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Nora stood before the door and took slow, deep breaths. She couldn’t even imagine who or what waited behind the door. The White Room was reserved only for the highest-level Dominants—not even Griffin had earned White Room privileges yet.
Slowly, she opened the door and hung her riding crop on the knob outside to show it was occupied. The White Room door had a lock, one of the few at the Circle that did, but Nora knew better than to lock herself in with a stranger. She’d learned that the hard way.
Nora took a cautious step inside. At the center of the room stood an iron four-poster bed heaped with luxurious white linens and pillows and surrounded by a semitranslucent white bed-curtain. For all its pretensions of purity and innocence, Nora knew for a fact that some of the most lurid sex acts in the history of the world had been performed in this room.
She crept to the bed and pushed the bed-curtain back. In the center of the bed lay a young man sleeping on his side. Nora studied him for a moment as her heart beat ferociously in her chest. He appeared to be about seventeen years old. He had straight black hair that fell past his shoulders and the longest, darkest eyelashes she’d even seen on a boy. They rested on his pale cheeks and fluttered in his sleep. Her eyes roamed down his body. He wore a frayed T-shirt, jeans with tears in the knees and white socks, one with a hole in the toe. He’d taken off his shoes but not his watch. It was leather and as wide as a bondage cuff. He’d covered his other wrist with a black wristband. He appeared tall but his hands and feet seemed disproportionately large. He hadn’t finished growing yet. Nora sighed and cursed Søren with everything within her. The boy—her gift—was inexpressibly lovely.
Nora leaned forward and brushed an errant strand of hair off the boy’s cheek and tucked it behind his ear.
“Oh, Søren,” she said as she sighed to herself. “You shouldn’t have.”
* * *
Zach searched for a suitable reply. He found himself strangely speechless in Søren’s presence. The priest seemed to find Zach’s discomfort amusing.
“Where’s Nora, sir?” Griffin asked for him.
“She will be occupied for some time with Circle business. While she’s off, I thought I should entertain her guest for her,” Søren said with a magnanimous air.
“But Nora told me I had to stay—”
Søren’s hand snaked out with the subtle speed of a cobra and grabbed Griffin by the throat. Zach stepped forward but Griffin shot him a warning look. At least it appeared Griffin could still breathe.
“Mr. Easton, may I call you Zachary?”
Zach attempted to tamp down his nervousness before answering.
“Do I call you Father Søren? Or sir?”
“I understand you aren’t Catholic. And you aren’t part of this community. You may call me Søren, of course. Would you care for a tour?”
Zach sensed that Nora’s priest desired his company for a reason or reasons he didn’t care to find out. But he decided to use it as a bargaining chip.
“Will you let Griffin go?” Zach asked.
Søren seemed to find this amusing.
“I’d hardly be a sufficient tour guide with a corpse in my hand, would I?”
Zach glanced worriedly at Griffin who thankfully still seemed calm even as the priest continued to hold him in his vicious grip.
“I suppose not. A tour would be fine.”
Søren let Griffin go. Zach noted that on Griffin’s neck right under his jawline were distinct red impressions of the priest’s fingers. “Shall we then?”
Reluctantly, Zach left Griffin at the balcony. As flirtatious as the young man was, Zach far preferred his genial company to Nora’s priest.
“What’s Nora doing?” Zach asked as Søren guided him from the balcony to an unmarked exit at the opposite end of the bar.
“Eleanor is doing what she is always doing, Zachary—anything she wants to.”
* * *
At Nora’s touch the sleeping boy’s eyelashes fluttered open. She bit her bottom lip to stifle a laugh as the boy scrambled into a sitting position.
“It’s all right. Don’t be scared,” she said as if talking to a frightened animal. “It’s only a dream.”
He looked at her with silver eyes moon-wide. His face flushed and he pulled his knees tight to his chest.
“Do you talk?” she asked.
“Not usually.” He raked his hands through his long hair and shoved it behind his ears.
“You can talk me to me. You can say anything you want to me. I want you to. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded and Nora nodded back. She was gratified to hear a small, nervous laugh.
“Okay, I understand.”
