The Saint: The Original Sinners Book 5 (27 page)

Wyatt leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head.

“What can I say, beautiful? The curtains match the rug.”

That night Eleanor and Wyatt had a quick dinner of cheap and unhealthy Chinese food in Chinatown and then went for a walk through SoHo. Eleanor had a feeling Wyatt suggested the walk because a new February snow had begun to fall and the city looked unbearably romantic. She hated—and there was no better word for it than
hated—
how much fun she and Wyatt were having. She laughed so hard her stomach ached. Wyatt adored everything about her. She’d worn knee-high boots over her jeans and he told her she looked ferocious in them. He loved the way she wore her hair in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. He said she looked like a sexy Virginia Woolf minus the suicidal ideations. Conversation proved difficult only when Wyatt asked her about her past and her stealth-bomber boyfriend. She’d rather not talk about her dead father and her brush with the law. And she couldn’t talk about the priest she’d been in love with since age fifteen.

“Nothing? I get nothing about Stealth Bomber? Not even a name?”

“I don’t want you stalking and killing him.”

“That’s fair. I can see me doing that. How old is he? If he’s getting his Ph.D. he has to be at least, what? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”

“He’s thirtysomething.”

“I knew I hated that TV show for a reason. Call the hotline right now.” Wyatt collapsed dramatically against a light pole and stared up at the lamp. “I’m going to hang myself from this thing.”

“You’re so full of shit.” She grabbed him by the front of his coat, put his arm in her arm and force marched him down the street. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Can we talk about your lips?”

“They’re lips.”

“I bet they taste like strawberries and poetry.”

“What does poetry taste like?”

“I don’t know. But I’d love to find out.”

Wyatt stopped walking and stood in the light under a streetlamp. The snow whirled like a dervish around him.

“I walked right into that line,” she said. “I’m smarter than that. I don’t fall for lines.”

“You want to fall for it. Fall for it, Elle.”

She stood outside the circle of light. Wyatt pulled his hand out of his pocket and crooked a finger at her.

Søren was across the ocean and Wyatt stood there right in front of her surrounded by light and snow. And he had a smile on his face and tattoos on his hands of German fairy tales. He loved writing so much he’d inked words into his very skin. That alone deserved a kiss. But only one.

She stepped into the light.

The kiss started soft and careful, as if he feared shattering the moment by touching too much of it at once. She gripped the front of his distressed leather jacket and pulled him closer. The kiss deepened and Wyatt slipped his tongue between her lips and wound his fingers through her hair. The kiss went on a long time, longer than she should have let it go on. It went on long enough she almost forgot who she belonged to, almost forgot about the white collar with the lock in the back and the man who gave it to her. Wyatt kissed nothing like Søren did. Wyatt explored with his kisses. Søren conquered with his.

The snow fell all around them and yet she didn’t smell winter.

She broke away and took a step back.

Wyatt took a deep breath and the air turned white around him.

“Damn,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“You don’t taste like poetry. Poetry tastes like you.”

And at that Eleanor knew he had her.

So it began. Since she’d told Wyatt sex was off the table, he didn’t even ask. He didn’t do anything but kiss her every chance he had their first five days together. She made sure to give him a lot of chances. He met her after class and they did homework together. They ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together. They went to a party together. They hung out in his dorm room with a couple of his friends and watched TV together. They fought over the popcorn so vociferously Wyatt’s two friends got up and left, saying they couldn’t watch TV with so much sexual tension in the room as it interfered with the reception. With the room to themselves they made out for two hours on Wyatt’s bed. He lay on top of her and she slipped her hands under the back of his T-shirt. She loved the way his skin felt, so soft and smooth. He didn’t have Søren’s lean muscle mass or his height. She and Wyatt were far more evenly matched than she and Søren. He felt like an equal, a friend. But then he started to lift her shirt and all feelings of friendliness jumped out the fourth-floor window to their deaths.

“Wyatt...”

“Please?”

One
please
and she gave up the fight.

“Okay.”

Wyatt pulled off her shirt. He unhooked her bra and slowly slid it off her arms.

He stared at her naked breasts, and she lay there letting him look at her. She waited for him to say something, expected him to say something. Instead he put his mouth to better use. He brought his lips down onto her right nipple and gently sucked. As he kissed her nipples, licked and teased them, she watched him and grew more and more aroused. She dug her fingers into his hair as she felt this overwhelming feeling of tenderness for him. He seemed so young to her, so innocent. She wanted to hold him to her breasts, keep him safe, protect him. He should be naked and underneath her while she teased his body the way he teased hers. With him on top of her, she couldn’t help but push her hips into his. He pushed back and soon Eleanor felt her climax building. She shuddered in his arms as a wave of pleasure crashed over her and through her.

