someone else to love for you? For your sake?” she asked, trying to stay calm.
“No.”
Nora laughed although she found none of this funny.
“Anyone on earth...” she began and stopped. She had to take a deep breath before she could start again. “Anyone on earth would be blessed to be loved by you. I was. Maybe I want you to move on and find someone else for her sake.”
“Or you could stop running from me.”
“This isn’t running,” she said looking down at her bare feet that ached on the cold floor of her porch. “This is standing. Standing and living my life. I’m not your property anymore. I submitted to your from the age of fifteen to twenty-seven. That’s twelve years. I’ve been a Domme for two years. I’m not ready to give this up yet. I’m just finding out who I am finally.”
“Mine,” Søren said. “You are mine. That’s who you are.”
“And you wonder why I’m not running back to you?”
He looked her up and down and smiled coldly to himself.
“Put your shoes on, Eleanor.”
And without another word he turned and walked away. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of watching him go. She stepped back into her house, shut and locked the door behind her and winced in agony.
He was right. She should have put on some fucking shoes. Standing outside barefoot in forty-degree weather was incredibly stupid.
Nora stood with her back to her front door stamping her feet and waiting for the pins in her feet sensation to fade.
She raised her hand to her face and wiped away an unwelcome tear with her fingertips. She hated fighting with Søren. Play-fighting was one thing. Saying “I hate you, you big blond asshole” was one thing. Acting like they were archenemies for the amusement of The 8th Circle’s denizens was one thing.
This was another thing entirely. And it hurt.
She looked at the two beer bottles on her coffee table. The first time she’d gone to Europe she’d been with Søren. The trip was a gift from Kingsley to them both. Søren was a wine drinker, not a beer drinker. Except, he’d said to her, the Trappist monks in Belgium made the most perfect beer in the world. If Christ had turned water into beer instead of wine it would taste like Achel Blonde. He’d taken her to Denmark to meet his family, Belgium to drink their beer, Germany to visit her ancestral stomping grounds, and Paris because Kingsley had grown up there and she’d wanted to see his old house, his old neighborhood, his old life he’d left behind. Those were the two most perfect weeks of her life. And then they’d come back to America, back to Connecticut, back to Søren being a Catholic priest, back to her being his dirty little secret.
She never forgot that trip, never stopped drinking that perfect Belgian beer, and never forgotten how hard it was to come home. In Europe when he was off-duty, they’d walked in the sunlight together. Back in America, she could see him only at night, only in secret, only in the shadows.
Pain no longer needled her feed. She picked up the bottles off the coffee table, poured the contents down her kitchen drain and threw the empties into the recycling bin. She’d yelled at Søren for living in the past.
Maybe she should take her own advice. Right now.
She walked back to her bedroom and found Lance still sleeping. He looked pretty damn comfortable in her bed. Too comfortable. She woke him up with a few bites on his shoulders, a few bites on his chest.
His eyelashes fluttered open and Nora raised a finger to her lips, bidding him to remain quiet. As she bit him and nibbled on him, he managed to stay silent but for a few tight intakes of air.
She bit a path up to his ear and kissed it before whispering, “Two nights ago you made me come using just your mouth and no hands. Now you get to use your hands...but nothing else. Understand?”
Lance didn’t take the bait. He didn’t reply in words; he merely nodded a yes. Nora slipped out of her robe and straddled his naked hips. Pleased with his ability to follow orders, she gave him a kiss on the mouth before rolling onto her back. Lance took two pillows and put one under her head and the other under her hips. Her legs fell wide open and she relaxed into the warmth of the setting sunlight streaming through the windows and the comfort of being with a man who she trusted, a man who wanted nothing but to give her pleasure again and again. More women should really try the Domme lifestyle. A man genetically programmed to want to sexually service a woman and be her willing slave? She had yet to find the downside.
Settling between her open thighs, Lance stroked her legs, massaged her stomach and hips.
“Toys are in the drawer,” Nora said. “And lube. Anything you want. You don’t have to use them, but in case you were wondering...”
Lance raised his eyebrow and tentatively opened the drawer of her nightstand. He looked in the drawer and his eyes widened hugely before looking back at her. He stuck his hand in the drawer, winced, and blew on his fingers as if something had burned him. Nora covered her face and laughed again. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard in bed with a man. Usually it was get in, get kinky, get laid and get out. Or with Søren it was get in, cry, get beaten, cry, get laid, try not to cry when she remembered how much she missed him, and get out.
With his hand playing the part of a creeping spider, Lance slowly and carefully dipped his hand once more into the drawer.
“Lube and a vibrator?” she asked. “You take this orgasm stuff seriously, don’t you?”
Lance nodded. He held three fingers up.
