“Please,” Justin whispered.

Without a word, Kingsley pushed him back on to his stomach, took the plug out of him and rolled on a condom. He entered Justin slowly, wanting to enjoy every second of sinking deep and being surrounded and held by his inner muscles. After a few strokes, Kingsley was all the way in. He gripped the boy’s shoulders and pounded into him with all his strength. He thought of nothing, remembered nothing, but felt everything. His strokes were long and aggressive, his hands relentless. And beneath him Justin moaned and breathed and begged for more.

Kingsley bent low over him and pressed rough kisses into his shoulders and spine. Kisses and bites, bites and kisses. Pleasure and pain. Pain and pleasure. This was what he lived for, what they all lived for. His climax built and Kingsley didn’t fight it. With his mouth against Justin’s ear he came in silence, which increased the intensity of the orgasm. Once the spasms passed, Kingsley stayed inside him but only long enough to take the handcuffs off. He pulled out carefully, and Justin rolled on to his back.

“Come for me,” Kingsley ordered. “I want to watch.”

Justin took himself in hand and stroked upward. It didn’t take long before his own semen spurted against his naked heaving chest. Kingsley was hard again from watching. After putting on a new condom, Kingsley pushed back into him and thrust again, slower this time, more carefully. Justin wrapped his arms around Kingsley’s back and they kissed. Their tongues mingled and their lips met, and for now everything was right in his world. As long as Kingsley stayed inside this boy, everything was fine.

Kingsley stopped fucking long enough to pull the sheets down, undress completely, and settle Justin against his pillows. He wanted this erotic oblivion to last all night.

They fucked again, slower this time. And although it scared him, the desire overrode the fear, and Kingsley let Justin inside him. Afterward, Kingsley beat Justin raw with a flogger and cane. He took pain like a professional, like he was born for it. When their need and hunger for each other was finally spent, they stood in the shower together, Justin’s back against the wall, Kingsley’s mouth on his mouth as the burning water beat down on them and the steam soothed the soreness the sex had worked on them.

“Will you do something to me?” Justin whispered into Kingsley’s lips.

“Anything.”

Justin didn’t tell him. He didn’t have to. Justin knelt in the shower and offered his back to Kingsley. Not even Søren had been sadistic enough to relieve himself onto Kingsley. That made it all the more enjoyable for Kingsley to mark Justin as the hot water poured down on to both of them.

Kingsley sent Justin to bed after the shower. He smiled at the sight of that blond head on his pillow. For the first time Kingsley realized five whole hours had passed, and he hadn’t thought once about Sam. A good sign.

Kingsley dipped his head and kissed him on the side of the neck. Justin stirred.

“Thank you,” Justin said, half-asleep.

“For what?” Kingsley asked.

“Remembering my name.”

Kingsley felt a knot in his throat.

“I would never forget it.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Justin said. “With my life, I mean.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Never go home again.”

“You want to work for me?” Kingsley asked.

“House boy?”

Kingsley laughed.

“Not quite,” he said.

“Is there any money in being kinky?”

Kingsley smiled at him.

“You would be surprised.”

33

KINGSLEY LEFT JUSTIN alone in his bed. He pulled on his trousers, his shirt, and walked on bare feet to his office. In the bottom drawer of his desk, the only drawer he routinely locked, he pulled out Sam’s clipboard. For five weeks he’d cherished a fantasy that Sam would show up on his doorstep demanding the return of her beloved clipboard. He’d rarely seen her without it in the months she’d worked for him. Worked. Past tense. He still couldn’t get used to the past tense where Sam was concerned. In his fantasy she would show up and tell him she was wrong, that she shouldn’t have taken the Fullers’ money, but she needed it for something and she’d been too ashamed to tell him why. She’d beg him to forgive her and he would. He would forgive her and take her back. And everything would be okay again.

A stupid childish fantasy. It would never happen.

He picked up a pen and flipped to the checklist Sam had created for their club. In the little square beside the words “Male Submissive” Kingsley made a check mark. Justin needed a job that would let him afford NYC. Kingsley needed a male submissive for the club.

A match made in hell.

Today was September fifteenth. The club would open in seventy-six days, and he still had no location for it. He’d put a tail on Reverend Fuller and sent both male and female prostitutes to tempt him into a scandal. So far...nothing. He was missing something. Fuller had an ugly secret and he knew it. He’d seen it in Fuller’s eyes—the secret shame, the fear, the terror of discovery. It was there, but Kingsley didn’t know how to find it. And he had to find it—not because he wanted the building so much anymore. But he wanted to destroy Fuller because Fuller had destroyed his love for Sam. And that was an unforgiveable sin.

He flipped through the notes she’d left on her clipboard. He loved her handwriting—loopy and playful even when writing out to-do lists for a BDSM club. But his Sam was always a creature of beautiful contradiction. She dressed like a man and yet was easily the most feminine woman he’d ever known, from her light and airy laugh to her pink-lipped smiles, her lithe, manicured fingers. And yet she had a teenage boy’s libido and the ability to charm any woman—straight or gay—right into bed with her. And although she’d never indicated that she wanted them to be lovers, nothing had made her happier than hopping into bed with him, pulling his arm around her tight and being his “bed bug” as she called herself. She’d bite him on the arm or on the neck and then fall fast asleep.