[English] The Virgin

The Virgin
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“If it makes you feel better, so am I.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better at all. None of this does.”

She nodded at the candles, shivered at the quiet, the quiet that radiated from Kingsley outward. He was different tonight. Nothing like the Kingsley she was used to, the Kingsley who could silence her with a stare, put her onto her knees with a nod. Some days she couldn’t get within five feet of him without him grabbing her, throwing her over his lap and spanking her until she collapsed into screams and laughter. Nothing was right about this. Kingsley nervous? Humbled? She shouldn’t be making eye contact with him now. She should already be on her knees, at his feet, obeying, serving, submitting.

He took a small quick breath and laid a hand on the side of her neck. His thumb massaged the ticklish spot under her ear.

“I know you know what I am,” he said.

Eleanor swallowed.

“I know,” she said.

“You can say it. I want to hear you say it.”

“You’re a switch,” she said.

“And?”

“And a masochist.”

“Did he tell you how much of a masochist?”

“He told me everything he did to you. And he told me you liked it.”

“I didn’t like it,” he said. “I loved it. And more than that, Eleanor. I needed it.”

“I understand. I need it too sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” he asked. She heard the note of curiosity in his voice. “Not always. Only sometimes?”

“I always like it,” she said. “Always love it. But I’m saying I know what it means to need it some nights.”

“Are there nights you need something else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are there nights you’d rather give pain than receive it?”

And then she knew what Kingsley wanted her to do. Her heart stopped. Her blood went cold. This was every kind of bad idea Kingsley had ever had.

“King...no,” she said. If she hadn’t had Kingsley’s hands on her, she would have turned around and walked right out that second. “This absolutely cannot happen.”

“Please,” Kingsley said. “He won’t have to know.”

“Kingsley...” Unexpectedly tears sprang into her eyes. She was scared. Not scared. Terrified.

“I want you to hurt me, Eleanor. I need you to hurt me. Please?”

He lifted both hands to her face and brushed the tears away with his thumbs. He didn’t seem the least surprised to see them on her face. In fact, he seemed to recognize them.

“I can’t...” She pressed her face against his chest and he wrapped her in his arms.

“You can.” He whispered the words into her hair. “We both know you have this desire in you. Oui?”

She paused only a moment before nodding her head against his chest.

“Oui,” she said. She pulled back and looked up at him. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to hurt you?”

“Hurt me and use me. Anything you want from me, ask it.”

“Anything? No limits?”

“The only limit is collars. I hate them.”

“I know, I know. Collars are for dogs. Where are the dogs anyway?”

“I put them downstairs.”

“Why?”

“The dogs, they love you, but they’re trained to protect me,” he said. “If they witnessed someone hurting me, they wouldn’t react well.”

“You were so sure I’d say yes that you locked the dogs downstairs?”

Kingsley smiled. Kingsley nodded. Kingsley was an arrogant son of a bitch and she loved him for it.

“Yes,” she said. “I mean, yes, I’ll try. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it. But I’ll try. But I’m only doing this because you told me to do it. You’re still topping. You ordered me to hurt you. Right?”

“If that’s what you need to believe...”

“I do.”

“You might be surprised how much you like it.”

“I’ve never done this before.” She felt nervous as a virgin. No, far more nervous. She hadn’t been nervous at all the night she’d given her virginity to Søren. This seemed like a far more terrifying threshold to cross. And yet...

“You have done it. I watch you with the other Submissives and they do everything you tell them to do. You scare the **** out of them every day.”

“If they weren’t such whiny little pussies, I wouldn’t have to.”

“See?” He cupped her face with both hands. “There it is. Pure dominance. It’s in you. I saw it in you the night we met. You aren’t afraid to make decisions. You aren’t afraid to give orders. You aren’t afraid to be hated.”

“Neither is Søren.”

“Oui. And there is no one more dominant than he. But maybe you...”

“Maybe me, what?”

“Maybe you could give him a run for his money, no?”

Eleanor took a long shuddering breath.

“Well, it’s worth a shot anyway,” she said.

Kingsley laughed then, a low sensual laugh that made her toes curl and her skin shiver. She did want him. She felt desire for him as acute as pain. It had been over two weeks since she’d had ***. She wouldn’t last a night more without it. Without him.

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“Any other limits?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Hurt me,” he said. “You know where everything is in the room. Whatever he does to you, you can do it to me.”

“If Søren finds out I topped you...” Eleanor said. “Without him here? Without his permission?”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt us.” He raised one finger to his lips.

She would have been less scared had she agreed to kill someone for Kingsley. But still, she raised her finger to her lips, as well.

Now, here they were, alone in Kingsley’s bedroom. And she was going to hurt him. And she’d never done anything like this before in her life. Where did she start?

She took a step back and looked Kingsley up and down. He needed something. Not a collar but something, something to make everything different between them.

“How do you feel about blindfolds?” she asked.

“I don’t mind them, but I’d rather see you.”

“You see me all the time,” she reminded him.

He gave her a long look, heated and heavy with meaning. “But not like this.”

She took a quick breath. “No.” She couldn’t argue with him there. “Not like this.”

Stepping back in front of him she started to unbutton his vest. She’d undressed him before at his command, but never of her own volition. He stood there, still and submissive, letting her pull the vest down and off his arms. She thought about folding it, thought about hanging it up. This was part of one of Kingsley’s ***iest Regency-style suits, after all. And likely one of his most expensive. Instead, she paused, looked at it and then dropped it on the floor.

“You’re more like him than you can possibly know,” Kingsley said.

