Once upon a time, Nora and Søren made a fateful deal—if he gave her everything, she would give him forever.

The time has finally come to keep their promises.

Out of money and out of options after her yearlong exile, Eleanor Schreiber agrees to join forces with Kingsley Edge, the king of kink. After her first taste of power as a Dominant, Eleanor buries her old submissive self and transforms into Mistress Nora, the Red Queen. With the help of a mysterious young man with a job even more illicit than her own, Nora squares off against a cunning rival in her quest to become the most respected, the most feared Dominatrix in the Underground.

While new lovers and the sweet taste of freedom intoxicate Nora, she is tempted time and time again by Søren, her only love and the one man who refuses to bow to her. But when Søren accepts a new church assignment in a dangerous country, she must make an agonizing choice—will the queen keep her throne and let her lover go, or trade in her crown for Søren’s collar?

With a shattering final confession, the last link in the chain is forged in The Original Sinners saga. It’s the closing chapter in a story of salvation, sacrifice and the multitude of scars we collect in the name of ecstasy—and love.

Praise for Tiffany Reisz:

‘The Siren is one of those books which has the amazing ability to create the scene in full colour in your mind’s eye – this is no small skill on the author’s part.’ http://carasutra.co.uk/

‘A beautiful, lyrical story … The Siren is about love lost and found, the choices that make us who we are … I can only hope Ms Reisz pens a sequel!’ —Bestselling author Jo Davis

‘The Original Sinners series certainly lives up to its name: it’s mind-bendingly original and crammed with more sin than you can shake a hot poker at. I haven’t read a book this dangerous and subversive since Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.’ —Andrew Shaffer, author of Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love

‘Tiffany Reisz is a smart, artful and masterful new voice in erotic fiction. An erotica star on the rise!’

—Award-winning author Lacey Alexander

‘Daring, sophisticated and literary … exactly what good erotica should be.’

—Kitty Thomas, author of Tender Mercies

‘Dazzling, devastating and sinfully erotic, Reisz writes unforgettable characters you’ll either want to know or want to be. The Siren is an alluring book-within-a-book, a story that will leave you breathless and bruised, aching for another chapter with Nora Sutherlin and her men.’ —Miranda Baker, author of Bottoms Up and Soloplay

‘The best erotica either leaves slut-marks on your back or a bruise on your heart. The Siren does both and I wish I’d written it.’ —Scarlett Parrish, author of By the Book

‘You will most definitely feel strongly for these characters … This was an amazing story and I’m so happy that it’s not over. I can’t wait to jump back into Nora’s world.’

http://ladysbookstuff.blogspot.co.uk

TIFFANY REISZ’s books inhabit a sexy, shadowy world where erotica, romance and gothic literature meet and do immoral and possibly illegal things to each other. The first book in her international bestselling series The Original Sinners was named the Romantic Times 2012 Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Erotic Romance. She is a very bad Catholic. Visit her website www.tiffanyreisz.com for news, gossip and wholly inappropriate bedtime stories.

Tiffany Reisz

www.spice-books.co.uk

Dedicated to …

The Author of the Universe

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

Extract

Copyright

“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish’d and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.”

—Søren Kierkegaard,

The Journals of Kierkegaard

1

The First Wedding

NOW, THIS WAS a happy ending.

It was all Nora had hoped for, all she had prayed for, and she couldn’t stop grinning as the music began—Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary.

She smiled even wider when two elderly gentlemen in traditional servant’s livery opened the great oak double doors with a flourish befitting the exalted occasion.

After one deep breath, Nora stepped through the open doors and did the one thing she’d sworn she would never do—she walked down the aisle of a church in a wedding dress toward Søren, who waited for her at the altar.

He hadn’t seen her for hours and this moment was Søren’s first look at her in her wedding dress. It had been twenty years since she’d walked down an aisle toward Søren as a bridesmaid in a wedding he’d performed. Even now, halfway down the aisle, she could see the look in his eyes, a look that said the twenty years had been worth the wait.

As Nora took her place at Søren’s right hand, she leaned in close and whispered, “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Why?” he asked as the two hundred assembled guests rose to their feet when the groom made his entrance into the Great Hall that had been converted into a church for the wedding.

“You’re on duty,” she reminded him. “Father Stearns.”

“Can I look at you like that after the wedding?”

She smiled at him as the two grooms joined hands in front of Søren.

“Today you can do anything you want.”

“Watch out. I’ll hold you to that promise,” he said as the music faded into silence leaving her unable to retort. She swallowed her words, composed her face and tried not to cry when Søren began to speak.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man, Michael Luka Dimir, and this man, Griffin Randolfe Fiske, in holy matrimony. May your love be blessed by the sacrament of marriage and may we all who are gathered as witnesses rejoice together in the beauty of your commitment to each other as we would bask in the warmth of the sun...”

Nora made it three whole minutes into the ceremony before the tears started flowing. Luckily all eyes were on Michael and Griffin as they spoke their vows and made their promises. Once upon a time in a very different setting, Nora and Søren had made promises to each other and she wore those promises around her neck in the form of wedding bands engraved with two words—Forever and Everything. They weren’t wedding vows but they had bound them together nonetheless. What was a sacrament but the outward sign of inner grace? If she and Søren loving each other and staying together despite all they’d been through, all they’d put each other through for twenty-three years, wasn’t a miracle, she didn’t know what was.

“Therefore,” Søren said as the service drew to its conclusion, “now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Søren spoke with authority and power, as if the words themselves could bind hearts together.

“I now pronounce you husband...and husband.”

Griffin took Michael’s face in his hands and kissed him.

And kissed him.

And kissed him.

A kiss of love and of lust and of complete and utter devotion, it went on so long the assembled witnesses started to titter, then giggle, then laugh. They kissed until Søren cleared his throat not once, but twice, louder the second time than the first. When even that didn’t put a stop to their rather protracted display of public affection, Søren uttered a low “For heaven’s sake, Griffin, people have places to be. Can’t you save the consummation until later?”

Griffin paused long enough to look at Søren and answer, “Nope,” before returning to the kiss with gusto.

Nora applauded him. Good man. Don’t let anyone tell you to stop kissing for such a silly reason as two hundred people watching. What better place in the world was there to be than here, watching true lovers kiss? One didn’t see such a thing every day. When witnessing a miracle, one should never hurry it along, for it’ll be gone all too soon and who knows when one will see another miracle in one’s lifetime?

Time stopped with that kiss. The image imprinted itself upon Nora’s mind like a tintype photograph... She stood at Søren’s right as Michael’s mistress of honor—no one would have believed her a maid or a matron, so mistress it was—and Kingsley stood to the left of Søren as Griffin’s best man. The wedding was held in the Great Hall of the thousand-year-old castle. The vibrant blue walls gleamed like polished azurite in the glow of a dozen brass-and-crystal chandeliers. Candles and flowers stationed on the ebony oak floors encircled the wedding party. Kingsley, Griffin and Søren all wore kilts. Griffin’s and Kingsley’s were red, white and green, the tartan of his mother’s ancestors. Søren’s kilt was black and blue, the traditional clergy tartan of Scotland and bruises. Upon request and because she couldn’t tell Griffin no when he’d asked so nicely, she’d worn a Scottish wedding dress, tiered white silk and lace peeking out from under a corseted red-and-green tartan overlay. Michael had forgone the kilt—not his style, he said—and chosen a hip Rat Pack–era tuxedo with a black shirt and black jacket. A better-looking married couple she’d never seen in her life and not because they were so beautiful, although they were, but because their love was true and pure and hard-won. Every act of love was an act of courage, but for Michael and Griffin it was especially so. The world didn’t often reward those who loved outside the lines. Nora had learned this lesson the hard way.

The kiss went on so long the guests rose to their feet and applauded.

Griffin turned to the masses and issued an order.

“Less applauding,” he yelled at his guests. “More kissing!”

“No one has to tell me twice,” Kingsley said, holding out his hand to Juliette, the mother of his daughter with another one on the way, and the most beautiful woman in attendance by far. Laughing, Juliette rose to her feet and put her hand in Kingsley’s. He dipped her back and gave her an old Hollywood kiss.

“Shall we?” Søren asked.

“In front of two hundred people?”

“Why not?”

“Is that a rhetorical question or do you really want me to list all eight hundred reasons why not?”

Søren answered by taking her face in his hands and kissing her—a kiss like Communion, like wine on her tongue. She heard a few gasps of shock from the assembly followed by laughter and applause. Apparently this was the first time they’d seen a Catholic priest kissing a woman. It was a first for Nora as well, being kissed by Søren in front of so many people they didn’t know. Yes, Kingsley had forced all the staff and the guests to sign non-disclosure agreements, but that was no guarantee word wouldn’t leak that a certain well-respected Jesuit priest passionately kissed a fairly notorious dominatrix at a wedding in Scotland. And not just any wedding—a same-sex wedding. Søren could be laicized for performing a same-sex marriage. He’d get in less trouble if he were caught by the Pope himself sodomizing her in the Tomb of Saint Peter. Not that she’d ever had that fantasy—not very often anyway. Officiating the service had been Søren’s gift to Michael, whom he loved like a son. When Nora had reminded him of the very real danger of excommunication if caught, Søren had replied, Michael asked me. It’s my honor to do it. Since Søren was a man of honor that had been the end of it.

But it wouldn’t be the end of it.

Søren was a Jesuit priest who had kissed a woman in front of two hundred people and performed a same-sex wedding. A kiss plus a wedding plus what would happen tonight at nine o’clock added up to one very simple conclusion.

Søren’s days as a priest were numbered.

2

Nora’s Last Confession

NORA PULLED BACK from the kiss and saw a dozen or more couples kissing, including Griffin and Michael, who were still kissing.

And.

Still.

Kissing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Griffin,” Nora said, reaching in front of Søren for Kingsley’s hand. “You two make out as long as you want. The King and I are going to get a drink.”

Nora gave Kingsley the end of the long plaid ribbon she’d tied around her bouquet. As they walked on either side of the happy couple—still kissing, of course—they lifted their hands and passed the sash over their heads like a wedding bower. Behind her she heard Søren speaking to the crowd of guests.

“I’d suggest everyone retreat to the banquet hall,” he said in his most authoritarian clergy voice. “It seems the groom and groom might be a while.”

Kingsley took her arm in his to escort her down the long aisle to the door.

“I heard we have you to thank for the wedding,” Kingsley said, kissing the back of her hand.

Nora winced. “Michael had a little case of cold feet. I beat it out of him.”

“Literally?”

“It took a solid hour of flogging followed by an hour of wax-play. Kid came so hard he almost passed out. Two-hour nap, and he was ready to get married. I love saving the day,” she said. “I’m so good at it.”

They waited in the foyer and soon they were joined by Michael’s mother and sister, Griffin’s parents and three brothers, and Søren. Juliette, wearing a red gown to match Kingsley’s kilt, passed Céleste into his arms. And when Michael and Griffin finally emerged from the Great Hall it was to a hail of applause and a shower of rice. Céleste was the best rice thrower of them all, Kingsley assured his little girl. Michael’s lips appeared swollen from so much passionate kissing and his pale cheeks were flushed, but Nora had to admit, she’d never seen him or Griffin ever look happier. Today was a beautiful day to be in love.

The guests who greeted the couple with hugs and kisses were a hodgepodge of friends and family, or as Kingsley called them, “the freaks and the straights.” Mistress Irina, the first dominatrix Kingsley had trained for The 8th Circle, had sat next to Michael’s aunt and uncle during the ceremony. Michael’s sister Erin had borrowed a tissue from Alfred, Griffin’s white-haired butler, who’d had to surreptitiously wipe his own eyes a time or two during the ceremony. Nora’d been a little surprised he’d come all the way to Scotland for Griffin’s wedding. When she had asked him why he’d made the long trip from upstate New York, he’d answered, “He’s a man-child and a deviant, and he has more money than sense, young lady. So of course I’m here for his wedding to his shamefully younger boy toy. It’s the only sensible thing he’s ever done in his life.” Then he’d stalked off before Nora could hug him or worse, cry in his arms, which would have been an unforgivable affront to his dignity.

“Good ceremony, Father,” she said, smiling up at Søren. “I loved the homily.”

“Thank you. The Lord gives me good material to work with. I suppose He deserves most of the credit.” Leave it to a Jesuit to be simultaneously pious and smug.

“Oops, picture time,” she said. “I should go.”

The photographer was already attempting to corral the wedding party back into the Great Hall. Søren started back into the hall with her.

“You can’t be in the pictures,” she reminded him.

“Michael expects me to be in at least one of the photographs for him and Griffin.”

“Søren...this is not a good idea.”

“Michael’s like a son to me,” he said. “When you have a child, you make sacrifices for them.”

“All right. Pictures it is. In for a penny, in for a pounding, right?” She took his hand in hers. His fingers trembled, and she met his eyes with a question.

“I’m fine,” he said before she had the chance to ask.

“It’s fine if you aren’t fine.”

“I am fine.”

“Your hand is shaking.”

“This kilt is...breezy.”

“It’s like a hundred feet of wool.”

“This castle has an updraft. I’m not used to inclement weather in that region.”

“It’s your own fault for going regimental.”

“Kingsley was. And when in Rome...”

“How do you know Kingsley’s going full Scotsman?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you actually go running this morning or did you two play a game of hide the claymore?”

“I ran,” he said. “Before.”

“I knew it.” She took both of his hands in hers now and interlocked their fingers.

Søren glanced at a grandfather clock and back at her.

“Five thirty,” he said. “Three and a half more hours.”

“It’ll go fast,” she said, smiling a hopeful smile. “Won’t it?”

“It will be the longest three and a half hours of my life.”

For Nora, too.

“They won’t need me at the reception which isn’t a reception. I can wait with you,” she said.

“Thank you.” He kissed her on the forehead. “What would I ever do without my Little One?”

Nora swallowed an unexpected lump in her throat.

“I promise, you won’t ever have to find out.”

Reluctantly she let go of Søren’s hands as the photographer led her and Kingsley toward Michael and Griffin. The first pictures were of the groom and groom, best man and mistress of honor.

Kingsley held out his arm for her and she took it, grateful for his company in the secret they shared.

“How is he?” Kingsley asked.

“He is exactly how you think he is,” she said.

“Never so scared in his life?”

“White-knuckle petrified.”

Kingsley kissed her cheek. “I know how he feels.”

Pictures took half an hour. Kingsley promised to make her and Søren’s excuses to anyone who asked where they were. Michael and Griffin could be told the truth, of course. They would understand. Michael had agreed to a big wedding with one stipulation—no official wedding reception. A party? Sure. Fine. Michael, young artist that he was, found manufactured moments like the ceremonial cake-cutting offensive. The reception was only for people to eat and drink and dance. Once the wedding was over, the wedding party was free to get up to whatever depraved shenanigans they wanted to. And as she and Kingsley were the wedding party, depraved shenanigans were a given.

Nora went looking for Søren and wasn’t the least surprised to find him in the castle’s small stone-and-wood chapel. She stepped inside and strode toward him.

The sun streamed through an octagonal window and cast eight-sided light onto Søren, turning his blond hair into gold in a moment of pure alchemy. In a breath, in an instant, she was fifteen years old again, and he twenty-nine, and he looked exactly like he did the first time she’d laid eyes on him. The sunlight melted the years between then and now. Her hand trembled so it was a miracle she didn’t drop her glass of red wine.

Her footsteps on the stone floor alerted Søren to her presence. He lifted his head and turned back to her. The mask of composure had fallen, and she saw anguish in his eyes. She set her glass of wine on the altar and went to him, gathering him in her arms, holding him to her heart and resting her chin on the top of his head.

“How are you, my sir?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, looking up at her. “There have been days in my life where I’ve woken up not knowing that later on that very day, my entire life would change. The day I met Kingsley, the day I met you. Usually you don’t know the day or the hour. Today I do.”

“Remember that story I wrote about Queen Esther when I was in high school?”

“How could I forget it? I must have read it a thousand times.”

“You did?”

“An erotic story written by a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl I was desperately and unrepentantly in love with and featuring a hero who looked suspiciously like me? I read it until the ink faded and the pages crumbled.”

It embarrassed Nora how much it pleased her that Søren had loved her story that much.

“I’ll have you know I did not base King Xerxes on you.”

“He was blond. A blond Persian.”

“Poetic license.” She sat at his side in the pew. “Queen Esther looked suspiciously like me, as well. Anyway...writing that story changed my life. I’d never written anything like that before. All I was trying to do was flirt with you and now twenty-two years later I’ve made an entire career from writing. I didn’t know my life would change that day by writing one little story. And yet...here we are. All thanks to you.”

