“You slapped me our first night together.” She was so wet she felt it dripping onto the sheets beneath her, could hear it when he pulled back and pushed in. “You did it before you took my virginity.”
“I’ll do it again when you come back to me. Not before.”
“You’re only punishing yourself.”
“And yet it’s you who is begging...”
Nora shifted beneath him, tilting her hips so that his cock was in the deepest part of her, hitting her cervix painfully. Better. Her head fell back and she moaned. Yes...this is what she wanted from him...to be used, hurt, taken, ravished, impaled, invaded, breached and violated. She let herself be weak because he was so strong and to fight it would be futile. She didn’t want to fight it. She’d broken a teenage boy last night, taken his virginity, and she submitted to Søren as her penance. It was no great punishment to watch him fuck her, all the hardness of his body, his arms and stomach and long thighs, against and inside the softness of her. She couldn’t lose this...she needed it...she was so close...
“Please hurt me, sir...”
“No,” he said again. If there were a crueler word in the world than that one she’d never heard it.
Maybe his own pain was enough. It had to be hurting him, moving like this when half his back was black and purple. She lifted her hips again and again into his, seeking release. But it was too late. It was over. Søren pulled out of her, his erection already gone.
Nora lay panting, overwhelmed with the realization of what had just happened, what they’d just attempted. The failure hung over the bed like a poison cloud.
“You’re punishing me,” she said. The words sounded hollow in the room. They rang off the walls and back against the bed.
“I am.”
“Because I left you? Or because I won’t come back?”
“Because I can.”
“And you wonder why I left you...”
“Don’t lie to yourself, Eleanor. And don’t lie to me. The pain wasn’t why you left. The pain was why you stayed.”
She didn’t argue with him because she couldn’t. He turned his back to her and once more became a wall of silence, a wall of stone. Closing her eyes, Nora slipped her hand down her body and against her clitoris. He’d left her slick and sore and empty, and she had to come or she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She dipped her fingertip into her own wetness and touched herself until the pleasure hit its peak and her muscles contracted around the nothing inside her.
Spent now, she considered leaving. Leaving tonight, this minute. Getting up, getting dressed and walking out without another word. He’d fucked her and hadn’t finished to prove a point. When he was inside her it wasn’t his come or his cock she begged for but his pain. If she were to do something so foolish as to fall in love with someone vanilla, this was what she could expect...endless frustration. It would leave her as unfulfilled as her body was right now. It would leave her always wanting more.
She could leave. She should leave.
Or she could go back to sleep and leave him in the cold light of morning. That would hurt him more so that’s what she did.
When she woke again it was to sunlight in an otherwise empty bed. Not an empty house, however. She heard Søren’s voice but not only his voice.
In a panic she grabbed the nearest clothes she could find, one of his shirts, and threw it on. She crept over to Søren’s closet, shutting herself in as silently as she could.
Through an air duct she could hear the voices. Søren’s she recognized. The other she didn’t. It was a male voice, however. It could be another priest. Oh, that would be bad. Or the bishop. Worst-case scenario.
The voices stopped. Nora heard footsteps approaching. The closet door swung open.
Søren looked at her with a cocked eyebrow.
“Is he gone?” she whispered.
“If only I had a camera,” he said. “Kingsley’s Red Queen hiding in my closet between a cassock and a garment bag.”
“Oh, shut up. Is he gone?”
“He is. He was delivering a plant.”
“A plant? I had a panic attack over a goddamn fern?”
“It was a ficus.”
“If we’re going to destroy your career in the church, I hope it’s over something better than a ficus.”
“It’s a very nice ficus.”
“Can I come out of your closet now?” she asked.
“No. For one thing...is this really the best you could do?” Søren asked. “The closet?”
“I assumed under the bed was the first place they’d look.”
“Yes, considering these were on top of the bed.” He held up a pair of underwear. Hers.
She grabbed them out of his hand.
“Sorry. I’m a little out of practice,” she said. “I used to be better at this.”
“Better at what?”
“Leaving before sunrise. I’ll go now before anyone else shows up with another fern.”
“Ficus.”