To which Eleanor replied, “Don’t speak until spoken to.”

Kingsley bowed his head in apology. She felt something new surging through her veins, something sweet and spiked and utterly intoxicating.

Power.

Kingsley remained still as she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his trousers. He had such a beautiful body—all lean muscle and old scars—that she couldn’t stop herself from kissing his naked shoulder as she pushed his shirt down his arms. First a kiss on the naked shoulder, then on the naked bicep, then the naked forearm and the naked wrist.

The naked wrist.

She left him standing there while she went down on her hands and knees by the bed. She pulled out a suitcase and opened it up. Inside was bondage equipment—ropes, adjustable spreader bars, cuffs and collars.

And gauntlets.

She took out two black leather gauntlets and laid them on the bed. She’d seen male submissives at The 8th Circle wearing various sorts of leather. Bicep cuffs, chest harnesses, but her favorite were the gauntlets. They looked so medieval, like something a knight would wear under his armor. And after a battle he’d strip down to nothing but the dirt and sweat and the leather braces on his wrists.

Eleanor lifted Kingsley’s arm and held it against her chest. She wrapped the brace around his forearm and laced it. Her hands shook as she did it and she knew Kingsley could see it. But he didn’t tease her for once.

“You like leather?” he asked. His voice was soft and the gentleness of his tone made her even more nervous.

“Yeah, I do. On men especially.”

“Why did you never tell me?”

She glanced up at him.

“You never asked.”

Kingsley narrowed his eyes at her. “I should have asked. What other secrets are you keeping in here?”

He touched her temple and let his fingers trail down until they rested on her chest under her shirt and over her heart.

“Lots of secrets,” she whispered.

“Tell me all your secrets. Tell me everything you want.”

“You,” she said. “Like this.”

“Like what?”

“Submissive to me.”

“You’ve fantasized about this?” he asked. “About me submitting to you?”

Finally she had the wrist brace on his left arm. Lacing the brace onto his right arm went much more smoothly. She could do this. She could.

It scared her to answer the question. The question wasn’t a question but a box, and if they opened the lid to this box, God only knew what would come out.

“Please tell me, Elle,” he said so quietly she could barely hear him even in the potent pregnant silence of the room.

“Yes.”

And with that yes, she yanked the laces on the gauntlet and tied a neat quick bow.

When she had the braces on his arms, she looked him up and down.

“Almost perfect,” she said, appraising her handiwork. She unbuttoned his trousers, pushed them down and told him to step out of them.

“Perfect,” she said with a smile. “Absolutely perfect.”

Eleanor had only ever been on the receiving end of a beating. She had no idea how to throw a flogger, wield a single-tail. And she certainly wasn’t going to try to figure it out tonight. But there were other ways to hurt someone, ways she did know.

“Lie on your back,” she ordered, and Kingsley did as he was told.

Wild. For years she’d been doing everything Kingsley and Søren told her to do.

Go here. Do this. Spread for him. Suck me here.

Stand there and take it and take it and take it...

Time to give as good as she got.

Kingsley was lying naked on the bed, naked but for the elaborate leather arm braces laced from his wrist halfway up his forearms.

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Eleanor looked down at Kingsley. He kept his eyes lowered. She snapped her fingers in front of his face, one of Søren’s least endearing ways of getting her attention. It worked. Kingsley met her eyes.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Completely 100 percent sure about this?”

“Elle, listen to me.” He met her eyes and looked deep and hard into them. “Yes.”

She nodded and took one more long breath. What to do...what to do... She’d been hurting herself since she was a teenager. She knew how to give pain, right? She’d been the first person to hurt her own body.

Then she had an idea.

She opened the drawer in his nightstand and pulled out a scalpel from a leather case. Then she picked up the lit candle.

“Blood-play or wax-play?” he asked. Both seemed amenable to him.

“Neither,” she said.

She crawled onto the bed and straddled Kingsley’s hips. She pushed herself against his erection but didn’t let him inside her. His **** pulsed against her wet seam. She wanted him in her, yes, but she wanted to make him wait even more.

“I did this to myself when I was a kid. Except I used a curling iron. My curling iron’s all the way in the other room, so we’ll have to improvise a little.”

She brought the blade of the scalpel into the flame of the candle and watched while the fire heated the metal.

When it turned a glowing red, she lowered the scalpel and pressed the flat of the blade against Kingsley’s stomach.

With a gasp of pure pain, he closed his eyes tight and arched underneath her, arched so hard his **** went inside her. She shuddered as their bodies joined. She settled in on top of him, moving her hips to take him as deep as she could.

“Vicious bitch,” he hissed through his clenched teeth. She’d given him a first-degree burn.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked, worried she’d crossed a line already.

“God, yes. Do it again,” he said between harsh breaths. “Please.”

Eleanor laughed. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”

Then she brought the blade into the flame again, heated it once more and brought it back to his stomach.

The red-hot metal left half-moon shaped burns on his stomach. Every time she touched him with the flat of the scalpel blade, he shuddered as if in agony, grunted in the back of his throat and pushed his hips into her.

After the fifth burn, and the sixth, *** and pain became the same thing to them. Their bodies were joined but only when she pressed the blade against his stomach, his hips, his chest, against the tender flesh of his inner bicep, did he thrust up and into her.

Her own wetness poured out of her and coated him, sealing them together.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, more curious than caring.

“It’s excruciating,” Kingsley said. “Thank you.”

“You want more?”

“As much as you can give.”

“Will you heal in time before Søren comes home?”

