“I changed the names to protect the not-so-innocent. And it’s hardly autobiographical,” she said, a half-truth. “She’s an art gallery owner. He’s a mysterious rich guy who says he’ll pay to keep her gallery open if she agrees to do everything he tells her to do for a year.”

“I remember you and I making a similar sort of bargain.”

“You asked for ‘forever’ from me. Mister Mysterious only asks for one year. And he put out immediately. You made me wait until I was twenty before you fucked me.”

“Believe it or not, I do have a conscience, Eleanor. You were a very attractive fifteen-year-old, but you were too young for me, and I had no intention of going to prison for statutory rape.”

“You fucked a sixteen-year-old.”

“When I was seventeen.”

“You should have taken me to Denmark and fucked me there. Age of consent is fifteen in your motherland.”

“I won’t ask why you committed that fact to memory.”

“I don’t think you thought I was too young for you. I think you got off on stringing me along and making me beg for it. Admit it.”

“You’re punishing me for that by making me wait for you to come back to me. Admit it.”

Nora only stared at him.

“Isn’t that your plan?” Søren asked, his eyebrow lifted in a question. “I made you wait for over four years. You’ll make me wait just as long or more?”

“You think this is some insidious plan of mine? I’m building this new life for myself without you just because you didn’t fuck me when I was fifteen like I asked you to?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Søren, I swear if you get any more smug you’ll turn into Kingsley.”

She pushed in closer, and buried her head in his lap. His hand resting on the back of her neck felt as comforting as a collar, as confining as a noose.

“No,” she said. “I’m not punishing you. I’m just... I’m trying to live my life.”

“Without me.”

“That was your choice, not mine,” she said. “You chose to be a priest, which was the last thing in the world Claire wanted you to do. Or Kingsley. Or your mother. So don’t sit there and judge me for going down a path you can’t follow when you walked away from everyone you loved when you put on your collar.”

“You have no intention of coming back to me?” he asked.

“Let me answer your question with a question—will you let me keep working for Kingsley?”

“You enjoy the work that much?”

“I enjoy being a domme that much. I enjoy being able to afford my house that much. So what’s your answer?”

“My answer is...no,” he said. “I can’t support this choice you’ve made. The work you do is too dangerous, and I love you too much to allow you to do it. If you were mine again, I would order you to quit.”

Nora already knew that was his answer, but hearing it reopened the wound she’d been trying to ignore for three years since she left him.

“So we’re at a stalemate,” she said, glancing over at Søren’s chessboard sitting on the bookshelf.

“Perhaps it’s time to break the stalemate,” Søren said.

“How?” Nora looked up at him.

Søren didn’t speak for a moment. He was weighing his words.

“I told you when I had my accident, I was on my way home from dinner with someone. That someone was the superior of my province.”

“Hot date?”

“Not quite. I’ve been asked to take my Final Vows.”

Nora’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“I thought you told them no years ago.”

“The last time they asked me was shortly after you left me.”

Nora sat very still and felt the weight of his decision heavy on her. She understood what it meant if he were to say yes. Final Vows were a big deal for a Jesuit. Jesuits usually took them twenty or more years after entering the order. When a priest’s life and ministry was examined by his peers and superiors and found worthy, he was invited to take his Final Vows. Søren had told her once that it was similar to a teacher being offered tenure.

If Søren took his Final Vows, he would be committing to remaining in the priesthood until he died. She understood it meant he would never again ask and/or order her to marry him. She understood it meant he had made his mind up about the rest of his life, and it didn’t include marriage or children, which she couldn’t blame him for as she didn’t want those things, either. But she wanted to make no more vows ever, no more promises she couldn’t keep. A vow was the opposite of freedom and she shrank from the very thought of it.

“The ceremony’s one week from Sunday.”

“So you’re going to do it?” she asked.

“Give me a reason to say no,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“Then I’ll tell them yes.”

Nora couldn’t look at him. She turned her head and stared at the chessboard again. Søren had taught her the game years ago. They’d often play when she’d spent the night with him after the kink and the sex were out of their systems. Although she always considered chess with Søren a sort of kink. He always beat her when they played. Except that one time she punished him for making her play by swallowing a pawn.

“Little One? Where are you?”

“Here,” she said. “I’m here with you.”

He pinched her nose. This time she couldn’t give him the smile he wanted.

“I want you to be there. Will you do that for me?”

“I don’t know if I can,” she said, her head still in his lap, his hand still on the back of her neck.

“Are you worried things will change between us after I take the vows?”

“Won’t they?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ll start keeping your vow of chastity, won’t you?”

“You left me, Eleanor, and you said yourself you’re not coming back.”

“That’s a yes, isn’t it?”

The pause between her question and his answer was the longest pause she’d ever lived through but if that thrumming empty air, that painful fermata, had gone on forever, it still wouldn’t have been long enough for her. She could have lived her entire life quite happily without hearing his answer. Someday she would learn never to ask questions she didn’t want the answer to.

“Yes.”

26

Snow in August

NORA TURNED ON the light in Søren’s bedroom and pulled down the covers on the bed.

“You’re staying the night,” Søren said. Not a question, a statement of fact.

“I’d stay until you were healed completely if I could. You know that, right?” she said, resting her head on his chest. He wrapped his good arm around her.

“A fool’s errand, Little One. If you waited until all my wounds were healed, you would be here forever.”

She didn’t tell him that was the point. She merely turned her face up to his and let him kiss her.

“I have something to show you,” he said.

“If it’s what I think it is, I’ve seen it before.”

“Behave, Eleanor. It was a gift from Laila,” Søren said. “It’s on the bedside table.”

The table in question sat between the bed and the wall of his upstairs bedroom. On it sat a little metal contraption. It appeared to be some sort of mobile no bigger than his hand. Tiny silver snowflakes dangled off fan blades suspended over a votive candle.

“It’s a spinner,” Søren explained. “You light the candle on the base. When the heat from the wick rises, the blades turn. Try it.”

Nora took a lighter from the bedside table and lit the candle. In only seconds the fan blades started to turn and the silver snowflakes rotated like a carousel. Søren reached past her and turned off the lamp.

She glanced around the darkened bedroom and smiled, delighted as a child as the light danced in the dark room.

“It looks like it’s snowing,” she said. “Indoors. In August.”

“A little Scandinavian magic,” he said. “Laila collects the spinners. At Christmas the house is full of them. A fire hazard but quite pretty at night.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said, as she slipped into bed to lie next to him. Together they watched the magic of snow indoors in August. But it wasn’t magic, merely an illusion. But if that were true, why did she smell snow?