“Did that happen?” Wyatt asked, holding himself up over her.

“Did what happen?” She decided to play innocent.

“Did you come?”

“I take the Fifth.”

“Elle...” Wyatt gave her a serious, almost pleading look.

“Yes, I did.” She laid her hand on the side of his face.

“That was the sexiest thing that has ever happened to me.” Wyatt pressed his forehead to hers.

She grinned and kissed him quick. “It happened to me more than you.”

“It happened to us. With us. I like saying
us.
Can I say it some more?”

“Wyatt, he’s back in three days.” She dreaded the conversation she and Søren would have about Wyatt, but not telling him seemed unthinkable.

“I don’t care about him. I care about us. We weren’t even having sex and you came underneath me. It was so fucking sexy, and I’m about to come from talking about it.”

“You can come if you want.”

“Do you want me to?”

“You’re asking my permission?”

“You’re the woman. You make the sex rules.”

She grinned up at him. She made the sex rules? She kind of liked the sound of that.

“You can. I want you to.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He brought his mouth down to hers again and kissed her with a roughness that shocked her. She wrapped a leg around his back and pushed her breasts into his chest. He moaned in the back of his throat as he ground his pelvis into hers. She turned her head to give him access to her neck. The sight of his tattooed hand and forearms against the sheets made her question her “sex off the table” rule. Right now she wanted him—on the table or off.

Wyatt’s breathing grew ragged as he moved against her. God, she wanted to push him onto his back right now and hold him down. She’d love to pin those tattooed forearms to the bed. She’d work her hips against him, bring him close to coming and then stop...bring him close to coming again and then stop again.... She’d torture him like that until he begged her to let him come. And maybe if he begged enough, she’d let him.

Instead she held him as his body trembled from his own orgasm before going still. He lay on top of her, barely moving, only lightly kissing her neck as he caught his breath.

“I am going to fall in love with you,” Wyatt whispered. “Right...now.”

He closed his eyes and she said nothing. What was there to say?

She shimmied out of her jeans. With him in nothing but his boxers and her in nothing but her panties and his Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt, they spooned in his bed and slept together. She’d known Søren for almost four years, and she’d never slept in his arms. She’d been with Wyatt five days and she’d fallen asleep in his arms and woken up still wrapped up in them. She’d felt so cherished and so wanted and so...normal—for once—that it killed her to leave his arms and his bed. Since she was fifteen she’d felt Søren’s love for her like a blessing. That morning in Wyatt’s bed was the first time loving a priest felt like a burden.

That Friday evening she went to Kingsley’s like always. She and Søren would stake out the music room and Søren would talk to her about various aspects of S&M she needed to understand. He also made her write for him. He wanted to know what she most desired when she imagined them as lovers. Those were her favorite homework assignments he’d given her—writing out sexually explicit fantasies of erotic bondage and torture. She loved their Friday-night training sessions, counting down the minutes until she could be with him again. But Søren had been in Rome for three weeks now. She came to Kingsley’s tonight simply to be alone with her thoughts, her fears, her terrifying feelings for Wyatt.

Wyatt had asked her to go out with him that night, but she’d lied and said she had to work. Some sort of dinner party was happening in Kingsley’s dining room. Eleanor avoided it, hiding out in the music room. She sat near the piano, hoping to feel closer to Søren. It didn’t work. From her backpack. she pulled Søren’s most recent letter to her.

My Little One,
I wish you could be here with me. I strolled through the Galleria Borghese today and tried to imagine all the inappropriate remarks you would make about the statues in their various states of undress. It’s a special kind of torture to be without you among great beauty. I’ve seen the statues before and marveled at them. What I missed today was seeing you seeing them. This city is old and tired, but it would become young again in your eyes. I don’t know if we could ever come to Rome together, although I dream of such a day. I have friends here. I seem to bump into them wherever I go. The city is crawling with priests. After a feast day, sometimes literally.

I hope your classes are going well. I’m sorry I had to be gone so long. I think of you every day, every night. I hope you aren’t too lonely and that Kingsley is behaving himself in my absence.

I passed some graffiti today I knew you’d find amusing—
cloro al clero.
You see it painted near Vatican City. It means “poison the clergy” but please don’t let it give you any ideas.