“He’s back when? Six weeks?” Kingsley looked down at the burns on his chest, hips and arms. “Maybe.”

“Well, in for a penny, in for a pounding,” she said, firing up the blade again.

She burned him a seventh time. Then an eighth. She went all the way to sixteen and then stopped.

“Sixteen’s a good number,” she said, putting the candle down.

“What does it mean to you?” he asked.

“I was sixteen when I saw you the first time. On the stairs at that orgy you were throwing. Remember what you said to me?”

Kingsley grinned. “I said, ‘No children allowed.’”

“And yet...here I am.” She pushed her hips forward and clenched her muscles around his ****.

“Ah, but you’re not a little girl anymore. Not a virgin anymore.”

“I haven’t been a virgin since I was twenty.”

He raised his hand and swept it through her hair. He touched her cheek, her chin, her lips and tapped her lightly under her chin.

“Not that kind of virgin,” he said softly. “Not after tonight.”

She turned her head and kissed his palm.

“Hold still,” she said.

Kingsley lowered his arms. After that he didn’t move even to breathe.

With the tip of the scalpel she carved a small “ES” into the delicate skin of his lower stomach, near enough to his **** to make him nervous. She went deep enough to draw blood but not so deep the cuts wouldn’t heal in a day or two. Kingsley could blame his burns on someone else if it came to that. Her initials on this most intimate part of Kingsley’s body would damn them both if Søren saw them.

“Beautiful.” Kingsley sighed. His pupils were so dilated his eyes appeared solid black.

“It’s not quite finished yet,” she said. She picked up the candle one more time and let a drop of wax fall onto the broken skin.

Kingsley’s fingers dug into the sheets, his shoulders lifted up and with a hot spurt, he came inside her. His orgasm caught them both off guard. He grunted and gasped as his hips rose and fell beneath her. The pleasure of it was so intense she almost came from the force of his climax. She’d never been aroused this way before, never felt this mix of pleasure and power. It scared her how much she loved having Kingsley underneath her, hurting him as she did, pushing him to the edge until he lost control and came without any warning.

He lay back on the bed, panting and breathing.

“I think you liked that,” she said. Eleanor bent over and kissed him hard and deep.

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“Like is not the word, chérie,” he whispered against her lips.

“We can’t ever tell him we did this,” she said.

Kingsley smiled. “Our little secret.”

Laughing softly she started to move again on him, riding him hard, chasing her own orgasm. She dug her fingernails into his chest, hard...harder...they broke the skin and kept breaking. Kingsley was brutally hard again inside her and when she came again, he came, too.

And when he came again inside her, Elle woke up.

* * *

She lay on her stomach on her bed at the abbey. Her hips pushed down and into the bed and her vagina clenched emptiness. When her orgasm faded out, she groaned into her pillow, rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

Another dream. She was losing her goddamn mind here.

Elle crawled out of her bed and pulled on her black silk pajama pants and camisole, and a black sweater. She shoved her feet into shoes, and she left her room and her burning bed behind.

Even now, almost eight months after leaving Søren, she still feared the front door that led to the outside world. Instead, she went out the back door into the garden and found a path to follow. It was brisk out on this spring night, and the air cooled her skin.

At the center of the garden stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, solid white stone and life-size, her belly rounded with the unborn Christ inside her. A full moon gave her enough light to see Mary’s face. She looked so peaceful, so calm and serene. Elle had trouble believing a fourteen-year-old girl who got pregnant by God would be that relaxed about the situation.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Kyrie asked from behind Elle.

“Are you following me?”

“Yes. But only because I couldn’t sleep. That’s my window.” Kyrie pointed to the nearest window looking out onto the garden.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind the company. What’s your secret?”

“When I was twelve, I had the biggest crush on the Virgin Mary. Is that weird?”

Elle turned and found Kyrie standing in her white bathrobe and white veil behind her.

“Not really. She’s beautiful. At least in all the paintings and statues she is.”

“I like that she submitted to God. I always thought that was ***y what she said to God when He told her she would get pregnant with His child—‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to Your word.’”

Let it be done unto me... Elle had said similar words so many times in her life to Søren. I am yours, do what you want to do with me. Whatever you want with my body, you can do it...

“When I was fourteen, I wanted her life,” Kyrie said. “I like to think Mary was a lesbian. I mean, it’s the perfect situation for a closeted lesbian.”

Elle laughed. “It is?”

“Well, of course. She can’t come out to her family so the best way to pretend to be straight is by getting married. But she gets pregnant with God’s child through the Holy Spirit. And then she’s a perpetual virgin. Never has to have *** with her husband and yet he protects her and provides for her.”

“Sounds like you,” Elle said.

“Me?”

“Can’t come out to your Catholic family. Married to a man you’ll never have *** with. That’s what they call you all, right? Brides of Christ?”

Kyrie held up her left hand. She wore a wedding band on her ring finger.

“That’s us.”

“A warning, don’t tell anyone but me your theory about Mary being a lesbian,” Elle said. “Lots of people don’t handle erotic speculation about Mary and Jesus very well.”

“I’m not saying she was. Just my theory,” Kyrie said.

“Søren had a theory like that, too,” Elle said.

“Søren? Is that his name?”

Elle nodded. She hadn’t spoken his name aloud in months.

“One of his names,” she said. “He’s half-Danish.”

“What was his theory?”

“When Søren was in seminary, he wrote a paper positing that Jesus had been married and was widowed. Only explanation for why this thirty-something Jewish man would be unmarried, and no one would remark on it. Married young. Wife probably died in childbirth or for a thousand other reasons people died back then. Søren’s professor called him a heretic. He was proud of that label. Then again, he’s a Jesuit.”