“Is that what you’re putting in me?” she asked, pointing at his hand.
He shook his head in a “no.”
“Is that how many times you’re going to get me off?”
This time he nodded.
“Groovy,” she said and fluffed her pillow behind her head. “Go for it.”
He went for it. First he did nothing but touch her with his bare hands. He slid two fingers into her and she sighed as he pushed deep, probing her. He widened her with his fingertips, and found the most secret places inside her, even going far enough in to lightly touch her cervix.
He pulled his fingers out but only long enough to pour some lubricant on them before going back in. Now instead of two fingers, he pushed in three. Three and then four. And with his thumb he teased her clitoris.
Heat pooled in her stomach and she knew Lance could feel it radiating between her thighs. She loved the touch of a man’s hand inside her, opening her up in different ways, turning her inside out with pleasure. Lance moved his hand with a spiraling motion, spiraling in and out again, in and out. She wanted to beg for release, but she remembered that she was the Dominant partner here and had to act like it. So instead of begging, she ordered.
“Lance, if you don’t stop teasing me, I will get out the butt plugs and the hot sauce.”
That threat did the trick. Lance pressed against her swollen clitoris and rubbed it. Nora raised her hips and came hard around his hand.
She held up one finger.
“One down, two to go,” she said. Lance gave her a smile so male, so arrogant she almost had a multiple orgasm.
He held up two fingers in a peace sign. He didn’t seem the least intimidated by the prospect of giving her two more. She did like her men dexterous and confident. A fantastic combination.
While she recovered from her first orgasm, Lance massaged her stomach before turning his attentions to her breasts. He rolled her nipples between his fingers and thumbs until the peaks had turned ruddy and hard. She closed her eyes as he toyed with her breasts. Every time he pinched her nipples, new ecstasy spiked into her stomach and made her hyperaware of her clitoris. When she started to pant again, Lance stopped and turned on the vibrator.
Nora kept her eyes closed as he slid the vibrator into her. He’d chosen the largest, thickest one in the drawer and her body opened, stretching to take it all in. The low buzz of it sent delicious waves of heat deep into her. Lance needed to do nothing except gently tease her clitoris to bring her to a second, even more powerful orgasm.
After her second climax of their game peaked and waned, Nora almost called off number three.
“If you make me come again it might kill off the last of whatever brain cells I have left,” she warned Lance. Those two orgasms had been face-meltingly good.
Lance gave a nonchalant shrug as if he couldn’t care less that her I.Q. dropped precipitously for every intense climax he gave her. According to the tests she had I.Q. points to spare. Why not?
“Well, you used your fingers and you used a vibrator. What tricks do you have up your sleeve for number three?” she asked.
Using both hands Lance motioned her to flip over. She gave him a suspicious look before complying.
Lance lifted her hips so she had to come up on her knees. Then with both hands he parted her thighs. Resting on her elbows Nora felt him moving to sit right before her.
“Just hands,” she reminded him. “No mouth or cock.”
He spread her thighs even wider. Nora arched her back and waited. Once more she heard the flipping of the lid on the lubricant but this time Lance poured out a copious amount into his palm.
She had a mirror on the back of her closet door. With her head turned she could watch what he did to her. Nothing better than starring in and watching porn at the same time.
Lance smoothed the lubricant onto her inner lips but that wasn’t the only part of her that got his attention. He pressed two fingers of one hand into her anally and then three fingers of his other hand into her vagina. Working in tandem, both hands massaged inside her as she panted and moaned into the sheets. She felt split open and violated and loved every second of it.
Lance pressed down and pushed up inside her and Nora flinched from the pleasure. Working his fingers in wide spirals, he scraped her inner walls with just enough pressure to send her to the edge of ecstasy again. A fourth finger pushing into her sent her right over. She dug her hands into the sheets and came hard and loud.
Carefully Lance pulled out of her as she crumbled onto the bed, spent and laughing.
“Oh, my God...” she breathed, rolling onto her back. “I think you killed me. Am I dead? You can talk again.”
“You’re not dead.”
“That’s a relief. I have stuff to do.”
“I don’t want to go prison for killing you with orgasms. I’d really never get to see my kid again.”
Nora laughed, low and tired. “All you would have to do is give the women of the jury orgasms like that and you’d get a life sentence chained to their bed.”
“I’d rather spend my life chained to your bed.”
Lance crawled over Nora’s spent body and kissed her long and deep. He pulled back and she looked up at him.
“I gotta get some damn chains.”
They napped again and when Nora woke up she found the bed empty. She didn’t worry. Lance could be in the bathroom, in the kitchen. She hadn’t given him permission to leave so she knew she would find him somewhere in the house.
She dragged herself from her bed and picked her gray robe off the floor.
