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  With rough hands and with no regard to her comfort, Søren stripped her naked. Her clothes ended up on the floor with her shoes. As Søren pulled his own shirt off, Nora reached up to touch his chest and stomach. This body, how she had missed it. This long, lean, indomitable body that she had craved like the drowning craved air.

  As her hands touched the sensitive sides of his rib cage, he grabbed her wrists and pushed them into the bed over her head. He did it hard enough to hurt her and she released a cry of true pain. Søren closed his eyes, inhaled, breathing in her pain. Her suffering. His oxygen. She bit his chest over his heart, giving pain for pain.

  While he held her pinned to the mattress, he sucked her nipples. They were hard already but his hot wet mouth made them ache and throb. His knees edged her legs open wider. Blood rushed through her, pounding in her veins, in her lungs, in her hips. She begged to be allowed to touch him again, but he kept her imprisoned against the bed, unable to lift her hands held in his iron grasp. She would have bruises on her forearms.

  God, she had missed this.

  Søren moved down her body, kissing her sides, her stomach. Heat radiated from his mouth all through her. There would be no escape. He held her down with his hands but she stayed there because of her heart.

  Without warning Søren turned her, pushing her onto her stomach. She felt the bed move. He stood at the foot, holding her ankle in his hand, tying it to the bedpost with a length of rope. He tied the other ankle to the opposite bedpost. She tried to push her legs together but couldn’t. They were trapped, held open three feet wide.

  She heard him undressing. He moved quickly, as impatient as she. She heard other sounds—he took a flogger off the wall and something else, too. A cane? A crop? Didn’t matter. It was all the same to her.

  The bed moved again. He knelt between her thighs. The first blow of the flogger fell right in the center of her back. The second blow struck the same spot. The third hit her harder than the first two combined. But between the fourth and the fifth brutal strike, Søren entered her. She was wet from Kingsley’s expert ministrations, but it still burned going in. Her whimper of pain didn’t stop him nor did she want it to. Søren pushed in again, all the way in, and she arched her back to receive him fully. When he was as deep as he could be in this position, he flogged her again.

  It was a special torture to be flogged while being fucked. Pleasure warred with pain. One would gain ground over the other before the other took control of the field. Nora dug her fingers deep into the black sheets and rocked her hips into the bed. She felt a flood of wetness bathing him and coating her thighs. He moved easily in her now and she groaned. His every movement sent her reeling. Her vision swam. Her muscles clenched and released, clutching at him inside her. He was still flogging her, but the pleasure had won the battle against the pain. All she felt was him embedded inside her. All she wanted was for him to fuck her as if he owned her.

  Nora heard another sound, the sound of a flogger landing on the floor. She felt his hands flat on her battered back and he slid them upward to her hair. He dug both hands into the waves, lifting her hair and baring the back of her neck to him. Then he bit down hard into her neck, clutching her with his teeth. No conscience, no consideration. Only brute animal fucking.

  The pounding seemed to go on endlessly. Pinned down underneath him with her legs tied open, Nora could do nothing but take his merciless thrusts. She could have stopped him with a safe word, of course, but that was the last thing she wanted. Once he came and she came it would be over and then she would hate him again. Once she let herself hate him again, that would be it. They would be done. Their bodies would part and they would part and that would be it.

  The end.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Søren slipped one hand under her body and found her clitoris. When he touched it she buried her face in the bed to mute her moans. It wasn’t fair he knew how to manipulate her pleasure this well. It wasn’t fair he knew her mind. It wasn’t fair that he knew she wanted this against her will and took her anyway. It wasn’t fair that she was glad he did. It wasn’t fair that God had given him a heart to love her and a second heart to love God. And it wasn’t fair he’d had to choose between the two. It wasn’t fair that she knew Søren would regret leaving the church for her. It wasn’t fair that the only way she could love him was by leaving him.

  But whoever said life was fair?

  She opened her eyes as Søren’s teeth released her neck. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled.

  “Jeg elsker dig, min lille en.”

  I love you, my Little One.

  Being called that name hurt worse than anything—worse than the flogging, worse than the fucking, worse than the teeth buried in her soft skin. He said it again as his fingertips worked her clitoris in that way he knew would bring her to the edge. Why did she have to love a priest? Of all the men in the world she could have loved it had to be him. He said it a third and fourth time, letting the words match the rhythm of his thrusts. She couldn’t escape the words or the name or his touch, so precise as if he could feel everything she felt. Could he also feel her anger at him? Could he feel her sorrow that he’d left her no choice but to leave? Could he feel her orgasm building and rising to the breaking point? When it broke, it broke hard, waves of pleasure radiating from her core through her entire body.

  Søren must have had the same thought she had, that once this mad interlude ended it might never happen again, because he held off coming longer than he ever had before. The pounding went on ceaselessly, so long she came again as hard as the first time. Harder as she dug her teeth into his arm to muffle her own cries.

  He tucked her hips up and rose over her. One hand rested on the side of her head to hold himself up while the other dug hard into her hair, holding her down and against the bed, immobile. His mouth caressed her naked shoulders, her back and her neck.