“This is the first time you’ve ever smiled while talking about him.”

“I think this is the first time I’ve really talked about him in months,” Elle said. “Telling a nun you used to sleep with a priest doesn’t go over well.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry for the way I reacted,” Kyrie said. “That was...not cool of me.”

“You’re a nun and a virgin. I’d be surprised if you weren’t a little disgusted with me.”

“Reflex,” Kyrie said. “Priest seduces a girl in his church. Hard not to flinch.”

“It sounds sordid when you put it that way. It wasn’t like that.”

“Yes, but how am I supposed to know what it was like if you won’t tell me anything?”

Elle shrugged. “Good point.”

“I guess you couldn’t sleep, either.” Kyrie came to stand beside her.

“I was sleeping. I had a dream. It woke me up.”

“Nightmare.”

“Opposite of a nightmare.”

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“What’s the opposite of a nightmare?”

“The dream I had.” Elle laughed to herself. She could still feel Kingsley inside her. “About once a week I’ll dream something that actually happened to me. These vivid erotic dreams. I’ve never dreamed like this before. It’s like I’m reliving the entire moment, second by second. I woke up having an orgasm.”

“I’ve had some pretty crazy dreams since coming here, too. They warn you that being isolated like this, cut off from the outside world, will cause your mind and your soul to dredge things up and force you to deal with all your unfinished business from your old life.”

“What do you dream about?” Elle asked her. “What’s your unfinished business?”

Kyrie shrugged. “I dream about Bethany a lot, my family. Everyone sort of fell apart after she was killed. The trial, the publicity...it’s like a shipwreck. You start off strong, everybody holding on to each other for dear life. And then you drift away on the tides of your grief and hope you wash ashore someday.”

“Is this where you washed up?” Elle asked. Kyrie always seemed far more interested in learning about Elle’s life before the convent than talking about what hers had been like. Elle didn’t blame the girl. Everyone deserved a fresh start free of baggage. Unfortunately no one ever really got what they deserved.

“This is my dry land,” Kyrie said. “Being here...I finally feel like I’m on steady ground again. You?”

“I’m still at sea,” Elle admitted. “Especially on nights like this when I wake up from my dreams and don’t know where I am for a few seconds. Lost at sea and I can’t find my sea legs. Maybe they were right about being here. Maybe I do have unfinished business.”

“What were you dreaming about?”

“Do you really want to know?” Elle asked. “Or are you asking to make conversation?”

“I want to know. I want to know everything about you. Maybe for the wrong reasons, but there’s at least one right reason in there. I do want to help you. Will you let me?”

Silence settled over them, over the garden, over the moment. In that silence, Elle made a decision. She was lonely and scared, and she didn’t know what to do with her life, didn’t know what to do now that she’d left Søren. And no amount of running and hiding was making the way any clearer. She needed help.

And so she answered.

“I was dreaming about the night I got pregnant.”

19

Haiti

PARFAIT...THERE WAS NO other word for that night with Elle, the night she burned him sixteen times. Every waking moment the day after, Kingsley’s brain had buzzed with the memories of the pain, the intensity of the agony and the incredible release she’d pulled from him again and again. He was drunk with happiness, nearly delirious with ***ual satisfaction. It was all coming together. The clouds were clearing, the pattern appearing. For years he wondered what it meant, that Elle had become part of his life. He loved sharing her with Søren. Kingsley loved watching Søren **** her, loved being watched by Søren as Kingsley ****ed Elle. Those were his most potent erotic encounters when sin and *** and sadism merged into one and spent the night in his bed.

But for all that, it hadn’t been enough. As much as Kingsley loved to give pain and to dominate others, he himself needed pain and domination, as well. And if Søren would not give Kingsley what he needed, then perhaps Elle would.

And finally she had.

And not only had she done it, she’d loved it. He’d seen that gleam in her eyes as she’d fired up the scalpel. He’d known exactly what it was that burned in those dark green depths.

Sadism.

Pure, delicious, unadulterated sadism.

It had been too long since he’d let someone hurt him the way he needed hurting and have the *** he needed having. The Dominatrixes in his employ—he couldn’t have *** with them. They worked for him and they never had *** with any of their clients. Mistress Felicia had moved back to England five years ago. And Søren had clearly repented of the night six years ago he’d lost control and beaten and ****ed Kingsley in his own house. Another night like that with Søren? It had become nothing but a fantasy.

But another night like that with Elle? He bore sixteen burn marks on his body and eight deep scratches on his chest to prove it had been real. And it would be real again as soon as he found what he was looking for.

Two days after the night Elle burned him, Kingsley left on his quest. It took three days of driving through New England, stopping at every antique store he’d ever heard of and a few he hadn’t before he found what he’d been looking for. At last in a tiny antique shop that specialized in equestrian equipment, there it was. It had cost a small fortune as it was two hundred years old and had belonged to a rather notorious duchess who supposedly did more than ride her horses. Triumphant, he returned to his town house and waited until nightfall to find Elle again.

He found her in his music room sitting near the piano. She did that whenever her longing for Søren grew painful. The piano was his and to sit near it was to be close to him. He’d seen similar behavior before among the priests at his old school, St. Ignatius. Sometimes they’d simply sit by the Eucharist with their eyes closed. They believed Jesus was incarnate in the blessed communion wafers. To sit by the Eucharist was to sit near Him, the man they’d devoted their lives to in service, in love and in marriage. Did Elle believe Søren was incarnate in the piano? Music, after all, was Søren’s communion.

