“I could have, but I didn’t. That’s what worries me. We have to be more careful. I can’t give you everything you want when you want it. It’s for the best you don’t get the idea that I can or I will. Okay?” She elbowed him gently in the side.

  He was quiet again. She was used to him being quiet. Quiet was Nico’s default state. She let him sit in the quiet and absorb what she’d told him without telling him that in the future, they would be sticking to their scheduled visits only, that her first loyalty was to Søren. It was okay if he didn’t like that, but he did have to accept it. The song rolled through her head again…One foot on the platform…the other on the train…Had there ever been a better image ever written, ever sung of a person being torn in two directions?

  “Vicious,” Nico finally said and kissed her neck. That was all. He’d gotten the message, accepted it, and wasn’t going to start a fight about it. Not tonight anyway.

  Nora smiled. “Very vicious. You won’t be taking your shirt off in front of anyone for a few weeks. I hope you’re not in too much pain for your little business meeting tomorrow.”

  “I’d rather be whipped again than sit through that.”

  She sat up in the water and turned around awkwardly. It was never easy to spin around in a bathtub, especially if you had a guest. Facing him, she said, “It’s a little old business lunch, Moosh, not hostage negotiations.”

  “It’s…” He waved his hand in frustration. “You know, financial reports. It’s projections. It’s making promises I can’t keep about what the harvest will be like, what the market will be like…” He rubbed his temples. “I’m a farmer. This isn’t what I do. I was reading the investor’s proposal on the plane, and I almost jumped out over those mountains in West Virginia I can’t pronounce.”

  “Appalachian?”

  “Yes, those,” he said and made a hilariously bad French attempt at pronouncing them—Ahh-pahl-aah-sheen. But she didn’t mock his efforts. After all, she was still trying to figure out Tchoupitoulas Street. That first goddamn T really threw her off. They spent the next few minutes attempting to teach each other how to pronounce their shibboleths.

  Ap-ah-lay-shun…Chop-ah-too-lus…Or if Nico wanted to sound like a mountain man, he’d have to say Ap-ah-latch-un, which hurt his ears so much he put his head under the water.

  Nora pulled him back out. “You know,” she said, “about your meeting and those financials…there is someone who could help you.”

  “Please, don’t say it.” He tried to sink down into the water again. Once again, Nora fished him out.

  “I have to say it,” she said. “Kingsley is many things—most bad, some good—and one of the good things? He’s a very successful businessman. He would help you in a heartbeat with those projections if you asked him.”

  Nico started to stand up and leave the bathtub. “I’m moving to the Appalachians. Adieu, mon amour.”

  “Oh, stop moaning, you big French baby, and get back in here.”

  He sat back down in the bathtub as ordered.

  “Now turn around,” she said. “Let me see the damage.”

  Nico turned and let her see his back. The lights were low in the bathroom, but the lamp on the vanity was switched on, and she could see the red welts coming up all over him. Most of the welts weren’t that much bigger than freckles.

  “Beautiful,” she said. “I do good work.” She wet a washcloth with cold water from the tap and pressed it into the largest of the welts. “You could ask him. It wouldn’t kill you. And it would make his year if you asked him for some help, especially since you do need it.”

  “Can’t we just let your master whip me instead?”

  Nora laughed. “I think he’d much rather whip me than you.”

  “Is he really angry at us?”

  Nora thought about that before answering. “He wasn’t thrilled, but he’s not angry. You’re on his time, you know. But we worked it out. You are actually a Christmas gift to me. We’re playing the sickest, most twisted game of White Elephant ever. Of course, I thought of it.”

  She explained how the game worked and how the presents had to be blessings and curses simultaneously. Truly sadomasochistic gifts. They had to hurt to give and hurt to get. And yet…you still wanted it.

  “I’m scared to ask what you’re giving Kingsley.”

  Nora exhaled, leaned back in the bath. She and Nico were face to face now, his head resting on his arm casually draped over the side of the bath. His hair was wet with water and steam. His celadon eyes glowed in the low light. She was planning on spending half the night biting his lips, the other half sleeping in his arms. And when they woke up, they would make rough love up until the very last moment before he had to go to the airport. He’d be zipping his fly as the cab pulled up to the curb.

