Author: Tiffany Reisz

“Søren?” Griffin asked, fear replacing the determination on his face. “This freak wants Søren?”

Kingsley nodded. “Oui,” was all he said.

Griffin pressed his hands into his stomach. Now it seemed he was on the verge of illness.

“Kingsley…this is crazy. No one comes after any of us. Your money and power…my money and power…and Søren? Who would ever go after Søren?”

“Someone who cares nothing for money and power. And I fear such people do exist.”

“What does it mean…all of this?” Griffin looked again at the bloody words on the floor, the pile of shredded clothes and the bed itself—charred and bloodied. To anyone but Kingsley, the scene would be incomprehensible. What did it mean?

Kingsley knew exactly what it meant. After running away from Saint Ignatius he’d joined the French Foreign Legion. First his facility with English had caught the notice of higher-ups, that if he concentrated he could speak it without any trace of a French accent. Then his other skills came to light—his intelligence, his way of charming anyone into telling him anything he wanted to know, his natural gift of marksmanship…and his utter disregard for his own personal safety, for his own life, even. They’d made him a spy first and then so much more after. He’d seen the deaths of thousands begin with a single act that took place behind closed doors in a bedroom like this. Oh, yes, he knew exactly what the scene before them meant.

“It’s a declaration, Griffin.”

Kingsley pulled the keys out of the pocket of his leather jacket. He had to go now and find Søren. The time for secrets had come to an end.

“Of what? Insanity?”

“No, mon ami. Of war.”

SOUTH

Nora stayed calm and collected for the entire trip back to Wesley’s house. She barely blinked and didn’t cry. No emotion showed on her face or in her hands. Long ago she’d learned how to control herself under the most difficult of circumstances. She’d had to for her job. Lesson number two from the great Kingsley Edge, King of the Underground—you are the Dominant. Act like it.

Those seven words had kept her face straight and her hands still even as one submissive after another had come to her with the most desperate and dangerous of fantasies. One Wall Street trader had wanted to drink her urine from a wineglass. The deputy mayor of New York confessed to the most graphic of rape fantasies involving him as the victim. A Texas cattle billionaire had begged her on his hands and knees to brand his back with his own branding iron. No matter how disturbed she’d been by their fantasies, their fetishes, she always had to stay calm and in control, even as they begged her, pleaded with her to hurt them as they dreamed. “No,” she often told them. “You haven’t earned it.” That was her line, her cover for when she knew no amount of love or money could convince her to do such a thing. And then they would beg harder, up their offer and she’d acquiesce.

“Now you’ve earned it,” she would say, which was code for, “now you found my price.”

I am the Dominant, she’d told herself over and over again, even as she wanted to run or crumble. I will act like it.

And now, as Wesley’s father watched her in silence out of the corner of his eyes, as he drove her and Wesley back to the guesthouse, Nora told herself the same thing. Hitting a newborn foal with a riding crop should have earned her at least a year in prison for cruelty to animals. Even now she wanted to roll up into a ball, and cry or puke, or both. But her guts had told her all it would take for Track Beauty to find the will to stand up and live was to see her baby in pain. It had worked. Not only had the mare gotten to her feet again, but it had seemingly earned Nora the respect of Wesley’s father…or at least his fear. And in her world, they were one and the same.

The older man pulled up to the guesthouse and Wesley got out first. Extending his hand, he waited, and Nora took it with the grace of an English duchess descending from her carriage.

“Thank you, sir,” she said as her feet touched the ground. “And good night, Mr. Railey.”

Nora turned her head just enough to smile at Wesley’s father over her shoulder. Kingsley had taught her that little move, as well—no one flirted quite like that Frenchman.

“Good night, son. And you, madam.”

She walked to the house without waiting for Wesley. She could hear him whispering back and forth with his father. Usually she would have been rabid to know what they were saying about her, but now she didn’t care. All she cared about was getting into the house and finding the bathroom.

Five minutes, she prayed. Just stay out of the house for five more minutes, Wesley.

Nora made it to the bathroom, shut the door behind her and threw up everything she’d eaten since lunch. It came up and out hard and fast, so hard her eyes watered and her stomach ached as if she’d taken a punch to the abdomen. She flushed her vomit away and crawled into the shower. The hot water blasted down even as Nora struggled to remove her sodden clothes.

When she heard the door open, she quickly composed her face.

“I’m in the shower, Wes. I’m covered in horse placenta.”

“Yeah, me, too. Make room.”

Nora gave a mirthless laugh as Wesley shoved in next to her, also fully dressed.

“Good idea,” he said as he raised his hand and started to unbutton her wet shirt. “It’s a shower and laundry all at once.”

“I’ve got nothing but good ideas.”

“I’m starting to think that’s true.” He grunted in frustration when Nora’s shirt remained stuck to her soaking body. With a roll of his eyes he simply tore it and sent three small buttons to the floor. “Oops.”

