A Winter Symphony: A Christmas Novella Read online

  If the party won’t leave, you leave the party.

  He had no plans to tell anyone what he had decided—not Søren, not Juliette, not anyone—until after the holidays. He didn’t want to ruin Christmas, not after all they’d been through this year. Kingsley walked on toward the church.

  Two enormous wreaths of greenery tied with red bows hung on the great double doors of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. He went inside, where he heard voices coming from the sanctuary. Sounded like an argument. One male voice, unmistakably Søren’s. A younger woman’s voice—not Nora’s.

  Kingsley poked his head through the doors and saw Søren sitting at the bench of the church’s grand piano with a young woman—Maxine, who used to play soccer with them on Sacred Heart’s intramural church league team. She was college-aged now, with short dark hair and an athlete’s compact build. For some reason, she was thrusting her left hand out at Søren and pointing at it.

  “One hard whack,” she was saying. “That’s all I ask.”

  Catholics were getting stranger all the time.

  “What’s going on?” Kingsley asked as he came to stand by Maxine. She turned to face him, gasped at the sight of him, and threw herself into his arms.

  “King!” she yelled in delight.

  “Missed you, too,” he said, returning the embrace with affection.

  She pulled back, but left her hands on his shoulders and gently shook him. “You’re having a baby!”

  “Not exactly,” Kingsley said. “I’ve outsourced that part to Juliette.”

  “I’m so happy for you.” Maxine shook him again. She really was a very sturdy girl. Kingsley’s brain bounced around his skull like a pinball until she let him go.

  “I’m very happy for me, too,” he said. “Or will be when the concussion subsides.”

  Søren was watching this whole show with an expression of barely concealed amusement. He shook his handsome blond head, turned back to his piano, and played a few notes.

  Maxine grinned, showing all her teeth. “Could you do me a favor, King?”

  “Sexual?”

  “Not today,” she said. “Can you please tell Father S to hit me as hard as he can with a Bible?”

  “No, no, no,” Søren said, punctuating the no’s with three descending notes on his piano.

  “Why do you want him to hit you with a Bible?” Kingsley asked. “Other than the obvious.”

  “I have a tumor,” she said, wincing.

  “A what?”

  “Maxine is exaggerating,” Søren said. “She has a small ganglion cyst in her hand that requires minor medical attention, not being slapped with a Bible. Especially not by me.”

  “Look at it.” Maxine held up her left hand and pointed to a tiny bump on the back near her wrist. “Isn’t it disgusting?”

  “Grotesque.” Kingsley could barely see it.

  “Right? It’s called a Bible bump,” she said. “It’s called that because the way you’re supposed to get rid of it is by hitting it hard as you can with a Bible to make it pop. Nobody around here can whack harder than Father S—”

  “This is very true,” Kingsley said.

  “But he won’t do it. Says it’s ‘assault on a parishioner’ or some bullshit like that. Sorry, Father S.”

  “Assault or not, if you want your cyst gone, call a doctor,” Søren said. “Hitting it with a Bible is an old wives’ tale.”

  “Sexist,” Maxine said.

  “I’ll do it,” Kingsley said.

  “Good Lord.” Søren sighed and returned his attention to the piano, playing a slow, melancholy tune.

  “Father S, do you mind?” Maxine said. “We’re trying to do a medical procedure here.”

  Søren swiftly stood up, closed the fallboard on his piano, and walked out of the sanctuary.

  “Thank God,” Maxine said, shaking her head. “Now, will you really whack me with a Bible?”

  “It would be an honor and a pleasure.”

  Kingsley never turned down an opportunity to take a whip, paddle, or a New Revised Standard Version Bible (red leather, how apropos) to an attractive young woman.

  He had Maxine duck behind a pew and grip the rounded top, giving him a clean target. With her head down, she recited the Latin Pater noster in hushed tones. Kingsley narrowed his eyes, readied the heavy leather Bible, and just as he had hefted the holy book over his head, he felt it plucked from his hand.

