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.