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He kept thrusting and she was close to her second humiliating orgasm when he came inside her with a ferocious final thrust. She whimpered as he pulled out of her. She rolled onto her side and brought her legs up to her chest. Now they were both looking at her.
The man in the riding boots strolled toward her. He crawled onto the bed.
“Sir, please,” she begged.
“You did say anything.”
She swallowed and nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
The man in the riding boots took her by the ankle and dragged her toward him.
“C’est à moi,” the man said as he opened his pants. He pushed inside her and she raised her hips to take him deeper.
My turn.
Nora turned her head and checked the clock. Zach would probably be here soon. She laughed to herself at the thought of Zach getting stuck in handcuffs. How or why he’d been playing with handcuffs she could only begin to imagine. But knowing that sexy stuffed shirt of an Englishman there was no way he ended up in them for any of the reasons she ever had.
She stared at the words on her screen—C’est à moi, she read again and sighed. She exited from the document without saving it then stood up and headed to the living room.
Wesley lay stretched out on the couch with a chemistry textbook balanced on his chest and a highlighter between his teeth. He looked so warm and comfortable in his battered jeans and bleached-white socks and the double layer of T-shirts that she just wanted to stretch out on top of him and fall asleep on his chest. She was deliriously relieved he was home. But as happy as she was to have him back, she worried he was going to make himself sick again. He was supposed to start giving himself his insulin shots in his stomach, but he hadn’t been able to make himself do it yet.
“You catching up on your homework?” she asked.
Wesley spit the highlighter out.
“Yeah. I’ve got three days of make-up work. I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.”
“Don’t work too hard. I want to see nothing but decadent laziness on your part.”
“I think I can handle that. Where are you going?” he asked as she pulled her coat on.
“Across the street. Zach’s coming over. When you’re done laughing at him, just send him over. Tell him to go in and look up.”
Wesley eyed her suspiciously.
“Why would I laugh at Zach?”
She bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
“You’ll see.”
* * *
Zach hopped the train and headed north to Nora’s. But when he knocked on the door it was Wesley who answered.
“Feeling better?” Zach asked.
“Much. Puking your guts out then fainting in a library bathroom is no way to spend a Monday night.”
“Agreed. Nora seems quite pleased to have you back. You gave her quite the scare.”
“It’s only fair. She scares me half to death at least once a week.” Zach laughed but Wesley’s eyes showed no mirth.
“You’re looking mostly restored.” Zach envied the boy his youth. Three days in the hospital and Wesley still looked hearty and hale.
“Nora said I looked ‘fit to be tied up.’ I’m hoping she didn’t mean it literally.”
“Apparently someone meant it literally with me,” Zach said, pulling his hand out of his pocket and showing Wesley the handcuffs dangling from his wrist.
Wesley laughed at him and Zach couldn’t help but join in. It really was quite embarrassing and ridiculous.
“Don’t feel bad, Zach,” Wesley said when he was done laughing. “Nora made me help her with a scene once. I ended up hog-tied on the living-room floor for half an hour.”
Now it was Zach’s turn to laugh. Was there any woman in the world quite like Nora? He was so glad she existed; even more glad there was only one of her.
“Where is Nora, by the way? She’s going to try to help get these things off me.”
“If anyone can, it’s her. She wants you to meet her at church.”
“Church?”
Wesley stood on the threshold of Nora’s house with his arms crossed over his chest. He reached out and pointed to a building on the corner of the block.
“There. Go in. Look up. You’ll find her.”
Wesley shut the door and Zach crossed the street and reached the end of the block. Zach read the sign out in front of the church. St. Luke’s Catholic Church, it said with the mass schedule underneath.
With trepidation, Zach slipped through the front doors of the small neo-Renaissance church. Apart from attending the weddings of a few friends he’d rarely stepped inside a church before. And he was certain this was his first time in a Catholic sanctuary. He glanced at the dripping candles and the stained-glass scenes of violence. In this setting the imagery in Nora’s books made more sense.
Go in, look up, Wesley had instructed.
Zach strode to the center of the sanctuary and looked up.