“And Queen Esther. And Queen Eleanor.”

“I’m not really a queen.”

“You’ve always been a queen in my eyes. Especially now.”

“I can’t believe I’m wearing a wedding dress. How do I let Griffin talk me into these things?”

“It’s exquisite. You’re exquisite.”

Søren kissed her lightly on the lips. His mouth shivered against hers. Søren was a man of quiet depth, as if he kept a secret second heart locked away in a glass case. It would explain how much he felt and how strongly and yet how rarely such feelings were allowed to escape from captivity. Sometimes before they made love he would cut her skin with a sharp paper-thin blade and the act was so intimate and harrowing it would leave him shaking. It scared him to take her life in his hands, and yet it was at such times they felt closest to each other. She knew his trembling now was for a similar reason.

“Do you forgive me, Little One?” Søren asked.

“What mortal sin have you committed recently?”

“You know my sins better than I do.”

“Yes. Which is why I tell you there is no need to beg my forgiveness for anything.”

“You have a forgiving heart,” Søren said. “I have always admired that about you.”

“I know myself. I know my own weaknesses and failures. Jesus was always so kind to sinners and so cruel to hypocrites.”

“Am I a hypocrite?” Søren asked.

“You’re human.”

“You don’t have to be insulting, Eleanor.”

She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. He sighed so her whole body moved with his. Somewhere behind and above them a bell rang. Six times the bell chimed. Six o’clock and all was well.

Three hours and counting.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Søren said.

“What is?”

“Just yesterday Michael was fifteen years old and had barely healed scars on his wrists from when he tried to kill himself in my church. And today...today he’s twenty-one and married. Michael. Married.” He looked at her and half laughed.

“I know. Crazy, isn’t it? I swear yesterday I was fifteen, and I saw my new priest for the very first time, and loved him from the moment I saw him, and knew I’d love him until I died. Today I’m thirty-eight, and I still love him and know I’ll love him forever.” The days danced and flashed around her like fireflies on a summer’s night. “Where is the time going?” she asked him. “How did it all go by so fast? And what if it’s all gone tomorrow?”

“We live each day like it’s our last. But not by running about wildly, attempting to cram every possible experience into one day. Instead...every day we should make our peace with God and each other. Say what needs to be said and not leave it for another time. If I knew I would die tomorrow I’d spend all night telling you and Kingsley how much I love you both, and I wouldn’t let God take me until I was certain you knew I meant every word. I would sing it to you like the angels sing praise to God in heaven—unceasingly.”

“We know. Kingsley and I, we already know.”

“But I would still tell you,” he said softly. “Even if you didn’t need to hear it, I would have to tell you.”

She held him close again, kissed his cheek, his forehead, like a mother kissing a scared child. And he was scared. She could feel it in every touch.

“Talk to me. Distract me. Help me get through these hours.”

“Will you hear my confession?” Nora asked. She turned and met his eyes. How she loved those eyes, the strength and color of steel. “This could be my last chance to confess to you, after all.”

“I won’t leave the priesthood. I promised you I wouldn’t.”

“You were in the wedding pictures. You performed a same-sex marriage. You kissed me in front of two hundred wedding guests, half of them we don’t know. You can tell me all you want that it’s fine, that it won’t matter, but we both know those are not the actions of a man who is planning on being a priest for much longer.”

“I have to tell them. Some things shouldn’t be secrets.”

“You tell them the truth, and they will kick you out.”

“Possibly. I’ve made choices, difficult ones, but I did it in full knowledge of the consequences. Nothing stays the same forever, after all.”

“That’s not true. My love for you is forever. I made that promise, and I will keep it. But tomorrow or next week or next month you might not be a priest anymore. So please...hear my confession and absolve me? One last time?”

He rose from the pew and moved a chair from the side of the chapel and set it in front of her. From the leather sporran of his kilt, he pulled a leather case, unzipped it and unfurled a purple sash. He kissed it and draped it around his neck and over his shoulders. He sat in the chair and pressed his palms together. Nora looked at his hands and saw they were now steady and still.

She smiled and looked up to the octagonal window. The sun would set in under three hours. By nightfall everything could change.

“First of all,” she began, “I’m confessing these sins to you because I committed them against you and only you can absolve me of them.”

“What are your sins?”

Nora loved Søren. This was an incontrovertible fact of the universe, strong as gravity, inevitable as sunrise. She’d told him almost everything there was to tell him about their years apart, everything but this. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him but she didn’t want to keep the truth from him anymore. No more secrets. No more lies. Nothing between them anymore and never again.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she began her confession. “When we were apart there were two times I almost came back to you and didn’t.”

“Two?” Søren looked at her, wide-eyed and stunned. Usually she loved shocking him, it was such a feat. Not today. “Why didn’t you?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

Then Søren said to her the two words she’d once said to him that had changed her life.

“Tell me.”

3

Power Games

New York City 2005

ELLE HAD NEVER felt more powerless in her life.

A strong statement from a woman who’d been the property of a sadist and dominant for her entire adult life. She’d knelt at his feet, called him “sir,” obeyed his every order, submitted to his every desire, sexual and sadistic. Not even with her forehead on his bedroom floor, a collar around her neck and a flogger on her back had Elle felt this trapped and impotent. With Søren she could have stopped it all with her safe word. What would she have to say to stop it now?

Elle was broke and homeless, had no job and no idea where to go if Kingsley kicked her out of his house. There was no safe word that could save her tonight. So when Kingsley sat on his desk in front of her in the middle of a cool spring night and said to her, “I want you to become a dominatrix,” she didn’t laugh in his face. She didn’t have the luxury anymore of laughing in Kingsley’s face about anything. He had all the power, and she had none. An unusual and unpleasant sensation. She resolved never to feel it again.

“A dominatrix?” Elle repeated after Kingsley had made his royal proclamation. “Me?”

“A dominatrix.” Kingsley pointed at her chest. “You.”

“So...you want me...to beat people up...for money?”

“Non. Not for money.” Kingsley waved his pointing finger in front of her face in that annoying French way he had of tsk-tsking her. She almost bit that finger off. Instead she behaved herself because she was too scared not to. “For a lot of fucking money, Elle.”

“How much fucking money?” she asked.

“When I’m done training you, you’ll be making one to five thousand dollars an hour.”

If Elle had water in her mouth at that moment she would have spit it all over the front of Kingsley’s barely buttoned white shirt.

“A thousand dollars an hour?”

“Minimum,” Kingsley said.

“Dominatrixes don’t usually make that kind of money.”

Mistress Irina, Kingsley’s Russian sadist, worked the top end of the scale. And she made five hundred dollars an hour—a thousand an hour when the client demanded very special and intimate attention that would likely lead to hospitalization. The extra fee was for all the paperwork involved.

“But you will. You will be offering a service others will not.”

“Sex?”

“Sex would hardly warrant five thousand an hour. Almost anyone can lie on their back, close their eyes and think of France.”

“It’s England.”

“Why would anyone think of England during sex?”

“Forget it. Tell me what I’m doing.”

“You know what you’re doing,” Kingsley said. “Exactly what you want to be doing except you’ll be doing it for money.”

“A lot of fucking money,” she said, looking up at Kingsley. He sat on the edge of his desk with one foot on the arm of the chair, gazing down at her waiting for her answer.

“This is not a good idea, King,” she said, keeping her voice even, not saying yes or no to his offer.

“It is not a good idea, no. It is the best idea. Chérie...you could buy anything you want,” Kingsley whispered. She knew that tone. He was seducing her. “In a year you’ll be rich. You remember Mistress Felicia? You should have seen her house in Bedford. I’ve known minor royalty who didn’t live as well as she did. Rich men gave her diamonds the way poor men give girls daisies—by the dozens.”

A house. That would be nice. A home of her own. Not a room in someone else’s life. Her own home that was in her name that no one could take away from her.

“I still don’t know why you think men will pay me so much money,” she said.

“Mistress Irina works from her dungeon, sometimes from the town house. They come to her, her clients do. But you...you will go where the money is. Clients who wouldn’t dare set foot into a club or a dungeon? You will go to them.”

“Is that safe?”

“Is life safe?”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Kingsley smiled. “Is there anything worth doing that is safe?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve read a lot of books worth reading. Never gotten hurt doing that before.”

“You’ve never gotten rich doing it, either.”

“King, I can’t... No. This is absurd. My entire adult life—and most of my teenage life—I’ve been a submissive.”

“You know what is more absurd? You sitting there and pretending you haven’t wanted this for your entire adult life. And most of your teenage life, too. I knew you then. I remember...”

“What? What do you remember?”

“The first time I saw you, you nearly gave a boy a concussion, because he committed the unforgivable sin of annoying you when you weren’t in the mood to be annoyed. He was talking back to a priest and stood up. I saw you stretch out your leg and hook your boot under his chair and slide it aside right at the moment he tried to sit back down. He landed on the floor so hard I heard a crack and thought it was either a rib or his skull. And you...”

“I put my feet on his chest.”

“No, you put your boots on his chest and told him to shut the fuck up. That instant, I knew you were either going to grow up to be a dominatrix...or a sociopath. I was hard as a rock watching you and you were barely sixteen years old. I could come right now thinking of it.”

“You don’t really think I’m a sociopath, do you?”

“You have a conscience. But you know what they call a sociopath with a conscience?”

It sounded like the setup to a joke so Elle took the bait.

“No, what do they call a sociopath with a conscience?”

“They call her ‘Mistress.’”

Elle stood up from her chair and walked to the window behind Kingsley’s desk. She pushed back the curtains and gazed onto the dark streets. Even during the dead of night, New York still felt awake and alive. Last night she’d been in a convent in rural upstate New York where the world went to bed at seven and woke up at four and slept like a corpse in the hours between. And not a man in sight. Now she was alone in a room with a man she’d beaten last year, a man she’d burned and bruised and brutalized. And God, it had been fun, hadn’t it? More than fun, it had been her. For years, ever since she was a teenager, her sexual fantasies had involved dominating men, tying them up, tying them down and fucking them half to death. When she’d finally gotten her chance to try it with Kingsley, she’d been scared. She’d even cried at first from fear and confusion. But the moment she let go and let it happen, she felt like...

“I’ve seen her, Elle,” Kingsley said as he came to stand behind her. She was acutely aware of his body so close to hers. She hadn’t had sex with a man for over a year, since she ran away and hid out at the convent. Any other man might not have made her feel so much in such close quarters, but it was this man who’d put a riding crop in her hand, given her permission to destroy him. Oh, and she had destroyed him, and in the process, she’d destroyed herself. Her old self. She still hadn’t found her new self yet.

“Who have you seen?”

“You. The real you. I’ve seen her.”

“What does she look like?”

Kingsley sighed and smiled. “She’s beautiful. Dangerous. All eyes are on her when she walks into a room. Men fear her but not because she’s the enemy. They fear her because she alone can show them who they really are. They fear this knowledge but will pay any price for it.”

“Is she happy?” Elle asked.

“She’s powerful. She can make her own happiness when she wants it.”

Elle turned and looked up at him.

“Is she with someone?”

“She isn’t lonely,” Kingsley said. “Not this woman. This is a woman who can walk into any room, find the most handsome face in the crowd, look him in the eyes and know she will take him home with her on a leash.”

Elle laughed at the idea. Sounded good to her.

Kingsley caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers.

He narrowed his eyes at her, his expression inscrutable.

“What? What is it?” she asked.

“I missed you,” he said, blinking as if attempting to clear a fog. “Forgive me. I just realized that.”

“I missed you, too. I thought about writing you but I didn’t know what to say.”

Kingsley turned his head, didn’t look at her.

“It didn’t matter. I was gone, too. I came home two months ago.”

“You left, too? Why? When?”

He paused before answering. “The day after you left, I left. And you know why. If I stayed...”

If he’d stayed, they—Kingsley and Søren—would have found her and brought her home, and no door, even one that said “No Men Beyond This Point,” could have kept them from taking her back.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

She wanted to thank him for forgiving her even though she didn’t regret it. But instead she said, “Thanks for not kicking me out. Tonight, I mean. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did.”

Briefly she met his eyes. She’d didn’t say what she wanted to say, couldn’t say it. Last year she’d accidentally gotten pregnant and it had been Kingsley’s. As much as he wanted children, she wouldn’t have blamed him for rejecting her pleas for help, sending her out into the night again, banishing her from his life. She was in debt now and hated it, hated owing him for something as simple as letting her back in the house she’d once shared with him.

“Elle...” He took her by the shoulders and met her eyes. “When Søren first told me about you, I called you his princess. And he said, no, you were a queen. And I laughed. But last year when you and I were together, when you cut me and burned me and you did it all with a smile on your face... I was wrong. He was right. You are a queen. At least...you could be one. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“I want a job.”

“This is a job.”

“I want money so I can support myself.”

“These are all very boring answers. Tell me the truth. What do you really want?”

“I don’t want to feel like this anymore. That’s what I want.”

He furrowed his brow at her. “How do you feel?”

“Powerless,” she said. “I’m afraid to say no to your ‘job offer.’ What would I do if you kicked me out? Where would I go?”

“Back to him?”

“No. I can’t. That’s the last place I could go.”

Kingsley nodded, seeming to understand her predicament.

“I can’t turn down your offer, can I?” she asked.

“Do you want to? Truly?”

The question seemed sincere, not teasing as it might have been. He meant it—did she want to turn down his offer?

“What’s the alternative if I say no?” she asked.

Kingsley opened a desk drawer and in the desk drawer was his locked cashbox.

“There’s one hundred thousand dollars in there. It’s yours if you want it. Take it and walk out the door.” He held up the key to the cashbox. “You can live on that much money for five years if you’re careful. Go south where the winters are warm and rents are cheap. Get a job. Go back to school. Be a lawyer or a therapist or a schoolteacher. Marry a rich old man for all I care. Start your life over away from here, away from me.”

“I don’t want your charity.”

“It’s not charity. After Sam left, you worked as my assistant for years without any pay other than room and board. I give it to you free and clear with no strings attached. You’ve earned it. All I ask is that you never contact me again. I spent an entire year worrying over you, feeling like you were my responsibility and I’d failed you. I won’t do that again. I can’t. Take the money and go, and I will absolve myself of all responsibility. My conscience will be clear. At least where you’re concerned. Or...”

“Or I can work for you. Here. As a domme.”

“Oui. And working for me here as a domme you will have a job, you will have money and you will have power.”

“Power? Working for you? If I work for you, you’d have all the power.”

“You won’t be my employee. You’ll be my queen. You will be my queen and in a year you will have all the money and power you could possibly desire. One hundred thousand dollars and you go tonight and you never come back. Or you stay and work for me and one hundred thousand will seem like spare change to you in a year. Think about it. I’ll give you five minutes.”

Kingsley turned and walked out of the office just like that, leaving her all alone.

Once alone Elle sagged against the wall, the choice before her dizzying. A hundred grand and she could start a brand-new life far away from here. Her passport was in her bedroom. If Kingsley hadn’t thrown everything out, she could get it and leave the country. Money was power. Money was freedom.

But...it was a game, wasn’t it? she thought as she sat in Kingsley’s antique leather swivel chair behind the grand old Art Deco-era desk. Take the money and run? Or stay and work and make two, three, four times that amount?

And yet...it wasn’t really the money she cared about. Money was a means to an end and that end was power. She never wanted to feel the way she felt half an hour ago when she’d knocked on the front door of Kingsley’s town house knowing that if he shut the door in her face, she had nowhere else to go.

On Kingsley’s desk sat a chessboard with red pieces and white pieces. When she and Søren played, he took red and she took white. When she and Kingsley played, she took red and Kingsley took white. Chess...a strange old game. She wasn’t very good at it and neither was Kingsley. Søren alone had the gift for it. She’d asked him once why he made her play chess with him when she wasn’t good at it. He’d answered, “Chess teaches that actions have consequences and the wise man—or woman—will always look to the endgame...”

Elle picked up the red bishop. The bishop moved diagonally along a straight line. The poor pawn could move only a square at a time. Although if it were played well, it could become a queen. She put the bishop back on the board and picked up the red queen and the white king. The king was a strong piece, of course. The most important chess piece and the most vulnerable to attack. But the queen...the queen was the most powerful chess piece. More powerful than the king. And the queen could move any way she wanted...

Kingsley opened the door to his office.

“What’s your decision?” he asked standing on the threshold.

Elle placed the king and queen side by side on the chessboard and looked up at Kingsley.

“Let’s play.”

4

Three Ways to Be a Queen

“GOOD ANSWER,” KINGSLEY said, snapping his fingers at her to indicate she was to follow him. Elle stood up and followed him out of his office.

