“A nonprofit?” Søren continued shuffling the cards while never once looking away from Blaise.

“Tell him what it does.” Kingsley pinched her on the thigh, and she shuddered in pleasure. “Our Blaise is très altruistic.”

“It’s called Slut Pride. We educate people about women’s sexual freedom, especially in regards to women’s participation in BDSM activities. Some people like to tell us that it’s not feminist to enjoy being flogged. I say it’s not feminist to tell a woman what she can and can’t do. But enough about me. What do you do?”

“I’m a Catholic priest.”

Blaise said nothing. She gawked at Søren with her full red-lipped mouth agape. And then she laughed, a warm throaty sound that filled the room.

“You’re terrible,” she said. “You had me there for a second.”

Søren winked at Kingsley. Kingsley had never guessed Søren had this flirtatious side to him. Back in their school days Søren had been feared and envied by all the other boys, and Søren had almost never spoken to anyone but the other priests. Kingsley realized that, other than his sister, he’d never seen Søren around a beautiful woman before. Interesting. The man was human after all. Even if he was a priest.

“I must be off. You two chat, become friends. Blaise, peut-être you should take my friend upstairs and show him what BDSM looks like in action. I’m sure he’ll find it fascinating.”

“I’m sure I will,” Søren said. “We’ll be fine, Kingsley. Have a lovely evening.”

Kingsley patted Blaise’s shapely bottom, and she stood up and let him out. On his way from the dining room he heard Blaise asking Søren, “So what do you really do?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Søren answered.

Kingsley chuckled on his way upstairs. He needed to grab a few things. That was it. Think about what he needed to take with him, not what he had to do. Just a job. He’d done hundreds of jobs in his life. He’d get a file, a mission, a plane ticket, a target. This was child’s play in comparison.

Digging his keys out of the pocket of his jeans, he opened a locked box in his closet and took out his Walther P88. He removed the clip and pulled the slide, checking that no bullets remained in the chamber. He snapped the clip in, shoved it into his holster on his jeans and pulled on his leather jacket.

Kingsley left the house and neither hailed a cab nor took a car. On foot he made it to the apartment in twenty minutes. He rang the doorbell, and a housekeeper let him in without a word. No words necessary. The look of disgust and disdain said everything. Fuck her. Kingsley wasn’t here to make the housekeeper happy.

He raced up the stairs right as Phoebe Dixon stepped into the hallway in her long silk bathrobe. She had a towel to her wet hair and walked toward her bedroom at the end of the long hall. She didn’t look back or speak. She hadn’t seen him.

Good.

Kingsley took a quick and silent breath and pulled his gun out. Careful of the creaking floor, he stalked her down the hall. When she reached for the door handle to her bedroom, he put the gun to the center of her back.

“Don’t scream,” he ordered as he slapped a hand over her mouth. “Not if you want to live.”

8

PHOEBE’S ENTIRE BODY stiffened like a corpse. She whimpered but didn’t scream.

“Open the door. Now.”

She opened it, and he pushed her inside, pushed her so hard she landed on the floor, her bathrobe coming open to reveal her naked body underneath.

He grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into the floor again.

“Don’t...” she begged, her voice breaking with tears. “I have children.”

“Are you offering them?” he asked, ripping the robe from her body and wrenching her to her feet.

“Please, don’t kill me. My husband’s an attorney. He has money—”

“Keep begging. It won’t work,” he said as he bent her over the bed and kicked at her ankles until she parted her shaking thighs. He pressed the barrel of the gun into her throat. “But I like how you do it.”

Tossing the gun aside, he opened his pants and slammed inside her. Her body clenched around him tighter with each thrust. Despite her pleas and her protests, she grew wetter the more he rammed into her, the harder he worked her. But he couldn’t come, not yet. Although he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Sex with Phoebe was business, not pleasure, and he hated the work.

As she moaned underneath him, crying against the intrusion, Kingsley closed his eyes and disappeared to another place, another time. The elegant and well-appointed bedroom he stood in disappeared and dissolved. The hunter-green walls and the modern art prints faded away and rough wood took their place. The king-size bed adorned with silk sheets and pillows was gone, and now a small cot sat on the floor near a fireplace. And Kingsley lay on his side facing the fire.

“You have a bruise on your neck under your ear,” Søren said, touching the sensitive spot with his fingertip. “It’ll go above your collar.”

“If someone says anything, I’ll tell them a tree hit me.”

Søren laughed softly and kissed the bruise.

“I don’t think they’ll believe a tree hit you. Maybe they’d believe you hit a tree.”

“Why would I hit a tree? A tree never did anything to me.”

“Perhaps it likes being hit.” Søren kissed Kingsley’s neck again, his shoulder, his throat.