CHAPTER 3
Nora waited until after dark and drove to Sacred Heart. She parked her car in the shade of the densely wooded copse that shielded the rectory on all sides. As she walked the short path from her car to the back door of Søren’s home, she smiled up at the trees. She remembered sneaking out to the rectory one Friday when she was sixteen, when she was still Eleanor Schreiber and Nora Sutherlin didn’t even exist yet. She’d skipped school that day for no reason in particular other than the sunshine called to her, and she’d had a hunch that if she had to sit through chemistry, she’d end up chugging the acetone in the supply closet. Strolling through the woods behind her church, she’d come upon Søren in his backyard. Never before had she seen him wearing anything other than his vestments or clericals. But that day he wore jeans and a white T-shirt. Even in his clericals she could tell he was well muscled but now she could see his sinewy arms, taut biceps and strong neck without his Roman collar for once. His hands were covered in dirt as he dug holes with impressive strength and efficiency and put three-and four-foot saplings into the ground. In his secular clothes and sunglasses, the April sunlight reflecting off his blond hair, her priest appeared a being of ungodly beauty. The deep muscles in her hips tightened just at the sight of him.
“Eleanor, you’re supposed to be in school.” He didn’t even look up at her from his work as he squatted on the ground and covered the roots of the sapling in black earth.
“It was a life-or-death situation. If I stayed in school, I would have killed myself.”
“As suicide is a mortal sin, I’ll absolve you for cutting class. But you know you are also not supposed to be at the rectory.” He didn’t sound at all angry or disappointed, only amused by her as usual.
“I’m outside the fence. I’m not at the rectory—I’m just near it. What are you doing anyway?”
“Planting trees.”
“Obviously, but why? Are the two million trees around us not enough for you?”
“Not quite. You can still see the rectory from the church.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
Søren stood up and walked over to the fence. Nora remembered how her heart had hammered at that moment. She thought for certain he could hear it beating through her chest.
Face-to-face with only the fence and a fourteen-year age difference between them, Søren pulled off his sunglasses and met her eyes.
“I like my privacy.” He gave her a conspiratorial smile.
“It’ll take years before you get any.” Søren arched an eyebrow at her, and she’d blushed. “Privacy, I mean. Trees take forever to grow.”
“Not these. Empress trees and this particular species of willow are some of the fastest growing.”
“In a hurry for your privacy?”
“I can wait.”
Something in his eyes and his voice told her that they weren’t talking about the trees anymore. I can wait, he’d said and looked at her with a gaze so intimate she felt as if it was his hand on her face and not just his eyes.
She summoned her courage and returned the gaze.
“So can I.”
Nora shook off the memory and entered the rectory through the back door. In the nighttime quiet, the only sound came from the creaking hardwood. She would miss that sound this summer, miss this house and the priest who presided here. Tonight would be their last night together until the end of summer and the bustle about a replacement for Bishop Leo had died down. Then she and Søren would be able to return to their own unusual version of normal life.
But only if he wasn’t chosen to replace the bishop. Please, God, she prayed, please don’t pick him.
Passing through the kitchen, Nora saw a single candle alight on the center of the table. Next to the candle sat a small white card, and written on it in Søren’s elegant handwriting were instructions: Bathe first. Then come to me.
Holding the card by the corner, she dipped it into the candle flame and let the fire eat Søren’s words. She blew out the flame just as it touched her fingers, and she rinsed the ashes down the sink. Like almost all parish priests, Søren had a housekeeper who handled all his household needs. Nora was grateful for Mrs. Scalera—a woman formidable enough that she could force even Søren to sit down and eat something on occasion—but Nora knew all it would take would be for his housekeeper to find a stray note from him to her, a single long black hair or hairpin, or any other telltale sign that a woman had spent the night to endanger Søren’s career.
Nora started undressing even as she took the narrow stairway to the second floor. She loved the rectory. For seventeen years it had been her secret second home. A small Gothic two-story cottage, Nora knew it was a far cry from the sprawling mansion where Søren had been born and had lived until he was eleven. But that house had never been a home to him. For all its exterior beauty it had been a house of horrors. This place, however, had captured his heart just as she had all those years ago.
