Her breasts felt swollen with the need to be touched and sucked. She arched her back and he took her nipple in his mouth. She bit the fabric at his shoulder to muffle her moan. Inside she burned and pulsed, burned and clenched. Her clitoris ached and throbbed, desperately needing attention. Her hips tilted upward and his cock shifted inside her, sliding in deeper. She stiffened, closed her eyes, tilted her hips again. Tiny explosions of pleasure ripped through her. She felt weightless, suspended as she was between his body and the wall behind her, dizzy with pleasure, near to bursting with the fullness of him inside her. The less she could move, the more intense every movement felt.

Søren’s teeth scraped her nipple, and she flinched with pleasure. His warm mouth moved up her breast, up her chest, up her neck and to her ear.

In a whisper no one but her and God could hear, he said, “I should have fucked you when you were fifteen.”

Were it any other place, any other time, Nora would have groaned at the words. But she swallowed the sound. Her head fell back against the wall, and Søren cradled it in his palm. The act, tender and protective, undid her.

Søren gathered her closer to him. They couldn’t be any closer than they were now, and he pumped into her until she came with a noiseless whimper, her vagina thrumming around him in a thousand, a million little spasms. With a few final deep thrusts he came inside her.

Panting together they remained entwined until Søren finally lowered Nora to her feet. She adjusted her clothes, buttoned her blouse, felt his warm fluid on her inner thighs but didn’t wipe it off. Right now, this second, she needed to leave, but she stayed because he kissed her again, she stayed because they’d just made love in the confessional, which was something she’d never dreamed they’d do because Søren was usually so careful, and if he wasn’t careful today it was because, as Kingsley had warned, he was losing control of himself out of his grief over losing her. He would take every chance he could to be with her and would regret the chances he missed. She knew this because she knew him, and it was how she felt, too.

Nora pulled away from his kisses and looked into his eyes, the color of steel but not as hard. His guard was down, his eyes soft, his face open and waiting for her words. He looked young for a second, younger than she’d ever seen him. Hope made him young. Fear made him vulnerable.

“I can’t be in your debt. I refuse to be in your debt,” she said. “Even your gifts aren’t gifts. They always come with a price.” He’d sold his own hair and let a woman he didn’t know, didn’t desire, kiss him and all to give her a gift. The debt she owed him was so high she’d pay any price to be back in the black.

“Everything has a price,” he said, his hands caressing her neck, her throat. She looked down and discovered he’d put the locket on her without her even realizing it.

“I can’t wear this,” she said, clutching the locket in her hand. She pulled to yank it off. This time she didn’t just bend the clasp, she broke it. “I won’t wear your collar. I won’t be in your debt.”

“Too late,” he said.

“Give me an order. Order me to do anything, and I’ll do it. Then we’ll be even, you and I. Whatever you want. One order. I’ll obey it.”

She knew what he would order her to do. She knew he would order her to come back to him. Standing there with her hands on his chest and his heart beating wildly under her palm, she knew she’d do it. She would go back to him when he gave the order. Oh, she would hate herself for it and Kingsley would hate her for it...but she would be at peace again at least. The peace of the runaway convict recaptured by the guards and hauled back to prison where she belonged.

She braced herself for the order, the inevitable order to return to him and be his again and wear his collar. For she had no doubt in her mind, none at all, that he would order her back to him.

“Write another book,” Søren said.

Nora’s eyes flashed at him in shock. That was his order. She knew that tone. She knew that look.

“Yes, sir.”

She wrote another book.

22

A Houseguest

Two Years Later

NORA’S FIRST THOUGHT upon waking was, There is a teenage boy in my house.

She lay in bed and thought about that thought, thought about what to do with it and him. He appeared to be sound asleep and dreaming. No reason to disturb him yet, so Nora let him be.

In her kitchen she brewed a pot of coffee. While she waited she checked her hotline phone. No missed calls. No messages. So the silent treatment would continue. Fine. If that’s what Kingsley wanted, who was she to argue? Without him calling her all the time and pouting until she took on this rich new client and that important new client, she’d actually gotten to spend a little time in her house.

Her house. All hers. Although she’d lived in the house for over a year, she still couldn’t believe it was hers. Kingsley hated her house as much as she loved it. He’d pitched a full-blown French fit when she’d told him she was moving out the day after she paid the down payment in cash and signed the contract. Having both his submissive and his dominant under the same roof was convenient for Kingsley but confining for her. She wanted her privacy, she’d told Kingsley. Needed it to save her sanity. And it was his own fault she’d bought the house anyway. He’d sent her all the way to Westport, Connecticut, for a session with a client, the dean of a small liberal arts college right outside of town. After her session with him, she’d taken a wrong turn and found herself in a residential neighborhood. When she saw a Catholic church on the corner, she’d stopped to ask directions. She’d done it instinctively, sought advice and help inside the church. The secretary had drawn her a map to the interstate on the back of a pamphlet with the title “You Can Go Home Again—A Roadmap for Lapsed Catholics.” When she asked the secretary how she’d guessed Nora was a lapsed Catholic, the older woman had smiled and said, “You started to dip your fingers in the holy water when you walked in and you stopped yourself.”

“An old habit,” Nora had said, guilty as charged.

“He misses you, you know,” the woman said as Nora started out of the office with her roadmap.

Nora froze, the words chilling her to the bone.

“He’s better off without me,” Nora told her. “Whether he knows that or not, he is.”

“God isn’t better off without any of His children in His life and His church. He wants them all home, even His prodigals. Especially His prodigals.”

Nora had given her a smile, a sad smile although she hadn’t planned on being sad that day.

“I wasn’t talking about God.”

The neighborhood St. Luke’s belonged to was a quaint and lovely one, the day around her bright and shining, so Nora went for a walk. She lived most of her life at night and indoors. Sunlight had become a rare luxury, and she needed more of it. Griffin wanted her to go to Miami with him soon, and she considered the offer as she walked.

Then she’d seen the house.

A Tudor home, two-story, black beams and off-white stucco. An old New England cottage with beautiful bones and a price tag in her budget. It even had an oak tree—the biggest, greenest, oldest, most beautiful gnarled old oak tree she’d ever seen and right in the corner of the yard. An oak tree. She could have her own oak tree. So what if a Catholic church stood on the corner of the street, and if she lived here she’d be an easy forty-minute drive from Wakefield, Sacred Heart and Søren? That had nothing to do with her love for this house. It looked like a writer’s house, she told herself. That was why she wanted it. She was a writer. A writer needed a writer’s house.

But...there was one catch. She didn’t pay a cent to live at Kingsley’s. If she bought this house, this dream house of hers, she would never be able to quit working for Kingsley. Not unless a miracle happened, and she was suddenly making six or seven figures a year from her books. Buying a house meant making a commitment—not to the house as much as to the job that paid for it. Was she ready to accept she would be working as a professional domme for the next fifteen to thirty years of her life? If so, that meant she could never ever go back to Søren because he would make her quit working for Kingsley, which meant she couldn’t afford the house.