“Good boy. Do you know who I am?”
He nodded again and Nora raised her eyebrow.
“Yes. Father S., he told me about you, that he knew you.”
“What did he tell you?” Nora asked.
“He said you were an old friend of his. I mean, not old—”
“We’ve known each other a long time,” she said, coming to his rescue.
“Right. And he said you were the most beautiful woman who ever lived.”
Nora blushed slightly. “What else did he tell you?”
The boy inhaled sharply and met her eyes.
“He said you’d help me.”
Nora cocked her head slightly. She reached out and touched the top of his foot.
“Do you need help?”
The young man didn’t answer at first.
Slowly, the boy relaxed his arms from around his legs. He started to take off his watch but his fingers fumbled too much and he exhaled in exasperation.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Here. Let me.”
The boy tenuously stretched out his arm. Nora unbuckled his watch and nearly gasped when she discovered why he wore a watch with such a wide band.
Down the center of his wrist stretched a white scar and the crosshatch outline of stitches. He held out his other arm and slid off his wristband and showed her the matching scar and stitches. The wounds appeared fully healed. With her knowledge of scars she guessed his suicide attempt had been around a year ago.
“Why?” she asked.
“My dad, he caught me…” He took a hard breath. “I had stuff in my room he found. He saw the bruises and burns. He said he refused to have a sicko for a son. He left a couple of months later. Mom—she’s not okay anymore.”
“That isn’t your fault,” Nora said. “Your father’s the sicko, not you. And he left for his own reasons. My family’s fucked up, too.”
“I know. Father S. told me that, too. He said we had a lot in common. I couldn’t believe it when he told me he knew you.”
“You knew who I was before he told you?”
“Yeah,” he said, blushing. “I’ve read your books.”
Nora ran her hands up and down the boy’s forearms. She traced the scars with her fingertips.
“He said if I went a whole year without hurting myself, then he would let me meet you,” the boy said in a whisper. “Sometimes it was the only thing that kept me from trying again.”
Nora’s heart dropped. She hated how much Søren’s unusual mercies made her feel in one breath all eighteen years of her love for him. She looked up and met the boy’s eyes. They shone like polished silver; his pupils dilated.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Michael.”
“Michael…Michael was God’s chief archangel. Michael, has anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful?”
He blushed and shook his head. “No.”
“You are, angel.” Nora reached out and ran her hand through his long black hair. Michael sighed with pleasure and closed his eyes. He opened them again when Nora pulled her hand away.
At the back of her mind Nora knew Zach was out there alone with Søren, but she wouldn’t rush this moment or this scared boy, not for the world. She knew she shouldn’t be here, knew she shouldn’t have left Zach at Søren’s mercy. But she remembered how Søren had saved her a lifetime of misery when he’d told her what she was, what she could be. She understood why Michael had tried to kill himself. She’d never been tempted to kill herself but she couldn’t deny Søren had saved her life a time or two. As Nora studied Michael she told herself it was her duty to stay, to help him any way she could.
“Michael, I’m going to take your virginity tonight.”
If she had any doubts that the boy was too young, too fragile, they evaporated when he looked back at her and met her eyes without blinking and for the first time without fear.
“Father S. said that’s what you would do.”
* * *
Nora’s priest proved to be a somewhat taciturn tour guide. Zach sensed Søren was waiting for him to speak, testing to see how long he’d remain silent. Nora must have learned that trick from him. Zach followed him through the bar exit and down several long hallways and corridors. Although Søren said little, Zach was not left in silence. Many of the doors hung open and Zach could see what was happening inside the rooms. They passed another door, this one closed, and Zach heard a woman scream. He stopped, unsure what to do, but Søren, who had surely heard the scream, as well, continued as if such a sound was commonplace and beneath his notice. Which it probably was.
They turned another corner.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Zach finally said. “Trying to intimidate me with the personal tour of hell. Nora’s already told me she’s a Dominant. She’s told me everything. I know you’re just trying to scare me away from her. It won’t work.”
Søren smiled coldly and Zach realized that the man was untouchable.
