Author: Tiffany Reisz

Nora swallowed.

“Who is she?” Nora asked, trying not to let the sorrow and anger she felt with unreasonable force seep into her voice.

“I believe he said her name is Bridget. She’s his father’s secretary, apparently.”

“Bridget?” Nora repeated, snorting a little in disgust. “Sounds like a high-functioning moron. I’ve yet to meet a woman named Bridget who could read.”

“This isn’t some latent jealousy talking, is it?” Zach asked. Nora heard something in the background, the sound of a woman’s voice. She heard the soft sound of a mattress sighing and knew Zach’s wife, Grace, had gotten back into bed with him.

“No,” Nora said. “Of course not. Are they sleeping together?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him that. Have you considered answering the phone the next time he calls?”

Nora nodded and then remembered she and Zach were on the phone.

“I’ll think about it. Søren wants me to. He thinks I need to make peace with my past.”

“Then I’ll say something I never thought I’d ever say in my life—I agree with Søren.”

Nora gave a little rueful laugh.

“Here, Grace wants to speak with you,” Zach said and she heard him whisper something and pass the phone.

“Nora? Are you all right?” came Grace’s lilting Welsh-accented voice over the line.

“I’m fabulous. I was just flirting with your husband while you were out of the room.”

“I don’t blame you. He’s looking quite nice tonight. I can’t tell you what he’s wearing because he’s not wearing anything,” Grace teased and Nora smiled finally, a real genuine smile.

“You’re torturing me, Grace,” Nora said, impressed. She still couldn’t believe how cool Grace was with her continued friendship with Zach. The ocean between them probably helped. “I think you might be a sadist. I approve of this.”

“I really do want to meet this mysterious priest of yours.”

“We’ll have a foursome next time you and Zach come to the States.”

“Capital idea,” Grace said before bidding her good-night. Nora hung up and dropped the phone back into her bag. For a long time she stared around her room, stared without seeing anything.

Wesley…a girlfriend? An older woman? His father’s secretary?

Wait, Nora thought. From what Wesley told her, his father worked as a trainer on a horse farm. Horse trainers had secretaries? And gorgeous young men who could have any girl they wanted dated older women for one reason only—sex.

Nora heard a knock on her door. She turned her head and saw Griffin standing in her doorway wearing nothing but well-fitting dark gray boxer briefs.

“I’m going to go check on Mick, okay?” Griffin said. Nora vaguely remembered ordering Michael to stay in his room all day as a punishment for doing absolutely nothing wrong since arriving at Griffin’s. He needed to make some mistakes or she wouldn’t have an excuse to punish him.

“Fine,” Nora said as she rose off the bed.

“And then I’m going to tie him up and fuck him,” Griffin said, apparently deciding to press his luck.

“Fine,” Nora said again as she wandered around the room.

“Groovy.” Griffin started to leave but she stopped him when she remembered something.

“Yes, mistress?” he asked, smiling.

“This house. This place was a horse farm once, right?”

“Yeah,” Griffin said. “When my grandfather was younger, they raised Thoroughbreds here. I sold all the horses when I got the place. Horse racing can be pretty gruesome.”

“The horse trainers, did they have secretaries?”

Griffin furrowed his handsome brow at her.

“No. Not that I know of. Just my grandfather, but he owned the place.”

Nora nodded and Griffin left her doorway. She saw him heading toward the nursery wing. Shaking her head, she tried to dislodge the dark thoughts that fluttered around her mind like angry bats. She couldn’t dwell on Wesley right now. She had Michael to think of. Of course Wesley had a girlfriend now. Tall and handsome, smart and sweet, Wesley was a catch. What had she expected him to do? She had kicked him out of her house and given herself—heart, body and soul—back to Søren. Did she think Wesley would just sit around waiting for her to come back to him for the rest of his life?

No, she hadn’t thought that. But she had secretly hoped it.

Nora took a deep breath. Grief, she told herself, naming the sensation that took over her body at the moment. Søren had taught her this trick years ago. If she could name her feelings, enumerate them, label them, she could distance herself from them, make them objects separate from her. Burning. Stinging. Aching. Bruising. Giving her agony a name gave her mastery over it. An old S&M trick for controlling pain, she used it now. Sorrow, she told herself. Irrational, stupid, feminine sorrow.