  “Where’s your collar?” he asked, between thrusts.

  “It’s gone. I threw it out.”

  “Liar.”

  He punished her lie with a vicious thrust she knew she deserved. Then he kissed her with a vicious kiss and she knew she deserved that, too.

  He was lost inside her. Into her ear he whispered beautiful words. She had no idea what they were because he spoke Danish, his first language. Was he confessing his love for her? His hatred of her? His need for her? His loneliness? It could be all of that or none of it. Maybe he was asking her to come back to him. If so it was good he spoke in another language so she wouldn’t have to answer. She knew how to say never in English.

  When neither of them could take any more, when the sex had become too much for either of them, he let go at last and came inside her, filling her with his semen and pulling out to leave her empty.

  “Eleanor?”

  She heard her name from far away. In the distance she sensed him unbuckling her ankles from the footboard.

  “Eleanor?”

  “That’s not my name anymore.”

  “Eleanor, you’re bleeding.”

  She rolled onto her back, came up on her elbows and looked down. Her thighs were red with blood and so was Søren.

  “Shit,” she said, half laughing. The spell of the moment broken in an instant. “Sorry about that.”

  “Did you start your period?”

  “I had an IUD put in a few days ago. They warned me this would happen. Sudden heavy bleeding. Thought I was wetter than usual.”

  The black-and-white coverlet beneath her bore a red stain the size of her hand.

  Søren pushed his fingers into her, and she winced as he found a sensitive spot. His eyes widened slightly.

  “Those are the strings,” she said. “My doctor said you could feel them in the beginning.”

  When he pulled his hand out his fingers were red.

  “You remember what happened the last time you bled on me?” he asked.

  “Are you going to make me wash the sheets in the bathtub again?” It wouldn’t surprise her in the least
if he did.

  “Not exactly.”

  As Nora ran the water in the bathtub, she had to laugh at herself. How embarrassingly easy it was to fall back into that old familiar pattern. He dominated her, she submitted to him, he hurt her, she let him. How could she ever truly break free of him when obeying him was as simple as breathing and running from him left her as breathless as choking?

  He’d allowed her to clean herself off first. Then she put on the black bathrobe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. It was a man’s robe and too big for her. When she bent to turn off the taps the robe fell down her shoulder. Søren pushed it back into place.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” she said.

  “What? Entice me with a show of skin? I have seen it before.”

  “I didn’t mean to do that.” She touched his chest. In a spot right over his heart she’d left a bite mark, a deep one. Deep enough to leave a bruise, not deep enough to make him bleed.

  “I assumed you were attempting to eat my heart out,” Søren said.

  “The thought had occurred to me.”

  “It was a fight, Eleanor. Couples fight. Apologies are made. Hurt feelings put aside. Life goes on.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that night. Not now or ever. What’s done is done. And life is going on. It’s going on without you.”

  “Yes,” he said, raising his hand stained with her blood. “Obviously we’re perfect strangers now.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Get in the fucking bathtub, Blondie.”

  He gave her a cold look.

  “Please and thank you? Sir?” she said, her tone mocking, but the words were enough to appease him. He stepped into the bathtub and sat down, stretching out his long legs so that his feet rested on the ledge by the taps and his back at the opposite end. Nora knelt on a thick folded towel at the side of the tub and soaked a soft bath sponge in the warm soapy water.

  “I am sorry,” she said, rubbing the sponge on his lower stomach over a patch of dried blood. “I didn’t plan going all Moses on you.”

  “Moses?”

  “You know, parting the Red Sea.”

  He gave her the blackest of black looks. “Are you in pain?” he asked, speaking to her like he’d speak to a child.

  “From the IUD, the kink or the sex?”

  “All of the above.”

  “A little cramping from the IUD. Normal. I have welts on the back of my knees and a bite bruise on the back of my neck. Not normal but not unheard of when one submits to a sadist.” Søren gave a little smirk. “And from the sex? I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t fine. She was far from fine. If her hands hadn’t been too busy with the sponge, Søren would have seen they were shaking.

  “Fine? Really?”

  “A little sore. I think you fucked me a whole hour. Were you feeling a little...pent up?” she asked, casually but not.

  “Is that your way of asking me if I’ve slept with anyone since you left me?”

  “Just curious.”

  “No, I haven’t. Relieved? Or disappointed?”

  “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know how I felt?” She’d been with other people since leaving him and she could hardly hold him to a different standard than she held herself. Yet she knew they were different. She had sex for fun. It was a casual necessity, like eating lunch. For Søren sex was anything but casual. And he could go for years without it. She fucked when she wanted it. He fucked when he meant it. Long ago she’d asked him when and how he decided to break his vows—all the nights with her, that one night with Kingsley...he’d had both of them since becoming a priest, since taking a vow of chastity. If he was happy to fuck them, why not someone else?

  I break my vows when I know I can justify it before God and know God will say, “I don’t blame you.” When God looks at you and He looks at Kingsley, something tells me that’s what He would say.

  When she stood before God and He asked her why she loved this priest and had given her body to him, she had a feeling God would say the same to her.

  Søren exhaled, a pensive sound. “Yes, actually, I would.”

