The Auction by Tiffany Reisz

5

Daniel didn’t move, couldn’t move. And as long as Kingsley stood there watching him, he wouldn’t move. But he listened. He heard a man’s voice, low and stern, a voice he hadn’t heard since that one perfect week with Eleanor. Then he heard her laugh again. That laugh, so joyous and lusty…it floated up the stairs and passed through him, chilling him to the core.

The voices retreated and Kingsley raised his hand, beckoning Daniel to follow him in silence. At the next landing, they stopped and waited. From their post, he and Kingsley could stay hidden in the shadows and still look into the private drawing room at the back of the townhouse.

There she was. The girl he’d been thinking of non-stop, even while inside other women, for the past year and a half.

Eleanor…she looked as beautiful now as the day he first saw her. She wore a white summer dress that showed off her legs, her black hair was pulled high on her head in a messy knot, and around her graceful neck was her white collar. At the liquor cabinet, she poured two glasses of white wine, then carried them back to a table where she offered one—with a curtsy—to a tall blond man in black trousers, black jacket, and a white shirt open at the collar.

Him. Søren.

Daniel watched as Eleanor sat opposite Søren at a small game table, a chessboard between them. They spoke in low tones. Daniel couldn’t hear what was said, but it made her smile.

Even cowering in the shadows on the staircase landing, looking far down into the sitting room, Daniel could see the radiant happiness shining in her eyes as she feigned luxurious, yawning boredom. Søren casually reached out and snapped his fingers in her face to get her attention. Instantly sat up straighter. With reluctance, Daniel dragged his eyes from her to gaze at Søren, a man he once considered a friend but now, since losing her, thought of as a rival. He hated himself for the bitterness he harbored in his heart toward Eleanor’s owner. But no amount of reasoning and rationalizing could help him swallow the bitter pill that remained lodged in his throat since the moment he’d asked her to stay with him and she’d said, “No.”

“He’s a priest,” Daniel said in a voice so soft he doubted Kingsley heard.

“He is.”

“How can she be that happy with him?” Looking at her face, her eyes, he had no doubt he was looking at a woman completely and utterly in love. “He can’t marry her. Can’t give her children…not without getting excommunicated.”

“She doesn’t want marriage. She doesn’t want children.”

“What does she want?”

“Him,” Kingsley said simply. His laugh was the low rumble of a distant train. “Trust me, my friend, there’s no way to break them up. Even I know they belong together.”

Daniel heard something in Kingsley’s voice, a note of bitterness that matched his own. Together they stared at the couple in the drawing room—the tall man in all black—handsome, distinguished, intimidating.

And her—that wild black hair, those black and green eyes, those full lips…lips designed for acts more intimate than simply kissing other lips.

Daniel noted that while his own eyes studied every line and curve of Eleanor, Kingsley’s gaze focused elsewhere, onto the face of the man who owned her, onto the face of Kingsley’s best, and some would say only, friend.

The sight of them together, so content, briefly overwhelmed him. Closing his eyes, Daniel found himself hurtled into the past, further than he wanted to go.

Back to the day of his wife’s funeral.

How he’d even gotten dressed that morning remained a mystery. He’d been able to knot his tie but only from muscle memory.

“I’m burying my wife today,” was the refrain that echoed through his mind. “I’m a widower at thirty-four…and I don’t know why.”

He must have spoken the words aloud because he heard an answer from the door to his and Maggie’s bedroom.

“I’m certain it will be of no consolation to you, but I don’t know why either.”

Daniel turned and there stood a six-foot-four blond priest. Søren.

“Actually, it is a consolation. I don’t want to live in a world where Maggie’s death makes sense.”

Søren studied Daniel with kind, searching eyes. Kingsley had come by earlier with a gift from his medicine cabinet, and the combination of the tranquilizer and the shock were the only two forces keeping Daniel vertical.

“I won’t insult you by asking you how you are. I will only ask you what I can do to help you today.”

