The Saint: The Original Sinners Book 5 (12 page)

Eleanor’s knees trembled at Søren’s words. She couldn’t help but picture herself in a silken gown being escorted to the bedroom of the king, a king who bore a strong resemblance to the priest in front of her.

“Eleanor?” Søren prompted.

“What?”

“You whimpered.”

“Did I?” She had. She knew she had. “Sorry about that.”

He leaned back in his chair again and looked at her without a smile on his face but with a dark and amused gleam in his eyes. Right there—she saw it. That look. Those eyes. He knew he’d turned her on with his words and was congratulating himself for it. The expression on his face was arrogant, patronizing and imperious. She wanted him so much it hurt.

“Who’s disconcerted now?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him. Without a doubt, he was the only man who’d ever lived who could make the word
disconcerted
sound sexy.

“Whatever this game is we’re playing,” she finally said, “I’m going to win it.”

If she expected him to be thrown off or confused by that statement, she was sorely disappointed.

“If you trust me and obey me,” he said, “we might both win.”

Trust him. Obey him... She could do that. And out of nowhere came the answer. Eleanor knew exactly what Esther had taken with her.

“I know what Esther took with her to the king,” she said, looking up at him with a smile.

“You do?”

“When I know I’m going to ace a test, I go to class with nothing but my pencil,” Eleanor said. “If Esther knew she was going to ace her audition, she wouldn’t have taken anything with her at all.”

“You might be right.”

“Might? I’m sure of it. But I wish the Bible writers hadn’t skipped all the good details.”

“I told you it had sex in it if you used your imagination.”

“Oh, I’m using it. I’m using it hard.”

“Go use it to do your homework.”

“First day of school. I don’t have any homework.”

“Did you do your other homework I gave you?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re totally full of shit. Psalm 116. And I quote, ‘The Lord is the keeper of the little ones, I was little and he delivered me.’ God loves little people, He keeps them and He delivers them. I’m short so God is going to keep me and deliver me because I am a little one. Considering He sent you to keep me out of prison, I think I have all the proof I need.”

“Very good, Little One.” He smiled broadly and for a moment she was nearly blinded by it.

“Don’t call me
Little One.
”

“Do you hate it?”

“Totally.”

“Good. Now go find something to do, Little One. I’m working on my dissertation and you are detrimental to my powers of concentration.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You could use your impressive powers of imagination and your newfound prowess as a Bible scholar to formulate a theory on what Esther did to earn the king’s favor.”

“So I’m supposed to figure out what made her better in bed than anyone else?”

“Precisely.”

“My kind of homework.”

Eleanor left Søren in his office with his eight billion books and his dissertation. She hid out in the food bank pantry and rearranged the cans of green beans on the floor into columns like she’d seen in pictures of exotic palaces.

As she stared at her green bean palace in front of her, Eleanor picked up a pen. On the top of a clean sheet of notebook paper she wrote:

One Night with the King.

For the fun of it she wrote underneath,
By Eleanor Schreiber.

And then she wrote for four straight hours.

13

Eleanor

One Night with the King

By Eleanor Schreiber

Tonight was my night.

For a year now I’d been going through the
training—how to curtsy, how to simper, how to dance, how to whimper. They
dressed me and pressed me and made me beautiful. For twelve months I had to
listen to the girls talking all around me, deciding what gift they’d give
the king, what they’d do to impress him.

“I have composed him a hymn,” one girl
said.

“I have written him a poem,” another
announced.

“I have knitted him a cardigan,” said
another girl.

Everyone had looked at that girl like she
was an idiot. She was an idiot. It was ancient Persia. Kings didn’t wear
cardigans. Cardigans hadn’t even been invented yet.

I spent most of the day in the bathroom
getting ready. By evening I smelled like orchids, looked like a princess and
had no unwanted body hair.

Then Hegai came for me.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Are you taking anything with you for the
king?”

“I have a hymn.”

“You’re going to sing?”

“No. Sorry. I have a hymen. I get them
mixed up.”

Hegai left me at the door to the king’s
chamber.

I opened the door.

At first I didn’t see anybody. All I saw
was chamber stuff—big sexy-looking couches, tall sexy plants with big sexy
flowers blooming on them, a long sexy gold mirror for checking out how sexy
you look in it. And it had the biggest, sexiest bed I’d ever seen in my
life. Red silk sheets, red-and-gold pillows and those fancy bed curtains
only people in the past had before central heating existed. It’s good to
live in the past. It’s sexier here.

The big door to the balcony was open so I
stuck my head out the door and saw a man standing by the ledge staring out
on the kingdom.

