Søren looked at her with a cocked eyebrow.

“Is he gone?” she whispered.

“If only I had a camera,” he said. “Kingsley’s Red Queen hiding in my closet between a cassock and a garment bag.”

“Oh, shut up. Is he gone?”

“He is. He was delivering a plant.”

“A plant? I had a panic attack over a goddamn fern?”

“It was a ficus.”

“If we’re going to destroy your career in the church, I hope it’s over something better than a ficus.”

“It’s a very nice ficus.”

“Can I come out of your closet now?” she asked.

“No. For one thing...is this really the best you could do?” Søren asked. “The closet?”

“I assumed under the bed was the first place they’d look.”

“Yes, considering these were on top of the bed.” He held up a pair of underwear. Hers.

She grabbed them out of his hand.

“Sorry. I’m a little out of practice,” she said. “I used to be better at this.”

“Better at what?”

“Leaving before sunrise. I’ll go now before anyone else shows up with another fern.”

“Ficus.”

Nora pushed past him and found her jeans over the back of the armchair and her shirt hanging on the doorknob. When she was still Søren’s sub, she knew better than this. She’d put her clothes right next to her side of the bed so she could find them in an instant and dress. They’d had a couple close calls before. Diane had come to Søren’s with church emergencies while she and Søren were in bed together. Once while Søren was inside her. They’d both stayed calm. Nora had dressed as quickly and quietly as she could while Søren went downstairs. Then she’d sunk to the floor between the bed and the wall, out of sight. Rule number one was “leave the bedroom door open.” If the door was closed, it would raise suspicion. An open door meant he had nothing to hide. If someone came into the bedroom she could slip under the bed. But that wouldn’t happen because no one would suspect a priest of hiding a lover in a room with the door wide-open, right?

Søren walked over to her and took her clothes out of her hands.

“What?” she demanded.

“I need your help.”

“After that stunt you pulled last night? You’re on your own, Blondie.”

“It involves putting a knife to my throat.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Now you’re talking.”

Five minutes later Nora sat on the bathroom counter with Søren standing between her knees. She held a straight razor in her hand and she ran it carefully down Søren’s cheek, wet with shaving soap.

“I thought you were Mister Ambidextrous,” she said, rinsing the shaving soap of the blade.

“I trust my left hand for eating, not for shaving with a straight razor.”

“You could use a normal razor like a normal person. I’m kinky and I love playing with knives as much as the next dominatrix, but you don’t catch me shaving my legs with a straight razor.”

“Sentimental value. It belonged to my grandfather.”

“Which one?”

“My mother’s father. I never met my paternal grandfather. He died before I was born.”

She tilted Søren’s chin up to shave along his throat.

“Do you know anything about him?”

“He was an English baron and a raging alcoholic who very likely abused my father as much as my father abused my sister.”

Nora rinsed off the straight razor again and turned Søren’s head to the left.

“Does that change how you feel about him at all?”

“I’ve met dozens of people who were abused as children who did not turn into abusers themselves as adults. Elizabeth didn’t.”

“You didn’t.”

“Some would disagree.” He gave her a pointed look.

“I don’t and only my opinion counts in this instance. What you and I did and what happened between your father and your sister are worlds apart. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d given your father the Holofernes treatment.”

Nora mimed slicing her head off with the razor.

“Don’t cut yourself. I’d have enough trouble explaining a half-naked woman in my closet. I don’t need a headless corpse in my bathroom.”

“No decapitation? You’re getting so vanilla in your old age,” she said.

He cocked his eyebrow at her. “Is that so?”

“We had about one minute of vanilla sex last night.”

“Only to prove a point. The point being you need, want and desire pain, and wouldn’t enjoy being with someone who couldn’t give that to you.”

“I give it to other people.”

“You know it’s not the same. I can torture my own body and it takes the edge off the need, but it doesn’t take it away. Do you even submit to Kingsley anymore?”

“I can’t talk to you about what Kingsley and I do together.”

“Why not? You always told me in delightfully exacting detail what you two had done in my absence.”

“He’s a client,” she said. “I don’t gossip about clients.”

“Kingsley pays you for pain and sex?”

“No, don’t be silly. He pays me for pain. I give him the sex for free.”

“You know you miss it, Eleanor. The way you were begging me to hurt you last night? That wasn’t pillow talk.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re injured and can’t even shave your own face. Now shut up before I accidentally give you the Holofernes treatment.”

He shut up and so did she while she finished shaving his face. She knew his sudden good behavior wasn’t due to any desire of his to actually submit to her. He simply didn’t want her nicking him. He stared placidly past her, letting her move his chin this way and that while she scraped off the last of his stubble. When she finished, she soaked a hand towel under the hot water and used it to wipe the last of the soap off his cheeks and chin and throat. She might have taken longer than necessary doing this. She did love his face, the sharp planes of his chin and jaw, the sculpted lips, the gunmetal-gray eyes that saw everything and revealed nothing.

She kissed him.

Søren returned the kiss, but only for a moment before pulling back.

“What was that for?” His tone was skeptical.

“You’re very handsome and when there’s a very handsome man standing between my knees, I kiss him.”

“I should spend more time between your knees then.”

“That is not the sentiment of a priest about to take Final Vows.”

“Not true. Half the priests taking Final Vows with me would say the same to you if they knew you.”

“What about the other half?”

“Gay.”

“Right,” she said, laughing. “Forgot.”

“Please be there with me,” he said. “Will you?”

She rested her forehead on the center of his bare chest. He kissed her hair.

“Just because I didn’t want you leaving the church for me, doesn’t mean I can sit there and watch you give away the rest of your life to the church. Your life and your body.” This body that she’d thought of as hers for so long would now be the sole property of the church. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Do you know the Danish fairy tale Den Lille Havfrue?”

“In English?”

“The Little Mermaid.”

“Of course I know it.”

“The real story? Not the sanitized modern version?” Søren took his razor from her hand and washed it under scalding water in the sink.

“I think so. Mermaid falls in love with a prince and gets herself turned into a human being so they can be together, right?”

“The little mermaid’s fins are rent in two as if a sword has passed through her body. But since she was never meant to walk on land, with every step she takes, she feels something like knives cutting into her feet and her body bleeding from the wounds.”

“How cheerful.”

“Danes are known for many virtues—cheerfulness is not chief among them.”

Søren took Nora’s ankle in his left hand and lifted her foot. With the razor tip held between two fingers on his injured right hand, Søren carefully placed a small cut on the heel of her foot—a small wound, yes, but she knew until it healed in a day or two, she’d feel it with every step she took.