  “What?” Kingsley turned. Søren stood there, the Bible tucked under his arm.

  “Here,” he said and held out a small scrap of paper. “Maxine, you have an appointment this week with Dr. Liz Rayden, an orthopedist. She’s booked until March, but she said she’d see you this week.”

  Maxine looked up at him and rolled her eyes. She stood up, took the paper, and tucked it in her pocket.

  “Fine. Fine. See if I ever ask you for help again,” she said. She threw her arms around Kingsley for another hug and said into his ear, “You’re going to make a great dad, you know.”

  It was the sort of bland nicety people said to expectant parents, but Maxine had said it with such sweet and easy faith in him, he felt a lump in his throat. “Merci.”

  “And when your kid’s big enough, they can join the Sacred Heart Attacks!”

  “I still despise that team name,” Søren said.

  “You were outvoted,” Maxine said. “Get over it.” She released Kingsley from her hug and pointed at Søren. “Merry Christmas, and thanks for nothing. Me and my tumor are out of here.”

  She started for the door, and Søren began to say, “It’s not—”

  “Don’t,” Kingsley said. “Just don’t.”

  “I can’t believe you were actually going to hit Maxine’s cyst with a Bible. What if you’d broken her hand?”

  “There were two positive outcomes either way,” Kingsley said. “Either it would work, and goodbye cyst. Or…she’d learn once and for all to listen to you.”

  “Fair play,” Søren said.

  A few minutes later, Søren locked up the church, and they started off down the path that led them through the small snow-shrouded woods and to the rectory.

  In the last rays of daylight, the trees shimmered like diamonds.

  “Stop,” Kingsley said. “I need a picture of this. For Juliette.” He took out his phone and snapped a few pictures of the scene—the light on the white trees, the little rectory hidden behind snowy branches.

  Søren was staring at him as he took his pictures, studying him.

  “What?” Kingsley said in French. “It’s pretty.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s pretty every year. First time you’ve ever bothered to notice.”

  Kingsley heard a question in that statement, but he refused to answer it. “Everything’s different this year.”

  “That it is.” Søren seemed to accept that as a good enough answer. They carried on, ducking under a canopy of tree branches and deeper into the little dark forest, made silver with snow. The moment they were out of the sunlight, the temperature dropped, but Kingsley didn’t hurry toward the house, though it looked as cozy and inviting as a cottage out of a children’s storybook. He inhaled the icy air, so clean and pure and cold, listened to the sound of the crisp snow breaking and crunching under his boots, a sound like no other. He even slipped his bare hand out of the pocket of his wool coat to gather snow off a low-hanging limb and feel it turn to water in his palm. If Søren hadn’t commented about Kingsley’s sudden interest in photography, he would have tried taking a few more pictures—the dark trees, the snowy path, the cottage with the gray stone chimney patiently waiting for a fire.

  And Søren… He wanted a hundred, a thousand, a million pictures of Søren. Especially the picture of him he was tattooing onto his memory, Søren just as he was right then and there—tall and blond (with a touch of silver, just like the trees), and starkly handsome in his black coat with his Roman collar peeking out of the open top button.

  He wanted to record everything, every sight and sound, eve
ry taste and smell. Not for Juliette, as he’d said. For himself. A king and a priest walking through a snowy wood… It sounded like the beginning of a story. The beginning, not the end.

  They entered the rectory through the kitchen door, and Søren shucked off his coat with one casual move, slipped his finger under his dog collar and popped it out of his shirt. Kingsley hung his own coat on the hook.

  “Where did you want to go to dinner or—” he started to say but then was cut off by Søren pushing his back against the door and kissing him.

