Author: Tiffany Reisz

He started to raise his arms to touch her, but she grabbed his wrists and pinned them to either side of his head.

“Behave yourself,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. Slowly she began to move on him. “We’re both wrecks. If we’re going to survive this fucking, we have to be careful.”

“If you insist...”

He relaxed underneath her, surrendered to her will, her body.

“You would have died,” Kingsley said as she bent over and kissed him on the mouth, the neck, the chest. “You know that? Stabbing her instead of him—they would have killed you both. You committed suicide yesterday.”

Nora looked up and grinned.

“More like martyrdom. I’m working on my bid for sainthood.”

He glanced down at their joined bodies, indicating their current erotic position.

“Work harder.”

She worked her hips harder against him and when they both came, it was with as much pain as pleasure. It didn’t matter. To those of their kind, it was one and the same.

After one round of sex they both collapsed into bed, too sore and too tired to do anything but sleep. Long day. He’d called Griffin to tell him the good news about Nora. Then called Juliette and told her to come home to him. Then he’d hung up the phone and buried his sister, buried her for a second time. He’d brought in a trusted crew to deal with the cleanup, but he’d insisted on taking care of Marie-Laure himself. He owed her that much. As he covered the grave with the last of the dirt, he felt almost nothing, not even sadness. It wasn’t his sister he buried, but a stranger. His real sister had saved them all by being willing to die with her priest. Stabbing Marie-Laure instead of Søren had caused the chaos and confusion that had given him the two seconds he needed. If he ever doubted Nora’s love for Søren before, he would never do it again.

With such thoughts in his head he fell asleep. When he woke, night still surrounded them but he sensed he and Nora were no longer alone.

Kingsley reached out and found the bed empty. He heard something and turned over. A few feet from the bed in Anya’s large rocking chair sat Søren. In his arms he held Nora wrapped up in a blanket. She barely made a sound but from the shivering of her body, he could tell she sobbed against his chest. Of course she wept after all she’d been through. The breakdown had been inevitable.

He watched them together, watched Søren bending to kiss her forehead, to whisper in her ear, watched her wear herself out with crying until she finally fell asleep.

Sliding out of bed, Kingsley pulled on his pants and came over to them. Søren opened his eyes. Kingsley laid a hand gently on Nora’s head.

“For a split second, I almost considered killing her,” Kingsley confessed in French. “When I thought she might kill you to save herself.”

“But then?”

“Then I remembered who she was. And I remembered who I was.”

“I never forgot who you were,” Søren said, slowly starting to rock again in the chair. Nora slept against his shoulder, her face tearstained but peaceful.

“I’m glad one of us didn’t.” He caressed Nora’s hair before taking a step back. “I’ll leave you alone with her.”

Søren shook his head.

“Stay. Please.”

Kingsley smiled at him through the dark.

“‘Jacob have I loved,’” Kingsley said in English once more. “‘Esau have I hated.’ Romans 9:13. I paid attention in school sometimes.”

“Not nearly enough attention.”

“I was preoccupied.”

“Obviously. You learned all the wrong verses. First Samuel 18:1. ‘And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’ First Samuel 20:16-17. ‘So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “Let the Lord even require it at the hands of David’s enemies.” And Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him: for he loved as he loved his own soul.’ Second Samuel 1:26. ‘I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan...thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’”

Kingsley stared at Søren and found he couldn’t speak.

Søren smiled at his sudden muteness.

“Don’t get into a scriptural pissing contest with a Jesuit priest, Kingsley,” Søren chided. “You’ll lose every time.”

“I’m happy to lose this contest.”

“Go back to bed,” Søren said. “Obey me one more night.”

Kingsley knelt down at Søren’s feet and rested his hand on Nora’s hip right under where she’d been kicked. They’d both been wounded for their sins, and both found their healing at his feet and in his arms.

“Every night.”

45

THE QUEEN

The next morning Nora woke up and knew she would be all right. It might take a while, might take a few more midnight crying jags in Søren’s arms, but she’d get there. She’d get her spunk back, her spirit. Right now she just felt empty and tired and really fucking hungry.

She took a long shower and dressed in her own clothes that Grace had washed for her. Jeans, a white T-shirt and her boots. Finally she felt almost human again.

That human feeling momentarily faltered when she walked past Wesley’s room. She wanted to talk to him again, make sure he was okay. When she reached his bedroom door, she heard the sound of lascivious laughter, a sigh of pleasure, followed by the unmistakable sound of a teenage girl having an orgasm. It hurt to hear but she made herself listen, anyway. She took it like penance. She’d hurt Wesley...worse, she’d harmed him. Now he found healing with someone else. Good for him. He deserved it.

She kissed her fingertips, and touched the door. She walked away and let Wes and Laila take their comfort in each other.

