The Angel

4

Søren made love to Nora twice more that night. He pulled her to the edge of the bed and took her while she lay on her stomach and he stood behind her. And after that they lay side by side, her back to his chest while he moved slowly and gently in her. As he thrust into her, he whispered how deeply he loved her, how much he would miss her and what he would do to her when she came back to him again. When Nora came the final time, she did so through tears.

“Hush, little one … it’s only for two months,” he promised her as he kissed the tears off her face.

She clung to him and cried even harder. “But I miss you already.”

Her tears dried, Nora lounged before the fireplace in the living room—Søren had built a low fire to warm her up again—and smiled at the sight before her. As if Søren hadn’t tortured her enough already tonight….

Studying the board on the floor before her, peering at it first through her left eye and then her right, Nora reached out and moved a pawn two spaces forward.

“Little one,” Søren said with thinly disguised disgust. “That was pointless.”

“Well, it wasn’t a step backward so we’ll consider it a step forward. Besides, I’m only playing chess with you to keep you awake longer,” she admitted. “I’m terrible at this game and you know it.”

“I do indeed.” Søren moved his queen. Checkmate.

“Fine. You win,” Nora conceded. “I’d kick your ass if we were playing Battleship though. That’s my game.”

“Battleship?”

Nora smiled. Søren had had such an unusual childhood that things she took for granted—silly board games, Saturday morning cartoons—Søren had no experience with. At age five he’d been sent to England to attend school. An unpleasant incident with a fellow student forced him back to America at age ten. A far more unpleasant incident at his home ended with him being shipped off to a Jesuit boarding school in rural Maine when he was only eleven. But it was there among the priests and monks that Søren found not only his salvation, but his calling. That and he met a certain young half-blood Frenchman who would change the course of his life forever.

“Battleship. It’s this stupid game Wes and I played when we were procrastinating from doing our work.”

“You so rarely speak of Wesley, Eleanor. And yet so many memories you have of him make you smile. Why don’t you talk about him more?”

Why didn’t she talk about him more? Nora shook her head and stared at the chessboard. Looking back she still wasn’t sure why she’d asked Wesley to move in with her, other than he’d intimated that he might have to move back home to Kentucky as Yorke was a prohibitively expensive liberal-arts college.

But as soon as Wesley was in her home, she’d begun to wonder how she’d ever lived without him. Before Wesley, she’d practically lived at Kingsley’s Manhattan town house. She worked in the city so much that several days would pass before she’d return to her home in Connecticut. Once Wesley was there, however, she’d find herself racing back to her house after a job, throwing on normal clothes and curling up on the couch with him.

Nora would never forget the day she got tired of writing in her office and had taken her laptop to the kitchen just for a change of scenery. Wesley joined her in the kitchen and sat opposite her at the table. He opened his laptop and started working on a paper due in his European History class that week. Nora remembered casting furtive glances over the top of her computer at him. He had brown eyes with little flecks of gold in them and dark blond hair that fell over his forehead. Only eighteen then, he was utterly adorable, and sometimes she had to practically sit on her hands to keep from reaching out and grabbing him when he walked past her. They were just roommates, just friends, she always had to remind herself. And Wesley was a good Christian kid and a virgin. One night with her wouldn’t just take his virginity, it would steal his innocence too. But that day all she felt for him was affection. Affection and amusement.

“Wes, I’m going to say it,” she said, glancing at their back-to-back open laptops.

“Don’t say it, Nora,” Wesley said as he kept typing.

“I have to say it.”

“Do. Not. Say. It,” Wesley ordered, trying and failing to sound intimidating. His sexy hybrid Kentucky-Georgia accent made her toes curl but it did not lend itself to intimidation. “If you say it, I’m leaving.”

“Wesley …”

“Nora …”

Nora took a deep breath, pretended to type something and whispered, “Wes?”

“What?”

“You sunk my Battleship!”

