Part 47 (1/2)
Kingsley only grinned.
”You did.”
”Sorry.”
”Don't be sorry. No one in this room can judge you. I've f.u.c.ked two different people today. And likely a third before the night is over.”
”That should help me feel less horrible, but it doesn't. A little jealous, though.” She tried to smile.
”This should make you feel less horrible. He knew this would happen. I would say he wanted it to.”
”S0ren wanted me to fall for someone else?”
”You think he is making you wait so long for him for no other reason than to torture you?”
”Well, yeah.”
”It's part of it.” Kingsley sat back and threw his long booted legs up on the back of the sofa and crossed his ankles. ”But the truth is he loves you. And he's a Catholic priest. And he can't marry you. And he can't give you children. And he can't hold your hand while you walk through Was.h.i.+ngton Square Park and kiss you under a streetlamp in the snow where all the world can see you. And if that's something you want, he wants you to have it. s.e.x will seal you to him. You spend a night in his bed and you will never want to leave it. If you are going to get out, you need to do it now before it's too late.”
”I want them both.”
”If le pretre would allow that, would your boy allow it?”
She shook her head.
”No. He'd hate that. The first day he wanted to know everything about S0ren. Now he flinches if I even mention him.”
”Then you have a choice to make. But make it soon and make it clean.”
”Make it clean?”
Kingsley sat his drink on the side table and, with adroit fingers, quickly unb.u.t.toned his white s.h.i.+rt. He pulled the fabric to the side to bare a large scar that looked recently healed.
”Bullet wound,” he said. ”Nearly killed me. Not the shot, however. The bullet shattered on a rib. They had to dig out thirty pieces of silver. You want to shoot someone? Have the decency to make it clean. In and out, straight through. No hope.”
”No hope? That's brutal, King.”
”You say he's an aspiring writer. Break him, then.” Kingsley sipped his Scotch and laughed to himself. ”It'll be good for his art.”
He started to b.u.t.ton his s.h.i.+rt, but Eleanor stopped him with a hand on his chest. She pressed her hand against the scar tissue. He didn't seem surprised when she touched his chest. Not surprised and not at all displeased.
”This nun at my school always said h.e.l.l was the absence of hope,” Eleanor said, tracing the hard line of the scar. She couldn't imagine how much pain Kingsley had suffered, how he'd even survived such a wound. But it was beautiful in a way, this scar of his. She almost wanted to kiss it.
Kingsley covered her hand with his.
”Then your nun was never in love with someone she couldn't have. If you care about this boy at all, give him no hope.”
He raised his hand and traced her bottom lip with his thumb.
”I know you, Elle,” Kingsley said, his voice so low it lulled her in closer to him, so close they could have kissed if one of them dared to do it. ”I know what you are. You will never be content with a boy like that. He will be a game and you will play him and you will tire of the game and him. You need so much more than such a boy can give you. I know this because I'm the same way.”
He looked into her eyes and Eleanor looked into his. She could almost imagine their lips meeting ... She could rip off his s.h.i.+rt, yank his pants open. He'd look beautiful on his back underneath her, her hands on his wrists, his c.o.c.k buried inside her as she rode him into the couch.
Wait. What the f.u.c.k was she thinking?
Eleanor pulled back and sat on the opposite end of the couch from Kingsley. He continued to stare at her, a smug smile on his lips as if he'd read her thoughts. He didn't bother b.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt.
Kingsley took another swig of his Scotch, then handed it to her. She stared into the murky liquid before taking a deep drink of it. She coughed only once as the liquor burned its way down her throat.
”I'm f.u.c.ked, King.”
”Not yet. But the night is still young.”
”What should I do?”
”What do you want to do?”
”f.u.c.k them both.” She laughed mirthlessly. ”I know what I don't want to do. I don't want to hurt Wyatt. I don't want to hurt S0ren.”
”A nice dream, but this is life, the real world. You will hurt them. They will hurt you.”
”Wyatt ... he's my age, you know?” She stared down into the Scotch at the bottom of Kingsley's gla.s.s in her hand. ”He's an NYU student. We can go places together, be seen together. We're both writers. We make sense. S0ren and I? We don't make sense. At least to no one but us.”
Kingsley traced the wet rim of his gla.s.s with his fingertip.
”Elle ... I wish you could have known him back when he was a teenager.”
”What was he like?”
”Old. He was older then than he is now. An old soul, as they say.” Kingsley chuckled at what must have been a good memory. ”Mon Dieu, you'd never met anyone more arrogant, haughty, pompous and condescending. Everyone at the school hated that blond s.h.i.+t. Everyone but the priests.”
Eleanor burst into laughter.
”I can totally picture that. Why was he such a p.r.i.c.k back then?”
”We're all s.h.i.+ts when we're teenagers. G.o.d knows I was, but for him, I think it was this fear of his. He thought he'd been tainted by his father, his past. Better to be hated than loved. Love lets people in. He wanted no one near him. He's better now. Being a priest ... he's more open with his affections. Being with you ...” Kingsley paused as if the next words didn't want to come. ”Being with you makes him better. Happy. Less troubled. My G.o.d, he's almost ...” Kingsley shook his head. ”Almost fun.”
Kingsley said the word with exaggerated horror.
Eleanor laughed. ”He wasn't fun as a teenager?” She gave Kingsley his Scotch back. If she kept it she might drink it all and then some.
”In a different way,” he answered, and Kingsley smiled his secret sort of smile before the smile died. ”No, he was not fun then. He was cold and closed off, dangerous and nearly impossible to get close to. It nearly killed me getting close to him, but in the end the reward was worth the price.”
”If I left him ...” She faced Kingsley and stared into his dark eyes. ”What would happen?”
Kingsley twirled the remaining Scotch and ice around the bottom of his gla.s.s.
”You have only seen him by day, and by day we see only light and shadow. But if you left him, the night would come. And then we would all see the darkness.”
”What's the darkness like?”