Turning to her meal, she reached for her fork, but S0ren snapped his fingers. She stopped and slowly placed her hand back in her lap.

"You do nothing without my permission."

"Yes, sir."

He picked up a strawberry, red and wet, and brought it to her lips.

"Eat," he ordered.

She parted her lips and let him lay the strawberry on her tongue. Her cheeks ached from its sweetness. She swallowed it because she knew he wanted her to.

"Are you comfortable?" he asked, now serving her a spoonful of the soup, some sort of miracle in a bowl. And yet it might have been ashes on her tongue for as much as she enjoyed it.

"Not uncomfortable. Weird. I feel weird."

"You"ll have to elaborate."

"I feel ..." She paused and looked at her own naked body. She had her legs firmly pressed together, her stomach pulled in tight. She"d positioned her arms to cover her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as much as she could. "Very aware of my own body."

"Exposed?"

"That."

"I have seen you naked before," he reminded her.

"That was different. We were on a bed in the dark and doing stuff."

"Doing stuff? You can do better than that. What were we doing?"

"We were." She exhaled, feeling strangely tongue-tied. "We were kissing and touching and you used your fingers to make me come twice and you came on me and it was amazing."

"Where did I touch you?" S0ren gave her another spoonful of soup. She couldn"t believe he was feeding her.

Eleanor"s feet went numb and her hands trembled.

"You"re seriously trying to embarra.s.s the h.e.l.l out of me, aren"t you, sir?" She added the sir quickly at the end.

"I am. But also you need to be comfortable talking to me about anything. If you believe you"re mature enough to do the acts, you need to be mature enough to talk about them. So tell me, where did I touch you?"

She closed her eyes to remember that night with him in his childhood bedroom. But also so she wouldn"t have to look at him while she answered his humiliating questions.

"You kissed me on the mouth and on my neck and shoulders. You kissed my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and my nipples. Um ..."

"I have to say it amuses me that a young woman with your notoriously foul mouth is struggling so much to say words like b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"You"re laughing at me."

"I am. And you"re blushing and beautiful, and I"m thoroughly enjoying the show. Continue."

"Am I allowed to use slang terms, sir?"

"Not tonight. You have to be clinical and precise. You called Kingsley a c.o.c.ksucker to his face the night he beat you at blackjack. But tonight I have to wonder if you can use the word p.e.n.i.s in a sentence without fainting."

"Next time I play blackjack with King I"m calling him a p.e.n.i.s. There. Happy, sir?"

"Of course I"m happy. You"re here, naked and obeying my every order despite the fact you"re nervous and mortified. It"s intoxicating to see you so uncomfortable."

"You are totally getting off on making me miserable, aren"t you, sir?"

"Yes."

"I hate feeling like this."

"Like what?"

"Awkward. Scared. No, that"s not it."

"Vulnerable."

"I hate it," she repeated.

"I"ve noticed. You rarely let yourself be vulnerable. Your brashness and boldness, your brutal honesty, keeps people at bay. But now here you are, stripped of your defenses. It"s quite becoming. So please continue. Where else did I touch you? And do open your eyes."

Eleanor reluctantly obeyed. She took two seconds to mentally drown S0ren in the soup bowl before answering.

"You touched my shoulders, chest, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, back, a.s.s, I mean bottom, derriere, whatever the official term is. And my hips and thighs. You put a finger inside me."

S0ren coughed.

"You touched my c.l.i.toris and put a finger inside my v.a.g.i.n.a," she said, enunciating each word as nervous sweat beaded under her arms. "And I loved it."

"I did, too. Where did you touch me?"

Eleanor groaned and dropped her head onto the table.

"Eleanor, you"re eighteen years old. If you want to be treated like an adult you must act like one. Sit up straight and answer the question."

She sat up and straightened her spine like an iron rod.

"I kissed you on the mouth and the neck and shoulders and chest. I think that"s all."

"It is. In the future, I will allow you more access to my body."

"Thank you, sir."

"Where did you touch me?" He reached into his water gla.s.s and pulled out an ice cube. He placed it at the top of her spine and she gasped at the shock of the cold.

