“I love you.” She fought the pain, the fear, to release the words. He let her go and rose up over her. In the moonlight she watched as he pulled off his shirt and let it fall to the floor. She had never desired anyone as she desired him and knew she never would.
“Your eyes change color,” he said, gazing down at her. “I noticed it the day we met. Green one moment, black the next. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You’ve never seen anything like me.” She smiled up at him.
“Have you ever had a dream feel so real that upon waking you thought you were still asleep?” He took her hand in his.
“Once or twice.”
“I felt like that the moment I saw you, Little One. I dreamed you once. I think I’m still dreaming.”
Eleanor kissed his hand. He cupped the side of her face.
“Call me sir,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me I own you.”
“You own me, sir.”
“Say I am the only Father you will ever obey.”
“I will obey you only, sir.”
They spoke the words—call and response—like the most sacred of liturgies.
“Do you like the pain?” Søren gripped her thighs.
“Yes, sir.”
“Even now?”
His impossibly strong hands pressed deep into her skin. She arched against the sheets, her body awash with pain. Søren covered her mouth with one hand and she screamed against it. How could bare hands hurt so much? How could she want more of it? Because it was him, the pain. Søren and pain became one in her mind and her body. She could never get enough of either.
At last he released her and she sank into the sheets. He traced a path down her neck with his hand, sliding his palm over her breasts. Her nipples hardened in response to his touch.
“Tell me to stop.”
“Is that an order?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then don’t stop, sir.”
In the next breath Søren slammed her flat on her stomach, grasped her arm and pinned it behind her back.
She felt teeth at the nape of her neck, teeth in the center of her back, teeth in the small of her back. All the while her shoulder burned like fire as the muscles strained to hold it in the socket. The pain threatened to overwhelm her.
The pain ceased as he released her arm. In that moment when the pain stopped, a relief far greater than pleasure suffused her.
Søren stretched out on top of her. He covered her hands with his hands, twined her fingers in his fingers, buried his face into her hair. The full weight of his body on top of hers, the feel of his bare chest against her naked back, caused her stomach to knot up and blood to rush to her hips.
His hand traveled between their bodies. She heard a zipper open and felt his erection pressing against the back of her thigh.
She loved him. He would never take her anywhere she wasn’t ready to go.
She trusted him. He pushed up and pressed her into the bed, his hand on the back of her neck, his hips riding against her.
She needed him. He inhaled softly and liquid heat rained on her back.
A sigh escaped his lips—or was the sigh hers? She lay beneath him, warm and naked, and welcomed his semen on her body.
Eleanor wanted to roll onto her back, but she waited, sensing an order would come. How simple it seemed, obedience did, when she loved the man she obeyed so completely. There was nothing he could order her to do that she wouldn’t do, because she knew he would never order her to do anything she didn’t want.
She waited in silence and listened as he cleaned himself off and righted his clothes.
Søren slid a hand under her hip and turned her over onto her back. His mouth captured hers again. She breathed in and inhaled that winter’s scent on his skin.
“Is that what it will always be like?” she asked as his right hand cupped her breast.
“No. Some nights it will be much worse.”
“Worse?”
“More pain.”
“I can take it.” She smiled at him through the dark and he raised his eyebrow at her.
“But do you want to take it? Will you always?”
“From you? Yes, always.”
He brought his mouth down onto her breast. She arched into his mouth as pleasure spiked deep into her belly. More, more, more, she wanted to beg. His tongue teased her nipple. His fingers toyed with her other breast. He kissed his way back to her mouth.
“For you, pain is the prelude,” he said into her lips.
“Prelude to what?”
“The reward.”
“What is the pain to you?”
“Its own reward,” he said, and she saw a shadow cross his face.
Søren slipped a hand between her legs and found her clitoris. Her body twitched from the shock of the touch, so intimate and unexpected. She spread her legs for him, wanting to offer all of herself to him. She met his eyes in the dark and he pushed one finger inside her.