“I’m up here, Zach.”
Zach glanced up and found Nora at the back of the church leaning over the ledge of a small balcony section.
“What are you doing up there?” he asked, trying to keep his voice low. The acoustics were so good he felt as if he shouted every word.
“Choir practice. Show me the damage.” Zach pulled his hand out of his pocket and held up his wrist to show her the dangling handcuffs.
“My, my, my…” She sighed, affecting a Southern drawl she no doubt stole from Wesley. “I see temptation has come a knockin’ and you have answered the door…”
“Hardly, Blanche DuBois. I have a rather irksome prankster at my office. This was his pathetic attempt at a joke.”
“Well, come on up. Let’s see what we can do.”
Zach found the tiny stairwell that led to the loft. In the loft he found smaller versions of the church’s pews and an ancient-looking sound system. Nora sat on the balcony ledge and pointed to the pew in front of her.
“Come here, Kinky Easton.” She beckoned. “Amateur. You know you should always do an equipment check before you play.”
Today Nora wore jeans and a white blouse. With her hair down and loose about her shoulders, Zach was drawn to her despite himself. She reached for his hand and he felt a current go through him when her fingers touched his wrist.
“So what do you think?” he asked, trying to ignore the pleasant sensation of his hand in hers. “Some sort of wire cutters? Or can you pick the lock?”
“I can pick it. But I don’t have to.”
Nora reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her keys. She flipped through a couple of them, stuck one in the lock and turned it. The cuffs popped open and fell off his wrist.
“Wonderful,” he breathed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She stuffed the keys back in her pocket and picked up the cuffs. “These are police issue cuffs. The key on them should have worked.”
“It didn’t. Both Mary and I tried.”
“Your prankster was really trying to cause trouble then. Handcuffs are mostly standardized in America and Canada. He wanted one or both of you to get stuck.”
“You know your stuff, don’t you?” he asked, impressed despite himself.
“I strive for authenticity in my work.”
“So that’s why you keep a handcuff key with you?”
She smiled slyly.
“Gotta be prepared. We guttersnipes are always ending up in trouble with the coppers.”
“You know, I should apologize for being so rude about you. The work is going rather well.”
The tiredness temporarily disappeared from her eyes.
“Thanks, Zach. I appreciate that.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We aren’t even close to the finish line.”
“I know. That’s why I came here. This is a good place for praying and meditating.”
“Praying? Really?”
“I grew up in the Catholic Church, believe it or not. Cradle Catholic, they call us. I was probably born in a pew. Knowing my father I was probably conceived in one, as well. I don’t attend Mass much these days, but I do get homesick now and then.”
“They must stand in line to hear your confessions.”
Nora released a hollow, joyless laugh.
“No,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “I don’t go to confession anymore.”
“So what brings you here then if you’re no longer practicing? Faith or just nostalgia?”
“Maybe it’s nostalgia for my faith.” She shrugged and laughed again. “I still believe. I do. My life has been too blessed not to believe. Faith just isn’t as easy as it used to be. Not since I left Søren anyway.”
“Was it easier with him?”
Nora nodded. “It’s easy to believe in God when you wake up every morning knowing you are completely and unconditionally loved. Søren gave me that.”
“But still you left him. Why?”
“There are only two reasons why you leave someone you’re still in love with—either it’s the right thing to do, or it’s the only thing to do.”
“Which was it?”
Nora exhaled slowly. “The right thing. I think. You?”
Zach turned his head and saw an icon of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus in her arms.
“The only thing. I think. Suffice it to say Grace and I never should have been together to start with.”
“Sounds like me and Søren. We definitely shouldn’t have been together.”
“Why?” Maybe if he could find out why Nora left the man she loved so deeply, he could begin to understand why Grace had pulled away from him.
“He had—” Nora paused and seemed to search for the right word “—other obligations.”
“Is he married?”
She raised her hand and touched her neck. He followed her eyes. She gazed at a small iron Jesus impaled on his cross.