At that Wesley stood up and left the kitchen. Nora dissolved into giggles as Wesley threw on his coat, grabbed his car keys and walked out of the house. She was still laughing half an hour later when Wesley returned carrying a just-purchased Battleship game with him. Nora closed their computers and they set up the game on the kitchen table. She beat him soundly, two to one. After that, every time one or both of them needed a break from work, they’d sneak up behind the other, yell, “You sunk my Battleship,” and the game would be on.

“Eleanor?” Søren’s voice pulled her out of the memory and back to the present.

Nora touched her face and held out her hand. In the light of the fireplace, the tears shimmered on the tips of her fingers.

“This is why I don’t talk about Wes,” she said, and Søren reached for her and pulled her into his arms.

He bent his head and kissed her as his hand crept under the shirt she wore—his shirt—and slipped two fingers into her. She wanted him to make love to her again, but the moment had passed. A true sadist, Søren could only become aroused by inflicting pain and humiliation. So instead it was his probing fingers that penetrated her. He spread his fingers wide within her, slipped in a third and pushed hard up against her pubic bone. Nora’s hips lifted as her inner muscles gripped him. She grew wet at his touch even as the cut on her labia still ached and burned.

“Come for me,” Søren ordered, “and then we’re sleeping.”

“I can hold off having an orgasm for a long time,” she teased. “Anything to keep you awake.”

Søren, as she knew he would, took that as a challenge. He pressed his thumb into her clitoris and made precision circles that left her panting. Still she breathed through the pleasure.

With his free hand, Søren unbuttoned her shirt and bared her breasts. He kissed her nipples and they hardened in his warm mouth. As his lips and tongue made languid circles on her breasts, his fingers continued their gentle onslaught inside her. Nora flinched and clutched at the rug beneath her. Still she didn’t let herself come.

Søren slid his hand behind her neck and forced her to meet his eyes.

“The day we met, you were wearing a black pleated skirt and combat boots,” he said, and Nora knew no matter how hard she fought him, he would win. “You had scrapes on your knees and wore too much eye makeup. And I would have laid you out on the altar, beaten you and taken your virginity in front of God, Christ, all his saints and angels, and the entire church that very day had I one ounce less of self-control. I would have drunk the blood off your thighs, turned you onto your stomach and taken you again, fucking you until you begged me to stop. And do you know what I would have done had you begged me to stop?”

“No, sir,” she breathed, her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst from her chest.

“I wouldn’t have stopped,” he said and shoved his hand hard into her. Nora cried out; the climax ripped through her stomach and hips as her inner muscles contracted wildly around Søren’s fingers.

She lay underneath him gasping through the orgasm that was so intense her lower back spasmed. After a few minutes her heart slowed and her eyes were able to focus again.

“You cheated.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re referring to,” Søren said, carefully pulling his hand out of her sore opening.

“You brought up the day we met. That’s cheating.”

Søren rolled onto his back and Nora crawled on top of his chest and collapsed against him.

“You’re the one who is going to be sleeping with two young men who are not me this summer, and you accuse me of cheating?”

Nora grinned up at him.

“Jealous?”

“Not even remotely,” he said and she knew it was true. Søren’s certainty in her love for him precluded even the slightest hint of jealousy. He couldn’t care less who she had sex with as long as he owned her. More than not caring, Søren was aroused by the sight and thought of her with other men. He didn’t even mind if she did kink with others as long as no one hurt her—that was his job alone.

“Speaking of jealous, Simone and Robin said they’d happily take my place on the rack this summer while I’m gone.”

“Lovely girls, both of them,” Søren said, smiling. If Nora was going to spend the summer in bed with two other guys, the least she could do for Søren was arrange for him to have access to two of the most beautiful, well-trained and discreet submissives in the Underground. She knew he wouldn’t have sex with them. Sadism was sex for him. So Søren going two months without beating someone would be akin to her going two months without sex—horrifying thought.

“Now I’m afraid this nonsense will have to end. I’m hearing confessions in—” Søren paused and glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantel “—four hours.”

Nora winced.