“Eleanor does seem very forthcoming, doesn’t she? She’s always followed the philosophy that the best place to hide is in plain sight. But I take offense at your insinuation. I would never try to dissuade you from being with the woman you most desire. Eleanor is the woman you most desire, isn’t she?”
Zach didn’t answer. He tried to stare Søren down but the priest only smiled and kept walking.
“We have more to see. Come along.”
Reluctantly Zach followed.
“You may ask any questions you like, Zachary.”
“Your voice,” Zach said, wondering if the priest would answer questions about himself. “You have an English accent. A very faint one, but it’s there.”
“Very good,” Søren said with approval. “You would notice. Most Americans don’t. They simply assume I’m overeducated. I was born in America, but I attended school as a child in England. My father was English. And he was evil. I pray daily that it is only the trace of his accent I’ve inherited.”
“You seduced a young woman in your congregation. You don’t think that’s at all evil?”
“Since I became a priest, Eleanor is the only woman with whom I’ve been sexually intimate. No children, either, I assure you. But you are welcome to ask Eleanor if she ever once felt taken advantage of or abused. I believe you’ll find her answer enlightening.”
“Why do you keep calling her that?” Zach couldn’t reconcile his Nora with the priest’s Eleanor. “She changed her name to Nora years ago.”
“She was born Eleanor and it was Eleanor with whom I fell in love. She has made decisions in her life that I do not approve of these past five years. I prefer to remember her for who she was, not for what she’s become. She can forsake her name and her past. I never will.”
Søren’s words stirred another memory. “She hasn’t forsaken it,” Zach told him, wanting to prove he knew something about Nora the priest didn’t. “Not entirely. I went to one of her book-signings not long ago. She was reading to some children. They called her Ellie.” Zach glanced at Søren’s face, but other than a glint of a smile, the revelation seemed to have no impact on him.
“Yes, well,” Søren said as they passed under an archway into another hall, “Eleanor always did have a way with children.”
* * *
Nora slipped off the bed and brought Michael with her. She bade him stand still while she knelt down and reached under the bed. She pulled out a metal briefcase, entered the numeric combination and snapped the locks open.
“Are you scared?” she asked.
“A little.” Michael looked down at her.
“Here, I’ll give you something to help with the fear. It’s called a ‘safe word.’”
“I’ve read about safe words…in your books.”
“Good. Since you’re an angel, yours will be ‘wings.’”
“Wings,” he repeated.
She dug through the briefcase for all the supplies she needed—rope, condoms, scissors. “If at any point you want to stop everything and just go home, you can say ‘wings’ and we’re done. We’ve all safed out. It’s completely okay.”
Nora shut the suitcase and slid it back under the bed. She rose up and faced him. With him in his bare feet and her in her high heels, they were almost the same height.
“Let’s practice,” she said. “I’m going to ask you to do something and you’re going to say your safe word to stop everything. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Nora took a step back and looked him up and down.
“Take your clothes off,” she ordered. Michael raised his arm and grasped the neck of his T-shirt.
“Wait,” she said and he stopped. “You’re supposed to say your safe word, angel.”
He lowered his arm slowly.
“But what if I don’t want to?”
Nora grinned at him and came so close to him she could almost hear his heart pounding in his chest.
“Then don’t.”
Michael raised his arm again and stripped out of his T-shirt. He bent over and pulled off his socks. When he got to the top button of his jeans, his courage seemed to fail him.
“Here. Let me help,” she said. Nora reached out and laid her hands flat on his stomach. They traveled down to his waistband and to the buttons. She made quick work of them and slipped a hand into his pants.
“No underwear,” she said, and Michael blushed again. “You really are one of us, aren’t you?”
His mouth was near her ear. “I want to be.” He shuddered as Nora took him in her hand. She stroked his hard length before releasing him to pull his jeans all the way down.
Michael stepped out of his jeans and stood naked in front of her.
“Do you know what these are?” she asked from the floor.
“Cuffs,” he said.
“Very good. Bondage cuffs. Two sets. One set for your ankles.” She clasped the first one around his left ankle and then his right before standing up again. “And one set for your wrists. You’ll like these.”
