[English] The Siren

The Siren
Page 50



He raised his head, picked up the phone and dialed. After two rings Wesley answered.

“She’s not here, Zach. Want to leave a message?”

“Does she have her mobile on her? Do you know where she is?”

“She’s in your office, Zach.”

Zach looked up and found Nora standing in his office doorway. She knocked twice on the open door and waited.

“Never mind, Wesley. She’s here.” Zach hung up. “How are you, Nora?”

“We need to talk about the blow job.”

Zach stood up and rushed around his desk. He pulled her inside the office and shut the door behind her.

“The blow job scene in my book.” She raised her voice as Zach sat at his desk again.

“You will be the death of me. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m here to discuss my book with my e***or. I still have an e***or, don’t I?”

“Of course. I’ve been busy this week.”

“Busy ignoring me.”

“I have responded to everything you’ve sent me.”

“Yes, with notes and polite suggestions. I don’t need polite suggestions. Polite doesn’t help me. How do I know what I’m doing right if you aren’t telling me what I’m doing wrong? I need you to be angry again, not polite. I think I liked it better when you hated me.”

“I never hated you.” Zach forced himself to meet her eyes. He took a deep breath and sat up straighter in his chair. “I never hated you or the book. It’s only…about Saturday night—”

Nora opened her mouth and he raised his hand.

“About Saturday night,” he began again. “I need to apologize.”

Nora looked at him in wide-eyed surprise. “Zach—”

“Please, let me finish. I’m terribly sorry about what happened. I had too much to drink, and I was still reeling from Grace’s last email. That’s no excuse, I realize. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you in your con***ion. It was foolish and reckless and I—”

“Zach, seriously. You have to stop,” Nora said and laughed.

Zach stared at her. She shook her head.

“You know why I’m here? I came to apologize to you,” she said.

“Whatever for?”

“I thought I was here to apologize to you for taking advantage of you in your con***ion, but apparently I’m the victim here. Novel sensation for me, being the victim. Not sure I like it.”

“Nora, I’m your e***or.”

“Yes, my gorgeous e***or with his poshy British accent and his ice-colored eyes and tennis player arms with the veins running from the wrist to the elbow. Oh, no, please don’t ever force me to go down on you again, Mr. Easton. It’s a fate worse than death.”

“This isn’t a bloody joke.”

“No, it’s not a joke. It’s a blow job.”

“Will you please stop saying that?”

“Fine. I fellated you, sucked you off, gave you an Oscar Wilde. But call it what you will, Zach, I handcuffed you to my desk and blew you back to England. And for some reason you aren’t thrilled that happened. It’s a bit of a, forgive me, blow to the ego, but I’ll survive. What I want to know is why you’re taking it so personally.”

Zach sat back in his chair and counted the days until he was on a plane to California. If he were on a plane to California right now, a plane to anywhere, he wouldn’t be having the most humiliating conversation of his life.

“I take it personally because that night was the first night I’d been intimate with any woman other than my wife in over ten years. That may seem rather bourgeois to you, but I’m afraid I’m terribly bourgeois when it comes to matters of infidelity—”

“She’s moved on.”

Zach ignored the comment.

“Not to mention taking advantage of a woman I have some modicum of power over.”

“Power? You think you have power over me? You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you had power over me. You are helping me make my book publishable. You work for me as much as I work for you.”

“I have the power to decide if your book gets published. I alone have the final say.”

Nora stood up and walked around the desk. She sat on the top and crossed her legs. Her knees and thighs were at Zach’s eye level. Zach refused to look at her legs, her sheer stockings and short red skirt and the boots that went up to her knees. He met her eyes and waited.

“If I gagged you right now and put you flat on your back and f**ked you seven ways till Sunday right here on this fine mahogany desk…would you sign my contract?” she asked.

“Absolutely not. And that’s not going to happen.” Zach forced back the flood of images her words conjured in his mind.

Nora slid off the desk and onto her knees next to his chair.

“What if I just gave you my best Oscar Wilde again every day for the next three weeks? Would you sign my contract then?”

“Nora, you can’t buy your contract with ***ual favors.” Zach reached down and pulled Nora up off the floor. “I told you I wouldn’t sign it until I’d read the very last page and I meant it.”

“I know you meant it. That’s my point. I probably could buy off a lesser man with ***, a lesser e***or. But you and I both know that even if we’d had *** ten times Saturday night, you still wouldn’t sign my contract until the book was perfect. You might think less of me, or yourself more likely, but you’d read the book with the same eyes that see every flaw and the same mind that knows how to fix it. You’re just afraid to be mean to my face because you think I’ll think it was about Saturday night. Be as mean to me as you want, Zach. Trust me.” She leaned forward and met him eye to eye. “I like mean.”

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Zach looked into her eyes and saw they burned black as night. In them writhed the shades and shadows of the things she’d seen and done; things that he couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine.

Nodding, Zach glanced away.

“Very well. I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you this week.” He stood up. “You’ll have my snide, churlish, cantankerous and bitter best from now on,” he pledged.

“God, I love a man with a big vocabulary.” Nora wrapped her arms around his neck. Despite how much he wanted to leave them there, Zach took her arms and pulled them off him.

