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Cunning. Sex. Pure nerve. Only this potent threesome can raise him to his rightful place as ruler of Manhattan’s kink kingdom.
Bouncing from bed to bed on the Upper East Side—handsomely paid in both bills and blackmail fodder—Kingsley Edge is brilliant, beautiful and utterly debauched. No carnal act or chemical compound can relieve his self-destructive apathy—only Søren, the one person he loves without limit or regret. A man he can never have, but in whose hands Kingsley is reborn to attain even greater heights of sin. He plans to open the ultimate BDSM club: a dungeon playground for New York’s A-list that’ll change the scene forever.
The club becomes Kingsley’s obsession—and he’s enlisted some tough-as-nails help. His new assistant Sam is smart, secretive and totally immune to seduction (by men, at least). She and Kingsley make a wicked team. Still, their combined—and considerable—expertise in domination can’t subdue the man who would kill their dream. The enigmatic Reverend Fuller won’t rest until King’s dream is destroyed. It’s one man’s sacred mission against another’s….
“Reisz’s Original Sinners series just keeps getting better!”
—RT Book Reviews
Praise for Tiffany Reisz
‘The Siren is one of those books which has the amazing ability to create the scene in full colour in your mind’s eye—this is no small skill on the author’s part.’ http://carasutra.co.uk/
‘A beautiful, lyrical story … The Siren is about love lost and found, the choices that make us who we are … I can only hope Ms Reisz pens a sequel!’ —Bestselling author Jo Davis
‘The Original Sinners series certainly lives up to its name: it’s mind-bendingly original and crammed with more sin than you can shake a hot poker at. I haven’t read a book this dangerous and subversive since Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.’ —Andrew Shaffer, author of Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love
‘Tiffany Reisz is a smart, artful and masterful new voice in erotic fiction. An erotica star on the rise!’
—Award-winning author Lacey Alexander
‘Daring, sophisticated and literary … exactly what good erotica should be.’
—Kitty Thomas, author of Tender Mercies
‘Dazzling, devastating and sinfully erotic, Reisz writes unforgettable characters you’ll either want to know or want to be. The Siren is an alluring book-within-a-book, a story that will leave you breathless and bruised, aching for another chapter with Nora Sutherlin and her men.’ —Miranda Baker, author of Bottoms Up and Soloplay
‘The best erotica either leaves slut-marks on your back or a bruise on your heart. The Siren does both and I wish I’d written it.’ —Scarlett Parrish, author of By the Book
‘You will most definitely feel strongly for these characters … This was an amazing story and I’m so happy that it’s not over. I can’t wait to jump back into Nora’s world.’
http://ladysbookstuff.blogspot.co.uk
TIFFANY REISZ’s books inhabit a sexy, shadowy world where erotica, romance and gothic literature meet and do immoral and possibly illegal things to each other. The first book in her international bestselling series The Original Sinners was named the RT 2012 Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Erotic Romance. She is a very bad Catholic. Visit her website, www.tiffanyreisz.com, for news, gossip and wholly inappropriate bedtime stories.
Also by Tiffany Reisz:
The Original Sinners: The Red Years
THE SIREN
THE ANGEL
THE PRINCE
THE MISTRESS
The Original Sinners: The White Years
THE SAINT
eBook Novellas
THE MISTRESS FILES
SEVEN-DAY LOAN
IMMERSED IN PLEASURE
SUBMIT TO DESIRE
LITTLE RED RIDING CROP
eBook Cosmo Red Hot Reads
MISBEHAVING
The
King
Tiffany Reisz
www.spice-books.co.uk
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Dedicated to all the girls with short hair and all the boys with long hair.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Praise
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Acknowledgments
Endpages
Extract
Copyright
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
—Lawrence of Arabia
1
Somewhere in London 2013
KINGSLEY EDGE WAS playing God tonight. He hoped the real God, if He did exist, wouldn’t mind.
He’d told his driver to let him out a few blocks before his destination. Warm air, a late-April rain and a little English magic had sent a soft white fog twisting and flicking its tail down winding streets, and Kingsley wanted to enjoy it. He wore a long coat and carried a leather weekender bag over his shoulder. It was late, and although the city was still awake, it kept its voice down. The only sounds around him came from the soles of his shoes echoing against the wet and shining pavement and the distant murmur of city traffic.
When he arrived at the door he knocked without hesitation.
After a pause, it opened.
They stared at each other a full five seconds before one of them spoke. Kingsley took it upon himself to break the silence.
“I’m the last person you were expecting to see again, oui?” Kingsley asked.
He expected the shock and he expected the silence, but he didn’t expect what happened next.