Daniel remembered the rush of gratitude, knowing that he didn’t have to dissemble. He could tell Søren anything, confess any secret and it would be absolved.

“If I asked you to kill me, would you?”

The priest smiled. “No, though I won’t judge you for wanting to die. I would, too, in your shoes.”

That helped. It helped that this man who seemed to know all the answers to all the questions that had ever been or would ever be asked…it helped to know that he, too, would want to die if he lost his wife. Except he was a Catholic priest and so would never have a wife. Daniel felt almost sorry for the man.

“Perhaps there’s something else? Something other than a mercy killing?”

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t think I could stand it…” Daniel paused and tried to put his words in order. “If anyone touches me today or talks to me, I won’t make it. And I have to get through this. For her.”

Søren clasped his hands in front of him at the wrist. Daniel didn’t recall ever seeing the Priest of the Underground in his long medieval-looking cassock before. Usually, he was in layman’s clothes at Kingsley’s house—jeans and a white button-down shirt and jacket, or black pants and black t-shirt. In the floor-length black cassock with the tie around the waist, Søren appeared even more intimidating than usual, like a being from an ancient world.

“You want me to keep everyone away from you then?” Søren asked.

Again Daniel nodded. Or tried to. His body and mind seemed to be working independently of each other.

“That I can do for you.”

For the next two hours, Daniel stared straight ahead—he heard nothing, saw no one but for a blur of black behind him hovering like a dark angel. If anyone came to speak to Daniel, Søren would raise his hand to stop them, then he’d lower his head and whisper into their ear. What he said, Daniel didn’t hear. But it worked. Everyone nodded, turned, walked away.

Only at the graveside did Daniel come back to awareness again. He stood staring down at the coffin as friends and family made their way back to their cars. Even the minister and his own parents finally gave up waiting on him and walked away. Only his dark angel remained—not speaking, not consoling, merely present.

“My wife is in a box in the ground,” he said more to himself than Søren. “I should be in it with her.”

A long silence stood between them. Daniel sensed the priest weighing his words.

“Only Kingsley knows this,” the priest began, “but I now have someone in my life. Her name is Eleanor.”

“Pretty name.”

“If something ever happened to my Eleanor…” He paused and took a breath. “There would be no hole, no chasm, no canyon deep enough to contain my grief.”

No hole…no chasm…no canyon deep enough… Daniel felt the truth, the rightness of those words in his soul.

“I’m lost.” His unblinking eyes began to water. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Sleep. For years maybe. Hibernate. Dig a hole in the ground and bury myself until I can face the world without her.”

“Then do that.”

Daniel turned his head and met the priest’s eyes—eyes the color and strength of steel. “What if I can’t ever get out of that hole again?”

“Do you trust me, Daniel?”

Did he trust Søren? Daniel had friends, loads of them. He had a sister he loved and in-laws who treated him like their own. He still had lunch once a month with the professor who had mentored him in school. If anyone asked who his best friend was, he would have said his eighty-year-old grandfather.

But the day he found out Maggie had cancer, it was Søren he called. Søren, a Jesuit priest fluent in over a dozen languages, the beloved pastor of a small but devoted congregation, and the wisest, most erudite man Daniel had ever met.

And when Daniel told him about Maggie, Søren said exactly the right thing.

“Fuck.”

If that was all a priest—a priest who could rattle off entire books of the Bible from memory—if that was all he could find to say, then it was all there was to say.

Daniel had laughed and then he’d cried. He knew he’d called the right man.

When Daniel finally answered Søren, he spoke with complete sincerity.

“Yes, I trust you.”

“Then go home,” he said. “Bury yourself in your hole in the ground if you need to. If you can’t find your way out again, we’ll send someone to dig you out.”

And for three years he hadn’t been able to dig his way out of the hole of grief he’d fallen into. For three years, he didn’t set one foot off their Big House property. But Søren had kept his promise. He sent his own property to him, his own Eleanor, his own heart.

