She did it again. And again. And again. She did it until her back burned and her muscles screamed and she thought she’d die if she had to lift her arms over her head again. But she did it again, and she didn’t die. She wanted to die, but unfortunately she didn’t get her wish.
After half an hour Elle dropped her arms to her sides. Sweat poured from her forehead and down her back. Her heart pounded and she gulped down an entire bottle of water in a few swallows.
She pulled the towel down—she still hadn’t managed to knock it off the wall—and raised it to her face.
“Why are you doing that?” Kingsley asked.
“Wiping my sweat off? Because I’m sweaty.”
“You have a man in this room. Why not use his clothes to wipe your sweat off?”
“You want me to wipe my gross sweat on one of your Signore Vitale custom-made shirts? You’d kill me.”
“Would I?” he asked.
“I would if someone did that to me.”
Kingsley smiled at her and her stomach tightened in unwanted wanting. Every night she waited for Kingsley to come to her bedroom like he used to do, but not once had he slipped under her covers and whispered sexual orders to her like he had so many times in the past.
“When we were lovers in high school,” he began and she knew who he meant by we, “it was my job to undress him many nights, but his clothes must be folded neatly, precisely, reverently, and then placed on a chair. No mess, no wrinkles. But he…he would strip me naked and drop all my clothes onto the floor. Then he’d walk on them. Not barefoot, either. With his shoes on most of the time. And you know what?” Kingsley asked as he stepped closer to her, close enough she could kiss him if she wanted to.
“What?”
“I worshipped him for it.” Kingsley smiled at her, a Mona Lisa smile that hinted of secrets but didn’t reveal them. “He would sometimes pretend I wasn’t there when I spoke to him…and I worshipped him for it. He would tell me he didn’t want me anymore and then at the moment I was ready to kill myself in despair, he’d smile to show it was all a joke…and I worshipped him for it. I mocked him once for what happened between him and his sister Elizabeth, and you know what he did?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“He blindfolded me, tied me to the cot, and made me say my sister’s name over and over again while he gave me the most intense erotic pleasure of my life with his hands and his mouth. When I stopped speaking he stopped pleasuring me. Then he made me say my own sister’s name when I came. And you know what?”
“You worshipped him for it?”
Kingsley nodded.
Point taken. To show Kingsley how thoroughly she’d absorbed her lesson she walked over to where he stood by the St. Andrew’s Cross, his arms folded over his chest. He wore camel-colored breeches and dark brown Hessian riding boots, a snow-white shirt held together at the throat with a gold pin, and a dark brown vest with little gold fleur-de-lis embroidered on it. Kingsley looked magnificent, like a Regency-era fever dream. If Jane Austen had set eyes on Kingsley, she would never have written her genteel comedies of manner.
She would have written porn.
Elle wiped her sweaty forehead off on his shoulder.
“See?” she asked, smiling up at him. “I can be taught.”
He looked down at the wet smudge she’d left on his pristine shirt and back at her.
“I could have you flogged for that.”
“I’m not a submissive anymore, remember?”
“I’m glad you’re starting to realize that,” he said and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Finally.”
THE QUEEN, coming hard to a bookstore near you, October 27, 2015.
