towel. Even it felt like salted sandpaper against his raw, bleeding, welt-covered back. Maybe he would simply go to bed wet and sleep on his stomach. But lying on his stomach would be something of an issue, as well. Kingsley looked down the front of his body.
“Good God,” he breathed as he saw the mass of bruises his abdomen and thighs had become. God, even his…
A wave of vertigo struck Kingsley as he studied his ravaged body. Welts and bite marks were the least of the damage. He’d seen an intruder attacked by his rottweilers who’d ended up less brutalized than he appeared right now. It would take weeks for the worst of the bruises to heal. They covered his body in deep black whorls, marbling his skin from neck to knee. He feared sleeping. Tomorrow morning he knew he’d barely be able to move. Søren had destroyed him more completely than the night he first took his Little One to bed. Kingsley had tended to twenty-year-old Nora for a week after that night—icing her bruises, rubbing ointment into her welts, picking the shards of glass from her feet and bandaging her bloody skin. She hadn’t cried. Not once. Not even when she’d woken up bleeding onto the sheets. More than not crying, the damn girl had even smiled. Smiled like only a woman in love could. Kingsley hated her for that, for not shedding a single tear no matter how much she suffered. Søren had broken her body the night she’d lost her virginity to him, but he hadn’t broken her spirit. And Kingsley had to respect her for that no matter how much he envied her Søren’s wounds.
But now the wounds were his.
Kingsley nearly stumbled on his way to bed. Rarely did he ever sleep alone. His town house was never without a beautiful boy or girl more than willing to act both as his company and as his pillow at night. Now he wanted nothing in the world more than to be alone. He would lie in bed and get as comfortable as he could. And he would bring to mind over and over again the memory of what Søren had done to him only hours earlier. Even now images flashed across his mind’s eye.
Hands on his face…his neck…his back against the wall…the sound of fabric ripping…the touch of teeth on his sternum…fingers digging into his throat…the leather on his back, his thighs…hitting the floor with his knees…salt on his tongue…sweat on his stomach…his arms aching from the cuffs that held him immobile on the bed…and the penetration, so necessary and brutal…. He’d closed his eyes at one point and wasn’t sure he’d ever open them again.
Kingsley grasped the bedpost with his left hand. With his right hand he grasped himself. He came hard onto the bed, wincing with the agony of the orgasm. Søren had left no part of him undamaged. Kingsley Edge, the King of the Underground, a man who hadn’t gone a day without sex in twenty years, would have to remain celibate for at least a week while he healed enough to be inside someone again. And it would be at least a week before Søren could be inside him. At least. Sadist. They left their notches not on their lovers’ bedposts but on the very bodies of those who braved their beds. Kingsley could count all night and still not reach the end of the number of lashes Søren had inflicted on those he loved. He could count until dawn and still not find the grand total.
Of course, Søren’s Little One had an even higher butcher’s bill to pay.
Carefully Kingsley started to climb naked into bed. Usually he adored his massive bed, draped in its red-and-black sheets. Bigger than a king-size, he joked that it was Kingsley-size, and all of the Underground spoke of it with respect. But now he hated its height. Every inch he had to move felt like a mile of agony.
Damn you, mon père.… Kingsley sighed with a smile. Damn you to hell.
As soon as his head hit the pillow, a knock sounded on his door.
“Arrête!” he called out tiredly. He had no strength for orders longer than one word.
“Monsieur? S’il vous plaît…” The voice of Sophia came through the door. Or was it Cassandra? They all blurred together now. No woman mattered to him but Juliette, and he’d sent her off to Haiti for her own safety, for reasons he refused to think about right now. “What is it?” he called out as he pulled a sheet over his body. Even lifting the light silk fabric hurt. Tomorrow…tomorrow he would take painkillers, many of them. Tonight he would accept the pain, revel in it. Søren had given it to him, this pain, and he would cherish the gift.
“Les chiens, monsieur.”
Kingsley’s eyes flew open. The dogs? The last time someone had come to him about his dogs was the night the thief had broken into the town house, drugged his infamous pack of rottweilers and stolen Nora’s file. If someone had drugged the dogs again…
Despite the pain, Kingsley rolled out of bed in an instant, pulled on his pants and a shirt, and headed for the door.
He opened it and found little redheaded Sophia, his night secretary, standing there, her face white as the moon.
“Quoi?”
She didn’t answer him.
“Mon Dieu…” he breathed, and followed her down the hallway. She raced down the stairs and Kingsley kept up as best he could. The last thing he needed was for his staff to see him weak, in pain. He swallowed the agony and kept moving.
At the bottom of the steps he saw Brutus, Dominic and Max pacing and whining. He reached for Max and touched his warm nose.
“Sadie?” he called out. Sophia turned to him with a tearstained face. She pointed.
In the darkness at the corner of the room, Kingsley saw a black shadow. As he approached it, the shadow took the form of a dog.
Sadie…his little girl lay unmoving on the white tile, blood seeping from a wound in her chest. He reached out and touched the blood. She’d been stabbed in the heart.
“Oh, ma fille…” he whispered, stroking her coat. On the wall behind her he saw five words scrawled in blood. Only five. And none of those five words was a name. Yet as soon as he read them he knew who’d killed his dog, who’d stolen Nora’s file, who’d sent the photograph and burned Søren’s bed.
“Sophia?”
“Oui, monseiur?”
“Call Griffin Fiske. And if he tries to tell you that he’s still on his honeymoon with his new true love, tell him he’ll be persona non grata in the Underground if he isn’t in my bedroom by noon tomorrow.”
“Oui. Bien sûr.”
Sophia raced off and left him alone with three rottweilers mourning their only sister. Kingsley knew how they felt.
He stared at the writing on the wall. Christian had been right…about everything.
All Søren wanted was for Kingsley to find out who was after them. And now Kingsley knew.
He knew and he would never tell.