But that was the past.

Now in the present, he watched Eleanor in the drawing room. She held a chess piece in her hand. Søren pointed to a square on the board, but she shook her head. Knowing him, he was attempting to teach her the finer points of some obscure strategy. Knowing her, she was playing by suicide rules, trying to lose on purpose to end the game quicker. Again Søren snapped his fingers in her face. Again she shook her head. Daniel heard him release an exasperated sigh. He reached for the chess piece but she popped it into her mouth.

“Merde…not again…” Kingsley sighed.

Daniel only watched as Søren reached out and pinched her nose closed. The battle of wills began. With her mouth closed and her nose pinched, Eleanor had no hope of winning this fight. The need to breathe would eventually overcome her willful refusal to play the game by His rules.

A minute passed. Eleanor clenched her eyes shut. Søren held out his hand, tapped under her chin, and she gave in and spit the piece into his palm.

“Merci mon Dieu,” Kingsley breathed.

“What?”

Kingsley looked at Daniel. “Last time she swallowed it.”

“By accident?” Daniel winced. That couldn’t have been pleasant—going down or coming out.

“On purpose.”

Daniel raised his hand and covered his mouth to stifle his laugh.

In the drawing room, Eleanor turned her face toward the shadows on the landing. Daniel took a step back deeper in the darkness.

Kingsley beckoned him back upstairs and Daniel wrenched his eyes from Eleanor. If she saw him…if Søren saw him, it wouldn’t be good. Maybe, eventually, he could see Eleanor without wanting to drag her to him and beat and fuck the memory of any other man out of her head. Maybe someday…but not today.

At the top of the stairs, Daniel turned his back to Kingsley just long enough to catch his breath.

“Can I get you anything?” Kingsley prompted. “Perhaps a member of my Imperial Collection could take your mind off her?”

Daniel turned, grabbed Kingsley by the throat and shoved him hard and fast into the wall.

“I’m not in a great mood right now so you’ll just have to forgive me,” Daniel nearly growled the words. “One of these days you’re actually going to care about a woman instead of collecting them like stamps in your passport. If Anya ends up getting hurt because of this stupid fucking sex auction of yours, I’ll show you and the priest downstairs what real sadism looks like. Tu comprend?”

Kingsley stared him down. Daniel knew that for all his devil-may-care airs, Kingsley might easily qualify as one of the more dangerous men in the city, if not the country. But when Daniel looked into his eyes, he saw the tiniest shred of fear. Daniel grinned.

“Je comprends,” Kingsley said.

“Good.”

Daniel relinquished his hold on Kingsley’s neck and stepped back.

Once more Kingsley had cause to straighten his crumpled collar.

“Now I’m leaving,” Daniel said and headed toward the front stairs. “I’m going to go have dinner. I’m going to go to my apartment. And I’m not going to think about you or Eleanor or him or this world you’ve sucked me back into.”

Kingsley raised his eyebrow at him. “If I recall, it is you who knocked on my door, Daniel.”

“Yes, and once this auction is over, I’ll never knock on it again. I’ll stick around long enough to make sure Anya survives this without getting hurt. Then I’m gone.”

Daniel started down the hall.

“It was a test, mon ami.”

Even as he spun around to face Kingsley, Daniel regretted the decision. “What was a test?”

“That week together—you and her. It was a test.”

Daniel glared back, and Kingsley laughed his infuriating French laugh.

Kingsley strolled toward him. “Lest you think he sent her to you out of some great affection for you…let me explain, it was a test.”

“Let me guess—I failed.”

“You were not the one being tested, Daniel. She was. And she passed.”

The cold truth of the statement hit Daniel hard in the stomach and harder even lower. He wanted to answer, wanted to say something, to deny it. But he had no words. She could have had him—someone rich, someone single, someone free. She could have had someone who could have married her, given her children, a life in the open…and yet she’d walked away from it all and chosen Søren instead. Instead of a wife, she was the mistress of priest. Instead of children, she had secrets. Instead of Daniel, she had Søren.