He didn’t expect Grace Easton to step onto the porch in her soft gray robe and bare feet and wrap him in her arms.
“If I’d known this is how the Welsh say ‘hello,’ I would have visited sooner,” Kingsley said. Grace pulled back from the embrace and smiled at him, her bright turquoise eyes gleaming.
“You’re always welcome here.” Grace’s words were tender, her accent light and musical. She took his arm and ushered him into the house. “Always.”
Always...a lovely word. He never used to believe in words like always, like forever, like everything. Now at forty-eight he’d lived long enough he could see both ends of his life. Always. There might be something to it after all.
“Zachary’s asleep,” Grace said in a whisper as she took his coat, hung it up, and guided him into a cozy living room. “He gets up at five every morning, so he goes to bed at a reasonable hour. I prefer the unreasonable hours myself.”
“You’re the night owl?”
“It works for us,” she said with a smile. “I can get work done after Zachary and Fionn fall asleep. Would you like tea? I can put the kettle on. Or something stronger?”
“I brought my own something stronger,” he said.
He unzipped his weekender bag and offered her a bottle of wine. She examined the label.
“Rosanella Syrah,” she said. “Never had it before.”
“It’s from my son’s winery. Best Syrah I’ve ever tasted.”
“Not that you’re biased or anything,” she said with a wink. She went to fetch wineglasses and a corkscrew from the kitchen, and Kingsley looked around. Zachary and Grace Easton lived in a small two-story brick house that made up one of many in a row of neat but narrow accommodations. It was an older neighborhood, a bit shabby but safe and clean from what he could see. Inside the house was the picture of quiet domesticity. Intelligent educated people lived here. And one very special baby.
“Am I interrupting anything?” Kingsley asked when Grace returned with the wineglasses. He took the corkscrew from her and opened the bottle. Grace had a low fire glowing in the fireplace and a table lamp on. Gentle light. Kingsley felt instantly at ease here.
“Nothing that can’t wait,” she said, and Kingsley saw stacks of papers on the pale green sofa. He took a seat in the armchair opposite her and crossed one leg over his knee. She curled up into a ball, her knees to her chest, her bare feet sticking out from the bottom of the robe. Her long red hair was knotted at the nape of her neck in a loose and elegant bun. In the soft light of the room she radiated a delicate beauty. A vision, freckles and all. How had he not noticed before how lovely she was? Of course, the one and only occasion they’d been in each other’s company, he’d been preoccupied, to say the least.
“You’re grading papers?” Kingsley asked.
“No, I’m still on maternity leave,” she said. Next to her on the table sat a baby monitor. “These are proofs of my book. Nothing exciting. Only poetry.” She held up a printed title page that read Rooftop Novenas.
“You’re writing again?” Kingsley asked. He remembered from her file she’d had a few poems published in her early twenties.
“I am,” she said, smiling shyly. “I don’t know what it is...As soon as I was pregnant with Fionn I had so much creative energy. Couldn’t stop writing. Zachary’d thought I’d lost my mind. He’s an editor, though, not a writer. He thinks all writers are a bit mad.”
“I might have to agree with him,” Kingsley said. “You have my congratulations on the book.”
She shuffled her pages, capped her pen. “Thank you, Kingsley. But I don’t believe you crossed an ocean simply to talk about my poetry.”
“Even if it was inspired by a mutual friend of ours?” Kingsley said.
“Even so,” she admitted without shame. Good. Kingsley might have despised her if she’d had any regrets, any shame for what had happened. Instead, she’d come with an open heart to their world, an open mind, and had returned home carrying a blessing inside her. “It’s back to school in a few months, and I’m trying not to think about having to leave Fionn.”
“He taught at our high school after he graduated. Did you know that?”
She held her glass steady on the coffee table between them as Kingsley poured the wine.
“He told me he used to teach. Said he liked it. I didn’t expect that from him.”
Kingsley picked up a framed photograph that sat on the coffee table between them—a black-and-white picture of a newborn infant boy sleeping on a white pillow.
“That’s one thing you can say for him,” Kingsley said, turning the photograph toward Grace. “He’s full of surprises.”
She blushed beautifully and laughed quietly, and Kingsley couldn’t help but join in her laugh.
“Is he why you’re here? Are you checking on Fionn for him?”
“No,” Kingsley said. “Although he’ll never forgive me if I don’t look in on him while I’m here.” Kingsley ached to see the boy, but he had learned the hard way to never disturb a sleeping baby.
“I’m only asking why you’re here out of curiosity. You never need a reason to visit us. I assume everyone is well?” Grace asked. “Juliette? Your daughter? Nora?”
“Juliette and Céleste are perfect as usual,” he said. “But Nora, she lost her mother recently. A month ago, I believe.”
