They retreated to the downstairs guest room. Inside it was quiet, still. Nora imagined she could hear her own heartbeat, but it was only the pounding of nervous blood in her ears.
The last of the evening’s sunlight streamed through the sheer white curtains over the large mullioned windows above the bed. The room was filled with golden light and silver shadows.
As soon as they entered the room, Nora shut the door to keep the new roommate out for the next hour. Something about the lock clicking made it all real to her and she closed her eyes, hand still on the knob.
“Eleanor?”
“Tell me this is real.”
He took her in his arms and held her to his heart. She rested her ear against his chest, his heart beating steady and ready and slow. He wasn’t scared. Of course not. Just a game, she told herself. Just another mind game.
“It’s not real,” he said. “It’s only a dream. And we never have to be afraid in our dreams.” Was he talking to her? Or himself? Either way it helped. The pressure lifted. Only a dream. Just a dream. Just her most deliciously decadent impossible dream.
Slowly, she pulled herself from his arms, faced him.
“Stand there.” She pointed at a spot on the floor at the foot of the bed next to the steamer trunk. He raised an eyebrow but obeyed.
“Here?” His bare feet were placed precisely where she’d pointed. “Or here?” He moved one centimeter to the right.
“Submitting for five seconds and you’re already a brat.” This was a very good dream. “There is fine. Stay.”
She found the matches and lit the candles arrayed on the fireplace mantel. The room was dark and growing darker. Soon the candlelight would be the only light they would dream by.
“Tell me again you want this?” She turned to face him.
“I want you,” he said. “All of you. For once.”
All of her. If that was what he wanted…
“Take your clothes off.”
She waited for the refusal, for him to remember who and what he was—dominant, master, owner—and who and what she was—submissive, slave, possession. Instead, he pulled his t-shirt off, folded it in half and lay it neatly over the back of the leather armchair. Jeans next, then his black—of course—boxer briefs, both folded and left on the chair, just so.
A clock gently chimed from somewhere in the house, telling them the hour was nine. The sun was almost gone.
“Lay on the bed, on your back, hands behind your head.”
His only act of rebellion was to wait a full three seconds before obeying. But obey he did. He went to the bed, lay down on the thick white antique lace counterpane and rested his head on the pillow.
“Safe word?”
“Yours will do,” he said. Hers was Jabberwocky.
“Hard limits?”
“Decapitation.”
“Søren.”
He looked at her, his eyes saying “silly girl” and his expression patted her on the head.
“Do you really think I have any limits when it comes to pain?”
No, of course she didn’t.
She placed a candle on the bedside table, picked up the handcuffs and took out the key, which she set next to the candle. She wanted to have it in case Søren changed his mind about being restrained.
Carefully, as if he were a wild animal easily startled into attack, she moved onto the bed, kneeling at the head. She took his wrists into her hands, pulled them into place, feeling his pulse under her thumbs. Steady pulse, cool skin. She cuffed his right wrist, and wrapped the links around the center iron bar. Then she snapped the other bracelet on the left wrist, where Søren had his son’s name tattooed over his pulse point. Fionn’s name. Nora’s handwriting. Now she knew what she was going to do to him.
Only when the cuffs were on did she let herself enjoy the moment. She touched his side, touched that shivery spot between his ribs. His skin was cool and supple but at the first trembling contact between his body and hers, gooseflesh rose up all over his chest. Smiling, she lowered her head, kissed the spot she touched. Søren breathed once, hard, but held still. When she raised her head, she saw him watching her every move, like a captured wolf watches its captor from the back of the cage.
Nora left him on the bed and went to the steamer trunk. She took a deep breath and opened the lid of the trunk. Kingsley did not disappoint. One whip. Two sets of floggers. Spreader bar. X-bar. Rope. Rope cuffs. Lube. Bamboo cane. Misery stick. And a tiny brown leather bag full of scalpels. And under the scalpels, a first-aid kit.
While he was looking at the ceiling—no doubt ruing whatever idiotic romance impulse that had led him to make this offer—she looked at him, all six-feet-four long lean strong perfectly proportioned body of a man half his age inches of him. He was probably hating every minute of this. She was in unholy heaven.
Nora took the scalpels out of the trunk and tossed the case on the bed. He wasn’t aroused, not yet, but she could tell he was intrigued. He knew perfectly well what was inside that leather case.
While he watched her, she undressed, laying her clothes on the armchair next to his. She could have tormented him, tossing his clothes on the floor, walking on them, bossing him around and about like he did with her for the sheer heathen pleasure of it all. But she didn’t, couldn’t. This meant too much to her to make light of it. And she knew he’d meant it when he said this was it. She only had this one chance, and she wasn’t going to waste it.
