“A knife? You were cut?” Stearns cocked his head to the side and gave Kingsley a long, enigmatic look.

“Oh, oui. You haven’t seen the scar?” Kingsley yanked his T-shirt off over his head. He moved to the other bed and sat next to Stearns. “Lovely, no?”

Angling himself toward Stearns, Kingsley displayed the wound on his chest. The gash had mostly healed, after careful stitching and treatment, but a two-inch-long white line of scar tissue still decorated the skin over his heart.

Stearns said nothing, only studied the scar. Slowly, he raised his hand and with a fingertip caressed it from tip to tip. Kingsey held perfectly still and didn’t let himself move or breathe. How could he? Stearns was touching him. The words echoed in his mind: Stearns was touching him... Stearns was…

Kingsley leaned forward and pressed his lips to Stearns’s mouth.

And for one perfect second, Stearns let him leave them there.

Once that perfect second passed, Kingsley found himself flat on his back, his hands by his head, his wrists pinned hard and fast into the mattress. Stearns gripped his wrists so tightly that Kingsley thought he heard something crack inside his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I don’t know what…”

He struggled against Stearns’s viselike grip, but no amount of pushing back could free him. Stearns held himself steady overtop of Kingsley, one knee on the bed, one foot on the floor, and pushed him deeper and deeper into the mattress.

Stearns’s face hovered only six inches from his own. The pain in his wrists, the fear in his heart, all threatened to send Kingsley into a panic. But underneath the panic he felt something else—a strange calm, a sense of surrender. As much as Kingsley wanted Stearns, he would be content letting him do anything to him, even kill him.

“I’m sorry,” Kingsley repeated. “I—”

“Stop talking.” Stearns spoke the words coldly, calmly, and Kingsley obeyed immediately. He pushed up again and

Stearns pushed back down with even greater force.

“Stop moving.”

Kingsley froze.

Waited.

Realized he’d never been so aroused in his entire life.

Looking up into Stearns’s eyes, Kingsley noticed the pupils had dilated hugely. And Stearns’s perfectly pale skin had flushed slightly. The exertions on the soccer field hadn’t caused half the reaction that simply holding him down on the bed clearly did.

“You are playing a very dangerous game, Kingsley.” Stearns lowered his voice as he spoke the threat, and every nerve in Kingsley’s body tightened.

He remained silent as ordered. Stearns’s thumb moved to press into the pulse point on Kingsley’s right wrist. The touch was so surprising, so suddenly gentle, that Kingsley moaned with the pleasure of it. A soft moan, barely audible. But Stearns clearly heard it, for his hooded eyes widened once more.

“You aren’t afraid of me right now.” A statement, not a question, and yet Kingsley heard the question underneath the words. Why?

“There’s nothing you could do to me now that I wouldn’t want.”

Stearns looked Kingsley up and down, as if he realized an alien lay beneath him instead of a person.

“What are you?”

Stearns asked him the same question Kingsley had asked him, but Kingsley had a much simpler answer.

“I’m French.”

Stearns took a deep and ragged breath. Closing his eyes, he pushed Kingsley one millimeter deeper into the bed before finally letting his wrists go.

Kingsley forced himself to sit up as Stearns strode toward the door.

“Did you really kill a boy at your last school?” he called out after him, desperate to do anything, say anything to get him to stay.

“Yes.” Stearns paused in the doorway.

“What did he do?” Kingsley started to walk to the door. The look Stearns gave him stopped him in midstep.

“He kissed me.”

NORTH

The Present

Kingsley couldn’t take his eyes off Søren the entire drive to the airport. After what they’d witnessed at Elizabeth’s house, after what they’d talked about, after what Kingsley had seen in Søren’s eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to look anywhere else but at his closest friend, his dearest foe. What was this madness happening to them? In thirty years, Kingsley had seen rage in Søren’s eyes, lust, need, hunger, piety, even the occasional flashes of love. But never had he seen fear before, real fear. Not like he’d seen at Elizabeth’s house, in the doorway of his old classmate’s childhood bedroom.

“Stop staring at me, Kingsley,” Søren said as he turned his eyes from the road outside the window to Kingsley’s face.

“I’ve been staring at you for thirty years. You should be used to it by now, mon ami.”

Søren gave a slight laugh, which helped. He scared Kingsley.

“I suppose I should be. You don’t have to come with me. This may very well prove to be a pointless trek. And I know you don’t hold the fondest of memories of Saint Ignatius.”

Kingsley exhaled slowly. The words were both true and a lie.

“Before Marie-Laure…” he began, and paused to steady himself. Talk of his sister troubled him like no other subject. “Before she came, everything was perfect. My fondest memories are of Saint Ignatius. I wish you believed that.”

“I do believe it.” Søren sighed. “I only wish you didn’t.”