For an eternity she could do nothing but breathe through the pain, breathe it into her and breathe it back out again. But as he moved in her, the pain waned and something else took its place. Something ... desire, hunger, greed for more of him. S0ren slid a hand between their bodies and kneaded her c.l.i.toris, stroking it as she ground her pelvis into his hand. A deep and primal need overtook her. She writhed underneath him, writhed and thrashed. Her inner walls throbbed against him. He pulled out and pushed in again as he teased her c.l.i.toris, dragging her close to a climax again.
The moment she saw him the first time all those years ago, she"d felt as if a golden cord had encircled her at the sight of him and tightened with each step toward him. Now she felt the cord again tight around her hips and her heart. As he pressed deeper and deeper into her, she felt the cord lifting her, carrying her higher and higher until her heart sc.r.a.ped the sky. The cord broke at its apex and she crashed to earth. She came apart, crying out as her climax crashed through her. This was it, the moment she had lived for and longed for since she"d first seen him. Communion was theirs at last.
S0ren pushed faster against her and with a final thrust that left her gasping, he came inside her, driving into her, pouring into her endlessly as she shuddered around him and shattered beneath him. He lingered inside her after coming, devouring her mouth with his. At last he pulled out and blood and s.e.m.e.n rushed out, pooling underneath her.
Once more S0ren knelt between her thighs. He lapped at her sore inner lips, at her still throbbing c.l.i.toris. She rose up again and crashed once more. When S0ren kissed her this time, she tasted blood.
He pushed his fingers into her tender opening. Soon he mounted her again, entered her again, f.u.c.ked her again. Their first time might have had pretensions of lovemaking. The second time he didn"t bother with any of the niceties of civilized s.e.x. He f.u.c.ked her brutally, unapologetically, f.u.c.ked her like he would never have another chance to f.u.c.k her again this side of heaven and h.e.l.l, and he would make the most of it even if it killed them both.
After he came a second time inside her, he pulled out and stared down at her naked, bleeding body. Welts and bruises scored her back. Cuts covered her feet. Her v.a.g.i.n.a felt lacerated from his thrusts. She"d come four times tonight and knew one thing for certain from the look in his eyes.
He"d only begun to hurt her tonight.
The cane came out again. Then the flogger. He unlocked her from the bonds and brought her to her hands and knees and entered her still bleeding body as she steadied herself with one hand on the headboard, one hand digging into the sheets. His hands roamed over her bruised back, her thighs and hips. He grasped her by the back of the neck and held her still as he rammed into her from behind. She felt like property in his hands, owned, possessed and enslaved.
She lost herself in the night, ceased to be Eleanor, ceased to be a person with a mind or a will of her own. She was His and His became her only ident.i.ty. If someone asked her who she was, "I"m His" would be the answer. He pushed four fingers into her, more than she"d ever dreamed she could take. And yet she took them and then him again because he gave her no choice in the matter.
"How much more can you take?" he asked as he pushed her down to her stomach.
"I can take anything you want to give me," she said. The s.e.x and the beatings had sent her into a near-ecstatic state of peace and bliss. The pain had anesthetized her. She barely felt her body anymore. It was as if she floated above the bed. The hardest strikes of the flogger only tickled. The most vicious blow of the cane barely stung. S0ren put her on her stomach and pushed into her again. For sixteen years he"d abstained from s.e.x. He seemed determined to make up for lost time all in one night. Let him. Let him f.u.c.k her until neither one of them could move anymore. She begged to drink from this cup. She would drink until she choked on the wine of his body and his sadism. She would drink until she drowned in it.
S0ren f.u.c.ked her a fourth time, pausing every few minutes to bite her back and shoulders. Then he knelt on her thighs and struck her with a thin reed cane that left a line of fire on her skin wherever it landed. Never had she dreamed he would beat her while inside her. She should never have doubted his sadism. She would never doubt it again. As he rode her with long, hard thrusts, he spoke to her and told her how proud he was to own her, how she was his most precious possession, how she pleased him more than she could imagine, how he would love her always and never let her go.