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“I’m not talking to you, King,” Elle said as she threaded a thin metal pick into what looked like a bicycle lock.

“Pourquoi pas?” he asked, suppressing a smile. He loved her bad moods. They always boded well for a good evening.

“You know why not.” She didn’t look at him, merely focused her entire attention on gently twisting the pick in the lock. She’d been doing this a lot lately, playing with locks, prising them open, learning their secrets. Why? Who knew? Although Kingsley had a theory, one he didn’t want confirmed.

“It was all in good fun,” he said, taking a seat behind her on the striped sofa. She must not be too angry at him for she wore one of his shirts again, a black button-down with the sleeves rolled to her shoulders. Her legs were tantalizingly bare and smooth and he traced a line with his fingertips from her knees to her hips.

“Good fun?” The lock popped open. She shut it again and went to work unlocking it again. “You tied me facedown, spread-eagle to your bed and ****ed my ass for half the night without letting me come. Then you disappear for three days. Do you have anything to say to that?”

“You’re welcome?” Kingsley said.

Elle glared at him.

“Don’t pout, mon chaton. I only tied you up and ****ed your ass all night to reassert my dominance. You know how it works. And you weren’t complaining at the time.”

“I wasn’t complaining at the time because I assumed at some point you would let me come. That did not happen. Then you disappear, leaving me sore and horny. So don’t even try to butter me up with the French accent and the finger-****ing. It’s not going to work. Shoo. I’m done talking to you.”

“Mais—”

“No buts. And no butts, either. You’re cut off.”

“But...I brought you a present.”

She raised her eyebrow.

“Present? What is it?”

“Come and see.”

“I’m not falling for that line again, King.”

“See and come?”

“Better.”

She set her pick and lock aside. He took her hand and led her from the music room and up to his bedroom.

“You’re smiling,” Elle said, her voice awash with suspicion. “I get nervous when you smile.”

“You shouldn’t be nervous. I should be nervous.”

“Why should you be nervous?” she asked as he opened the door to his bedroom, shut it and locked it behind him.

“Because I’m giving you this.”

He nodded toward the bed and Elle looked down at it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a riding crop,” Kingsley said. “An antique bone and ebony riding crop. Hand-carved, carved bone handle, two hundred years old. Rare, valuable, vicious. And...”

“And?”

Kingsley picked it up off the bed and presented it to her.

“And yours.”

Elle stared at the crop but didn’t take it.

“For me?”

“Pour vous, mademoiselle.”

“Why are you giving me a riding crop?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because you hate me, and you’re secretly plotting to get Søren to kill me?”

“Non.”

“Because you’re suicidal and you’re secretly plotting to get Søren to kill you?”

“Non.”

“Because you’re masochistic and you want me to beat the **** out of you again?”

“We have a winner. Take it. See how it feels.”

He saw the subtlest tremor in Elle’s hand as she reached out and grasped the crop by the bone and pearl handle. The wood of the crop was black, the handle white.

“This is the most incredible riding crop I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Do I want to know how much it cost?”

“If you sold it you could buy a car,” he said, speaking to her in terms she’d understand. “A small one.”

“This is better than a car.”

“I’m pleased you like it.” He bowed to her. Hopefully, by the end of the night he’d be doing more than bowing. He wanted to kneel at her feet, bury his face in her *****, service her until she screamed, and then let her thank him for his service by beating him until blood ran down his back.

She looked at it through narrowed eyes, bringing it to her face to study the carvings on the handle. She tested the weight and the balance of it. With a flourish she swished it. He heard the whipping sound it made as it sliced the air in two.

“Do you want to hurt me again?” Kingsley asked.

“Oh, Kingsley,” she said, smiling up at him. “I want to hurt everybody.”

“Start with me.”

Elle looked up at him and once again she was transformed. Gone was the good little girl who sat at Søren’s feet, napping in his lap while her priest wrote out his homily for that Sunday using her back as a desk. Gone was the good little girl who said “Yes, sir” and “If it pleases you, sir” and “I am yours, sir. Do with me what you will, sir.”

It was a bad little girl who looked up at Kingsley and without smiling asked him one very important question.

“Why do you still have your clothes on?”

Kingsley couldn’t help but smile at the memory.

“Was I supposed to take them off?” he asked her.

She took a step back and brought the leather tip of the crop under his chin.

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“You weren’t supposed to have them on to start with.”

He would have laughed at the memory she’d conjured with those words but he was already too turned on to do anything but obey.

“My apologies,” Kingsley said and quickly—but not too quickly—stripped out of his clothes.

Once he was naked she pointed the crop at the bed.

“Bend over. Hands on the bed. Feet apart.”

“You’re welcome to **** me,” Kingsley said as he did what she ordered. “I certainly deserve payback for sodomizing you all night.”

“I might,” she said, wrapping black leather cuffs around his ankles and buckling a foot-wide spreader bar to them to keep his legs open. “But I think I want to beat you first. No...”

“No?”

“No. I know I want to beat you first.”

“Beat me then. And don’t be afraid to hit hard. Most new Doms are too gentle, too careful. You can strike me as hard—”

Kingsley screamed.

No, not quite a scream. He was too well trained to scream. But it was the closest he would ever get to a scream.

She’d hit him so hard on the back of his thighs with her crop that Kingsley’s arms gave out under him.

As he gasped and coughed and forced his arms to straighten again, he heard Elle’s voice from behind him.

“You were saying?”

“Nothing,” Kingsley said. “I was saying nothing.”

