He tensed when they reached the door to the grounds. Søren opened it for them and Kingsley bowed his head in thanks as he walked past. The door shut behind them. They were alone outside under God and all the stars.

“Where are we going?” Kingsley asked as they tread carefully across the cool, dewy grass. Luckily, September in Maine was still warm enough that only their toes would get cold tonight. Kingsley breathed in the night air and tried to memorize the scents on the breeze. Pine…so much pine. Hard to smell anything other than pine. But he could detect a trace of the not-too-distant ocean on the air, and the faraway smoke from someone’s fire. Beautiful, this perfume the night wore—he would remember it always. He told himself that as he followed Søren to the edge of the forest and down a well-trodden path.

“There’s a place I go and read sometimes. You’ll be safe there.”

“You’re concerned about my safety?” Kingsley almost laughed.

Søren paused and turned around. “Of course I am,” he said, and started walking again. “That night…I won’t apologize.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I want…it’s hard to explain what I want.”

“Can you try?”

Søren exhaled and Kingsley winced. He didn’t really care why Søren wanted what he did or why, as long as Kingsley was somewhere in the wanting. But he was curious.

“I need to cause you pain. For years now pain has been the only pleasure for me. Or at least the only way into pleasure. I think what happened when I was younger made it impossible for me to be…normal.”

“Good,” Kingsley said, and meant it. “I spend too much time with normal. I like that you aren’t normal. I like that you want to hurt me. I’ve had so many girls. You can’t believe how many girls I’ve had. Fifty, maybe? Not all girls. Women, too. A teacher once, even. Now, I suppose, two teachers.”

Kingsley grinned as Søren laughed softly.

“I suppose you’ve never been with a girl. Doesn’t matter. You haven’t missed much, really. She lays there and giggles and sighs while you stick it in her. I can do better most nights with my own hand. Only…sometimes, if she’s a little scared of me, or a virgin and very scared of me…then I enjoy it more. That fear—I could drink it.”

“I feel the same,” Søren agreed as he veered off the main track and down a narrower path dense with trees. “But with pain. The thought of doing what you just described with anyone…it leaves me dead inside, cold. I don’t believe I could ever be with anyone like that. Not without hurting them first. But you should know something. I have been with another person.”

“Who was he?” Kingsley winced as he stepped on a sharp rock. Søren glanced over his shoulder with a smile and kept walking. This was it, part of the plan—Kingsley without shoes on a path he’d never walked before. His feet would be bloody by the time they made it to the end. And he knew Søren would grow more and more aroused with every wince and gasp of pain he heard fall from Kingsley’s lips.

Kingsley stopped watching where he stepped and let the forest floor eat his feet.

“It wasn’t a he.”

“A girl? I thought you lived here for years?”

“I’ve been here since I was eleven.”

“Eleven? The only girl I talked to when I was eleven was my own sister.”

Søren paused and turned around. He said nothing, but he didn’t have to.

“Mon Dieu…” Kingsley whispered. “You…and your sister?”

Søren turned back around and resumed walking. “Stop wasting time.”

Despite his rabid curiosity, Kingsley closed his mouth and kept going, wincing with each stick or rock his foot landed on. If they didn’t get there soon, Søren would have to carry him back to the damn school.

The path opened up onto a clearing. A huge flat rock jutted out from the hilly forest, overlooking a steep drop into a valley below. Kingsley set his overnight bag by a spindly tree and stepped onto the stone plateau. The sky exploded with stars all around them. Kingsley walked to the very edge of the cliff until he stood with his toes overhanging the abyss. Stretching out his arms to the left and right as far as he could reach, he gave up, surrendered, let go of himself and let the night have him.

His peaceful surrender lasted as long as it took for Søren to wrap an arm around his chest, drag him back from the edge of the cliff and throw him hard onto the ground. The force of the fall knocked the wind out of his lungs. As Søren stripped him naked, Kingsley could only lie there gasping painfully for breath, like a fish washed up on a sandy beach.

Air. He needed air. The stone beneath his torso felt like an iron lung. He knew tomorrow his back would be a mass of bruises from how forcefully Søren had thrust him to the ground. Tomorrow he’d barely be able to move…if he survived tonight.

“Breathe,” Søren whispered in his ear. Kingsley nodded, still unable to speak.

Søren dipped his head to the center of Kingsley’s chest and kissed him over his racing heart. The touch of Søren’s lips to his bare skin was all he needed. Once more he went calm and slack in Søren’s arms.

“Good. Relax for me.” Søren spoke quietly, almost gently, but Kingsley knew these were orders, not requests, and he sensed the punishment for disobedience would be as severe as the reward for compliance.

Kingsley relaxed as Søren commanded, letting his body go limp against the stone. Søren slipped a hand between his legs and pushed a finger inside him. Kingsley arched hard and grasped at Søren’s shoulder.

Søren took Kingsley’s hand and pushed his arm back towards the ground.

“Don’t fight me.”

Kingsley shook his head. He didn’t want to fight Søren, only touch him. But Søren seemed intent on doing all the touching tonight. He remained fully clothed—pants on, shirt on—while Kingsley lay naked underneath him. Søren brought his mouth to Kingsley’s and kissed him with brutal force. Biting, tugging, skin-breaking…Kingsley had never kissed a girl with half the passion with which Søren kissed him. The finger inside him found a spot Kingsley didn’t know he had, and when Søren pushed into it, Kingsley cried out from the sheer shock of pleasure.

