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His hands, as gentle this morning as they’d been brutal last night, explored every corner of her body. She ran her fingers through his hair and slicked it back. When he moved his mouth to her neck and drank the water from the hollow of her throat, she taunted, “No toys, no chains—how are you going to dominate me now?”
It happened so fast that she didn’t even have time to gasp. She was pinned with her stomach flat against the shower wall. At first she wasn’t scared.
“Like this,” he whispered in her ear. “This is how.” And he pushed into the one part of her body he hadn’t yet penetrated. The pain was beyond anything he’d ever inflicted on her. She screamed in the back of her throat, screamed broken formless words, words ripped in half as she was. She knew there was a way to stop it, but in her panic and her agony, the way was forgotten. On her lips she tasted blood and realized she’d bitten her own arm. He continued to thrust as her tears mingled with the water and ran down her face. It was over then as quickly as it began. He pulled out of her and left her in the shower. Her legs gave out and she sank to the floor. The water continued to beat down on her. When he came back to her, he was dressed.
Slowly, she forced herself to look up at him and in a hollow voice she whispered, “I forgot my safe word.” Horror dawned in his eyes. Slowly, he knelt on the floor, knelt like he meant to pray. He reached for her and she shrank back instinctively in fear. He waited and did not move to touch her again. Finally, she pulled herself slowly up. He held open a towel and she stepped into it, leaning into his body as he wrapped it around her. Picking her up he carried her back to the bedroom. He sat in the armchair by the window and held her to him, rocking her in his strong arms while she cried.
He did not apologize and she did not expect him to.
She never forgot her safe word again.
Nora read the words with a slight smile on her lips before deleting the last hour of writing with a wistful sigh. She opened her email and found a new set of notes from Zach on the last chapters she’d sent him. Although he liked where she was taking it, Zach was back in attack mode and she couldn’t stop grinning as she read some of his more sarcastic comments.
“Nora— Forgive me for copyediting, but it must be said—you have raped the semicolon yet again. Stop it. It wasn’t asking for it no matter how it was dressed. If you don’t know how to use punctuation then do away with it altogether, write like Faulkner and we’ll pretend it’s on purpose.”
Bite me, Easton, Nora said to herself as she corrected her sexually compromised semicolon in chapter eighteen. Seriously, bite me.
“Nora— Aristotle said character is plot. Aristotle is dead and can’t hurt you. I’m alive and I can. Plot is plot. Find one and keep it.”
You want to try to hurt me, Zach? I’d love to see you try.
Nora looked up as Wesley entered her office. She smiled but he didn’t smile back. He merely sat her red cell phone on her desk, turned around and walked out.
With relief Nora noted that her one missed call was from Kingsley and not Søren. She called back, but only out of courtesy.
“Bonjour, ma chérie, ma belle, mon canard,” Kingsley started in on her as soon as he answered.
“King, calling me ‘your duck’ isn’t going to change the fact that I’m still busy.”
“Too busy for a 10K evening with a dear friend of yours?”
“Tell him it’s 20K or the waiting list.”
“The waiting list then.”
“We are in a recession after all. Just tell him to tell his wife how much he’s paid me in the last year. That should earn him enough of an ass-kicking to last him until I’m done with the book.”
“I’ll pass your well-wishes along to the happy couple.”
Nora hung up on Kingsley and left her office. She followed the thrumming of a guitar to Wesley’s room.
“That’s pretty. What it is?” she asked.
“The Killers.” Wesley stopped playing the song and adjusted his capo. “Ever heard of them?”
“If they came after Pearl Jam’s Ten then probably not.”
He looked at her and laughed a little.
“A little after. You going out tonight?”
“Nope. I hung up on King. And in three weeks if Zach signs my contract I will put on my best pair of stilettos and slam my heel through my hotline once and for all.”
Wesley smiled and started picking out a melody. Nora started to leave.
“What if he doesn’t sign it?” Wesley asked.
Nora considered the terrifying possibility that after reading the finished novel, Zach would still think it wasn’t Royal House material.
“I guess the hotline will have to stay hot a little while longer.”
Nora watched Wesley’s face.