“Good. Shut up. Stand there. And don’t talk. Unless you want to say ‘ouch.’ That you can say.”

Ouch was the least of the exclamations she dragged from him that night. She wrung every French curse and every English curse he knew out of him. The crop was as vicious as a bamboo cane and in no time she had him welted from shoulder to shoulder, neck to knees. The back of his body burned as if it had been stung by a thousand angry wasps instead of one very calm young woman who was having too much fun tearing his body to pieces.

She hit the same spot three times in a row at the bottom of his rib cage. One, two, three vicious strikes with the thin wooden crop, and he released a cry of utter agony.

“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, his fingers digging into the bed. He saw red, all red. The red light of pain flashed in front of him and he’d never see any color other than red again. “Do they teach all Catholics how to hurt people like this? Or is it just you two monsters?”

“Søren’s sadism is self-taught,” she said. “And I learned from Søren.”

“No one’s ever hurt me as much as he has,” Kingsley said.

“Good.”

“Why is that good?” Kingsley asked.

“I love a challenge.”

She hit him again. By the time she tired of beating him, his back was a solid red knot of burning welts. His **** was excruciatingly hard and throbbing with the need for release. If she even touched it, he would come. He breathed to calm himself. He was still angry he’d come so fast the first night she’d hurt him. He wanted to savor his arousal, let it build to the breaking point before coming anyway and anywhere she ordered him to. On her, in her, he didn’t care as long as it pleased her.

It pleased her now to lay the riding crop on the bed and run her hands up and down his broken body.

“Your skin is hot to the touch,” she said. “The welts are on fire.”

“I’m on fire,” he said, forcing the words out between rasping breaths.

“You’re beautiful like this.” Elle pressed her palm to his lower back where she’d concentrated her most vicious attentions. “Did you know that? When you’re submissive and suffering and so turned on your **** is dripping? It’s beautiful.”

“Merci,” he said, flushing slightly. Praise like that was a balm to his soul.

“Remember that night I told you about Wyatt, my college boyfriend for like a week? Well, you and I were in the music room. You unbuttoned your vest and your shirt and put my hand against the scar on your chest. I had this fantasy right then about pushing you onto your back and riding your **** into the ground.”

“I would have let you.”

“I was a virgin.”

“Only because he saw you first.”

Elle kissed his back between his shoulders. She reached around his hips and grasped his **** with two hands.

“What do you think would have happened if you’d seen me first?” she asked, stroking him so that he groaned.

“I’ve wondered that myself,” he confessed. “I know one thing—if I had seen you first, you wouldn’t have been a virgin at twenty. You would have been lucky to make it to sixteen.”

“Lucky is not the word I would choose,” Elle said, stroking him harder now. “Would you have shared me with Søren the way he shares me with you?”

“I would have shared you, but not in the same way.”

“How then?”

“I would have let him beat you and **** you. And then let him watch while you beat me and ****ed me.”

“You want him to watch me hurt you?”

“Oh, oui.”

“So he can see what he’s missing?”

“No.” Kingsley shook his head. “So he can see who you really are.”

“And who am I?” she asked, massaging his **** so that his eyes rolled back with the dizzying ecstasy of it.

And Kingsley grinned. She might be beating him and he might be submitting to her right now but that didn’t mean he’d given up all his power.

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“That’s for me to know, and for you to beat out of me.”

And she did.

* * *

Kingsley opened his eyes and stared out upon the ocean before him. It had been a week since he’d seen Juliette coupling with her lover in their garden. A week since she told him to go. A week since he’d chosen to stay for no reason he could think of except he wasn’t ready to go back yet. He’d tried to push thoughts of Juliette out of his mind, but thoughts of Elle had come and taken their place. Every evening he walked alone on the beach at sunset, a slow ramble from his hut to the edge of the bay and back again.

Kingsley took a deep breath. The vastness of the ocean spoke to the submissive in him. He was nothing compared to the endless waters. Their power and might humbled him as nothing else could. Vaguely he wondered if this was how Søren felt when he contemplated God. Small. Humble. Unimportant and yet loved despite all that. No. Surely Søren never felt small or humble. Not even God could humble that man.

Søren...for months now Kingsley had kept thoughts of Søren at bay. They’d intruded, of course. There was no escaping them entirely. But now Kingsley invited the thoughts in, let them swim to the shore and walk along the beach beside him.

“I miss you, mon ami,” Kingsley said to the silent shadow that strolled beside him. “But I am still so angry at you.”

The shadow didn’t speak. Kingsley kept walking.

“With Elle...it wasn’t like you and me. Or you and her. I had to work to love her. It didn’t come easy. You chose her over me and it hurt, and it will always hurt. But I learned to love her despite all that, and that should tell you how close we are that I could overcome how much I wanted to hate her. You were right about her, about what she could be to us. But I was right, too. I was right about what she is and what she needs. I was right, and you didn’t listen to me.”

Kingsley paused and faced the waters. The wind blew through him and he inhaled the clean salt air. The sound of the surf drowned his every word, his every breath. He could hear nothing but the ocean.

“And now she’s gone. And it’s your fault. And it’s my fault.”

The shadow at his side bowed its head. Kingsley pulled a length of carved bone from his pocket. A broken piece of what had once been an antique riding crop.

“What happened between me and Elle...it was between me and Elle. Not you,” Kingsley said, readying himself to toss the bone fragment into the ocean. “You had no part of it. And that’s why you were angry, no? That’s why you did what you did and made her run away from you, away from us?” He lifted his arm to throw it as far into the water as he could. “Because there is a part of her that has nothing to do with you and you were...”