By dawn she could take no more from him. By dawn he could give no more to her. He gathered her body, bruised from shoulder to knee, front and back, and held her in his arms.
They didn"t speak of what had happened between them. What could they have said to each other? He had shown her his soul. She had given him her heart. They had joined their bodies and an immutable bond now sealed them together. And nothing could break them apart because nothing could break them.
When she awoke the next morning, the sun had joined them in bed.
Eleanor flinched as she stretched against the sheets. The bottoms of her feet throbbed. No doubt she still had shards of gla.s.s embedded in her skin. Her shoulders and back ached as if she"d been stretched on a rack. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and nipples were sore and swollen. Inside she was bruised and raw. She couldn"t recall ever being in this much pain.
It was the best morning of her life.
S0ren opened his eyes and gazed at her like he was trying to remember where he"d seen her before. She kissed him. He kissed her back.
"So now what?" she asked.
S0ren smiled and something in that smile told her she was in the biggest trouble of her life.
"Everything."
33.
Nora NORA OPENED HER EYES AND ACROSS FROM HER IN the bed was Nico, not S0ren. And she was glad to see him there, glad enough she smiled.
"Is that the end of the story?" Nico asked. She could see his eyelids were heavy, as heavy as her heart.
"The story never ends. It"s only the storyteller who grows too tired to keep telling it."
"What happened next?"
"Kingsley came for me at S0ren"s house. He came right into S0ren"s bedroom and carried me to the car. I spent a week at his house recovering from that one night. Your father ..." She paused and conjured the memory. She could still feel it all the way to her feet. "He put me on his bed and sat at my feet and with a pair of tweezers cleaned the shards of gla.s.s out of my skin. He said some poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d had to pick the shrapnel out of his chest once. This was his way of returning the kindness to the universe."
"What happened with you and your mother?"
"She did it." Nora rolled her eyes. "She joined a convent. When I was in college she went back to school. The order she wanted to join-the Sisters of Saint Monica-required the postulants to have a bachelor"s degree and no debt. Took her four years, but she got there. She took her first vows when I was twenty-four."
"Were you happy for her?"
"No," Nora admitted. "We weren"t even speaking then. I moved back in with her after college to try to mend the rift. Didn"t work. Instead she found out about me and S0ren. It was a bad time. I didn"t speak to her for three years. So ... you should forgive Kingsley and your mother." She poked him in the chest. "Trust me on this. Do it now before it"s too late."
"I want to love him," Nico said.
He gave her a tired smile.
"I"ll tell you the story of him and Sam and his club, The 8th Circle, one day. Then you"ll love him."
"Tell me now."
"No, it"s almost dawn."
"My vines need me," he said, reaching for her and pulling her close.
"Do you like being needed?" She settled against his chest, so broad and so warm. "Doesn"t it scare you?"
"I like knowing another life depends on me for its being. I like proving it made the right choice to put its faith in me. Does it scare you?"
"Being needed? Yes. Very much. Probably one reason why I decided long ago I didn"t want children, not even S0ren"s. And it"s why I"ve never owned anyone."
"Never?"
She shook her head. "I"ve had pets-human ones. But that was just play at the club. I never owned anyone the way S0ren owned me. It"s terrifying to be needed. Being responsible for another human being? For years? Sounds like a prison sentence. I don"t even have plants."
"You should try it," he said. "It"s not as bad as you think it is. It"s not always a prison. Sometimes it"s a palace. Subjects need their kings and queens."
He brushed her hair off her shoulder. Nora smiled to herself.
"What?" Nico asked, touching her lips. "What"s the smile for?"
"You just reminded me of something I said once-it"s nothing." She kissed his fingertips.
"You said you never needed S0ren, but he needed you."