“Something like that.” She shook herself from her reverie and met Zach’s eyes again. “Come on. Let’s get back to the house. You can look over my new chapters.” Nora gave Zach her hand and he let her pull him up. But she didn’t stop with up. She pulled him straight to her.
Face-to-face, their bodies were only separated by a hairbreadth. Nora looked down and back up again.
“Oh, dear. No room for the Holy Ghost.”
“You are incorrigible, Ms. Sutherlin.” Zach’s smile died as he noticed the dark circles under Nora’s eyes. “You look exhausted. Are you not sleeping?”
“I’m fine. But last night I kept waking up every hour and going in to check on Wes. You know, I got an IUD so I would never have to do the ‘is junior still breathing?’ thing. This is very unfair.”
“IUD—you are a bad Catholic, aren’t you?”
“The birth control is the least of my worries if I ever have to answer to the pope,” she said, taking a step back. “I do as Martin Luther instructed—I sin boldly.”
He followed her down the steps and along the rows of pews to a side entrance he hadn’t seen when he came in. Inside the door was a foyer where Nora had left her coat.
“Do they make the sinners use the side door?” he asked.
“We’d all have to use the side door then. ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ Romans 3:23.”
“A Bible-quoting erotica writer—you are quite the oxymoron,” Zach said.
“And a Moxie Whore-On sometimes.” Nora winked at him. “If it helps, Søren used to say Catholicism was the perfect faith for someone into S&M.”
“Why?”
Nora opened her mouth and closed it again as if she started to say something and then thought better of it.
“Show, don’t tell,” she said, taking his arm.
Together they walked back into the sanctuary taking another doorway on the opposite side that opened up to a long corridor. The walls of the corridor were adorned with framed prints of biblical scenes. Scenes from the Hebrew Bible were on his right—images that he remembered from his childhood in Hebrew school; he recognized Ruth and Naomi, Jacob’s Ladder, the Crossing of the Red Sea, among others. On his left were scenes from the New Testament—images far less familiar to him. Nora brought him to the end of the hall and stopped in front of the third print from the end.
“This one’s my favorite,” she said, still holding his arm. “Antonio Ciseri’s Ecce Homo. That’s ‘Behold the Man’ if you aren’t up on your Latin.”
“A tad rusty. Is this from the Crucifixion?”
“From the Passion. This is when Christ is being presented to the angry mob.”
“Ah, yes. When we bloodthirsty Jews killed Jesus, right?”
Nora smiled and shook her head. “You kidding? Jesus died for the sins of the world. Everyone who ever lived killed Jesus.” She paused and smiled sadly. “I killed Him.”
Zach said nothing as he studied the painting, struck by the artist’s choice of bright colors to paint such a dark scene.
“Søren has this impressively twisted theology of the Trinity, you know. God the Father inflicted the suffering and humiliation, God the Son submitted to it willingly and God the Holy Spirit gave Christ the grace to endure it.”
“Your Søren sounds…interesting,” Zach said, attempting to be diplomatic.
“He was never my Søren. That’s the one thing about being a collared submissive. I was his. He never was mine. But yes, he is interesting. The most caring sadist you could ever hope to meet.”
“But you loved him?”
“And I loved him,” she corrected. “Søren said Jesus was the only man who ever made him feel humble. He makes me feel humble, too.”
“Søren or Jesus?”
But Nora didn’t answer. Instead, she released Zach’s arm and stepped toward the print.
“Just look at it. Look at Him. Isn’t He the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, Zach?” She’d said his name but from the ethereal tone of her voice, it seemed as if she were talking to herself instead. “It’s the Praetorium. Pilate was a kind of Roman overseer of Jerusalem. He was trying to keep a very fragile peace so instead of immediately sentencing Christ to die, he orders Him to be scourged. Scourging meant a near fatal beating with a whip that had glass and bone and rocks embedded in the lashes. It was a serious punishment. He hoped that would satisfy the mob’s bloodlust. But look at the painting—no wounds. The skin of his back looks perfect. But supposedly He’s just been brutally, viciously whipped. Ciseri is emphasizing Christ’s beauty, not His beating. He’s showing Christ’s feminine side. Admittedly it’s very inaccurate, I know. Almost all depictions of the crucifixion are inaccurate. That little loincloth they always show Jesus wearing? Didn’t exist. Victims of crucifixion were stripped completely naked to add to their shame and humiliation. Artists can’t bring themselves to show just how fully human Jesus was.”
