Author: Tiffany Reisz

“What did she say?” Wes asked, seemingly clinging to every word she spoke. She’d never had anyone like him paying so much attention to her before.

“She said I shouldn’t judge him for not leaving the church and marrying her. He’d offered once and she said no.”

Wes went completely still. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Why her aunt and uncle’s love life mattered to him so much, she couldn’t guess and didn’t want to. But she wasn’t stupid. Obviously Wes had feelings for her aunt. But it seemed to go deeper than a crush.

“He asked her to marry him and she said no,” Wes repeated.

“Yes, and that’s when she left him. She said she was scared she’d change her mind and say yes and he would leave the church for her. She said it was like hearing someone offer to commit suicide to prove their love. She left so he wouldn’t destroy the man she fell in love with.”

For a few minutes they sat side by side in silence as the evening faded out and became night.

“It’s crazy,” Wes finally said. “All this time I thought she left him because he wouldn’t stop being what he was for her.”

“He offered. She refused. She said she’d rather be the mistress of a priest than the wife of the ghost of a priest.”

Wes started to say something but she heard a woman’s voice calling her name.

“We’re here, Grace,” Laila said as Wes jumped off the log. Laila started to jump down, too, but Wes stood in front of her and held out his hand. She took his hand in hers and let him help her down. She probably would have landed okay even in the dark but she couldn’t turn down a chance to hold Wes’s hand, could she?

“What’s up?” Wes asked as Grace jogged into the clearing.

“Your uncle was wondering where you’d gone,” Grace said as the three of them retook the road toward the house.

“I needed to walk,” Laila said. “I was going crazy in that house.”

“I don’t blame you.” Grace gave her hand a quick squeeze, a kind and affectionate gesture that Laila appreciated even as part of her wished to feel her hand in Wes’s again. “But it’s late and your uncle wants us all under the same roof tonight.”

A car passed them and Wes watched as it drove away.

“Yeah? Well, then, where the hell is Kingsley going?”

21

THE QUEEN

Nora spent the entire day in Søren’s childhood bedroom, searching it for anything she could possibly use against her kidnappers. Apart from the razor blade she found nothing else hidden away and for that she was almost grateful. Søren had made her promise to not think about, not to imagine, what had transpired between him and his sister. She wanted no reason to break that promise to him. Hopefully the one razor blade would be enough if Nora could keep it, save it, use it, if and when the time came.

The hours ticked by with excruciating slowness. She knew Marie-Laure was waiting for...something. Some move to be made by Søren or Kingsley...or perhaps even Nora herself. Marie-Laure had put the pieces into play. Now she sat back and waited for someone else to take their turn. But who?

An hour after nightfall, Nora heard footsteps outside her room. She’d been hearing them all day...random squeaks of the hardwood, the slight creak of leather soles. She knew one of Marie-Laure’s boys was out there making noise to scare her. It worked. With every sound she sat up straight as her heart hammered in her chest. She slept a little but not enough. Every sound the house made sent her into immediate fight or flight mode. The constant surges of adrenaline exhausted her. She wanted nothing more than to be at home in Søren’s bed and to sleep for weeks, sleep until every moment in this house felt like it was nothing more than the absurdity of a dream, and when she woke up, she would tell Søren, “I had the craziest dream last night—your wife was still alive and she came for me....” And he would laugh and tell her to stop eating Cajun food before bed. By noon the last embers of the dream would have burned out entirely, and she’d remember nothing of the dream except that she’d had it.

Nora smiled at the thought as the door opened and Damon stood staring down at her on the floor.

This was no dream.

“Story time,” he said. Nora stood up and reluctantly joined him in the hallway.

He followed behind her, his right hand in his pocket, his left hand resting like a silent threat on the back of her neck.

Deciding to test the waters, Nora cleared her throat and opened her mouth.

“Don’t,” he said before she could get a word out.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t even bother. You can threaten me, flirt with me, bribe me all you want, it won’t work.”

“True love, then, is it? You and her?”

“Not even close.”

“Do I get a hint?”

“Threaten me,” Damon said, “and I’ll laugh. Her dead husband made all his money smuggling drugs and guns. I used to work for him. He killed people for amusement when he got bored and he died a billionaire. No one you know is scarier than he was. No one you know is richer than she is. And as for the flirting, I’ve heard all about you. I’ve fucked Eastern European prostitutes with fewer miles on them than you. No thank you.”

“I do have a lot of STDs. Most of them raging and fatal.” Nora hoped she sounded slightly convincing with that. She didn’t have anything but they didn’t need to know that. She’d never been so grateful for her bad reputation in her life.

“I don’t doubt it.”

“What about the other guy? Any use bribing, fucking or threatening him?”

“No.”

“Same reason as you?”

“You were right the first time.”

Nora laughed mirthlessly.

“He’s in love with her? Well, how sweet. I know a good priest if they decide to get married.”

“I’m sure they’ll send you the invite. It can be a double ceremony. Their wedding. Your funeral.”