“Shit, I knew there was something I was supposed to do before I left. Will you have time for me before I leave tomorrow morning?” she asked. She’d meant to go to confession during the past week but had completely forgotten. Wasn’t her fault. She blamed her editor Zach—the other sadist in her life—for sending her fifty pages to revise in two days.

“I can hear it now if you like.”

Sitting up, Nora buttoned Søren’s shirt over her breasts. Søren rolled up and faced her. And although he too wore his black pants and nothing else, the minute he met her eyes, she knew her lover had gone, and she now sat in the presence of her priest alone.

Nora took a deep breath and began.

“God have mercy on me, a sinner.”

“‘Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs on your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.’”

Nora smiled. Luke chapter twelve, verses six and seven—one of her favorite passages.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been …”

“Eight days,” Søren supplied.

“Eight days since my last confession. Let’s see … where to start?”

“Pace yourself, Eleanor. If you forget something, I will remind you.”

“Oh, thank you very much, Father. You are too kind. I have done some serious lusting this week.”

“Per usual.”

“I lied in a phone interview. Not the first time for that, either. They wanted to know summer plans and I said I’d probably be overseas working on a new book. Let’s see … what else? Oh, I got a big fat royalty check and I didn’t give a damn bit of it to charity.”

“To whom much is given, much is required,” Søren reminded her. God knew he certainly had room to talk.

“I know,” Nora said and sighed. She did know. She just needed a refresher of that every now and then. “Does the church need anything?”

“Owen’s parents have suffered financially this year. Not terribly but they may have to put him into public school.”

“Public school? That little guy will get eaten alive in public school. He loves St. Xavier.”

“St. Xavier is not inexpensive.”

“Will five cover it?”

“Yes, and then some.”

Nora nodded. Not that long ago she could make 5K in a few hours topping someone. Surely Owen deserved as much kindness as her clients received of her cruelty.

“I’ll leave a check on the kitchen table tomorrow morning. Don’t tell them it’s from me.”

“Of course not. Anything else?”

“Well, I did do blood-play with a priest this evening, after which came much fucking.”

“Those were good works.”

“I’ll say.”

“Eleanor, what else?”

She heard in Søren’s voice an expectation. He knew she had more to confess.

“I lied about something else,” she finally whispered.

“You never have to be afraid to tell me anything,” Søren said, in that priestly tone that coaxed confessions like scared shadows from the darkest corners of hearts.

“You asked me today why I don’t answer the phone when Wes calls. I said it was because you hadn’t given me permission. That wasn’t the truth.”

Nora stared at the floor, unwilling and unable to meet Søren’s eyes.

“What is the truth?”

Swallowing, Nora forced herself to meet his eyes.

“I think,” she began and took a hard breath, “it wouldn’t be good for us if I did.”

Søren seemed to study her through the low and dying light of the fireplace. Her heart ached at the thought of hurting Søren. But he wanted the truth from her no matter what.

“Your penance,” he began and she braced herself.

“Yes, Father?”

“Make your peace with Wesley this summer while you’re away from me. Make your peace and do not return to me until you do.”

Nora’s stomach clenched. Make her peace with Wesley? What did that even mean? Just get over him? Or would she have to talk to him? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

“Yes, Father” was all she could answer.

She bent her head.

“Through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Nora crossed herself.

“Amen.”

Nora stood up with a heavy heart. She hated that on their last night together before she left, she’d had to confess something so hurtful. But suddenly she was off her feet and in Søren’s arms. Without a word, he carried her upstairs to his bedroom.

“You aren’t angry?” she asked as he stripped her of his shirt and laid her in the bed. He slipped out of his pants and pressed his naked body into hers.

“Eleanor, will you ever learn that when I say ‘I love you’ I mean it?”

“Eventually maybe,” she said and smiled at him through the dark. “I’ll miss you so much this summer. Are you sure I have to go? Running away really isn’t my thing. Not anymore anyway.”

“I’m afraid in this scenario, discretion will be the better part of valor. Eleanor, this isn’t simply about the Church or the public finding out about us. There is more to fear than someone simply discovering that we’re together.”

“You don’t agree with Kingsley, do you? You don’t think it was just an old client of mine who stole my file, right?”