Breathing in the steam from the warm water, Nora let the heat seep into her skin. Søren often bathed her before their sessions. It was an act of dominance, the act of a parent with a small child, but more importantly, it relaxed her muscles so that his beatings would only hurt, not injure her.
Nora did not linger in the bath. Nor did she bother washing her hair. She wanted him, needed him. Tonight was their last night together for two or three months. Five years, she reminded herself, as tears welled up in her eyes. Five years they’d lived apart. Two months should feel like nothing.
But what if she left him and this time she couldn’t come back?
She pulled herself out of the water and dried off. Wearing nothing but a white towel, she walked down the hallway to his bedroom. At first glance Søren’s bedroom seemed an appropriate reflection of what he appeared to be. The dark wood of the two-hundred-year-old four-poster bed perfectly matched the wood of the floor. The ceiling arched like a church nave. The oriel window broke apart the moonlight that intruded into the room. All was neat, spare, humble, elegant and pious. Unsullied by modern technology, uncluttered by superfluous decoration, it was the bedroom of a man who had nothing to prove.
Still…a trained eye that knew what to look for would see marks on the bedposts that were not the natural byproducts of time. The lock on the heirloom chest under the window seemed unnecessarily heavy for simply guarding linens. And the rosewood box on the bedside table didn’t just hold his white collar—it held hers.
Nora’s eyes scanned the candlelit room trying to locate Søren. She didn’t see him. Instead she saw the bed… He’d changed the sheets. The white sheets were gone and in their place rich black sheets graced the bed. Black sheets meant only one thing. Nora inhaled sharply and forgot to exhale again.
“Breathe, little one,” Søren instructed as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.
“Yes, sir.” In and out she breathed, dragging air into her stomach and pushing it out through her nose. Nora closed her eyes as he brought her collar around her neck; she shivered as he raised her hair to buckle and lock it closed.
“Down,” he ordered.
Nora stepped away from him; her feet trembled beneath her. As she walked to the bed, Søren took the towel from her. Naked, she lay across the sheets, the black sheets, and forced herself to keep breathing.
Søren stood next to the bed looking down at her. He reached up to his neck and removed his own white collar. He unbuttoned his shirt and slowly pulled it off. Nora had never seen a man with a more beautiful body than Søren’s. His morning runs and the five hundred push-ups and sit-ups he did every day kept him in immaculate shape. Lean, taut muscle wrapped every inch of his tall frame. Sometimes she could simply not keep her hands off him. But tonight she feared his touch as much as she craved it.
Søren let his shirt fall to the floor. Barefoot and wearing only his black pants, he crawled onto the bed, crawled over her.
He bent his head and kissed her. She loved how he kissed her, like he owned, as he owned her. Sometimes Nora marveled at the thought that while she’d had more lovers than she could count, Søren had shared his body with only three people in his entire life. His devotion to her humbled her, and Nora wrapped her arms around him to pull him even closer. Rarely, if ever, could she touch him when they made love. Søren was a sadist and a dominant. When he took her she was almost always tied down, bound to the bed, the floor or the St. Andrew’s Cross. Only on nights like this did he leave her arms and legs free. The act he was about to perform was sadistic enough no bondage was necessary to satisfy him.
Søren pulled up from her and reached to the bedside table. Nora’s hands dug into the sheets, the black sheets.
Nora looked up and into his eyes—gray eyes the color of a rising storm.
When he brought his hand back she saw the small curved blade shining in his hand.
* * *
Michael paced his room while trying to decide exactly how to tell his mom he planned to leave town for the summer. He hated to lie to her. But he couldn’t just come out and tell her that he was running off with Nora Sutherlin. He knew his mom knew what he was. Or at least she knew that he wasn’t like other kids. The boys at his school got in trouble for Playboy magazines stashed under their mattresses or for knocking up the cheerleaders. But when Michael got in trouble it was for burning and cutting himself, for downloading pictures of men being tied up and beaten by women and even other men. And when in trouble, he didn’t get grounded. He got slapped and thrown against the wall by his dad with enough force to leave bruises—the bad kind—all over him.
