Nora entered the side of the confessional reserved for the penitent.

“I’m here when you’re ready to speak,” Søren said from the other side of the booth. Although she couldn’t see his face, she could tell from his voice he didn’t know it was her.

“Oh, I’m ready to speak, Father.”

She heard him sigh.

“Far be it from me to stop a sinner from confessing,” he said.

“I’m actually here for your confession.”

“Mine?”

“What happened between you and Milady?”

“Nothing you need to know about.”

“She was wearing your hair in a locket around her neck, and now I have a laptop. These things are related.”

“If you must know, I went to speak to her because she’d threatened us both. All of Kingsley’s dominas are sane and reasonable women. I assumed I could reason with her. She said she had no intention of exposing me to anyone but was merely attempting to needle you. When I went to leave she asked me if she could have a lock of my hair. I told her no. She asked me if I would sell it to her. I remembered you were in great need of a computer so you could write your next book and that you thought it would cost two thousand dollars. I named my price. She paid it willingly.”

“Did she touch you?”

“I don’t believe you can cut someone’s hair without touching that person.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do you care if she did?”

“There are people who deserve to touch you and people who don’t. She doesn’t deserve to touch you.”

“She kissed me. I let her.”

“Did you like it?”

“I believe the standard saying is ‘It was like being kissed by my sister,’ but, of course, you know that means something entirely different coming from me.”

“So you did like it?”

“No.”

Nora closed her eyes tight. It would have almost been better if he had liked it. To imagine him sitting there, suffering through a kiss, closing his eyes and thinking of England, and all so she could have a fucking laptop which she could have bought for herself in a week or two...

“Why? Why did you do that, Søren?”

“I wanted to give you a gift.”

“No, you wanted to make me jealous or make me angry or make me lose my mind. If you wanted to give me a gift you would have picked a bunch of goddamn daisies off the side of the road.”

“You can’t write a book with daisies,” he said.

Nora wrapped her arms around her stomach, feeling sick and dizzy and torn.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s perfect,” she whispered. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”

“Diane picked it out. I’m something of a Luddite, as you know.”

“Søren, I...” Nora was in an agony of indecision. “I’m not giving up my job and my life and coming back to you just because you bought me a gift or whatever that was. You know that, right?”

“Keep it. Use it. I paid dearly for it after all.”

“I’ll keep it,” she promised. “I won’t come back to you...but I will keep the gift.”

“You’ll come back to me when you’re ready.”

“I’m not going to be ready. And you have to get it out of your head that I’m the one who ran away from you because you lost your temper one night. You rejected me. I told you the truth about me, and you didn’t want to hear it. If I came back to you, you would take me from me. You would take Nora from me, and I just found her. I’m not giving me up for you. I can’t sacrifice so much of myself that there’s nothing left to give back to you.”

“You promised me forever, Eleanor.”

“You can’t give me everything any more than I can give you forever.”

“I can give you everything. Whatever it takes, I will keep my promise to you.”

“Call me Nora just once, and I’ll believe that. Then I’ll know you won’t take from me everything I’ve worked for and fought for. Jesus, Søren, I broke a man’s nose. I made a notorious dominatrix squeal like a little girl. I fucked with Kingsley’s head so hard he cried. And I loved every second of it. Every single second. That’s me. That’s how I am now. And you want to take it from me.”

“If you truly trusted me, you’d know that whatever I took from you, I would give back tenfold.”

“Then you owe me a hundred years of dominance for the ten years of submission I gave you. And ten riding crops to replace the one you broke.”

“Ten crops? I hope I have enough hair to sell.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Why not?”

Nora could barely get the words out. They backed up in her throat, a verbal bottleneck. She forced them through anyway.

“Because I love your hair.”

“Eleanor... Little One...please...”

His words sounded as pained as her own.

Nora couldn’t stand it any longer. She slipped out of her side of the booth and opened the door to his.

“Here. This belongs to you.” She held out the glass locket that contained his lock of hair. Søren took it and tucked it in his pocket. He looked at her.

“So does this.”

Søren took her by the wrist and yanked her to him, then shut the door behind them.

His kiss traveled to her mouth, and she opened to him. In such close quarters she had little room to move or breathe. Their bodies were pressed together, and she couldn’t escape unless he let her. He seemed to have no intention of letting her.

“Come back to me,” he said against her lips.

“I can’t.”

“Come back to me,” he said, against her neck.

“I won’t.”

“Come back to me,” he said, lifting her skirt to her hips.

“I don’t...”

“You can’t say it, can you?” He slipped his hands into her panties and ripped them off with one fierce tear. “You can’t say you don’t want to come back to me because we both know you do.”

“Not enough to do it.”

“Not yet. But you will.”

“Arrogant pr—” Before she could finish the insult, Søren’s mouth was on hers again, devouring it with kisses. She tasted his tongue, smelled the winter on his skin and surrendered. When he dug his fingers into her thighs and squeezed them hard enough to leave bruises, she knew he meant to have her. Right here. Right now. And nothing would stop him unless she said her safe word. With his tongue in her mouth she couldn’t speak, nor did she try to. She let him swallow her cries of pain because it was her pain he fed on, her pain that sustained him. Oh, but it fed her, too. And every cruel and beautiful thing he did to her, the gifts he gave her at once merciless and merciful, left her starving for him.

Søren dug his fingers into her hips, finding the pressure point that made her weak with pain. A skilled sadist, he could give her agony and leave her with not a single mark, except for the marks he left on her heart. Again he hurt her. Again he swallowed the cry of pain that rose in her throat. His hand moved between her thighs and eased her wet lips open, forcing her vagina to widen enough to take him. Her inner muscles protested at first but then opened for him, growing slick and ready in seconds. He didn’t so much lift her off her feet as slide her up the smooth polished wood of the confessional to bring her down onto him, impaling her. Their bodies were locked tight together, her wetness sealing him to her, their backs against the walls as the smallness of the space forced them as close as two people could be. Her booted foot on the wall behind him was all it took to hold herself in place, and his hand at the side of her head and his full length inside her was all it took to hold her to him. He moved, barely an inch, and drank the cry of pleasure from her lips. They couldn’t make a sound, the two of them. Not here. Not now. She couldn’t risk even a whimper, not if someone waited outside.

In heated silence Søren unbuttoned her white silk blouse and unhooked her bra in the front. Her breasts spilled out as he released the clasp, and her nipples hardened as they brushed the rough fabric of his clericals, an exquisite teasing torture.

Nora didn’t know which one of them, her or Søren, moved first, but within her body she felt her vaginal muscles tightening on him, clenching him, holding him inside her. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion, as if they moved through honey or deep water. If he thrust roughly into her, the wood would creak, the sound would be overheard. All they could do was push against each other, slowly, willfully, methodically, making no noise, muting even their breaths by breathing into each other’s mouths.