Nora pushed past him and found her jeans over the back of the armchair and her shirt hanging on the doorknob. When she was still Søren’s sub, she knew better than this. She’d put her clothes right next to her side of the bed so she could find them in an instant and dress. They’d had a couple close calls before. Diane had come to Søren’s with church emergencies while she and Søren were in bed together. Once while Søren was inside her. They’d both stayed calm. Nora had dressed as quickly and quietly as she could while Søren went downstairs. Then she’d sunk to the floor between the bed and the wall, out of sight. Rule number one was “leave the bedroom door open.” If the door was closed, it would raise suspicion. An open door meant he had nothing to hide. If someone came into the bedroom she could slip under the bed. But that wouldn’t happen because no one would suspect a priest of hiding a lover in a room with the door wide-open, right?
Søren walked over to her and took her clothes out of her hands.
“What?” she demanded.
“I need your help.”
“After that stunt you pulled last night? You’re on your own, Blondie.”
“It involves putting a knife to my throat.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Now you’re talking.”
Five minutes later Nora sat on the bathroom counter with Søren standing between her knees. She held a straight razor in her hand and she ran it carefully down Søren’s cheek, wet with shaving soap.
“I thought you were Mister Ambidextrous,” she said, rinsing the shaving soap of the blade.
“I trust my left hand for eating, not for shaving with a straight razor.”
“You could use a normal razor like a normal person. I’m kinky and I love playing with knives as much as the next dominatrix, but you don’t catch me shaving my legs with a straight razor.”
“Sentimental value. It belonged to my grandfather.”
“Which one?”
“My mother’s father. I never met my paternal grandfather. He died before I was born.”
She tilted Søren’s chin up to shave along his throat.
“Do you know anything about him?”
“He was an English baron and a raging alcoholic who very likely abused my father as much as my father abused my sister.”
Nora rinsed off the straight razor again and turned Søren’s head to the left.
“Does that change how you feel about him at all?”
“I’ve met dozens of people who were abused as children who did not turn into abusers themselves as adults. Elizabeth didn’t.”
“You didn’t.”
“Some would disagree.” He gave her a pointed look.
“I don’t and only my opinion counts in this instance. What you and I did and what happened between your father and your sister are worlds apart. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d given your father the Holofernes treatment.”
Nora mimed slicing her head off with the razor.
“Don’t cut yourself. I’d have enough trouble explai
ning a half-naked woman in my closet. I don’t need a headless corpse in my bathroom.”
“No decapitation? You’re getting so vanilla in your old age,” she said.
He cocked his eyebrow at her. “Is that so?”
“We had about one minute of vanilla sex last night.”
“Only to prove a point. The point being you need, want and desire pain, and wouldn’t enjoy being with someone who couldn’t give that to you.”
“I give it to other people.”
“You know it’s not the same. I can torture my own body and it takes the edge off the need, but it doesn’t take it away. Do you even submit to Kingsley anymore?”
“I can’t talk to you about what Kingsley and I do together.”
“Why not? You always told me in delightfully exacting detail what you two had done in my absence.”
“He’s a client,” she said. “I don’t gossip about clients.”
“Kingsley pays you for pain and sex?”
“No, don’t be silly. He pays me for pain. I give him the sex for free.”
“You know you miss it, Eleanor. The way you were begging me to hurt you last night? That wasn’t pillow talk.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re injured and can’t even shave your own face. Now shut up before I accidentally give you the Holofernes treatment.”
He shut up and so did she while she finished shaving his face. She knew his sudden good behavior wasn’t due to any desire of his to actually submit to her. He simply didn’t want her nicking him. He stared placidly past her, letting her move his chin this way and that while she scraped off the last of his stubble. When she finished, she soaked a hand towel under the hot water and used it to wipe the last of the soap off his cheeks and chin and throat. She might have taken longer than necessary doing this. She did love his face, the sharp planes of his chin and jaw, the sculpted lips, the gunmetal-gray eyes that saw everything and revealed nothing.
She kissed him.
Søren returned the kiss, but only for a moment before pulling back.
“What was that for?” His tone was skeptical.
“You’re very handsome and when there’s a very handsome man standing between my knees, I kiss him.”
“I should spend more time between your knees then.”
“That is not the sentiment of a priest about to take Final Vows.”
“Not true. Half the priests taking Final Vows with me would say the same to you if they knew you.”
“What about the other half?”
“Gay.”
“Right,” she said, laughing. “Forgot.”