“I had no idea. Zachary never said a word about it.”
“She didn’t tell anyone until afterward. She disappeared on us for two weeks.”
“Nora.” Grace sighed and shook her head. “Well, if she behaved like a normal person, she wouldn’t be Nora, would she?”
“No. No, she wouldn’t be.” Kingsley laughed to himself. “But she and her mother...they had a difficult relationship.”
“Because of him?”
“Her mother hated him. I don’t use the word hate lightly,” Kingsley said. “I think it was a peace offering to her mother for Nora to go alone. And she couldn’t tell him. Nora ran away to her mother’s once before, and he hunted her down like the hound of hell.”
“I didn’t know that. But I can imagine he’s...persistent where she’s concerned?”
“That is one way to put it.” Kingsley took a sip of his wine. “She and her mother, they had unfinished business.”
“That’s the worst-case scenario then, isn’t it? If you’re close to your parents, you have no regrets when they pass away. If you have no relationship, you have no grief. If you want to be close, but you can’t be...”
“She took it very hard,” Kingsley said, knowing Nora well enough to say that in good faith.
“I’ll call her tomorrow,” Grace said. “Maybe she should come stay with us a few days. She loves being around Fionn. And she and Zachary fight so much, she’ll forget all her sorrows, I promise.”
Kingsley wanted to laugh. Only Grace Easton would call the woman who had slept—more than once—with her husband, offer her condolences on the loss of her mother and then invite her to stay in her home with Grace, her husband and their infant son who was fathered by Nora’s lover.
Did Grace have any idea what an extraordinarily odd woman she was?
Then again, what room did Kingsley have to talk?
“Apart from that, we’re all well. He’s well,” Kingsley said, saving Grace the embarrassment of asking about him.
“Good,” Grace said with a smile. “I never know... He’s the easiest man in the world to talk to...and the most difficult man to read. Rather amazes me that Nora’s been with him over twenty years and is as sane as she is. Zachary was my professor when we fell in love, and I thought I’d go insane trying to keep that secret from my friends, my family, the school. To be with a priest for twenty years...”
“No one is more amazed than I that they’ve lasted. The sanity part is up for debate, but you can’t question the love. Not anymore. And he hasn’t made it easy for her, and she... Well, I don’t have to tell you anything about Nora, do I?”
Grace grinned broadly.
“No,” she said. “No, you don’t.” She took a drink of the Syrah, and her eyes widened in delight.
“Your son is quite the vintner. This is marvelous.”
“I told you so,” Kingsley said, taking a sip of his own wine. The Syrah was good, an excellent vintage, strong and potent. As much as Kingsley loved the taste, he found it hard to drink sometimes. The knot of pride in his throat made it difficult to swallow.
“Zachary was very impressed with Nico when they met. He’s what? Twenty-five and he owns and runs his own vineyard?”
“I think about how I was at twenty-five, what I was doing with my life, and I can’t believe he came from me.”
“I can believe it,” Grace said, giving him a luminescent smile.
“I won’t keep you up all night showing you pictures of my children,” Kingsley said. He had pictures of both Nico and Céleste with him, and he was seconds away from pulling them out. “I’m only here for a few hours before I catch my next flight. But I did come for a reason.”
“Should I be concerned?” Grace asked.
“Non, pas du tout,” Kingsley said with a wave of his hand. “Forgive me. French wine brings out my French.”
“I speak some,” she said. “You haven’t lost me yet.”
“Bon,” he said and paused for another drink. “I have something to tell you. A story. And I can’t tell you why I’m telling you the story until after the story.”
“I see...” she said, although Kingsley knew she didn’t. “May I ask what the story concerns?”
Kingsley reached into the inner breast pocket of his jacket. From it he pulled a crisp white envelope thick with documents sealed with wax. The wax was imprinted with what appeared to be a number eight inside a circle. Kingsley placed it on the table between his glass of wine and Grace’s.
“The story is about that,” Kingsley said, nodding toward the envelope. “And I can tell you the long version which is the true version or I can tell you a shorter, sweeter version. I’m happy to tell you either. But you decide.”
“The long version, of course,” she said. “Tell me everything I should know even if you don’t think I want to hear it.”
“Everything...dangerous word.” Kingsley sat back in the chair, and Grace leaned forward. She looked at him with a child’s eagerness. “But if you insist. The more you know about us, the better it will be if...”
He didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t have to, because he saw the understanding in Grace’s eyes. She knew the end of the sentence he hadn’t spoken, and her nod saved him the pain of saying the words that no one yet had dared to utter aloud.
If Fionn takes after his father...