Sicko…pervert…freak… His father had said them all. When his mother tried to defend him against his father, saying Michael was just young and confused, his father had hit her too. The fighting had become an everyday thing, until his dad finally just up and moved out. Michael’s mom had gone into shell shock and still hadn’t completely recovered from it. The night Michael slashed his wrists it was with one thought in mind: maybe if he died his parents wouldn’t have anything to fight about anymore.
Michael took a deep breath and left his bedroom. He found his mom in the kitchen putting away groceries.
“Hey,” he said, rubbing his arms as if he was cold. He wasn’t, but he had goose bumps anyway.
“Hey, you,” she answered as she balled up a plastic bag and threw it under the kitchen sink. His mom was still pretty even after two kids and a marriage that had fallen apart around her. From her, Michael had inherited his straight dark hair, thin frame and pale complexion. From his dad he’d gotten nothing as far as he could tell. Sometimes he wondered if his father wasn’t his real dad. No one on either side of the family had his color eyes. But he knew it was wishful thinking. He looked a lot like his father’s youngest sister, so he knew there was no loving, forgiving real father out there waiting to be found.
“Can I help?” Michael had learned to ask before he helped with anything involving the kitchen. No matter where he put things away, his mom always came back and moved them to their mythical “right” place.
“Almost done. How was your day?” His mom opened the cabinet over the stove and rearranged the pitchers and jars on the shelf to make more room.
“Good. Glad to be out of school. I took your books back to the library. You were done, right?”
“I was. Thank you.”
Michael shifted from one foot to the other. His mother’s stiff posture and her refusal to make eye contact with him did not portend anything good. He wasn’t sure what he’d done this time, but he decided now might not be the best time to tell her he was leaving for the summer.
“Okay, I’m going to go read, I guess.”
“Michael, are you missing something?” his mother asked before he could leave the kitchen.
“What? No, I don’t think so.”
His mother gave him a long, searching look, a familiar look, a look he’d been getting from her for the past three years. He’d even named the look—he called it the Who are you and what have you done with my son? look. The long hair, the incident over the websites and the burns, the night he’d tried to kill himself… Michael knew his mother was convinced he’d lost his mind a few years ago and she’d given up all hope he’d ever get it back.
She shook her head and walked to the back door. She pulled his skateboard out from behind the open door and handed it to him.
“Thanks. I left this somewhere.”
“You left it in the backseat of Nora Sutherlin’s car.”
Shit. Michael took a breath, decided to try a little deflection on his mom, a survival strategy Father S had taught him during their counseling sessions.
“It’s a BMW Z4 Roadster. It doesn’t have a backseat.”
Her eyes flashed with anger.
“What were you doing in Nora Sutherlin’s BMW Z4 Roadster that doesn’t have a backseat, Michael?”
“Nothing. She gave me a ride home from church.”
Michael’s mother continued to stare at him.
“You know she’s old enough to be your mother, right? I know she doesn’t look like it and God knows she doesn’t act like it, but she is.”
“It was just a ride home, Mom. She’s nice. She’s not like you think she is.”
“I think she’s a very dangerous woman. And I think you could get hurt if you spend any more time with her.”
Michael thought about Nora, how she lived so brazenly. Would he ever be as fearless as her? Michael remembered a few months ago he’d been lurking around the hallways after church, eavesdropping on Nora’s conversations. One of the resident old bats had been going on about the abomination of sodomy. Nora had patted the woman on the back and said, “If it’s an abomination, it’s because you’re doing it wrong. Bear down hard, then relax. It’ll fit better.” Then she’d breezed off, leaving the old ladies blushing and huffing. Michael had run into the bathroom and laughed his ass off in one of the stalls.
Fearless. He could do that.
“I like getting hurt,” he said.
His mother shook her head. “Don’t remind me.”
Michael started to turn and walk away. He felt as though he’d spent most of the past two years turning and walking away from his mom. He’d much rather run up to her and hug her than walk away from her yet again. But that didn’t seem to be an option anymore.