The sun was gone now. The only light came from the candles on the mantel, the candle by the bed. She returned to the bed and crawled next to him. Because she could, she touched his face, his lips, traced the perfect lines of his perfect ears. He wasn’t aroused, but Nora was, wet and shaking like a sapling in a storm inside. Her training went too deep, however, so she feigned calm on the outside, collected and in control.
She straddled him at the waist, pushing her vulva against his still soft cock. She bent to kiss him, because she had to, because she had never wanted him more than she did right then. She kissed him hard and deep, forcing his lips to part and pressing her tongue inside his mouth. When he returned the kiss, it was tentatively at first, letting her have her way with him, humoring her, she knew. Then something changed. The room darkened, the darkness deepened. He kissed her back harder. He pressed his tongue to hers. As she moaned in response, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth and bit it.
Nora gasped, sat up, and pressed her fingertips to her lip, saw he’d drawn blood. He licked the blood from his lips. Her blood. Then he lifted his hips and she felt him growing hard against her. With her hands on his chest for support, she pushed down and back onto his cock, rigid now and thick. It slid along the slick seam of her vulva. She spread her knees, pushed down again, and he entered her. With each slow roll of her hips, he filled her more and more. Slowly she rose and sank down again, taking more of him into her, letting him fill her, spread her, pierce her until he was so deep inside her body she felt the tip of his penis nudge her cervix.
She clenched her inner muscles around him, squeezing him. His head fell back and his throat was bared. And there she was with a set of knives in a case on the bed. With one little flick of her wrist, she could kill him and he couldn’t stop her, couldn’t fight back. As strong as he was, the iron bed was stronger, the steel cuffs were stronger. For the first time in their twenty-three years together, he’d put himself entirely at her mercy. Maybe, possibly for the first time since he was a child, he’d made himself this physically vulnerable to another person.
“Why did you do this?” she asked him softly.
He opened his eyes, met hers.
“If the day comes when I can’t give you anything, at least here, now, I can give you everything.”
“I will never leave you,” she said.
He nodded solemnly. “Now that’s all I wanted to hear.”
With their bodies locked together, Nora reached for the leather case. She took out the smallest, thinnest, sharpest scalpel and used the flame of the candle to clean it. His watching wolf eyes followed her every move.
Carefully she set the candle on the center of his chest. A short, wide candle, it would stay in place as long as he didn’t flinch. She didn’t have to tell him that. She’d spent many a terrifying hour with a votive candle balanced between her breasts while he worked some sort of erotic havoc on another part of her body.
With the slightest, lightest touch, she carved a quick shallow N over his heart. His eyes closed as bright red blood welled to the surface of his skin. Now an O made from two parentheses, made to kiss. She let the blade do all the work as she cut the R into him, even as his hips moved slightly under her, his cock pulsing inside of her. Her concentration was unbreakable. She would cut him, carve him, slice him open, but she wouldn’t harm the man to save her life. With a last little flourish, she finished off the A.
She lifted the candle off him, put it on the table. The key gleamed gold in the firelight.
“Can you come?” she asked.
“I want to,” he said. “I don’t know if I can.”
The vulnerable honesty in his answer broke something in her that needed breaking.
“Let me help.” She picked up the key and released his right wrist, but left his other cuffed to the bedpost. She offered him the scalpel. “One for you.”
Again, he waited a full three seconds before obeying her—she counted. But he did take the blade from her at last. Nora sat up, arched her back, offered her body to him, offered all of her.
The blade grazed her lower stomach. She dug her fingers into his thighs to steady herself. As aroused as she was, she barely felt the cut. Only when she opened her eyes did she see what he’d done—with one practiced cut, he’d carved an S under her bellybutton over that aching place where the tip of his cock met her cervix. She’d claimed his heart. He’d claimed her cunt.
She could only smile. The smile evaporated instantly when Søren used his free hand to grab the key off the bedside table and release his left hand. Free, he pushed her onto her back, mounting her like the whore who’d taken his last penny. He dragged her against him, holding her hard in place under him. She lay trapped beneath him, her head half off the bed as he speared her.
Trapped, she didn’t put up a fight. She simply let him have her. Her one act of revenge was to bite his chest where she’d cut him, causing him to let out one small cry even as her blood stained his belly.
He pounded her hard and slow and the harder he pounded her, the harder she wanted it. Split and speared, her surrender was complete. She gave him her breasts and he sucked her nipples sore. She gave him her neck which he bit to the point of bruising. She gave him her heart and he swallowed it whole. A thousand heady nights ached in her memory, a thousand heavy hours under him, keeping her screams silent and careful with her cries. But those were the old nights, long gone, spent in the bed of a man who would turn back into a priest in the morning. She wasn’t sure who this man inside her was, only that she wanted him there, beautiful stranger that he was.