“The story starts twenty years ago,” Kingsley said, conjuring the memories he had tried to bury. But he’d buried them alive and alive they remained. “And it takes place in Manhattan. And although you don’t know yet why I’m telling you this, Grace, I promise you, you won’t regret hearing me out.”
“I don’t regret anything,” she said.
Kingsley straightened the photograph of her infant son. No, none of them regretted anything. Not even Kingsley.
“It was raining,” Kingsley began. “And it was March. I had everything then—money, power and all the women and men in my bed anyone could possibly want. And to say I was in a bad mood would be the understatement of the century. I was twenty-eight years old and didn’t expect to see thirty. In fact, I hoped I wouldn’t see thirty.”
“What happened?”
Kingsley took a breath, took a drink and took a moment to pull his words to together. A pity Nora wasn’t here. Storytelling was her gift, not his. But only he could tell this story and thus he began.
“Søren happened.”
2
Somewhere in Manhattan, 1993 March
“WHAT’S YOUR POISON?” the bartender asked, and Kingsley answered, “Blonds.”
The bartender, Duke, half laughed, half scoffed as he pointed to the stage.
“Two bleach-blonde bottles of poison right there.”
Kingsley eyed the two girls—Holly and Ivy—who now hung naked from their knees, which they’d wrapped around twin poles. Men sat belly up to the stage watching in silence, making eye contact with no one but the dancers. Dollar bills fluttered between their waving fingers.
“Not what I’m in the mood for tonight.” Kingsley looked away from the stage.
“What?” Duke asked. “How can you not be in the mood for that? Are they too hot? Too sexy?”
Kingsley reached behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of bourbon.
“Too female.”
“Don’t look at me,” Duke said, raising both his hands.
“I promise, I’m not.” And he wasn’t. Someone else had caught his eye. But where had he gone?
“It’s too quiet tonight,” Kingsley said to Duke. Usually on a Friday night at the Möbius, the place would be standing room only. Half the usual crowd was in attendance tonight. “What’s going on?”
“You came in the back way?” Duke asked as he uncorked Kingsley’s bourbon for him.
“Of course.”
“Some church is outside holding up signs.”
“Signs?”
“Yeah, you know. Protest signs. Sex Trade Fuels AIDS. Fornicators will burn. She’s somebody’s daughter.”
“Are you serious?”
“Go look for yourself.”
Kingsley took his bottle of bourbon to the front door of the club and took a long drink but not long enough for the sight that greeted him. Duke hadn’t been exaggerating. A dozen people walked up and down the sidewalk carrying various white signs held aloft proclaiming the evils of strip clubs.
“Told you so,” Duke said from behind Kingsley. “Can we call the cops on them or something? Shoot them?”
“We don’t have to get rid of them,” Kingsley said. “God will.”
“He will?” Duke asked. “You sure about that?”
The sky broke open and rain began to fall. The protestors lasted about five seconds under the bite of the late-winter rain before running for cover.
“See?” Kingsley said to Duke. He looked up at the sky, “Dieu, merci.”
“God must be a tits and ass man.”
“If He wasn’t,” Kingsley said, “He wouldn’t have invented them.”
He shut the door and glanced around the club again.
A psychiatrist—if Kingsley would let one near him—would have had a field day with his prodigious talent for finding the blond in every room he entered. If someone blindfolded him right now, he could, with picture-perfect recall, point out every last blond man in a fifty-yard radius. Five of them sat at various stations of the Möbius strip club—two at the bar (one real blond, the other a punk who’d bleached his hair), one working as a bouncer, one disappearing into the bathroom with a suspicious bulge in his trousers and a young one at table thirteen back in the corner. Kingsley had noticed the young blond when he’d first entered the Möbius half an hour ago. He’d been watching him, studying him, getting a read on him. Kingsley approached him.
The blond at table thirteen sat alone. He didn’t look at any of the girls, but only at his hands, his drink, his table.
Kingsley sat down across from him and placed the bourbon on the table between them. The amber liquid licked at the sides of the bottle. The blond glanced first at the bourbon, as if wondering where it came from and how it got there, before his eyes settled on to Kingsley’s.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and it’s important you answer it correctly.” Kingsley did his best to temper his French accent without disposing of it entirely. The accent got him attention when he wanted it but in such a noisy room, he needed to speak as clearly as possible. “Luckily for you, I will tell you the correct answer before I ask the question. And that answer is twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one?” The blond spoke in some sort of accent of his own—American, obviously, but this young man was far from home. “What’s the question?”
“How old are you?”
The blond’s eyes widened. In the dim light, Kingsley couldn’t make out the boy’s eye color. Steel-gray, he hoped, although tonight he wouldn’t be picky.