“Did you really think I’d take the money and run?” she asked as they walked down the hall side by side.

“In your shoes, I might have,” he admitted.

“I was tempted.”

“What made your decision? Him?”

“You,” she said. “I’m not done beating the shit out of you yet.”

Kingsley laughed and it was a sight to behold. His face was handsome, striking, even in repose, but when Kingsley Edge laughed it could drop a girl to her knees for more reasons than simple obeisance.

“Plus, being a queen sounds more fun than being the wife of some rich old man.”

“When I’m done with you, you will be the domme of many rich old men. Instead of you cooking and cleaning for them for free, you will beat them and use them and they’ll pay you for the privilege.”

“Sign me up for queenship, then.”

“It’s not that easy,” Kingsley said as they headed down the steps and to his private sitting room. “There are, in fact, only three ways to become a queen. Signing up isn’t one of them.”

“What are the three ways?” she asked. “Marry a king, I guess.”

“Will you marry me?” Kingsley asked.

“No offense, King, but I’d go back to the convent first.”

“And I’d join the priesthood before marrying you, as well. You and I are not husband-and-wife material. For each other or anyone else.”

Kingsley opened the door to the sitting room and Elle followed him inside. When she turned on the Tiffany lamp she saw nothing had changed in the room while she was at the convent. Same bookshelves filled with leather-bound classics in French and English. Same red velvet fainting couch. Same gilt-framed portraits of naked nymphs at play. Same everything and on a night of upheaval and change, the sameness comforted her.

“Sit,” Kingsley ordered.

Elle sat.

“Where was I?” he asked, stalking about the room like a caged wolf, more rather than less dangerous because of the cage. Energy contained is energy focused and she felt almost afraid to be alone in the room with someone this dangerous. She had been at the convent so long she didn’t know how to be alone with a man again.

“Three ways to be a queen.”

“Yes. First, you can marry a king. That won’t work in this instance. Mainly because I already have a consort, and she might not like it if I took on another.”

“Wait. What? You have a new girlfriend?” He’d been so heartbroken over his ex-girlfriend Charlie’s defection she never dreamed he’d take on another 24/7 submissive again.

“Not a girlfriend. Consort. Her name is Juliette, and she is the perfect submissive. She’s also currently chained by her ankle to my bed so I wouldn’t go in my bedroom for at least a week.”

“Chained to your bed? King, you can’t leave her alone chained to your bed. What if something happens to her?”

“I left a bell by the bed to ring if she needs me, and the phone, of course. And the key if she wants to unlock herself. She can get out the second she wants to get out. But I know her—she’ll stay there until I unlock her.”

“Can’t wait to meet her.”

“You’ll love her. I met her in Haiti.”

“Special, is she?” Elle asked.

Kingsley grinned ear to ear, a rare sight and a breathtaking one.

“I’m in love with her. I think she will be with me all my life.”

“It’s good to see you happy. You deserve that.”

“I most certainly do. Now, the second way to become a queen,” Kingsley said, taking a book down off the shelf and flipping through the pages, “is how I became a king. I claimed a territory, called myself a king, acted like a king, and soon everyone simply accepted that I was. But you will become a queen the third way.”

“Which is?”

“By deposing the current queen and taking her realm away from her.”

“There’s a queen? We have a queen? We never had a queen before. Jesus, how long have I been gone?”

“Too long,” Kingsley said with real feeling. They were so much alike, she and King. Too much alike. Impossible to be friends. Impossible to be enemies. But partners in crime? Yes, they could be that.

“Nature abhors a vacuum, they say. When I left and you left, it created a power vacuum. A dominatrix appeared on the scene and started scooping up the best and richest clients. Half of Irina’s clients deserted her. So did Mistress Vee’s.”

“Ballsy woman. I wouldn’t want to get on their bad sides.”

“She’s on my bad side. One of Irina’s clients came back to her, begging forgiveness and asking to be hers again. His new domme sent pictures she’d taken during their sessions to his wife. Thankfully he’d already told his wife about his submissive side, and she’d given him permission to explore with a professional. But it was a petty, vile thing she did, and she won’t get away with it. She keeps her clients in line through fear, not love and devotion. She abuses her power, and I won’t stand for that in my city.”

Elle winced. Kingsley had his reams of blackmail material on anyone in the city who mattered and many people who didn’t, but he used it to protect the citizens of his kingdom, not humiliate and ruin them for their proclivities. And to destroy his enemies, of course. Sounded like he’d made a new enemy.

“Who is she?” Elle asked. “What’s her name?”

Kingsley held the book in his hand out to her and pointed to an illustration of a beautiful woman in an eighteenth-century gown. Elle glanced at the title of the book and back at the page.

“Milady...” Elle said, studying the face of the woman on the page. The book was Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, and the woman in the illustration was the infamous Milady de Winter.

“That’s what your rival calls herself. No first name. No last name. Milady. Nothing else.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“I know nothing about her and not for lack of trying. She claims to be the illegitimate daughter of a Japanese geisha and an English lord. She also claims she went to Harvard but didn’t graduate because she was caught topping one of her professors. Oh, and she says she married an Italian knight—they do exist, by the way, I’ve met a few—but he was fifty years her senior and when he died, he left her a wealthy widow with a villa in Tuscany. And if any of that is true, I’ll eat my vest.”

“You think she’s lying?”

“I do but I have no proof of it. She’s careful. Even wears gloves all the time so no one can get her fingerprints. When in the city she stays in a hotel under an assumed name and pays in cash. That level of paranoia and fear makes me suspicious. But her story makes for wonderful marketing. Her English is flawless, not a trace of an accent, but she also speaks Japanese flawlessly with no trace of an accent. She’s well educated and intelligent. She’s also mysterious, seductive, painfully beautiful and terribly cruel. Men throw themselves at her. There are rumors she secretly tapes her sessions so that if a client wishes to leave her, he either pays her a huge sum of money for the tapes or he stays with her. Most of them stay.”

Kingsley snapped the book shut and placed it back on his shelf.

“Have you tried sleeping with her?” Elle asked. Knowing Kingsley as she knew him, it wasn’t an unreasonable question.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t met her yet.”

“Is she good?”

“Very good from what I hear.”

For Kingsley to call a domme good was quite a compliment. The man could take more pain and wanted more pain than anyone she’d ever known in the scene.

“But...”

“But what?” Elle asked. Kingsley took her chin in hand and tilted her face up to him. He smiled.

“You’ll be better.”

“Will I be better than him?”

“No one is better than he is at sadism,” Kingsley said. “But...”

“But?”

“You’ll be a close second. Considering you’re untrained, and he’s been studying pain since he was born, there’s a very good chance you could put even him on his knees.”

“I don’t ever want to see him again, on his knees or off.”

“You say that now.”

“I’ll say that tomorrow, too.”

“Very well. I will respect that. For now. He’s not my favorite person either, nor am I his. But ours is a small world. You can’t avoid him forever.”

“Have you seen him?”

“I have.”

“How is he?” she asked.

“Not the question someone usually asks about someone she hates.”

“I want to know he’s hurting.”

“Then you’ll be happy to hear he is.”

“Good,” she said. That made her happy. So happy. So fucking happy she wanted to cry. “He’s still a priest, isn’t he?”

“He is.”

“I was afraid he’d leave the church.”

“He didn’t.”

“That’s good then.” She exhaled a breath she’d been holding for over a year. “He... Whatever his faults, he’s a good priest, isn’t he?”

Kingsley put his hands on her shoulders.

“Yes, he’s a very good priest.”

“I’m glad I left, then. He...he would have regretted leaving the Jesuits for me. I know him. It was good I left him if he’s still a priest.”

She knew she was speaking to convince herself, not Kingsley.

“This life I’m offering you isn’t easy money, Elle. The things dominatrixes do with their clients? Not even the priest would dream of some of it. It will be hard work. You’ll be tempted to return to him. Better to face that temptation head-on instead of running and hiding from it. Tu comprends?”

“Je comprends.” He was right although she hated to admit it. No way could she avoid Søren forever.

“Don’t be afraid. You won’t have to see him right away. He doesn’t know you’ve returned. No one outside this house does, and Calliope and Juliette will keep the secret.”

“What’s the plan? How do we ‘depose’ this Milady of yours?”

“In six weeks’ time, there will be a party at The 8th Circle. The summer solstice party—the Midsummer Night’s Fling. Everyone will be there. I will let it be known that I have a new domina who will make her debut that night. I will warn the world that she is the most dangerous, most sadistic and most beautiful domme they’ve ever seen. A domme who will put the great Milady in the shade. She will come, of course. If she doesn’t, she’ll be seen as a coward.”

“Six weeks? You think I’ll be ready in six weeks?”

“We’ll start your training tomorrow. I’ll work on a plan of attack, and we’ll build your dungeon.”

“I get my own dungeon? At the club? Seriously?”

“You will have the best dungeon in the house.”

Elle couldn’t repress a grin at that thought. Her own dungeon—she’d dreamed of such a thing but never spoke that fantasy aloud. That alone would be worth all the work Kingsley would demand of her.

“Okay. Six weeks. Milady shows up to this party. Everybody’s there. I turn up. And then what?”

Kingsley looked at her without smiling and the look on his face both scared and excited her.

“Then you will do what you do best.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“Hurt men.”

Elle laughed, her first real laugh since she’d set foot in this house.

“Hurt men? With pleasure,” she said. “Theirs and mine.”

“And mine,” Kingsley said and he knelt on the floor at her feet, sitting between her knees. He cupped her face with his hands and brought her mouth to his. A kiss... The very last thing she expected him to do was kiss her. And not a simple, benign, friendly kiss between ex-lovers greeting each other after a year living separate lives. No, this was a kiss that meant something. His lips pushed hers apart, his tongue slipped between her teeth, his thumbs brushed her cheeks. She returned the kiss, pushing close to him so that her legs wrapped around his back and her hands found their way to his hair. She dug her fingers into the soft dark waves and pulled, tilting his chin up, taking control of the kiss.

“I’m glad you came back,” Kingsley said between kisses, his voice low and intimate, his French accent thick and his erection pressing against her thigh.

“Why is that?” she asked, aching for more than a kiss.

“Because,” he said, kissing her neck under her ear and breathing the words so that she felt them brush across her skin like fingertips, “I’m your first client.”

5

Flogging Lessons

“HARDER,” KINGSLEY SAID. Elle did it harder, hard as she could. “You call that harder?”

She threw the flogger down and turned to Kingsley.

“How do you know how hard I’m hitting when I’m not hitting anyone?” She pointed at the towel on the wall. “That is a bath towel, not a person. No matter how hard I hit it, it’s not going to scream.”

“It’s still hanging on the wall. And if it’s still hanging on the wall—” Kingsley picked up the flogger, threw it once with a practiced snap, and the towel fell to the floor landing in a soft pile at their feet “—you aren’t hitting it hard enough.”

Elle exhaled heavily and scooped the towel off the floor to pin it back in place. They were in Kingsley’s playroom. It boasted a red St. Andrew’s Cross, a leather kneeling bench, two dozen floggers, canes and enough rope to truss up an entire herd of cattle. From the ceiling hung an elegant glass chandelier, which gave the playroom that touch of class everyone expected from the King of the Underground. For the past two weeks Kingsley had brought her here for four hours a day, training her in the various arts of pain. Caning was a breeze. Clamps were a blast. Flogging, however, had proven to be more difficult than it looked.

Once the towel was back in place, Elle held out her hand. Kingsley gave her the black-tailed elk-hide flogger, slapping the handle into her palm.

“I could knock it off with a whip,” she said.

“No whips. No single-tails. You could kill someone with one of those. You get to touch the whip when you’re ready and not a moment sooner.”

“I like whips.”

“Don’t we all, but you’ll use floggers more often than whips. No whipping until you’ve mastered flogging. Then I’ll find you a whip master. Now do it again,” he said, his voice calm and steady. “Make it hurt.”

“I’ll make it hurt.” Elle narrowed her eyes at the towel. “I can make it hurt. Who knows more about pain than the submissive of a sadist?”

“You are not a submissive. You never were.”

“Then what the hell was I doing the past decade of my life, King?”

“Wasting everyone’s time?”

She glared at him. “Look, I want to do this right. I loved topping you. I loved hurting you. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love submitting, too.”

“You have to let that part of your life go. You aren’t her anymore.”

“I’m still Elle Schreiber. No matter which end of the whip I’m on, I’m still Elle Schreiber.”

Kingsley narrowed his eyes at her.

“That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“You need a new name,” he said.

“What?”

“A new name. A scene name. Everyone already knows you as Eleanor Schreiber. Everyone already knows you as his submissive, his property. But you aren’t his anymore. You need a new name.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

“You’re going to give me a new name? Do I get any say in this?”

“You can pick out the font on your business cards after I decide on your new name. Now flog.”

Elle took a few steadying breaths and focused her attention. She could do this. How many times had she been flogged in her life? First time when she was twenty, eight years ago. She’d spent at least one night a week in the company of the most infamous sadist in their vast kink community during all those years. Sometimes two. Two times fifty-two times seven equaled a lot of fucking floggings. And that didn’t include all the ones Kingsley had given her.

With one more heavy breath she placed her feet in position and raised the flogger over her head. With her right hand she held the handle, with her left hand the tips of the tails.

She pulled the tails taut and then let it go with a flick. It was a good hit, a strike right down the middle. And yet, the towel stayed pinned in place.

“Fuck.”

Kingsley gave a low chuckle, and she nearly flogged his French face.

“You’re finding out that being a dominant is more work than you ever imagined, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I need more practice. These floggers are heavier than they look.”

“And you’re a woman and you’re five foot three, and you don’t possess one-tenth of the upper body strength I do.”

“I swim laps.”

“Not enough.”

“Fine. I’ll join a gym.”

“Yes, you will. But you’ll never be as strong as I am, or as strong as he is or as strong as the average healthy man on the street is. This job isn’t about muscle strength. The physical part of dominating someone is the smallest part of it. Your clients will be men, and they will be bigger and stronger than you are. You’ll never outweigh them, and you’ll never be able to beat them at arm wrestling.”

“So...shoot them?” she asked.

Kingsley smiled.

“They want to submit to you. They want you to hurt them. They won’t want to hurt you, because that’s not their nature. They want to be dominated by a woman because they don’t feel alive or sexual or aroused until they’re beaten, used and treated like objects. But if you want that respect, if you want their lips on your boots and their souls at your feet, you have to earn their respect. And you earn it by showing them you aren’t afraid to hurt them. Milady hurts them. You’ll hurt them more. Now do it again.”

She did it again. And again. And again. She did it until her back burned and her muscles screamed and she thought she’d die if she had to lift her arms over her head again. But she did it again, and she didn’t die. She wanted to die, but unfortunately she didn’t get her wish.

After half an hour Elle dropped her arms to her sides. Sweat poured from her forehead and down her back. Her heart pounded and she gulped down an entire bottle of water in a few swallows.

She pulled the towel down—she still hadn’t managed to knock it off the wall—and raised it to her face.

“Why are you doing that?” Kingsley asked.

“Wiping my sweat off? Because I’m sweaty.”

“You have a man in this room. Why not use his clothes to wipe your sweat off?”

“You want me to wipe my gross sweat on one of your Signore Vitale custom-made shirts? You’d kill me.”

“Would I?” he asked.

“I would if someone did that to me.”

Kingsley smiled at her and her stomach tightened in unwanted wanting. Every night she waited for Kingsley to come to her bedroom like he used to do, but not once had he slipped under her covers and whispered sexual orders to her like he had so many times in the past.

“When we were lovers in high school,” he began and she knew who he meant by we, “it was my job to undress him many nights, but his clothes must be folded neatly, precisely, reverently, and then placed on a chair. No mess, no wrinkles. But he...he would strip me naked and drop all my clothes onto the floor. Then he’d walk on them. Not barefoot, either. With his shoes on most of the time. And you know what?” Kingsley asked as he stepped closer to her, close enough she could kiss him if she wanted to.

“What?”

“I worshipped him for it.” Kingsley smiled at her, a Mona Lisa smile that hinted of secrets but didn’t reveal them. “He would sometimes pretend I wasn’t there when I spoke to him...and I worshipped him for it. He would tell me he didn’t want me anymore and then at the moment I was ready to kill myself in despair, he’d smile to show it was all a joke...and I worshipped him for it. I mocked him once for what happened between him and his sister Elizabeth, and you know what he did?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“He blindfolded me, tied me to the cot and made me say my sister’s name over and over again while he gave me the most intense erotic pleasure of my life with his hands and his mouth. When I stopped speaking he stopped pleasuring me. Then he made me say my own sister’s name when I came. And you know what?”