Daniel closed his eyes. Not even a masochist would have enjoyed this kind of pain. Daniel took one second to imagine punching Kingsley’s handsome face into an unrecognizable pulp. It made him feel better. A little.

“Let her go,” Kingsley said, and his voice was almost, but not quite, kind. “She’s not for you. She never was. You’re in love with a fantasy, a girl you can save from a sadist who will never marry her or give her children. That girl doesn’t exist.” He put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Maggie loved you and would want you to find love again. That way,” he said, nodding his head toward the darkened stairs, toward Eleanor, “is not where you’ll find it.”

* * *

Daniel said nothing.He stared at the dark stairway, wanting to go down it, to call Eleanor’s name, to hear the truth from her own lips. Until he did, he wouldn’t believe it.

He didn’t. And he didn’t wait for Kingsley to speak again, either. Daniel left by the main stairs. He went out the front door and hailed the first cab he saw. It took him home, but only long enough for him to change clothes. Then he went for a run, a long, hard run through Central Park. The heat was nearly unbearable. It felt like running in a sauna, but he craved the mindlessness, the release of endorphins, the punishment.

But he couldn’t outrun memories of her.

He remembered the night he and Eleanor had played a game of strip poker. He played to win. She played to lose. After three hands, she was down to her white lacy panties. He dealt another hand.

“Hit me,” she’d said, rolling onto her stomach, her bare legs in the air and nothing on her from the waist up but a smile.

“This is poker,” he reminded her.

Every evening was spent in the living room by his fireplace talking, fucking, sometimes both at the same time.

“Poker? I don’t even know her.”

Daniel reached out and flicked the end of her nose. “Behave yourself.”

“Never.” She threw a few cards down. “Hit me.”

“Poker,” he repeated. “Not blackjack.”

Eleanor looked up at him through the veil of her wavy black hair. “Maybe I’m not talking about the game.”

Daniel nearly dropped the cards. “You do realize we’ve only known each other for a few days,” he reminded her.

She shrugged her shoulders, her soft, pale shoulders he’d bruised with bites and rough kisses just a few hours earlier, though the hunger to bruise her with a flogger was growing.

“You’ve fucked me more times than I can count, ordered me around, made me call you ‘sir’…but still you haven’t hit me. You know you want to…sir.”

She flipped onto her back and looked up at him. Was there anything in the world more beautiful than a woman’s naked breasts bathed in the light of a fireplace? Especially Eleanor’s breasts by his fireplace?

“I take inflicting pain very seriously,” he’d said even though everything in him ached to tie her to his bed and paint her pale skin bright red with welts. “That’s a lot of trust. Do you really trust me that much? After only a few days?”

“No, I don’t. But I trust him. And he trusts you. After all, I’m not submitting to you this week. I’m submitting to him.”

“Answer this question—how long did you know him before he beat you the first time?” Daniel asked.

Eleanor groaned melodramatically.

“Yes, I forgot,” he said. “You don’t want to talk about him.”

She nodded as she sat up.

“Can you at least answer me in sign language?”

Eleanor reached out and took the deck of cards from him. She flipped through the cards and found the Five of Clubs.

“Five years?” Daniel asked and she nodded again. “Five years. Not a few days,” he said pointedly. “So he waited five years not only to hit you, but to have sex with you. And you’re ready for that with me after a few days?”

She nodded eagerly.

Daniel looked down at the cards scattered about. “Are you really happy with him?” he asked, not quite sure where that question came from.

She sighed heavily as if she’d been asked and had answered that question a thousand times before. “Everyone thinks because he’s so quiet and serious…”

“And a sadist,” he reminded her.

“Everyone thinks he’s this.” She held up the King of Clubs who grasped a sword in each hand. “But he isn’t. Not with me. With me he’s…”

She dug through all the cards until she had a full suit.

On the floor between them she arranged the cards.

