[English] The Virgin

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Elle shook her head. She couldn’t stomach the thought of being touched intimately yet by anyone other than herself. “No, you don’t have to. I already had an orgasm tonight.”

“Were you masturbating?” Kyrie asked, a fair question.

“Dreaming,” Elle said. “I woke up from the dream having an orgasm.”

“You said you were dreaming about the night you got pregnant. You know exactly when it happened?”

“I do,” she said without hesitation. “I remember the day Søren left for Rome. I remember the day I went to the doctor because of my kidney infection. I was on antibiotics for two weeks. When I felt better, Kingsley and I had ***. The next night we only had anal. Can’t get pregnant from anal. The next morning he left for a few days. I remember...” She paused, closed her eyes... She could feel Kingsley inside her again, see him underneath her. And she missed it. Him. She missed him.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“We can talk about it. But you’re the nun, and I’m the unrepentant slut. It’ll probably bother you a lot more to hear about it than it’ll bother me to talk about it.”

“I’m not...” Kyrie paused. “Let’s just say I haven’t made up my mind about abortion the way the Catholic Church has. I can’t imagine it’s ever an easy choice. But I can imagine that sometimes it’s the only choice you’d have.”

“It was the right choice,” Elle said. “But no, I wouldn’t call it easy.”

“Why did you do it?”

“When I was seventeen, God and I had a long talk. I told him that I would never ask Søren to leave the priesthood if God would let Søren and I be together. Something happened that night and whatever childish dreams I’d had of marrying him and having his children burned to ashes. I have new dreams now. Children aren’t part of my dreams. Is that selfish?”

“Children aren’t part of my dreams, either. How can I judge you without judging myself?”

“Even if I did want children, I don’t think my life is...was the sort of life you should bring a child into.” She rubbed her forehead and laughed. “You know what Friday night is at Kingsley’s house?”

“I don’t know? Game night?”

“Orgy night,” she said. “He throws these wild parties on Friday nights and all the rich beautiful people of Manhattan show up and get off. You walk around and there are naked women everywhere with men ****ing them over and on top of every piece of furniture in the place. Except the piano. The piano was off-limits.”

“Why not the piano? Is Kingsley some big music lover?”

“The piano was Kingsley’s gift to Søren.” Kingsley had bought the piano even before he and Søren had reunited. A gift? More like an altar.

“What about Kingsley?”

Elle sighed heavily and closed her eyes.

“Kingsley...that’s the only knot I can’t quite untie. Kingsley wants children. He always has. I took that chance from him.”

“He’ll have other chances.”

“I tell myself that. I hope I’m right.”

“It’s not your job to provide a baby for every man who wants one,” Kyrie said. “If God wanted women to be baby makers, He wouldn’t have called so many of us to religious orders.”

“Kingsley’s special,” Elle said. “And he would never have wanted me to have a child against my will. I know that. But I also know that he wished I’d wanted it. That’s what still hurts, knowing he’s still hurting.”

“So when did you realize you were pregnant?”

“It was a few days before Søren was due to come back from Rome. He was defending his dissertation at the Jesuit university there. PhD number two.”

“Two PhDs? That’s crazy. He must be really smart.”

“He’s the most intelligent man I’ve ever known. And such a nerd,” Elle said, smiling. “But he’s a Jesuit. PhDs are like catnip to Jesuits. They pop a boner around academic degrees like a teenage boy with his first Playboy.”

“Oh God, my great-uncle’s a Jesuit.”

“Sorry,” Elle said, wincing. “How many PhDs does he have?”

“Three. Which is probably the same number of boners he’s had since becoming a Jesuit.”

Elle laughed.

“Not the ***y, vow-breaking kind of Jesuit then?”

“Dry as dust and about as ***y,” Kyrie said.

“Søren is ***y,” Elle said. “You’ve never seen a more beautiful man in your life. Blond hair. Darker than yours but still very blond. Handsome. Strong nose and jaw. Gray eyes like the color of a cloudy morning. And he’s tall—six foot four. Tall and strong. I used to sit on his back while he did push-ups in the morning. Five hundred of them without me. Or one hundred of them with me.”

“Wow, that is seriously strong.”

“Once we spent the night at Kingsley’s and Kingsley took over push-up duty. He stood barefoot on Søren’s back. Søren only made it to fifty Kingsley push-ups, but that’s still pretty good. Kingsley’s six feet tall, weighs about one-ninety, I think.”

“Oh my God. I weigh ninety-five pounds. He’s exactly two of me.”

Elle gave a wistful sigh. “I was living in this erotic Paradise. If Søren was busy there was always Kingsley. If Kingsley and Søren were free at the same time, it was both of them in the same bed. All night long.”

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“It sounds perfect. Apart from the men. Change them to beautiful women, and it’s my secret Heaven.”

“It was as close to perfect as you can get in this life, I guess.”

Kyrie rolled onto her side and sat up halfway. She rested her weight on her right hand and looked down at Elle. Her nightgown fell off her shoulder and Elle had to fight off a wave of desire for her.

“So why...why if everything was so ***y and perfect, why did you say you’ve had ‘not okay’ ***?”

“What?”

“You know.” Kyrie shrugged. “After you and I were done having ***...” She blushed as she spoke. “After we were done, you said it was fine if I wasn’t okay. You said you’d had ‘not okay’ *** before. That doesn’t sound like Paradise to me.”

“Why do you care so much?”

Kyrie flashed hurt eyes at her.

“Because it’s you, and I care about you. Do you think I would be in bed with you if I didn’t care about you?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Elle, you loved him, right? Your priest?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t deny it so she didn’t bother denying it.

