Author: Tiffany Reisz

Carefully, Kingsley made his way down the winding path that led to the hermitage. But before going to the cottage, he turned and walked to the rock.

The last time he’d gazed upon it, it had been painted red with his sister’s blood. A thousand winds and a thousand rains had washed her blood away and left it gray and green once more. Kingsley laid his hand on the cool stone.

“Marie-Laure…” How good it felt simply to say her name, to acknowledge, even if only to himself, that she’d lived. She should still be alive. He’d long ago forgiven God for the death of his parents. And his grandparents…their deaths barely a splinter compared to the bullet wound in his heart that had been his parents’ death.

But Marie-Laure, her death had destroyed him. It had gone off inside him like a bomb. Everything had shattered, and only the shell remained. He ate and drank death after that. Until Søren had come back and brought him to life once again.

“Ma soeur,” he whispered.

“You should know, Kingsley, she’s not really gone.”

SOUTH

For the tenth time in one car trip, Nora shushed Wesley.

“What? Why are you shushing me?”

“I’m thinking about serious stuff. You know how hard that is for me.”

Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back in the passenger seat and visualized the race…the horses surging, flanks flying and Spanks for Nothing taking the lead and refusing to give it up.

And then just an hour later…that thousand pounds of muscle in motion had lain still and dead on the floor of his stall, with no visible injuries. She’d seen the horse, gone to him, looked at him with her own eyes, before kneeling on the ground next to Talel and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. They didn’t speak. She had nothing to say that would help him. She could only be there for him with a touch. Had Wesley not been there, she would have been there for Talel in other ways.

Talel…she still couldn’t believe this ghost from her past had shown up in Wesley’s world. Nora replayed the chain of events in her mind. Wesley had walked off with his father and left her alone near the stables. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a familiar outline. Her eyes had widened, her heart had raced. Talel? Here?

Forgetting all her promises to Wesley of maintaining decorum and good behavior, she’d shouted, “Talel!” and raced toward him. He’d whipped around at the sound of her voice. Son of Middle Eastern royalty or not, the man still obviously worshipped at her feet. They’d embraced with laughter and kisses. In his arms, Nora had felt a calm return to her, a calm she hadn’t felt since leaving the safety of New York.

“How is my car treating you?” he’d asked, and Nora laughed in his face.

“My car. You gave me the Aston Martin. She’s mine.”

“And I am yours,” he said, kissing her hand.

“None of that. That car has gotten me into as much trouble as you did.”

“That was my plan, Mistress. I’d hoped you would get into so much trouble only I could get you out of it.” He’d whispered the words in her ear, and she’d playfully purred at him. Talel…she’d broken a lot of rules with this man. Three years ago Kingsley had learned that the dashing sheik who’d come to New York ostensibly on diplomatic matters had been making quiet inquires into where and how he could enjoy some playtime with one of the city’s legendary Dominatrixes. Kingsley had seen nothing but dollar signs on Talel. But Nora had seen more. Life in a strict Muslim country had left him hungry to explore the decadences of the Western world. More than that, however, he simply needed affection, acceptance. In his world, his desires were taboo. His father would have exiled him had word gotten out that Talel had a sexual submissive streak in him as wide as the desert that bordered his country. Kingsley had one hard and fast rule about the Dominants and submissives in his employ—no sex with the clients. With pride, Kingsley could say he was no pimp. If Nora slept with Talel, then Talel could not be a paying client.

She’d slept with him. And Kingsley had been furious. Not that Nora had cared. She’d just run off to Jordan with Talel for a week, and holed up in the grandest hotel in the country. Day after day, night after night, she’d become Talel’s oasis…giving him what he’d thirsted for in his desert home, but never could find. For one beautiful week with him, she’d gloried in her Dominant side as she beat Talel, bound him, brought him to his knees again and again. He had kissed her boots, obeyed every order, lived and died between her thighs. He’d begged her for everything, for every touch, for every kiss…and only if he begged well enough did she acquiesce. At the end of the week he’d begged her for one more favor.

Stay with me…stay forever.

And for the second time in her life she’d looked into the eyes of a man she adored, a man who could give her a life of luxury, a man who wanted her more than the air in his lungs…and she’d said, “No.” And she’d said it to Talel for the same reason she’d said no to another beautiful heartbroken man all those years earlier. Daniel…Talel…even Griffin…she could have had them but walked away, and all for the same reason.

Søren.

But he’d forgiven her, Talel had. And he’d loved her despite knowing she loved another. And the week after she returned to America, she’d found an inferno-red Aston Martin with a license plate that read MSTRSS sitting in her driveway.

To see him again, here at a racetrack a thousand miles from New York and a billion miles away from his home country…Nora couldn’t believe her eyes, her luck. Once in Talel’s arms she felt at home again. These rich Southerners with their million dollar accents and their twenty-five-million-dollar ponies, they weren’t her people. Talel with his hunger for female Dominance, his willingness to submit to anything she wanted to do to him, his whispered “Yes, Mistress” in her ear—he felt like home to her.