“But this can’t happen,” he said. “Saturday night can’t happen again.”

“It can, and will in a few days. Saturday night happens at least once a week.”

“No more jokes. You know what I mean.”

“And you know I’m right. We could f**k all we wanted—”

“Perhaps I don’t want to.”

Nora took a step back and Zach cursed himself for his inability to say what he meant without hurting her.

“Zach, you had how many shots Saturday night, and I was still able to get you off with, let’s be honest, minimal effort on my part? Don’t pretend you aren’t attracted to me.”

“Attracted or not, we can’t sleep together. And not just because of the book.”

Nora moved closer. She seemed to be studying him.

“You act like you’re afraid of me, Zach. But you’re not afraid of me at all, are you?”

“I’m terrified of you.”

“No, you’re not. I know guys like you. You worship women, put them on pedestals, think they’re fragile and perfect. That’s why even though it was you on your back in the handcuffs Saturday night, you’re the one doing the apologizing. Zach…you’re afraid of yourself.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. I’ve never known a grown man to be so afraid of his own desires. What happened to you? What did you do that’s made you so afraid to let go?”

“This meeting is over.”

“Tell me. Whatever it is, I promise I’ve done worse.”

“Believe me, Nora, you’ve never done this.”

“It was Grace, wasn’t it? What did you do to her?”

Nora’s words pummeled into him but he couldn’t tell her to stop. He knew whatever pain she inflicted he deserved.

“Please,” he whispered.

“You know how to beg. That’s a good start.”

“No more games, either. I’m not like you.”

“We’re more alike than you want to admit.”

“I’m not—” he paused and looked for the right word “—free like you.”

“You could be.” She took another step closer. “I can show you if you’ll let me. The world I live in, you’ve never seen such freedom. Freedom like you can’t even begin to imagine. Try, Zach.”

“I can’t.” The sadness settled over him again.

“Come with me,” Nora said. Zach felt himself falling under the spell her words were weaving. “Let me show you what life is like lived in the moment. No past, no future, just the one perfect moment you’re standing in and there’s no guilt and there’s no shame and there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of…”

Zach closed his eyes and tried to imagine her world. But once his eyes closed he could see only darkness and he could smell only the copper of fresh fallen blood.

“I’m sorry.”

Nora was still looking at him when he opened his eyes.

“**** your sorry,” she said with angry eyes and turned on her heel. “I’ve got a book to write.”

16

Three weeks left…

“Why do you stay with me?” William asked. With his fingertip, he traced the outline of a welt that ran shoulder to shoulder across her back.

Caroline turned over in bed to face him. “Because of the Wives of Weinsburg,” she said as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the ladies of which you speak.” William ran his hand over her hip and she shivered at the sensation. For all the pain he inflicted on her, he resolved every day to inflict equal pleasure.

“They may only be a legend. I like to think they were real. Once the city of Weinsburg in Germany was under siege. The enemy emperor was dangerous but not unmerciful. When it became inevitable that the city would fall, the men of Weinsberg pleaded for their women, that they be allowed to flee with their lives. The emperor relented and allowed the women to leave the city with only the valuables they could carry on their backs. The day came and the gates of the city opened and the emperor watched in shock as the women stumbled through the gates nearly breaking under the weight of their husbands and fathers who they carried on their backs. Their love humbled the emperor and he declared all would be spared.”

“For these women who may or may not exist you stay with me?” he asked, laughing at her as usual.

Caroline reached out to touch his face but pulled her hand back. He’d taught her so well not to touch him without permission. There were moments he regretted how well he’d trained her.

“Every day you battle an enemy I cannot fight with you or for you. But if there is ever a chance for a reprieve, then I will bear you across the world on my back to see you finally at peace.”

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William smiled at the twenty-year-old child who loved him more than he could or would ever deserve.

“But what if the enemy you think I fight isn’t the enemy at all?” he asked, reaching out to take her face in his hand. He forced her to meet his gaze and for a moment he let his eyes fill with all his darkest desires. “What if this enemy is only me?”

Caroline didn’t flinch at what she saw. He had taught her that, as well.

“Then I will save you from yourself.”

Poor Wesley, Zach thought. Did that poor smitten lad have any idea that he was the inspiration for Nora’s latest hopeless, love-struck heroine? Did Nora even know it herself? I will save you from yourself…he could hear Wesley saying those very words to Nora. He hadn’t learned yet you couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved.

Zach wanted to be saved. He tried to conjure the image of Grace, six inches shorter than he and light as a sparrow, trying to lift and carry him on her back. She’d had the chance to save him once. That day he told her about the job at Royal House, that he would be moving to the States, she could have saved him with a sentence—“I’ll go with you.” She could have saved him with a word—“Don’t.”

Zach opened his email. Nora—you cut half this chapter or I’ll cut half this chapter. Either way half of it is getting cut.

He hit Send without remorse. Nora truly worked better when he was at his most brutally honest with her. He didn’t have to couch a criticism inside a compliment. She didn’t want compliments. She wanted her book to be better.