“You loved him, but you still left him. That scares me.”

“Why would it scare you that I left him?”

“Because if you can leave someone you’re that much in love with, how much easier would it be to leave me?”

“Kyrie...” Elle pulled Kyrie close to her and wrapped her arms tight around the girl’s thin shoulders. “Listen to me. There is no way in Hell you will ever make me as angry at you as I am at Søren. And I’m not going to leave you like I left him. I can’t stay here forever but remember, you’re the one in the convent, the one who’s taken a vow of chastity.”

“Temporary vows,” Kyrie said.

“But you’ve got final vows coming up.”

“In two years.”

“Okay, in two years, you’ll take final vows and go back to the abbey in California, right?”

“I know. I’m sorry. This is all new to me.”

“It’s new to me, too,” Elle said. “I’ve never been in a relationship with another woman before. We’ll have to figure it out together. But I’m not going to run away from you, so put that thought out of your pretty little head.”

Elle tapped her on the forehead between the eyes. Kyrie’s eyes crossed and Elle laughed.

Kyrie stretched out again along Elle’s side and laid an arm across her stomach.

Elle took a deep breath.

“I did love Søren,” she said again. “And I do love him. Still. Do you know how hard it is to leave someone you’re in love with? To walk away from them? Or worse,” she said, remembering the near-crippling pain she’d been in that night, “to crawl away?”

“I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine...”

“I think about it all the time. Why I left Søren. Why I haven’t gone back yet. I need to think about it otherwise maybe I’d forget why I left him and then...”

“You’d go back?”

Elle nodded.

“And I don’t want to go back. Even if I did, I shouldn’t go back. So I think about bad times, the bad things about being with him. It’s a short list but...”

“What’s on the list?”

“Not getting to spend as much time with him as I want to. Not getting to go out in public as a couple. We’ve never spent Thanksgiving together, you know? He spends it with his sister Claire at her place with her family. She knows about me but bringing me along would be asking for trouble. All it takes is one person making one phone call, and we’re front-page news, Søren and I. But it’s not just stuff like that.”

Elle felt Kyrie’s eyes on her but didn’t meet her gaze. She raised a hand to her forehead and rubbed between her eyes.

“I’ve never told anyone about this,” Elle finally said.

“Told anyone what?”

“The list of things I tell myself to keep me from going back to him... Something happened once—only once—but once was enough. If it had happened twice, I think I would have left him a long time ago.”

“What did he do to you?” Kyrie asked, the same question Daniel had asked her. This time Elle would answer.

“It’s not easy being the ***ual property of a sadist,” she said with a tired smile. “It’s ***y. It’s fun. It’s intense like you can’t imagine. Fear makes it potent. Doing something dangerous makes it potent. But there’s always a risk that you can go too far and someone can get hurt.”

“You got hurt?”

Elle nodded.

“In kink, we have a thing called a ‘safe word.’ It’s nothing special, just a word that means ‘Stop, I mean it.’ If you’re doing heavy role-play stuff and you want to be able to say ‘Oh no, not that. Don’t put your big **** in me, sir, and force me against my will to have an orgasm. Anything but that,’” Elle said, putting the back of her hand on her forehead and pretending to play a pearl-clutching virgin. “You know, stuff like that. You need a word that means ‘stop’ that isn’t stop. Mine is Jabberwocky.”

“Good word. Sounds nothing like stop.”

“Easy to remember, too,” Elle said, glancing away from Kyrie’s searching gaze. “Unless you get so freaked out you forget it in the moment.”

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“Is that what happened? You forgot your safe word?”

“We’d only been lovers a couple weeks,” Elle said. “I was a virgin until Søren, a virgin until I was twenty years old. But after our first night together, I felt like we’d done everything there was to do. But we hadn’t actually. We hadn’t even scratched the surface of everything...”

“Did he put his entire hand inside your vagina?”

“Not that night.”

“Then I still win.”

“You win,” Elle said, touching Kyrie’s face, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She kissed her again but Kyrie wasn’t to be deterred or distracted from her question by so obvious a ploy as a kiss.

“What happened?” Kyrie asked, and Elle knew she had to answer.

“It was after our third night together, a Thursday night. I remember that because Søren didn’t have anything to do until noon on Fridays so we could actually stay in bed together longer, spend the whole night and the morning after together. And it was a rough night. Rough in the good way. Lots of kink. Lots of ***. Afterward we were curled up together in bed. I was laying on his chest. Laying? Lying? I can never remember which. And we were talking.”

Elle closed her eyes. And when she opened them she lay on Søren’s chest, her head against his heart.

“How are you feeling, Little One?” he asked as he stroked her back with his fingertips. He’d left her covered in welts from his cane and even his gentle touches burned. But she didn’t stop him from touching her. She would never stop him from touching her.

“Sore. Happy. You?”

“Happy,” he said.

Søren happy was her favorite sort of happy. She knew everything there was to know about his past, his pain, everything he’d suffered growing up. To know that right now in this moment he was happy, that the darkness was outside the room tonight and not in it, that made her happier than her own happiness ever could.

“I want to make you happy,” she said, kissing the center of his chest.

“You please me very much.”

“Is there anything I can do to please you more?” she asked, hoping the answer was yes. Whatever it was, she would do it, allow it, enjoy it. Anything for him.

He sighed heavily and she grinned as she rose and fell on the wave of that big breath.

“There’s something I’d like us to do together. When you’re ready.”

“What is it? And I promise, I’m ready.”

“You don’t know what it is yet,” he said, rolling onto his side. She lay on hers and faced him. “So how do you know you’re ready?”

