“I’m not for sale.”

“Everyone’s for sale. What if I paid you two thousand dollars to whip our friend Thorny, would you do it?”

“No. He doesn’t want to be whipped.”

“You wouldn’t hurt someone against their will?”

“Only to protect myself or someone else.”

“Money might not be your price, then. Would you hurt someone against their will to keep a secret?”

“Depends on the secret.”

Milady gave her a little smile, an impish grin that made Nora want to rip Milady’s lips off.

“Would you hurt someone against their will to keep your priest’s secret?”

11

White Whips Red Blood

IT WAS A good thing Nora had spent nine years of her life obeying Søren’s every order. Had she not been so well trained, she likely would have ripped Milady’s face off and put it in a jar. Or at the very least let loose a litany of profanity to make a sailor clutch his pearls. Instead, and because she had learned a modicum of self-control as Søren’s property, she kept her mouth shut while on the inside she plotted murder.

Milady ignored the stare of pure burning hatred Nora shot at her while she untied her pelisse and passed it to one of her burly trio. She took Thorny by the hand and turned him to face the cross. With her hands and not her words, Milady directed Thorny into place. She cuffed his ankles to chains and bound his wrists high on the cross. Nora knew she should be paying attention to Thorny but she spared a glance up at Kingsley. He looked at her with narrowed curious eyes. Did he sense her distress? She hoped this show didn’t last long. They needed to get out of here now. Milady knew who she was and what she was and that she had been Søren’s lover. And if she knew all of that, she might know Søren’s real name and if she did...she could get him into a whole world of trouble.

Or...was this just a mind game designed to scare Nora off? Nora wasn’t scared off but she was angry. Søren might be a hypocritical, pretentious, arrogant, insufferably possessive bastard but he was her hypocritical, pretentious, arrogant, insufferably possessive bastard.

She couldn’t worry about that right now. Milady had opened the white velvet bag and pulled out two matching whips—white whips. Pure white with white crackers on the ends of the tails. Consummate show-woman that she was, Milady walked the perimeter of the room, whips extended to the side as if measuring the space. Would she miss and accidentally hit a spectator? Milady wanted the crowd to be afraid she would miss so they would be so terribly impressed when she didn’t.

Nora had the worst seat in the house. She would see the tips of the whips but not the action, but this was fine by her. Thorny had to be her priority, not watching the show. A man who’d never been whipped before was about to get whipped in public by a woman wielding not one, but two single-tails.

“Scared?” Nora whispered to Thorny.

“Terrified,” he said with a brash grin. She wondered how long that grin would last.

Milady finished her circuit of the room and stood six feet or so away from the cross and Thorny. Before Søren whipped her or flogged her or hurt her, he’d almost always touched her, held her or spoke a few choice whispered words to her. Sometimes he’d claim her, saying, “You’re mine, Little One. Mine to hurt and mine to heal.” Sometimes he’d confess, “I’ve been dreaming of hurting you all day.” Sometimes he’d touch her inside and tease her: “As wet as you are I think you want this as much as I do.” Sometimes he’d simply say, “I love you, Little One” or “Jeg elsker dig, min lille en” before he brought the pain down.

Nora watched and Milady didn’t whisper a single word of warning to Thorny. Instead she cracked the first whip and then the second in rapid succession. Everyone in the room jumped, everyone but Nora and Kingsley, who were accustomed to the sound. Thorny flinched although he hadn’t been struck yet. Milady was merely warming up. And what a warm-up it was. She sent the whips, both of them, in graceful tandem flicking high and low and along the floor and toward the ceiling. They snapped and cracked and swirled and twirled like white smoke around her. She drew lines in the air, wrote words and made figure eights. Every turn ended with another sonic crack.

Then Milady turned her attention to Thorny. First she flicked the whip around the outline of his body, missing him on purpose to show that she could. Many of the cracks were concentrated around his head. Nora watched his face closely. He breathed heavily but his face was set in stone.

The stone broke at the first strike of the whip on his back. Nora knew that pain, like being stung by a bee. A big fucking vicious demon bee. Thorny gasped, winced, grunted, groaned...but he didn’t say roses or red or stop so she simply stood there, monitoring his breathing, praying it would be over soon.

Milady made the whip dance and it danced all over Thorny’s body. Up his arms to his wrists and down again. Over his shoulders, across his neck, down his spine and back up again. She avoided the kidneys, which was a good sign that she had a modicum of respect for the rules of safe play. Otherwise she shredded Thorny’s body.

Søren had never whipped her for this long. Maybe Kingsley could have taken a beating this severe, but not someone who’d never been whipped before. Thorny had had enough. Nora could tell. Finally he uttered a desperate “roses.”

“Louder,” Nora said. “She didn’t hear you.”

“Roses!” Thorny called out, loud enough anyone in the room could hear him.

Milady didn’t stop, and Nora knew she had no intention of stopping. So she did the only thing she could do.

Nora stepped under the cross and held out her arm, catching the end of one whip around her wrist. She yanked it from Milady’s grasp before she realized what she’d done.

An audible gasp echoed through the room, the sound of two dozen people in shock.

Milady didn’t look shocked, however. But she didn’t look happy.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Milady asked, her voice still light and sweet even as her eyes blazed.

“I believe your friend said his safe word,” Kingsley said from the top of the stairs. Milady turned and looked up at him. “And you ignored it. Didn’t you?”

No one spoke but no one contradicted him, either. Nora saw a few nods, a few nervous glances. Behind her Thorny panted loudly. He needed to be taken down immediately and tended to. Blood seeped from the wounds on his back. Shallow cuts that would heal quickly, but there were dozens of them.

“Take him down,” Kingsley ordered as he descended the stairs.

“He’s my toy tonight.” Milady coiled her remaining white whip. “I say when he comes down.”

“No, I believe he says when he wants down. Mister Thorny? Yes? No?”

“Please,” Thorny said between breaths. “Take me down.”

Kingsley nodded at Nora, who worked quickly, unbuckling his wrists first and then unchaining his ankles. She yanked the blindfold off him and met him eye to eye. He had startling blue eyes that almost seemed to glow in the dark. But she didn’t attribute that to any supernatural powers. He’d been in so much pain his eyes were rimmed with red, which made the blue that much more vibrant in contrast.

“God, you’re pretty,” he said. Men. She rolled her eyes as she set him in a chair. “How bad is it?”

She looked at his back. Every square inch of skin was burning scarlet and blood seeped out from roughly two dozen tiny cuts. She chucked him under the chin and smiled.

“You’ll live,” she said.

“I wish.” Thorny laughed at a joke she didn’t get.

“My apologies, darling,” Milady said. “My lovely assistant was supposed to let me know when he’d had enough.”

“She did,” Kingsley said. “And so did he. Are you all right?” Kingsley directed the question at Thorny, acting as though Milady were beneath his notice.