“King, I—”

“You don’t get to leave and then show up almost a year later and call me King. Call me ‘sir’ or don’t call me anything.”

He saw her clench her jaw tight.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and he heard her struggle to say the words.

“You have no idea how angry at you I am,” Kingsley said, realizing his anger at the moment he admitted it. She’d disappeared and hadn’t written, hadn’t called, hadn’t told him she was alive. “After everything we went through—”

“We?” She looked up at him and met his eyes, a clear violation of every protocol a submissive was supposed to follow. “What did we go through? Sir.”

There it was. She’d asked the question. They could talk about it, the pregnancy, the decision she’d made, and the mistake he’d made letting her go through with it alone.

Or he could let it go, drop it. It was in the past and they should leave it there.

“How are you?” he asked instead.

“Surviving. You?”

“The same.”

He waited for her to ask about Søren. She didn’t. Either she already knew or she didn’t want to know. He’d put his money on the latter. He wished he didn’t know.

“Where did you go?”

“My mother’s.”

“You were at her convent the whole time?” he asked.

“I was. I left.”

“Did you—”

“I don’t want to talk about the convent.”

He raised his hands in surrender.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I told you. I need a job. I’m doing something with my life. I think. Maybe.” She laughed to herself. “But I’m broke and I’m homeless and I need help.”

“It must have hurt to admit that.”

“Look at me. You think I have any pride left at this point?” she asked him. He looked at her as ordered. She looked thin and tired and very pale. But the beauty was still there, and her eyes burned with a new light he’d never seen before. She had walked through Hell these past months and had survived the flames but carried the fire out with her.

“I think you have nothing left but pride.”

She looked him in the eyes, a cold and penetrating stare that bore into him. If he had words written on his soul, her eyes could read them.

“I wrote a book,” she finally said. “Someone is interested in it. But I need a job. Got any openings at Cuffs?” she asked. Cufflinks, Kingsley’s private bondage parlor he’d opened three years ago.

“I sold Cuffs for ten million dollars while you were gone. Very valuable real estate.”

“Fine. What about Le Cirque?”

“Sold. Twenty million.”

“Your empire is shrinking.”

“Au contraire. Merely reinventing itself.”

“Can I help?”

“Perhaps you can. But first...tell me exactly what you need.”

“Money.”

“I could give you money.”

“I don’t want you to give it to me. I want to earn it. It’s not really mine unless I earn it.”

“And she says she has no pride.” Kingsley laughed but Elle didn’t. She glared, a cold and cruel sort of glare as merciless as any Søren had ever used on him.

“I’ll go,” Elle said, moving to stand. Kingsley put his foot on her thigh.

“Stay,” he ordered. He knew if he let her walk out of his home tonight, he would never see her again.

“Staying, sir,” she said. Every time she said “sir” it felt as if she was mocking him. She was mocking him and he liked it.

“Tell me this...what do you want to do?”

“Anything that’ll pay the bills,” she said.

“Anything, chérie? Anything at all?”

She winced at the chérie. Clearly she was in no mood to be charmed.

“Just a job, King. I’ll cocktail waitress at the club, I’ll scrub floors—I don’t care.”

He bent and took her chin in his hands. For a second she looked afraid. But then the fear was gone again.

“Non. Not a waitress, not a maid.”

“Then what?”

“You want money. You’re already worth a fortune,” he said. With her face, her body, her reputation and with the right training she was sitting on a gold mine and didn’t even know it. Men would give their right arm to kiss this woman’s feet. And even better, they’d give over their entire wallets. Everyone in their world knew of her as Søren’s submissive. Which meant everyone in their world knew of her. The curiosity factor alone would have them lining up around the block.

“What do you mean?”

“Kink is a kind of currency. You’d be surprised what it can buy you.”

“You want me to sub for money? Fine. Like you say, if you’re willing to get beat up for free, you might as well get paid for it.”

He shook his head, tsk-tsked with his finger right in her face.

“No subbing. Not if we both want to live,” he said, and Elle smiled knowingly. Søren would kill them both with his bare hands before he let his Little One submit to other men for money. He might kill them both with his bare hands anyway, so if they were going to die, might as well go out with a whip and a bang.

Kingsley had a vision then, a vision of this woman in front of him standing tall in a pair of knee-high black leather boots laced all the way to her thighs, a riding crop in her hand and a sadistic gleam in her eyes. He’d never known a sadist more vicious than Søren, but had never seen a Dominant more beautiful than Elle.