“I’m going to be gone this summer. I leave on Thursday. That’s okay, right?”
“Fine,” his mom said. He thought he heard a note of relief in her voice. “If that’s what you need to do. You’re going to be a camp counselor again?”
“Something like that,” he said. “I’m good on money and stuff. So you don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’ve been worried about you since the day you were born. Won’t stop now.”
Michael tried to laugh but the sound didn’t come out quite right. He started to leave.
“Michael?”
Slowly Michael turned around and faced his mother.
“You aren’t really going to camp, are you?”
“Mom, I—” Michael said and stopped.
“I don’t think I want to know what you’re doing this summer, do I?”
Michael weighed his words.
“No, probably not.”
* * *
Søren placed the first cut on her hip.
A shallow cut only an inch long, it bled out slowly. Nora’s blood welled up and slid in a thin line over her hip, drying on her skin before it reached the black sheets.
Second, Søren cut her stomach right at the edge of her rib cage.
“Talk to me, Eleanor,” Søren ordered as he made a third cut, only a half inch long, on her chest.
“Ow.” Nora laughed a little. Søren looked down at her, love and desire burned in his eyes.
“It will hurt less if you talk to me. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we haven’t done this in a long time, sir.”
The last time they’d done blood-play was over a year ago, just two weeks after she’d returned to him. That night they’d recommitted themselves to each other—Nora pledging to belong to him again, and him promising that he would do everything in his power to make her happy and keep her safe. Like their first night as lovers fourteen years ago, blood was spilled that night, her blood. Their very first night together, the blood of her torn hymen had stained his sheets; the night one year ago, the blood came from eighteen cuts all over her body. Eighteen…one cut for each year he’d known her, one cut for each year he’d loved her.
“It’s for the best we do this rarely,” he said, gently caressing the side of her face with the back of his hand. Søren seemed perfectly calm right now, his face a mask of utter serenity. But she knew him like no one else did. Under the surface of his placid demeanor rippled dark, dangerous and barely restrained desires.
Nora looked down as Søren brought the blade just underneath her right breast and made a deliberate cut.
“You love this,” she said and Søren solemnly nodded. “We could do this more often if you wanted, sir.”
“Of course we could,” he said simply, and Nora smiled even as the eye-watering pain from the stinging, burning cuts bit into her. They could and would engage in blood-play every day if he decreed it so. “But we both do have to work.”
Søren smiled down at her and she grinned through her tears.
“Work? What is that again?” Since quitting her other job as a dominatrix, Nora worked only as a writer these days. A job that required little more than drinking coffee and tea and wearing pajamas until four in the afternoon didn’t really qualify as work to her. Søren, on the other hand, gave his life to the church. Up nearly every morning at five to run, he was in his office at Sacred Heart by seven at the latest. He heard confessions, visited the sick and dying, counseled married couples, performed weddings, christenings, baptisms, funerals and celebrated Mass four to eight times a week…. Nora knew if it came out that she and Søren were lovers, it wouldn’t be the sex that caused the greatest scandal. Søren was himself nearly an object of worship at Sacred Heart and within the diocese. If the Church discovered he was a sadist who beat women, even consensually, he would be expelled from the priesthood. Søren would not give her up, would not repent and would never agree that their relationship was a sin. And so the Church would excommunicate him. Few outside the Catholic Church understood what excommunication meant. It wasn’t just being fired or kicked out of the church. Søren would be denied the sacraments, shunned and condemned.
“I’m scared, sir,” she finally admitted.
“Do we need to stop?”
She shook her head. “Not of this. Of what might happen. What about Michael? What if it gets out what he is? What if they learn about The 8th Circle?” Nora didn’t even want to think about how bad it could get if the press found out about them. Kingsley Edge guarded the members of their underground community with terrifying tenacity. But not even he could stop the sharks once the blood was in the water. A Catholic priest and an erotica writer who’d belonged to him in one way or another since she was fifteen…a teenage boy who’d attempted suicide over his sexual orientation and who had lost his virginity to Nora during a ritualized S&M scene…and The 8th Circle, where everyone from a high-level FBI agent to the governor’s stepdaughter were key-carrying members. If the world found out about her and Søren, there would be no end to the digging. The 8th Circle, named for the level of Dante’s Inferno where dwelled those who abused their power, would become a real hell for those who thought they had found the one safe place where they could be themselves.