Zach said nothing, strangely spellbound by Nora’s words.
“Just imagine what this was like for Him, Zach.” Nora shook her head as if she couldn’t imagine it herself. “We talk about the Virgin Mary, but Jesus never married. He was a virgin, too. And there He was completely naked on display for the whole world to see, and right in front of Him is Mary Magdalene, who was his best friend, and His poor mother. His mother, Zach. He must have been so embarrassed, so humiliated. See these two women here. They get it.”
Zach glanced at the painting and then at Nora.
“Look how Ciseri painted Jesus. See the curve of His back and shoulders. It is a classic feminine posture. His hands are tied behind His back and His robe is falling over His hips. And all the men are just pointing and staring and gawking. But the women—see them?—they can’t bear it. One’s looking down and she—” Nora pointed at a female figure who was turned completely away from the horrible scene unfolding behind her “—she can’t even look. She has to hold on to the other woman just to keep from collapsing. And of all of them, she’s the only one whose whole face we can see.”
Nora fell into silent contemplation again and Zach watched her eyes. They were fixed on the two women in the foreground, huddled together in palpable distress. “They know what He’s feeling. The women always know. They know it isn’t just a beating or a murder they’re being forced to witness. It wasn’t even just a crucifixion. It was a sexual assault, Zach. It was a rape.”
Nora took a deep breath and Zach felt his own breath catch in his chest. He wanted to say something but didn’t trust himself to speak yet.
“That’s why I believe, Zach,” Nora continued. “Because of all gods, Jesus alone understands. He understands the purpose of pain and shame and humiliation.”
“What is the purpose?” Zach asked, truly wanting to know.
Nora’s eyes returned to the two women in the foreground clinging to each other in sympathy and horror.
“For salvation, of course. For love.”
11
“You think I’m so damn obedient,” Caroline said as she pulled away from William. She stood at the window looking out on their backyard where just yesterday they had sat and talked until dusk. If only there were more yesterdays instead of so many todays.
“You’ve never given me cause for complaint.” She heard the confusion in his voice.
“It’s always ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ and ‘as you wish, sir.’ But it’s not out of obedience.”
“Then what is it, Caroline?”
She didn’t want to answer. But she knew she couldn’t keep lying to him with her every breath.
“Fear.”
“Of what?”
“Of this…game you make us play. It isn’t a game to you, though, is it?”
He came to stand behind her. She braced herself but he didn’t touch her.
“No, it isn’t. For me this is very real.”
“I want it to be a game…so much,” Caroline admitted. “Games can be won. You win the game and the game’s over. And I want it to end.”
“It can end,” William said, his voice soft with sadness. “If you stop playing.”
“But I can’t. If I quit playing…” She didn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t bring herself to finish it.
“Then neither of us will ever win.” William said what she’d been afraid to say.
“So what’s the consolation prize?” she asked, trying and failing to find a smile for him.
William bent and rested his chin on the top of her head. He wrapped his arms around her and she sank into him and closed her eyes. This game had an hourglass for a timer and she saw the sand running out.
“I don’t think there is one.”
* * *
God, it was wrenching. Zach minimized the document and pushed back from his computer. He stood and walked around his office. Stopping at the window, he stared out at the city and the sky. Today was a gray day, cold and windy. It had been windy the day he’d left England: a sea wind, warm and fierce, and Zach recalled waiting at the airport almost hoping his flight would be canceled or even just delayed long enough for Grace to realize he really was going. But the wind had failed him that day. It had carried him aloft instead of forcing him aground. Sailors’ wives once had little balconies on their roofs. What were they called? Widow’s walks. That was it. Yes, the widow’s walk, the place where they could go alone and stare out to sea and watch and wait. He envied them their macabre station. At least they could see the ship coming in. At least they had a place to hide their grief every day it didn’t.