He pushed her hard through the door of Marie-Laure’s bedroom, hard enough she almost hit the floor, but she managed a graceful recovery and remained on her feet, her back to the bed.

“Très bien,” Marie-Laure said from the bed. She sat in her nightgown and robe, her left foot propped up on a tissue as she painstakingly painted her toenails. “You’re very graceful. Were you ever a dancer?”

“I can do a mean Davy Jones ‘Daydream Believer’ shimmy. But no formal training.”

Marie-Laure shrugged. “Too bad. You’re short and that’s an asset for a ballerina. Not thin enough, though, and your breasts are too large.”

“Mother Nature’s a bitch.”

Marie-Laure capped her polish and stretched her leg out on the bed. Even at fifty years old, she still retained her dancer’s physique. She must work at it constantly to stay so lean and graceful. Marie-Laure might be thin and older than her, but Nora didn’t doubt for one second that she was strong enough to seriously hurt her.

“Have a seat.” Marie-Laure tapped the edge of the bed. She knew what was next and, sure enough, Damon brought out rope to bind her to the bedpost before leaving the two women alone in the room. “Did you have a nice day?”

Leaning back against the pillows, Marie-Laure gave her a broad innocent smile. One could almost believe they were nothing but two schoolgirls having a slumber party.

“Lovely day. Stared at the wall, stared at the ceiling, counted cobwebs.” Nora pulled on her bonds—rope only. Thank God for small mercies.

“You’ve probably stared at a lot of ceilings in your life.”

“Not too many. I like being on top. Except with Søren, and then it’s a lot of floor staring. Unless I’m blindfolded.”

“You have sex with my husband often?”

“I didn’t know he was your husband at that time he and I were fucking. You’re the one who faked your death. Can’t blame me.”

“I don’t blame you. I blame him, and I blame my brother.”

“They didn’t know you were alive, either.”

“I don’t blame them for not knowing. That was the plan. I blame them for not caring.”

Nora’s blood momentarily turned to ice in her veins. She felt as though she was standing on the edge of a cliff, maybe even the very cliff Marie-Laure had supposedly fallen from. But this time it would be her who would fall off it if she wasn’t careful.

“They did care,” Nora said, weighing her words.

“That’s not what you said earlier today. You said my revenge against them didn’t work. And you promised me a story to prove it. I want this story of yours.”

Fuck... Nora felt the wind rushing past her as the ground sped toward her. Marie-Laure had set a nice little trap and she’d fallen into it.

“I said your revenge didn’t work because it didn’t break up Kingsley and Søren. I never said they didn’t care.”

“It’s the same thing to me. If my love for someone had killed my brother, I would never want to see that person again.”

“Yes, I can tell how much you love Kingsley.”

Marie-Laure leaned forward and rested her elbows on her legs. With her chin on her hand and a dangerous glint in her eyes, Marie-Laure only responded with four words.

“Tell me the story.”

“You sure you want to hear a graphic narration of me having sex with your brother?”

“But of course. Leave us, Damon. She’s shy.”

Damon finished off Nora’s knots and left them alone in the bedroom. Marie-Laure reached into the nightstand and pulled out a gun. She laid it by the lamp and leaned back against the pillows. A nice little taunt. The gun lay pointed at Nora. Nora ignored it.

“Get comfortable,” Nora warned Marie-Laure. “This story, much like sex with Kingsley, takes a while.”

* * *

Four years...that’s how long Eleanor waited to have sex with Søren. Too long for her tastes but then again, knowing her, she would have let him have her the day they met. Stupid priest had scruples, however, and this weird idea that she should be fully mentally and emotionally prepared for what it meant to share his bed. He said it like that, too. Share his bed. So classy...respectful even. He never said anything about “fucking” her. He only swore when he wanted to deliberately provoke or shock someone. She, on the other hand, swore like a sailor with Tourette’s syndrome. She never told Søren how much she liked the way he talked to her about their private life, how it made her feel like a lady to have sex discussed in such discreet civilized terms. Of course, it wasn’t until they became lovers that she realized how much of a mindfuck that delicate talk of his was. Outside the bedroom, he was all euphemisms and elegance. Once she started “sharing his bed,” she discovered the gentleman outside the bedroom turned almost savage inside it, inside her. Sex with Søren was raw, brutal and merciless, and she’d loved it, reveled in it, couldn’t get enough of it, enough of him.

Three months after they’d become lovers, she lay across his strong stomach, spent from the beating he’d given her and bruised from the sex. She made the mistake of uttering a very dangerous sentence to a very dangerous man.

“I wish I had two of you,” she said, dropping a kiss onto the center of his chest as she traced his rib cage with her fingertips. “I want this every night.”

All she meant by it was that she loved him, that she loved being with him, submitting to him, seeing the real him that he kept hidden away from the world and who only came out at night.

But instead of laughing at her insatiable desire for him, teasing her about her libido that rivaled any teenage boy on earth, he simply said, “I’ll speak to Kingsley.”