Zach closed his laptop. Stretching out on his sofa he stared around his flat. Grace would be horrified by its austerity. If she ever saw it she would tease him that minimalist was not a synonym for empty. But when he’d come to New York he knew it was temporary. He’d have about eight months at the East Coast offices until the current chief e***or in L.A. finished off the last of her projects and then he was off to yet another city. He saw no reason to have anything but the bare minimum—a sofa, a bed, a television that he only ever tuned to the occasional Everton football match, and a landline phone sitting on the floor. Why even bother with an end table for the living room? Just one more damn thing to pack.

He picked up his lager and took a drink. Only seven o’clock on a Monday evening and he already felt so exhausted he considered just calling it a night. Only his masculine pride kept him from going to bed at such a geriatric hour. Even his sixty-six-year-old widowed father never went to bed before eight.

Thoughts of his father stirred a fearful thought—Nora’s pills in the medicine cabinet. He still couldn’t believe that she was as ill as the bottle portended. Perhaps it was only a mild con***ion, an arrhythmia or something innocuous and treatable. He tried to talk himself out of his fear but couldn’t quite rationalize it away.

Zach picked up a handful of Nora’s pages and skimmed the lines. Why do you stay with me? He had never spoken those words to Grace, though they echoed in his head almost every day of their marriage. Their marriage had begun in terror and shame and then in time changed into something he didn’t want to live without. Zach knew why he stayed. But why had she?

Standing, Zach rubbed his neck and tried to think of something or someone else for a few minutes. But his only other thoughts were of Nora and that was an even more dangerous rabbit hole. Nora… It had been over a week since their drunken night of idiocy. He remembered how her mouth felt on his skin, how foreign it felt to be touched by a woman’s hands again, how strange it was to be awake and conscious and thinking of something other than losing Grace, not thinking about anything at all except that whatever Nora was doing he would be content to let her keep doing until the day he died. Only afterward did the guilt set in—the guilt that for a few minutes he let himself stop feeling guilty.

Zach performed a quick mental calculation. Seven o’clock in New York equaled midnight in London. He knew Grace would still be up. A night owl in the worst way, she took long naps after coming home from school and then stayed up far too late reading.

He picked up his phone and dialed. It rang once and no one answered. A second ring and still no answer. Zach’s heart dropped with every unanswered ring. Between the seventh and the eighth ring Zach whispered, “I miss you, Gracie,” and hung up the phone. On the floor next to the phone Zach sat with his head in his hands. Midnight and she wasn’t home. A school night and she wasn’t…

For a horrible second an image of her with another man tore through his mind. But he knew he couldn’t be angry or jealous. After that night with Nora, he’d lost all right to be hurt.

Nora…he remembered what she’d offered him when she’d come to his office last Thursday…a chance to see the world she lived in, to see what it was like to live free of guilt or restraint. He envied Nora her freedom. He wondered if her mysterious former lover, Søren, was the source of her vivacity. Nora said the first day they worked on her book together that Søren had owned her. He couldn’t even imagine what that meant, what such a relationship would be like. But perhaps only someone who had been a slave could truly appreciate the worth of freedom.

Let me show you what life is like lived in the moment. No past, no future…no guilt…no shame…nothing to be afraid of…

No guilt, no shame, no fear—he’d forgotten what it felt like to live without his three most constant and cruel companions. Could Nora really do that for him? Even just a few minutes of freedom seemed worth any price he had to pay.

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Zach looked down at the useless phone and his empty flat and made a quick decision. He stood up and grabbed his coat. He fled his building in one minute and hopped on the train in ten more. He wouldn’t turn into his father, he told himself. Not tonight.

* * *

On their third morning together, she woke up in his bed and found it empty. Slowly, she sat up, careful of her bruised and aching body. Last night had been the roughest yet, and she smiled at the memory of the sensual crimes he committed against her flesh. He’d spent two years mentally preparing her for what he would demand of her once they finally consummated their relationship. Although she’d known what was coming, had even watched him with others, she hadn’t truly known how much it would hurt until the first blows landed on her virgin back their first night together as lovers. Waking up the next morning with welts on her body and blood on her thighs and his sheets, her first thought was not of regret or fear, but that it had all been worth it—the wait, the pain, the sacrifice that now felt like no sacrifice at all. She belonged to him and always would. He’d said those words to her but now she felt them singing in her skin. The collar he’d locked around her neck now encircled her heart. She raised a hand to her neck and found it bare. He’d taken off her collar in her sleep. Knowing he did not expect total submission from her right now, she rose from the bed and followed the sound of running water to the bathroom. She found him in the shower and without asking permission joined him under the steaming water. He was not angry. She knew he wouldn’t be. Everyone she knew was intimidated by him—by his intelligence, by his imposing height and strength, by his ethereal beauty—but she knew him as a man of flesh and earthy desire who loved her beyond comprehension. She knew his kindness, his generosity, and although he could make the surface of her body ripple with fear when as he locked her in her bonds at night, underneath that fear moved deep ocean currents of trust. For five years he’d been teaching her how to trust him. And as he bent his head to kiss her, she laughed into his mouth, proud of how well she’d learned the lesson.

His hands, as gentle this morning as they’d been brutal last night, explored every corner of her body. She ran her fingers through his hair and slicked it back. When he moved his mouth to her neck and drank the water from the hollow of her throat, she taunted, “No toys, no chains—how are you going to dominate me now?”

