“I don’t fuck drunk girls,” Griffin said, lightly rubbing her back. “So...you sober yet?”

Nora held up two fingers in front of her face and saw three.

“Give me a minute.”

Griffin took her in his arms and she stretched out on top of him.

“Sorry to give you a scare,” she said. “King and I were drinking last night. And the night before. And the night before...”

“You’ve been partying too much lately,” Griffin said. “When I say that, you know there’s a problem.”

“There’s a problem,” she said. “I thought Søren was leaving us—forever. Turns out it’s just a few months. And the relief I felt when he said he would come back by New Year’s...” Nora paused and searched her mind for just the right word to describe the sensation. She was a writer. The right word was everything. Finally, she found it.

“Humiliating.”

“Humiliating? How is that humiliating?” Griffin asked.

“I left him. I shouldn’t care if he leaves for four months or forty years. I’m supposed to his ex-lover, his ex-submissive, his ex-everything, and I swear to God, Griffin, most days I feel like I’m his wife and not his ex-anything. We’re not even divorced. Just separated. This isn’t how I want to live my life, in this constant struggle to get free. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to him, either.”

“Don’t give up, Mistress,” Griffin said, cupping the side of her neck. “Please?”

“King interferes every time I try to get involved with someone else.”

“Find someone to be with that he can’t fuck with then. Someone with money and power of his own. Someone he can’t blackmail.”

“Good idea. I’ll just run out and find someone with money, power and no dirty secrets. Dime a dozen, right?” Nora rolled her eyes. Griffin laughed and kissed her. Nora let it happen. Whenever her heart was in turmoil, she let her body take over. Griffin’s kisses were familiar, comfortable, warm and getting warmer, hot and getting hotter.

“My days of freedom may be numbered,” she said. “Want to help me go out with a bang?”

“I’ll give you all the bangs you want...”

Nora pushed Griffin onto his back, and he surrendered control to her. He surrendered and let her put the condom on him. He surrendered and let her guide him in. She felt the penetration of his cock inside her like a puncture wound. In her bitterness and defeat, she’d closed herself off and it hurt to let someone inside her. Despite the pain she let him sink into her depths, and she grew more aroused, more herself as she moved on top of him.

“Mistress Nora...” he whispered into her ear as he brushed her hair back and kissed her throat. “Queen Nora...”

“You’re trying to seduce me,” she said.

“You’re on top of me, and I’m inside you.” He yanked her shirt off her and threw it on the floor. “I think I succeeded.”

Nora leaned over him, put her hands on his shoulders and arched her back, offering him her breasts to suck. His tongue swirled around her nipples, his fingers pinched and teased them. He lifted his head and latched on to her nipple, drawing it deep into his hot mouth. Nora sighed as she felt the pleasurable sensation of pulling, of tugging, of heat on her breast. All the while she rocked her hips into him, grinding her swollen clitoris against the base of his penis.

“You’re trying to seduce me into not going back to him.”

“I am, Mistress,” he admitted shamelessly, which was how Griffin did everything. He took her breasts in his hands and massaged them. “He won’t let you play with me anymore if you go back to him.”

“I admit, it’s a compelling argument.”

“You know you’d miss me, Mistress.”

“I would miss you...”

She’d miss Griffin. She’d miss freedom. She’d miss her house and her life.

And she’d miss being Mistress Nora. She’d grown so accustomed to being called Mistress or Mistress Nora it felt like her real name and Eleanor had become the name of an old friend she’d lost touch with.

She lay on top of Griffin, pressed her breasts to his chest, and he whispered her name in her ear over and over again—Nora... Mistress Nora...my Nora...

On top of Griffin, Nora came with a cry. Griffin kept pushing up and into her even as she lay immobile and panting on top of his chest. It felt wonderful; sex with Griffin always did. But it wasn’t enough. With Søren she had the opposite problem. He was more than enough, almost too much for her. Between not enough and too much, she’d choose too much any day.

“See?” Griffin asked as he wrapped his arms around her. “Won’t you miss that?”

“I would,” she said. Because she loved Griffin as a friend and a lover she didn’t tell him the whole truth. Yes, she would miss him.

But she missed Søren so much more.

Thus it was decided. She would go back to Søren today. She would give him her collar today. She would tell him she would be his again today and forever, without conditions or constants and if he told her to quit her job she would and she would be his property again as soon as he came home. And she would never look back.

Nora was at peace.

Eleanor was at peace.

The phone rang.

She answered it, hoping for nothing from the call except that it would put an end to her conversation with Griffin.

“This better be good,” she said as she answered the phone.

“I have a little job for you,” Kingsley said.

“It’s six in the morning.” Nora groaned, rolled off Griffin and onto her back. “What sick sadistic pervert needs me at six in the morning?”

“A sick sadistic pervert doesn’t need you. Twelve sick sadistic perverts need you.”

“Twelve?” Nora sat up in bed. “I don’t do group sex. Wait. How much does it pay? Forget it. I don’t do groups.”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” Kingsley asked. He sounded as sleepy and irritated as she felt.

“Will I like it?” she asked.

“I think you will. It’s a job uniquely suited to your particular talents.”

Without any hope whatsoever that she would like what Kingsley had to say to her, she told him two words. Two words she’d said before the night her life changed. She said those two words again not realizing it was about to change one more time.

“Tell me.”

36

Professor Nora

ONE HOUR LATER, Nora kissed Griffin goodbye and told him to sleep as late as he wanted. She had on a black pencil skirt, a white blouse, and her black hair was wrapped in a loose bun. She wore her favorite high heels, not the stilettos but the retro pumps with the strap around the ankle. The woman looking back at her from the mirror looked like every man’s exaggerated fantasy of a sexy librarian or schoolteacher.

Fitting as today she would be a schoolteacher.

Twenty minutes from her house, thirty minutes in traffic, was a small liberal arts school called Yorke College. She knew of it through Noah. He was about to start his sophomore year there. Today. Noah started school today and so did she.

But not as a student.

She’d had to apologize to Kingsley for being so rude to him on the phone. Instead of calling and asking her to go meet a very special client at his hotel room or to fly to another state or another country to woo a rich and infamous pervert into Kingsley’s coterie, he’d asked her if she’d be willing to teach a writing class for a few weeks.

“A what?” she’d asked him.

“Our friend Dean Howell, who is, as you know, related to the Newport Howells, has a little problem,” Kingsley had explained when Nora finally started listening. “Every semester they hire a professional writer to teach a freshman creative writing course. The teacher they hired is an older man, and he’s had a heart attack. Our friend the dean knows you live near the school and was wondering if you’d step in until they can find a permanent replacement.”

“King, I write erotica.”

“It’s a college, not a high school. They’ll find you eccentric. Liberal arts colleges love eccentrics.”