CHAPTER 26
Nora couldn’t stop smiling. She took a sip of her white wine and set the glass back on the table. It tasted so good she wanted to chug the whole thing, but they were at The 8th Circle and the new bartender Kingsley had hired actually enforced the two-drink-maximum rule. Surely she and Søren would play later that night, so it was for the best she stay sober and alert. Søren had been acting strangely all night. He and Kingsley kept sneaking off to whisper to each other. It wasn’t like either of them to keep her this out of the loop. But she trusted Søren. He’d tell her what was up when it was time. From across the room he glanced at her, and Nora smiled. He didn’t smile back.
After a few minutes he made his way to her. She stood at the edge of the bar in the VIP section looking down on the horde below. Music pounded in the background, bodies writhed. She used to love to play in the pit at The Circle. Topping…subbing…didn’t matter. Public kink was so humiliating, so primal. She’d experienced her worst agonies in the pit, had her strongest orgasms. But tonight, it seemed like another world to her—alien, foreign, distant.
“You’re quiet tonight, little one,” Søren said as he came to her and kissed her forehead.
“I’m fine, sir. My mind’s been a lot of places lately.”
“Has it been in Kentucky?”
Nora looked up at him sharply.
“Kentucky? No, it—”
“Eleanor.” Søren covered her lips with one finger. “Tell me the truth or do not speak at all.”
She nodded and he pulled his hand away.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Sometimes it wanders to Kentucky. But it always comes back here, comes back to you.”
“I know it does. Being separated from you this summer…you should know I too felt my heart touched by someone else.”
Nora’s stomach tightened.
“That reporter was much hotter than she needed to be.”
“And intelligent and damaged.”
“Just your type. I’m glad she didn’t, you know, get to you more than she did. Get to us. I was worried there for a while that she’d find out what we are. Things could have gotten ugly. But I guess that would have kept you from being bishop, right?”
“The fact I had a reporter digging into my past kept me from becoming bishop,” Søren said, a little glint shining in his eyes. The glint told her all.
“Oh, you son of a bitch,” Nora groaned. “You were the one who tipped her off, weren’t you?”
“Kingsley, actually. Although it was my idea. I knew if I could tell the search committee that I had a tenacious reporter dogging my every step, they wouldn’t risk making me bishop and the news of my donation to the diocese going public.”
“You manipulative Machiavellian asshole, I love you.” Nora burst into laughter. She should have known. She absolutely should have known Suzanne’s presence in their lives had been Søren’s idea all along.
“In my defense,” Søren said without a hint of shame or contrition, “we did choose her because I knew I could help her.”
“Yes, you’re a saint. St. Søren the Bastard, Patron of Manipulation.” She couldn’t stop laughing. He really would do anything to protect them, to protect her.
“I’m still awaiting final approval on my canonization.”
Nora rose up on her toes and kissed him.
“You can open the card now,” Søren said into her lips.
“The card? Oh, the card.” Nora remembered that infuriating note Søren had given her at the beginning of the summer. She’d resisted the temptation to open it for weeks. From behind the bar she grabbed her bag and dug through it. Pulling out the card, she tore it open and read the words written on it in Søren’s elegant script.
You are formally invited to attend the collaring of Griffin Fiske and Michael Dimir.
Nora’s jaw dropped. She looked at Søren and swatted his arm with the card.
“You knew?” Nora’s eyes nearly fell out of her head.
“Of course I knew,” Søren said. “I’ve known Griffin for years. I’m Michael’s confessor. I knew they’d fall in love with each other. I knew it would be a good opportunity for Griffin to redeem himself. I’m quite happy for Michael. He needs someone as out and as effusive in his affection as Griffin.”
“So you ordered Griffin to stay away from Michael because…?”
“We value the most what we must sacrifice to have. I never want Griffin taking Michael for granted. I don’t think he ever will.”
Nora looked at the card before tearing it into pieces and throwing it up in the air like confetti.