“You worshipped him for it?”

Kingsley nodded.

Point taken. To show Kingsley how thoroughly she’d absorbed her lesson she walked over to where he stood by the St. Andrew’s Cross, his arms folded over his chest. He wore camel-colored breeches and dark brown Hessian riding boots, a snow-white shirt held together at the throat with a gold pin and a dark brown vest with little gold fleurs-de-lis embroidered on it. Kingsley looked magnificent, like a Regency-era fever dream. If Jane Austen had set eyes on Kingsley, she would never have written her genteel comedies of manner.

She would have written porn.

Elle wiped her sweaty forehead off on his shoulder.

“See?” she asked, smiling up at him. “I can be taught.”

He looked down at the wet smudge she’d left on his pristine shirt and back at her.

“I could have you flogged for that.”

“I’m not a submissive anymore, remember?”

“I’m glad you’re starting to realize that,” he said and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Finally.”

“I know I’m a dominant. I know I am.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I’m sure.”

“Then you aren’t sure. Elle, what we’re doing here... I need all of you for it. Your heart, your soul, your strength, your guts. All of you. If you can’t give me all of you, then you are, yet again, wasting everyone’s time. Now tell me...do you want this? Do you want to be my Queen?”

“I want it.”

“It? What is it you want? Money?”

“Yes,” she admitted without shame. She needed a good job that didn’t take up all her time if she were going to do something with her writing.

“Power?”

“Definitely.”

“Me?” he asked.

“You did say you’d be my first client,” she reminded him.

“I will be.”

“You said I won’t be having sex with my clients.”

“Are you asking me if we’re going to have sex again?”

“Yes,” she said without shame or apology. She wanted him. She knew he wanted her. Why hadn’t they fucked yet?

“Would you like to?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove it? How?”

“By acting like the domme I know you are. Once you are a domme, I will be your client, and you can do anything you want to me.”

“Anything?”

Kingsley met her eyes and whispered, “Anything.”

“You’re going to regret that.”

“I can’t wait to regret it.”

“This is a test, isn’t it? You’re testing me?”

“Of course I am.”

“And if I pass this test, what do I win?”

“Me.”

“Good prize.”

“When I am done with you,” he said, taking her face in his hands, “there will not be a man in the world who wouldn’t take a bullet to lick your boots.”

“It’s not my boots that need licking right now.”

Kingsley smiled at her, a sensual, mysterious smile. It did not bode well.

“I’ll give you a hint about how to win your prize. Do you know a woman by the name of Theresa Berkley?” he asked.

“If I met her I don’t remember.”

“You’ve never met her. She died in the 1830s. But before she died she worked as a dominatrix. I doubt she used that term, but that’s what she was. She invented a sort of standing table she called a chevelet. It was used to torture men on one side of their bodies while another woman could sexually stimulate them on the other side. We have the freestanding St. Andrew’s Cross for that now, but it was quite an ingenious bit of furniture.”

“Sounds like my kind of girl.”

“A client coming to London wrote a letter to her once requesting a session on her chevelet. These were the conditions he offered. He would pay her ‘a pound sterling for the first blood drawn, two pounds sterling if the blood runs down to my heels, three pounds sterling if my heels are bathed in blood, four pounds sterling if the blood reaches the floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness.’ His words, chérie.”

“Lose consciousness? Jesus.”

“Don’t be vanilla,” he said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We masochists love our beatings. But that’s not the moral of this story.”

“Then what is the moral, King?”

“The moral is that if you want my pounds sterling or any other sort of pounds, you’ll have to earn it.”

Kingsley turned his back on her to leave and without thinking she raised the flogger over her head. She threw it across his back hoping to impress him with one hard hit. But Kingsley turned at the last second and caught the tails in his hand. She’d put the handle strap around her wrist thus making it all too easy for him to yank her to him and shove her back against the wall.

“What the fuck was that?” he demanded, squeezing her wrist to the point of pain. “Don’t put the fucking cord of the fucking flogger on your fucking wrist. That’s how you fucking hang the flogger on the fucking wall. And if you fucking put it on your fucking wrist, someone like me can fucking grab you and fucking fuck you up, you fucking rookie.”

He ripped the flogger off her wrist and tossed it aside.

“King, sorry—”

Kingsley cut off her apology with a hand over her mouth. Elle started, heart racing in pure fear.

“Shut up,” he said. “You fucked up, and you will be disciplined.”

He dragged her bodily to the bed and threw her down onto it. No amount of pushing and fighting could force him off her.

With knees and feet and arms and hands, Kingsley pinned her down to the bed. He had sixty pounds on her at least and was unbelievably strong. Finally she gave up her struggle. She was flat on her back on the bed and going nowhere until Kingsley let her go.

“This is what is known as a reality check, Elle. Repeat after me,” Kingsley said. “I am a bad dominant.”

A furious growl rose in the back of her throat.

“Say it,” Kingsley said.

“I am a bad dominant.”

“Good dominants do not hit people without their permission. Say it.”

“Good dominants do not hit people without their permission.”

“Are you a good dominant?” he asked.

“I want to be.”

“Let’s find out,” Kingsley said, his face a mask of steely resolve. He might be a masochist, he might be a switch, but right now he was all dom and all terrifying.

Kingsley released one wrist and unzipped her jeans.

“Safe out right now,” he said. “Right fucking now.”

“Or what? You’ll fuck me? Go ahead.”

“You’d like that too much,” he said, pushing his hand into her jeans. “And you haven’t even come close to earning my cock yet.”

He shoved a finger inside her and Elle cried out, not in pain but in pleasure.

“Thought so,” he said.

“What?” She tried squirming away from him but couldn’t move. He had her riveted to the bed.

“You’re dripping wet. So much for being a domme.”

“I haven’t gotten fucked in over a year.”

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

He pulled his hand out of her pants and pushed her onto her stomach. With his mouth at her ear he whispered a warning.

“There’s one man in the world who cares about you more than I do,” Kingsley said. “Just imagine what a man who doesn’t give a fuck about you would do if you fucked up during a session as badly as you fucked up with me.”

“I fucked up,” she said.

“You did.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“We won’t have to have this talk again, will we?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, Kingsley.”

“You aren’t going to call me ‘sir’?” he asked, his voice cold but teasing.

“No,” she said.

“And why not?”

“Because I’m not a submissive anymore. I don’t call anyone ‘sir.’”

Kingsley leaned in even closer, pressed his lips to the back of her neck and kissed her.

“Glad you finally are realizing this,” he said. “It’s about fucking time.”

6

A Special Delivery

ALONE IN HER bedroom Elle stripped out of her clothes—her favorite old Pearl Jam concert T-shirt she’d had since 1994 and a ratty pair of cutoff denim shorts. They’d been her comfort clothes, her lazy-day uniform, when she’d lived here at Kingsley’s before she’d gone to the convent. There she’d had to wear black tights and long skirts and buttoned-up blouses. It had been like wearing a costume every day so it should have been nice to wear her own clothes again. Although they didn’t feel like hers. They felt like a different sort of costume. They belonged to Eleanor. His Eleanor. But if she wasn’t his anymore, was she even Eleanor? Kingsley said he would change her name. She almost didn’t care what he changed it to as long as she could be someone who wasn’t Eleanor anymore. Eleanor was tired. Eleanor was scared. Eleanor missed her priest.

For almost an hour she stood under the scalding water and let the heat seep into her sore muscles but no matter how long she stayed under the water, the pain remained. She dried off on plush white towels she wouldn’t have to wash and dry and fold—Kingsley had a housekeeper. It should have felt like heaven, living in luxury again. And yet...

“You fucked up today.”

Elle stepped out of her en suite bathroom to find Kingsley sitting on her bed, boots crossed at the ankle, looking smug and satiated. His collar was open and the vest unbuttoned. While she’d been in the shower he’d been in Juliette. His new lover received the lion’s share of Kingsley’s erotic attentions lately. Elle didn’t blame him. Juliette was easily the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen in her life, and she’d seen her fair share of beautiful women come and go from Kingsley’s bed. Juliette, however, seemed likely to stick around.

“Yes, you mentioned that earlier. I won’t do it again.”

“I know. You’ll make me proud. Eventually.”

Elle smiled at him and then dropped the towel. Kingsley didn’t blink or say a word at her sudden nudity. He’d seen her naked before, but she noted his eyes narrowing as she walked past him. Not a look of ardor at all. He appraised her as she dressed in black panties, a black bra, a denim skirt that hugged her curves and a low-cut shirt.

“You’ve gained weight,” he said.

“Six pounds since coming back from the convent. If you’d had to eat convent food for a year, you’d go a little nuts with New York–style pizza, too. I promise I won’t gain any more.”

“Don’t lose the weight. We’ll turn it into muscle.”

“Don’t lose the weight? Those are the sexiest four words anyone has ever said to me.”

“Money money money money.”

“Those are the other four sexiest words anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I didn’t come to seduce you. I came to invite you to a party. Not quite an invitation. Attendance is mandatory.”

“What sort of party?”

“The sort of party Milady will attend. We need to see her in action.”

“You said nobody could know I was back yet.”

“They won’t know. You’ll be in disguise. I don’t want you leaving the house between now and then, either.”

“Sure. Of course. Whatever you say, boss.” She added the “boss” at the end more sarcastically than she meant.

“Don’t get pissy at me because you fucked up,” he said, wagging his finger at her.

“I’m not pissy because I fucked up.”

“What is it?”

She sighed. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”

“Being a domme?” he asked.

“Not being a sub.”

“Not being his sub, you mean.”

She nodded. Reluctantly.

“You need to face him,” he said. “The longer you wait the harder it will be. You’ve been back two weeks. It’s time.”

“I’ll go talk to him. Soon. I promise.”

“Not today. I don’t want anyone knowing you’re back yet. No going out. Anywhere.”

“Fine. I’ll be good. Happy?”

“Good, chérie, is the last thing I want you to be.”

He chucked her under the chin and left. A few minutes later Elle heard a soft knock on her bedroom door, which meant it wasn’t Kingsley returning. He never bothered knocking.

Elle opened the door.

“Juliette,” was all Elle could say. Beautiful, glorious, magnificent Juliette. Even Elle got a little tongue-tied around Kingsley’s consort.

“Calliope brought in the mail. There’s something for you.”

“For me?” She held out her hand and Juliette passed her a thick manila envelope.

“C’est pour toi.”

“Thanks.” She tossed it in a drawer.

“You aren’t going to open it?” Juliette asked, her hands lifting gracefully in a question.

“I’ll open it later.”

“It’s from a literary agency,” Juliette said.

“Yeah, I know who it’s from.”

“I didn’t tell monsieur you received any mail today.”

Elle smiled, relieved. “Thank you for that.”

“For years, I lived with a man who monitored any mail I received. I had no privacy. It was...unpleasant. You should have your privacy. But I think it’s wonderful you’re receiving mail from a literary agency if it means what I think it means.”

“It means I wrote a book. But please don’t tell.”

“Something tells me the subject will not come up. I keep monsieur on other topics,” she said with a sly smile.

Elle liked Juliette. It didn’t take long for her to decide this was the perfect woman for Kingsley. She had a backbone of iron and a love of submission that made her the ideal consort for their king. Since Elle did like her so much she had to say what she said next or she wouldn’t be able to look Juliette in the eyes much longer.

“Juliette, you do know Kingsley and I used to sleep together, right?”

“He told me, oui.” Juliette seemed entirely unperturbed by the fact.

“And we’ll probably be sleeping together again in the near future.”

“He keeps me abreast of these sorts of things.”

These sorts of things? Probably the tamest euphemism Elle had yet heard for Kingsley’s sex life.

“You’re fine with that?”

She nodded her head regally. Everything Juliette did or said looked or sounded regal. If Elle wanted to be a queen she would do well to emulate Juliette.

“He told me what he was and what he needs. I would never deny him what he needs.”

“Some people don’t like the thought of sharing.”

“It isn’t sharing. Not to me. He is one man when he’s with you. Another man when he’s with me. It’s clear you care for the man who he is with you. I care for the man who he is when he’s with me.”

“He loves pain when he’s with me. I’ll send him back to you covered in whip marks and bruises, cuts and welts. I left a lot of burns on him last year. You should be prepared for that. I mean that literally. Keep the medicine cabinet well stocked. He hates doctors. You’ll have to handle first aid.”

“I will be prepared. In truth, I couldn’t watch while he’s being hurt, but I admit I enjoy the thought of tending to his wounds after...”

“That’s a kink, you know. Comforting someone after a hard scene. Usually it’s the person who did the hurting who handles the cleanup, but I’ve known kinky people whose favorite thing to do was dress the wounds of masochists after a beating. Aftercare can be very intense, very intimate.” Søren had always taken good care of her after the beatings. Washing her wounds, cleaning her cuts, kissing her boo-boos away. Those were her favorite moments, when he put her back together after tearing her apart. “It’s like playing doctor or naughty nurse.”

“I would look good in a nurse’s costume, wouldn’t I?”

“You would look good in a brown paper bag.”

Juliette smiled, a smile so steamy it could have fogged the windows in a parked car.

“You break him down,” Juliette said, pointing at Elle. “And I—” she pointed at herself “—I will build him up so he’ll be ready when you break him again. Between the two of us he should be a very happy man. It’s a good plan, non?”

“A very good plan, yes. So you think we can be friends?” Elle asked. “No jealousy? No awkwardness?”

“Jealousy is a sign of insecurity. He adores me,” Juliette said, sounding almost affronted by the very suggestion Kingsley would ever choose another woman over her. Veritable madness. “And I am never awkward.”

“I can believe that. Thank you for this.” Elle swallowed hard, suddenly on the verge of tears and not knowing why. A tiny kindness from a woman she barely knew and...tears? This wasn’t like her. Not at all.

Juliette gave her a long searching look.

“You miss him,” Juliette said. “Your lover?”

“I shouldn’t,” Elle said. “I left him.”

“I miss mine, and I hated him.”

“I hate my ex, too.”

Juliette raised a finger, shook her head. “Elle, you do not know hate the way I know hate,” and Elle believed her. “Starting a new life isn’t easy. Not even for me and I have wanted this new life all my life.”

“I hate crying,” Elle said. “Seems...weak. I’m usually stronger than this.”

“It’s not weak. I cry, too, and I’m not weak. If I feel weak because I’m crying I remind myself of one true thing.”

“What’s that?” Elle asked.

“This is a new life I’m living. I am reborn. And all babies cry when they’re born.”

Elle smiled and knew she’d remember that one true thing all her life. Being born hurt. So did being reborn.

Juliette left her alone and the second she was gone, Elle locked her bedroom door and tore open the envelope. A handwritten note lay on top of a rubber-banded bundle of papers. Her book printed out with edit notes.

“Elle,” the note read, “Loved it, loved it, loved it. I’ve made some notes in the margins. I found a couple scenes to cut but most changes are minor. I’d love to have it back by next Friday.”

The note was signed by her new agent. Kingsley had ordered her to stay in the house. Elle did not follow men’s orders anymore. So she stuffed the book into a backpack, threw on a hat and headed out into the city.

Coming back to Manhattan had been harder than Elle had anticipated. Even now, two weeks after she’d returned, the noise of the city had kept her on edge. Life in the convent had been so quiet. She’d fallen asleep at night to the sound of soft breezes and chirping crickets. With nothing but Kyrie to distract her, she’d been able to write her book quickly. Yet another reason to make as much money as she could as fast as she could. A quiet house of her own where she could write in peace. That was the dream...

But first, she’d need her own damn computer. Sneaking to the library to work on her book was hardly ideal. She didn’t put it past Kingsley to chain her to the bed. He’d done it to Juliette, after all.

She reached the library but didn’t go into the computer lab yet. First she walked through the stacks, as she always did, seeking inspiration. The convent library had “uplifting” or “religious” literature in its small library and not a single novel. But here she found Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry Miller and her beloved Anaïs Nin. She walked the stacks and paused when a book in the C’s caught her eye. She pulled it from the shelf and held it in her hand.

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll.

Elle had her own copy of this book back at Kingsley’s. Søren had given it to her when she was nineteen. He’d brought the book home with him from Rome. Back then she’d been too young to wonder how a priest under a vow of poverty had gotten the money to pay for such an expensive early edition of this book. When she’d gotten older and had learned to ask more questions, he’d told her that he had a wealthy friend in Rome, a madam of a brothel who’d worked all her life as a dominatrix to European businessmen, royalty and clergy. Whenever he returned to Rome he visited with her. And although Elle had never met his friend Magdalena, Magdalena seemed to know Elle.