My trip here has been successful. I left you as Rev. Marcus Stearns, SJ. I’ll return to you Rev. Dr. Marcus Stearns, SJ. You are under orders never to call me Reverend, Doctor or Marcus. You may call me Father Stearns at church, Sir in your collar and Søren when I’m inside you.

I’m spending the evening with several Jesuits I went to seminary with. I should go now. Soon I’ll be home to you. Home, in case you were wondering, is not Denmark nor New York nor Wakefield nor any city, state or country. I’m home when I’m with you.

Jeg elsker dig.
(Yes, I know how much it turns you on when I speak Danish.)

The letter was signed with an ornate
S
with a slash through it, Søren’s private signature. As she looked up from the letter she saw Kingsley watching from the doorway to the music room.

“What’s his name, Elle?” Kingsley asked from the doorway.

“Who?”

Kingsley walked over to her and pulled the collar of her shirt down. She knew he touched the slight red mark Wyatt had left on her chest from last night’s kisses.

“Tell me everything right now.”

“Kingsley, I’m in trouble.”

“Pregnant?”

“Worse.”

“What’s worse than pregnant?”

She brushed tears off her face with the back of her hand and took a deep breath.

“I think I’m in love.”

28

Eleanor

KINGSLEY TOOK THE
news better than she expected. He listened and asked no questions, not even when she finished her tale.

“He’s in love with me, King. I never expected anyone other than Søren would ever fall in love with me. He must be a masochist,” Eleanor said with a grim and mirthless laugh. “I guess anyone in love with me would have to be a masochist.”

Kingsley laughed behind his tumbler of Scotch.

“You said it, not me. But I doubt he is one. Or even a submissive.”

“Then why does he want to do everything I tell him to do?”

“Because he is a vanilla teenage boy desperate to please, desperate to keep you. A male submissive submits out of desire, not desperation. And a man in love with a woman in love with another man is the secondmost desperate creature on earth.”

“What’s the first?”

“A man in love with a man in love with another woman.”

Eleanor laughed. Kingsley didn’t.

“I didn’t know I could feel this way. It’s not like I love Søren any less. I feel like I have this second heart I didn’t know was there until I met Wyatt. I didn’t know you could do that, could care about two people that much at the same time.”

“Welcome to polyamory.” Kingsley sat his drink down.

“Polyamory?”

“
Poly
means multi.
Amory
means love. It’s common in our world, having more than one lover. I don’t mean lover in the sexual sense alone. I mean loving two people.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

“Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said there were two great tragedies in life—getting what you want and not getting what you want? Polyamory is the tragedy of getting everything you want all at the same time. Still, anything’s better than monogamy,
oui?
”

“I feel...horrible.” She buried her face in her hands before looking up to stare at the piano. “But I can’t stop. Every day I tell myself, ‘Okay, I’ll break it off with Wyatt today.’ And every day, I don’t. We fooled around last night. We slept together, even. I’ve never done that with any guy before—slept in the same bed. No sex, but I wanted to. I wanted to tie Wyatt down and make him beg for it....” She exhaled through her nose. “Shit, did I say that out loud?”

Kingsley only grinned.

“You did.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. No one in this room can judge you. I’ve fucked 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.”

“Søren 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 Washington 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. Sex 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 prêtre
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 Søren. 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 unbuttoned his white shirt. 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 button his shirt, 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 Hell 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 shirt, yank his pants open. He’d look beautiful on his back underneath her, her hands on his wrists, his cock buried inside her as she rode him into the couch.

Wait. What the fuck 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 buttoning his shirt.

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 fucked, King.”

“Not yet. But the night is still young.”

“What should I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Fuck 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 Søren.”

“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 glass in her hand. “He’s an NYU student. We can go places together, be seen together. We’re both writers. We make sense. Søren and I? We don’t make sense. At least to no one but us.”

Kingsley traced the wet rim of his glass 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 shit. Everyone but the priests.”

Eleanor burst into laughter.

“I can totally picture that. Why was he such a prick back then?”

“We’re all shits when we’re teenagers. God 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 God, 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 glass.

“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?”

“I will say only this—when
le prêtre
is in the right mood, he can make even the devil afraid to turn his back.”

Kingsley downed the last of his drink. Eleanor buried her face in her hands again.

“I hate my life tonight,” Eleanor said as his words slipped in through the hairline fractures in her heart and widened them.