All hearts.

“And who are you?” Daniel swallowed hard, her devotion to her owner a painful reminder of how close he and Maggie had been. Would he ever have that again? “Her?”

He picked up the Queen of Hearts.

“Oh, no.” She reached past him and grabbed the card box. “This is me.”

She held up the Joker.

“Is that because you’re funny or because you’re Gotham’s worst nightmare?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out. In the meantime, how about a little game of…”

She picked up two cards. One a Six of Clubs, the other a Nine of Spades.

Daniel glared at her. “Now I am going to beat you.”

He hadn’t been joking. He grabbed her wrist and dragged her to her feet. In less than a minute, he had her in the bedroom with her back pressed to the bedpost. He devoured her mouth, her soft lips even as his fingers dug into her hips. With a ruthless shove he pushed her onto the floor. He didn’t even have to give her the order. She opened his pants and took him deep in her mouth.

He and Maggie had been lovers for a month before he let himself slap her during sex. But her reaction had been so intensely erotic that the very next day he’d invested in an arsenal of S&M gear, an arsenal of S&M gear that had touched no one’s skin but Maggie’s. For the first time since her death, he would use it on someone else.

Before he came, he pulled away and dragged Eleanor up to her feet again. He threw open a cabinet in his bedroom where he and Maggie stored the gear and took out a flogger, bondage cuffs, and snap hooks. He returned to the bed, wrenched Eleanor’s wrists behind her back and buckled the cuffs on.

“Tell me your safe word,” he demanded.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said and he felt her body go slack as she surrendered herself into his hands. “You won’t hear it.”

He’d almost laughed out loud then. “That tough, are you?”

“No, sir. That well-trained.”

And God, she had been. Eleanor stood still, kept her body loose and slack and breathed through the pain like a pro. Of course, the mild beating he inflicted on her probably paled in comparison to what her owner did to her. But her willing submission to the pain, to him, the trust she showed letting him bind her to the bedpost…

After, he’d dropped the flogger, pressed his chest to her back, pushed into her hard and deep. Her wetness and heat enveloped him. Before Eleanor came to him, he’d been celibate for three long and lonely years. That night he was determined to make up for lost time.

Right before coming he wrenched himself away from her, picked up the flogger and beat her again. Harder this time, hard enough she finally let out a real grunt of pain. And that sound hit him harder than his flogger hit her. Again he thrust into her and as he thrust, he felt himself clawing his way out of the ground, the dirt falling away, the fresh air of the wide world filling his lungs. With every brutal movement he came more back to life, more back to himself again.

Finally, he released her from her bonds and dragged her to the floor. In an instant he was on her and in her.

After he came, he tried crawling off her, found he didn’t have the energy, and merely collapsed onto her prone body. He started to apologize for going too far, for losing control. But once again he heard that laugh. That incredibly erotic laugh. Homer, he decided then and there, had gotten all it wrong. The sirens of ancient lore were singers. The real siren’s song was a laugh.

“What?” he’d asked, kissing the back of her shoulder.

“Now that,” she said, stretching out underneath him, seemingly fully content to let him stay inside her all night, “was poker.”

He’d laughed. This girl even made bad puns during sex.

Daniel couldn’t run anymore.

He jogged to a water fountain and drank himself sick. Then he splashed water on his face and ran it through his hair. After, he was too wet and sweaty for a taxi so he walked back to his building in Lenox Hill. He’d strip naked the second he got home. Take a shower, pour a whiskey, drink himself into a stupor. Tomorrow—lather, rinse, repeat.

Stalking through his apartment, he pulled his shirt off on the way to his bedroom. In the doorway he paused when he found a naked girl kneeling with her back to him on his bed.

Long black hair, voluptuous body… Now where had he seen that before?

“Irina—how did you get in here?” he asked, surprised but not entirely displeased to see his beautiful Russian again.

The girl turned her head and gave him a wicked grin. “Did you miss me?”

“God. Eleanor.”