Eleanor nearly came right then simply from him penetrating her so suddenly. She gripped the sheets as he explored inside her. He pushed in deep and slid out slowly before pushing in again.
“It’s been so long …” He breathed the words, his eyes closed.
“Since you’ve been inside someone?”
He nodded and inhaled sharply as she raised her hips into his hand.
“Does it feel …” She paused and asked the question she really wanted to ask. “How do I feel?”
“There’s not a word that’s been invented to describe how you feel inside, Little One.” He sat up and wrapped her leg around his back so he sat between her open thighs. He pressed his finger into a spot deep within her and sank into her softness. He seemed to be so far inside her she could feel him in the pit of her stomach. “Has anyone ever been inside you?”
“No one but me.” She flinched with pleasure as he scraped the front wall of her vagina. He hit a spot inside her that made her shoulders come off the bed.
“I can feel your hymen,” he said, turning his hand and pressing down. She winced at the sudden burning pain and he inhaled as if suddenly aroused.
“Feel free to get rid of it.”
“That would be a terrible idea.”
“You don’t want to take my virginity?”
“No, I want it too much. I’m not entirely sure I could control myself to keep from truly hurting you.”
“Is your … I mean, are you—”
Søren pulled his hand out of her and started to open his pants.
“Wait, I’m not on—”
But before she could finish protesting, Søren had taken her hand and wrapped it around him.
“Oh, fuck,” she said.
“Does that answer your question?”
Even after coming a few minutes earlier, he was hard again, incredibly so. She stroked him from the base to the still-wet tip of his erection. He was big—big enough it made her nervous. When they had sex the first time it would hurt and hurt badly. That didn’t stop her from wanting it.
“You’re gonna kill me with that, aren’t you?”
“Very likely.”
“I can think of worse ways to die.”
He removed her hand from him and she whimpered in protest. Laughing, he settled next to her on the bed again.
Once more he slipped his hand between her legs.
“I want you to come for me. Will you do that?” he asked her.
“Hell, yes, sir.”
Even in the dark she could see Søren arching his eyebrow at her.
“I mean, yes, sir.”
“Better. Now show me how you need to be touched.”
Covering his hand with hers, she guided his fingers to her clitoris. Once they’d made their deal, she’d begun learning her own body and its responses. She’d snuck into the adult sections of the library and read every sex manual she could find, hiding them behind books on fall foliage and European architecture. She considered herself
the only virgin sex expert in the world. She should win some sort of prize for that. This—Søren’s fingers on her clitoris—must be that prize.
With her fingers over his, she showed him how to rub her in the way she knew would bring her to orgasm. Her hand fell from his as the pleasure built hard and high in her back. She’d been teetering on the brink of orgasm simply from lying naked in a bed with him for the first time. All her senses were on highest alert. Her entire body buzzed with desire. Wetness stained her thighs and the sheets beneath her. Looking down, she watched his fingers on the most private part of her body. Blood pounded in her ears. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. Muscles deep inside her started to clench and release. She closed her eyes and felt her body rising off the bed.
“Come for me, Little One,” Søren ordered, and her body obeyed before her mind even registered the command.
She climaxed hard, gasping aloud as Søren pushed a finger into her and pressed it against the contracting muscles. It trebled her pleasure as she felt herself spasming around him over and over again.
Søren stayed inside her as she came down from the high. They kissed again, and the kiss stoked the fire still smoldering inside her. Søren kneaded her clitoris again and she came a second time, nearly as hard as the first time. She collapsed onto the sheets, limp and spent.
“Stay here.” Søren slid off the bed and left the room for a minute. When he came back in, he locked the door behind him once more and sat on the edge of the bed. He ordered her to sit up with her back to him.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her as he started to wash the slight residue of semen off her back with a warm, wet cloth.
“I think my brain exploded.”
He paused to kiss her naked shoulder.
“You’ll have bruises tomorrow. On your thighs, on your back,” he said, retracing the path of the pain he’d given her with his fingertips. “They’ll start out pale and turn black soon after.”
