CHAPTER 8
Alone in the room Nora and Griffin had given him, Michael unpacked his duffel bag. His skateboard, wheels up, he’d packed on top of his things and that came out first. Now that he held it in his hands, he almost regretted bringing it. Nora knew he was a skater, but Griffin didn’t. Surely someone like Griffin would find skateboarding childish. Michael sat the board on the floor and rolled it under the bed.
He unpacked his clothes—jeans and T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks, the usual—and tucked them in the empty dresser. Putting his rather ratty clothes inside furniture that probably cost more than his mom’s car felt a little wrong. Digging once more in his bag, Michael found his most precious possession and pulled it out.
Right after he’d moved with his parents to Wakefield and started attending Sacred Heart, Michael heard rumors that the writer Nora Sutherlin attended that same church years before she’d become the Nora Sutherlin. One day at the mall he’d snuck off to the Borders store and found a copy of her book The Red. The cover had a picture of a woman’s wrists tied with a bloodred silk ribbon. He remembered staring at the picture for so long without blinking that his eyes had started to water. But there was no way they’d let a thirteen-year-old buy a book like that. He thought about stealing it, but even the idea of shoplifting made his stomach churn with guilt. He found a fantasy novel about kings and unicorns that was the same price and size as The Red and he switched the covers. He didn’t need the cover. The image of the tied wrists had burned into his retinas. When he looked at it, looked at those tied wrists and pale hands, he couldn’t help but imagine his own wrists and own hands. It spoke to him, that image. It whispered to him. Love, he thought, when he first gazed on the image, looked just like that.
He bought the book and took it home. After his parents had gone to bed he’d stayed up all night reading it. He stayed up all the next night reading it again.
When Father Stearns started counseling him after his suicide attempt, Michael finally worked up the courage to ask him about Nora, who Father S called Eleanor. For some reason the first question that came out was, “Is she pretty?”
Father Stearns answered, “Michael, Eleanor is without a doubt the most beautiful woman who has ever or will ever live. If you could take a nighttime thunderstorm and turn it into a woman, you would have a very good idea what she looks like. And a fairly good idea how she behaves as well,” he’d said and smiled. Michael was quiet for a long time after that. He loved storms at night, how they made the whole house shiver with the force of the wind and the rain and how they broke the sky open with white light. After a long silence his priest had paused and turned to him. He looked at Michael for a long moment. “Would you like to meet her?”
Father S had made him a deal: if Michael could go one entire year without harming himself in any way—no burns, no bruises, no cuts, no suicides attempts—he would arrange for him and Nora Sutherlin to meet. Eleven months into their deal, Michael had been at Sacred Heart doing homework. His mom had gotten a new job after the divorce was finalized. It paid better than her old job but it meant she had to work until 11:30 p.m. some evenings. She didn’t like leaving Michael home by himself. Father S had offered to stay late at church on those days so Michael wouldn’t be alone.
A Monday night, a school night, he remembered. He was working on a Mendel chart due in biology the next day. He heard Father S on the phone with someone but couldn’t make out what he was saying. It sounded as though he was speaking French. He did that sometimes on the phone. Sometimes French. Sometimes another language that sounded maybe like Swedish to Michael, but which he later learned was Danish. Michael heard Father S hang up the phone. When his priest emerged from his office, he wore that same sad smile again.
“She would do her homework out here too,” he’d said without preamble. Michael didn’t have to ask who “she” was. “You could always tell when she was working on her math homework.”
“How could you tell?” Michael had asked.
“I, and anyone else in the church at the time, could hear the litany of profanities.”
Michael had laughed then. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
“You don’t have to wait anymore. Are you ready?”
Michael’s hands had gone numb then for the first time since regaining all feeling a month after leaving the hospital. Her—Nora Sutherlin—the woman who’d stolen his deepest dreams and put them on paper. Michael took a scared, shallow breath and started putting his homework away.
Michael had nodded. “I’m ready.”
He’d followed Father S out of the church and into a gray Rolls Royce that waited on the street. The car had pulled away from the curb and Father Stearns had stared out the window.
“What do I do when I meet her?” Michael asked.
“You will call her ma’am or mistress. And you will do anything she tells you to do.”
