The Prince (13 page)

“No. You aren’t Søren. If you were, yes, I would have had sex with you last night, like I’ve had sex with him a million times before. But you aren’t Søren, and I could get down on my knees and thank God for that right here and now but for the huge pile of horse shit that’s at my feet. One Søren is enough for this world.”

Now Wesley seemed incapable of speech. She decided to take advantage of the sudden silence.

“I sleep in your bed, Wesley.”

“What?”

“I sleep in your bed at my house in Connecticut. I haven’t slept in my own bed since the day…since the day I went back to Søren. I haven’t once slept in my bedroom. I sleep in your room when I’m at the house. I sleep in your room wearing the Kentucky T-shirt you left behind in the dirty laundry. I tried sleeping in my own bed and I just…I couldn’t sleep.”

“You were a twenty-year-old virgin, too. You said that was when you and Søren—”

“First of all, I was never a virgin. Having an intact hymen does not a virgin make. Go to a Muslim country. Those girls take it up the ass from their boyfriends so they can still have a hymen to break on their wedding nights. Hymen doesn’t equal virgin.”

“Fine. But still—”

“But nothing. And butt everything. Søren started to train me for him the day I turned eighteen. No. Stop. Scratch that. He started training me for him the day we met. He taught me to sit and stand, to perform, to obey, to serve him and his every want and need and desire. He could tell me to meet him at three o’clock outside his office with just a look in his eyes. And I’m not exaggerating, Wes. By the time we spent our first night together, I was ready for him, ready to be broken. And my God, he broke me. I was shattered and every single piece of me loved him for it. But we were together. He collared me. He owned me. I was his.”

“Nora, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that the last time I had sex with a virgin he ended up in four-point restraints and had candle-wax burns. I’m saying that I might break you, too, the way Søren broke me. But you might not love me for it the next morning. And if I shatter you, I don’t know how to put you back together.”

“Nora…you don’t get it, do you?” Wesley cupped her face and smiled at her.

“Get what?”

“That I know being with you is a big risk. And that you’re worth it.”

Nora’s hands clenched as tightly as her heart.

“I know how to tie knots that sailors who’ve spent half their lives at sea have never even heard of. I can pick locks that would stump half the cat burglars in New York. I can slice a Post-It note in half with the tip of a bullwhip. I can get any kinky man in the world to drop to his knees, kiss my feet and confess his darkest sins to me just for the pleasure of having me punish him for them. But, Wesley…I do not know who to be with somebody like you. A sweet, kind, vanilla virgin has me stumped. It’s been fifteen months since the last time we tried, and I still haven’t figured it out.”

Wesley exhaled so heavily his breath ruffled Track Beauty’s mane. The horse twitched her head in mild irritation.

“You know, if you want to know how to be with me…maybe you could just ask me?”

Nora opened her mouth, paused and closed it again. “That honestly never occurred to me.”

Wesley laughed and Nora laughed. And she almost cried from the sheer relief of hearing them both laugh.

“Okay, vanilla.” Nora laid her hand on top of Wesley’s. Track Beauty’s coat bristled underneath their twined fingers. “So tell me how to be with you.”

“Not that hard to explain. You know how we were together back at your house? How we hung out and watched movies and talked and ate dinner together and all that?”

“I remember. I remember it like yesterday.” Her hand slipped from his wrist to his face.

“I need it just like that, except…”

“Except?”

“Except instead of us going to separate bedrooms, we go to bed together. Can you do that?”

Nora ran a hand through his long hair. “I can try.”

Wesley started to lean forward, started to kiss her, before the sound of fingers snapping loudly echoed through the stall and startled them apart.

“Come on, John Wesley. We’re gonna be late.”

Nora saw Wesley’s father glaring at her through the stall door. He gave Wesley a dark look before walking away. “Now, J.W.,” he called out.

“You can come with me,” Wesley said.

“Where are we going?”

“Gotta go see a man about a horse.”

Nora paused on her way out of the stall. “Please tell me you mean that literally.”