“I like Zach,” he said. “I didn’t at first, but I do now. He’s a really good guy.”
She cocked her head and looked at him.
“I agree. Wholeheartedly.”
“I think you should tell him, you know, about the other job.”
Nora’s stomach tightened.
“I will. I promise I will. But not yet. I want him to read the book with clear eyes. If I tell him what I do he’ll think I’m just writing a knock-off memoir with the names changed instead of real fiction. If and when he signs the contract, then I’ll tell him,” she promised.
Nora left Wesley in his room and headed to the kitchen. She only made it as far as the living room when she heard a knock on her door. She glanced at the clock. Who would be stopping by her house at almost eight o’clock at night?
Nora went to the door and opened it. Zach stood on the other side looking flushed and sheepish and so handsome she had to force her heart to slow its frantic beating.
She said nothing, only raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I know why he calls you his Siren,” Zach said without preamble.
Nora grinned at him.
“You finally decide to let me blow you off course?”
“Yes. I think. I’m not sure, but I know I can’t keep living like this, Nora.”
Nora reached out her hand and this time Zach took it in his. His strong hand felt so good wrapped around hers she was afraid that now she had it she wouldn’t ever let it go. She yanked him into the house with her left hand while her right hand hit the eight on her phone.
“What now?” he asked as Nora lifted the phone to her ear.
“We’re taking a little trip. King, don’t talk,” she said when Kingsley answered. “I’m hitting the club tonight. Call and have them hold my table. One guest.” She glanced at Zach. “And Kingsley…mum’s the word.”
Nora hung up the phone and looked at Zach.
“Where are we going?” Zach asked.
Nora could hear the fear still hiding under the excitement in his voice.
She met his eyes and without smiling answered him.
“Hell.”
17
Zach entered Nora’s office and switched on her desk lamp. From what Wesley said just before he left, it sounded as if Nora would be a while getting ready. Might as well pass the time with a book. Considering Nora’s tastes he had no doubt he could find something to distract him from the screaming voice in his head telling him he really didn’t want to do this.
The lamplight spread its warm yellow glow over Nora’s desk. Wesley must have tidied up. Her usual disarray had been transformed into well-ordered chaos, if there was such a thing. He picked up a small box she’d labeled Scribbles and Bits. He opened it and found dozens of quotations from various sources on multicolored note cards.
One card read in Nora’s slanting script, “No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown. — William Penn.” That did sound like something Nora would commit to memory. Another quote came from the Roman playwright Platus: “I do believe it was Love which devised the torturer’s profession here on earth.” Appropriate. A pink card read, “The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.—Menander of Athens.”
The last card simply said, “The Lady or the Tiger?” over and over and over again.
Zach put the cards away and closed the box. He saw her day planner tucked next to her keyboard. He knew he was being unconscionably nosy, but his curiosity got the better of him. Seemed to be today’s theme.
He flipped the red leather-bound calendar open. She and Lex apparently had rescheduled her book-signing for a month from Saturday. She’d dragged Wesley to the opera a few weeks ago. She and G.F. had been in Miami in January. He flipped to the week before he and Nora had met. On that Monday she’d written, “T.R.—M.D. 8:00 p.m.” Another notation later that week read, “S.S.—W.A., 9:00 p.m.” But the next day had another M.D. appointment at 5:00 p.m. He glanced through all the previous pages. Anywhere from two to four times a week, Nora had some sort of M.D. appointment. But as soon as they’d started working on her book the M.D. appointments had dropped off almost completely. What sort of doctor saw a patient on evenings and weekends? Why had Nora stopped going to her appointments when they started working together?