Michael had shivered then like a house in a thunderstorm.
“Will we… I mean, what will—”
“She’ll take your virginity, Michael. If that’s what you want.”
Michael nodded and stared out the window. It seemed as though the car was staying still and only the streets were moving.
“Yeah, that’s what I want.”
And now here he was in a freaking mansion in upstate New York with Nora Sutherlin herself. God, it was surreal. What the hell am I doing here? Michael asked himself as he put the book into the bedside-table drawer. This house reeked of wealth and power and old money. He was just a seventeen-year-old nobody with nothing going for him.
“If I ordered you to smile, would you?” came a voice from his doorway.
Michael looked up and found Nora watching him with her arms crossed and her usual little grin on her face.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to smile for her. She entered his room and came to him. Taking both of his hands in hers, she lifted his wrists to her lips and gently kissed his scars.
The real smile finally came.
“He saved my life, you know?” Michael said. “Father S did.”
Nora pulled away and sat on the bench in the big bay window.
“Did he?”
Michael nodded. “Not just that night when he found me. Telling me about himself, about you…that helped more than anything.”
“Did he ever tell you how he saved my ass?” Nora asked, crossing her lithe legs.
“No.”
“Well, he does try to keep my reputation as sterling as possible. One of the labors of Hercules obviously. Right after I met Søren, I got into some trouble. Almost went to juvie.”
Michael boggled at this news. “For what?”
“My mom thought she’d married a mechanic.” Nora leaned back against the wall. “Nice blue-collar husband for a girl from a big, poor German Catholic family. Not really a mechanic it turned out. More like he ran a chop shop with mob connections.”
“Holy shit. Your dad was in the mob?”
Nora shrugged. “Not in it really. Just of it. He was in and out of jail. Always owed some dangerous somebody money. Mom tried to keep me away from him but it’s hard for a Daddy’s girl to tell her father no when he calls and says he needs her help. Let’s just say I was a little too good at the family business.”
“You got arrested stealing a car?”
Nora held up one hand and spread out her fingers.
“Five cars?” Michael asked, aghast.
“They caught me on the fifth one. I was on quite a roll that night. Nobody suspected the fifteen-year-old girl skulking around Manhattan in her Catholic school uniform was out for their Porsche. I looked so innocent. It was the perfect disguise.”
“Innocent? You?”
Nora stared at him a moment before composing her face into a blank expression. She widened her eyes, fluttered her eyelashes and bit her bottom lip like a nervous child. She suddenly looked fifteen, sweet and scared.
“Damn,” Michael breathed.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, her face returning to normal. “I can do innocent. That look worked on everybody—Mom, Dad, cops…everybody except Søren. He saw right through it. He sees right through everything.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“I was sitting in the police station in an interrogation room. Fifteen years old, and the priest I’ve met all of twice before comes in and unlocks my handcuffs…with his own personal handcuff key, I found out later. He sat down across from me and waited, not saying a word, until I met his eyes. He said he could get me out of this but I would have to do everything he told me to do.”
“For how long?”
“That’s what I asked him. He said, ‘Forever.’”
“What did you say?” Michael asked, fascinated by the image of a fifteen-year-old Nora trying to save herself from juvie by making a desperate deal with the mysterious priest.
“You’ve met him. What do you think I said?” she asked and winked at him. “But enough about me and ancient history. How are you?”
“I’m okay. Griffin’s nice,” he said and immediately regretted it. Where the hell had that come from?
“He is. Very,” Nora said, staring at him long and hard. Michael looked at the floor and studied the scuff marks on the white tips of his Chuck Taylors. “I’m glad you like him. He and Søren do not get along.”
“How come?”
“Neither of them will tell me. If you can find out from either of them, I’ll give you anything you want.”
Michael smiled and shook his head. “Nora, I’m here with you. What else could I ask for?”
Nora stood up and walked over to him. Standing in front of him she looked him up and down.
“How about this?” Nora asked as she opened his pants.
“Okay,” Michael agreed. “Maybe that.”
* * *
When Suzanne arrived at her apartment, she found a folder on her desktop Patrick had labeled Nora Sutherlin, Fine Writer. She thought that a rather odd name for the folder until she noticed the capitalized initials: NSFW, internet slang for Not Safe For Work. That she believed.