"I touched your face and your neck and your shoulders and your chest and back and p.e.n.i.s, and there, I said it. Are you done torturing me yet?"

"No."

"A girl can dream."

He traced the length of her spine with the ice cube from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. She gripped the arms of the chair and tried not to squirm.

"I want to talk about pain with you tonight," he said as the ice cube melted against her skin. "Does this hurt?"

"A little. It makes all my muscles contract."

"That"s your body"s way of trying to protect itself from the cold. I"m using my bare hands. The ice hurts me, too."

"Kingsley said dominants and s.a.d.i.s.ts use floggers and canes and stuff so they don"t hurt themselves while inflicting pain."

"That"s part of it. There is another part." He lifted the ice cube off her skin and put the remnant of it in her mouth. She swallowed it.

"What"s the other part, sir?"

He fed her another bite of soup. He seemed uninterested in his own dinner.

"People have an instinctive trust of authority figures. It"s almost a cliche. Women are attracted to men in uniform. Boys grow up and marry women who remind them of their mothers. We fantasize about our teachers, our doctors-"

"Our priests?" She grinned at him.

"Even priests." He took another ice cube out of the gla.s.s. This time he ran it down her neck and over her chest. Goose b.u.mps exploded all over her body.

"Do you see me as an authority figure?"

"Yes, sir. Obviously."

"What sort?"

She bit her bottom lip out of simple nervousness. S0ren rubbed his thumb over her mouth to remind her not to do that. Dumb girls. She"d never forget that talk.

"It won"t make me uncomfortable if you say you see me as a father figure. I"m addressed as "Father" daily by people twice my age."

"People would say it was weird to be in love with someone who"s like a father to you."

"Why do we care what those people think?"

A good question. She had an even better answer for it.

"We don"t."

"Do you enjoy submitting to my authority?"

"I do. It"s embarra.s.sing right now. But I trust you. I know you"re not going to rape me or kill me. Just humiliate me by making me eat dinner naked and forcing me to talk about your p.e.n.i.s. Sir."

"This is only the beginning, Little One. There will be other, greater humiliations. And we aren"t even close to playing with real pain yet."

"I want to do everything with you, anything you want to do, sir."

S0ren leaned in and kissed her. She loved these nights when they were together at Kingsley"s and could be together without fear and without judgment from the outside world.

"Go stand by the fireplace," S0ren ordered. "Warm up."

"I"m fine, I promise."

"I gave you an order."

Eleanor stood up and, feeling ridiculous in her high heels and collar, went to the fireplace. S0ren picked up the winegla.s.s and brought it over.

"Feel better?"

"Yes," she admitted without shame. "I thought that ice cube might kill me for a second there, sir."

"So how does the fire make you feel?"

"Warm. Grateful. Relieved."

"Relieved? Grateful? If you hadn"t been cold to start with, how would the fire make you feel?"

"Warmer, I guess."

"So it would be only a physical sensation, not an emotional reaction?"

"Right."

"If you were in pain and then suddenly the pain stopped and you experienced pleasure, what would you feel?"

"Pleasure, of course. And relief. And grat.i.tude. Happiness."

"So again, an emotional reaction instead of simply a physical reaction?"

"Yeah, that. Is that what S&M does?"

"Precisely that. Instead of the simple pleasures of vanilla s.e.x, S&M adds the emotional and psychological component. Fear. Humiliation. Trust. Longing. Desire. Relief. Grat.i.tude. Also, a young woman like yourself who feared her father and didn"t respect or love him can explore those feelings with a father figure she trusts and loves and has a healthy fear of."

"Sounds like good therapy. With o.r.g.a.s.ms."

"I won"t even charge you by the hour." He dipped his head and kissed her again. She heard a clink as he sat the winegla.s.s on the mantel and sighed as he wrapped both arms around her.

He ran his hands up and down her naked back, cupped her bottom.

Taking her hand, he led her to the fainting couch. He sat down first and he pointed at the floor. She knelt at his feet and rested her head in his lap. He tickled the back of her shoulders with his fingertips.

"Now that I"m collared, can we ... you know?" She made a hand gesture.

"Use your words, Eleanor."