“It’s like the numbers game we play when you make me pick a number between one and ten and you don’t tell me what I’m picking. One kiss? Ten kisses? One strike of the cane? Ten strikes of the cane? I pick a number and you do whatever it is you want to do.”

“This is different.” He reached out and ran his fingers through her unbound hair. He caressed her face, traced her bottom lip with his thumb.

“Is it something you want to do?” she asked.

“Very much. It’s been a fantasy of mine since I saw you.”

She smiled at him. Her eyes were bright with the untold secret. She even bit her bottom lip, an act that he punished by kissing her and biting her bottom lip for her.

“I’m yours,” she said into the kiss. “Do anything you want to me, my sir. My body is yours...”

“Yes, it is,” he said, stretching out on top of her and deepening the kiss. “You’re all mine. Now and always...”

Whatever it was, she wanted him to do it to her right then, right there. She’d waited years to be with him and now that they were lovers, she wanted him all the time. She couldn’t get enough of his body inside hers, couldn’t get enough of the pain he gave her. Nothing made her feel more beautiful than to kneel naked at his feet and let him mark her with welts and bruises. And to know he’d fantasized about doing something to her since the day they met excited her beyond reason.

“Please...” she whispered as he pulled her back against his chest and settled into bed once more.

“Not tonight. But soon.”

“Never soon enough,” she said as he ran his finger around the edge of her white leather collar. She would fall asleep in it tonight and by morning he would have taken it off her and put it away. And she drifted off to sleep in the safety of his arms.

* * *

“What was it?” Kyrie asked. “What was his fantasy?”

Elle took a deep breath and smiled as Kyrie rose and fell on the wave of that breath. Now she was the Dominant and she had her a little Sub all her own. And she had no idea what to do with her.

“I found out the next morning,” Elle said. “I woke up in his bed and my collar was off my neck. I could hear water running down the hall so I went to take a shower with him.”

* * *

She wanted mornings with Søren almost as much as nights. Nights were a secret time, dark and erotic. A time for sin and whispers, passion and pain. But mornings...mornings were an everyday time. Light and bright. Drinking coffee together. Reading the newspaper. Discussing the day ahead and plotting how to make it through the hours until the next night they could be together came again. As much as she loved the sins and the secrets, Elle also longed for the light, for the simple pleasures of fighting over the sink while brushing their teeth and making the bed—he took the right side, she took the left—and, of course, taking a quick shower together.

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She stepped into the shower and in an instant she was in his arms. His mouth was on her mouth, on her neck, on her breasts. The hot water poured over them both. She reached up and slicked his hair back, marveling at how much darker the blond turned when wet.

“Did I say you could get out of bed?” he asked, biting her hard on the neck. She shuddered at the sting of his teeth on her tender skin. He pulled her hair hard enough to elicit a gasp. He bit her lips again between kisses, dug his fingers into the soft flesh of the small of her back.

“No, sir,” she said, smiling in her defiance. She felt the tip of his erection pressing against her belly.

“Did I say you could steal my water?” he asked, pinching her nipples to the point of pain.

“No, sir.” She pushed her hips against him, eager already to have him inside her. They’d never made love in the shower before, and she treasured all of their first times. First kiss, first touch, first time he beat her in his bedroom, first time he beat her in the living room and then took her on the floor by the fireplace...she wanted all their firsts and all their seconds and all their thirds and she couldn’t get them fast enough. “But what are you going to do about it?” she taunted. “No floggers in the shower. No whips, no toys. How are you going to punish me in here?”

And then he smiled. The smile scared her.

“Like this,” he said and pushed her face-first against the tile wall. “This is how.”

There was, in her memory, a split second of pause. And in that split second she’d had three distinct thoughts.

I know what he’s going to do to me.

I don’t want him to do it.

How do I stop it?

Before she could remember the answer to number three, he was inside her with one vicious thrust. She screamed into her arm as he penetrated her anally. It felt like a burning blade sliced her body in half from neck to knees. His mouth was at her ear and she heard his breath catch in ecstasy. Her pain was his pleasure, he’d told her. So surely now he experienced the greatest pleasure of his life as she had never known pain like this. It was without beginning and without end and for all she knew in her blind panic she would feel like this forever. He came inside her.

And then it was over.

He pulled out of her and kissed the back of her neck. She stood stock-still as he stepped out of the shower. Slowly she sank down onto the floor of the bathtub. Her arm bled from a small cut. Wide-eyed and without recognizing her own body, she wondered how the cut had got there, whose arm that was and why it was bleeding. Oh, it was her arm. Of course it was. And the cut came from her teeth. She’d been bracing herself against the wall and had bitten her own arm. Silly her.

“Eleanor? Are you staying in there all day?” Søren pulled back open the shower door and looked down at her sitting with her knees to her chest, her arm bleeding, the water beating off her like a storm she didn’t notice was happening.

She looked up at him.

“I forgot my safe word.”

* * *

Elle turned and looked at Kyrie, who was staring at her wide-eyed with horror.

“That’s it,” Elle said.

“What is?” Kyrie whispered the words.

“The way you’re looking at me now is exactly the way he looked at me when I told him I forgot my safe word. I had never seen that look on his face before. I didn’t think you could shock Søren. No, it wasn’t shock. It was horror.”

“I can believe it,” Kyrie breathed. “What did he do when he realized what happened?”