“Eleanor, what did I promise you the last time we did this?”
Nora inhaled and bit her bottom lip.
“You promised you would keep me safe.”
“I meant it. I will handle this, and nothing bad will happen to you or Michael.”
The fifth cut was short and sharp and fell along the edge of her collarbone.
Søren set the knife aside and spread her legs. He kissed her inner thigh; the kiss moved higher until he touched her clitoris with his lips and opened her with his tongue. Blood-play made Søren even more amorous than usual. As blood welled up and dried on her skin, Nora felt her climax building hard and deep within her. Søren knew her body like no lover ever had or ever would.
“Permission to come?” she asked and knew Søren wouldn’t deny her, not tonight. The orgasm, like the hot bath, had a utilitarian purpose. The more endorphins flooding her system, the more pain she could take.
“Come,” Søren ordered as he slid a finger into her and pushed into the front wall of her vagina. As Nora’s orgasm waxed, Søren picked up the small knife again and made a quick slash to her thigh. She flinched but only a little. The pleasure and pain danced together without touching.
Nora panted as Søren brushed her hair off her forehead.
“Can you take more?” he asked.
She wanted to say no and end it. The pain was almost too much even for her. But the intensity of it was heady, intoxicating. The intimacy of it greater than even sex. Only with Søren would she ever submit to this act. Søren did not demand sexual fidelity from her. She continued to see Sheridan, the favorite of all her old clients, and Søren still shared her with Kingsley on occasion. But when it came to pain, only he was allowed to hurt her.
“Yes, sir.”
Søren pushed her over onto her stomach.
The sixth cut sliced open her shoulder.
Nora bit into the sheets trying to stifle her cry of pain. Turning her head to the side she swallowed hard and braced herself.
The seventh cut didn’t come at all.
“Look at me, little one.”
Nora turned over again, wincing as her raw and bleeding shoulder made contact with the sheets.
“You will come back to me. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, nodding. Søren had never failed her before. When she’d been arrested at fifteen, it was Søren who’d kept her from going to juvie. When her fuckup of a father had tried to take her away, Søren had stopped him. When she’d gotten into trouble at school over a story she’d written, it was he who’d come and pulled her ass out of the fire yet again. He’d helped her get into college, helped her graduate, kept her safe, kept her close, kept her happy, and shown her a world that few even knew existed and then had made her queen of it…and all he’d ever asked in return was that she give herself to him, heart, body and soul.
It seemed such a small price to pay.
“How many cuts tonight?” she asked as Søren studied her bleeding body with reverent eyes. She saw his chest heave; his eyes had turned black from desire. Blood-play aroused him like nothing else. And nothing aroused her more than seeing him like this…so desperate for her it made even him almost weak.
“Seven,” he answered, his voice low and breathy. She’d already survived the first six.
“A good biblical number,” she noted.
“Five for the years we were apart. And one for the year you’ve been back with me. And one for the rest of our lives.”
The final one was always the worst. And she didn’t have to ask where it would be. Søren waited and Nora worked up her courage. This was Søren, she reminded herself. The man she’d loved for nearly twenty years. She’d only ever loved one person other than him, and for Søren she’d given him up. If she could give up Wesley for Søren, she could do this.
Nora spread her legs wide-open. Søren positioned himself between her thighs and with shockingly steady hands, spread her wide.
Nora closed her eyes tight and breathed through her nose as Søren ran the flat of the blade along the seam of her vagina and left a small cut on her labia. She refused to flinch as she knew her bravery would be rewarded.
