LITMIR.BIZ

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you take more?” he asked.

      She wanted to say no and end it. The pain was almost too much even for her. But the intensity of it was heady, intoxicating. The intimacy of it greater than even sex. Only with Søren would she ever submit to this act. Søren did not demand sexual fidelity from her. She continued to see Sheridan, the favorite of all her old clients, and Søren still shared her with Kingsley on occasion. But when it came to pain, only he was allowed to hurt her.

      “Yes, sir.”

      Søren pushed her over onto her stomach.

      The sixth cut sliced open her shoulder.

      Nora bit into the sheets trying to stifle her cry of pain. Turning her head to the side she swallowed hard and braced herself.

      The seventh cut didn’t come at all.

      “Look at me, little one.”

      Nora turned over again, wincing as her raw and bleeding shoulder made contact with the sheets.

      “You will come back to me. You believe that, don’t you?”

      “Yes, sir,” she said, nodding. Søren had never failed her before. When she’d been arrested at fifteen, it was Søren who’d kept her from going to juvie. When her fuckup of a father had tried to take her away, Søren had stopped him. When she’d gotten into trouble at school over a story she’d written, it was he who’d come and pulled her ass out of the fire yet again. He’d helped her get into college, helped her graduate, kept her safe, kept her close, kept her happy, and shown her a world that few even knew existed and then had made her queen of it … and all he’d ever asked in return was that she give herself to him, heart, body and soul.

      It seemed such a small price to pay.

      “How many cuts tonight?” she asked as Søren studied her bleeding body with reverent eyes. She saw his chest heave; his eyes had turned black from desire. Blood-play aroused him like nothing else. And nothing aroused her more than seeing him like this … so desperate for her it made even him almost weak.

      “Seven,” he answered, his voice low and breathy. She’d already survived the first six.

      “A good biblical number,” she noted.

      “Five for the years we were apart. And one for the year you’ve been back with me. And one for the rest of our lives.”

      The final one was always the worst. And she didn’t have to ask where it would be. Søren waited and Nora worked up her courage. This was Søren, she reminded herself. The man she’d loved for nearly twenty years. She’d only ever loved one person other than him, and for Søren she’d given him up. If she could give up Wesley for Søren, she could do this.

      Nora spread her legs wide-open. Søren positioned himself between her thighs and with shockingly steady hands, spread her wide.

      Nora closed her eyes tight and breathed through her nose as Søren ran the flat of the blade along the seam of her vagina and left a small cut on her labia. She refused to flinch as she knew her bravery would be rewarded.

      The pain had already faded even as Søren took her hand and laid the knife in her palm. Nora steeled herself as she raised her hand. With one swift and sure motion, she cut his chest over his heart. She lowered her hand and sat the knife aside. Lifting herself up, Nora brought her mouth to his skin and licked his bleeding wound. The act severed the last thread of Søren’s restraint. He shoved her onto her back and opened his pants. When he pushed into her bleeding body, she felt a pain so acute it threatened to overwhelm her. Her safe word sat poised on the edge of her tongue. But she breathed in and swallowed it whole as Søren began to move in her.

      She wrapped her arms and legs around him, dug her fingernails into his back and scored his skin. He bit at her neck and breasts, dug his fingers into her skin. Her body came alive with pain, pain that turned to pleasure as he continued his assault on her. She pressed her heels into the bed and arched back into his hips. When she came, she came hard. The orgasm racked her back. The pleasure spiked through her, clawed at her and cut into her like the sharpest of knives.

      Søren kept thrusting and she clung to him in love and desperation. At moments like this, he was lost to himself, lost in the shadows that hid beneath his heart. Rarely did he let himself go, and when he did it was only with her. Nora lay beneath him and let him use her body as a vessel for his need. When he came at last, it was with a final thrust so fierce Nora knew she would be bruised inside from the force of it. He gasped her name as his whole body shuddered in her arms.

      Nora held Søren as they lay intertwined, his body still embedded in hers. For a long time they said nothing, merely lying together content in their silence and their nearness to each other.

      “You’re shaking, Eleanor,” Søren finally said, touching her cheek with his lips.

      “A little. I’m just cold,” she admitted. Nora ran her hands through Søren’s hair and kissed his forehead.

      “You’re shaking too.” His arms, his back trembled beneath her hands.

      “Not from cold,” he confessed. She knew why, and he needed to say no more. “You belong to me … always.”

      “Always,” she repeated.

      “I will do whatever I must so you can come back to me.”

      “I know you will, sir.”

      “And we will keep our promise to each other.”

      Nora reached up and touched his face.

      “I will die in my collar.” She repeated her part of the pledge.

      Søren turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm.

      “And I will die in mine.”

      Suzanne sat cross-legged on her sofa with her laptop open on her legs. She’d started a file on her computer called Asterisk and in it she was putting all the information she could dig up on Sacred Heart and Father Marcus Stearns. So far, it was a very small file. Patrick had gotten almost no additional information on the boy who’d attempted suicide in the sanctuary. No charges had been filed and the boy apparently still attended church there. What sort of kid would keep going back to the same church that had inspired him to kill himself? she wondered. Who was this priest who had that sort of pull on him? It turned her stomach just to imagine it.

      She was dangerously close to thinking about her brother Adam when her cell phone rang. She checked the number. Patrick, of course.

      “Any luck?” he asked as soon as she answered.

      “Not much. This guy is a ghost. What about you?”

      She heard a laugh on the other end of the line.

      “What?” she demanded.

      “I’m about to go into a dinner meeting so I can’t really talk. But you’ll never guess who goes to Sacred Heart. Not just goes but apparently never misses Sunday Mass.”

      Suzanne exhaled noisily. She didn’t have time for games.

      “I don’t know. The Dalai Lama?”

      “Even better—Nora Sutherlin.”

      Suzanne’s eyes widened and her stomach did a small flip.

      “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

      “I’ve gotta run. I’ll call you back tomorrow. But no, I’m not kidding you.”

      Hanging up, Suzanne simply stared out at her living room for a long time. She closed her computer and headed over to her bookcase. Scanning the titles, she finally found what she was looking for—a book entitled The Red. On the cover was a picture of a woman’s beautiful pale hands tied with a bloodred silk ribbon. The author? Nora Sutherlin. It was the story of a woman who owned a failing art gallery called The Red and the mysterious man who shows up and offers to save it in return for her submitting to him in every possible way for one year. Lurid and graphic with some

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