"He did, yes. Even after I left him he would call me sometimes and tell me he needed me. I loved him so I went to him."
"Did that feel like a prison sentence to you?"
"No," she confessed, recalling those nights she slipped over to the rectory and gave her body to him. "It felt like a privilege."
"That"s what it felt like to me," Nico said. "When you needed me last night? A privilege. An honor."
"What are you saying, Nico?" Nora asked.
"I need you."
He touched her face, her lips.
"I need you," he said again. "You"re everything I ever dreamed of in one woman. My Rosanella. Beautiful, graceful, intelligent, fearless, and yet you trembled in my arms during the storm and then you drank me from a winegla.s.s. You owned me last night with everything you did to me and everything you let me do to you. No one on this earth deserves to have everything they desire. No one is ent.i.tled to have what he wants. But if I were to have what I wanted, I would need you to give it to me. Because it"s you, Mistress Nora."
Nora couldn"t look at Nico. Hearing him call her Mistress Nora was like hearing S0ren call her "Little One" for the first time, like learning her real name. After she"d told Nico who his father was, he"d asked her for Kingsley"s last name. "Nicholas Boissonneault," he"d said, his eyes shining with unshed tears as he tried out his new name. It hurt to learn who he was. It hurt her, too, but for a different reason.
"Go to sleep, my love." She kissed him on the forehead. "It"s an order. You have a long drive back."
"What will you do?"
"I don"t know yet," she said. "But I"ll be okay. I always am."
Nico"s eyelashes fluttered and in minutes his breathing settled into the deep rhythms of sleep. She gazed down at him, at this beautiful young man in her bed with callouses on his hands from the hard work he did every day. She"d never loved a man with calloused hands before. She had callouses, however. The callous on her finger from so much writing. The callous on her heart from so much loving.
She dragged herself from the bed and found her nightgown. She pulled a book from her suitcase and took it downstairs with her.
After building up the fire again, she curled into a chair. Carefully so as not to let any papers fall out, she opened her Bible.
More and more lately she found herself turning to this book for comfort and guidance. Queen Esther still enchanted her, as did Ruth and her threshing floor seduction of Boaz. The Psalms brought her solace-"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." King David and King Solomon spoke to her from ages past-two adulterers who found their way into the lineage of Christ. And how she loved Isaiah and the words that had become so much more meaningful to her of late-"For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given."
But it wasn"t the words of the Bible that she turned to in this last hour of night. From its pages she pulled a photograph, a child barely a year old with his mother"s turquoise eyes and his father"s blond hair.
She stared at the photograph of Fionn in her hand. In it her editor, Zach, held his son on his shoulder. The first time she"d held the boy in her own arms, the sudden depth of love she had for him had shaken her like fear. She"d trembled so hard she had to give him back to Grace almost immediately.
"If anyone ever tries to hurt that boy I will burn their world down," she"d said to Zach. "But please never ask me to babysit."
Zach had laughed and pulled her into a tender embrace, not caring that his wife stood five feet away watching and rolling her eyes at the both of them. They were long past jealousy and shared only joy among them all.
"Born to be a soldier, not a politician," Zach had teased her, then kissed her quick on the lips.
"What do you mean?" she"d asked.
Zach had looked into her eyes and smiled.
"Love the risk, hate the responsibility."
She hadn"t argued. Zach knew her all too well by now.
Nora studied the boy in the photograph. She"d shown the picture to Nico once after showing him a picture of his newly acquired half sister Celeste.
"My G.o.dson," she"d said with pride.
"He doesn"t take after his father," Nico had said, noting Zach"s black hair and Fionn"s blond locks.
"He does actually," she"d said with a secret smile. "So let"s pray he gets his personality from his mother."
She needed to look at Fionn"s picture right now. That little face of his with those wide, watching eyes consoled her more than any words of any song or psalm or prayer could right now. Death had come to her house and stolen a precious thing from her. But life had won this round. Fionn was her victory banner.