“He turned off the water and opened a towel. He held it open and waited. I got up and stepped into the towel. What a pair we must have made right then. He was already dressed—collar and everything. And here was this naked girl, soaking wet, wearing nothing but a white towel. He picked me up and carried me to his bedroom. He didn’t say anything, not a word. He dried me off and checked to make sure I wasn’t torn or bleeding. I wasn’t except for my arm. So he cleaned the cut on my arm and put a Band-Aid on it. I think...I think I laughed then—when he put the Band-Aid on. I asked him why he didn’t have Snoopy Band-Aids. Those were my favorite as a kid. I’d get so excited when I scraped my knees or elbows as a kid because then I had an excuse to cover myself in Snoopy Band-Aids. Anyway...” She paused and took a much-needed breath. “He dressed me in my underwear and one of his white T-shirts. And then he held me in his arms, in a chair. He held me and I held him. And we didn’t talk about what happened. And we didn’t need to talk about it. It never happened again.”

“Never?”

“Don’t get me wrong, he hurt me. A lot. But never like that again. And he always had my explicit consent before doing anything new. But even when you’ve given your consent, sometimes you still don’t know what you’re in for.”

“Sounds like joining a religious order. Before I got here...I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

“Søren said the young seminarians he knew were all so bright-eyed and happy—thrilled even—to take their vows of celibacy, to give up family life for God and the church. He said you could watch that light visibly fading year after year. Ten years into their priesthood, twenty years, and they were running on fumes, drinking heavily, cheating every chance they got, or worse. They didn’t know what they’d signed up for. Same with being a submissive. You go into it wide-eyed and then reality comes along and kicks you in the ass—sometimes literally.”

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“Were you angry at him?” Kyrie asked. A good question, she had to admit. Elle wished she had a good answer. She wished she’d been angry at him. That would have been healthier than blaming herself. But she’d given him permission, and he’d taken her at her word. Who was to blame? Maybe nobody.

“Back then I was only mad at myself for forgetting my safe word. And I was ashamed. Which was a foreign feeling for me that day. I felt so stupid. I had one job as his submissive—say my safe word if and when I wanted the scene to stop. That would have stopped it. One word, and I couldn’t even do that right. It took me a few weeks to get over that feeling. Søren, he was more careful with me after. And when we had anal *** the second time about a month later, it was amazing. Like the best *** we’d ever had. I think he was trying to make up for what happened in the shower. That morning in the shower, I think maybe...”

“What?” Kyrie asked.

Elle smiled and remembered the story Kingsley had told her about his first time with Søren on the forest floor. He ****ed the life out of me, Elle. Every other time we used lube but that night, there was only blood. My blood. And I hope God is as understanding as you two like to tell me He is, because if I get to Heaven and God wants to wipe my memory of the night and take away the blood and the pain, I’ll turn on my heel and walk straight into Hell just to keep the memory.

“Søren had one other lover before me, a hard-core masochist. I think Søren forgot who he was with for a second. If so, he never forgot again. And I never forgot, either. But that didn’t stop me from whispering my safe word to myself over and over again for the next two weeks until it was the only word I knew. At night before bed, when I woke up the next morning, before lunch, after lunch and into my coffee. It’s a miracle I didn’t introduce myself to people that way by mistake. ‘Hi, I’m Jabberwocky, nice to meet you.’”

“Why did you pick that word?”

“I loved Lewis Carroll’s books as a kid. So did Søren. It was something we had in common, and if you compare his childhood to mine, you’d see how crazy it was we had anything in common at all. I loved the books because I thought they were funny. But he... When Søren was five years old, his father sent him to England to live with relatives and go to boarding school. He said he loved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass because he wanted to believe there was another world out there he could get to by stepping through a mirror or falling down a rabbit hole. But he didn’t want a Wonderland with Mad Hatters and March Hares. He wanted to see his mother again, and he didn’t know how to find her. He’d walk past a mirror and catch a glimpse of his own blond hair and he would...he’d think for a second it was her waiting just around the corner of the world inside the mirror.”

Elle closed her eyes and let herself love the lonely little boy Søren had been once upon a time.

“So Jabberwocky was my safe word because it meant something to both of us,” Elle said, clearing the knot from her throat with a cough.

“Did you ever use it?”

“Once more,” Elle said. “The night I left Søren once and for all. But that’s a longer story than this one and you need to get back to your room. It’s almost 3:00 a.m. You have to get up soon.”

“I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you all night.”

“I know,” Elle said, kissing Kyrie on top of her head. “I know that feeling. But if you want another night with me, we can’t get caught.”

With obvious reluctance, Kyrie rolled up. Elle saw her wince.

“How are you?” she asked Kyrie. “Are you sore?”

“Sore,” she said, nodding. “And happy. Are you happy?”

“I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.”

“I’m going to be thinking about you...what we did, all day tomorrow.”

“Me, too,” Elle said, tying a knot in the cord of Kyrie’s white robe. “All tomorrow and the day after and the day after...”

“We can do it again, right?”

“Yes, definitely. But we’ll wait a couple days until you’re healed. Take warm baths. That’s an order.”

Kyrie grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Kiss me good-night. That’s another order.”

Kyrie bent down and kissed Elle on the mouth. It should have been a quick kiss but it lasted far too long and yet ended all too soon.

“Good night, my dove,” Elle said, brushing Kyrie’s hair over her shoulder. “Sleep well.”

She started for the door but stopped and turned back.

“You used your safe word the night you left him?” Kyrie asked.

“I did.”

“Was what he did to you that night...was it worse than what he did to you in the shower?”

Was it worse? The night she’d left him Søren hadn’t laid a hand on her. He hadn’t hit her, hadn’t touched her and didn’t **** her in any way.

Elle glanced away, let herself remember what had happened, forced herself to forget.

“Much worse.”

25

Haiti

“ARE YOU OUT of your Haitian mind?” Kingsley demanded, to which Juliette had a cruel retort.