With shaking hands, Zach closed the calendar and stepped to her bookshelves. Lovely, he thought, smirking at the books on the top shelf—sex manuals. He skimmed the titles: The Joy of Sex, The Kama Sutra, The Guide to Anal Sex for Women. The last title he read twice. The second shelf did hold some surprises, however—psychology and sociology texts, weighty cerebral tomes on the psychology of power and pain. On the third shelf down sat children’s books, their covers worn from multiple readings—the Harry Potter books in British first editions, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia. But one book appeared more loved than the rest. Its thin red spine was worn and frayed. Zach slipped it off the shelf—The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. Some clever illustrator had taken the text of Carroll’s poem and reimagined it as a story all its own. Zach leafed through the lurid, lush illustrations, the pages grown soft and porous from so many readings. On a hunch he turned back to the front end-pages and found an inscription. In handwriting both masculine and elegant it read, “My Little One, Never forget the lesson of the Jabberwocky. And never forget that I love you.” It was signed only “S” with a fierce diagonal slash through it; the mark of the mysterious Søren. He closed the book and slipped it back on the shelf.
Turning back to Nora’s desk, he noticed again that long black duffel bag he’d accidentally kicked the first time he sat in this office. He stuck out his foot and toed the bag, hearing again the chiming sound of metal against metal.
“Open it, Zach.”
Nora entered the office grinning at him, but Zach was too stunned to smile back. He only stared as she moved even closer, the heels of her boots clicked hollowly on the hardwood floor as her ankle-length leather skirt quietly creaked with each soft sway of her hips. The pale flesh of her thigh peeked out from the hip-high slit in her skirt over a black lace-trimmed stocking. She wore a black corset laced over a flesh-toned bustier. And with her neck bare, her hair artfully arranged over her shoulder, the effect was utterly obscene.
“Gotta love a woman in uniform,” she said, and Zach caught a whiff of her perfume—subtle and seductive. It made the little hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“You will hear no complaints from me.”
“Thank you, Zachary. Give me a hand, will you? I can’t get them tight enough on my own.”
Nora held out her arms, completely bare but for a pair of black fingerless leather gloves that covered her forearms. She turned her arms over, and Zach saw the gloves hooked over her thumbs and laced up her arms like a corset.
“What are these?” He took Nora’s wrist in his hand and methodically pulled the laces tight.
“They’re called gauntlets. Kind of a feminized medieval warrior look.”
“Thought you only wore red when you went out.” Zach laced her other gauntlet.
“Don’t believe everything you hear about me—just the bad stuff. You’re pretty good at this. You’ve laced a corset before. You like lingerie?”
“I’ve never been known to object to it. Must be frustrating to have clothing you need help putting on.”
“This is usually Wes’s job. He’s the one who finds it frustrating.”
“His job? And to think I tended bar for cash while I was at university. This is a far cry from punching out drunken football hooligans.”
“A lover and a fighter? You need to give Wes some lessons on how to properly enjoy his college experience.”
“Where is Wesley anyway? He seemed to leave in a hurry.”
“Oh—” Nora waved her hand “—off pouting somewhere.”
“Pouting? Might I ask why?”
“Wes doesn’t want me, but he doesn’t like it if I want someone else. Kid’s gotta learn that he can’t have his cake and not eat me, too.”
Zach laughed.
“He’s also pissed,” Nora said, moving even closer to him, “because he knows what I’m doing tonight.”
“And that is?”
“Seducing you.”
Zach took a step back.
“Nora, I haven’t changed my mind. We can’t work together and be lovers, too. J.P. will kill me to start with. And if he doesn’t I might kill myself.”
Nora raised her eyebrow at him, crossed her arms and leaned against his side.
“So are you just window-shopping tonight?”
Zach crossed his arms to match her and gave her a smile.
“Perhaps I’m just hoping you’ll be inspired to finish the book before I leave.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“How about this…” Zach began and couldn’t believe what he was proposing. “I’ll give you your homework. You get it done in a timely manner by day and—”
“And by night we play?” Nora’s eyes were shining. “This is a fun game, Zach. I could win this one.”
“And…” Zach turned to face her. “If you do manage to complete the book a few days ahead of schedule then technically we’ll no longer be working together. Perhaps then we can discuss bringing the handcuffs out of hiding.”
“Handcuffs?” she scoffed. “Handcuffs are the least of your worries. Open it.” She pointed her toe toward her long black duffel bag on the floor. “I dare you.”
Zach let a few seconds pass before he bent over and grabbed the handles. He hefted it onto Nora’s desk, stunned by its weight.
“What on earth is in here?”
“It’s my toy bag.”