“I’m truly in the dark on this matter.” Søren gazed toward the shadows that lurked outside of the lamplight. “Whoever it is, and for whatever reason … I will not let them harm you. I’d let them cut out my heart first.”

Nora reached out and touched the wound over Søren’s heart. A superficial cut, it would heal in just days. The wounds underneath, however, were old and scarified and likely would never completely heal. Scar tissue, she’d once read, was the strongest of all tissues. Maybe Søren’s heart was so strong because it was so scarred.

“Eleanor? Do you remember my father’s funeral?”

Nora closed her eyes and became suddenly seventeen years old again. She’d faked a good excuse for her mother and accompanied Søren to his father’s funeral. She was there for Claire, his sixteen-year-old sister. Or at least, that was the cover story.

The night after the visitation she’d found Søren sitting in a large armchair in his childhood bedroom—a bedroom that held only the memories of nightmares for him. She remembered walking in and seeing him sitting, praying silently in a pool of moonlight. The white light had illuminated his face, his pale hair. On silent feet she came to him, and he’d taken her in his arms and held her. It had been the first time he’d admitted that he loved her, had loved her from the moment he saw her when she was only fifteen years old. His sadness and grief for the father who’d tried to destroy him came out that night as he told her the horror story that was his childhood. She’d only meant to comfort him. She’d made it to the next morning still a virgin, but just barely.

Nora giggled. “Oh, no. As long as I live I will never forget that night.”

Søren caressed her lips with his fingertips. “I know what you overheard, little one.”

Another memory came to her. This time it wasn’t nearly so pleasant. After leaving Søren that night, she’d headed for the room she and Claire were sharing. The house had over a dozen bedrooms but Søren insisted that neither she nor Claire sleep alone. The minute they’d arrived at the house, Søren changed. He’d always been highly protective of her, but suddenly he’d turned almost paranoid with both her and Claire. He acted as if there was a dangerous ghost haunting his childhood home. And in Søren’s arms that night she learned that wasn’t far from the truth. On her way to the guest room she saw the outline of a woman standing by an open window. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed. Next to her stood Søren, and they whispered back and forth to each other. Nora had slipped into a shadow and hidden herself there. Closer she crept and heard the woman say to Søren three words—I’m not sorry. And she heard Søren’s three-word reply. Neither am I.

At that moment Nora knew she’d heard something she shouldn’t. She disappeared into the room she shared with Claire and stared wide-awake at the ceiling until dawn—her body burning from where Søren had touched her, her mind reeling with what she thought she’d heard.

At the funeral she’d come face-to-face with the woman Søren had been speaking to the night before. Tall and elegant with auburn hair and violet eyes, the woman had terrified her with both her beauty and the despair that seemed to surround her like a dark halo. Søren introduced her as Elizabeth, his elder sister, and introduced Nora as a friend of Claire’s. Nora remembered studying Elizabeth and realizing that she was looking not at a person, but at a ghost. A living, breathing ghost, but a ghost all the same. Even in the dark, Nora saw that ghost flicker across Søren’s gray eyes.

“I promised I would protect you, little one. That is the only reason I’m sending you away,” Søren said and pulled Nora into his viselike arms.

“Your sister … You’re afraid they’ll find out about what Elizabeth did, aren’t you?”

Søren pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

“My fear of Elizabeth is the same as it has always been. I’m afraid she’ll find out about you.”

5

On Monday morning, Suzanne woke up with the dawn and didn’t even bother turning on her computer. She’d never been stymied like this before. It was as if some sort of presence sat on the other end of the internet purposely thwarting her every attempt to find out anything of substance about Father Marcus Stearns. But today she was going to pull out all the stops. Desperate times called for desperate research.

She was going offline.