Michael held out his arms. Nora took his left arm in her hand. She raised it to her lips and slowly kissed the scar on his wrist. He breathed in as her mouth met his ravaged skin. She buckled the cuff around his wrist and kissed the scar on the other. She buckled his other wrist and took a step back.
He examined the cuffs on his wrists. He looked down at the cuffs on his ankles. Michael met her eyes. In his face she saw herself at age eighteen when Søren first began her training. That moment when he first revealed to her what she would become to him, how he would possess her completely when the time came…looking down at her bound wrists and ankles; it was the first time she knew what love looked like.
“Thank you,” Michael breathed.
Nora coughed a hint.
“Thank you…mistress.”
21
Søren brought Zach to another hallway—this one strangely silent and empty. Although quiet, it was far more colorful and elaborate than the other more nondescript hallways and rooms Søren had shown him. Here every door was decorated—some with extravagant S&M scenes, some with startling graffiti. One door had a faux coat of arms painted on it—a unicorn fellating a griffin. Zach had no doubt whose room that was. They stopped before a door painted only with words.
“‘We’re all mad here,’” Zach read the famous Alice in Wonderland quote aloud that was scrawled across the door in Gothic lettering. “I think she’s right.”
“There is a method to our madness. Sadomasochism was once considered a mental illness. Now for many psychologists it is an object of study rather than derision. One in ten people are said to have experimented with S&M…although I would be surprised if the number were not higher.”
“I would be in that nine.”
“I’m sure that will change. Eleanor is nothing if not persuasive.” Søren smiled at him with a smile Zach knew women must find charming but he found alarming.
“She won’t talk me into this.” Zach waved his hand at the ominously closed doors.
“Everyone should try it at least once. S&M has a curious effect on those who practice it.” Søren sounded professorial now. “The Dominant undergoes a surge of testosterone while the submissive experiences a euphoria that has been likened to the effects of opiates. But for most of us the physical sensations are the least of why we do this.”
“Why do you do it?”
Søren paused and seemed to consider the question.
“To call what Eleanor and I had ‘bliss’ would insult it. Owning her, dominating her, training her to react to the slightest command, the merest crook of my finger, the barest change in my tone, and to love someone so much that anything less than complete and utter possession is unacceptable…that is the purest joy.”
“But she left you,” Zach reminded him.
“Disobedience is as much a proof of authority as obedience. You cannot be a rebel without acknowledging a government. You cannot be a heretic until you are first a believer. And I could leave the priesthood, but I would still be a priest. The church would endure with or without me. Some vows are merely promises. But some are sacraments. Like marriage,” Søren added and met his eyes for a moment. “Yes, she did leave me, and I let her go. But she will return. Still, I imagine it isn’t simply the mix of pleasure and pain that you find disturbing, is it?”
“The hierarchy is disturbing. Women being enslaved to men. Women have fought against such treatment for hundreds of years and yet here—”
“Yet here they willingly and bravely choose to explore those aspects of their sexuality that are less than socially acceptable. Another study revealed that a shockingly high percentage of women have rape fantasies. What is the likelihood that your wife is in that minority that has not?”
“I won’t discuss my wife’s fantasies with you.”
“Did you ever discuss them with her? Forgive me. You don’t have to answer that,” Søren said in a way that was both offhanded and pointed. Zach knew Søren wasn’t asking for forgiveness at all. “Yes, we have a power structure here. Some require a power structure as they are born submissives. Others require a power structure as they are born subversives.”
“Which is Nora?”
“Which is she?” Søren smiled. “Shortly after Eleanor and I became lovers I introduced her to the blindfold. She loathed it at first.”
“Why?” Zach asked.
“I’m sure it is nearly impossible for you to imagine a virginal Eleanor, but once she was actually both timid and shy. The loss of her sight during our interludes terrified her. So naturally I employed the blindfold often.”
“Naturally.”
“One evening I noticed something strange. Just before I blindfolded Eleanor she would close her eyes. It seemed counterintuitive. Surely someone so afraid of forced blindness would keep her eyes open to drink in every precious second of sight. Then I realized what she was doing. By closing her eyes first she was choosing the darkness, blindfolding herself in a way, and subverting me with her very surrender. Astonishing. I had never been so proud of her. That’s what this place is. This is where we come to close our eyes.”
