The end.

But it wasn’t over yet. Søren slipped one hand under her body and found her clitoris. When he touched it she buried her face in the bed to mute her moans. It wasn’t fair he knew how to manipulate her pleasure this well. It wasn’t fair he knew her mind. It wasn’t fair that he knew she wanted this against her will and took her anyway. It wasn’t fair that she was glad he did. It wasn’t fair that God had given him a heart to love her and a second heart to love God. And it wasn’t fair he’d had to choose between the two. It wasn’t fair that she knew Søren would regret leaving the church for her. It wasn’t fair that the only way she could love him was by leaving him.

But whoever said life was fair?

She opened her eyes as Søren’s teeth released her neck. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled.

“Jeg elsker dig, min lille en.”

I love you, my Little One.

Being called that name hurt worse than anything—worse than the flogging, worse than the fucking, worse than the teeth buried in her soft skin. He said it again as his fingertips worked her clitoris in that way he knew would bring her to the edge. Why did she have to love a priest? Of all the men in the world she could have loved it had to be him. He said it a third and fourth time, letting the words match the rhythm of his thrusts. She couldn’t escape the words or the name or his touch, so precise as if he could feel everything she felt. Could he also feel her anger at him? Could he feel her sorrow that he’d left her no choice but to leave? Could he feel her orgasm building and rising to the breaking point? When it broke, it broke hard, waves of pleasure radiating from her core through her entire body.

Søren must have had the same thought she had, that once this mad interlude ended it might never happen again, because he held off coming longer than he ever had before. The pounding went on ceaselessly, so long she came again as hard as the first time. Harder as she dug her teeth into his arm to muffle her own cries.

He tucked her hips up and rose over her. One hand rested on the side of her head to hold himself up while the other dug hard into her hair, holding her down and against the bed, immobile. His mouth caressed her naked shoulders, her back and her neck.

“Where’s your collar?” he asked, between thrusts.

“It’s gone. I threw it out.”

“Liar.”

He punished her lie with a vicious thrust she knew she deserved. Then he kissed her with a vicious kiss and she knew she deserved that, too.

He was lost inside her. Into her ear he whispered beautiful words. She had no idea what they were because he spoke Danish, his first language. Was he confessing his love for her? His hatred of her? His need for her? His loneliness? It could be all of that or none of it. Maybe he was asking her to come back to him. If so it was good he spoke in another language so she wouldn’t have to answer. She knew how to say never in English.

When neither of them could take any more, when the sex had become too much for either of them, he let go at last and came inside her, filling her with his semen and pulling out to leave her empty.

“Eleanor?”

She heard her name from far away. In the distance she sensed him unbuckling her ankles from the footboard.

“Eleanor?”

“That’s not my name anymore.”

“Eleanor, you’re bleeding.”

She rolled onto her back, came up on her elbows and looked down. Her thighs were red with blood and so was Søren.

“Shit,” she said, half laughing. The spell of the moment broken in an instant. “Sorry about that.”

“Did you start your period?”

“I had an IUD put in a few days ago. They warned me this would happen. Sudden heavy bleeding. Thought I was wetter than usual.”

The black-and-white coverlet beneath her bore a red stain the size of her hand.

Søren pushed his fingers into her, and she winced as he found a sensitive spot. His eyes widened slightly.

“Those are the strings,” she said. “My doctor said you could feel them in the beginning.”

When he pulled his hand out his fingers were red.

“You remember what happened the last time you bled on me?” he asked.

“Are you going to make me wash the sheets in the bathtub again?” It wouldn’t surprise her in the least if he did.

“Not exactly.”

As Nora ran the water in the bathtub, she had to laugh at herself. How embarrassingly easy it was to fall back into that old familiar pattern. He dominated her, she submitted to him, he hurt her, she let him. How could she ever truly break free of him when obeying him was as simple as breathing and running from him left her as breathless as choking?

He’d allowed her to clean herself off first. Then she put on the black bathrobe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. It was a man’s robe and too big for her. When she bent to turn off the taps the robe fell down her shoulder. Søren pushed it back into place.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said.

“What? Entice me with a show of skin? I have seen it before.”

“I didn’t mean to do that.” She touched his chest. In a spot right over his heart she’d left a bite mark, a deep one. Deep enough to leave a bruise, not deep enough to make him bleed.

“I assumed you were attempting to eat my heart out,” Søren said.

“The thought had occurred to me.”

“It was a fight, Eleanor. Couples fight. Apologies are made. Hurt feelings put aside. Life goes on.”

“I don’t want to talk about that night. Not now or ever. What’s done is done. And life is going on. It’s going on without you.”

“Yes,” he said, raising his hand stained with her blood. “Obviously we’re perfect strangers now.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Get in the fucking bathtub, Blondie.”

He gave her a cold look.

“Please and thank you? Sir?” she said, her tone mocking, but the words were enough to appease him. He stepped into the bathtub and sat down, stretching out his long legs so that his feet rested on the ledge by the taps and his back at the opposite end. Nora knelt on a thick folded towel at the side of the tub and soaked a soft bath sponge in the warm soapy water.

“I am sorry,” she said, rubbing the sponge on his lower stomach over a patch of dried blood. “I didn’t plan going all Moses on you.”

“Moses?”

“You know, parting the Red Sea.”

He gave her the blackest of black looks. “Are you in pain?” he asked, speaking to her like he’d speak to a child.

“From the IUD, the kink or the sex?”

“All of the above.”

“A little cramping from the IUD. Normal. I have welts on the back of my knees and a bite bruise on the back of my neck. Not normal but not unheard of when one submits to a sadist.” Søren gave a little smirk. “And from the sex? I’m fine.”

She wasn’t fine. She was far from fine. If her hands hadn’t been too busy with the sponge, Søren would have seen they were shaking.

“Fine? Really?”

“A little sore. I think you fucked me a whole hour. Were you feeling a little...pent up?” she asked, casually but not.

“Is that your way of asking me if I’ve slept with anyone since you left me?”

“Just curious.”

“No, I haven’t. Relieved? Or disappointed?”

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know how I felt?” She’d been with other people since leaving him and she could hardly hold him to a different standard than she held herself. Yet she knew they were different. She had sex for fun. It was a casual necessity, like eating lunch. For Søren sex was anything but casual. And he could go for years without it. She fucked when she wanted it. He fucked when he meant it. Long ago she’d asked him when and how he decided to break his vows—all the nights with her, that one night with Kingsley...he’d had both of them since becoming a priest, since taking a vow of chastity. If he was happy to fuck them, why not someone else?