The King: The Original Sinners Book 6 (12 page)

“You don’t like it?”

“You look amazing,” she said. “And I’m not kidding. You’re sexier than Tim Curry in
Rocky Horror
, and that’s saying something. But you’re in a strip club full of men.”

“They’re only jealous I look better in a corset and heels than they do in their suits. I have fantastic shoulders, don’t I?” He tossed his hair playfully.

“To die for.”

“Let me ask you something, Sam. Do you love working here?”

“I like working here. I can’t say I love it. I’m good at it.”

“What would you rather be doing?”

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders.

“Using my brain more often. Getting into trouble more often.”

“You like trouble?”

“I love trouble.”

“Then let me make you offer.”

“What’s the offer?” Sam asked.

“Come get in trouble with me.”

14

“TROUBLE?” SAM REPEATED.

“I’m offering you a job. Work for me.”

“Work for you? Doing what?” Sam asked Kingsley as he threw a leg on to the bar and straightened his stocking.

“I need a personal assistant,” Kingsley said, tilting his head to let Holly and Raven kiss him on the cheek. They tried to steal his boa, and he slapped their hands away.

“Personal assistant? How personal?” she asked, sounding cautiously curious.

“You can live in my house for all I care, as long as we get the work done. And I do have a very nice house.”

“What’s the work?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he looked around the club. He caught Duke’s eye and waved him over.

“I’m taking Sam with me. Can you handle things without her?” he asked Duke.

“Sure. Carla’s here now. No problem,” Duke said.

“Good. Sam? This way,
s’il vous plait
.”

Sam followed Kingsley through the club and to the street. What a pair they made—he in his corset and stockings and she in a three-piece suit, black Oxfords with white spats. Some drunk teenagers across the street whistled. Kingsley waved his boa at them.

His silver Rolls Royce waited behind the club. His driver hopped out of the Rolls and opened the door for them. Gia gave Kingsley a little smile of approval and a slap on his ass as he got in the car. Women—did they ever stop thinking about sex?

“So, where are we going?” Sam asked as the car pulled into the street.

“To a hotel.”

“Why?”

“Before I answer that,” Kingsley said, “let me ask you a question.”

“Ask.”

Kingsley stretched out his leg and put his high-heeled foot on the seat next to her.

“Have you ever had sex in the back of a Rolls Royce?”

Sam furrowed her brow at him and leaned forward.

“Look at me.” She pointed at herself. “What part of ‘I’m a lesbian’ do you not understand?”

“You said you were fucking all the girls at the Möbius,
oui
?”

“
Fucking
might be too strong a word. But I’ve gotten them all off at one time or another.”

“They aren’t all lesbians.”

“Yeah, but I’m really good at what I do.”

“So am I. Care to find out?”

“No. No I wouldn’t. And you can let me off right here.”

“Let you off? Or get you off?”

“Not funny. Let me out of the fucking car,” she said, reaching for the door handle.

Kingsley tapped on the window that separated him from the driver. The window rolled down an inch. Kingsley ordered the driver to pull over. As soon as it stopped, Sam reached for the door. Kingsley put his high-heeled foot on the door to block her.

“Let me out,” Sam ordered.

“You passed,” Kingsley said.

She crossed her arms over her chest and raised her chin.

“Passed what?” she asked.

“The test.”

Sam eyed him warily. “What test?”

“I have a problem,” Kingsley said, and he sat back. Sam remained on her guard. “I need help. I’m doing something with my life. Finally. Something important. It might even be the most important thing I’ve ever done. And I can’t do it alone. But I fuck my assistants. Then when they realize I’m not in love with them, they get pissed and quit.”

“This is why I fuck straight girls. No commitment.”

“Forgive me for upsetting you. Please. I only wanted to see if you had any inclination, any interest in me. You don’t.”

“Not a bit,” she said. “But don’t take it personally. I mean, I see the appeal. You look great in drag, and you have amazing legs. And you’ve got the sexy hair and the Greek thing going—”

“The French thing.”

“French. Right. Sorry,” she said, and he noted her biting back a smile. “I mean,
pardonnez-moi
.”

“De rien,”
he said.

“All that being said...you’re darn cute. I’m just not attracted to you. I hope that makes sense, and your ego isn’t too bruised.”

“My ego enjoys the occasional bruise.” Among other parts of him. “And you don’t have to apologize for not wanting to have sex with me. I consider it a mark in your favor. Especially if you’re my assistant.”