  “I haven’t thought of anything yet. What do you get for the man who has everything?”

  “What do you want to do with me tomorrow morning?” he asked.

  She told him the plan—rough sex and lots of it until the very last moment he had to leave to go to the airport.

  “It’s a good plan,” he said. “But there’s something else we can do.”

  Nora gave him a smile. She also gave him her foot. Reverently he took her right ankle into his palm and kissed the top of her foot, the arch, the dripping wet tips of her toes.

  Like father, like son.

  “I think you’re starting to like him,” Nora said as he traced a circle around her ankle bone with his tongue.

  “Never,” Nico said between kisses. “But I don’t hate him anymore.”

  Søren uncuffed Kingsley from the bench and helped him stand. He was dizzy at first, as the blood rushed from his head, but when he stumbled a little, Søren caught him, held Kingsley’s head to his shoulder.

  “It’s what I was thinking,” Kingsley said. “When you asked me what I was thinking on Christmas Eve. That I never want to have to have that conversation with my daughter. I’ll have to, though, someday. Won’t I?”

  Søren’s mouth was on his cheek, his ear. Kissing, biting, grasping. Now his mouth was on Kingsley’s throat. Teeth on his shoulder, in his skin, grazing his collarbone. Hands on his back, digging in, holding him in place as their mouths met. Then Kingsley was on his back on the bed, and Søren was fucking his mouth with his tongue.

  At once, the kiss was broken, but only so Søren could turn him onto his stomach.

  What was happening? What had Kingsley said? What had he done to bring this sudden change in Søren from a dispassionate sadist to a passionate lover? He needed to know so he could say it again, do it again and again and again.

  Søren’s clothes came off, the rest of them, and the sound of them landing with a soft rush on the wooden floors was sweeter than any music this club ever played. There were no words. No orders. Nothing was required of him but to lay there while his strange and beautiful man prepared his body for deep penetration. Next, his knees were pushed apart. After, his hips lifted. After that, the tip positioned at the entrance of him. And after that, the slow, slow, slow opening, entering, filling of him.

  Kingsley closed his eyes tight, breathed as he was taken. It was no easier now than it was when he’d been sixteen, in this same position for the same purpose but on a much narrower, smaller bed. Never easy but always sweet, always wanted, except when it wasn’t. Tonight it was.

  Søren stretched out on top of him, his chest on Kingsley’s back. Gradually, so as not to overwhelm him, Søren let his whole weight settle onto—and into—Kingsley’s prone body.

  He never got used to this either—the sheer weight of the man. He was lean, all muscle, but tall, and though Kingsley wasn’t small or weak in the least, even his lungs struggled against two hundred pounds of man stretched out along his back. But it was bliss to gasp for each breath with each thrust into him. And when his body opened, and the penetration became an obscene and decadent pleasure, it was easier to breathe. The cock went deep, and all the nerves in his body sang, his head lifted. He took a breath like a dolphin surfacing only to sink under the water, to dive back into the warm ocean of the bed before surfacing yet again.

  Sometimes when they were making love, Kingsley would talk. He would have to. The words came out, and nothing could stem the tide but Søren’s fingers in his mouth or a gag. Usually, he cursed Søren when it hurt or sang his praises when it felt like this, felt like God Himself sent one of his own angels to fuck him into the next life. Sometimes he debased himself, saying over and over—I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you. God, I hate how much I love you.

  On those nights, Søren never gagged him but heard it all.

  Tonight Kingsley said nothing, only listened to Søren’s ragged breaths, his near-silent moans. There were two different sounds—the sound he made when he thrust his cock deep into Kingsley and the sound he made when he slowly pulled it out to the tip.

  And then, quietly, into Kingsley’s ear, Søren asked, “Does it hurt?”

  And Kingsley’s quieter reply, “It only hurts when it’s over.”