And then Kingsley understood. He lowered his arm.

“And you were scared.”

From behind him he heard Juliette’s voice.

“Who was scared?”

20

Upstate New York

“PREGNANT?” KYRIE REPEATED. “You were pregnant?”

“I was,” she said.

“And you...”

“Had an abortion.”

“I see.” Kyrie’s voice was calm. Elle gave her cre*** for that.

“I’m not making this easy for you, am I?” Elle asked. “Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse...”

“It’s okay,” Kyrie said. “I’m still here. Is that why you don’t go to Mass?”

“I’m excommunicated.”

“You can still go. You’re just not supposed to take communion.”

“Consider me quietly protesting that aspect of Catholicism.”

Kyrie said nothing and Elle pitied her. The poor girl, a virgin, a nun, and here she was fighting off ***ual, possibly even romantic feelings for a woman who’d ****ed a priest and had an abortion.

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you about me, about why I’m here,” Elle said. “It’s a lot for one person to carry.”

“Too much for one person to carry,” Kyrie said. “That’s why I want you to tell me.”

“Regret asking yet?”

“Not yet.”

“You might if I keep talking.”

“Keep talking,” Kyrie said. “I want to know it all.”

“Not here. Not tonight. It’s cold out.”

“Tonight,” Kyrie said. “Before you change your mind. We can go to my room if you want somewhere warmer.”

“No. We should go to mine. They put me up on the third floor away from everybody else.”

“What? Do they think pregnancy is contagious?”

“I think Mother Prioress thinks sin is contagious, and I’m a carrier.”

“We’re all carriers. Original sin, remember?”

Elle laughed. “If you saw the crowd I used to run with...let’s just say we put the original in original sin.”

“Who were they? Your crowd?” Kyrie asked as they walked back to the abbey.

“I don’t know what you’d call us. There’s this man—Kingsley Edge. He has a town house on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. That’s where all the rich people live, if you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know. So he’s rich?”

“Filthy.” Elle smiled. So many memories flooded her mind—good and bad. “He owns and operates a big S and M club. There’s a group of us who practically live at that place.”

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“S and M? Like hitting people and stuff?”

“Pain and bondage and *** parties. Kink. Kingsley’s our king, of course. He wouldn’t have it any other way. But he has a court all around him. I was part of the court. Life is pretty luxurious inside Kingsley’s inner circle.”

They stopped talking when they reached the back door. They entered the abbey in silence and tiptoed up three flights of stairs. Elle’s cell was near the end of the hall. The abbey had once boasted nearly one hundred sisters. Now their numbers were halved and dozens of cells on the third floor sat empty.

Elle opened her cell door for Kyrie but didn’t turn on the light.

“Sister Luke walks the halls at night,” Elle explained in a low whisper. “If she sees the light, she might listen at the door.”

Kyrie sat on the bed. Elle pulled up her desk chair and sat close but not too close to her.

“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” Elle said.

“You, either. They wouldn’t kick me out. They might kick you out, though.”

“That’s the last thing I need,” Elle said. “I have no idea where I’d go if they kicked me out.”

“Why can’t you go back to your friends?”

“I could,” Elle said as she took her shoes off and shoved her cold toes under the blanket on the bed. “I could go back tonight if I wanted. I was living at Kingsley’s house.”

“You lived with someone? That sounds serious.”

“Not really. I had a room there. My own room. My own bathroom. I wasn’t living with Kingsley. I was living at Kingsley’s. Subtle difference.”

“So you two are friends?”

“More than friends.”

“But what about your priest?”

“Søren’s a Jesuit but he’s also a parish priest. He lives alone in his rectory, but it’s not safe for me to be there all the time. I’d go over after dark and hide my car. I’d almost always leave before morning. I had to live somewhere, and I couldn’t afford my own place. I moved in with King. King and Søren are best friends. And brothers-in-law. But that is a long story. And trust me, you don’t want to get into that long story.”

“If you say so. So what happened? You got pregnant and your priest, Søren, made you have an abortion?”

“No. It was nothing like that. Søren was out of the country for ten weeks, in Rome finishing his dissertation on Canon Law. I wasn’t pregnant when he left. I know that because I was having my period. And then I got sick. Fever, stomach and back pain.”

“What was wrong?”

“A kidney infection. Two weeks of antibiotics. My regular doctor couldn’t get me in so I went to Søren’s. When she asked me if I was ***ually active I lied and said no. I didn’t want her asking me any more about my *** life. So she didn’t tell me that antibiotics can mess with your birth control. As soon as I felt better, Kingsley and I had ***.”

“Wait. You cheated on your priest with Kingsley?”

“It wasn’t cheating. Søren and Kingsley...” Elle stopped and took a breath. If Kyrie hadn’t looked so confused and so beautiful, she would have laughed. “This is really hard to explain. No. Wait. It’s very easy to explain. I was sleeping with both of them. There. I explained it.”

“But how is that not cheating if you’re having *** with two different men?”

“We’re in an open relationship. Sort of. I’m...I was Søren’s submissive, and he—”

“What’s a submissive?”

“It’s like being someone’s property. But not exactly.”

“But how can you be someone’s property? Isn’t that illegal?”

Elle raised her hand.

“This isn’t working.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t sit here and try to explain my life to you with you saying ‘but’ every five seconds after I’ve said something weird like, ‘My priest is a sadist, but that’s one of his most endearing qualities.’ And you’ll say?”

“What’s a sadist?”