Still shaken from her meeting with the ungodly handsome priest, Suzanne poured a glass of wine to calm her nerves. She sat at her computer and opened the file.
Hey Beautiful, read a note from Patrick when she clicked the folder. I scoured the interwebs for you and dug up everything I could on one Ms. Nora Sutherlin. You’ll be shocked to learn I didn’t find out as much about her as I thought I would. She, like your priest, seems to have some sort of internet force field around her. Writing career stuff? Tons. Personal life? Not so much. But I made some calls and got the scoop. Read file #1 first. Then read file #69. Then call me and let me take you out to dinner, you beautiful obsessed woman. I’m sexier than any priest, right?
Suzanne gave a little rueful laugh. Any priest but Father Stearns. She still couldn’t believe he was so… No, Suzanne told herself. She was not going to let herself get blinded by the man’s appearance. Something bad had to be up with this priest for someone to anonymously fax her about him. As good-looking as he was, it wasn’t hard to imagine him having a sexual-predator side to him. Even if he wasn’t going after kids, he could be preying on the women in his congregation.
She opened the file marked #1 and found a list of quotes from Nora Sutherlin in various interviews.
From Writers’ Weekly.
Interviewer: Where do you get your ideas?
N.S.: I have my best plot ideas in the same place I have my best orgasms.
Interviewer: In bed?
N.S.: At church.
Suzanne snickered out loud at that.
From Literary Friction, the largest erotica blog on the web.
Interviewer: Do you rely on personal experiences when writing your sex scenes?
N.S.: No.
Interviewer: Secretly vanilla?
N.S.: Legal advice. I don’t want anything out there that can be used against me in a court of law.
Suzanne read through a few more of the quotes Patrick had compiled. Nora Sutherlin certainly talked a good game. But she’d met a few too many novelists to believe that any writer lived as wildly as his or her characters. The days of crazy Kerouac and Hemingway types of writers was long over. Nora Sutherlin could easily be an overweight fifty-year-old housewife who’d only had missionary-position sex all her life and even that with just her husband. That was Suzanne’s theory on what most romance writers were like anyway.
She closed out file #1 and saw a file marked Pics. She clicked on the folder and her eyes went wide.
“Wow,” Suzanne said out loud to the empty room. Patrick apparently put a great deal of time and effort into finding photographs of Nora Sutherlin. Poor thing. What a chore. Nora Sutherlin could have been Rachel Weisz’s sister—wavy black hair, big green eyes, full pouty lips, pale skin and curves that wouldn’t quit. In one photograph Nora Sutherlin sat at a table signing books with a red Sharpie. The corset she wore did magnificent things to her cleavage. In another photo she stood on the top of a spiral staircase in a short red skirt with an extremely handsome man with a dark Brutus haircut. Writer Nora Sutherlin with Royal House Editor Zachary Easton, read the photo caption. Something about the way they looked at each other in the photo made Suzanne wonder if Mr. Easton did a little more than just edit her books. Not that she would blame him. So much for her theory on romance writers. The last photo appeared to have been taken at some sort of party or fund-raiser. She wore a gorgeous bloodred satin gown. Next to her stood a man, no, a boy really. Although significantly taller than she was, the boy looked considerably younger. He couldn’t have been a day over eighteen or nineteen at the most. In his tuxedo he looked like a teenager playing dress-up. He, like Zachary Easton in the other photo, gazed at Nora Sutherlin with equal parts longing and adoration. She seemed to be something of a man-collector. Suzanne had to wonder if Nora ever “collected” Father Stearns.
Okay, Suzanne thought, so Nora Sutherlin was a babe. Interesting. And she wrote erotica. And in interviews she acted as though her books were pale shadows compared to her real life. Suzanne had read a few of the books. Hard to believe Nora Sutherlin could be living wilder than her characters. That would take a lot of effort. Suzanne remembered Patrick’s instructions—read file #1 first and then file #69. Classy, Patrick, she thought. Very classy.
She double-clicked on file #69. The document inside contained only two sentences.
If you want to know more, you have to have dinner with me, read sentence number one. But it was sentence number two that got Suzanne’s attention.
Nora Sutherlin is a world-famous dominatrix.