Nora moaned because she could. Her cunt hurt from needing to come. Every thrust was a punishment until she came. Once more, twice more, three times more he rammed her and with that third thrust she came writhing and crying out his name. As her stomach spasmed, he poured into her, filling her until his scalding semen slicked her thighs.
After, they lay entwined, cock and pussy, arms and legs, blood and sweat and come. Her vagina pulsed around him even as the organ inside her softened. Søren released her wrists and stroked her hair. He held her to his chest.
“I’m sorry. I tried.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, meaning for that, for them, for everything. “I’m not.”
Slowly they pulled themselves apart and tenderly tended to each other’s wounds. Nora cleaned Søren’s cuts with alcohol and gauze. The S on her stomach had stopped bleeding. A little antiseptic ointment, and she was good as new. She started to ask him if he wanted some water when a small squeak sounded through the door.
Søren turned his head.
Nora said, “Was that your pussy or mine?”
“Mine, I think.”
He rose up off her, opened the door, and the little black cat sashayed into the bedroom like the guest of honor. She hopped onto the bed with one nimble leap, sauntered over to Nora and let out a meow.
“Guess she’s made herself at home,” Nora said.
Søren sat on the bed, scratching the cat under her chin.
“Are you all right?” Nora asked him.
“I am. You?”
“Still in shock.”
He smiled, almost shyly. “It went better than I thought it might. But if you tell Kingsley, it’ll be foot torture for a month.”
The cat, still unnamed, sat between them. Nora reached across her and touched Søren’s hand.
“Eleanor?”
“You’re cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“You were cold from the second I put the handcuffs on you. Cold sweat. Cold skin. Symptoms of panic.”
He said nothing. The cat shook herself, seemingly for no reason, then leapt onto the pillow. She turned in circles to soften a place for herself, and laid down again, making herself into a soft black donut.
“You were scared the entire time,” she went on, “but you didn’t stop me.” He stroked the cat, long gentle strokes from between her ears to her happy twitching tail. “Things happened to you as a child so awful you begged me once to never even think about it. And I’ve never even asked you what this has done to you.” It seemed fitting they would have this conversation, both of them naked.
She waited. Still, he stroked the cat. Still, he said nothing.
“Søren?”
“Should I have taken you to my mother?” He looked at her once, then returned to petting the cat.
“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe I would have loved being with her. But, knowing me, I would have run away eventually and come back to you.”
That got him to smile. A little. A very, very little.
“I got your postcard,” she said. “That split-second I thought you had left again, I think my heart stopped.” She laughed at herself. “Then I saw the postmark and it started again.”
“I won’t leave without telling you again. There was something I wanted to say to you, but it wouldn’t fit on a postcard. I only wanted to say it to you when you were ready to hear it.”
“What is it?”
“What I wanted to say was this. If you ever asked me to choose between you and the Church…”
“I would never—”
“I know you wouldn’t. But if you did, I would choose you. When I was trying to stop you from calling the media, it was only because I was afraid it could come to that. If the Church turned on you, accused you of something, made you the into their scapegoat—”
“I know you’d leave them if they did that to me.”
“I wouldn’t leave them. I would destroy them.”
He met her eyes so she could see he meant it. The threat hung in the air, sweet as perfume, and she fell in love with him again, like she had a thousand times before, like she would a thousand times again before their story was over.
The cat rolled over again, leaving a hundred black hairs on the bed. The spell was broken.
“Blood, come, and cat hair on the antique white counterpane,” Søren said with a sigh. “I’ll have to ask for black sheets as a housewarming gift.”
“It’s fine. It’ll all come out in the wash.”
The cat began licking her own stomach. It was not a graceful procedure.
“Cats are very strange,” Søren said.
“You like your housewarming gift?”
“I do. Both of them.” He picked up the handcuffs, twirled them once, just to show her who was boss. He was. Of course he was. Now. Always.
“Wait. I forgot the last present. Stay here.” Nora grabbed her panties off the floor and her tank top, pulled them on. “Hope it’s still warm.”
“Warm? Eleanor, what’s warm?” he called after her.
She ignored him, went into his kitchen, returned with two mugs. He’d put on his clothes again and sat in the armchair, the cat still on the bed, cat-napping. She sat on the floor at his feet and offered him one of the mugs.
“Drink,” she said. He stared at her. “Please?”
He drank. At the first sip, his eyes widened. Though he was fifty-one years old, it was a wounded eleven-year-old boy’s eyes that met hers.
“Sometimes you need hot cocoa, even in New Orleans in September.”
He held the cup in his hands, cradling it as tenderly and carefully as he’d ever carried a communion chalice.
“You’re nothing like your father,” she said, “and you’re full of shit if you think that.”
He smiled behind his mug and said softly, “Thank you.”
She held out her mug. “To Father Henry,” she said, “a very good priest.”
They clinked glasses and drank.