Why me? Elle had asked him when Søren admitted the book had been given to him by Magdalena to give to Elle.

Søren had answered, Because a long time ago she looked into my future and saw you. So she says, anyway.

What’s my future? I’ll go through the looking glass?

She says you are like Alice in the Looking-Glass world. First a pawn and then a queen.

Was that what had happened? She’d stepped through a mirror into a world where everything was backward—where she was Kingsley’s domme and not Søren’s slave? Where she was a dominant and not a submissive? Where she was a queen and no longer a little girl?

Elle put the book back on the shelf. No reading right now. No remembering. Queen or not, she had work to do. She took the computer right next to the wall and started cutting. Today’s project was her last project before her book went out on submission with editors. Her agent had told her that her book needed trimming. Less was more and Elle knew she was right. Elle highlighted a scene consigned to the chopping block and hit Delete.

It hurt, of course. She might have winced a little between highlighting and deleting, but it was also empowering. She felt like a god of her own world in a way. She created their reality—what her characters ate and drank and how they lived and loved and fucked and if they did something she didn’t want them to do then all she had to do was...poof...delete...gone...

Just. Like. That.

She wished real life came with a delete key. But if she could change her reality, would she? Maybe. She knew she’d never truly be free of Søren as long as she remembered everything that had happened between them, from their first meeting at Sacred Heart two weeks before her sixteenth birthday to that last awful night when he’d been so angry he’d scared her. But it wasn’t that night that she wanted to be free of. The bad memories gave her the strength to keep following this path. It was all the good nights that held her hostage, her memories of beautiful kink, passionate sex, lying in bed after Søren had spent his pain and passion on her, talking about everything and nothing until she fell asleep against his chest and woke up with her collar locked away in the rosewood box until the next time he would make her his. Too many good memories. They were like links in a chain that bound her to the past.

Why couldn’t she push Delete on those memories and make them go away like she did the scenes in her book that slowed the story down?

Maybe she could.

Elle opened a new blank document on her computer screen and stared at the blinking cursor.

What to write...what to write... What memory did she most want to rid herself of? Which night haunted her more than any other, weighed on her more than any other? Impossible to pick only one, but she had to start somewhere.

She thought of the book again—Through the Looking-Glass. Her favorite part of it had always been the “Jabberwocky” poem, especially when Søren read it to her at night in his poshest and most entertaining English accent. Some evenings he’d read to her before they adjourned to his bedroom for kink and sex and on those nights it was torture to have to sit and wait while he read when all she wanted from him was pain and fucking.

But there were other nights, special nights, private nights she would tell no one about even on pain of death...

A memory hit her so hard in the stomach she almost whimpered aloud. God, it hurt to remember. But wouldn’t it feel good to forget? Not good, but powerful? She could show those memories who was boss. She was god of her own world.

She knew right where to start.

Elle put her fingers to the keys and started to type.

It was a winter’s night in Ordinary Time, but this was no ordinary night.

7

Ordinary Time

IT WAS A winter’s night in Ordinary Time, but this was no ordinary night.

First of all, He had summoned her to His home and no ordinary night began with such a summons.

Second, it had snowed last night and all the world for as far as she could see had turned white. She inhaled Him, for He smelled like snow and nighttime and chimney smoke in the distance. Only He smelled like both winter and fire at the same time. Only He was so cold and yet could make her burn.

The roads were safe to pass by late afternoon and when the winter evening turned inexorably into the winter night she drove to His home. The snow crunched under her boots as she walked to His door and she paused long enough to gaze up at the black sky, which was so white with stars it was as if the snow had fallen up as well as down.

When she walked through the kitchen door she found a box on the table and that’s when she knew the third reason it would be no ordinary night.

On the box was a card with two words written on it.

“Wear me.”

Elle took the box up the narrow wooden stairs to the bathroom. Inside it she found a nightgown, creamy off-white muslin with lace accents on the innocent puff sleeves. It was a child’s nightgown, not a woman’s.

No.

She closed her eyes as hot tears burned them, scalding her cheeks. Not this. She didn’t want this.

But she did. She did want it but she didn’t want to want it.

And that’s why He’d summoned her here tonight. Because when she wanted something she didn’t want to want, that was when He wanted her the most.

It was her own fault. Two weeks ago she’d been at a private party with Him and their king. A couple had entered the party, a couple she’d never met before—an older man with silver hair, a younger woman with skin fresh as March dew on rosebuds. She’d watched them with interest, watched the older man taking her short pink coat off her as if she were too young to unfasten her own buttons and instead of answering when he asked questions, the younger woman had nodded, wide-eyed and innocent. When they walked she held on to his hand with both of her hands as if she feared the crowd would separate them, and she would never see him again. In a room reserved for the private party they all attended, the older man did the talking and the younger woman clung to his side. When he sat in a chair she sat in his lap, her arms wound round his neck, his large hand absentmindedly rubbing her lower back as if soothing a fussy child. And once he kissed her on the cheek and told her she was being a very good girl. That’s when the younger woman spoke the only three words anyone would hear her speak that night.

Thank you, Daddy.

The king warned her if she kept watching the couple so intently she would be punished for it. One of the rules of such gatherings was “Don’t stare. We’re all freaks here.” But stare she did. The thirtysomething woman transformed herself into a little girl by simply making her face a mask of innocence, turning her lips into a pout, opening her eyes wide and clinging to her older lover with both hands. She found it fascinating that a woman would want to be treated like a child when she herself had fought so hard for so long to be treated like an adult.

“Is this a game you want to play?” the king whispered in her ear.

“No, of course not. It’s...”

“What? Too naughty even for you?”

That stung. Nothing was too naughty for her.

But...still...would she like this? Playing like a little girl? Calling your lover “Daddy”? Disturbing. Troubling.

And so very arousing...

No. Absolutely not. She refused to even entertain the idea of playing that game. It would be humiliating to pretend to be a little girl, to call Him Daddy, to act like a child when she was twenty-five years old.

It was too late, however. Her interest in the couple had been noted.

By Him.

Long ago, He’d warned her that He could become aroused in only one of two ways—by inflicting pain or inflicting humiliation. Some nights pain might not be enough for Him. Some nights He would humiliate her for His own pleasure. He then promised to refrain from that particular side of His sadism as much as possible. But now and again it appeared, unbidden. During a beating she’d realized she’d had a painfully full bladder and instead of excusing her to the bathroom He’d kicked a bucket into the center of the room and uttered the order, “Go.” When her period had started a few days early and she’d woken up to blood on His white sheets, He’d stood over her at the bathtub while she’d had to scrub the stains out, crying with mortification the entire time.

But after...oh...after... He’d bent her over the bathroom counter and fucked her from behind so hard that if she hadn’t been bleeding already, she would have started.

Those humiliations, however, paled in comparison to this new hell.

With trembling hands she dressed in the child’s nightgown that fit her so well she knew it had been made for her. The club had a quartermaster of sorts whose sole job it was to provide the high-level members with anything they needed. A child’s nightgown that would fit an adult woman likely numbered among the least strange of the requests she filled weekly.

There were ribbons, too. It took three tries for her to plait her untamable black hair into twin braids and to steady her fingers enough to tie the ribbons in little bows at the ends. She felt scared as a child, nervous as a child, excited as a child.

When she walked out of the bathroom, she wasn’t twenty-five anymore, but seven. Seven and scared and miserable. If it had been a game she would have played it with pleasure but this wasn’t a game to her, although it was to Him. She would never tell another soul of this night; it was far too private and personal and, of course, because that was the point...it was far too humiliating.

In His bedroom, the lights were all off but for the old brass lamp on His bedside table. He reclined on His side on the bed wearing jeans and a black long-sleeve T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up to reveal His sinewy forearms. His feet were naked, and His blond hair was slightly damp and slicked back as if He’d run His fingers through it a few times after coming in from the snow. Open on the bed in front of Him was a book, a book she hadn’t seen before. The bed was the same bed but the covers looked different. Usually He slept on white sheets covered by a simple white quilt. But He’d changed them tonight. Once she’d told Him that as a little girl she’d loved visiting her grandparents because she had her own bed there—a twin bed with a pastel-blue-and-white-striped quilt and the sheets were covered in laughing white moons and smiling yellow stars. The sheets and the quilt on His bed weren’t identical to the ones she remembered from her childhood days visiting her grandparents. But they were close enough to take her breath away.

He must have known she was standing there, but He didn’t look at her and He wouldn’t look at her until she spoke the word He wanted her to speak, the word that would begin the night’s humiliations. The last word she wanted to say to Him.

“Daddy?” Standing in the open doorway to His bedroom, she felt more exposed in that child’s nightgown than she would have been naked.

He looked up from the book in front of Him and smiled an indulgent fatherly smile at her.

“What’s wrong, Little One?” He asked, and the name He’d called her for years now took on a darker connotation. “You look upset.”

She nodded and held on to the bow of her nightgown with both hands, twisting the fabric nervously.

“Come here.” He waved her over to Him and on her bare feet she walked to Him, slowly...slowly, drawn to Him and repelled in equal measure.

He closed the book and set it on the bedside table. She stood between His knees. Reaching out He tugged lightly on the tip of her braid.

“Are you tired?”

She shook her head.

“Then what’s wrong?” His voice was so tender and fatherly she burst into tears. He pulled her into His arms and held her while she cried. Holding her on His lap, He gently rocked her and shushed her until her sobs subsided.

“I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

“I’m never mad at you.”

“Then why are you making me do this?” she asked.

“Because I love you.”

“You aren’t mad at me?” She was certain He was punishing her for something by making her play this horrible game. But was it a punishment? Was it a horrible game? Or was it something she had wanted, something she had dreamed of, something she had desired and never told Him because she couldn’t bring herself to tell Him?

“I could never be mad at you. Never ever.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Look at me,” He said in such a tone she obeyed instantly. “You know that, don’t you? You know you could never disappoint me? Yes?”

She nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”

“Good girl.” He tugged her braid again, then tickled her nose with the tip of it.

She wrinkled her nose.

“That tickles,” she said. “Stop it.”

“Stop it? Stop what? This?” He tickled her neck now with the tip of her braid.

“Yes, that. Stop.” She tried to pull away from the tickling, but He grabbed her arms with both hands. Before she knew it, He had her flat on her back, His knees straddling her hips.

“You don’t like being tickled?” He slipped His hand under her nightgown to lightly caress her stomach. She squirmed under His touch. He was only thirty-nine, but He seemed older tonight. Or maybe He only seemed older than thirty-nine because she felt so little and young and scared.

“No, Daddy.” She tried to wriggle out from under Him but there was no escaping Him and His searching, finding fingers.

“Why not?”

She panted, breathless with laughter.

“Because...” She attempted to twist herself out of His grip and failed miserably.

“Because why?” He brushed His fingertips over her rib cage and the sensation was so acute it hurt.

“Because...it...tickles...” Finally she managed to slip out of the prison of His knees and tickling fingers. She made it to the other side of the bed before He caught her again and pulled her to Him.

“You aren’t allowed to run away from me, Little One. You know it’s your bedtime.”

“But, Daddy—”

“And no talking back.” With that He put her over His lap and gave her a vicious swat on her white cotton panties. The pain of it was equal to the shock, and she gasped and stiffened. He spanked her again. Once, twice. Five times total. Her body burned when He’d finished. All of it, not just where He’d struck her. She lay there across His lap and panted while He rubbed her scalding skin.

“Are you going to behave now?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“That’s my good girl.” He rubbed her bottom and thighs gently as He rocked her in His arms again. She felt peaceful, quiet inside, happy. She’d forgotten who she really was in His arms and that this was a game He’d made her play. She was His little girl. Now. Always. “You need to settle down. It’s bedtime.”

One finger traced the edge of her panties all the way between her thighs. He pushed the fabric to the side and found her clitoris. He stroked it carefully, steadily and it swelled under His fingertips, throbbing against them as little bursts of fluid coated her labia and vagina. When He inserted one finger into her, He smiled at how wet He found her.

“Very good girl,” He whispered as He moved His finger in deeper. She buried her face in the crook of her arm while He fondled her. A second finger joined His first one and He spread them apart inside her to open her up.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she said, the word rolling easier off her tongue now.

“Are you ready for bed now?”

“Ready.”

He took His fingers out of her, and she scrambled back on her hands and knees. He tossed the quilt and top sheet back, and laid her on the bed. He fluffed the pillow under her head before reaching under her gown and sliding her panties off her legs. He stood at the side of the bed and she stared at the ceiling, but she knew He was unzipping His pants. She opened her legs for Him before He asked her to.

“That’s my girl.” He covered her body with His and when He pushed her legs open wider, she whimpered but didn’t say a word.

As wet as she was, He entered her easily, filling her with His full length in a stroke. His hands were on either side of her shoulders, bracing Himself up and over her to keep His weight off her smaller form. In the low light He seemed enormous, as if He would crush her if He lay on top of her. His shadow on the wall looked like a giant’s.

After a few minutes He paused but only long enough to pull her nightgown down her arms. Her nipples hardened as He uncovered them. When He bent His head to lick them, the deep muscles inside her twitched and throbbed and tightened to the breaking point. Not moving took more effort than moving. Her fingers clutched the sheets. He fed on her embarrassment like food. Tonight’s humiliation was a banquet.

She closed her eyes and laid her head back on the pillow. An orgasm so strong she felt it all the way up the center of her back and in her thighs tore through her. When her body ceased its shuddering around Him, she closed her eyes. At last He came inside her, His lips pressed to her forehead.

“You were a very good girl,” He said as His fingertips brushed her cheek, pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, Little One.”

He pulled out at last, straightened her nightgown and covered her with the quilt.

She opened her eyes. “Can I have a glass of water, please?”

“Of course.” He kissed her on the forehead again and left the room. When He returned a few minutes later, all traces of His exertions were gone. Every button buttoned and every hair back in place. He passed her the glass of water. She took it with both hands and drank from it as He picked up the book off the table.

“This book is called Jabberwocky,” He said, opening it to the inside cover. “And it’s yours.”

On the inside she silently read the words “Never forget the lesson of the Jabberwocky. And never forget I love you.” It was signed with an elaborate S with a slash through the heart of it.

“What’s the lesson of the Jabberwocky?” She looked up at Him with eyes as wide as Alice’s lost in Wonderland.

“Let’s find out.” He opened the book and in His voice that belonged to a man from another time started to read to her. “‘’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves...’”

Meanwhile His semen dripped out of her body onto the laughing white moons and the smiling yellow stars.

* * *

Elle blinked and a tear landed on the keyboard.

She read through the story once. Then twice. She remembered the humiliation and the desire. She was aroused, painfully so, and would give anything for release. Her cheeks flushed hot with the sensory memories of her mortification. She could still feel Søren’s semen slick on her thighs. When she wrote her scene, she hadn’t been able to type his name. She could only write “Him,” capital H as if he were God instead of a mere man. Maybe he was a god with a god’s power and a god’s wrath. She had seen both with her own eyes. And he had seen into her soul the way only a god could and had conjured a scene for her designed to touch the most tender spots on her heart, the parts of her that mourned for her lost childhood and the love she’d had for her real father as a little girl. The night her father died, the night she had condemned him to die, she’d declared to Kingsley, “My only father is a priest.” Had Søren seen those words printed on her soul? Was that why he’d put her in the nightgown, made her call him “Daddy”? That wasn’t his kink, his fantasy. It was hers and he used it like a knife. But not a knife like a weapon, a knife like a scalpel, and he’d cut the wounded spot out of her heart with it. Her father hadn’t loved her. Her priest, that Father, did love her and always would. Her father had abandoned her. Her Father never would. Her father had never held her and rocked her and read her stories. But her Father had.

The memory of that night glowed in her mind like something radioactive; potent, powerful and dangerous. Such a memory could make her forget things she didn’t want to forget, like the sound of an antique riding crop snapping into the three pieces, or ugly words like you are mine.

A memory such as this could make her crawl back to him. The day she’d first seen him when she’d been fifteen, she’d felt a golden cord tied around her heart pulling her toward him. Even now she felt the cord, felt the pull. The cord tightened around her heart leaving her breathless with pain and wanting.

She didn’t want to go back to him.

She didn’t want to go back to him.

God, she wanted to go back to him.

If she went back to him it would all be for nothing—leaving, the year at the convent, swallowing her pride to beg Kingsley for a job, the plan to turn her into the Queen of the Underground. She’d have to give it all up to go back to him. He’d ordered her to stay away from Kingsley. He’d ordered her not to top Kingsley. He’d ordered her to marry him.

Would he order her to do all that again if she went back to him?