“Are you out of your French courage?”

“I’m half-American.”

“I thought Americans were supposed to be brave, always running off to play war.”

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“You’re getting courage confused with stupi***y.” He leaned forward and looked down. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s not that far down. You’ll be fine.”

“You have gone mad in the heat,” Kingsley continued. “Sunstroke? Heatstroke? That would explain this.”

“*****,” Juliette said.

“Meow.”

“You know you want to...” Juliette gave him a cat-eyed smile.

“I know nothing of the sort. I have no desire whatsoever to do this. You are living in a dreamworld, a dreamworld where gravity does not exist. I live in the real world. I have been shot four times. I have looked death in the face, shook his hand and said we have to stop meeting this way. So if you think I’m going to do this, you are as foolish as you are beautiful.”

Juliette leaned over the edge of the cliff. Kingsley followed her eyes fifty feet down to the blue-and-white water below.

“I must be,” she said. “Because I’m going to jump. And you’re going to follow me down.”

“Is this a cry for help?” Kingsley asked, forcing his gaze back up to the sky. The view down to the water had made his head swim with dizziness.

“Diving’s fun,” she said. “And it’s not as hard as it seems. You have to close your eyes...listen to the waves. You hear that? That crash when they come in? That’s when you jump. By the time you hit the water, the wave will be on its way out away from the rocks.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“I have.”

“Many times?” he asked.

“So many times.”

“And you’ve never been killed?”

“I’d hardly be standing here talking to you if I had been,” she said, still smiling. They’d spent the past few days in his bed at the beach hut. They’d hardly come up for air or water or food. They’d survived on ***, thrived on it, feasted on each other and been sated. But this morning Juliette had woken him at noon, dragged him from bed, told him she had a surprise for him.

It was a terrible surprise.

“Mon roi,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. She wore nothing but a red bikini and a skirt around her hips festooned with white-and-red flowers. And he had on nothing but his khaki pants rolled up to his calves. “There is something I want to show you and I can’t show it to you unless we go down to the water. And there’s only one way down to the water.”

“Then how do we get back up again?”

“Maybe we don’t,” she said. “Maybe we stay down there forever.”

“Because we’ve crashed against the rocks and died?”

“Because it’s Paradise. And who would ever leave Paradise?”

“Adam and Eve left Paradise.”

“Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise. They weren’t allowed to stay. And ever since God sent Adam and Eve from Paradise, we’ve been trying to get back there.”

“And you know the way?”

“I know a shortcut.”

“Is death your shortcut?”

“Trust me,” she whispered, looking at him with her bright and gleaming eyes. “I’ve done this dive a thousand times. You wait for the wave to hit, you jump, and in seconds...there you are, in the water, safe.”

“What if I jump at the wrong time?”

“Then the water throws you against the rocks, your spine shatters, your skull explodes like a dropped egg, and you die.”

He saw the mirth shining in her eyes. She was trying to scare him. Oh, she would get it later for this. If he survived this insane leap.

“I’m going back to the hut. Paradise is not worth the risk.”

“Paradise is the only thing worth the risk.”

She pulled away from him and untied her skirt.

“What are you doing?”

She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Everyone thinks Paradise is up...high up in the sky and far away. But it’s not. It’s down there. And I’m going. With or without you.”

“You can’t go without me.”

“We all go alone. But you’re welcome to meet me there.”

Then she winked and turned away. He fell silent and watched her close her eyes. She was listening, listening to the water. With her eyes still closed she took a step and another. And then she was running and with the ends of her red wrap in her fingers she launched herself off the cliff. Kingsley raced to the edge and watched her swan dive down to the water, the wrap in her fingers still floating and flying behind her like red-and-white wings. She hit the water with the smallest of splashes and he held his breath. Between the inhale and the exhale he lived and died a thousand deaths.

When she surfaced again and waved up at him, he breathed out finally.

“Why can’t I ever fall in love with a normal woman?” he sighed to himself. “Just once...”

He looked up at the sky hoping for an answer.

“Too much to ask? One normal woman?” He held up one finger. “Or man. I’m not picky. You know me. Someone without a horrible childhood and no kinks that will get me killed.”

He leaned over the edge of the cliff and yelled down at Juliette.

“Cliff diving is one of my hard limits!”

She must not have heard him because all she did was wave.

He closed his eyes, took a breath. He thought he heard something somewhere, something like laughter. But surely it was only the waves on the water below.

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God didn’t answer so he took the silence for a no. So when the water hit the rocks Kingsley jumped feet first. It seemed he hovered in midair a moment. The way down passed in a second and lasted an eternity. In the final second before he hit the water, he thought of all that he’d done and all that he wanted in his life. Everything he’d wanted to do he’d done but for two final things on his to-do list. He wanted to save Juliette, and he wanted to have children. And if he survived this foolish leap to his imminent death he would do both.

He hit the water with so much force he went blind and deaf. He couldn’t see the way to the surface, couldn’t hear the sound of the surf. Up and down became meaningless. Life waited in one direction. Death in the other. But which?

He felt a hand on his hair, a tug on his arm. He went where he was pulled and surfaced with a gasp of breath. The rocks were fifty yards away. Juliette was right there. Smiling. Laughing. Alive. Both of them. Alive and beautiful.

“It’s this way,” she called out over the rolling waves. She kicked off and he followed her. She might have been guiding him to Hell—he didn’t care. Where she went he would follow. If she was there, it was Paradise no matter the destination.