“Elle, I once stood at the same crossroads you stand at now. I have never regretted walking the darker path. The view is better down here. And I am many things, but I am never bored.”

“I don’t want Søren to ever leave the priesthood, but if we get caught, if he gets in trouble... I wish I could I see the future.”

“What’s his last name, this young man of yours?”

“Why? You gonna make a file on him?” She knew all about Kingsley’s files he kept on anyone who interested him.

“Peut-être,”
he admitted without shame. Maybe.

“It’s Sutherlin. Wyatt James Sutherlin. Want his birth date and blood type, too?”

Kingsley chuckled. “I can find that out myself. Wyatt Sutherlin...Eleanor Sutherlin... It has a nice ring to it, no?”

She sighed heavily. Absurd to think of someone like her getting married, having kids, doing the wife-and-mother thing. She sat in the music room of the most notorious house in the city talking to the most notorious kinkster in the city about the priest she loved.

“My high school best friend, well, my only friend, Jordan, is getting married next summer. She’s a sophomore at Anna Maria and she’s already engaged. She can’t wait to have babies. She called me last week. I couldn’t even talk to her. How do I talk to someone like that? I thought...” She stopped and laughed sheepishly. “I thought about asking you to pay her a visit. Seduce her, I mean. She saw you once and it was the only time she ever made a sex joke. She’s going down the marriage-and-kids path at eighteen, and I want to stop her.”

“I could stop her,” he said without any arrogance in his tone. He simply stated a fact. “Would you like me to?”

She shook her head.

“Husband, kids—that’s what Jordan wants.”

“And you?”

“I want more than that.”

“Then you have your answer, Eleanor Sutherlin.”

“You call me that again and I’ll slap you into the next century.”

“Now,
ma belle Elle,
you are speaking my language.”

Eleanor kissed Kingsley good-night on both cheeks and threw on her coat.

The temperature had dropped, so she decided to spring for a cab. While scanning the street in search of a yellow, she heard someone calling her name.

“Wyatt?” She turned around and faced Wyatt with shock. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He clutched a bouquet of flowers in his hand, half-dead from the cold.

“You said you had to work tonight,” he said without a smile on his face. She couldn’t remember seeing him without a smile on his face. “I wanted to surprise you at work with flowers. I didn’t know which bookstore you worked at so I followed you. I know that’s creepy, but I thought you’d forgive me since all I wanted to do was bring you flowers.”

“You’ve been waiting out here for two hours?”

“The things we do for love, right?” He raised his hands and laughed at himself. “I kind of liked the mystery-girl vibe you have. You don’t talk about your past, your parents. I don’t even know the name of this guy you’re supposedly in love with. It’s kind of hot, this whole secrecy thing you’ve got going. But secrets are one thing. You lied to me.”

“I did lie,” she admitted. “I’m not at work, obviously. I was visiting a friend.”

“A fucking rich friend from the looks of it.”

“He’s also
his
friend. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Well, they’re hurt. No big deal. They’ll get unhurt. Eventually. Same way as I’ll get unfrozen.”

“Eventually?”

“Right. Can we maybe go somewhere and talk—”

“Wyatt, I can’t see you anymore.” Eleanor let the words rip fast and hard, like tearing off a bandage.

“Am I suddenly invisible?”

She rubbed her forehead.

“You have to stop being so cute and funny, okay?” she said. “He comes back in three days. I can’t do this anymore, play this game with you.”

“It’s not a game. I’m in love with you.”

“And I’m in love with him.”

“You can’t be. He’s in his thirties. You’re nineteen. I mean, what could you have in common with someone that old? What could you two even talk about?”

“He’s brilliant and funny and fascinating, and I’ll never reach the end of the mystery of him.”

“Guys that age love younger girls. You’re easy prey for them. They can impress you by just being older.”

“I am not easy prey, okay? I’m not some sheep being eaten by a big bad wolf. He speaks eighteen languages. He’s six foot four. He’s stunningly beautiful and yes, I’m using the word
beautiful.
He rides a motorcycle and he lives this life like you can’t believe and he brought me into it. These parties I’ve seen, you can’t imagine it. And the people? Rich and powerful people like you wouldn’t believe. And, Wyatt, none of that matters. What matters is that he loves me and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me. He loves me so much that if I wanted to be with you more than him, he’d let me be with you. He loves me and he knows me, and I am a more interesting person when I’m with him than when I am without him. Without him I’m just an NYU English major with a part-time job and too much homework.”