The library opened early but she arrived even before the doors unlocked. As soon as they let her in, Suzanne rushed the research desk with pencils and notepaper. She hadn’t done hardcopy research in years. Probably not since middle school when her entire class had taken a field trip to the library and learned how to dig through the fat green tomes and write down the name, date and issue of the periodical they were looking for. Suzanne didn’t have much to go on. All she’d gleaned from her online research was that Father Marcus Stearns had been at Sacred Heart for nearly twenty years and had presided at no other parishes. Apparently Father Stearns also acted as confessor to a nearby order of Benedictine sisters. One of them had a blog and mentioned that their Father Stearns, like her, had been born in New Hampshire. Guessing he graduated seminary at age twenty-eight, that meant he would be forty-seven or forty-eight. So she knew his name, approximate age and state of birth. A place to start at least.

By noon, Suzanne decided to give up again. There was simply nothing on Marcus Stearns out there. But she took one more dive into the stacks and came up with a Marcus Stearns who’d been in his early forties in 1963 and lived in New Hampshire. At least it was the same name if not the right age. Possibly a relative, she decided, and kept digging.

By one o’clock, Suzanne knew she was onto something.

Marcus Augustus Stearns, born in England in 1920, was the heir to a small barony. He’d come to New England in his late thirties and used his title to marry into a spectacularly wealthy family. The mother, Daisy, had realized her Edith Wharton fantasy and married the baron despite the fact that his only asset was his title. After just one year of marriage, Daisy had given birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Bennett Stearns. Not just an Edith Wharton fan but a Jane Austen fan as well, Suzanne noted. And then barely one year after, Suzanne was thrilled to discover, a son, Marcus Lennox Stearns, was born. Beyond that, the trail went cold. Marcus the Younger seemingly disappeared. No school records, no college records, no mentions of him at all.

Suzanne leaned back in the chair in her cramped library study carrel and closed her eyes.

Catholic priests made almost no money. No one became a Catholic priest to get rich. And yet, if this was the same Marcus Stearns, he’d given up a huge inheritance and a title, albeit a minor one, in the British peerage to become a priest. She had trouble believing it was possible. Still, a tantalizing possibility.

“Father Stearns,” she whispered to herself, “who the hell are you?”

When Nora awoke the next morning, she found her neck bare of her collar and the bed empty but for her. She disposed of all evidence of her presence—she replaced the white sheets on the bed, put the candles away and made a sweep for any stray female flotsam—before dressing in Søren’s bathroom and heading down to the kitchen. Nora got out her purse and wrote a check for Owen Perry’s school fund. She knew Søren would find a way to get the money to the Perry family without them learning it was from her. Her small shadow at church, Owen’s sweet, innocent company during Mass was always welcome. But still … she had a very bad reputation to uphold.

Leaving the check on Søren’s table, Nora groaned when she saw he’d left her another note. This time the note was in a sealed envelope and on the outside were the words Do not open until instructed.

“Sadist,” Nora growled and stuffed the envelope into her purse. She dug out her keys and checked the time on her cell phone. She had one new text message.

Hurry up, it read. My cock can’t wait to see you. Love, The Griffin.

Nora wrote back, Just for that, I’m taking the scenic route.

With a hint of heaviness in her heart, Nora left Søren’s house and headed to her car. She threw her stuff and herself inside and started the engine.

Griffin … It had been over a year and a half since they’d slept together. The last time had probably been in Miami at his father’s beach house. She’d lied to Wesley and said she’d had a book-signing at an alternative bookstore down there when all she really wanted to do was get away from her slightly disapproving roommate for a few days and have uninterrupted kinky sex. She’d gotten her wish. She probably would have continued to see Griffin even after going back to Søren, but even Søren’s patience could be tested by the young and often obnoxious Griffin Fiske. For Søren, S&M was like air or water—he needed it to function. For Griffin, S&M was a game that he played to get laid as often as humanly possible.

Nora remembered her last night with Griffin at the beach house. They’d gone out to a club and brought home some insanely hot Portuguese kid named Mateo or Mateus … something like that. Bi-curious and barely twenty-one, he’d never been with another guy before or done kink. Nora had taken her turn first, Griffin second. Then they’d tackled him at the same time. The next morning the kid dropped to his knees begging them to take him back to New York with them.