After a few minutes of fighting the choppy surf, they entered calmer darker waters. Kingsley spied Juliette’s destination—a large basalt rock formation a hundred yards out. She swam toward it with graceful powerful strokes of her arms and kicks of her long legs. Kingsley went underwater and kicked his way to her. They reached the rocks at the same time and carefully climbed up the tallest of the boulders.

“What is this place?” Kingsley asked as he sat to her right and raised a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun.

“Playground,” she said.

“Playground?”

“Watch.”

Silently she peered out over the dancing waves. Kingsley followed her gaze. It was beautiful here with the sound of the surf filling the air and the call of the seabirds and the sun skipping over the waves.

“There,” she said, pointing. “Do you see?”

Kingsley looked and laughed. Two dolphins breached the surface of the water and shot steam into the air. Ten yards away, three more dolphins came up for air. They glided along the surface with incredible power—their sleek bodies pure muscle and energy.

“You never see that in Manhattan, do you?” Juliette asked.

“No,” Kingsley breathed. “If there are dolphins in the Hudson River, I’ve never seen them.”

For a long time they didn’t speak, only watched the dolphins play. Was it play, though? They surfaced to breathe, swam fast to hunt, frolicked to learn how to fight. It was life to them—life and death. Not a game at all. And Kingsley wondered if something was out there, something greater than himself, greater than Juliette, perched in the distance and watching him and watching her, sitting together on this rock, making love in his bed, watching the pain he gave her, the worship she gave him, and smiling at what looked like play, what looked like a game. But it wasn’t a game to him and Juliette. It was their lives.

“You could stay,” Juliette said at last. “Here in Haiti.”

“I could stay,” he repeated. “And why would I do that?”

“For them.” She pointed at the pod of dolphins that had moved in closer to the rocks. One of the larger ones swam right in front of them, his dorsal fin pockmarked with old battle scars. Kingsley could sympathize.

“For the dolphins? A good reason. Anything else?”

“Maybe for the food?”

“There is a very good Haitian restaurant in Manhattan.”

Juliette laughed. “Then maybe stay for me?”

“You belong to someone else,” he said. “And it sounds like he wouldn’t be interested in sharing.”

“He wouldn’t have to know. I could come to you at night after he’s asleep. I could try.”

She wasn’t looking at him now, only at the water and the waves and the ever-shifting sunlight.

“How long could you do that before he found out?” Kingsley asked turning to look at her. Water ran down her face. Ocean water from her hair? Tears? Both? “And what would happen when he caught us?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but it wouldn’t be good.”

“Let me help you,” Kingsley said. “Please.”

“You can’t buy me,” she said, blinking hard. “I’ve already been bought. I’m not for sale.”

Her words hurt more than any weapon used against him ever had. They hurt not because they were false, but because they were true. He did want to buy her. He wanted to own her. And she wanted nothing but her freedom, the one thing he couldn’t give her.

“There has to be a way. Let me help you.”

“Just kiss me,” she said. “That’s how you can help me.”

Kingsley kissed her. She tasted like the ocean and the ocean tasted like tears. He cupped the back of her neck and held her steady, held her against his mouth as he kissed her harder and deeper.

“I’ve never...” she began and stopped.

“Never what?” Kingsley asked.

“I’ve never brought him here. I’ve never brought anyone here. This is my secret place.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“Because you are my other secret place now.” She rested her hand on his bare chest over his heart.

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Kingsley took her by the wrist and lifted her arm to his lips. He kissed her hand, turned it and kissed inside her palm.

“I can’t let you go,” he said. “Not even when he comes back.”

“You can,” she said, kissing his lips, his cheek, his jaw to his ear. “You can and you will. And you’ll go home to your world, and I’ll stay in mine. And we’ll be fine, you and I. I’ll be fine. Eventually. Someday.”

“I won’t. Don’t pretend you will, either,” Kingsley said. Juliette didn’t argue. He knew she felt as he did, that what they were to each other they could only be to each other.

He kissed her again, more passionately now. There was no way to make love to her out here without tearing her back to shreds on the rough rocks. And they had nothing with them, not a single condom. But he had to touch her. They were far from the shore, no other people in sight. He untied her suit top and pulled it off her. Her naked breasts were magnificent in the sunlight with water sliding down her skin. He dipped his head and licked a water droplet from her breast before taking a nipple in his mouth and sucking deep. He cupped her other breast in his hand, massaged it. She arched her back as he kissed and licked her nipples.

When her breaths grew ragged and harsh, he untied the bow on her right hip and slipped his hand between her legs. She opened her thighs for him, leaned back on her hands and tilted her hips for him in an invitation.

Kingsley pressed his fingertip lightly against her clitoris. He brushed it gently again and again and Juliette panted between her parted lips. Her eyes were closed and her long thick lashes lay on her cheeks. He kneaded the swollen knot harder now, making circles with his finger. It pulsed against him as her hips moved in time with his touch. He entered her with one finger and found her wet inside, wet and hot. He pushed a second finger inside her. He didn’t rush the moment, didn’t force her climax. All he needed was to touch her as deeply and intimately as possible.

Inside her he pressed his fingertips into the soft indentation under her pubic bone. Juliette’s inner muscles clenched him and she gasped again. Her fingers curled tight on the rocks. As wet as she was, it was easy to push a third finger into her. He pushed against the walls of her vagina, slipping his fingers into the inner folds, opening her up, exploring, learning every inch of her. He found a pulse point inside her and pressed his fingertip into it. Against his hand he felt the wild pounding beat of her heart.

He turned his hand again and penetrated her with his thumb and index finger. Juliette gripped his thigh and squeezed to the point of pain.

“There,” she said, the words coming out in sharp rasps. “Like that.”