Elle laughed. “We’re going to be here all year if we keep this up. You and I, we speak different languages.”

“Please try, Elle. I want to know.”

“Why?”

“Because...” Kyrie took a ragged breath. “I’ve wanted to be a nun for so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to want anything else. And then you...I met you and now I know what it’s like to want something else. But I don’t know you. You don’t tell me anything so I don’t even know what it is I want, and it’s driving me crazy. Please, Elle...who are you?”

“Who am I?” Elle repeated. “I wish I knew who I was. I wish I knew how to tell you.”

“Can you show me?” Kyrie asked.

Kyrie looked at her in silence and then pulled the veil off her head. She ran her fingers through her long blond hair and let it fall down her back where it belonged.

Elle reached out and touched a lock of Kyrie’s hair. It was soft, so soft, like a baby’s hair. But Kyrie was no child. In the moonlight streaming through the window and with her hair down, Kyrie looked like a nymph, beautiful and ethereal. She didn’t seem real. More like a shadow or a shade from a dream. Elle had been dreaming her memories for months. Was she now living in her own dreams?

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“If you can’t tell me,” Kyrie asked again, “can you show me?”

Elle laughed. Could she show her? One easy way to do it.

“Give me your hand,” Elle said. Kyrie obeyed without question. “I’m going to bite your wrist. Is that okay?”

“Will you do it hard?”

“Yes. But I won’t break the skin. Do I have your permission to bite you?”

“Sure, I guess. Yes.”

“Good.” Elle raised Kyrie’s wrist to her lips and sank her teeth deep into the soft flesh at the wrist bone. Kyrie flinched but didn’t cry out.

Then Elle kissed her in the same spot. A warm, soft, sensual kiss on the bite mark and the inside of her wrist.

“Elle...” Kyrie breathed. Elle released her hand and Kyrie pulled it back against her chest, cradling it in her other hand.

“Did you like that?” Elle asked.

“I liked the kiss after you bit me. And the bite, too.”

“What would you say if I said I would do it again, but only if you let me bite you again?”

“I’d say...bite me.”

“What if I said I’d make you feel amazing but only after I hurt you? Would you let me hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think would happen if every time I hurt you I also made you feel good afterward?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’d want you to hurt me so I could feel good.”

“You’d associate pain with pleasure?”

“I would.”

“You’d want the pain because it meant you’d have pleasure, too?”

“Probably.”

“Would the pleasure mean more to you because you earned it?”

“I think so.”

“If I told you it turned me on to hurt you and then pleasure you in that order, what would you think?”

“I would think you should do that to me then. Hurt me and then pleasure me.”

Elle smiled. “That’s kink. It’s also kink when your deepest ***ual fantasy is to be treated like a *** slave or punished by a teacher or tied up like a prisoner or spanked like a child.”

“People do that?”

“I do that,” Elle said.

Kyrie held out her hand again to Elle. “Will you do it me?”

“Kyrie—”

“Please?”

Almost nine months...Elle hadn’t been intimate with anyone in that long. No wonder she dreamed of *** almost every night and woke up coming. And Kyrie...she wanted her. This young virginal...

“You’re a nun.” Elle took Kyrie’s hand but only to hold it. “If we do this—”

“I’m just a starter nun.”

“It’s called a novice, not a starter nun.”

“You know what I mean. I don’t take final vows for two years,” Kyrie said. “I want to know what I’m giving up.”

Elle closed her eyes and shook her head.

Somewhere out there, far in the distance, she heard a sound she thought she would never hear.

“Can you hear that?” Elle asked.

“No, what is it?”

“God laughing at me.”

Elle opened her eyes.

Then she stood up.

She pushed her chair under the doorknob.

Kyrie was already on the bed, her hair down and unbound. She was a vision of loveliness and innocence. And Elle wanted her. Wanted her as she’d never wanted a woman before in her life. But she wasn’t a woman. Not yet. She was a girl, chaste and pure, and she’d never even been kissed. The hunger to be the first lips on Kyrie’s lips was physical in its urgency. Elle wanted hers to be the first hands on Kyrie’s body. But even more than that, she wanted to feel again what she felt those nights with Kingsley, the nights he’d let her hurt him, dominate him, use him. She needed to feel that power again.

She needed to own this girl, body and soul. In two years, Kyrie would take her final vows. In two years, her beautiful long hair would be shorn to the scalp. In two years the door on Kyrie’s life would lock and it would never be opened again. Kyrie would never be opened again.

Innocence had its virtues, but ignorance had none. To let this beautiful girl walk away from the world without ever having tasted the pleasure it offered was more than a crime. It was a sin. A shame. And Elle wouldn’t allow it.

“Are you praying?” Elle asked, seeing Kyrie’s head bowed. The starlight made itself a halo in her hair.

“Yes. The prayer of St. Augustine.” Kyrie looked up at Elle and met her eyes in the dark. “Lord, make me chaste....”

Elle finished the prayer for her.

“But not yet.”

21

Haiti

“WHO WAS SCARED?”

Kingsley closed his eyes. Juliette’s voice carried over the air and the waves and the water on the sand. It carried over the beach like the signal of a lighthouse to a ship lost at sea.

“No one.” He shoved the length of carved bone into his pocket. He turned and found her standing ten feet behind him. She wore a yellow dress, bright as the sun. “I was talking to myself.”

“It didn’t sound like it. Were you praying?” She walked on bare feet across the sand to him.

“Something like that.”

“To God?”

“To a man,” he said. “A man who thinks he’s God sometimes. But he can’t be God, can he? Not if he’s scared.”