  It went on. It went on for a long time. Sometimes it was fast. Sometimes it was slow. Sometimes it was endless until the moment it ended. That was tonight. Søren was going to spend all night inside of him. He felt teeth nip at the back of his neck. Kingsley turned his head to give up more of himself. He opened his eyes for a moment and was shocked to see himself. The dungeon was new. He’d never used it before. He’d forgotten about the antique cheval mirror he’d placed near the bed, and for this reason, so he could watch Søren fucking him.

  It was dark in the room, dark but for the candles still burning. Kingsley saw his own eyes glinting, the outline of his face, his body in shadow, and the candlelight shimmering on Søren’s long pale body, turning it gold.

  This was his favorite part, when he was so open and relaxed he almost couldn’t feel the cock impaling him. It was as much a part of him now as his own. He settled into the bed, let it hold him, the black sheets caress him, as Søren gently used him like the shameless greedy whore he always had been and always would be. And Kingsley watched. He couldn’t stop watching. He couldn’t look away from the slow undulations of Søren’s hips, the dip at the small of his back, the taut muscles of his thighs as he worked himself in deeper. What was that joke Elle had made to him once, that Søren fucked like a freight train? Was it a joke or the perfect metaphor? He thought of the times he’d gotten trapped at a railroad crossing watching as the train rumbled heavily, steadily across the tracks. All that endless, unstoppable, tightly controlled power…

  “Did you laugh?” Søren said into his ear.

  Had he? He must have been thinking of the train. “Are you going to fuck me forever?”

  “Yes,” Søren said and grasped his hair hard, pushing his head into the pillow. “So settle in.”

  He settled in.

  But still, he watched.

  That face, Søren’s face…Michelangelo’s David come to life, the stone turned to flesh. His lips were parted as he breathed, his eyes were closed, and with each thrust in, the wince, the slightest wince of pleasure and need. And what was that? That look on his face as he pressed his lips to Kingsley’s hair and breathed as if trying to breathe him in? Love. It was love. Kingsley had seen it, and even in the dark, he knew it for love.

  “I love you,” Kingsley said.

  “I know you do. I know.”

  He knew he did. Despite what he’d said before, that he sometimes wished Søren had never come back to him. Not that it wasn’t true, but that two things could be true—that he wanted Søren like a man lost in the Sahara Desert wants water—and that he didn’t want Søren, like a man saved from the Sahara Desert didn’t want sand.

  It had to end sometime. It felt like he’d been lying on his stomach all night when Søren finally increased the pace of his thrusts. Kingsley’s hips ached, felt full. His cock throbbed into the sheets, dripping. Søren slid an arm under his hips, lifted him to his elbows and knees.

  Kingsley could move now, and he did, pushing back against Søren as he pushed in. His head was down. He breathed shallow breaths as he arched his back, let himself open even more. Had he ever been penetrated this deeply? He could feel Søren in his stomach.

  Every nerve in his lower body sang and every muscle tensed. In the mirror, Søren pounded him. He watched until it was too much even for him. He arched his back again, closed his eyes, gasped as Søren’s strong wet hand wrapped around his penis and stroked. That’s all it took, and Kingsley was gone. His head came up. He released with a shudder, semen spurting wildly onto the sheets, white on black.

  Silently Søren released inside him, filling him with his hot fluid.

  They broke apart like waves break apart on the beach, crashing into pieces only to recede back into the ocean and come back together. Kingsley knew this was only the beginning of a long night.

  And the scalpel was still there on the mantel.

  They lay naked side by side on the bed, breathing. Søren’s arm was flung over his eyes and forehead, the picture of a man utterly spent.

  “You don’t even have to try to humiliate me anymore,” Kingsley said. “I do it for you.”

  “Tell me the rest,” Søren said. “Tell me what you didn’t want to tell me.”

  “I think Céleste will believe I’m cheating on her mother with you, and it kills me.”

  “Juliette will tell her that’s not how it is.”