“Toy bag?” He eyed her skeptically. “Store your Legos in here, do you?”
“Not quite.”
He glanced at her once more before slowly unzipping the bag. Nora moved to stand next to him, her left hip pressing against his right leg. Nora reached past him and pulled from the bag a long chrome bar.
“Do you know what this is? It’s called a spreader bar. Just a basic pipe with eyebolts on the end. You take a snap-hook and a pair of these—” she reached into the bag again and brought out a wide leather bracelet with a gold buckle sewn into it “—leather cuffs. Adjustable. They go around the wrists or the ankles. Both if you want to put someone in a spread-eagle position.”
Nora arched an eyebrow at him and reached back into the bag.
“This is a flogger. Here. Give me your arm.”
Zach held his arm out with extreme reluctance. Nora brushed his forearm lightly with the tips of the flogger’s leather strips.
“It tickles.” He rubbed his arm.
“Pain or pleasure, it’s made for either. So am I.”
“I’ll stick with pleasure. I’ve always preferred the carrot to the stick.”
“Where we’re going, the stick is the carrot.” She put the flogger away. She dug into her bag again. “This lovely device,” she said as she held out what looked like two spreader bars joined in the middle, “is called an X-Bar. It cuffs the wrists and ankles behind the back. Perfect for immobilizing someone in a kneeling position. As a man, I’m certain you can imagine the benefit of immobilizing a woman on her knees.”
Zach coughed and exhaled.
“Usually, I just prefer her to volunteer for that particular activity.” His tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth.
“In my world, if she shows up, she did volunteer. Or in your case, you showed up and I volunteered.”
Zach could feel the cold metal of the handcuffs around his wrists again.
“I can’t win with you, can I?”
Nora laughed.
“Of course not. The only way to win in this game is to surrender. Come on, Zach,” she said, seeming to drop out of character for a moment. “You and I both know I could have had you weeks ago. In the cab, remember?”
Zach recalled the night of the release party. He’d convinced himself it was his own restraint that had prevented him from asking Nora up. But he knew it was only because Nora had closed the door before he could invite her inside.
“Why didn’t you?”
“You weren’t ready then.”
“And I’m ready now?”
“Well… You did show up again, didn’t you? You should know by now,” Nora said, and Zach made himself look in her eyes, “I wouldn’t chase you so hard if I didn’t know you wanted to be caught.”
“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should have it.”
“Really?” Nora asked with a raised eyebrow. “And what did you want that you shouldn’t have had?”
Zach looked away and pointed at something in her bag. “What’s that?”
“Ah…” Nora sighed. “He’s lost in the fog yet again.” Still, she reached into the bag and pulled out a black silk scarf. She twined it through her fingers and over her wrists, letting it cascade into her palms like black water.
“Blindfold?” Zach made an educated guess.
“Or gag. Or wrist restraint. The blindfold seems tame, but I’m very fond of them. Do you have any idea how much trust it takes to let someone take you blind? Want to find out?”
“Nora…”
“Okay, Zach. I promise I’ll keep my hands off…more or less. No sex until the book is done. Well, you won’t have any sex. Knowing me, I will,” she said over her shoulder.
Zach laughed until he saw she wasn’t smiling.
“Come on.” Nora threw on her coat and belted it. She strode toward the door. “Time to go.”
“Need your bag?” he joked.
“Not where we’re going.”
18
Zach followed Nora outside. He started to walk toward her car parked in front of the house. But she beckoned him instead to her garage.
“This way, handsome. I’ve got a little surprise for you.”
Nora pulled her key ring out of her coat pocket and hit a small black button. The garage door slowly yawned open. Zach never dreamed she kept an actual car in her garage. Her black Lexus and Wesley’s beat-up VW always sat in the driveway or on the street. But inside the garage he saw some kind of vehicle covered in a suede car cover.
“You Yanks.” Zach shook his head. “You think you need a whole army of cars.”
“This isn’t just a car, Zach.” She grabbed the corner of the cover and pulled it off in one extravagant motion.
“My God…Nora,” he breathed at the sight of the inferno-red machine. He’d never been much of a car enthusiast but something very male in him wanted to just run his hands across it from fender to fender.
