“Is that as horrible as it sounds?”

“We have a seminarian here today. He’s speaking to a group of teenagers about discerning God’s will in their life. Eleanor’s under orders to pay very close attention.”

“You ordered your teenage girlfriend to go to youth group on a Saturday morning during summer break?”

Søren smiled fiendishly as he stood up and came around his desk.

“Sometimes the depths of my sadism surprises even me.”

“That makes one of us,” Kingsley said, standing to leave the office.

Søren replied with a swift slap to the center of Kingsley’s back, making hard quick contact with a cluster of welts.

A flinch and gasp gave it away, and Kingsley had to grab the door frame to steady himself as pain washed over him.

“I remember that sound,” Søren said, shutting his office door and locking it.

“What are you—”

“Hold still.”

He hadn’t belonged to Søren in eleven years, but an order was an order. Søren had said, “hold still.” Kingsley held still.

Søren grasped the bottom of Kingsley’s T-shirt and pulled it up and off of him. Kingsley heard a whistle of appreciation.

“Jealous?” Kingsley asked.

“Only impressed. You have bruises on top of bruises. Who did the work?”

“No one you know.”

“What made these?” Søren traced half circles on Kingsley’s upper back. The light touch on his abraded skin hurt enough to arouse him. He had to breathe to avoid getting a massive erection in a priest’s office. He wasn’t Catholic, but he assumed that was frowned upon.

Then again, maybe not.

“Electric cable looped in half,” Kingsley said. “Feels like getting punched by fire.”

“No cuts.”

“Not with her. She prefers impact-play. A little candle-wax when she’s in the mood.”

“She?”

“She’s a dominatrix I know.”

“You know her intimately,” Søren said, his voice low. The skin on Kingsley’s back was so sensitive he could feel the breath from Søren’s words brushing over his wounds.

“Very intimately. We’re sleeping together.” Kingsley turned around and showed Søren the welts on his chest.

“Good.”

“Good?” Kingsley repeated, playfully aghast. “Did a priest just tell me it’s good I’m engaging in sadomasochism and fornication?”

“I took the vow of celibacy, not you. And I’m pleased to hear you’re feeling more yourself again. I can’t imagine you being content to only top.”

“You should meet her. You two can talk shop.”

“Did you have a flashback with her?”

“A few times,” he confessed, still embarrassed about the one he’d had in front of Søren. “They’ve mostly stopped. Not completely, but they aren’t stopping me anymore.”

Søren pressed the flat of his hand into the knot of welts on Kingsley’s rib cage. He winced and inhaled sharply.

“It hurts coming back to life,” Søren said. “It’s a brutal, dirty business. Paddles on the chest pushing electric current into the dead heart, Dr. Frankenstein shooting lightning through his monster’s corpse. Life is a force so strong it can blow a stone off a tomb. It’s never easy—resurrection. It’s violent and it hurts.”

“It’s better than the alternative, non?” Kingsley asked, turning around to face Søren. He pulled his shirt down. “Staying dead?”

“It’s good to have you back.”

“I’ve missed me,” Kingsley said.

“You were always very fond of yourself.”

“I charmed the pants off of me,” Kingsley said as they walked out of Søren’s office.

“I’ll blame you if we lose today because you’re bruised all over. There will be consequences, possible eternal.”

“We aren’t going to lose. Go, change. I’ll meet you at the field.”

When Søren was gone, Kingsley considered heading straight to the field. He considered it for one split second before deciding on an entirely different course of action.

Somewhere in this church was Søren’s Virgin Queen. And Kingsley was going to see her.

Once outside the sanctuary Kingsley poked around until he found the breezeway that led to the attached annex. Once inside the annex, he heard voices—loud, obnoxious voices—and knew there were teenagers ahead. He found a door and peeked inside. About two dozen teenagers ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen sat in folding chairs arrayed in a semicircle around a very young and scared-looking man. Søren had called the man a seminarian, so he must have been a priest-in-training. Apparently his training included being subjected to a trial by fire. Kingsley nudged the door open a little wider and heard the seminarian attempting to talk over the din of three teenage boys who seemed determined to punish him for ruining their Saturday.

Behind the three rowdy boys sat a girl in black combat boots, a ratty denim skirt and a black low-cut shirt. She ran her fingers through her mass of wavy black hair and stretched luxuriously in her seat with the decadent unapologetic laziness of a cat that’d been forced out of bed too early. Had to be her, right? All the other girls looked like girls. This girl looked like a woman. She had a woman’s curves, a woman’s confidence and a woman’s utter boredom with the boys who surrounded her. She wore gobs of black eyeliner, which gave her eyes a smoky, seductive look, and Kingsley couldn’t stop staring at her.