  The kiss was hot as summer but tasted like winter—that pure electric taste of ice-cold air that made the blood wake and the skin shiver. The kiss was possessive, and Kingsley let it possess him. He surrendered his weight against the door and lifted his chin to give Søren more of his mouth. There they were, those hands on his neck, holding him in place. Those hands he’d spent years wanting, dreaming of, remembering like a man in prison remembers the best meal he ever had in his life…

  Kingsley returned the kiss—with his mouth, with his tongue, with his hands seeking Søren’s skin at his throat, his beautiful bare throat. Kingsley found that perfect hollow with his fingertips.

  The kiss broke, leaving them standing at the door close together, breathing each other’s breaths.

  “No dinner,” Søren said. “You. Upstairs.”

  “Here?”

  Søren smiled. “Why not?”

  “We’ve never…here.”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “With Nora. Not alone.”

  “Really? Never?”

  “Never,” Kingsley said.

  “I thought for sure…”

  “You must have imagined it.”

  “I did imagine it,” Søren said. “More times than I’ll admit to.”

  “Admit to it,” Kingsley said. “Please.”

  Søren laughed softly, though Kingsley wasn’t joking. They had gone to bed together at the rectory many, many times over the years, always with Nora there between them. Never alone, never just the two of them, not here. There were two things Kingsley wanted in his life, wanted so badly he would have sold everything he owned down to his very soul: to have Søren, and to have children with Juliette.

  And now, as if by magic, the universe had handed him both at the same time. But it was a trick, he realized. He was given both. He could keep only one.

  “How many times?” Kingsley asked again. “I want to know. I spent too many years thinking you didn’t want me at all. No more secrets, no more lies. I’m asking—how many times did you want to call me and ask me over, but you told yourself no?”

  “I didn’t count,” Søren said, still smiling as if Kingsley were joking. But then, as if he finally saw how serious Kingsley was, he said, “Not even I can count that high. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now are we going to stand here in the kitchen while you ask me questions all night, or are you going to come upstairs with me so I can beat and fuck you?”

  And while Kingsley did want answers…

  Reader, he went upstairs with him.

  Chapter Four

  Tonight would be the first time they played alone together in Søren’s bedroom. And eventually, one night would be their last time. So when Kingsley followed Søren up the stairs of the rectory to his bedroom, he counted the steps—eleven. And he memorized the particular shade of sunlit gold that gilded the dark hardwood floors. And the smell… The rectory was tended by the world’s most Italian Catholic grandmother, and it always smelled clean, like pine and fresh linens. And winter, of course. It always smelled like winter, even in summer, because the man who made this little cottage his home smelled like winter. His skin like snow. His hair like ice. And, once upon a time, Kingsley would have said his heart was frosted over like a windowpane on a January morning, but what man with a heart of ice could say something like, “Not even I can count that high,” when asked how many times he’d imagined them making love in his bedroom?

  Once inside that bedroom, Søren went to the window and drew the white curtains open. There was nothing like the last light on a winter’s day, the way it filled a room with a strange and sacred silence.

  Kingsley felt almost light-headed. He leaned against the bedpost to steady himself.

  “I still can’t get used to it,” Kingsley said breathlessly when Søren turned to face him.

  “What can’t you get used to?”

  “That we’re doing this again,” Kingsley said. “You want something for your whole life, and you get so used to wanting it, you don’t know how to get used to having it.”

  Kingsley stood at the bedpost nearest the door, as if he couldn’t bring himself to accept he was here, really here, an invited guest, a wanted guest.

  Søren came to him. “I sent you away too many times. I shut you out too long. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me, if you walked out the door right now to punish me.”

  “Would it punish you?”

  “I can’t think of anything I want less right now than for you to leave.”

  Kingsley met his eyes, his steel-gray eyes and saw the truth shining in them, turning them silver. Søren was afraid that Kingsley might walk out—that this was too little, too late.

  Kingsley went to the door, and paused at the threshold—he was a sadist himself, after all—before shutting the bedroom door.

  The clicking of the brass bolt into place was one of the more erotic sounds he’d ever heard.