“Once upon a time,” Nora began, “I spent a week with a sheikh. This was his version of morning-after roses.”
“You just keep this in your garage?”
“What? Just your everyday Aston Martin.”
“This is James Bond’s car.”
“Yes, but he can’t have it back. Don’t tell, but I’m going to give it to Wes as a graduation present in a couple of years.”
“If you ever fire him and start looking for a new intern…” Zach reached out and touched the hood.
“I’ll keep your résumé on file,” Nora said, looking at him as he stroked the top of the car. “You’re hard right now, aren’t you?”
“Fully erect.” Zach didn’t crack a smile.
“Typical male.” Nora rolled her eyes. “Get in.”
Zach slid onto the passenger seat and inhaled the heady scent of the most expensive leather interior in the world. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. It held him like a hand. He could die here.
Nora slipped into the driver’s seat. The car purred to life.
“Nora…who are you?”
“Just another guttersnipe. Ready to see my gutter?”
Zach leaned up and opened his eyes.
“Where exactly are we going?” he asked as she slinked through the streets and headed toward the city.
“It’s a club,” Nora simply said.
“What kind of club?”
“The only kind of club I would ever go to.”
“What’s this club called?”
“It doesn’t really have an official name. It doesn’t officially exist. Those of us in the know call it the 8th Circle.”
Zach tried to remember his Italian literature class.
“It’s been too long since I’ve read Dante. The eighth circle—was that where the sins of lust were punished?”
Nora’s lips curled into an ironic grin.
“That was the second circle. The eighth circle was the destination for those who abused their power—panderers, seducers, simonists, false counselors.”
“Simonists?”
Nora’s smiled widened.
“Corrupt priests.”
“Abused their power…very clever.”
“The name is all too apt.”
Zach turned to her and didn’t ask what she meant by that. He’d already lost his train of thought as he watched Nora shift gears with the practiced ease of a race-car driver. Her touch was easy and smooth; the engine responded to her every whim. Zach couldn’t stop watching, couldn’t stop imagining her dexterous hands on him.
“How did you learn to drive like this?” Zach asked, trying to ignore his growing arousal.
“I can drive anything—any car, any kind. I’ve been driving a stick shift since I was thirteen.”
Zach started to open his mouth to ask her another question. But Nora took a sharp turn to the left and pulled into what appeared to be an abandoned parking structure attached to a dingy squat concrete block of a building. Windowless, lifeless and covered in graffiti, the building seemed the last place in the city Nora would want to enter.
“Why did you stop?”
Nora pulled in and parked next to a sleek, silver Porsche.
“Because we’re here.”
“Here?” Zach looked around in disbelief as they both left the car. The place seemed dismal and far too quiet. Only the wind sliding around the concrete columns made any sound at all. He looked back at the Aston Martin.
“Are you sure it’s safe to leave it here?” Zach asked even though it was just one of many luxury cars in the garage.
“This is the safest parking garage in New York. Trust me.”
Nora brought them to a gunmetal-gray door and pulled out her keys again. She slid one into the lock and turned it. Zach expected the roar of a nightclub to greet them but he heard nothing but silence.
He found himself standing at the end of a long hallway. It seemed to be part of an old hotel. The walls and carpets were a deep red; small aging chandeliers hung from the ceiling and cast broken light over the paisley squares of threadbare carpeting. They came to the end of the hall where an old-fashioned coat check booth stood. Nora rang the silver desk bell and shed her coat.
A girl came out of the back and flashed them both a courteous smile.
“How may I serve you?” she asked. Her smile wavered and widened as the young woman seemed to suddenly register Nora’s identity. “Mistress Nora,” she said, bobbing a perfect curtsy. She looked positively starstruck. The girl wore a classic cigarette girl costume, blue and black striped, and her lush dark hair was coiffed Bettie-Page style.
“Hello, dear,” Nora said with a magnanimous air as she gave the girl her coat. Zach surrendered his, as well, grateful to be rid of it. In the stifling hallway, he instantly felt more comfortable in his jeans and T-shirt. “Are you new? Did King bring you in?”