She couldn’t take that chance.

Elle highlighted every single word in the document, every word she’d just written.

She hit Delete.

Poof. It was gone.

Just like that.

Elle smiled although it had hurt.

Daddy’s little girl was all grown-up now.

Slightly shaking, Elle got up out of her chair, logged off the computer and walked back to the stacks, searching for a book, any book, anything to take her mind off what she’d just written, what she’d just done. She felt freer now. Stronger. Lighter but emptier in a way. But that’s what she wanted, wasn’t it?

From the shelf in front of her she pulled out a book, an Agatha Christie mystery she’d always meant to read. She wasn’t quite in the mood for a mystery right now. She needed something else...but what? When she put it back on the shelf she saw a pair of eyes staring at her from between the books.

Familiar eyes.

Without thinking, Elle shoved the books on the shelf to the side and there he was, staring at her like a goddamn creeping creeper.

“Griffin Randolfe Fiske, what the fuck—”

“Um...sorry. Also, hi, Nor.” He put his hand through the gap in the shelves and waved, calling her Nor like he always had. He hated “Eleanor,” thought it sounded too prissy and prim. Prissy? No wonder Søren had liked the name so much. “Missed you. Welcome home.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” She rolled her eyes, walked around the end of the stacks and found him in the next aisle over looking as sheepish and self-conscious as a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound weightlifter with a trust fund as well-endowed as he was could look. He was dressed in his usual uniform of stylishly ripped jeans and a heather-gray fitted T-shirt. He’d grown a beard since she’d last seen him. No, not quite a beard but more than a five-o’clock shadow. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?” she whispered, but loudly.

“Um...maybe.”

“No more ums. Use your words.”

“Yes. I’m following you.”

“Care to tell me why you’re following me?”

“King told me to.”

“King told you to follow me?”

“Yes, if you left the house, which you did. He’s trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe from who?”

“Yourself, I think.”

Of course he was. Kingsley knew her, knew she’d be tempted to go back to Søren. Somehow he’d cajoled Griffin into saving her from herself. Well, as plans went it wasn’t the worst one she’d heard.

“And you couldn’t say, ‘Hi, long time no see’? You had to follow me?”

“King told me not to tell you I was around.”

“Why not?”

“Um...”

“What is it, Griffin Fiske?” She crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at him, domme-style.

“King said if you saw me, you’d probably jump me, and if we’re fucking I won’t be able to do my job of keeping an eye on you if we’re having sex since I do most of my thinking with my cock.”

“King thinks that although I haven’t seen you in over a year, I will jump your bones the first chance I get and then you won’t be able to follow me because I’ll know you’re there? That’s the situation? That’s why you’re stalking me?”

“Well...yeah.” Even with the beard, Griffin looked terribly young and innocent, and she had a feeling he’d grown the beard so he’d look less terribly young and innocent. Caught red-handed. Shamefaced. Slightly embarrassed. Utterly adorable. And Griffin looked at her as if Christmas came early this year, and he’d been a very good boy.

Merry Christmas.

“Well, you want to know something?” she asked.

“What?”

“King was right.”

She dropped her backpack and crooked her finger. In an instant Griffin was in her arms, pressing her back into the bookcases. He kissed her hard, and she kissed him back harder. So hard. Everything was hard. The kiss and Griffin’s cock and how much she wanted it inside her.

“Did you miss me?” she asked into his lips.

“So much,” he breathed as his hands scored her back and clasped her tight to his chest.

“How much?” She raised her chin to give him access to her neck. She needed neck kisses. She needed all the kisses.

He pushed his erection against her.

“This much.”

When he kissed her ear she could feel the scruff of not quite a beard but more than a five-o’clock shadow tickling her neck. She wanted this, didn’t she? Wasn’t this what she’d been waiting for, what she’d been aching for since she’d come back to Kingsley’s? A male body, strong arms...power? Right? And Griffin kissed masterfully. He could dominate with a kiss alone by setting the pace, holding her where he wanted her, keeping her captive and mute with his tongue in her mouth so that she couldn’t raise a word of objection.

But.

It wasn’t quite right.

Something was missing, and she knew she needed it if this were to go further than one good kiss.

“Please...” Griffin growled in her ear. She loved to hear him beg.

“Please, what?”

“I have to fuck you.”

“No one has to fuck me. You want to fuck me. Going without sex never killed anybody.”

“But why take that chance?”

Elle reached down between their bodies and pressed her hand into his cock through his jeans. Already erect, Griffin stiffened even more in surprise and what must have been a modicum of discomfort.

Elle laughed softly and the sound of it surprised her. It was an arrogant, throaty laugh that sounded foreign to her own ears. Kingsley laughed like that while he mocked a trussed-up submissive when she squirmed or begged for mercy. It was a dominant’s laugh. A queen’s laugh.

She unbuttoned his jeans. Hidden in such a faraway corner of the stacks, she felt it was safe to touch him. If they got kicked out of the library for fooling around? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“You did miss me, didn’t you?”

He put his mouth at her ear. “I still think about that night, your birthday. When we were in the Rolls and—”

“I remember.”

“Fucking you...watching King and Søren fuck you... Jesus, I’ve known gay guys who didn’t love cock as much as you do.”

“They don’t know what they’re missing.”

“But you do,” Griffin said, tilting his pelvis forward to push his cock against her hand.

“I do want it. But on my terms.”

“What are your terms?” Griffin asked. She had a feeling he’d agree to anything at this point, including but not limited to committing felonies. Or, at the very least, a series of misdemeanors.

Elle looked up and met his eyes. He was so much taller than her but she didn’t care. She had his attention.

“I am not a submissive anymore, and I will not be treated like one. I kiss you. You do not kiss me. I top you. You do not top me. If you can play by these rules, we can play. If not? Game over.”

Griffin closed his eyes. He’d grabbed on to the bookshelves on either side of her arms, and gripped them as hard as she gripped him.

She slid her hand down his cock and wrapped all five fingers around the base, squeezing, holding, waiting. Griffin’s hips pulsed against her hand, fucking her fingers until he could fuck other parts of her.

“If you let me top you, we can fuck. Deal?” she asked.

The slightest cry or maybe it was a whimper escaped his lips. His eyes were shut tight as if he were in pain or in pleasure or in both. Didn’t matter to her except he better make up his mind fast before he ejaculated all over The Collected Novels of Willa Cather.

“No pain?” he asked. Griffin was no coward, but he was a recovering drug abuser. When he was in pain he wanted drugs to ease the pain. Even one strong painkiller could send him backsliding into the hard stuff again.

“No pain. I promise. Only other sorts of torture.”

“Fun torture?”

“There is no other kind of torture when you’re with me.”

Griffin took a shuddering breath as she ran her hand up and down his cock again.

“Deal.”

A smile crossed Elle’s face, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever smiled like that before, as if she were nothing but smile.

“Good boy.”

8

Seven

THEY TOOK A cab to his new place in Chelsea where Griffin had moved three months ago. Inside the apartment he tossed the keys into a silver bowl and locked the door behind them. He offered a tour of the new digs but she declined. All she wanted to see was the bedroom and the bedroom did not disappoint. His bed was a king-size, low to the ground and minimalist. Black frame—padded black leather headboard, metal slatted footboard. The headboard was for cushioning the head during rough sex. The footboard was for bondage. She gave Griffin credit—the kid could decorate like a motherfucker. The coverlet and sheets were black, red and white. Apart from the bed he had nothing much else in his room except for a black leather Chesterfield sofa, the sort of sofa one fucked on if one were the sort to fuck on sofas, which Griffin was.

Elle stood facing the bed. Behind her, Griffin locked the door and came up to her. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the side of her neck.

“I’m all yours,” he whispered.

“I have to tell you something.”

“Anything.”

“I haven’t had sex with a man in over a year.”

Griffin grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. He looked at her as if she’d sprouted a second head.

“How are you even alive? Over a year without sex? How’s that even possible?”

“I was in a convent, Griffin. No men in convents.”

“Then order delivery. There are people who will bring the sex to your house.”

Elle laughed. “It’s okay. I said I hadn’t had sex with a man in over a year. I have had sex.”

His wide eyes widened even wider. If they got any wider, they’d fall out of his head.

“You fucked a girl.”

“Shh...don’t tell.”

Griffin fell sideways, collapsing on the bed.

“Griff?”

He rose up on his elbows. “Was she hot?”

“She was a twenty-one-year-old virgin with small breasts and long legs. And yes, she was hot.”

“She was a virgin until you?”

“Yes. I fisted her our first night together.”

Griffin gasped and looked down at his crotch.

“Oh, my God,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“My cock twitched. I didn’t know it could do that.”

“Can you be serious for two seconds?”

“I am serious. It wiggled like one of those plastic flower toys that dance when you play music.”

“I haven’t had anyone or anything inside me for a long time. I might be a little...tight.”

“I can handle tight. I buy lube in bulk. Can we fuck now please?”

“Not yet. You aren’t ready.”

Griffin looked down at his crotch.

“He just told me he’s ready,” Griffin said. “Telepathically.”

Elle sighed. Heavily. She did want him, and his cock, but he’d agreed to bottom for her, and she wasn’t about to rush this or waste her chance. But what to do to him...?

“You’re bi—” she said.

“I am? Oh, yeah. I am. Sorry. I’m focused on your pussy right now. Almost forgot.”

“You have a leather chest harness somewhere, don’t you?”

“Maybe...somewhere...” He didn’t sound excited about the prospect of wearing one.

“Will you wear it for me?”

“Must I?” he asked.

“I’ve masturbated to the thought of fucking you while you’re naked but for a chest harness.”

“It’s in the closet, back wall, hanging on a hook next to the spreader bars.”

She retrieved the harness and laid it on the bed next to Griffin.

“What’s with the beard?” she asked as she ran her hand over the soft scruff on his cheeks and chin.

“I was roughing it. Went backpacking to Clingman’s Dome with friends. Got back a couple days ago.”

“How was the Dome?” She tugged his gray T-shirt off and threw it onto the floor.

“I didn’t get to the top. I came home early.”

“Why? Bored?” She slipped the harness on him and buckled it in place.

“I checked my messages. King said you were back.”

Elle was silent a moment. She swallowed before speaking again.

“You came back from your trip early, because you heard I came back?”

“Told you,” he said, shrugging. “I missed you.”

“I didn’t think anyone would miss me. I mean, anyone but him.”

“Søren.”

“Yeah, him.”

“I know this might surprise you, but I’d gotten used to the idea of thinking we were friends. Almost best friends,” he said. “I wanted us to be that and you acted like that’s what you wanted, too. Then you disappeared and you didn’t tell me where you went or why you left. So obviously we weren’t best friends if you couldn’t tell me where you were going, which is fine. That’s cool. But knowing you didn’t feel the same about me didn’t make me feel any differently about you. When King said you were back in the city, I came back the same day. And when he said he wanted me to keep an eye on you since you were, you know, going through a rough adjustment period, I said I would. Because maybe if I keep an eye on you, next time you run off I’ll know where you went.”

Simple words and not very eloquent, yet they somehow slipped through the cracks in the hard shell she’d built around herself since leaving the convent. No, since leaving Søren.

“Do you want to be my best friend?”

“With benefits?” he asked.

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

“I’m in,” he said grinning broadly. “Buddy.”

“Good, old pal.” She pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips. He looked utterly delectable in his black jeans, his leather harness. She ran her hands up and down his taut stomach, tracing the edges of the harness, caressing his chest and arms. She kissed his scruffy, handsome face and wondered at the change in him. He’d always been a charmer, a rogue, a wicked playboy trust-fund baby cracking dirty jokes and acting as the life of the party, every party. No one who knew him as Master Griffin would believe he was on his back for her. No one would believe he had this tenderness to him. Where had he been hiding it? Did it show itself with her because they were friends? Or was it something else? Or maybe it wasn’t Griffin who’d changed at all. Maybe it was her. Maybe she’d changed. Maybe it was always there and now she finally noticed it.

Elle lowered her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Pick a number between one and ten.”

“What?”

She pulled back and looked down at him.

“You heard me.”

“What am I picking?”

“I’m not going to tell you until you’ve picked your number,” she said.

“But how do I know what number to pick until I know what I’m picking?”

“Exactly.”

Griffin narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re evil.”

“Still waiting on that number, Griff.”

“Fine. I don’t know. Seven?”

“Seven. Good.”

“What’s good? Why is seven good?” Griffin sounded slightly panicked.

“Because seven is the number of orgasms you’re going to give me today. And when I’ve had seven you can fuck me. And you can’t fuck me until I’ve had seven.”

“Seven orgasms? You want me to get you off seven times? One-for-each-day-of-the-week seven?”

“Is that a problem?” She cocked her head at him.

“Yes, that’s a problem. A big problem,” Griffin said.

“Is it? And why so?” she asked.

Griffin grinned up at her, a grin she felt right in her belly.

“Because I should have picked ten.”

Elle laughed and kissed him again.

“Ten might kill me,” she said.

“But what a way to go.”

Standing up, Elle crooked her finger at Griffin, who slipped his hands into her underwear and started to slide them down her legs.

“Fold them,” she said.

“What?”

“Fold my underwear. Don’t throw them.”

“You threw my T-shirt.”

“Who’s in charge here? Hmm?”

“You are.”

“Good. Now fold them.”

Griffin gave her the classic “you’ve gotta be kidding me but if it’ll get me laid...” look and obediently folded her black silk panties. Clearly he hadn’t folded much women’s underwear in his life as they resembled a pocket handkerchief when he’d finished with them. Someday they would go out in formalwear, and she’d make Griffin put her panties in his breast pocket.

“Any rules?” he asked.

“You can use your mouth, fingers and toys, but no cock.” She crawled back onto the bed and lay back on the pillows.

“How many fingers?”

“Are you asking if you can fist me?”

“They don’t call me Griffin Fist because I know how to box.”

“If you can get your whole hand in there, then you’re welcome to. But I’ll be surprised.”

“Have a little faith in me. I’m the David Copperfield of fisting.”

“The Dickens character or the magician?”

“There’s fisting in Dickens? I should have majored in English instead of art.” Griffin winked at her as he grabbed a pillow from the head of his bed and pushed it under her hips. He kissed her again on the mouth and she sensed real affection in Griffin’s kiss. He cared for her. It made it easier for her to relax and open her legs for him without any nervousness or self-consciousness.

With the tips of his fingers, Griffin found her clitoris and lightly rubbed it as he kissed her neck. Passionate kisses on a naked neck. No, she didn’t miss her collar at all.

Griffin slid down her body and settled between her thighs. Carefully he parted her wet folds, touching her at first with his fingers. When he lowered his head and licked her clitoris she inhaled sharply. Such sudden pleasure, it was a gift.

“The clit.” Elle sighed. “The only organ on the human body designed solely for pleasure. Proof God is a woman.”

Griffin laughed and his warm breath brushed over her most sensitive parts. He worked his tongue over her again and again, lightly at first and then harder as she began to pant. What was better? What she felt or what she saw? Looking down and seeing Griffin’s naked shoulders, the leather harness strapped on his back moving with every breath, the hard muscle, the tan, the prominent ridge of biceps as he held himself in place. Bare feet. Ripped black jeans. A willingness to submit to her.

“You were the right man to break my dry spell,” Elle said.

“Welcome to a long, hard wet spell,” Griffin said, a divine bit of poetry.

He pushed his tongue deep inside her before returning his attentions to her clitoris. He slipped a finger into her and pressed into the soft depression right under her pubic bone. Elle let out a very un-domme-like gasp of pleasure. She was so close...so close... She hadn’t been touched so intimately in so long she knew she would come any second now. Any second... Everything throbbed inside her, everything ached, and her hips rose off the bed and pulsed against Griffin’s mouth. Between her thighs his head dipped and his tongue licked and his lips sucked and she came with a cry, clinging to the pillow Griffin had put underneath her.

He rose up as she panted to calm her racing heart.

Griffin wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand.

“One down,” he said. “Six to go.”

“I’m not going to survive it,” she said, panting hard. “I should have made you pick a number between one and five.”

“Too late. Don’t give someone as competitive as I am a challenge if you don’t want me to do it.”

With that pronouncement, Griffin’s head disappeared again. Not between her legs but under the bed.

“Griff?”

“Be right back,” he said and she heard him rummaging under the bed for something. She put both her legs on his back to anchor him and because she really wanted to put her boots on his back.

“You make a very sexy ottoman, Mr. Fiske,” she said.

“I’m not Turkish.”

“I meant the furniture, you ridiculous slut.”

When Griffin resurfaced from his under-the-bed diving expedition, he had a metal briefcase with him.