Søren opened the door with the Alice in Wonderland quote. Zach let Søren enter the dark room first. When a light appeared Zach stepped inside. Søren stood by a massive bed piled high with red and gold linens. He had an oil lamp in his hand. The lamp sent lambent light into every corner of the room. It seemed to be only a bedroom, albeit one festooned like a French bordello.
“Decadent, isn’t it? Eleanor has never learned the meaning of subtle. Perhaps you could help her with that.”
“So Nora has her own room here?”
“Yes. The top seven Dominants are given their own quarters for personal use. As you can see,” Søren said, bending down and picking up a white lace garter off the floor and laying it on the rumpled bed, “she has been making use of it.”
Zach looked at the discarded lingerie and grinned.
“White…I wouldn’t have expected it of Nora. She’s always in red or black.”
“I doubt it belongs to Eleanor,” Søren said.
“Then why—” Zach began and stopped before he said something foolish. Of course, Nora had been with another woman. He tried to be bothered by the fact, but the images that tiny slip of lace brought to mind evoked feelings distinctly different from disgust.
“You appear troubled, Zachary. What is it?” Søren asked, and Zach did not trust the note of concern in the priest’s voice.
“She joked about threesomes with other women. I suppose it wasn’t a joke.”
Søren gave him a dark look.
“Eleanor is always joking. Eleanor is never joking. Best to learn that as soon as possible. Care to see the rest of the suite?”
“Suite?”
“Eleanor’s earned very posh accommodations here.”
Søren raised the oil lamp to shine a light on a door to the left of the massive bed.
“How does one become a top Dominant here?” Zach asked as he walked around the bed to the door. As soon as Søren’s back was turned, Zach took the white garter off the bed and shoved it in his pocket.
“The same way anyone else would ascend to the heights of her chosen field.” Søren opened the door. “Practice.”
Zach inhaled sharply as he entered the second room of Nora’s suite.
“Good God,” he breathed. In the center of the room stood a massive wooden X. Leather thongs were attached to the tops and bottoms of the wood planks—a large-scale cross of her very own. Zach had no doubt what Nora used it for. He’d seen the pit, seen a man lashed to it and beaten until he came.
Eyes wide with shock, Zach turned his attention to the walls. On hooks and racks, in rows of military precision hung whips, floggers, bamboo canes, crops…a hundred various instruments of torture. On a small table lay an assortment of spreader bars like the one Nora had in her toy bag at home. He opened a drawer and found cuffs and collars, leashes and leads. In addition to the cross was a large examining table, the kind found in a doctor’s office. Except this one came equipped with four-point restraints.
Søren’s voice came from over his shoulder.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
“No,” Zach said. “It’s appalling.”
“Really? Such a strong word to describe sensual activities shared between consenting adults.”
“Hurting people for pleasure? For sexual pleasure?”
“Holding Eleanor down while she struggled underneath me and begged me to stop…that was beauty.”
“Rape isn’t beautiful.”
“But you see, it wasn’t rape,” Søren said, his tone light and conversational. “She enjoyed the struggle, enjoyed feeling overpowered and taken. I take rape very seriously, Zachary. My mother was a rape victim.”
Zach turned and looked at Søren in shocked sympathy. His distrust of the man wavered.
“I’m sorry,” he said with sincerity. “That must have been traumatic. For you and her.”
“It was.”
“May I ask how old you were when it happened?” Zach asked, trying to find the origin of Søren’s violent sexual proclivities.
“It happened roughly nine months before I was born. But that is neither here nor there. You seem uncomfortable with women fully owning their sexuality.”
“That isn’t true. Women have as much right to their bodies and desires as men. Nora accuses me of being a stuffy Englishman and she isn’t far off the mark. But I am no prude.”
“You say that and yet the thought of a woman allowing herself to be violated appalls you.”
“Of course it does. There are limits to what’s healthy.”
“Healthy…interesting word choice. Are you much familiar with the disease leprosy?”