He ****ed her with his fingers now and her thighs fell open. His hands were covered with her wetness. He’d never felt such raw ***ual chemistry with a woman before, such incredible aching hunger. He would die before his desire for her ran out. For days she’d played his ***ual property, submitting to his every order, his every need. And it was a cruel trick the gods were playing on him, for whenever he entered her, penetrated her, it was Juliette who dug her way deeper inside of him.

She was close to coming now. He could feel her muscles tightening on his hand, gripping him hard, pulsing and contracting. She cried out in her release, but Kingsley didn’t stop. He pushed on, still touching her past the point of pleasure until she winced and flinched in pain.

“It hurts,” she said but didn’t tell him to stop. He didn’t stop. He rubbed her still-throbbing clitoris until she cried out again with a second orgasm. He didn’t let her catch her breath, didn’t let her rest. He knew her body by now, knew what it was capable of. Inside her she bore an inexhaustible supply of ecstasy and he knew how to find it and release it. He gave her pleasure until it turned to pain, gave her pain until it turned once more to pleasure.

“You’re punishing me,” she said, her voice weak and tired. Still he worked his hand inside her, and still she stayed open for him, letting him use her as he willed.

“I am,” he said. “Every time he touches you for the rest of your life you’ll think of me. I will burn myself into your mind like a ****ing brand and it will never heal.”

She cried out with her fourth orgasm. Her body shook and her vagina spasmed with the tremors of her climax. He let her rest at last and reluctantly he pulled his hand from her. While she watched, he licked her wetness off his fingers. She opened his trousers and took his length in her hand. He hadn’t ordered her to do anything but he didn’t stop her from taking him in her mouth, sucking him hard. The rocks underneath him hurt his hands and his back. The pain spiked his pleasure. Not since Søren had he felt this particular brutal combination of desire, of agony, of ecstasy and fear. When they were lovers, Kingsley had feared Søren and what could happen between them. Kingsley’s life had been in Søren’s hands because Kingsley had put it there. With Juliette, Kingsley feared something far more terrifying—he feared what might not happen. He might lose Juliette, he might lose this game. But now he only lost himself in the impossible bliss of this moment with the sun warm on his body and the waves cold against his feet and Juliette’s mouth wet and hot around him. And when he came, he came with blinding force oblivious now to the rocks scoring his back. He felt only the movement of Juliette’s tongue as it coaxed his **** deeper and her throat as she swallowed every drop of him.

When it was done and over and they had nothing else to give or take from each other, Juliette rested her head on Kingsley’s chest and he wrapped an arm around her naked back.

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He had to have her. He had to. He couldn’t imagine a world where she belonged to any man but him. So he would have her. Whatever it took. He would have her. No matter what he had to do. He would have her. Even if it killed him.

He would have her.

Even if he had to kill for her.

26

Upstate New York

ELLE COULDN’T STOP smiling. At first she tried to stop when she realized someone might notice her behaving oddly. After all, she probably hadn’t smiled five times in the past six months. But when alone she gave up the battle against her own happiness. Why not smile? She’d had one of the most amazing nights of her life without Søren, without Kingsley, without a man anywhere near her. All day long and all night, all the next night long and all the day after, she thought of Kyrie. Kyrie’s face with its elfin beauty and her small body that fit so nicely against Elle’s, and her scent like ocean water and the beach and the warmth of the California sun...

Flashes of memory from their night together intruded into all of Elle’s thoughts. The sheets she washed and folded reminded her of the sheets she’d taken Kyrie’s virginity on. And the sunlight breaking through the spring cloud cover reminded her of Kyrie’s smile. And for two nights Elle had lain alone in her bed praying Kyrie would come to her again. But the girl was too good at following orders already. Elle had told her to wait a few days, and wait Kyrie did. So Elle waited, too. Impatiently, wistfully and in a near-constant state of arousal. Images from their night together hit Elle’s brain like an electric current. Her knees went weak—literally—and she’d have to stop every few minutes and brace herself on the counter, catch her breath, refocus her thoughts. She hadn’t walked around in this sort of lust-filled daze since she was a teenager waiting for Søren to have her. She needed Kyrie, needed her now, in her bed. And Elle needed to top her, dominate her, use her. For years, Elle had ignored her dominance fantasies but now she gave free rein to them, all of them. There was no one to stop her now from doing whatever she wanted to do to Kyrie. No priest, no king. And not even God would get in the way of Elle doing to Kyrie everything she dreamed of doing.

And these were her dreams.

Next time she and Kyrie were in bed together, she would tie that girl spread-eagle to the cot and give her so many orgasms they’d need a calculator to total them all up.

Gagging might be a good idea. That many orgasms could get loud, after all.

Oh...maybe a blindfold? Kyrie would be able to focus on what she felt if Elle took her sense of sight away.

Would Kyrie like pain? She could start with a spanking and together they could work their way up to harder stuff.

Wait. Had Elle ever spanked anyone in her life? Swatting Kingsley on the ass when he wore a pair of particularly tight and well-tailored trousers didn’t count.

This was a convent. Candles everywhere. Maybe Kyrie would like candle-wax play. Who didn’t like candle-wax play?

So many ideas, fantasies, dreams...all Elle needed was another night with Kyrie. And another. And another. Then a whole week with Kyrie. A whole year. They needed their own bedroom, their own house, where they could do everything they wanted.

House?

“Oh my God, one night with a girl and I’m already packing the U-Haul,” she said out loud.

No to the house idea. They’d start with a hotel room and see where things went from there.