“What exactly would I be doing for you as a personal assistant?”

“Let me show you something.”

Sam raised her eyebrow.

“It’s a building,” he said. “I promise.”

“Good. Just checking.”

When they arrived at their destination, the driver held open the door for them. Sam exited the car first and then held out her hand to Kingsley.

“Might I assist you, ma’am?” Sam asked.

“Who said chivalry was dead?” Kingsley took her hand, and she pulled him—high heels, corset and all—out of the car.

Side by side they stood on the sidewalk in the light of a lamppost, in the shadow of a ghost.

“What are we doing here?” Sam demanded. “This is the hotel Fuller’s church bought, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Why are we here?”

“Because I want it.”

“The city sold the place to them two weeks ago. It’s not on the market anymore.”

“I’ve fucked more married women than I can count,” Kingsley said. “If something’s worth owning, it’s worth stealing.”

“You are an interesting man, Kingsley Edge,” Sam said, watching him as he scanned the exterior of the hotel. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.”

“You seduce straight girls in order to make them question their sexuality. Jury is still out on you, too,” he said. “And for the record, I have had sex with lesbians before.”

“Yeah, how did that happen?”

“One was on an ‘orientation vacation’ as she called it. The other didn’t know she was until after we had sex.”

“Ouch,” Sam said.

“There were no hard feelings. Especially after she told me she was gay.”

They walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the building. It was boarded up and chained. Yellow caution tape warned passersby away. Signs and notices declared it condemned and closed.

Kingsley was undeterred.

“What did the newspaper say about this place?” Kingsley asked.

“According to the
Times
, it was called The Renaissance. Now it’s The Nothing since it’s been closed for ten years.”

“Why does a church want a hotel?”

“Reverend Fuller wants to expand his empire of conservative family values into the heart of New York City blah blah bullshit et cetera,” Sam said. “In the interview in the paper he said something about how, unlike the righteous Lot who fled from Sodom, WTL Ministries will infiltrate the city of New York and save it from within.”

“The righteous Lot fucked his own daughters,” Kingsley said. “I wonder if Reverend Fuller remembers that part.”

“You know the Bible?” Sam asked.

“I went to an all-boys Catholic school.”

“How did you survive that?”

“By sleeping with a teacher.”

“Was she hot?”

“He was, yes.”

Kingsley made a circuit of the exterior of the building. For all the dirt and decay, it had beautiful old bones. Twelve fifty-foot high lancet windows adorned the main floor. The top two floors were decorated with jutting corbels that look like the beaks of birds. The entire building, with its dark exterior and stone plumage, gave off the impression of a great stone raven, hunched over in the cold and sleeping.

“Maybe we can find out who sold the place,” Sam said. “I’m sure we could get the real estate agent to show us the inside. Maybe they can show us another building like this one but not already owned by a cult.”

“Or we can look inside it now and see if it’s worth stealing.” Kingsley strode to a boarded-up door and kicked. The door flew open.

“Damn,” Sam said.

“I know.” Kingsley frowned. He held up his shoe. “I broke a heel. Petra’s going to kill me.”

He took off both shoes and stepped barefoot into the building. Sam followed.

“What the hell am I doing?” Sam asked herself as she walked in behind Kingsley. “I’ve never met you before tonight, and here I am, breaking and entering a building owned by the creepiest church in America.”

“I told you I’d get you into trouble,” he said. “I’m keeping my promise.”

“You know we could get arrested for this,” Sam said.

“I have a DA’s wife in my pocket,” Kingsley said. He reached out and flipped a wall switch. Surprisingly the lights worked. The church must have had the power turned back on already. Overhead a dusty chandelier cast dingy hexagons of light onto the seedy carpet. “And the DA, too.”

“You must have big pockets.”

Kingsley turned and faced Sam.

“What do I need to know about you?” he asked.

Sam stuffed her hands in her pockets. “There’s not much to know about me.”

“What’s your full name?”

“Samantha Jean Fleming. I’m twenty-six. I’m a lesbian.”

“You don’t say.”

“Shut up,” she said, laughing. “You have no room to talk, Dr. Frank-N-Furter.”

Kingsley flipped another light switch.

“What else?”

“Nothing much else.”

Kingsley gazed at her.

He touched her chin, tilting it up to meet his eyes.

“Can I trust you?” he asked.