“What’s that?” she asked, eyeing it as he clicked the locks.

He opened the lid and turned it to face her.

“Vibrator collection,” he said. “Brand-new. Time to christen them. Your pussy is their maiden voyage.”

“You’re a man with a vibrator collection?”

“I was a Boy Scout a million years ago. Gotta be prepared.” He gave her a three-fingered salute.

Griffin set the open briefcase next to her on another pillow. He sat back on his knees and unzipped his pants.

“No cock yet,” she said wagging her finger in that way Kingsley wagged his. Great, now she was doing it. Must be a dom thing.

“I know, but I want to get closer to you. Is that okay?”

She smiled at him. “Very okay. But first—touch yourself.”

His jeans were unzipped and open, hanging low on his narrow hips. She wished she had a camera to take a picture of this scene—Griffin running his hand up and down and all over his erection, the look on his face as he stared directly in her eyes while he did it, shameless, sensual, sexual, all in one.

She crooked her finger at him and he crawled over her kissing her on the mouth again.

“Can I take your clothes off?” he asked. “Please?”

“Of course.”

She sat up to help him pull her shirt off. This time she didn’t have to tell him to fold it neatly and put it away like a good boy. Fast learner. She liked that.

He unzipped her denim skirt and folded it. He slid her bra off her arms and hung it from the knob on the nightstand drawer. When he went for her boots she issued an order.

“Leave those on.”

“With pleasure,” Griffin said, dipping his head to kiss the laces.

“For a dom, you’re a very good sub.”

Griffin grinned at her. “If I have to fold your underwear and kiss your boots to get inside you, then I’m more than happy to do that. But—for the record—King diagnosed me as a born service top.”

“You think I’m bottoming from the top?”

“Maybe I’m just topping from below.” He kissed her right on the tip of her nose. Typical top. She’d show him who was boss. At least in this scene.

Elle laughed as Griffin yanked off his jeans and, naked, slid into bed next to her. He gathered her in his arms and put her on top of him, his chest to her back. With the padded headboard behind him, Griffin was half sitting up, which made her feel as if she were lying on a human chaise longue. A human chaise longue with a massive erection halfway up her ass. She ground her hips from side to side and in a slow undulating circle.

“Vicious wench,” he said. “If you keep doing that I’m going to come on your back.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“I’m not?”

“You aren’t allowed to come until I’m done coming.”

“You didn’t say that earlier.”

“New rule,” she said. “I make the rules. You follow the rules.”

“In that case, we better get to six fast before I break that rule all over the both of us.”

From inside the briefcase he pulled out a medium-size vibrator, about six inches long and of average thickness. She was already wet from her previous orgasm so it slid into her easily. Griffin put it on its lowest setting and she turned her face to meet his. As he fucked her with the vibrator they kissed again, a long, slow, deep kiss. His one free hand cupped her right breast and squeezed it. He grasped her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, kneading it lightly. Her whole body felt his presence. Her thighs were draped over his thighs, her back rested against his stomach and chest, his arms wrapped around her and his mouth was on her mouth. When she came a second time it was against his lips. The mingling of their breaths as she climaxed was as erotic as the orgasm itself.

Griffin turned the vibrator up to a higher setting and fucked her with it again. The fingers of his free hand massaged her clitoris gently and it wasn’t long before she came a third time with a deep shudder.

After number four he took the vibrator out of her and explored her with his bare hands.

“God, you’re so wet,” he said in her ear and she could hear the strain in his voice, the need. “I can’t stop touching you.”

He pulled her folds wide, spreading her out and pushing two, then three, then four of his fingers into her. With his four fingers inside her, he moved his hand in a spiraling motion, circling in and out, in and out, the spiral widening with every turn and his fingers finding soft spots and muscles inside her she’d forgotten she had.

She could hardly stand it, how good it felt, how open she was, and how much she wanted him. She could barely breathe for it, for the pleasure and the pressure and the slow building toward release. Underneath her Griffin’s hips pushed against her. They were adrift together, moving and rocking and floating above the bed.

“Please come for me. Come on my hand so I can feel every muscle inside you,” he said as he pushed the heel of his palm against her clitoris.

“Deeper,” she said.

“Faster,” she said.

“Harder,” she said.

Griffin did all three and he did them all at once. When she came for her fifth time it was with a cry that sounded to her own ears like pain but her body told her differently. The muscles inside her contracted all around Griffin’s fingers, hard enough he swore in her ear.

“Fuck,” he said, slowly pulling his hand from inside her.

“Good idea.”

“What?”

“Let’s fuck.”

“But that was only number five.”

“What did I say about the rules?” she asked.

“You make the rules.”

“Right. Now I’m changing the rules. I need to fuck you. I’ll die if I don’t.”

“No one ever died from not fucking,” he reminded her.

“Whoever said that was an idiot. Get on your back, head by the footboard. I want to tie you up and use your cock for my own selfish needs. Do you have any objection to that?”

“I—”

“Don’t care. Just do it.”

He just did it.

Her legs wobbled as she stood up and dug through Griffin’s closet for bondage toys. Not in the mood to be fancy, she grabbed a pair of basic rope cuffs, wrapped them around the top bar of the footboard and slipped them onto Griffin’s wrists.

“Condoms?” she asked.

“In the drawer. And between the mattresses. Also in a box under the sofa. There’s some in the bathroom, too. And the kitchen.”

“Is there anywhere in the house you don’t have condoms?”

“The cookie jar. There are actual cookies in there. No. Wait. There are condoms in there, too. I ate all the cookies.”

Elle laughed so hard she had to rest her head on his chest for a minute.

“You’re ridiculous and sexy and ridiculously sexy,” she said, meeting his eyes.

“I know.”

“I’m going to fuck you now.”

“Thank you.”

She reached into the bedside table for a condom.

“Wait,” Griffin said, lifting his head. “Not those. The ones under the mattress.”

Elle raised her eyebrow and slid her hand between the mattress and the bed frame. She pulled out a sheaf of condoms.

“Your favorites?” she asked.

“Lambskin,” he said. “Love them. I got tested last month, and you haven’t been with a guy in a year and, you know, they’re roomier. You can’t use them for anal so I save them for only the most special pussies.”

“My pussy and I are honored.”

Elle straddled Griffin’s hips, took his cock in her hand and guided it to the entrance of her body. She sunk down slowly onto it, relishing every inch. Already she was bathed in sweat but as Griffin entered her fully the temperature in the room rose ten degrees. Or maybe that was her body temperature rising. Didn’t matter. They were both slick with sweat and burning up for each other. When she leaned closer to him, he lifted his head and captured a nipple in his mouth, sucking it deeply, and she felt the pull of pleasure all the way into her stomach. Elle gripped the bar of the footboard over Griffin’s head and used it to steady herself as she rode him. She pushed against him and his back arched. She did it again. His eyes closed and his lips parted.

“You’re enjoying this,” she said, rocking into him again.

He nodded, biting his own lip, a gesture she found innocently erotic.

“I was afraid,” he said.

“Of what?” She touched his face.

“Of never seeing you again.”

“You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going anywhere. Not with you inside me.”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

Elle stopped moving.

“What?” Griffin looked at her, his eyes open again.

“You called me Mistress.”

“I did. Did you like that?”

“Say it again.”

“Yes, Mistress... Mistress... Mistress... My beautiful Mistress Nor.”

And the more he said it, the more she wanted him to say it. And when he came it was with the word on his lips.

She laughed and Griffin whispered, “What? What is it?”

“Mistress Nor. I like the sound of that.”

9

Mistress Nora

ELLE ATTEMPTED TO creep back into Kingsley’s town house under cover of night. A few years ago she might have succeeded in her sneaking but that was before Kingsley acquired his “children.”

Four black Rottweilers—the children in question—bounded down the stairs, galloping toward her in a hail of paws and ears and tails and tongues. She ended up flat on her back beneath them with four wet noses in her face. Kingsley’s dogs—Brutus, Dominic, Sadie and Max—were reportedly vicious attack dogs. Anyone who knew them, however, quickly discovered that although they, like their owner, were capable of killing if necessary, in general they were lovers, not fighters.

“Brutus, stop it,” she said as Brutus, the alpha of the bunch, stuck his nose between her thighs. “Jabberwocky.”

“They don’t respond well to safe words,” Kingsley said from the top of the stairs.

“Jesus Christ,” she said, petting and pushing the dogs away at the same time. “Why couldn’t you be a cat person?”

“There’s enough pussy in this house as it is.” Kingsley started down the steps toward her. He was dressed but disheveled, looking like a well-fucked rogue. Apparently she and Kingsley had both had a nice evening. Finally he whistled, calling the dogs off her. They whimpered but obeyed their master although it was obvious they were not done with the lickings and the pettings.

“Where’s Calliope?” Elle pulled herself off the floor and brushed herself off. “I thought they slept with her.”

“They do. But she’s on a date.”

Elle walked past him heading up to her room.

“Guess we’re all getting lucky tonight,” she said.

Kingsley grabbed her arm as she tried to pass him, stopping her on the stairs. “Griffin?”

“Yup.”

“He wasn’t supposed to tell you he was watching you,” Kingsley said.

“He didn’t tell me. I caught him in the act. He’d make a terrible CIA agent.”

Kingsley sighed heavily. “I’ll kill him.”

“Don’t kill him. I need him alive if I’m going to keep tying him up and fucking his brains out.”

Kingsley narrowed his eyes at her. “But Griffin’s a dominant.”

“So?”

“You topped him?”

“I did.”

“You topped a top.”

“I’ve topped you,” she said.

“I’m a masochist. Griffin isn’t.”

“Griffin’s barely twenty-three and couldn’t scare someone if he wore a suit made out of knives. He’s a puppy, King. It’s pretty easy to top a puppy when you’ve already topped a...” She looked down at Brutus sitting at Kingsley’s heels. “A Rottweiler.”

Kingsley cocked his eyebrow at that. Probably the first time in his life a woman had ever likened the inestimable Kingsley Edge to a dog.

“You enjoyed it with Griffin?”

“As much as he did. So...a lot.”

“My office. Now.”

“Now? I’m so tired,” she said. “I came like eight times today. I need to put an ice pack on my pussy.”

“Ice later. Talk now. Go.”

Elle went. The fantasy of owning her own house was growing stronger every day. Wouldn’t it be lovely to return home from a day of debauchery to an empty house? Or if not an empty house, a house devoid of her boss. She wouldn’t have to answer questions about where she went and what she did and with whom she did it. Someday...once she got her money. Not money, she corrected. A lot of fucking money.

Since Kingsley would be the source of her getting “a lot of fucking money” she dutifully trudged up to his office and sat gingerly in the chair opposite his desk. Next time she took a year off cock, she’d pick a guy with a much smaller penis to help with her reentry into the world of PIV intercourse.

“I have good news,” Kingsley said. He sat on the edge of his desk in front of her.

“I like good news.”

“Milady will be at the party we’re attending tomorrow night.”

“Good,” Elle said. “Can’t wait for the beat and greet.”

“You think you’re ready to go out again? Be around our people?”

“He won’t be there, will he?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“But eventually you will have to see him again. You need to prepare yourself for that. If you saw him right now, could you handle it?”

Elle paused before answering. Finally she spoke.

“While we were having sex, Griffin called me something. He called me Mistress. Mistress Nor.”

“You liked that?” Kingsley asked.

“I loved it.” She heard the heat in her own voice, the emotion betrayed, and she quickly worked to cover it. “I don’t want to go back to being Eleanor. I want to be Mistress Nor.”

“Nor?”

“Griffin hates the name ‘Eleanor.’ He just started calling me Nor one day and that’s what he calls me. Then he called me Mistress Nor, and when he called me Mistress Nor, it was like I heard my real name for the first time.”

“There is a queen named Noor. Queen of Jordan. Beautiful woman. Brilliant and accomplished. I send her roses on her birthday. It’s a good name for a queen but perhaps not a dominatrix. Nor. Rhymes with whore. Can’t have that, can we?”

“No, I guess not.”

Kingsley leaned over and took her chin in his hand. He looked at her, looked into her eyes, at her face, looked like a man aiming for a target. Where was the bull’s-eye?

“Nora.”

The name sounded elegant with his accent. Strong, sophisticated. Not her name and yet there was her name buried inside it. Those three letters—Eleanor, Nor, Nora...it was her and yet it wasn’t.

“I like it,” she said.

“Mistress Nora. Yes...parfait.”

“It is.”

“Mistress Nora,” he said again. “Nora, la Maîtresse. Son Maîtresse.”

“Votre Maîtresse,” she said, completing the conjugation. The Mistress. His Mistress. Your Mistress.

“Oui,” he said. “Ma Maîtresse.”

My Mistress.

“Mistress Nora,” she said, rolling the name around her mouth and loving the way it tasted—sweet and spiked like Christmas punch.

“What’s my name?” Nora asked.

“Mistress Nora.”

“Who am I?

“Mistress Nora.”

“Who will be Queen of the Underground?”

Kingsley smiled. “Mistress Nora.”

“Fuck yes, I will,” Nora said, beaming.

Nora.

That was her name.

Not Elle like her friends called her.

Not Ellie like her mother called her.

Not Eleanor, which Søren called her in public.

Not even Little One, which he called her in private.

And not Nor because that wasn’t quite right.

Nora.

Mistress Nora.

“Mistress Fucking Nora,” she said aloud.

“Well, Mistress Fucking Nora,” Kingsley said, “if you’re going to be queen, you’ll need a throne room. I’ll start working on your dungeon tomorrow.”

“Finally.”

“Go, get some rest. We’ll start fresh tomorrow.”

“Do I get to play with the whip?”

“You can’t even flog a towel off the wall. Now go to bed. There’s a naughty Haitian submissive in my bed who will be wondering where my cock has gone to. Sleep well.”

“I plan to.” She stood up. When she’d sat down she’d still been Elle. When she stood up she was Nora. Mistress Nora.

She headed to Kingsley’s office door.

“You really topped Griffin?” he asked.

“I did. Like a boss,” she said, laughing. “But don’t be too impressed. Like I said, he’s a puppy.”

“You were gone for a year. So was I. Tessa told me that while we were gone, Griffin became one of the most sought-after doms in the club. He’s brutal when he wants to be. When we were gone, he wanted to be. Tessa had bruises for two weeks after a session with him—inside and out. He’s made grown men bleed, and he’s not even a sadist. He says he does it for ‘shits and giggles.’ If Griffin seems like a puppy to you, it’s because you’re a tiger.”

Nora narrowed her eyes at him and raised her hand in a claw. “Rawr.”

Kingsley laughed. “Go to bed.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Goodnight, Mistress.”

“Mistress... I could get used to that.”

Truth was, she was already used to it.

She walked out of his office intending to go straight to her bedroom. She’d take a long bath, sleep for twelve hours, eat all the food for breakfast...

But she didn’t make it to her bedroom. She stopped at Kingsley’s playroom first. Inside she turned on the light and walked around gazing at the array of BDSM toys hanging on the wall. He had ten floggers of various sizes and materials hanging on evenly spaced hooks—red floggers, blue floggers, black, brown, elk-hide, cowhide, deer-hide, vinyl and vicious rubber floggers. He had canes, too, over a dozen of them. Tiny little white ones that burned like a bee sting on sensitive skin. Large rattan canes that could put a full-grown man in the hospital if wielded with too much force.

When she came to the crops, she smiled. Oh, yes, these were her favorite. Something about a riding crop. The feel of it, the balance, the elegance. Riding crops were designed for humans to use on horses, for striking thick skin and driving a ton of pure muscle. Perhaps that’s why she loved the crop so much. Kingsley had told her a dominatrix would never be physically stronger than the men she topped. It wasn’t about physical strength. It was about control, about taking command over a beast bigger and stronger but with a will that could be bent, a drive that could be directed, power that could be restrained, channeled, dominated.

Nora reached out and took a particular riding crop off a brass hook. It was red, bloodred, and about two feet long. A shorter crop had less give to it. It hurt more than one with more swish in its swing. She knew this instinctively, not from her few weeks as a dominant, but her years as a submissive. She’d long been on the receiving end of a riding crop. How good and right it felt to wield it by the handle.

She spun it in her hand like a baton. She hadn’t twirled a baton since she was a little girl pretending to be a majorette, but it all came back to her. Pure muscle memory. It danced lightly over her fingers as she turned it. Testing out the old skills she walked the perimeter of the room, twirling it in her hand as she walked. A few times she almost lost it, but she caught it and soon the rhythm was hers again.