Elle gave up her work and stared out the window of the laundry room. The trees swayed in a spring breeze. The sun dappled the leaves that shone with morning dew. The sky was a brilliant blue. This was her world and it was good. And she, she was happy. Elle was happy for the first time in a long time. She was happy without Søren. It was possible. It could happen. It had happened. She could leave him and move on with her life. Hope was Heaven, and she had Heaven in her heart.

Once upon a time she thought the world would end if she ever had to live without him.

And here she was, without him. And here was the world, spinning on its axis as usual.

She had survived the end of the world and found at the end a new beginning. And if she’d survived the end of the world, surely she could survive anything now.

“Eleanor Louise Schreiber, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Elle started and dropped the sheet she’d been halfheartedly folding and spun around.

Her mother stood in the doorway of the laundry room glaring at her with fire in her eyes.

“Mom? You scared the **** out of me.”

Her mother shut the door behind her. That wasn’t good. Mother Prioress discouraged private conversations at the convent. Whatever her mother had to say, Elle knew she wouldn’t like it.

“I will ask you again,” her mother said as she stood in front of Elle. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Laundry?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m doing laundry. Like I do every day.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, I swear—”

“Answer me this then. Do you want to get kicked out of here? Do you?”

“Of course not.” Elle stammered as she answered, scared and confused.

“This is an abbey. We have rules here. Vows. And while you’re here you have to respect that.”

Oh ****. Kyrie.

“Mom, I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh no, you never mean to do anything you do. I bet you didn’t mean to sleep with your own priest, either. And you didn’t mean to keep sleeping with him for six years.”

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“We’re having this fight again? I was twenty years old when I lost my virginity to him. How old were you when you had *** the first time?”

“I’ve repented. And clearly you haven’t.”

“I’m a ***ual being, Mother. I know you don’t want to accept that your daughter has ***ual thoughts and feelings, but I do.”

“I know you do. We all do. But we don’t go around writing about them, do we?”

“What?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t catch you?”

“What exactly did you catch me doing?” Elle asked, more confused now than ever.

Her mother reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a sheaf of bent and folded papers.

“You left this here in the laundry room the other day. And it’s a damn good thing I’m the one who found it. Mother Prioress would have you out on your ass in five seconds if someone had brought this smut to her.”

Elle saw it now. Her story. Her Daphne and Apollo story.

She laughed.

“You think this is funny?” her mother demanded.

“You found my book,” Elle said. “That’s why you’re mad.”

“What did you think I was talking about?”

“Nothing,” she said hastily. “I didn’t know you’d found it.”

“I did find it, and I read it. You can’t have pornography in a convent. Have you lost your mind?”

“Mom, it’s not pornography. It’s a romance novel. They sell them in grocery stores. Last time I was in a grocery store I didn’t find any porn. I looked.”

“This is what you think romance is? No wonder you fell in love with that man.”

“Yeah, no wonder.” Elle tried to compose her face into a mask of sincere contrition. Or at least a passable fake. “I’m sorry. Seriously. There’s nothing good to read in this place. It’s all theology and politics, and I got bored. It’s a novel based on a mythology story.”

“It has explicit *** in it.”

“People do have *** sometimes. So I hear. Every now and then. When they’re not in a convent.”

“You don’t have to write about it.”

“I don’t have to. But I want to.”

“Are you trying to get thrown out of here?”

“Well, no.”

“Then if I were you, I’d burn this trash. Burn it today. Get rid of it before anyone else finds it and reads it. And stop wasting your talent on this garbage. Use it to write something good. When God gives you a gift, you use it to glorify Him, not to glorify sin. Or worse, to glorify yourself.”

“Some people don’t think *** is a sin, Mom.”

“And some people think the world is flat and that there’s nothing wrong with letting a priest beat you and abuse you. Those people are wrong.” Her mother threw the pages down onto the counter. She pointed her finger at them. “Now get rid of that before someone else finds it. I find it again, and I’ll throw you out of here myself.”

Elle swallowed. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Good. Thank you.”

Her mother shook her head in disgust one last time. She walked to the door of the laundry room. Elle could have wept from relief. She’d been so sure her mother knew about her and Kyrie...but this. A dirty story? That was nothing.

But...

“Mom?”

Her mother paused by the door and turned around.

“What, Eleanor?” she asked in clipped tones.

“Do you really think I’m talented?” Elle’s voice sounded small even to her.

Her mother didn’t answer at first. She looked at Elle, who squirmed under the intensity of the gaze.

“I read every page,” her mother finally said.

“You did?”

“I didn’t need to read every page to know what it was I was reading. I’ll admit, I kept reading long after I told myself I should stop reading.”

“I guess that’s a good sign,” Elle said, smiling. She hated how much she wanted and needed her mother’s praise. “I’ve had fun writing it. I think...maybe...I think it’s pretty good.”

Her mother fell silent once more. Her lips pursed tight and her eyes revealed nothing. Elle tried to see her mother as her mother, not the nun she’d become. If she took off the habit and put on her old white bathrobe and grew her long black hair out again, a little makeup...she’d be Mom once more.

“Do you remember a day in school...you must have been six, I think. First grade. And they took all the children out of your class one by one and gave you tests out in the hallway?” her mother asked.

“I think so. Yeah,” Elle said, nodding. “There were flash cards and different colored blocks and we had to do puzzles for these people.”

“You know what that was for, right?”

“No.”

“They were administering IQ tests to all the first graders.”

“So that’s what that was. Anything to get out of class for a few minutes. They gave us cookies and orange juice.”

“I never told you this, but the school called me a week later and said you’d scored higher than any other student in your grade. Your IQ was—”

“One hundred and sixty-seven,” Elle said.

“Genius.”

“I wouldn’t test that high now,” Elle said, shrugging. “Kids tend to test high.”