“Please be there with me,” he said. “Will you?”
She rested her forehead on the center of his bare chest. He kissed her hair.
“Just because I didn’t want you leaving the church for me, doesn’t mean I can sit there and watch you give away the rest of your life to the church. Your life and your body.” This body that she’d thought of as hers for so long would now be the sole property of the church. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Do you know the Danish fairy tale Den Lille Havfrue?”
“In English?”
“The Little Mermaid.”
“Of course I know it.”
“The real story? Not the sanitized modern version?” Søren took his razor from her hand and washed it under scalding water in the sink.
“I think so. Mermaid falls in love with a prince and gets herself turned into a human being so they can be together, right?”
“The little mermaid’s fins are rent in two as if a sword has passed through her body. But since she was never meant to walk on land, with every step she takes, she feels something like knives cutting into her feet and her body bleeding from the wounds.”
“How cheerful.”
“Danes are known for many virtues—cheerfulness is not chief among them.”
Søren took Nora’s ankle in his left hand and lifted her foot. With the razor tip held between two fingers on his injured right hand, Søren carefully placed a small cut on the heel of her foot—a small wound, yes, but she knew until it healed in a day or two, she’d feel it with every step she took.
“The little mermaid fails to win her prince’s heart and returns to the ocean,” Søren continued. “When she dies she finds she has a soul, a reward for all her suffering.”
“But she doesn’t get her prince?”
“No. Being transformed into something she isn’t fails to win the prince. A good moral. Very Danish. Don’t try to be something you aren’t.”
“And what are you?” she asked.
“I am a priest,” he said. “Which I always knew I was. I knew I belonged in the church when I fell in love with you. I knew I was born to be a priest whether I wanted to be one or not. If I’d left the church to marry you, I would have felt the pain of it with every step I took...” He made a second small cut in the heel of her other foot.
“Yes, we could have been together on land,” he continued, “but at what price? You didn’t let me leave the ocean I belong in and in a way, I’m grateful to you. Especially since you’re here now.”
“Of course I’m here,” she said, reaching down to take the razor from his hand. She set it on the counter and placed her hands on either side of his strong neck. “I know how to swim.”
Søren kissed her, kissed the words on her lips that she knew had comforted him even more than a promise of attending his Final Vows would. She kissed him back with equal ardor, brushing her lips over his now smooth chin. Cutting her feet had aroused him. She slipped her hand into his pants and wrapped her fingers around his erection.
“Eleanor,” he said breathlessly, “what are you doing?”
“Solving the crisis in the priesthood,” she said. “I met a nun once who said the secret was giving priests daily hand jobs. It’s not intercourse—not anal, not vaginal, not oral—but it can get a priest off. I might join a religious order if I were guaranteed daily orgasms hand-delivered by a handsome oblate.”
“I should run that idea by the superior of the Paraclete order.”
“What are they?”
“An order of priests and sisters dedicated to helping and comforting other priests.” Søren wrapped his left arm around her back and pressed closer to her.
“Then consider me your Paraclete.”
“I always have.”
He bit her earlobe while she continued to stroke him. She loved hearing his labored breathing in her ear. His left hand, the uninjured once, dug hard into the small of her back. Nora didn’t mind. The pain he gave her stoked his pleasure. He was brutally hard. Hard and soft, aroused and yet putty in her hand. But that’s how men worked. Even dominant sadists like Søren. He’d teased her that morning that their little kingdom would be aghast to see their fearsome Red Queen hiding in a closet from a ficus-delivery boy. Well, wouldn’t they be equally amused to see their god of pain melting against her, at once tense and loose, over nothing more than a well-timed hand job?
Nora wet her hand under the tap. Søren gasped a little against her neck as she took him in her grasp again, rubbing him with warm wet fingers. His hips moved, but only just into her grip, tiny pulses that were more erotic to her than hard thrusts because she knew how badly he wanted to stay in control and he couldn’t entirely master himself. But he could master her.
“Don’t stop,” he ordered.
“No, sir.” She could tell Søren hadn’t come in some time. Fluid dripped from the tip onto her hand and she massaged it back into the frenulum. His chest rose in sharp breaths. It pleased her to be able to distract him from his own pain for a few minutes. It soothed her aching conscience. She knew leaving him had been the right thing to do, and she knew going back to him would be a