Her own dungeon. She would have a room like this soon enough. All the toys she could ever want. A dream come true. A dark and decadent dream. A secret dream like playing Daddy’s girl with Søren. She’d had the dream of being a domme all her life. She remembered sexual fantasies from long before she’d met Søren. When she was fourteen, she’d snuck into an R-rated movie and saw her first sex scene with a woman on top. That fantasy had given her some of her earliest orgasms.

Wasn’t it strange that Søren had never picked up on those domination fantasies of hers? He could read her so well that he could sense from her fascination with the couple at the club that she had a Daddy’s-girl fantasy. Why hadn’t he known she’d had this side to her? He was a smart man, a brilliant man, an insightful man. There’s no reason he shouldn’t have known. Kingsley had known.

“Oh, you son of a bitch,” she said out loud. “You knew.”

“Who knew?” Kingsley asked from the doorway.

She turned and faced him.

“I came for a flogger,” he said. “I thought you were going to bed. Tell me...who knew?”

“He did. He knew everything about me. The more private it was, the more personal, the more humiliating... He knew it. He could read me like a book. He knew I wanted to be a domme. He had to know.”

“Of course he knew. I told him when you were sixteen that you were a dominant or a switch.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Did he have to?”

“It would have been nice if we could have talked about it,” she said.

Kingsley gave a little scoffing laugh as he plucked a large black flogger off the wall.

“If you’re looking for someone ‘nice’ you picked the wrong priest.”

“I can’t believe he knew all this time, and he never said a word.”

“I can,” Kingsley said. “He loved you. He didn’t want to lose you. He’s a dominant and a sadist. If you were a dominant, too, he couldn’t switch for you. He knew he’d lose you if you let your domme side out to play. I suppose we proved him right.”

“That’s why you didn’t want me to tell him I topped you.”

Kingsley nodded.

“I didn’t leave him because I have a domme side,” she said. “I left him because he tried to leave the church for me, and because he ordered me to marry him like my feelings didn’t matter one fucking bit to him. Oh, and he did this.” She threw her riding crop against the wall. “That’s what he thinks of me.”

“I warned you he had this side.”

“I know you did.” She looked at Kingsley and shook her head. “He made me promise him forever. Did you know that? I had to obey him forever just because he got me out of going to jail when I was fifteen. Did he really think I owed him the rest of my natural life because of that? I would have gotten out of juvie at twenty-one. Maybe I shouldn’t have made the deal.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No,” she admitted. “But sometimes, I do wonder...”

“What do you wonder?” Kingsley asked, coming to stand in front of her.

“When I was with my mom at the convent, we talked one day about my dad. She told me something I didn’t know, and it’s been bugging me ever since she told me. Now I know why.” She paused, gathered her words. She wasn’t sure why Kingsley needed to know what she was going to tell him, but he did. He had to know.

“Go on,” Kingsley said gently. She had his complete attention.

“I was still a baby when my parents divorced,” she began. “My mom asked for full custody of me, but the judge said my dad could have me on the weekends. But then Dad got caught stealing some car parts. Spent three months in jail. But there were about four weekends I stayed with him at his place before he got arrested and my mom got full custody. Do you know where he lived back then?”

“No.”

“A shitty apartment at the edge of West Harlem. Barely two miles from Riverside Drive. Two miles from this house. King.” She smiled, shook her head, laughed at the mad world they lived in. “It’s funny... If he hadn’t gotten arrested, I would have grown up two miles from this house. Dad started jacking cars and running a chop shop full-time when I was about ten. When I was fifteen he made me help him. Remember that?”

“I do. It’s what brought him to my doorstep to save you after you were arrested.”

“If I lived with my dad and wanted to steal cars, my first stop would have been Riverside Drive. A Rolls-Royce two miles from my place? Very tempting target. I would have stolen your Rolls if I’d grown up with my dad instead of my mom. I know it. I know it for a fact. I don’t know how I know it so don’t ask. But when I go back in time in my mind I can see where that one little event changed the course of my life. I would have stolen your Rolls that night I helped my dad jack cars, and I would have gotten arrested. And what would you have done when you found out a fifteen-year-old girl had been the one who stole your Rolls?”

“I would have gone to the police station to get a look at this girl. Like I did with Mistress Irina when she was arrested for trying to poison her husband. I wouldn’t have been able to resist seeing the little girl car thief.”

“So you, not Søren, would have met me first. If I’d lived with my dad on the weekends, then I wouldn’t ever have gone to church with my mom on Sundays, right? No Sacred Heart for me,” she said. “It was like God flipped a coin and it landed on heads instead of tails, on Søren instead of you. It could have landed on tails.”

“And you would have landed on me.”

She nodded, not laughing. It wasn’t a joke. She saw it all happening. Kingsley would have walked into the police station interrogation room and it would have been him sitting across from her when she opened her eyes. She would have said, Who the fuck are you? and he would have answered, That’s for you to decide, chérie. I’m either your best friend or your worst enemy. He would have wanted her. Kingsley was no saint. He would have had far fewer qualms about fucking her as a teenager than Søren had. Kingsley wasn’t a priest, didn’t care what happened to him. Instead of at age twenty and with Søren, she would have lost her virginity at age fifteen or sixteen to Kingsley. Although it hadn’t happened that way, it was as if she had the memories of her other life on that other path. Her first time with Kingsley would have been nothing like her first time with Søren. She would have been scared with Kingsley, and he wouldn’t have hurt her first. No flogging, no caning. She would have been on top to minimize the pain and to remind them both what she was—a switch. Because he would have recognized her as the switch she was from day one and would have trained her accordingly—to hurt and be hurt, to dominate and to submit, to rule and to serve. And where would Søren have been in all this? At Sacred Heart, praying, working, without realizing the girl he could have owned was tied to the bed of the boy he’d once loved.

“You told me once what would have happened if you’d seen me first. But I never told you what would have happened if I’d seen you first,” she said.

“What would have happened?”

She met his eyes. “I would have fallen in love with you. I still remember that night I first saw you. The night of the wedding at Sacred Heart. I thought I’d never meet a man who tempted me like Søren did. And then you waltzed in whistling and wearing those boots and your bad attitude and you threatened to lose your watch in me. The reason I didn’t fall in love with you that night was because I’d already given my whole heart to him. But if I’d seen you first...and wasn’t in love with him, I would have loved you.”

“Yes,” he said. “I believe that. And I would have fallen in love with you.”

“Do you think that’s what was meant to happen? You and me in love?” Nora asked. “Søren came to see you because he needed your help to get me out of jail. But if I’d stolen your car...”

“I might never have seen Søren again,” Kingsley said. “I was in a bad place when he showed up here in my music room asking me to help him help you. And he helped me pull myself together. But if I’d seen you first in that police station, fifteen, scared, alone...I would have pulled myself together to take care of you.”

She’d seen the way Kingsley treated his assistant, Calliope. He protected her, adored her, watched over her... He would have done the same for her had she moved in with him at age sixteen. She would have, too. A father in jail, a mother who was a religious fanatic...easy enough to get her legally emancipated. By age eighteen she would have been Kingsley’s second-in-command. His second, his partner in crime, his dominant, his submissive, his lover, his everything. Kingsley had never fallen in love with her because she was always Søren’s. But with Søren out of the picture...

“And it all happened because my piece-of-shit father got caught stealing a hundred bucks’ worth of spare parts from a junkyard. Something he’d done a thousand times before. One choice, one mistake, one tiny twist of fate...”

“Chills the blood to think of it, doesn’t it?” Kingsley asked, and she could see it did trouble him to realize how tangled was the thread that tied their three lives together.

“If he’d never met me, he would never have broken his vows. What if that’s how it should have been?”

“Is that what you wish had happened?” Kingsley asked. “Do you wish we’d seen each other first?”

“All I know is that looking back I can see where the road forks. But I also see that if I’d ended up on the other path, with you...I still would have found my way to this moment. I’m saying this feels like destiny, like both paths would have brought me here, like every path would have brought me here. But I could have been here so much sooner if he...”

Her voice trailed off. Anger choked her throat, strangling her words. Her hands clenched and unclenched. She wanted to hit someone, something. Set fires, burn the old world down and rise up from the ashes. If Søren were here right now she would teach him a new pain...

Nora saw the flogger in Kingsley’s hand. She took it from him and walked to the towel still pinned on the wall.

“Søren knew I was a switch the whole time, and he never said a fucking thing to me about it. If I’d never met him, I would have been doing this since I was sixteen.”

With all her anger and sorrow and bitterness, she threw the flogger with a fearsome snap.

The towel went sailing to the floor. It sat limp and defeated at her feet. She wished it was Søren’s heart.

Nora turned to face him.

“Well, look at that,” Nora said, smiling at Kingsley.

“By George, I think she’s got it.”

10

Milady

KINGSLEY TOOK NORA’S hand and helped her step over a naked body on the floor. The man didn’t appear to be dead, merely spent. Merely very spent considering he didn’t seem to notice the woman in the blue-and-black silk cancan dress and the man in the Regency suit and Hessian boots stepping over his panting, sweating torso to reach a set of steps behind him.

Nora didn’t thank Kingsley for his gallantry. She couldn’t if she wanted to. In addition to the cancan dress, seamed stockings and her black button-up ankle boots, she also wore a blue leather collar and a blue leather leash. The leash Nora clenched between her teeth. When they made it to the landing at the top of the stairs and saw no one else near, Kingsley took the leash from between her teeth.

“What is this place?” she asked. They were in a big fancy Westchester County mansion that looked like every other Westchester County mansion on the street.

“It’s called the Body House,” Kingsley said.

“Why haven’t we ever been here before?”

Kingsley had taken her to every kink club in the city, but she’d never even heard of the Body House.

“It’s not our sort of place,” Kingsley said. “Now shh...” Kingsley lifted a finger to his lips to shush her, and she rolled her eyes behind her feathered masquerade mask. “Your voice is recognizable. If you have to speak, do so very quietly.”

“I could speak in a French accent,” Nora said, putting on her very best French accent, which she’d picked up from Kingsley. He winced at it. “That bad?”

“You sound like a drunk Brigette Bardot.”

“Oh, I do not. Søren said my fake French accent is very good.”

“It is,” he said. Kingsley paused and it was a meaningful pause. “Too good.”

“Too good?”

Kingsley didn’t answer for a moment. Nora waited. When he spoke again he said, “It’s not personal. But when you speak like that with the accent, you sound just like Marie-Laure.”

“I sound like your sister?”

He nodded. “When she spoke English she had a strong accent. She used it to flirt with the boys at school. It’s how I remember her, playing up her accent to throw herself at Søren. Your voice and the accent together... It’s uncanny. Like she’s back from the dead.”

He gave her a look of apology, a look that asked for mercy.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

Kingsley had never forgiven his sister for marrying Søren, had never forgiven himself what happened after. There was no spot more raw on Kingsley’s soul than the one left by his sister, Marie-Laure.

“It’s not your fault. Anything can bring her back to me. The scent of Chanel No. 5. The music of Swan Lake. I smell it, I hear it, and it’s like she’s standing behind me or in the next room. And when you speak in that accent, I can hear her.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut, then, and you can tell everyone I’m not allowed to talk.”

“Merci.” He put the leash back between her teeth which was a sign to all and sundry that she was off-limits to playing with anyone but Kingsley. If he hung the leash down where anyone could take it, anyone could play with her.

Nora was not here to play.

“That’s Mistress Vee,” Kingsley said, nodding toward a corner of the living room where a woman in a black leather catsuit was painstakingly tying up a middle-aged man in a corset made entirely of silk rope. “She does masterful shibari. I’m hoping she’ll be willing to teach you.”

Nora pulled a fan out of her blue silk reticule and unfurled it as she spat out the leash. Holding the fan in front of her mouth, she whispered, “Who is he?”

“You don’t know?” Kingsley asked.

“No.”

“He’s the governor’s son.”

“King?”

“What?”

“I don’t know what our own governor looks like much less his relatives.”

“You’ll learn what he looks like eventually.”

“Why?”

“He’ll be one of your clients.”

Nora would have rolled her eyes at this pronouncement except it was likely true.

“Is the mayor’s son going to be a client of mine, too?” she asked.

“No. He’s not a submissive,” Kingsley said. “But I did a little cover-up work for the mayor’s wife before the election. She owes me a favor now.”

“Who doesn’t?” she asked. If you were powerful in New York, Kingsley made sure you owed him a favor. She owed him a favor herself. A big one. He’d taken her in after she’d run away from the convent. She had her old bedroom back. No one had touched her things, moved her clothes, packed up her stuff and stored it all away. It had been left in place waiting for her return. Even the book she’d been reading when she left, Villette by Charlotte Brontë, had been left on the nightstand, her bookmark still in place on page 268. When she had returned, Kingsley had opened the door to her bedroom and said, “Welcome home.”

A roof over her head, a bed to sleep in, clothes, food and books. None of which she’d have if Kingsley had turned her away. Which begged the question...

“Why did you take me in?” she whispered behind her fan.

“Why did I take you in?” Kingsley repeated. “Are you truly asking me that?”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d sent me packing.” His anger at her for running away and not telling him where she’d gone, not contacting him once in all those months, had been real. Terrifyingly real.

“I tried to explain you to Juliette. Explain us, I mean.”

“That must have taken all night.”

“It might take the rest of my life. She said you and I, we’re family in a way.”

“I certainly wouldn’t call us friends,” she said, not out of cruelty but mere honesty. Nora was a writer and she took the meaning of words seriously. This man who’d been her lover since she was twenty, who had introduced her to her dominant side, who’d gotten her pregnant and then run for the hills when she’d needed him most, but who had taken her in without question when she’d turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night? To call him a “friend” seemed an insult to what they were to each other. It would be like calling Kingsley and Søren “school chums.”

But family?

“I’m not sure about the ‘family’ here, either,” she said. “No offense.”

“And why ever not?” Kingsley sounded almost insulted.

“Because I’ve never wanted to fuck a member of my own family.”

Kingsley laughed under his breath.

“You aren’t, by any chance, training me to be a dominatrix to punish him, are you?”

Kingsley put his hand over his heart. “You wound me, chérie. Would I really do something like that?”

“Yes.”

Kingsley winked and nodded toward a scene happening on the level below them.

“Showtime.”

Three burly men dressed in leather entered the large living room below and started moving the furniture. Chairs were pushed to the outer perimeter and every other bit of furniture was taken to another room. Someone clearly needed a big space to play. From the other room, they brought out a large black St. Andrew’s Cross and set it near the main wall.

“Her harem,” Kingsley said, leaning close to her ear.

The men tested the cross and found it sturdy. They tested the ankle and wrist restraints on the cross and found them solid. They tested the distance from the cross to the nearest onlookers and found it adequate.

One of the three men disappeared again into the other room. When he returned he wasn’t alone.

A blindfolded man was escorted into the play area and made to stand in front of the cross with his back to it. From her perch on high Nora could see him well. He had a trim and sinewy frame, tall but not too tall. She could see his ribs and his muscles when he inhaled. His arms were covered from shoulder to wrist in vibrant full-sleeve tattoos. Unfortunately he had on pants, black ones that hung low on his hips so she could see the little line of hair leading from his navel down, down, a trail she’d love to follow. Although his face was that of a young man—he looked no older than thirty—he had gray hair. Gray flecked with black, but mostly gray. Kingsley’s teenage assistant, Calliope, said such men were known as “silver foxes.” Nora had never wanted a pet fox before. Now she reconsidered.

“He’s pretty,” she said to Kingsley behind her fan. “Who is he?”

“You like him?” Kingsley asked.

“Who wouldn’t?”

“His name is Thorny.”

“I love his ink,” she said, eyeing his tattoos.

“You want him?” Kingsley asked.

“I might not say no if he offered,” she readily admitted. “If he’s a sub.”

“Oh, he’s a sub. For two thousand dollars.”

“He’s a pro-sub?”

Kingsley shook his head.

“Pro-dom?”

Kingsley shook his head again.

“Pro-switch?”

“He’s a pro...pro. And for two thousand dollars he’ll be almost anything you want him to be.”

Nora’s eyes widened.

“He’s a prostitute?” Nora asked. Kingsley nodded. “The Body House... Bawdy house... King, did you bring me to a brothel?”

Again he nodded.

With her mouth hidden by the fan she whispered a question to Kingsley.

“Why the hell did you bring me to a brothel? I’ve been arrested before, you know. I don’t want to get arrested again.”

She had nothing against sex workers, especially since she was training to be one herself. But kink for money was legal in New York. Sex for money wasn’t.

Kingsley took the leash and put it between her teeth again. Next time they went undercover he could wear the wig and play the sub, and she would stick a leather rope in his mouth.

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