  “Will she believe her? Will she think her mother’s making excuses to keep the peace the way my mother did? How do I explain to my daughter that the best sex I have with her mother is the night after the best sex I have with you because Juliette has a fetish for playing nurse when I’m injured? What do I say? ‘Don’t worry, ma petite. Your mama is as much a freak as I am.’”

  Søren reached out, squeezed Kingsley’s thigh. “I don’t know what you should say, only that it’ll be a long time before she knows to ask.”

  “I knew. When my father and mother fought, I always knew. It’s so easy to hurt a child without even trying.” Kingsley turned his head to face Søren. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you. And you didn’t want to hear all this.”

  “You did want to tell me, though. And I did want to hear it.”

  Kingsley smiled. “So there’s your gift then. Not the scalpel, but the truth from me. Something you want but don’t want. What about you? What aren’t you telling me that you want to tell me that I don’t want to hear?”

  Søren was quiet for a long time. Kingsley knew there was something that needed to be said. He could probably guess what it was.

  “I wish you’d tried harder to put a stop to it,” Søren finally said.

  Nico and Nora, he meant. He didn’t have to say any more.

  “I tried. My son has, as we say, une tête de mule.” Literally, the head of a mule. Stubborn as hell, en anglais.

  “You didn’t tell him everything, though, did you? That she wasn’t just someone you had sex with sometimes.”

  “No. I didn’t tell my son that his new lover used to burn me, whip me, and fuck me up the ass with a strap-on. Do you think I should have told him that instead of her being a girl I fucked every now and then, that she was important to me? That she was special to me? That would have made him want her even more because it would hurt me more. And when he had her—and by that point, he’d already had her—it would have been a sweeter triumph.”

  “Probably,” Søren said, his tone conciliatory.

  He hadn’t told Søren about how Nico had stood his ground when Kingsley had tried to confront Nora, how he wouldn’t even let him speak to her. How they’d almost come to blows over it.

  You don’t talk to her, you talk to me. You don’t look at her, you don’t go near her…

  If he hadn’t wanted to strangle his son, he might have been proud of Nico for standing up to him. Not many people stood up to Kingsley. And even more, he was proud of Nico for not letting him or anyone else blame Nora. When there was an affair, the woman was always assigned the blame. Always. And Kingsley was guilty of that himself, thinking Nora had seduced Nico. But Nico had taken all the responsibility, one-hundred-percent of it. I went to her because she was feeling weak, and I knew it. I went to her to have her, and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And I didn’t.

  What was that saying about the apple not falling far from the tree?

  “You know you have no right to tell her she can’t have him. None. If she had a whole army of lovers, she’d still barely break even with you.”

  “Because of Fionn.”

  “Because of Fionn.”

  “She loves Fionn.”

  “She does. But having sex four months out of the year with a handsome younger man will never compare to you having a child with another woman. Even if she didn’t want children.”

  “I know,” Søren said. Then again, “I know.”

  “You took it well when it happened,” Kingsley said. “Better than I did.”

  “Marie Antoinette took it well when they led her to the guillotine.”

  Ah, the guillotine. He remembered something Nico had said that day of their fight, that Kingsley wasn’t angry because he thought Nora had seduced his son. He was jealous. She’s known you for years and me for months, and she still wants me more. You know it, and it hurts your stupid pride.

  No surprise a Frenchman had invented the guillotine. Only the French could kill a man with a single cut.

  Kingsley smiled. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  “I never thought it would be this serious between them. When she hinted at what was happening, I thought—unfairly, I suppose—that it was payback.”

  “For Grace.”

  Søren nodded. “Believe it or not, I was relieved. I’d behaved horribly in a moment of temporary insanity. She’d behaved horribly in a moment of temporary insanity. I’d almost lost Eleanor. She’d just lost her mother. It made sense in a way. We could call it even. But no, it wasn’t that at all.”

  While they were telling each other the truth, Kingsley had one more confession.

  “You have no idea how hostile he was to the thought of me being his father. We joke now about Nico hating me, but in the beginning, he did. If not me, personally, the idea of me. If I had put a stop to it, to them, that would have been the end of my relationship with him. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t strong enough to do it. I wanted my son too much.”