NORTH

The Past

Kingsley walked in the garden outside the chapel. Rose bushes alight with red blossoms surrounded him as he wandered the cobblestone path among the flowers. The garden was Father Henry’s pride. To keep flowers alive in such an inhospitable clime took constant work and tending. Every free moment he had, Father Henry could be found in the garden.

“My garden
is
my Gethsemane,” Father Henry joked, and Kingsley would always smile. He never understood the joke if it was, in fact, one.

Kingsley had come here to get away from the boys in his dorm room. The coming of summer heralded the end of the school year. The boisterousness had been too much even for Kingsley. The other students couldn’t wait until their parents would collect them from exile and return them to the world of girls and movies and sleeping as late as they wanted. All these things would be Kingsley’s as well in two days, when his grandparents came for him. But unlike the other boys at the school, he couldn’t rejoice in this.

Stearns had ruined him. Ruined everything. A summer back in civilization held no appeal. Three months he’d be without Stearns, without even a glimpse of him. Kingsley already anticipated the agony of that time apart. Every ray of yellow sunlight would remind him of Stearns’s hair. Every solid gray evening sky would call to mind Stearns’s eyes. Every time Kingsley touched himself, he would imagine Stearns’s hands on his body instead of his own. Not that Stearns had ever touched him like that, only in Kingsley’s dreams. But since that day in the dorm when Stearns had held him down, things had been different between them.

They’d stopped speaking as much. But for some reason, Kingsley felt even closer to him. Whenever he found
Stearns sitting alone reading or writing, he would take his own homework and sit on the floor next to Stearns’s chair. Why the floor and not the sofa, the table, another chair, Kingsley didn’t know. But whenever he thought of the pad of Stearns’s thumb caressing the pulse point on his wrist, Kingsley wanted to sink to his knees, sit at Stearns’s feet and stay there forever.

His anguish at the prospect of so much time apart from Stearns had sent Kingsley into Father Henry’s garden. He wanted to try something he’d never tried before. Perhaps it was Stearns’s influence... Kingsley has seen him in the chapel just yesterday, rosary beads in hand, as he prayed in silence for a solid hour. Kingsley knew it had been a full hour, for he’d sat three pews behind him and watched him the entire time. At one hour exactly, Stearns had risen from his seat and turned around.

“What are you praying for,
mon ami?
” Kingsley had asked.

“What I’ve been praying for every day since I met you,” Stearns said, twisting the beads around his hand.

“And what is that?”

Stearns opened his hand to display the rosary beads he’d weaved between his fingers like a spiderweb.

“Strength.”

He closed his hand again and rested it against his chest, over his heart. Stearns had left the chapel, but Kingsley had remained.

Strength.
That one word had told Kingsley everything. He needed no other hints, no other words. He knew the truth now. But instead of setting him free, the truth pulled Kingsley even deeper into the enigma that was Stearns.

Strength.

It meant one thing and one thing only.

Stearns wanted him.

Kingsley’s fingers balled up into a fist. Stearns had prayed for strength. So should he.

Plucking the largest, most pristine of the red roses from a bush, Kingsley held it in his hand and stared into the blossom’s core.

“Assistez-moi.” Help me,
Kingsley prayed, falling into French. He couldn’t imagine God speaking any language other than his native tongue.
“Assistez-moi, s’il vous plaît, mon Dieu.”

Kingsley opened his eyes. Standing at the edge of the garden, in the shade of a tree, was Stearns, watching him pray.

In his nervousness, the rose fell from his hand.

Stearns took a step forward.

Kingsley took a step back.

Stearns stopped.

Kingsley ran.

The school sat as an oasis in a desert of trees. Nothing but dense forest surrounded the place—forest, hills, cliffs, valleys. Kingsley usually saw it as something fearsome, threatening, a labyrinth. Now he fled into it for safety.

But the trees offered little protection. As Kingsley raced down untrodden paths, the green-leafed branches whipped at him, stinging his skin, his face. But he couldn’t stop. Behind him he heard footsteps. Kingsley could only force his legs to carry on faster, despite the pain of the branches beating him, despite the fear that nearly felled him.

He entered a clearing. The sky above had turned red with the setting sun. Darkness was coming and he would be lost here in the woods. Alone…or worse. Not alone.