A pleasant sort of soreness suffused her hips and lower back. Sex with both Søren and Lance in less than twenty-four hours? She knew some people might disapprove but she couldn’t care less. In fact, she decided she deserved a medal for her distinguished sexual service to mankind. At least a Purple Something to match her purple bruises.
Quietly and on bare feet, she padded down the stairs following the sound of Lance’s voice. He seemed to be on the phone somewhere so she didn’t want to interrupt. She’d much rather eavesdrop.
She found him in her kitchen sitting at the table wearing nothing but his jeans again. He had his cell phone to his ear and his back to the door.
“How’s school going?” he asked. “Do you like your teacher?”
He paused and Nora smiled, knowing his daughter was on the other end of the line.
“That’s good. She sounds nice. Whose birthday was it?”
Again a pause.
“That sounds like so much fun,” he agreed, his voice going so soft and tender Nora’s heart tightened as if someone had wrapped a fist around it. “I’m jealous. I want to play in a bouncy house, too.”
Lance listened again for a moment.
“No, Daddy can’t come to your school party. I know, baby. I know. Daddy’s so sorry he can’t make it...No, don’t be mad at Mommy, this isn’t her fault. She wants you to be happy, too.”
Nora covered her mouth with her hand to silence her tears. She saw Lance’s back heaving as he raised a hand to his face. She couldn’t stand seeing men cry—not unless it was in her dungeon. Her own father hadn’t give two shits about her. Oh, he’d put on a good act, an act she’d believe for sixteen years until he finally showed his true colors. But she knew in her heart he’d never cared enough about her to shed a single tear over her. He hadn’t even tried for joint custody when her parents divorced. That should have been her first sign that her dad hadn’t wanted her. If he’d once sat at a kitchen table on the phone in the dark weeping because he couldn’t see her, she would have forgiven him everything.
“I’ll send you a present,” Lance promised his daughter. “Anything you want. As long as it’s not a pony. Or a puppy.”
He laughed softly at whatever she answered.
“Okay, not a kitten, either,” he said. “Do you want anything that isn’t alive and walks around on four legs? Maybe I’ll just surprise you.”
Lance fell silent again as Lance’s daughter apparently took control of the conversation, likely listing everything she wanted for her birthday.
“Be a good girl for Daddy,” he whispered. “I’ll see you as soon as I can, I promise...I love you, too, my Maya.”
Lance ended the call and put the phone on the table in front of him. Nora took a deep breath, one deep enough he heard it and spun around.
“Get dressed,” Nora ordered. “We’re going to the city.”
“What are we doing?” he asked, standing up and coming to her.
“We’re doing what I’m always doing—breaking the rules.”
She was the Dominant in this relationship so she didn’t have to explain anything. She gave the orders. Lance followed them. Life was simpler in a D/s relationship.
Wait...Nora stopped in the middle of shoving her feet into shoes. Had she really just used the word “relationship”? Yes. Yes, she had. But only in her mind, she comforted herself. Didn’t count until she said it out loud. And a “relationship” wasn’t that scary, was it? She had a working relationship with her hair stylist. She had an adversarial relationship with her dentist. Relationship wasn’t a dirty word. Nothing to be afraid of. Not like it was monogamy.
Still, she kept her guard up as she and Lance drove into New York. She refused to tell him where they were going, knowing Lance would probably try to talk her out of it.
“Are you going to at least tell me what rule we’re breaking this evening?” Lance asked as they made their way through Manhattan traffic.
“Kingsley has a rule,” she said as she turned onto the street she’d been seeking. “More of a guideline. No...it’s definitely a rule. He runs the show, he’s the king. We, his lovely employees, are his ambassadors to his kingdom. And often we’re his bait. My clients are very wealthy, very powerful, very influential and important. Kingsley says that these people honor us with a sacred trust. We provide them a valuable service that the rest of the world doesn’t quite understand and in return they pay us exorbitant sums of money. And sometimes they pay us with more than money.”
“Like what?”
“Information, assistance...the usual. But Kingsley wants to handle that sort of stuff. We ambassadors just put on a good face for the empire. But I’m cutting Kingsley out. I need to ask a favor of a client.”
“Two questions—what client? And will you get in trouble for this?”
“Two answers—Judge Bollingen,” she said as they pulled into the side street near his house and parked. “And yes, big trouble.”
* * * * *
The Last Good Knight
Part V: The Last Good Night
Tiffany Reisz
An Original Sinners Story
Told in Five Parts
The Last Good Knight: An Original Sinners novella told in five parts.
Part V: The Last Good Night
Now that the perpetrator has been apprehended, Nora sadly acknowledges she doesn’t need a bodyguard anymore. She adores Lance