It happened so fast that she didn’t even have time to gasp. She was pinned with her stomach flat against the shower wall. At first she wasn’t scared.

“Like this,” he whispered in her ear. “This is how.” And he pushed into the one part of her body he hadn’t yet penetrated. The pain was beyond anything he’d ever inflicted on her. She screamed in the back of her throat, screamed broken formless words, words ripped in half as she was. She knew there was a way to stop it, but in her panic and her agony, the way was forgotten. On her lips she tasted blood and realized she’d bitten her own arm. He continued to thrust as her tears mingled with the water and ran down her face. It was over then as quickly as it began. He pulled out of her and left her in the shower. Her legs gave out and she sank to the floor. The water continued to beat down on her. When he came back to her, he was dressed.

Slowly, she forced herself to look up at him and in a hollow voice she whispered, “I forgot my safe word.” Horror dawned in his eyes. Slowly, he knelt on the floor, knelt like he meant to pray. He reached for her and she shrank back instinctively in fear. He waited and did not move to touch her again. Finally, she pulled herself slowly up. He held open a towel and she stepped into it, leaning into his body as he wrapped it around her. Picking her up he carried her back to the bedroom. He sat in the armchair by the window and held her to him, rocking her in his strong arms while she cried.

He did not apologize and she did not expect him to.

She never forgot her safe word again.

Nora read the words with a slight smile on her lips before deleting the last hour of writing with a wistful sigh. She opened her email and found a new set of notes from Zach on the last chapters she’d sent him. Although he liked where she was taking it, Zach was back in attack mode and she couldn’t stop grinning as she read some of his more sarcastic comments.

“Nora— Forgive me for copye***ing, but it must be said—you have raped the semicolon yet again. Stop it. It wasn’t asking for it no matter how it was dressed. If you don’t know how to use punctuation then do away with it altogether, write like Faulkner and we’ll pretend it’s on purpose.”

Bite me, Easton, Nora said to herself as she corrected her ***ually compromised semicolon in chapter eighteen. Seriously, bite me.

“Nora— Aristotle said character is plot. Aristotle is dead and can’t hurt you. I’m alive and I can. Plot is plot. Find one and keep it.”

You want to try to hurt me, Zach? I’d love to see you try.

Nora looked up as Wesley entered her office. She smiled but he didn’t smile back. He merely sat her red cell phone on her desk, turned around and walked out.

With relief Nora noted that her one missed call was from Kingsley and not Søren. She called back, but only out of courtesy.

“Bonjour, ma chérie, ma belle, mon canard,” Kingsley started in on her as soon as he answered.

“King, calling me ‘your duck’ isn’t going to change the fact that I’m still busy.”

“Too busy for a 10K evening with a dear friend of yours?”

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“Tell him it’s 20K or the waiting list.”

“The waiting list then.”

“We are in a recession after all. Just tell him to tell his wife how much he’s paid me in the last year. That should earn him enough of an ass-kicking to last him until I’m done with the book.”

“I’ll pass your well-wishes along to the happy couple.”

Nora hung up on Kingsley and left her office. She followed the thrumming of a guitar to Wesley’s room.

“That’s pretty. What it is?” she asked.

“The Killers.” Wesley stopped playing the song and adjusted his capo. “Ever heard of them?”

“If they came after Pearl Jam’s Ten then probably not.”

He looked at her and laughed a little.

“A little after. You going out tonight?”

“Nope. I hung up on King. And in three weeks if Zach signs my contract I will put on my best pair of stilettos and slam my heel through my hotline once and for all.”

Wesley smiled and started picking out a melody. Nora started to leave.

“What if he doesn’t sign it?” Wesley asked.

Nora considered the terrifying possibility that after reading the finished novel, Zach would still think it wasn’t Royal House material.

“I guess the hotline will have to stay hot a little while longer.”

Nora watched Wesley’s face.

“I like Zach,” he said. “I didn’t at first, but I do now. He’s a really good guy.”

She ****ed her head and looked at him.

“I agree. Wholeheartedly.”

“I think you should tell him, you know, about the other job.”

Nora’s stomach tightened.

“I will. I promise I will. But not yet. I want him to read the book with clear eyes. If I tell him what I do he’ll think I’m just writing a knock-off memoir with the names changed instead of real fiction. If and when he signs the contract, then I’ll tell him,” she promised.

Nora left Wesley in his room and headed to the kitchen. She only made it as far as the living room when she heard a knock on her door. She glanced at the clock. Who would be stopping by her house at almost eight o’clock at night?

Nora went to the door and opened it. Zach stood on the other side looking flushed and sheepish and so handsome she had to force her heart to slow its frantic beating.

She said nothing, only raised an eyebrow and waited.

“I know why he calls you his Siren,” Zach said without preamble.

Nora grinned at him.

“You finally decide to let me blow you off course?”

“Yes. I think. I’m not sure, but I know I can’t keep living like this, Nora.”

Nora reached out her hand and this time Zach took it in his. His strong hand felt so good wrapped around hers she was afraid that now she had it she wouldn’t ever let it go. She yanked him into the house with her left hand while her right hand hit the eight on her phone.