* * *
Michael groaned in ecstasy as Nora rubbed the backs of his legs with her incredibly talented hands. He’d been a little disappointed when Nora said they weren’t going to scene together or have sex yet. But a full-body massage from the one and only Nora Sutherlin? He couldn’t find much cause to complain.
“I’m the sub,” Michael said when Nora moved up to his back. “Shouldn’t I be giving you the massage?”
“You are the most stressed-out, tightly wound sub on the face of the earth,” Nora said, digging her strong fingers into the knot that was his back. “I can’t beat you up until you relax a little or you’ll pull every muscle in your body in our first session. Relax. That’s an order.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Michael said, tensing when she slid her hands into his boxers.
“Michael,” Nora said with obvious exasperation, “you just clenched your ass tighter than the second pair of Spanx on a drag queen. Did I forget to mention relax was an order?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Michael said, laughing.
“What has gotten you so tense, Angel?” Nora pulled her hands away and stretched out on her side next to him.
Michael turned his head to face her.
“You’re my priest’s girlfriend. I’m in a stranger’s house. Both of my parents would freak out if they knew I was here.”
Nora reached out and caressed the arch of his cheek.
“Tell me the truth. Why are you really so stressed out?”
Swallowing hard, he rolled up and pulled his T-shirt back on.
He turned his face from her and stared out the window.
“There’s a huge swimming pool right out that window,” Michael said.
Nora smiled. “I know. You want to drain it and skate it, don’t you?”
“How did you know?” he asked, grinning sheepishly.
“I’m old. I’ve seen Gleaming the Cube about a million times. Christian Slater as a blond punk skateboarder? The movie’s probably the reason I’m so attracted to blond men.”
“Never seen it.”
“We’ll rent it. Now answer the question. Why are you so stressed?”
Sighing, Michael pulled his legs to his chest and rested his chin on his knees.
“I don’t belong here, Nora. With you, with Griffin, in this house…this is crazy.”
Nora said nothing at first. She stood up and switched on the small bedside lamp. When he was a kid he had an ugly plastic Power Rangers lamp. Young Griffin had a Tiffany lamp.
“Get into bed,” Nora ordered.
“It’s only 10:30 p.m.,” Michael protested.
“I’m getting in with you.”
Michael couldn’t scramble under the covers fast enough. In the low light he watched Nora strip out of her shoes, skirt and blouse. Wearing only her black bra and barely there panties, she slid into bed next to him.
“Clothes off,” she said and Michael awkwardly stripped out of his shirt and boxers. “Good boy. Spoon with me—your back to my chest.”
Nervously Michael pressed into Nora, nearly groaning aloud as his skin met hers. He did groan aloud when she reached down and wrapped her hand around him.
“You’re not just taller,” she said into his ear. “You’ve gained a couple inches in another area too, I see.”
Michael blushed and said nothing.
“Now I’m going to do two things,” Nora said. “I’m going to give you an orgasm and tell you a bedtime story. Which do you want first?”
“Ah…orgasm?” Michael answered tentatively. If he didn’t come first, he probably wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a word Nora said.
“Understandable.” Nora tightened her grip on him, bit his shoulder and gently stroked upward. His body tensed hard at Nora’s touch and he released with a silent shiver. “Feel better?”
Michael nodded. “And wetter.”
“Leave it,” Nora said. “This is Griffin’s old bed. Trust me. Yours is not the first cum to hit these sheets. Bedtime story now. Ready? Say ‘Yes, ma’am.’”
His own personal bedtime story by Nora Sutherlin?
“Yes, ma’am,” Michael said with the closest thing he had in his verbal repertoire to gusto.
“Once upon a time,” Nora said, as she fluttered a series of kisses over his shoulders that sent every nerve in his body reeling, “a very poor girl from a fucked-up family became a famous writer with a wicked pen and an even more wicked tongue who made seven figures a year. And she went everywhere she wanted to and did everything she wanted to. And nobody ever tried to stop her. And she had her own pet Angel who needed to learn how to talk. So guess what she did?”
“What?” Michael asked. He laughed in surprise as Nora slammed him down onto his back and slid on top of him.
She brought her mouth onto his and forced his lips apart.
“She gave him her tongue.”