  “Then... I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel right now.”

  “If it’s any comfort to you, neither do I.”

  Søren raised a wet hand from the water and caressed her cheek with it. Water ran down her face and into the water like tears.

  It shouldn’t have been so nerve-racking to do something as simple as scrub the blood off Søren. But he watched her every move intently and without speaking as she lathered her hands in soap and ran them gently over his lower stomach and penis. Did he see how much it affected her, being this intimate with his naked body? The first time she’d touched him in a sexual way, she’d been seventeen years old and he’d put her hand on his erection. They were at his family home for his father’s funeral. She’d snuck out of her room and found him in his childhood bedroom. They’d told each other secrets in the dark, and when she couldn’t wait another minute more for him to see her as a woman who wanted him and not a girl needing his protection, she’d taken her clothes off for him and offered him her body. His pleasure meant her pain. His pain meant her pleasure. He hurt her because it aroused him; when it aroused him he pleasured her. The cycle went on and on, repeating itself night after night. She’d come to crave pain like Pavlov’s dog had learned to salivate at the ringing of a bell because it signaled feeding time.

  She’d broken off her leash. If only she could break the bell...

  Until then she could pretend. She pretended she was still his and nothing bad had ever happened. She ran the sponge over his broad shoulders, down his strong chest and flat stomach. She lathered her hands again and washed his feet, massaging the soles and ankles, digging her fingers between his toes until she forced a smile from him.

  “How can such a beautiful man with an otherwise perfect body have such weird feet?” she asked.

  “My feet are not ‘weird.’”

  “Your big toes are crooked.”

  “It happens to runners.”

  “Your toes are weird. If that’s what happens to runners, it’s yet another reason for me never to go running.”

  “You ran from me.”

  Nora dropped the sponge into the water.

  “Run from you? That’s funny.” She’d been bleeding so hard she could barely walk. It had taken everything she had to stand on her two feet in front of him, and it took more than she had to walk out his door. She’d fainted in his bathroom from hunger since she couldn’t keep any food down. She had literally crawled on the floor of his house when he’d broken her riding crop, and she’d had to pick up the pieces.

  “I saw a nature show once when I was kid,” she began, keeping her voice as low as possible. “There was a wolf caught in a trap and he gnawed his own foot off to get free. It was awful. I couldn’t imagine being so desperate to be free I’d amputate a part of my own body. I couldn’t understand the wolf. Now I do.”

  “Are you so desperate to be free of me you’d gnaw your own leg off?”

  “I’m saying leaving you was as easy as gnawing my own leg off.”

  “My Little One...”

  “It’s been over a year, Søren. I’m not the same person I was. A lot can happen in a year.”

  “I realize this. Apparently in one year my submissive decided she was a dominatrix.”

  “I didn’t decide I was a dominatrix. I am a dominant. I want to make money. You put the two together and you get dominatrix.”

  “You aren’t a dominant, Eleanor.”

  “Then what am I, since you seem to be the expert on me?”

  “You’re mine. That’s what you are.”

  She shook her head. “Not anymore, Søren. I’m doing this. I know you don’t like it. I know you don’t agree with it, but I’m doing it.”

  “There are easier ways to hurt me than by becoming a dominatrix.”

  “That you think I’m doing this to hurt you is all the proof I need
that leaving you was the right thing to do. You know I have this part of me. You know this is who I am. You’ve always known. Pretending it’s not there won’t make it go away. If you’d let me explore my dominant side instead of ignoring it, hiding it from me...I might never have left. But you forbade me from seeing Kingsley, one of your precious three nonnegotiables. God, me and Kingsley. Have you ever considered he might be one of my nonnegotiables, too?”

  “He’s using you to get back at me. I’d choose your nonnegotiables more wisely.”

  “Fine. Then I choose me. You and Kingsley both can go fuck yourselves. Or each other. God knows you both want to bad enough.”

  She stood up and dropped the sponge into the bathtub.

  “You’re clean,” she said. “You can get out whenever you want.”

  Søren didn’t stand up like she expected him to, not at first. No, first he sank down into the water, submerging himself entirely. When he came back up, it was with a cascade of water. As he stood he ran his hands through his hair, slicking it back as water poured off and down him, licking every inch of his six-foot-four frame—his strong thighs corded with runner’s muscles, his narrow hips, his taut stomach and back that seemed to go on forever when one kissed it from hip to neck and down again like she had so many nights after they finished making love. And his eyelashes, naturally dark, darkened even more when wet and his blond hair turned to shining gold. Wet and naked he was magnificent and shameless, and he was putting on this show all for her benefit. And it worked because she did want him so much it hurt, and when it hurt she wanted him, because when she wanted him it hurt. Somewhere in the distance she heard Pavlov’s bell ringing. This time she ignored the sound.

  “Remember when I said I would hate you again later?” Nora asked, handing him a thick white towel.

  “Yes.”

  “Later is now.”

  14

  Reign of Terror

  NORA DRESSED IN her own bedroom. It took an act of will to go back to the playroom and face him. At least she had one tiny victory under her belt. He’d tempted her with his body, and she’d walked away. Miracles did happen.