“What now?” he asked as Nora lifted the phone to her ear.

“We’re taking a little trip. King, don’t talk,” she said when Kingsley answered. “I’m hitting the club tonight. Call and have them hold my table. One guest.” She glanced at Zach. “And Kingsley…mum’s the word.”

Nora hung up the phone and looked at Zach.

“Where are we going?” Zach asked.

Nora could hear the fear still hiding under the excitement in his voice.

She met his eyes and without smiling answered him.

“Hell.”

17

Zach entered Nora’s office and switched on her desk lamp. From what Wesley said just before he left, it sounded as if Nora would be a while getting ready. Might as well pass the time with a book. Considering Nora’s tastes he had no doubt he could find something to distract him from the screaming voice in his head telling him he really didn’t want to do this.

The lamplight spread its warm yellow glow over Nora’s desk. Wesley must have tidied up. Her usual disarray had been transformed into well-ordered chaos, if there was such a thing. He picked up a small box she’d labeled Scribbles and Bits. He opened it and found dozens of quotations from various sources on multicolored note cards.

One card read in Nora’s slanting script, “No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown. — William Penn.” That did sound like something Nora would commit to memory. Another quote came from the Roman playwright Platus: “I do believe it was Love which devised the torturer’s profession here on earth.” Appropriate. A pink card read, “The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.—Menander of Athens.”

The last card simply said, “The Lady or the Tiger?” over and over and over again.

Zach put the cards away and closed the box. He saw her day planner tucked next to her keyboard. He knew he was being unconscionably nosy, but his curiosity got the better of him. Seemed to be today’s theme.

He flipped the red leather-bound calendar open. She and Lex apparently had rescheduled her book-signing for a month from Saturday. She’d dragged Wesley to the opera a few weeks ago. She and G.F. had been in Miami in January. He flipped to the week before he and Nora had met. On that Monday she’d written, “T.R.—M.D. 8:00 p.m.” Another notation later that week read, “S.S.—W.A., 9:00 p.m.” But the next day had another M.D. appointment at 5:00 p.m. He glanced through all the previous pages. Anywhere from two to four times a week, Nora had some sort of M.D. appointment. But as soon as they’d started working on her book the M.D. appointments had dropped off almost completely. What sort of doctor saw a patient on evenings and weekends? Why had Nora stopped going to her appointments when they started working together?

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With shaking hands, Zach closed the calendar and stepped to her bookshelves. Lovely, he thought, smirking at the books on the top shelf—*** manuals. He skimmed the titles: The Joy of ***, The Kama Sutra, The Guide to Anal *** for Women. The last title he read twice. The second shelf did hold some surprises, however—psychology and sociology texts, weighty cerebral tomes on the psychology of power and pain. On the third shelf down sat children’s books, their covers worn from multiple readings—the Harry Potter books in British first e***ions, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia. But one book appeared more loved than the rest. Its thin red spine was worn and frayed. Zach slipped it off the shelf—The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. Some clever illustrator had taken the text of Carroll’s poem and reimagined it as a story all its own. Zach leafed through the lurid, lush illustrations, the pages grown soft and porous from so many readings. On a hunch he turned back to the front end-pages and found an inscription. In handwriting both masculine and elegant it read, “My Little One, Never forget the lesson of the Jabberwocky. And never forget that I love you.” It was signed only “S” with a fierce diagonal slash through it; the mark of the mysterious Søren. He closed the book and slipped it back on the shelf.

Turning back to Nora’s desk, he noticed again that long black duffel bag he’d accidentally kicked the first time he sat in this office. He stuck out his foot and toed the bag, hearing again the chiming sound of metal against metal.

“Open it, Zach.”

Nora entered the office grinning at him, but Zach was too stunned to smile back. He only stared as she moved even closer, the heels of her boots clicked hollowly on the hardwood floor as her ankle-length leather skirt quietly creaked with each soft sway of her hips. The pale flesh of her thigh peeked out from the hip-high slit in her skirt over a black lace-trimmed stocking. She wore a black corset laced over a flesh-toned bustier. And with her neck bare, her hair artfully arranged over her shoulder, the effect was utterly obscene.

“Gotta love a woman in uniform,” she said, and Zach caught a whiff of her perfume—subtle and seductive. It made the little hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“You will hear no complaints from me.”

“Thank you, Zachary. Give me a hand, will you? I can’t get them tight enough on my own.”

Nora held out her arms, completely bare but for a pair of black fingerless leather gloves that covered her forearms. She turned her arms over, and Zach saw the gloves hooked over her thumbs and laced up her arms like a corset.

“What are these?” He took Nora’s wrist in his hand and methodically pulled the laces tight.

“They’re called gauntlets. Kind of a feminized medieval warrior look.”

“Thought you only wore red when you went out.” Zach laced her other gauntlet.

“Don’t believe everything you hear about me—just the bad stuff. You’re pretty good at this. You’ve laced a corset before. You like lingerie?”

“I’ve never been known to object to it. Must be frustrating to have clothing you need help putting on.”

“This is usually Wes’s job. He’s the one who finds it frustrating.”