Grace had taken it upon herself to cook a big breakfast for them all. They assembled in the dining room, she and Søren, Kingsley and Grace. Nora studied Grace for any signs of awkwardness or regret about submitting to Søren last night. But instead Grace appeared radiant. She looked rested and happy and she and Søren acted like old friends and nothing more. She still couldn’t believe Grace had gone through with it, but not many women after getting to know Søren could resist the temptation of a few hours alone with him, even if it meant submitting to pain. And although Grace had been doing Søren and Nora a favor by giving him an outlet for his sadism, Nora had made sure to get something out of the deal herself.

“You get my priest for a night, I get one more night with Zach,” Nora had said last night.

And Grace, who never ceased to surprise her, had only laughed and said, “A night? For one night with your priest, you can have Zachary all week.”

“Bring it,” Nora said, and they’d sealed the deal with a fist bump.

They all gathered around the table for what promised to be a gluttonous full English breakfast. But the peace of the moment shattered when Søren posed a question that left them all quiet.

“Where’s Laila?” he asked. No one answered.

Nora reached for the toast and Søren intercepted her hand. He took it, kissed it and looked at her with quiet determination.

“Eleanor, where is my niece?”

“Still in bed.”

“Her flight leaves in a few hours. I’ll go wake her up.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Nora said, standing up.

“And where is Wesley?”

“Probably sleeping, too.”

“Eleanor, answer me.”

“I’m not one hundred percent certain I know where Laila and Wesley are.”

It was true. After all, a point-one percent chance existed they might have been abducted by aliens in the past five minutes.

Søren rose out of his seat and headed to the entryway. Nora had to run to beat him.

“Don’t.” She braced herself in the doorway barring his exit.

“Eleanor, get out of my way.”

“They’re together right now—Laila and Wes. They spent the night together. They’re still together. And if you don’t want to traumatize your niece for the rest of her life, you’ll leave them alone.”

“Me, traumatize her? She spent the night with someone she barely knows who is in love with someone else.”

“And she had a damn good time doing it from what I overheard.”

“Eleanor...” Søren said in a tone so sharp she could have cut herself on it. “If you don’t get out of my way right now—”

“You’ll what? Beat me up? Or, as we call it, foreplay?”

“I’m not joking. Get out of my way this instant.” He eyed her with barely restrained fury.

“No. You and I have put Wes through enough pain and drama to last a goddamn lifetime. If spending some private time with Laila makes him feel better, then fine. Laila got kidnapped and held at gunpoint. If she wants a few hours’ distraction with a gorgeous, sweet kid like Wes, we’re not going to stop them.”

“You aren’t. I am. So help me God, Eleanor, she is only eighteen—”

“So the fuck what? I was seventeen when you and I fooled around the first time. Remember that night? You didn’t seem to mind I was a seventeen-year-old virgin. And you also didn’t mind you were a thirty-one-year-old Catholic priest. My priest. You remember that?”

“This is an entirely different situation.” Søren took a menacing step forward but Nora stood her ground.

“Why? Because she’s your niece? Fuck you, I’m somebody’s daughter. I know Mom would love to come do what you want to do to Wesley right now.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you.”

Søren started to push past her and Nora put a hand out, grasping the door frame.

“You go another step past me and you will never see me again,” she said, her voice low and menacing. “If you dare interfere with Wes’s chance at happiness, even a few more minutes of it, I will run so fast and so far from you even God and all His angels won’t be able to hunt me down. You and I have been playing this game by our rules for twenty fucking years and it is way too late for you to be pulling this vanilla bullshit on any of us right now. We know who you are. We know what you do. Every single one of us in this room has the bruises to prove it. So unless you want to lose me and lose me for good this time, you will sit your ass down and eat your goddamn breakfast and you will leave Wes and Laila alone. Otherwise, I will disappear from this life and the next life. I will make sure I die first and whether I’m in heaven or hell, I will bar the gates behind me so you can’t even touch me in the afterlife. Say, ‘Yes, Mistress,’ if you understand.”

“Eleanor...”

“Say it. Say it if you ever want to see me again.” Nora felt like a corpse struck by lightning and jerking back to life. “I left you before. By God, I will do it again. This time I won’t come back.”

It was the only hand she had to play and she wasn’t bluffing. She stared at him. He stared at her. Wars had been started with less fury than she felt at him right now. No way in hell would she let him humiliate Laila and Wesley for doing nothing wrong at all. Laila was eighteen, not even fifteen like Michael was. Wes was twenty and a college student, not thirty-three and a Catholic priest like Søren had been their first time. They had nothing to apologize for, nothing to be ashamed of. They’d committed no sins and she wasn’t about to let Søren punish them for one night of pleasure.

“I mean it,” she said when she saw the war raging in Søren’s eyes. “You know I mean it.”

For a few more terrible seconds Søren remained silent. She knew her entire future hung in the balance even more now than it had two days ago when she held her and Søren’s lives both in her hand. She could forgive Søren any hurt he’d ever caused her in her entire life. But she would not, could not, forgive him if he hurt Wesley. That she could not allow.