Nora shrugged. “It was your shirt, anyway.”

“Damn.” Wesley laughed and brought his mouth down to hers, but Nora pulled her head away before he could kiss her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I have horse placenta breath. Let me brush my teeth before you kiss me.”

“That might be the grossest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“What? Placenta’s a good source of protein, right?” she asked, and laughed again.

“Nora…are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Of course I’m okay. Why not? I mean, why?”

Wesley looked down at her and Nora could barely meet his brown eyes, which bored into her with the fiery love of a guardian angel. God probably had eyes like Wesley’s…anyone who looked into them wanted to immediately apologize for any and all sins ever committed.

“You’re standing under hundred-degree water and shaking, for one thing.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Every time you laugh, I worry the mirrors are gonna shatter. Talk to me.”

He caressed her cheek, kissed her forehead and brought her head briefly to his chest. Goddamn tall men…she hated them. All of them. They made her feel so small and so weak by virtue of their size alone. And she hated feeling small and she hated feeling weak and hated Wesley for reminding her how much she hated that.

“I hit a baby,” she whispered into his chest.

Wesley sighed and pulled her even closer.

“You hit a horse, Nora. Not a baby. And he’ll be fine. Which he might not have been had his momma died on that stall floor or in a hospital room. Horses don’t mend well. They’re not like dogs and cats. They get sick, you just put them down. Track Beauty might not have survived a week even if the vet had got her in a sling. And—”

“You can stop talking now, Wes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Underneath the steaming shower spray, Nora stood in Wesley’s arms and cried, letting the water wash the tears away before they could even drip down her face. Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen, while the pain and the shame she’d felt every time she’d brought the crop down with vicious strength on the little horse’s back eased out of her. Finally, she’d cried out all the tears she had, and found herself laughing against Wesley’s chest.

“Now that sounds like a Nora laugh. What are you laughing at?”

“Us,” she said, rubbing her face on his shirt to wipe her runny nose. “How come we always end up in the bathroom with me having a nervous breakdown and you keeping me together?”

“I dunno. The bathroom seems to be your favorite place to go have a breakdown.”

“It’s good for reading, too.”

“You’re so disgusting.”

“What? I read in the bathtub. What were you referring to?”

Wesley laughed and rested his chin on top of her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

He sighed so heavily Nora felt his chest heave against hers.

“Now what’s your problem, kid?” Pulling back, she looked up at Wesley and started to peel off the rest of her clothes.

“You. You’re my problem. I’m crazy about you and you’re going to leave me. Aren’t you?”

“Wes, I just got here a few days ago. And now it seems like your dad doesn’t hate the very sight of me. So that’s progress.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

“Ask it again.”

Wesley met her eyes as Nora removed her underwear and stood before him wet and naked.

“Are you going to leave me…again?”

Nora’s stomach clenched even worse than it had back in the stable when she’d realized what she had to do.

“I didn’t leave you the first time, Wes. I went back to Søren. And I made you leave me. I couldn’t have left you. That’s why I kicked you out. I wasn’t strong enough to leave you. I was only strong enough to order you to go away.”

“Will you order me to go away again?”

“No. I thought it would kill me the first time I did it. I could barely speak for a week after you were gone. I cried constantly.”

“Søren must have loved that.”

“He loved me. And forgave me every tear. And not once did he tell me not to miss you, not to talk about you, not to love you.”

“I hate when you tell me nice things he’s done. Makes it harder to hate him.”

“Don’t ever hate Søren.” Nora unzipped Wesley’s jeans and started to tug the wet denim down over his hips as he finally pulled off his wet and snot-covered shirt. “Hate me, but never hate him.”

“I have to hate him.”

“Why? Hate does not become you, my Wesley.”

“Nora…he put you in the hospital. I was there, remember? I drove you to the hospital after he—”

“He didn’t,” she said in a hollow voice and hated herself the second the words came out. She’d promised herself she’d never tell Wesley about that night.

“Didn’t what?”

“He didn’t put me in the hospital that night I went back to him. That’s not what happened.”

Wesley’s eyes widened. Nora turned off the shower, stepped out and grabbed a towel. Naked but for a towel, Nora sunk down on the floor. Still dripping wet, Wesley sat opposite from her, his back to the bathtub.

“The night I went back to Søren, it was rough. We played rough. He started with a hard slap. A good one. My favorite kind.”

“I should have broken his face for that.”

“Wesley—Søren slaps because I like slapping. I do it to clients all the time. It’s part of my kink. He knows that. He slapped me.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“I can’t let you hate him. I thought I could but only because I thought it would make you hate me, too. I have to tell you the truth. You have to know what you’re asking me to do every time you ask me to stay.” Nora stared deep into his dark brown eyes.