“I can handle bruises. I won’t wear short skirts and backless dresses.”
“Kingsley recommends his masochists take zinc. It helps the bruises heal faster.”
“Is Kingsley like you?” She turned around and faced him, her knees pulled to her chest to cover her nakedness.
“A sadist, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“He enjoys pain play enormously, although he can and does have sex without it often. It’s safe to say Kingsley enjoys … everything.”
“My kind of guy.”
“There is something else you need to learn about Kingsley.”
“What?” She wrapped her arms around her legs, suddenly chilly.
“There is God, there is you and there is Kingsley. Those are my three nonnegotiables. You understand?”
She nodded solemnly, wondering why Kingsley meant so much to Søren, but decided not to ask. Kingsley had been his best friend in school and their friendship had survived the death of Kingsley’s sister. Søren called Kingsley a non-negotiable. She needed to know nothing more.
“I may have Kingsley instruct you about our world, the rules.”
“It is that complicated?”
“It is. This world of ours is structured, hierarchical and ritualistic.”
“Sounds like church.”
Søren smiled broadly.
“Perhaps that’s part of the appeal for me. It takes eroticism seriously, treats it as the sacred thing it is, that it should be.”
“This feels sacred to me. It didn’t feel like a sin. Was it?”
Søren turned her to face him. She should have felt embarrassed being naked with him like this, especially since he still had his trousers on, but instead she felt pride in her naked body, pleased she could finally display it for him. He took her breasts in his hands and held them while he kissed her.
“Did it feel like a sin?” Søren asked when he pulled back from the kiss and released her breasts.
“No. It felt like love,” she said.
“Your friend St. Teresa of Avila who had the erotic encounter with the angel might have agreed with you.”
“Really?”
“She said, ‘It is here that love is to be found—not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin.’ Perhaps she was right.”
“I think she was,” Eleanor said. “I liked this, what we did. Loved it.”
“I won’t lie to you, Eleanor. It’s been several weeks since I’ve hurt anyone. When you’re starving nearly any food will do. When you’re sated it takes much more to tempt you.”
“Is that a fancy way of saying I got off easy tonight?”
“I’m saying I got off easy tonight.”
Eleanor laughed. God, this felt good, being intimate with him. Naked. Talking. Laughing. Perfect.
Søren dropped a kiss on her sore shoulder.
“Tonight I gave you bruises, Little One. Someday it will be welts. It will be cuts and burns. I would never do anything to you that you did not want to do. Unfortunately, you may not know you dislike a certain act until you’ve tried it.”
“Eventually you’re going to have to realize I’m not scared of you.”
“Eventually you’ll have to realize that you need to be for both our sakes. Say ‘yes, sir’ if you understand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now put your clothes on before I change my mind.”
“Change your mind about what?” She slid off the bed and found her pajamas. It amazed her how comfortable she felt being naked around Søren. She didn’t even like taking her shirt off at the doctor’s office.
“About not taking your virginity in the bed where I lost mine without having any say in the matter.”
Eleanor’s heart plummeted at his words, spoken so simply and without any hint of the sorrow and shame she knew he must have felt that night. She came to him and wrapped her arms around him. He sat on the bed. She stood in front of him. Finally they were the same height.
“I want our first time in your bed at the rectory. Can we do that?” she asked.
“Yes. But it won’t be any time soon. You may feel ready for it, but I know I’m not. Tonight shouldn’t have happened. I don’t regret it and I certainly don’t want you to feel upset or ashamed about anything we did together. But the consequences for what we did could be enormous.”
“We’ll wait, then, as long as you think we should, until you feel safe.”
“I’ll feel more safe when you start feeling less safe.”
“I’ll work on that,” she promised, kissing his neck.
“This is why I want you to let Kingsley show you a few things. You might understand the risk involved better.”
“He won’t try to lose his watch inside me, will he?”
“I’m not entirely certain he wears a wristwatch.”