Before I saw the man I thought the palace
was beautiful, I thought the kingdom was beautiful, I thought jewels were
beautiful. But they were nothing compared to the king.

He had blond hair and was so tall I knew
he was probably doing it for attention. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt. I
thought jeans hadn’t been invented yet but then I realized they had been
invented because they looked so good on him.

And if anyone had put a gun to my head and
told me I had to say who the most handsome man in the kingdom was, I would
first remind that person guns hadn’t been invented yet.

And then I’d point at the king.

“Him.”

“Him, who?” asked the king as he turned
around to look at me.

“Oh. Sorry. Did I say that out loud? I was
having this bizarre fantasy about a guy holding a gun to my
head.”

“Guns haven’t been invented
yet.”

“That’s exactly what I told him.” I took a
step forward and held out my hand. The king shook it. “I’m Esther. I’ll be
your entertainment this evening.”

“Oh, God, did you bring a
poem?”

“I don’t write that shit.”

“Hymn?”

“No.”

“Please tell me you didn’t knit me
anything. I don’t need sweaters. This is Persia. It doesn’t even get cold
here. Except in the winter.”

“I don’t knit.”

“Do you know any good jokes?”

“A hymen walks into a bar. Well, that took
care of that.”

The king didn’t laugh. But I think he
wanted to.

“What else do you do?”

I stepped up to the king and rose high on
my tiptoes.

“Whatever you tell me to.”

And then we kissed.

And what a kiss it was. It took my breath
away, that kiss did. I forgot my name and my age and my phone number. I even
forgot that phones hadn’t been invented yet. He kissed me with his mouth on
my mouth but it felt like his soul kissed my soul and all I wanted was to
never ever stop kissing this king who tasted like melting snow on my lips
and smelled of winter in a magic world where no one aged, no one died and
once people fell in love they never fell out of it again.

“You didn’t bring anything with you?” the
king said, pausing from their perfect kiss.

“I only brought me.”

“Good. That’s all I want right
now.”

“What do I call you? Your
Majesty?”

“Call me Xerxes. That’s my
name.”

“No one calls you by your first
name.”

“You do.”

“Why me?”

“Because,” he whispered against my lips,
“when I’m inside you, I want you to say it and know you’re talking to me and
not some other king somewhere. Got that?”

“Yes, Your Maj...Xerxes.”

He picked me up in his arms.

The king carried me into the bedroom and
laid me on the bed. It felt like floating in sea of red silk. Xerxes sat
next to me on the bed and kissed me again.

“You’re really good at that,” I said. He
kissed my mouth and my neck for a long time.

“I practice a lot.”

“On all of us?”

“Anything to keep from hearing more bad
poetry.” He smiled at me and kissed me again. His tongue in my mouth would
definitely keep me from reciting poetry.

“Do you like being with all these girls?”
I asked as he kissed my chest. I felt weird about wearing such a low-cut
dress but now I decided it had been a good idea. His lips tickled my skin
and his light touches gave me goose bumps. I imagined him kissing other
parts of my body. Then he pulled my dress down to bare my shoulder and
kissed me from my neck to my upper arm. Those parts, for example.

“I don’t dislike it,” he said. “It gets a
little boring with the same thing night after night. Different girl. Same
thing. No offense.”

“It’s okay. I’d probably get bored, too.
You know, Xerxes,” I said, trying his name on for size. It fit my tongue
well. “If you want, we can do something different than you usually do with
the other girls.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. You’re the king, so you can
decide.”

“You aren’t afraid?”

“I was before, but I’m not
now.”

“Are you sure you want to do something
different than I do with the other girls?”

“I’ve met the other girls.
Yes.”

My dress tied at the front with a single
ribbon. I started to get nervous again when he untied the bow and my gown
loosened. But I knew this would happen and I wasn’t afraid. I refused to be
afraid.

He slid the dress off me. I lay naked on
the bed now. He looked at me like I was some kind of prize he’d won. I never
wanted him to stop looking at me like that.

He didn’t touch me, which made me more
nervous. Instead he left me laying/lying on the bed while he walked over to
a big brass box. The box had a lock on it and the king took out a key. He
opened the lid, took something out of it, locked it back up and came back to
the bed.

While he was at the box I pulled the
covers on the bed down and slid underneath them.

“Are you cold?” the king asked. He held
something behind his back.

“I’m naked.”

“Are you embarrassed about being
naked?”

“I’m not embarrassed.
I’m...disconcerted.”

“Do you want me to take my clothes
off?”

“I hope yes is the right
answer.”

“It’s the right answer. I’ll take my
clothes off if you take the sheets off.”

I threw the covers off and the king sat
next to me on the bed again.

“Now I’m going to tie you to the bed,” the
king said.

