Now this was pure torture. Kingsley lay with his hands and feet tied to the ends of the bed, while Søren slowly, gently kissed him. His mouth…his neck…his collarbone and chest received nearly five full minutes of attention...
“Please…s’il vous plaît…” Kingsley pleaded, and didn’t even know why he begged and what he begged for. Søren never heeded his pleas—neither for mercy nor for consummation. Everything happened in Søren’s time, by his will and his will alone. But Kingsley couldn’t stop himself from begging, from pleading. No girl had ever kissed him like this. He felt like an object and nothing more. When Søren kissed him, Kingsley knew it was for Søren’s sake alone. The pain was for Søren. The pleasure was for Søren. Kingsley existed for Søren and he knew it. A month ago he’d bragged to Søren about the privileged position he held, being the only son in a French family. His mother had worshipped him and asked nothing from him. His father had spoiled him. His sister did the work he was never expected to do. A little prince…that’s what he’d been, growing up. And every night, his mother read to him from Le Petit Prince, his favorite story. But underneath Søren, Kingsley ceased to be a prince or a king.
He was nothing but a slave, a servant, a body to be used by Søren and for Søren.
Nothing pleased Kingsley more than to disappear to the hermitage at night and find Søren waiting for him. The crown his parents had placed on his head, even naming him Kingsley, although a less French name had never existed…he’d take off that crown and lay it at Søren’s feet. And the prince would become a servant and the king a commoner all night long.
Søren slid his hand down the center of Kingsley’s chest, over his stomach, creeping ever lower. Kingsley moaned in near pain from the need, the incredible ache. He had to be touched…soon. But Søren’s hands and mouth roamed over every inch of him…except for the inches he most needed kissed, most desperately desired touched.
“You hate me,” Kingsley whispered, and Søren laughed into his skin.
“I don’t care about you enough to hate you.” Søren brought his mouth to Kingsley’s ear and kissed him from the nape of his neck to the tip of his shoulder. “You’re nothing to me.”
“Is that why you’re trying to kill me?” Kingsley raised his hips, seeking some sort of satisfaction and feeling nothing but renewed pressure in his stomach. He’d come if he wasn’t careful. And he knew better than that. Søren would beat him nearly bloody if he ever came without asking permission first. He had the week-old welt on his lower back to prove it.
“I would never kill you,” Søren said, sliding his hands over Kingsley’s inner thighs, massaging them, running his fingers to the very edge of Kingsley’s painfully straining erection before pulling away again. Only another man would ever understand the absolute agony of this kind of teasing. Only a sadist like Søren would ever inflict it. “It would be a waste of my valuable time, killing you.”
“You would have to find someone else to torture like this if you killed me,” Kingsley said, laughing even though his eyes held unshed tears of frustration.
“Exactly…a waste…” Søren kissed his rib cage. “Of…” Søren kissed his hip. “My time…” Søren kissed his stomach, only an inch away from where Kingsley so desperately wanted him to.
“I’ll die anyway if you don’t let me come.”
“Your penchant for exaggeration is embarrassing. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am. Or would be if I had any shame…which I do not.”
“No shame? One would think someone with no sense of shame would beg more than you have been...”
Kingsley heard the hint in Søren’s voice and nearly laughed out loud with joy. Søren did that sometimes…guided him toward the desired response. At these times Kingsley most felt like a servant, a child, like property. Søren wanted Kingsley to perform for him—to beg when begging was desired, to cry when crying was desired, and always, always to submit to him, for submission was what Søren most desired.
Submission...Kingsley had never understood it until he’d spent his first full night with Søren. That first night in the forest had simply broken his body. The second night had broken his will. But when they spent their first night together in the hermitage, and hadn’t given up until dawn, Kingsley learned that submission didn’t mean surrendering to an enemy, but to an ally. Although Søren never confessed love for Kingsley or even affection, he felt it in every “we” uttered during that long night.
“We should stay here tonight,” Søren had said.
“We should sleep…at least for a while,” Søren had whispered.
“We shouldn’t go back together. Someone might see,” he’d decided in the morning.
During their first night together in the hermitage, Søren had beaten Kingsley before tying him facedown on the cot and penetrating him again and again. And with every thrust, Kingsley had whispered “Je t’aime” into the sheets. A thousand times that night he must have said it. A thousand times he’d meant it. He’d awoken the next morning with his head on Søren’s stomach and those perfect pianist’s fingers twined in his long hair. The pain had rendered him nearly immobile, but he couldn’t stop smiling.