“I love you, you terrifyingly brilliant man.” Nora threw her arms around Søren in what she thought would be a quick, playful hug. But Søren pulled her close and held her tight to him. So tight it almost scared her. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled.
“Søren? What’s wrong?” she whispered. “You’ve been tense all night.”
Søren’s hand rested at her neck. She felt something, heard a click, and her white collar came off in Søren’s hands. She looked down at the collar and up at Søren.
“Sir?” Nora’s hands went numb. Her heart raced.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you enough to take this from you for a little while. I love you enough to give you this in return.”
He reached into his pocket and handed her a key with a white ribbon on it in place of a keychain. A white ribbon…the key to the White Room. She’d met Michael in that room last year and taken his virginity. Søren had given her this very key with the words He’s still a virgin… You can close your eyes and pretend it’s…
“Søren?”
“You came back to me after years apart. And it gave me such joy to have you again that I neglected to ask the most important question—why? Why did you come back to me? And were you coming to me? Or were you leaving someone else?”
“You know I was—”
“I saw your book. I saw the dedication.”
Nora closed her eyes. She’d hoped Søren wouldn’t notice that for the first time ever she’d dedicated a book to someone other than him.
“Many waters…” Søren said. “You still love him.”
A tear fell from Nora’s eye. She couldn’t deny the words. But she didn’t want to admit it, either.
“I love you too much to keep you against your will,” Søren said.
Nora looked up at him.
“Even if against my will is what I want?”
“Even then.” The key felt warm on the palm of her hand. She stared at it and wondered. “Go. You know it’s what you want.”
Nora’s fingers curled around the key. A well of hope sprung up in her heart. But she tamped it back down. No…she couldn’t believe…could it be?
“I’ll come back,” she promised. “I’ll always come back to you.”
“I know,” he said with cold, calm arrogance. “If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t let you go.”
“Believe it. It’s true.” She took a step back. Then another. “Always.”
“Eleanor, if you have any mercy in that dark heart of yours, when you leave right now, you will walk and not run.”
She gave him a smile, a smile that told him everything she wanted to say but didn’t have the words or the voice to say.
“I’d never run from you, remember? But I’ll always run back.”
Nora didn’t kiss him or touch him anymore. If she did, she feared she wouldn’t be able to stop. And she had to go, had to leave, had to see whoever waited for her behind the door of the White Room.
Turning around she walked with agonizing slowness to the door at the back of the bar. She opened the door and stepped across the threshold, shutting the door behind her.
Once alone, Nora stopped and looked down at her feet. She wore high heels. She always did these days at the club. Søren preferred them to the boots she’d always strapped on during her days as a dominatrix. More demure, high heels were. More ladylike. She could do anything in her heels if she had to. Anything but run, and she knew that was the real reason Søren made her wear them.
She kicked off her shoes and left them behind in the hall. And Nora didn’t walk and she didn’t crawl and she didn’t fly.
She ran. Down the hall she ran as if the hounds of hell nipped at her heels. She ran as if God himself had ordered her to. She ran as if her life depended on it and in that moment she might have sworn that it did.
She didn’t know why she ran. She didn’t know who or what waited for her in the White Room. She only knew she had to get there as fast as she could and whoever it was, he was worth running to.
Nora’s hand shook so hard when she finally reached the door to the White Room, she could barely get the key in the lock. But then it was in, and the door flew open, and she stopped running. She stopped running because for no reason, none that made sense, none that mattered, he was right there in front of her.
“Wesley…” she breathed, unable to take another step. But she didn’t have to, because he was on his feet and running to her now, and he held her in his arms and she held him in hers, and she knew she’d never run again. Not from him anyway. Not from her Wesley.
“Nora…I missed you…so much…”
She pulled back to stare at him. Her Wesley—same boyishly handsome face, same big brown eyes that looked at her like he’d never seen anything like her before.
Nora took his face in her hands, still unable to really believe it was him, her Wes, right in front of her.
“My God, you need a haircut.”
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