But the pleasure was short-lived. Søren pulled out of Kingsley and left him on the ground as he stood up and walked to the edge of the forest. He picked up the bag Kingsley had brought, but also pulled a whip-thin branch from a tree.

“Hands and knees,” Søren said as he dropped the bag back onto the ground and stood at Kingsley’s side.

“What?”

Søren put his foot on Kingsley’s chest and pushed him hard, rolling him onto his stomach.

“Hands…and…knees,” he repeated, and Kingsley dragged himself painfully up as ordered.

Søren brought the branch down onto his back. Once. A second time. A third. After five Kingsley stopped counting. After five minutes, Kingsley stopped breathing.

He collapsed onto his chest and was only vaguely aware of Søren tossing the branch aside, and then the zipper to the bag opening and something cold and wet filling him. But when Søren started to push inside him, Kingsley came back to himself.

“Yes…” He exhaled the word as Søren went deep into him. It hurt. No denying it hurt. But it healed him, too. The welts on him, the cuts and bruises, had been the price he’d paid for such a prize as this moment.

Kingsley dug the heels of his hands into the stone to steady himself as Søren drove into him over and over again. He pushed back when Søren pushed forward. In that moment of total penetration, Kingsley ceased to be a person, a human being, and became nothing but property, chattel, an object to be owned and used for the pleasure of another. That other was Søren, whom Kingsley loved. To be owned by him was an honor higher than any he could imagine. Had the world offered him castles and thrones, the chance to reign as a prince or a king, and all the riches that he could imagine, in exchange for giving this up, Kingsley would have said no, and he would have not regretted his choice. Not then. Not ever.

Kingsley’s body started to open up for Søren. The pain lessened. The pleasure increased, while Søren moved in him with methodical thrusts and in utter silence. Kingsley ached for something, anything from him—a touch, a word, some kind of comfort or reassurance. But he also relished that Søren deemed him unworthy of all the niceties of sex among the civilized.

Søren dug his hand into the back of Kingsley’s hair to hold him still as he pushed into him even harder. More than uncivilized, this was savagery, and Kingsley loved every primal second of it.

He wanted to say something to Søren, wanted to tell him how he felt about what was happening to him, but he didn’t know the words—not in French, not in English, not in any of the languages Søren knew but Kingsley didn’t. He had to tell him something. What he felt…he felt used, owned, like property, like a slave, treasured, wanted, needed, like an object of infinite value so coveted Søren had lowered himself to theft to make Kingsley his own. Underneath Søren, Kingsley came more alive than he ever felt on top of any girl. He loved his girls, had loved them all. But this was more than love. He couldn’t think of the word for it—not l’amour, not la passion... la vie. It was the closest word to what he felt that he could find.

La vie.

Life.

Søren’s fingers moved from Kingsley’s hair, over his shoulders, down his back, until they held Kingsley by the hollow of his hips. He needed to come, had to come, but somehow instinctively knew he shouldn’t. Not yet. Not until given permission. Søren didn’t even touch him or stroke him, and yet Kingsley felt he could explode at any moment. Breathing deeply to contain his need, he stared at the ground, the stone almost black in the night. Kingsley wasn’t sure what time it was, but he hoped dawn approached. He wanted to greet the morning with Søren. This morning and every morning after.

But the stars stayed in the sky and the sun lurked beneath the horizon. It seemed an hour passed, though the more rational part of Kingsley’s brain knew it only felt that long. The pain stopped time in a way more powerful than even boredom could. Ecstasy passed in seconds. Agony lasted forever. And on the cold rocky cliff, with Søren bruising him with every touch, Kingsley had both.

“Please…” The word came out of Kingsley before he even thought it. He said it again. And one more time.

“Tell me,” Søren ordered, pushing him flat on his stomach. Kingsley turned his head to cushion his face from the rock. But Søren stopped him with a touch. Crooking his arm, he rested it on the ground. Gratefully, Kingsley lay his cheek against Søren’s forearm. The gesture, so simple but so protective, nearly undid him. He would have cried from the joy of it had he not already been crying from the pain.

“I don’t know...” And he didn’t. He didn’t know why he’d said “please,” didn’t know what he asked for. But he needed something from Søren.

Somehow Søren instinctively seemed to understand what Kingsley needed even better than he did. With a final thrust, he pushed into him and came in utter silence, his teeth leaving a bruise on the back of Kingsley’s neck.

Kingsley bit Søren’s forearm to stifle his groan of pain as Søren slowly pulled out. He grasped Kingsley by the shoulders and pushed him onto his back. By the light of the moon and stars, Kingsley watched as Søren unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off. He folded it neatly, lifted Kingsley’s neck and placed the shirt under his head. Kingsley relaxed into the makeshift pillow and averted his eyes as Søren gazed down at him. Instinctively, Kingsley also knew he shouldn’t meet Søren’s eyes—not without permission. Right now he was less than human and didn’t deserve the same privileges as other people. Or perhaps Søren was more than human right now and therefore had the right to act like a god among men. Act? At this moment, with the moon on his shoulder and the entire world beneath his knees, Søren was God.