  “I knew you weren’t going to leave,” Søren said, grinning slightly. “Come here.”

  Søren pointed to the old oval country rug at the foot of the bed. Kingsley committed the rug’s colors and placement to memory, as he did with the entire room—the four-poster bed, the tops of the posts so tall they nearly brushed the ceiling. The quilt, downy white. The leather armchair and small side table, where a brass reading lamp sat.

  Kingsley took his place on the rug. No one, unless they had submitted to someone they loved and respected, could ever understand the beautiful freedom of taking orders given by someone you trusted with your heart and your body. Nora had the best explanation for it. He remembered a lazy night at The 8th Circle, sitting around a table with Griffin and a few others, when one of the club’s dominatrixes demanded Nora explain why she still sometimes submitted to Søren, why she’d take the servant’s role to a man when she was born to be a master.

  And Nora had said, “Imagine you know a guy—an investment banker, maybe—and you know that even if you handed over every penny of your fortune and watched him walk away with it…that when he came back a day later, or a week later, it would be with double your money, triple even. Imagine giving up all you have to someone, knowing you’re going to get it back and then some. If you knew that guy, you’d love him, wouldn’t you? Even if you didn’t love him, you’d love him. You’d kiss his fucking hands, wouldn’t you? You’d kiss his fucking feet.”

  The dominatrix who’d challenged Nora conceded defeat and kissed Nora’s boot in penance. She was right. No denying. And if Kingsley hadn’t been ordered to stand there on the rug by the bed, he might have dropped to his knees and kissed Søren’s fucking hands, his fucking feet.

  Søren lifted his hand and cupped the back of Kingsley’s neck. “What do you want from me tonight? I’m in a giving mood.”

  Kingsley knew there was no right or wrong answer to that question. It wasn’t a sincere query, just a way to make Kingsley squirm a little, embarrass him by making him talk about his fantasies. It took a lot to embarrass Kingsley, but Søren’s steady gaze on him—his waiting, watching, judging regard—always turned him back into a nervous teenager, terrified of saying the wrong thing.

  “The usual, I guess. Sex and kink, and it’s all very hot and intense, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Et cetera, et cetera?”

  “I’ll leave the ‘et cetera’ to you.”

  “Sex and kink, et cetera.” Søren’s tone was stern but amused. Professor
ial, like a teacher trying to find a kernel of sense somewhere in a very stupid pupil’s reply. “Could you possibly be more specific?”

  He could, actually. Kingsley remembered who he was then—not a skinny, scared teenager anymore but a grown man, a man other men were rightly afraid of.

  And he knew exactly what he wanted.

  Søren’s bed was beautiful, two hundred or more years old. Oak with hand-carved spindles. No surprise that after two hundred years, the wood was scuffed and scratched. It wasn’t time that had left its mark on the bed, but rather Søren and Nora. Kingsley had watched with his own eyes, lying on those pillows, as Søren had flogged her while she was cuffed to the bedpost. Flogged her then fucked her. All those scratches, those gouges, those grooves, they were all souvenirs of her nights here.

  “You have gouges and scratches all over your bed,” he said. “Did you ever notice that?”

  “I’ve noticed,” Søren said, touching a deep dent in the footboard. “If I ever leave, I’ll have to have the bed refinished.”

  “All these are hers,” Kingsley said. “You tie her up here and flog her and whip her and beat her. None of them are mine. I’ve never left so much as a scratch.”

  “Would you like to leave a scratch or two on my bed?”

  “I’d like you to fuck me so hard the bedposts break off, but I’ll settle for one or two of these of my own.” He stroked the marks left by handcuffs, by snap hooks, by desperate fingernails.

  Kingsley wanted to leave his mark there, too. Something permanent. Something left behind that declared to the world, Kingsley Was Here.

  “Let’s leave some marks then.” Søren brushed his lips lightly over Kingsley’s and whispered two words that left Kingsley breathless.

  “Deep ones.”

  Chapter Five