Knowing that he lived, that a new generation had already come into the world to fill the shoes of the lost, Nora could now look at the silver box on the mantel without denial or fear or regret. One death. One life. And so it would go until death died.
Nora closed her Bible, held it to her chest and for a while she dozed in the chair. She woke a few hours later, shivering from cold. Her fire had died again. She set her Bible aside and returned upstairs.
Standing by the bed, she watched Nico sleeping. What did vintners on the Mediterranean Sea dream of-the wine or the water? Did he dream of her? She"d never met a man like Nico, a man at complete and utter peace with himself. He loved older women, s.e.xual submission, his wine and his work. He made no apologies and offered no explanations for any of it. He had never battled with demons. He"d never wrestled with angels. He stood upon the earth immune to h.e.l.l"s seductions, untroubled by heaven"s demands.
Nico should have hated her, after all. Only last year the man he knew as his father had died. And when she"d come bearing the news another man had sired him, it was, as he said, like losing his beloved father a second time.
But he didn"t hate her, although he"d grieved and she"d grieved with him. Instead he"d thanked her for telling her the truth about his birth and the half sister he loved the moment he learned her name. It comforted Nico to know that another man had tempted his mother, seduced her even, but she"d chosen her husband in the end. Kingsley had been grateful to Nora, as well. He"d wanted children as long as he could remember and soon after being blessed with a daughter, he learned he had a son.
"Thank you for my son," Kingsley had said when she"d told him of Nico, told him she"d met his son and the young man was everything a father could wish for and more. Kingsley"s voice, usually so suave and measured, had been hoa.r.s.e with his grat.i.tude and grief for the lost years. "Thank you for finding him."
Thank you for finding him. She heard those words even now in her ears. She had searched for him and sought for him and found him, and now here he was before her in the bed they"d shared. And in a few hours he would leave her.
Nora reached out and touched Nico"s lips. Nico, who she and no one else had found.
"Finders keepers ..."
Nico stirred in his sleep. His eyes opened. She knelt by his shoulder and lowered her nightgown to her waist. Leaning over him she brought her breast to his mouth. He latched on to her nipple and she sighed as the pleasure rose up in her and pushed back the sadness. The dead felt nothing. That she could feel the sc.r.a.pe of his teeth, the heat of his breath on her skin, the gentle tug of his mouth, was all the proof she needed that she lived.
She shifted to give him her other breast as his hands roamed over her arms and down her back. Nico dragged her closer and grasped the fabric of her gown, pulling it up and off her completely. For the first time she was naked with him, completely and utterly naked.
"I need you," she said into his ear.
"Then take me."
She took him in her hand and guided him inside her. With her hands on his chest, she rode him. He gripped her hips as her inner muscles clamped onto his thick inches that penetrated to her core.
She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth, spiraling her hips to work him deeper into her. She stayed low over him, her hands braced on either side of his head, pushing against him until he gasped and arched underneath her.
Nora lightly gripped his bare neck, not to hurt him or even hold him, but simply to touch the most vulnerable part of him at his most defenseless. Her nipples grazed his chest as she moved on him, grinding her c.l.i.toris into the base of his shaft and forcefully clenching herself around him. When she couldn"t hold back anymore, she came. Her v.a.g.i.n.a fluttered with deep contractions as Nico exhaled her name. He came then, too, pouring into her, filling her with his wet heat.
Panting, Nora collapsed onto Nico"s chest. He held her close, held her tight. She should have been at peace now, but she wasn"t. It wasn"t enough to f.u.c.k him or let him f.u.c.k her. She wanted to possess him-every part of him. She wanted to own his heart, his body, his c.o.c.k, his s.e.m.e.n, his soul, even his life. But she couldn"t ask that of him, could she?
"You have to go soon, don"t you?" Nora asked, once they"d both caught their breaths.
"It"s a long drive back, but I"ll stay until you tell me to go."