“How come?”

“You said I could do anything I
wanted.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I held up
my hands and he held out a golden rope.

It didn’t take long for him to tie my
wrists to the big sexy headboard of his bed. The ropes felt tight but not
too tight on me. I could wiggle my fingers and move my hands. But I couldn’t
touch him, which made me want to touch him even more.

He took another rope and tied my ankles
down to the bed. Once he finished I realized I couldn’t close my legs. This
king knew what he was doing.

Xerxes took off his jeans and I tried not
to watch. Well, I didn’t try very hard not to watch.

“Oh, wow,” I said once he was naked. I
looked back up at the ceiling.

“Just wow?”

“Holy wow?”

“Much better.”

I moaned a little when the king stretched
out on top of me. His skin felt so warm next to mine. His body was strong
and muscular, and I felt safe underneath him. Who could ever hurt me now
with the king like a shield over me? Who could steal me now that I was tied
to his bed? No one.

The king kissed my mouth again and my
neck. He rubbed my breasts, which felt better than I ever dreamed it would.
He kissed them, which was embarrassing at first until I realized that it was
the best thing anyone had ever done to me. He put his hand between my legs
and pushed a finger inside me. I wanted to close my legs, but the ropes
stopped me. But he moved his finger in and out of me and I tensed up and
relaxed at the same time. He touched me for a long time until I thought I
would die from wanting him so much. I couldn’t touch him because he’d tied
my hands. I couldn’t close my legs because he’d tied my ankles. I couldn’t
kiss him because I couldn’t rise up. All I could do was lie there and want
him and want him and want him.

Then he was inside me.

“Xerxes,” I said as he pushed all the way
into me.

“Good girl,” he said. He’d told me to say
his name while he was inside me. I wanted to obey him. Obeying him was the
most important thing.

He moved inside me and it hurt. I didn’t
care that it hurt, though, and I didn’t want it to ever end even if it did
hurt. The pain stopped but the pleasure stayed behind. I felt a storm in my
stomach like lightning and thunder were throwing down inside me. My whole
body crackled with electricity. I wasn’t sure if electricity had been
invented yet but I didn’t care anymore. I only cared about Xerxes, about my
king.

Xerxes lowered his head and bit my chest
over my heart. I flinched from the pain.

“Why did you do that?”

“You’re beautiful, and if another man sees
that bruise he’ll know you belong to me.”

“I belong to you,” I said. I loved those
words. I loved belonging to the king. I loved it so much I said it again. “I
belong to you.”

“You’re mine.”

The ceiling had lied to me. It wasn’t over
soon. We slept a little bit, but then we woke up and he made me his
again.

At dawn I woke up in his arms. Even while
I was sleeping he’d kept one of my ankles tied to the bed. I liked that he
wanted to keep me in his bed, in his arms.

Then morning came, and I was mad at it for
coming so soon.

Xerxes untied my ankle from the bed and
helped me put my dress back on.

“I’ll miss you, Xerxes.”

“I’ll miss you, too, Esther. Last night
was better than any song or any poem.”

“Or cardigan,” she said.

“In fact, it was so good, I think we
should have a thousand more nights like that.”

“I’ll be in the harem if you want
me.”

“Or...”

“Or what?”

“You could be my queen.”

E
LEANOR WAITED IN THE
hallway outside of Søren’s
office. He’d told her that if she figured out what happened between Xerxes and
Esther on her audition night, she should tell him. So she rewrote her story by
hand as neatly as she could, put it in a nice new folder and gave it to him. It
seemed like such a great idea right up until the moment he opened the folder,
started reading and shut his office door in her face.

Why had she given it to him? That whole story was ridiculous.
She had Esther talking like she lived in 1993 instead of in ancient Persia, and
she put the king in jeans and made him kind of funny and goofy instead of
kingly. Regal. Kings were supposed to be regal. And the story... Oh, God, she
had a whole sex thing going on in the story with Esther being tied to a bed
while the king fucked her.

And now her priest was reading it.

Eleanor went back to the fellowship hall food pantry and sorted
through the donations. Why did no one ever donate Oreos? All she wanted was to
eat an entire bag of Oreos and cry for a few hours while listening to Whitney
Houston sing “I Will Always Love You” on repeat. Instead she went to the
bathroom and discovered she’d started her period. That explained the tears and
the Oreo obsessing. Maybe it even explained her sudden moment of temporary
insanity when she decided to let Søren read her stupid Esther story.

She grabbed her backpack and sat down on the bench outside
Søren’s office. If he was in there calling the men in white coats to come
get her, she wanted to be on standby to knock the phone out of his hand and
plead her case.