“His job? And to think I tended bar for cash while I was at university. This is a far cry from punching out drunken football hooligans.”

“A lover and a fighter? You need to give Wes some lessons on how to properly enjoy his college experience.”

“Where is Wesley anyway? He seemed to leave in a hurry.”

“Oh—” Nora waved her hand “—off pouting somewhere.”

“Pouting? Might I ask why?”

“Wes doesn’t want me, but he doesn’t like it if I want someone else. Kid’s gotta learn that he can’t have his cake and not eat me, too.”

Zach laughed.

“He’s also pissed,” Nora said, moving even closer to him, “because he knows what I’m doing tonight.”

“And that is?”

“Seducing you.”

Zach took a step back.

“Nora, I haven’t changed my mind. We can’t work together and be lovers, too. J.P. will kill me to start with. And if he doesn’t I might kill myself.”

Nora raised her eyebrow at him, crossed her arms and leaned against his side.

“So are you just window-shopping tonight?”

Zach crossed his arms to match her and gave her a smile.

“Perhaps I’m just hoping you’ll be inspired to finish the book before I leave.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“How about this…” Zach began and couldn’t believe what he was proposing. “I’ll give you your homework. You get it done in a timely manner by day and—”

“And by night we play?” Nora’s eyes were shining. “This is a fun game, Zach. I could win this one.”

“And…” Zach turned to face her. “If you do manage to complete the book a few days ahead of schedule then technically we’ll no longer be working together. Perhaps then we can discuss bringing the handcuffs out of hiding.”

“Handcuffs?” she scoffed. “Handcuffs are the least of your worries. Open it.” She pointed her toe toward her long black duffel bag on the floor. “I dare you.”

Zach let a few seconds pass before he bent over and grabbed the handles. He hefted it onto Nora’s desk, stunned by its weight.

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“What on earth is in here?”

“It’s my toy bag.”

“Toy bag?” He eyed her skeptically. “Store your Legos in here, do you?”

“Not quite.”

He glanced at her once more before slowly unzipping the bag. Nora moved to stand next to him, her left hip pressing against his right leg. Nora reached past him and pulled from the bag a long chrome bar.

“Do you know what this is? It’s called a spreader bar. Just a basic pipe with eyebolts on the end. You take a snap-hook and a pair of these—” she reached into the bag again and brought out a wide leather bracelet with a gold buckle sewn into it “—leather cuffs. Adjustable. They go around the wrists or the ankles. Both if you want to put someone in a spread-eagle position.”

Nora arched an eyebrow at him and reached back into the bag.

“This is a flogger. Here. Give me your arm.”

Zach held his arm out with extreme reluctance. Nora brushed his forearm lightly with the tips of the flogger’s leather strips.

“It tickles.” He rubbed his arm.

“Pain or pleasure, it’s made for either. So am I.”

“I’ll stick with pleasure. I’ve always preferred the carrot to the stick.”

“Where we’re going, the stick is the carrot.” She put the flogger away. She dug into her bag again. “This lovely device,” she said as she held out what looked like two spreader bars joined in the middle, “is called an X-Bar. It cuffs the wrists and ankles behind the back. Perfect for immobilizing someone in a kneeling position. As a man, I’m certain you can imagine the benefit of immobilizing a woman on her knees.”

Zach coughed and exhaled.

“Usually, I just prefer her to volunteer for that particular activity.” His tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth.

“In my world, if she shows up, she did volunteer. Or in your case, you showed up and I volunteered.”

Zach could feel the cold metal of the handcuffs around his wrists again.

“I can’t win with you, can I?”

Nora laughed.

“Of course not. The only way to win in this game is *****rrender. Come on, Zach,” she said, seeming to drop out of character for a moment. “You and I both know I could have had you weeks ago. In the cab, remember?”

Zach recalled the night of the release party. He’d convinced himself it was his own restraint that had prevented him from asking Nora up. But he knew it was only because Nora had closed the door before he could invite her inside.

“Why didn’t you?”

“You weren’t ready then.”

“And I’m ready now?”

“Well… You did show up again, didn’t you? You should know by now,” Nora said, and Zach made himself look in her eyes, “I wouldn’t chase you so hard if I didn’t know you wanted to be caught.”

“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should have it.”

“Really?” Nora asked with a raised eyebrow. “And what did you want that you shouldn’t have had?”

Zach looked away and pointed at something in her bag. “What’s that?”

“Ah…” Nora sighed. “He’s lost in the fog yet again.” Still, she reached into the bag and pulled out a black silk scarf. She twined it through her fingers and over her wrists, letting it cascade into her palms like black water.

“Blindfold?” Zach made an educated guess.

“Or gag. Or wrist restraint. The blindfold seems tame, but I’m very fond of them. Do you have any idea how much trust it takes to let someone take you blind? Want to find out?”

“Nora…”

“Okay, Zach. I promise I’ll keep my hands off…more or less. No *** until the book is done. Well, you won’t have any ***. Knowing me, I will,” she said over her shoulder.

Zach laughed until he saw she wasn’t smiling.

“Come on.” Nora threw on her coat and belted it. She strode toward the door. “Time to go.”