Zach stared at the sky and wished he could see all the way across the gray ocean. Gray was Grace’s favorite color. She joked it was “like silver only sadder,” and he’d tease her about all the gray sweaters in her closet, the dozens of gray woolen socks. Grace would have loved a morning like this. She would have opened the curtains, opened the blinds and dragged him back to bed with her to make hasty love before the sun intruded and changed the color of the day.
Tearing his eyes from the sky, he looked down at the gray streets below. Supposedly from this height everyone was supposed to look like ants. But they didn’t look like ants to him at all. They still looked like people. He leaned his head against the glass and watched their progress. He was afraid for them and didn’t know why.
Nora…was she why? When he’d made her cut the more graphic scenes of sexual violence from her book she’d replaced them with emotional violence. Now everywhere he looked he saw people as fragile as paper.
Nora’s book had impressed him more than he wanted to admit. Most impressively she had turned the romance novel formula on its head. One of the cardinal rules of classic romance was that at no point, no matter how infuriating the heroine was and no matter how much the hero wanted to throttle her, he could never, would never raise his hand to her. But William was a sadist and used pain to prove his love. And where the romance novel began with the two characters trying to come together against forces both internal and external, Nora’s novel began with them together and then let the forces slowly, torturously tear them apart. She was writing the antiromance novel.
Zach let his eyes focus on one of the small figures below him on the street. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. He or she bustled across the street in a great hurry. He wondered if this was why Nora was drawn to religion despite herself. The Pagan gods sat on high and played with their subjects like pieces on a chessboard. Nora’s god turned Himself into a pawn and let Himself be captured. He could see the attraction. Zach wanted to run down to the street below and follow whoever it was until he was certain he or she made it on time. He wanted to know everything turned out fine for at least one person in the gray city today.
Zach pulled away from the window and faced his desk again. As he returned to his computer he remembered Nora’s original first line from the first draft of her novel—“I don’t want to write this story any more than you want to read it.” He realized it wasn’t just William speaking to Caroline. It was Nora talking to him.
He sat down and opened Nora’s revisions again. He made himself keep reading. As much as it hurt, he had to know what happened next.
* * *
Nora sat at her kitchen table writing furiously in her notebook. She’d given up on her computer a few hours ago. Her wrists were aching from typing, but she still had another chapter in her head she wanted to get on paper. After her long talk with Zach yesterday at church, she’d come home newly inspired. She had made a terrible mistake with her characters in her first draft. In the original ending of her book, Caroline was no longer able to bear William’s darkness. In the original ending, Caroline left him. But Nora realized she’d done Caroline a great wrong. She was no sexual masochist; she was an emotional masochist and never would she leave the man she loved, the man she was certain needed her help. No, in the new ending William, out of love for her, would send her away. It was beautiful and brutal and how it had to end. William had told her that and she knew better than to cross him.
Wesley had spent the past two hours with her at the kitchen table catching up on more make-up work while she wrote. She wasn’t worried about his homework. Wesley had a shockingly keen mind under that mess of blond hair and had made Dean’s List all three semesters he’d been at Yorke. She’d made Dean’s List once when she was in college. Søren had ordered her to just to annoy her. Just to annoy him, she’d done it. Wesley was a natural hard worker, however, and didn’t need anyone telling him to do his homework or study. She told him once he could never be a writer like she was. He wasn’t nearly lazy enough.
Wesley… Nora looked up and around the kitchen. Wesley had left over twenty minutes ago to check his blood sugar and take his insulin—something that usually took less than a minute—before he started cooking dinner. Nora went looking for him and found him leaning over the downstairs’ bathroom sink.
“You okay, Wes?” she asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
Wesley laughed and shook his head.
“You know, I have ridden some of the biggest, meanest, scariest stallions on the planet. You wouldn’t think a little needle in my stomach would bother me this much.”
Relieved that he wasn’t sick again, Nora exhaled and entered the bathroom. Wesley stood up straight and she hopped up on the counter next to the sink.
“Still can’t do it?”