He jumped and spun around as the sound of a twig cracking alerted him to the presence of another. Kingsley didn’t hesitate. He took off again, racing deeper into the forest. The canopy of trees closed in on him. Dropping to his hands and knees, Kingsley crawled through a small opening, crying out when the thorns of a bush cut into his forehead. His vision turned red with blood. But he pushed on, pushed through, stood up and started running again. Or tried. But a hand came out of nowhere, grasped him by his shirt and pushed him into a tree. The bark bit into his back. In the shadows, Kingsley could barely see. He groped in the darkness, felt fabric under his hands and tore. His fingers touched something cool. He pulled and it came off in his hand. The grip on him loosened a moment, long enough for Kingsley to get his footing and flee again.

Sweat and blood poured down his face. Kingsley wiped at his eyes. As his vision cleared he discovered he held a small silver cross on a thin chain. Kingsley carried it high up the side of the mountain, the footsteps still following behind him.

In another clearing, he stopped and dropped to his knees. He could run no farther.

As he gasped for air, he heard the sound of shoes sliding over a blanket of leaves. Kingsley’s fingers tightened around the cross. No matter what happened to him, he wouldn’t let it go.

Neither of them spoke. Kingsley put up one last fight as Stearns stripped him naked and forced him onto his stomach. But he didn’t have the strength for anything but surrender. He groaned from the pain every small movement caused him. This wasn’t how he wanted it…not here on the forest floor, broken and bloodied and terrified. But he would take this pain, this humiliation. For the communion he’d prayed for, he would take it all.

Stearns caressed Kingsley from his neck to his hip. Yes, Kingsley decided, this was exactly how he wanted it.

One arm stretched out to the east. The other to the west. He kept his fingers clenched around the cross. When Stearns pushed inside him, Kingsley cried out. Stearns covered his mouth with his hand. Kingsley bit down and nodded, thankful for the fingers against his teeth.

The pain of the penetration was beyond anything he’d ever felt in his life. The knife wound to his chest had been nothing. Nothing had hurt like this, nothing outside or in, nothing in his body or soul.

In the midst of his agony he felt Stearns’s mouth on the back of his shoulder. Kingsley melted into the ground. Whether or not he survived tonight ceased to be a concern. The touch of Stearns’s lips on his skin was all he’d ever needed. Complete now, he could die happy, if that was his destiny.

Time passed, but Kingsley couldn’t count it. After a minute, an hour, the blood began to ease Stearns’s movements into him. The pain turned not to pleasure, but something more than pleasure. A kind of ecstasy that threatened to raze him, cut him down and leave nothing left of him. But it didn’t matter.

Stearns was inside him.

As the red evening turned into the black night, Kingsley rejoiced in this truth. He heard Stearns’s ragged breathing…or was it his own? He didn’t know, didn’t care. He inhaled deeply and smelled pine in the air. A beautiful scent. He inhaled again for another lungful.

On the merciless ground, Kingsley came with a shudder that racked his entire body.

Stearns was inside him.

His prayers had been answered. Perhaps. Or perhaps his prayers were being punished.
Heaven
and
hell
became meaningless words to Kingsley. Heaven was now, this moment underneath Stearns. Hell had been every moment before and would be every moment after.

Stearns was inside him.

He repeated those words in his mind until they became the only ones he knew in any language.

It ended, finally, after an hour perhaps. Maybe two. Or perhaps only minutes. He felt a weight lift off of him, felt his body empty.

Slowly, Kingsley pulled his arms to his sides and rolled onto his back. Above him the sky screamed with stars. Beneath him the fallen leaves stroked his skin like a blanket of living silk.

He heard the rustle of fabric, of clothing righting itself. But he would lie here under the heavens forever, naked and bleeding and unashamed. He’d died underneath Stearns. Died and been born again.

Something touched his face. A hand? No, a pair of perfect lips. The lips moved from his forehead to his cheek and settled onto his mouth. The kiss lasted an eternity and ended all too soon.

“My name is Søren.”

Kingsley nodded and prepared words of his own.
“Je t’aime,”
he replied in the language God spoke.

I love you.