The Prince (The Original Sinners 3)

A rustle of leaves alerted Kingsley to a presence behind him. He didn’t look back at Søren, but knew the priest followed now, as he had followed him that night.

“Why did you chase me?” Kingsley asked, still not turning around.

“Because you ran.”

“Do you know why I ran from you?”

“Because you wanted me to catch you.”

Kingsley laughed and didn’t deny it.

“Did you know you would rape me when you caught me?”

“Are we really calling it rape?” Søren asked, his voice tinged with dark amusement.

“What else shall we call it?”

“It’s hardly rape when you wanted it.”

“You didn’t know that at the time, though, did you?” Kingsley passed through the trees that had whipped at his flesh that night and torn his clothes. Did they remember the night as well as he did?

“You stared at me constantly, followed me everywhere I went. You watched me sleep, Kingsley.”

“How did you know that?”

Kingsley shivered as Søren’s laugh rippled through the woods.

“I watched you watch me.”

Today Kingsley managed to avoid the thorn bush that had cut open his forehead and sent blood dripping into his eyes. When he had returned to Saint Ignatius after summer break, he had learned every inch of the woods that surrounded the school. But nowhere on the thousands of acres he’d roamed and memorized had he seen another thorn bush. Only here, guarding the clearing where he’d lain underneath Søren and let the boy he loved destroy him.

“When did you know you wanted me?” Kingsley asked as he entered the clearing where he’d died and bled and been born again. “I wanted you before I even saw you. When I heard the first notes of Ravel coming from the chapel.”

“Father Henry told me a French student would be coming to Saint Ignatius. I’d never played Ravel before. I thought I should play something French so you wouldn’t feel so homesick.”

Kingsley looked at Søren and said nothing. Søren merely looked back at him.

Closing his eyes, Kingsley remembered that day in the chapel, a petrified Matthew at his side trying to warn him to leave Stearns alone. Kingsley should have listened, would have listened but for one thing...

“I loved you because of the Ravel. Had you played any other piece I would have thought you merely handsome and fascinating.”

Søren gazed up at the sky. “Then I’m glad I played it.”

Kingsley took a step toward him and waited. Søren did nothing, said nothing to stop him.

So Kingsley didn’t stop.

Another step. And then another. And after one more step he stood in front of Søren, merely a hairsbreadth apart.

“I thought you were the most beautiful creature on God’s earth,” Kingsley confessed. “I would have been an atheist but for you proving to me that both heaven and hell were real, even if they existed only when I was with you.”

“I can’t say when the moment came that I wanted you,” Søren said. “Perhaps before we even met. Why else would I have chosen the Ravel? I always thought God brought Eleanor and me together.”

“Then who is to blame for us? The devil?”

“I hope not.” Søren sighed. “I have no intention of meeting him. Even to thank him.”

Søren turned his face to Kingsley.

“You are still the most beautiful creature on God’s earth,” Kingsley said, meaning every word.

“I hated how you stared at me.” Søren raised his hand and laid it on Kingsley’s shoulder. He moved his hand up Kingsley’s neck and pressed his thumb into the hollow of his throat.

“And why is that?”

“Because,” Søren said, bending his regal head the four inches that separated them, “it made it impossible for me to stare back.”

Their lips touched for the first time in thirty years. Even the night Søren took him fourteen years ago, they hadn’t kissed. Søren had reserved his kisses for Eleanor alone. What happened that night had been mere violence, not even lust or love. But Kingsley sensed no violence in this kiss. Søren’s mouth was cold and clean. Their tongues gently mingled. But the gentleness lasted only seconds, and Kingsley knew it was merely the product of their own astonishment the kiss was even happening.

Fingers on the back of his neck.

He remembered those fingers.

A hand digging into his hip with bruising force.

Kingsley remembered that hand.

Pain with every touch. Pain with every kiss. Pain with every beat of his heart.

Kingsley loved this pain.

Søren pushed him until Kingsley felt bark against his back, digging through his shirt and into his flesh. They devoured each other with kisses, bit lips, nipped tongues. Kingsley tasted blood and knew it was his own.

Or was it?

“Stop, Kingsley.” Søren spoke the order against Kingsley’s mouth. He didn’t stop.

“You never told me your safe word,” Kingsley whispered back. “I don’t stop for anything but a safe word.”

He laughed then and Søren’s hand came out of seemingly nowhere and slapped the laugh off his lips. Then they kissed again, harder, deeper. Kingsley felt the kiss in his stomach, in his hips. The pants he wore were made by the finest tailor in the world and cost a small fortune. He wanted to drop to the ground in them, take Søren in his mouth, and afterward take the trousers to his tailor and demand he repair the tears in the knees.