“Need your bag?” he joked.

“Not where we’re going.”

18

Zach followed Nora outside. He started to walk toward her car parked in front of the house. But she beckoned him instead to her garage.

“This way, handsome. I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

Nora pulled her key ring out of her coat pocket and hit a small black button. The garage door slowly yawned open. Zach never dreamed she kept an actual car in her garage. Her black Lexus and Wesley’s beat-up VW always sat in the driveway or on the street. But inside the garage he saw some kind of vehicle covered in a suede car cover.

“You Yanks.” Zach shook his head. “You think you need a whole army of cars.”

“This isn’t just a car, Zach.” She grabbed the corner of the cover and pulled it off in one extravagant motion.

“My God…Nora,” he breathed at the sight of the inferno-red machine. He’d never been much of a car enthusiast but something very male in him wanted to just run his hands across it from fender to fender.

“Once upon a time,” Nora began, “I spent a week with a sheikh. This was his version of morning-after roses.”

“You just keep this in your garage?”

“What? Just your everyday Aston Martin.”

“This is James Bond’s car.”

“Yes, but he can’t have it back. Don’t tell, but I’m going to give it to Wes as a graduation present in a couple of years.”

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“If you ever fire him and start looking for a new intern…” Zach reached out and touched the hood.

“I’ll keep your résumé on file,” Nora said, looking at him as he stroked the top of the car. “You’re hard right now, aren’t you?”

“Fully erect.” Zach didn’t crack a smile.

“Typical male.” Nora rolled her eyes. “Get in.”

Zach slid onto the passenger seat and inhaled the heady scent of the most expensive leather interior in the world. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. It held him like a hand. He could die here.

Nora slipped into the driver’s seat. The car purred to life.

“Nora…who are you?”

“Just another guttersnipe. Ready to see my gutter?”

Zach leaned up and opened his eyes.

“Where exactly are we going?” he asked as she slinked through the streets and headed toward the city.

“It’s a club,” Nora simply said.

“What kind of club?”

“The only kind of club I would ever go to.”

“What’s this club called?”

“It doesn’t really have an official name. It doesn’t officially exist. Those of us in the know call it the 8th Circle.”

Zach tried to remember his Italian literature class.

“It’s been too long since I’ve read Dante. The eighth circle—was that where the sins of lust were punished?”

Nora’s lips curled into an ironic grin.

“That was the second circle. The eighth circle was the destination for those who abused their power—panderers, seducers, simonists, false counselors.”

“Simonists?”

Nora’s smiled widened.

“Corrupt priests.”

“Abused their power…very clever.”

“The name is all too apt.”

Zach turned to her and didn’t ask what she meant by that. He’d already lost his train of thought as he watched Nora shift gears with the practiced ease of a race-car driver. Her touch was easy and smooth; the engine responded to her every whim. Zach couldn’t stop watching, couldn’t stop imagining her dexterous hands on him.

“How did you learn to drive like this?” Zach asked, trying to ignore his growing arousal.

“I can drive anything—any car, any kind. I’ve been driving a stick shift since I was thirteen.”

Zach started to open his mouth to ask her another question. But Nora took a sharp turn to the left and pulled into what appeared to be an abandoned parking structure attached to a dingy squat concrete block of a building. Windowless, lifeless and covered in graffiti, the building seemed the last place in the city Nora would want to enter.

“Why did you stop?”

Nora pulled in and parked next to a sleek, silver Porsche.

“Because we’re here.”

“Here?” Zach looked around in disbelief as they both left the car. The place seemed dismal and far too quiet. Only the wind sliding around the concrete columns made any sound at all. He looked back at the Aston Martin.

“Are you sure it’s safe to leave it here?” Zach asked even though it was just one of many luxury cars in the garage.

“This is the safest parking garage in New York. Trust me.”

Nora brought them to a gunmetal-gray door and pulled out her keys again. She slid one into the lock and turned it. Zach expected the roar of a nightclub to greet them but he heard nothing but silence.

He found himself standing at the end of a long hallway. It seemed to be part of an old hotel. The walls and carpets were a deep red; small aging chandeliers hung from the ceiling and cast broken light over the paisley squares of threadbare carpeting. They came to the end of the hall where an old-fashioned coat check booth stood. Nora rang the silver desk bell and shed her coat.

A girl came out of the back and flashed them both a courteous smile.

“How may I serve you?” she asked. Her smile wavered and widened as the young woman seemed *****ddenly register Nora’s identity. “Mistress Nora,” she said, bobbing a perfect curtsy. She looked positively starstruck. The girl wore a classic cigarette girl costume, blue and black striped, and her lush dark hair was coiffed Bettie-Page style.

“Hello, dear,” Nora said with a magnanimous air as she gave the girl her coat. Zach surrendered his, as well, grateful to be rid of it. In the stifling hallway, he instantly felt more comfortable in his jeans and T-shirt. “Are you new? Did King bring you in?”

“Yes, mistress. Mr. K. brought me in a few weeks ago.”

“King always did have good taste,” Nora said, eliciting a blush from the beaming young woman. “Have you made it to the floor yet?”

“No, mistress,” the girl said, her voice aflutter with nervousness. “I’m so sorry. It’s just…I’m such a fan.”