“I hope so. And if you’re against Fuller’s church, I’m on your side. I don’t know if that answers your question or not.”

“It’s a good answer. On my side is where I need you.”

“After what you did for me tonight at the club, I’m yours,” she said. “Just not in a sexual way. Every other way.”

“So, what do you think of the place?” Kingsley asked.

“It’s definitely a wreck,” Sam said as they wandered down the hall. “The newspaper said the church got a deal on it because the city was about to condemn the place. But you can tell it was beautiful once.”

“I like that it’s not beautiful anymore. I like that it’s been hurt.”

“It’s kind of big for a BDSM club. Most kink clubs I know are little shitholes.”

“Well, my club will be a big shithole.”

They entered what had been the lobby of the hotel and found moth-eaten furniture, fading Persian rugs, layers of grime on a curved bar—grime and grim everywhere they looked. Once, the decor had been blue and red and gold, but now everything had faded to a dull gray. Kingsley opened a set of double doors, and Sam peered over his shoulder.

“It looks like an old concert hall.” Sam pointed up at the ceiling. “Or a dining hall. Hard to tell.”

She and Kingsley walked through the dining room, stepping over broken chairs, breathing in dust-filled air.

“Is that an elevator?” Kingsley asked.

“Looks like it.” Sam pointed upward. “There’s some kind of landing up there. I guess the bigwigs got to eat their dinner looking down on the little wigs.”

Kingsley stood in the middle of the grand hall and turned slowly in a circle.

“Let’s see the rest,” he said. Together he and Sam wandered for an hour through the now-defunct Renaissance. A madman must have designed the building. The layout made very little sense. One hallway of guest rooms was hidden behind the dining room. There were secret doors all over the place that led to other hallways. Guests must have gotten lost all the time trying to find their way back to their rooms. No wonder it had gone out of business.

“I think M.C. Escher must have been the architect on this place,” Sam said.

“I hate to think what Fuller would do to a building this unique.”

“He’ll probably turn it into a church like his other churches—a big ugly warehouse with beige carpet.”

“This place...it’s been through many transformations.” Kingsley stood in one of the larger suites. “Many incarnations. Now it doesn’t know what it is anymore. It only knows that it’s been abandoned. I know how it feels.”

He reached out and laid his hand on an ornately carved door frame like a doctor feeling for a heartbeat. “This place is perfect,” Kingsley said. “Everything I dreamed of.”

“You have weird dreams.”

“These suites are what I need for our pros.”

“Pros? Like hookers?”

“No hookers. I’m not a pimp. I mean professionals. Professional dominants.”

“Dominatrixes?”

“One or two. The best in the city.”

“Mistress Felicia? You want this club to be special, you want her.”

“Isn’t she still in prison?” he asked. Last he’d heard the notorious Mistress Felicia was still locked away in Danbury for ignoring a subpoena to testify in a high-profile divorce case.

“She got out last month. She says she’s retiring, but she might come out of retirement for you,” Sam said with a wink.

“I’m not a submissive,” Kingsley said.

“I mean for the club. She’s the best in the city. You should woo her.”

“You know a lot about kink in this city.”

“Everyone tells the bartender everything. Plus, I’m kinky. Does this come as a shock to you?”

Kingsley looked her up and down.

“Not at all. I want people like us at the club. I want all of our kind welcome here—gay and straight, bi, as long as they’re kinky. We’ll need professional male dominants, too. A few bouncers.”

“Then you’ll need some of the leather guard,” she said. “What else?”

“Pro-submissives—male and female.”

“Those will be harder to find. There’s ads for dominatrixes in the goddamn phone book, but pro-subs? How many people do you know who want to get the shit beat out of them for a living?”

“Enough of them do it for free. They might as well get paid for it.”

“What else?” Sam asked. “If it’s an S and M club, I guess we’ll need some sadists.”

“I have one sadist already. Not on the payroll, but he’ll certainly bring the pain, out of the kindness of his heart.”

“Is he good?”

“He can slice a lit cigarette in half with the tip of a whip. But we’ll need more than one. There are more masochists in this city than you would believe.”

“With rent as high as it is, I’d say we’re all masochists.”

He stood in front of her and looked at her without smiling.

“This might get ugly,” Kingsley said. “I do ugly things in my work sometimes. If you work for me, you’ll get your hands dirty.”

“I like dirty.”

“Illegal things may or may not happen.”

“I have an amazing ability to look the other way.”