“If someone says anything, I’ll tell them a tree hit me.”
Søren laughed softly and kissed the bruise.
“I don’t think they’ll believe a tree hit you. Maybe they’d believe you hit a tree.”
“Why would I hit a tree? A tree never did anything to me.”
“Perhaps it likes being hit.” Søren kissed Kingsley’s neck again, his shoulder, his throat.
Kingsley remembered this night. It had a been a Sunday. Everyone at their school went to bed early on Sunday nights. They’d woken early for Sunday Mass and had to wake early again for Monday morning classes. Once everyone had gone to bed, he and Søren had sneaked out to the hermitage to spend a few perfect hours alone together.
“Aren’t you worried someone will find out what we’re doing out here?” Kingsley asked as he covered Søren’s roving hand with his own.
“They’d never believe it even if we told them.”
“What? They’d believe I’d sleep with a teacher, but they wouldn’t believe you’d sleep with a student?” Kingsley tried to sound outraged. He wasn’t sure if he pulled it off or not.
“Precisely.”
“Because I’m a slut, and you’re perfect?”
“Because you have friends, and no one likes me,” Søren said.
Kingsley sat up and looked down at Søren.
“I like you,” Kingsley said.
“No, you don’t,” Søren said with a half smile. “You want me. There’s a difference.”
“You don’t like me, either,” Kingsley chided. He ignored the unwelcome pang of sympathy Søren’s placid “No one likes me” declaration gave him.
“It isn’t that I don’t like you,” Søren said with a playful sigh. “It’s only I like me so much more than I like you that, in comparison, it looks like I dislike you.”
“I might suffocate you tonight with a pillow,” Kingsley said.
“You’ll have to teach my French classes, then. Lesson plans in my desk.”
“Forget it. You get to live.”
“I thought as much.”
Kingsley collapsed on to Søren’s chest with a sigh. Søren lifted Kingsley’s hair and pressed a kiss under his ear.
“Well, I’m worried they’ll find out about us,” Kingsley said, turning on to his side away from Søren. Søren wasn’t deterred. He ran his hand down the center of Kingsley’s back and pressed a kiss to the top of his spine. Kingsley relished these moments, after the fire of Søren’s sadism had burned itself out. The gentle touches and kisses hurt almost more than the blows from the belt and the cane did. They hurt his heart, and yet he treasured the ache. It was his favorite pain.
“Why are you worried? We’re always careful. No one ever sees us together. I don’t care if they find out about me. I have places I can go. But I don’t want you...”
“Don’t want me what?” Kingsley asked.
“I don’t want to embarrass you,” Søren said, and Kingsley laughed out loud at the abject absurdity of that statement.
“You don’t want to embarrass me? An hour ago, you stripped me naked, told me to get on my knees and confess to you the most shameful sexual fantasies I’ve ever had in my life, and you say you don’t want to embarrass me?”
“That’s different. Who we are in private has nothing to do with who we have to be out there. Do you want people to know what you are?”
“Your lover?”
“Not that.”
Kingsley thought about the question. Alone with Søren he became a slave, a slut, a groveling nobody who submitted to sexual torture and said thank you for the privilege. Having sex with another boy didn’t embarrass him. It was everything else that did.
“Non, it’s true. I don’t want people to know I like being hurt. They wouldn’t understand it, and they wouldn’t understand you. They’d think you were a monster.”
“I am a monster,” Søren said as he bit the center of Kingsley’s back.
“Yes, but no one knows that but me. It’s our secret. But...” He sighed heavily and pressed his back against Søren’s chest. “I’m afraid they’ll find out soon enough anyway.”
“And why is that?” Søren demanded.
“Well, you see...” He braced himself for Søren’s wrath. “I’m pregnant.”
Kingsley bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing as Søren sighed so heavily with disgust the cot vibrated. Then Kingsley felt something in his back, something that felt like a foot.
That foot pushed, and Kingsley landed hard on the floor right on his ass.
“Oh, no,” he said as he hit the hardwood beneath him with bruising force. “I lost the baby.”
When he looked up over the edge of the mattress, he found Søren’s face buried in the pillow. He’d never seen Søren brought to tears by laughter.
“Don’t cry,” Kingsley said, rubbing Søren’s heaving shoulder. “We’ll try again.”
Kingsley couldn’t hold off coming anymore. Surely enough time would have passed by now. He came inside Phoebe with such force he grunted in near discomfort.
He pulled out of her and grabbed her robe from the floor to wipe himself off.
“Hey, that robe cost a thousand dollars,” she said as she stretched out on the bed, naked and happy. One hand teased her own nipples while another slipped between her legs. His semen dripped out of her, leaving a wet stain under her hips. If she didn’t care about the silk sheets, he knew she didn’t actually care about the robe.
“Now it’s a thousand-dollar cum-rag.” He tossed it back on the floor as he zipped himself up.
“You’re terrible.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and she lazily sat up. “I hope that was to your liking.”
“I like that you laughed.”
He grabbed the gun and shoved it in the waistband of his pants again.
“What?”
“I said...” She left the bed and came to him, putting her arms around his neck. “I liked that you laughed while you were fucking me. It made it feel dirtier, like you really were some psycho maniac raping me.” She grinned up at him. He should have found her attractive, this thin, graceful beauty who looked twenty-five but had probably said hello and goodbye to thirty-five a long time ago. Once upon a time he found her attractive, but today she repulsed him. He wanted to take her arms off him, but it wouldn’t do to upset her. He needed her. More accurately, he needed her husband. Robert Dixon was working his way up. He’d be mayor someday if he continued on his current career trajectory. Kingsley would love to have a mayor in his pocket.
So he smiled at her, played nice and let her kiss him.
“I laughed because I was remembering something.”
“What were you remembering?”
“I don’t remember,” he lied.
She went to a chest of drawers, opened the top drawer and pulled out a leather makeup case. She opened it and laid out two lines of cocaine. She’d probably been on it while he’d fucked her. Would explain why she couldn’t shut up now.
“I heard you and Robert went shooting together,” Phoebe said.
“I