The pain had already faded even as Søren took her hand and laid the knife in her palm. Nora steeled herself as she raised her hand. With one swift and sure motion, she cut his chest over his heart. She lowered her hand and sat the knife aside. Lifting herself up, Nora brought her mouth to his skin and licked his bleeding wound. The act severed the last thread of Søren’s restraint. He shoved her onto her back and opened his pants. When he pushed into her bleeding body, she felt a pain so acute it threatened to overwhelm her. Her safe word sat poised on the edge of her tongue. But she breathed in and swallowed it whole as Søren began to move in her.
She wrapped her arms and legs around him, dug her fingernails into his back and scored his skin. He bit at her neck and breasts, dug his fingers into her skin. Her body came alive with pain, pain that turned to pleasure as he continued his assault on her. She pressed her heels into the bed and arched back into his hips. When she came, she came hard. The orgasm racked her back. The pleasure spiked through her, clawed at her and cut into her like the sharpest of knives.
Søren kept thrusting and she clung to him in love and desperation. At moments like this, he was lost to himself, lost in the shadows that hid beneath his heart. Rarely did he let himself go, and when he did it was only with her. Nora lay beneath him and let him use her body as a vessel for his need. When he came at last, it was with a final thrust so fierce Nora knew she would be bruised inside from the force of it. He gasped her name as his whole body shuddered in her arms.
Nora held Søren as they lay intertwined, his body still embedded in hers. For a long time they said nothing, merely lying together content in their silence and their nearness to each other.
“You’re shaking, Eleanor,” Søren finally said, touching her cheek with his lips.
“A little. I’m just cold,” she admitted. Nora ran her hands through Søren’s hair and kissed his forehead.
“You’re shaking too.” His arms, his back trembled beneath her hands.
“Not from cold,” he confessed. She knew why, and he needed to say no more. “You belong to me…always.”
“Always,” she repeated.
“I will do whatever I must so you can come back to me.”
“I know you will, sir.”
“And we will keep our promise to each other.”
Nora reached up and touched his face.
“I will die in my collar.” She repeated her part of the pledge.
Søren turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm.
“And I will die in mine.”
* * *
Suzanne sat cross-legged on her sofa with her laptop open on her legs. She’d started a file on her computer called Asterisk and in it she was putting all the information she could dig up on Sacred Heart and Father Marcus Stearns. So far, it was a very small file. Patrick had gotten almost no additional information on the boy who’d attempted suicide in the sanctuary. No charges had been filed and the boy apparently still attended church there. What sort of kid would keep going back to the same church that had inspired him to kill himself? she wondered. Who was this priest who had that sort of pull on him? It turned her stomach just to imagine it.
She was dangerously close to thinking about her brother Adam when her cell phone rang. She checked the number. Patrick, of course.
“Any luck?” he asked as soon as she answered.
“Not much. This guy is a ghost. What about you?”
She heard a laugh on the other end of the line.
“What?” she demanded.
“I’m about to go into a dinner meeting so I can’t really talk. But you’ll never guess who goes to Sacred Heart. Not just goes but apparently never misses Sunday Mass.”
Suzanne exhaled noisily. She didn’t have time for games.
“I don’t know. The Dalai Lama?”
“Even better—Nora Sutherlin.”
Suzanne’s eyes widened and her stomach did a small flip.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’ve gotta run. I’ll call you back tomorrow. But no, I’m not kidding you.”
Hanging up, Suzanne simply stared out at her living room for a long time. She closed her computer and headed over to her bookcase. Scanning the titles, she finally found what she was looking for—a book entitled The Red. On the cover was a picture of a woman’s beautiful pale hands tied with a bloodred silk ribbon. The author? Nora Sutherlin. It was the story of a woman who owned a failing art gallery called The Red and the mysterious man who shows up and offers to save it in return for her submitting to him in every possible way for one year. Lurid and graphic with some of the most explicit sex scenes she’d ever read, The Red was possibly one of Suzanne’s favorite novels. Not that she ever told anyone that.
A fourteen-year-old boy attempting suicide in the middle of the sanctuary…the world’s most infamous erotica author attending Mass with the constancy of a nun…and that mysterious asterisk by the name of its priest.
“Jesus,” she breathed. “What kind of church is this?”