Zach smiled at the girl. “You should enjoy her next book, too. It’s coming along very well.”

The girl looked puzzled.

“You write books too, mistress?”

Nora laughed but didn’t meet Zach’s eyes.

“You’re adorable,” Nora said to the girl. “I’ll talk to King about getting you on the floor.”

“Thank you, mistress,” the girl breathed. She seemed to remember herself and said with a more professional tone, “Can I get anything for you, mistress? For your guest?”

“A white scarf, please. And my case. The black one.”

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With another curtsy the girl left and promptly returned with a plain white handkerchief and a small box that looked like a flute case only much longer.

Nora took the white scarf and wrapped it around his bicep.

“What on earth—”

“The Circle revived the flag and scarf signal system from the old guard leather scene,” Nora explained. “We revised it quite a bit *****it the specific clientele that comes here. The scarves are signals or advertisements. Here white means you’re an SM virgin who only wants to observe. Should keep the wolves at bay.”

“Should?” Zach asked skeptically. “I really need a stop signal? A simple ‘no, thanks’ wouldn’t do?”

“Trust me, as gorgeous as you are, Zach, you would be in big trouble down there without a little armor on.”

“Wouldn’t red make for a better stop signal?” Zach asked, not wanting to be labeled as a “virgin” anything.

“A red scarf would signal you were into blood-play.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Could be worse,” Nora said as she finished knotting the scarf around his arm. “It could be a brown scarf.”

“And brown means?”

The young woman and Nora gave each other conspiratorial glances.

“Keep the wolves at bay…should I be nervous, Nora?”

Nora didn’t answer. She snapped open the black case and took out a riding crop, black with white braiding and quite professional-looking. She took a step back and twirled the crop with stunning expertise. With a quick flick she struck it against her own leather-clad calf. The sound echoed down the hall like a gunshot.

“Kingsley Edge was the first person who put a riding crop in my hand. It was like Arthur with Excalibur.” She winked at the girl and the girl could only smile in awe. Zach tried not to roll his eyes. Disheartening to think Nora had better luck with women than he did.

“Come, Zachary,” Nora said, tapping her leather-clad calf with the crop.

“Yes, mistress,” he said, with minimal irony.

Nora started to turn but stopped in midstep.

“Tell me your name,” she ordered the girl.

“Robin,” she replied.

“Ah, a little bird,” Nora purred. She reached out and caressed the girl’s burning cheek with the back of her hand. “I’ll remember that.”

Nora lowered her hand and stepped away. She pushed the down button on the elevator and the door slid open. They entered and Zach saw there was only a down button inside.

“This elevator only goes down?”

“Apparently so.” Nora held the handle of her crop in her right hand and the tip in her left. She held it, he discovered with a jolt of recognition, like a scepter. Even her posture, usually intimate and conspiratorial, had transformed. She held herself like a queen, her chin high, her back straight. She wore the hauteur well.

“Then how will we get out?”

Nora looked at him as if the thought had never occurred to her.

“I suppose we won’t.”

“That girl worships you but she doesn’t know you’re a writer. How did she know you, Nora?”

“Down here everyone knows me. Oh, and to answer your earlier question,” she said as the elevator slowed. “Yes, you should be nervous.”

He heard the muted grinding of the elevator coming to a shuddering stop. The doors opened. Nora turned her face to the dark outside the doors, and in a low voice said, “Let the wild rumpus begin.”

Nora stepped forward and across the threshold. Zach called her name as she disappeared into the dark. Her hand reached back; Zach grasped it and let her pull him across blindly into the abyss. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Zach stepped back when he realized he now stood teetering at the top of a steep staircase. But Nora stepped forward and went down, and he had no choice but to go down with her.

He felt the music before he even heard it. It beat into his chest, a pounding, visceral symphony of violence. Nora descended the staircase, and he had to trust her since he could barely make out his own feet below him. As they reached the middle of the staircase a deafening roar erupted as the throngs below recognized Nora. When they reached the bottom step a horde of near naked bodies congregated to throw themselves at Nora’s feet. She brushed past them, kicked some away, and swatted a few dismissively like flies with her riding crop. The more viciously she dealt with them, the more they groveled.

Looking around, Zach saw sights his eyes could process but his mind could not. Above him hung bodies hoisted high on suspension harnesses. A woman in leather dragged a man to a cross and lashed him to it. A line of people queued up to take turns flogging him. A naked woman was tied spread-eagle to a large spinning wheel. A huge bear of a man whipped her as the wheel turned and turned. Another woman strapped to an X-Bar volunteered her services to a man covered in head-to-toe vinyl except for the part of him in her mouth.

Into all this wet, red hell Nora strode without blinking, without flinching, without missing a step. She floated light and buoyant across the black waters, her eyes burning like flags afire. Zach imagined they could be seen for miles.

She pulled him through the herd of admirers toward an open wrought-iron elevator shaft at the other side of the floor. Guarding the elevator was a man roughly the size of a house wearing chaps and a spiked dog collar. Nora transferred her riding crop from her right hand to her left, and with her free right hand delivered a slap so fierce to the man’s face that Zach winced.