So she grieved even more that Spanks for Nothing had been one of his horses. Such a beautiful creature with the white star on his forehead and the little red socks on his ankles. Talel had told her he’d been thinking of her when he’d named the horse. She’d slapped him on his firm bottom in reply.

“You’ll get me into trouble if anyone sees us together,” Talel said, grinning at her.

“Horses don’t talk, right? Or do they? Mister Ed wasn’t real, was he?”

“No, Mistress. Horses don’t talk. Thank God. I can only imagine what this ill-tempered beast would say if he had the power of speech. Nothing a lady should ever hear.”

“Good thing there are no ladies present. But he doesn’t seem that ill-tempered to me. Right, Spanks?” She’d reached over the stall door and patted the beast on his velveteen nose.

“He is in a rare good mood today. Submissive even. I am certain your presence is to thank for that. But tell me about your presence here. I can’t believe my eyes.”

“I believe your eyes.” Talel had the darkest, most soulful eyes she’d ever seen. Eyes that could keep secrets.

“My presence here... I’m with my boyfriend?” The sentence came out as a question, not a statement.

“Boyfriend?” Talel seemed as skeptical as she, and far more shocked by the word boyfriend than by her presence there at the race. “And your priest?”

“He knows I’m here. I’m not sure why he let me come, but I think he thought…I don’t know. I never know what that man’s thinking.”

“But you will go back to him?”

And that question Nora had chosen not to answer.

She’d seen Wesley then, standing by the paddock looking around—for her, most likely. In the bright afternoon, the sunlight caught in his too-long hair and he’d seemed for a moment to be surrounded by a halo. The sudden sight of him silenced her words and awakened her longing. It might be the wrong decision to take Wesley’s virginity and then go back to Søren again, but Wesley was old enough to face the risks.

And she had to have him.

“Wesley…” Nora opened her eyes and came back to the present moment. He had just turned into the driveway of his home. “What happened today? With Spanks, I mean?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t break anything. Horses are real fragile. Maybe a heart attack from running so hard? Maybe electrocution?”

“Are you kidding?”

He shrugged. “Nope. You can kill a horse with an electrical current so mild even a person wouldn’t be affected by it. Bunch of horses got killed not that long ago when a wire hit some water and they were standing too close. Just an accident.”

“You think it was an accident?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“That horse was so healthy, Wes. I petted him and kissed him. And when he ran…it was like someone turned wind into rage and turned rage into a horse... I’ve never seen anything like it. It was beautiful.”

“You’re starting to sound like a racing fan. This isn’t good. I don’t need you losing every penny playing the ponies.”

“You never let me have any fun.”

Wesley stopped smiling. “I could say the same to you.”

Nora’s stomach tightened at the hurt in Wesley’s voice.

“I’m trying here, Wes. With you. Figuring you out. I want us to be together, really together. This thing with Spanks for Nothing kind of freaked me out.”

“It sucks and it’s sad, but it happens. It’s a cool sport, but a dangerous one. You should understand that.”

“I do. I really do. But people don’t turn up dead all that often doing kink. The E.R. for the occasional sprained wrist or whatever? Yes. But not the morgue.”

“I told you, horses are fragile and accidents happen.”

“But I don’t think it was an accident.”

Wesley pulled up to the guesthouse and turned his car off. He looked at her and Nora steeled herself. Certain sides of her, certain parts of her past, she tried to keep from Wesley, for his own good. A sweet kid like that didn’t need to know she herself had put people in the hospital, that his wasn’t the only heart she’d broken, that she’d had an abortion, that she’d done the sort of things he’d never forgive anyone but her for…but she knew he needed to know this.

“Nora…what do you know that I don’t know?”

She pulled a small red object from her bra. In the stall with Talel, she’d seen it, recognized it immediately and hidden it quickly where no one else would look. Now she showed it to Wesley.

“What is that?” he asked.

“It’s a crocodile clip.”

“Where did you find it?”

“In the stall in the hay by Spanks for Nothing’s body. Wesley, you know what these are used for, right?”

“Yeah, my dentist uses them to keep the bibs on.”

She gave a cold little laugh.

“Not this kind of crocodile clip. This is for carrying electrical currents.”

Wesley’s eyes widened in shock before narrowing with understanding. “Are you sure—”

“Yes, I am absolutely sure.”

“How do you know what that is?”

“I’ve used them before.”

His eyes narrowed further.

“For what?”

Nora swallowed before forcing the words out.

“For electrocuting people.”

NORTH

The Past

Kingsley returned to Saint Ignatius in September, healed and whole and desperate to see Søren. Søren…he couldn’t believe that he of all the students at the school had somehow earned the right to call Søren by his name. His friends, Christian and the others, greeted him eagerly but warily when he stepped back onto the campus, suitcase in hand, hair pulled back in a ponytail, bruises on his neck from Jackie’s farewell love bites last night. But his smile and his stories of his summer exploits seemingly reassured them. No one asked him about what had happened to him two days before school let out. Had they asked, he would have simply repeated his mantra to them. He would never speak of that night to anyone but Søren.