An image flared up in her mind, an image of her sweet, virginal Wesley naked and burying himself inside another woman, thrusting into her, coming inside her.

Jealousy, Nora named the new feeling. Raging jealousy.

Nora took another deep breath. She sucked in her pain, her misery, held it in her stomach and pushed it out of her nose. Michael. She repeated his name in her head. He had to be her focus tonight. As she opened her eyes, she caught a glimpse of a bundle of white paper sitting on her bedside table. Michael’s checklist. Picking it up, she skimmed through Michael’s answers. Underneath the section on S&M, Griffin had left her a note.

Mick’s not just a sub. He’s a masochist  too. Can I have him when you’re done with him?

A subtle line existed between submissives and masochists. Submissives enjoyed submitting even if they hated the pain part of the process. But masochists not only liked submitting to pain, they got off on it.

Good, Nora thought, putting the checklist aside. Tonight, for some reason, she felt like beating the holy living hell out of somebody.

* * *

Michael Dimir—Suzanne typed the name into her Google search bar and paused before hitting Enter.

For days now Suzanne had avoided researching the kid who’d tried to kill himself at Sacred Heart. It hurt too much to think about, hit too close to home. But she couldn’t avoid it anymore. After one meeting with Father Stearns, she’d discovered he was a man to be reckoned with. Even now, sitting alone in her apartment, her body recalled the fissure of shock she’d experienced upon seeing the priest for the first time. And when they’d spoken, she’d had the distinct impression he was playing her, toying with her. He’d been expecting a reporter—that much was obvious. And he hadn’t betrayed the slightest flicker of fear or nervousness around her. Even the purest innocent got a little nervous around a reporter. Who the hell was this priest?

Suzanne pressed Enter and started sorting through all the hits. She hated herself for digging up dirt on a kid. But she kept hitting a wall with Father Stearns. Maybe she’d have better luck with one of his parishioners.

Nothing came up about the suicide attempt, of course. A minor at the time, the newspapers would have withheld his name. His name—Dimir…young Michael must be of Eastern European stock, she decided. She’d known a couple of Dimirs during her two-month stint in Romania and Serbia. That’s it, she told herself. Keep it  professional, keep it vague, keep it impersonal. Don’t think about him as a  person, as a kid, as a Catholic kid who loved the church and trusted his  priest and who…

With an angry swipe of her hand, Suzanne wiped tears off her face. She slammed her laptop shut before even getting one piece of information about Michael Dimir. Immediately she felt better. If Michael Dimir had attempted suicide for the reason she believed he did, then the last thing she wanted to do was violate him again. She had to keep her focus on her target, and her target’s name was Father Marcus Stearns.

She stared at her closed laptop and knew opening it would be futile. Someone once defined insanity as trying the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. No amount of internet stalking would get her anywhere closer to the truth about Father Stearns.

Although she no longer believed in God, Suzanne knew she was doing His work right now. Someone somewhere knew something about Father Stearns, something bad enough to send her an anonymous tip about him. Why her, she had no idea. A thousand investigative reporters lived in the New York area. She’d never worked as anything but a war correspondent. Perhaps whoever sent the tip knew someone brave, someone unafraid of war zones would be needed to get to the truth. And war zones she knew. She’d been in a dozen of them—Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq… Bombs had exploded around her, she’d seen soldiers get ripped apart by IEDs right in front of her eyes. But never until now had she experienced the sort of real fear she’d felt when standing in front of Father Stearns. She wouldn’t let herself be intimidated. Not by one man. Not when she’d walked into battle zones wearing nothing but camos and a camera. She would go back to church. She had to.

The phone rang and jarred Suzanne from her dark, determined reverie.

“Patrick,” she breathed when she answered. “I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t,” he said sheepishly and she sagged with relief. For some reason, she’d been a wreck since her fight with Patrick. Now that they’d broken up, she stressed more about him than when they were officially together. “It’s my fault. You’ve been back in the States for like five minutes and I’m all over you to commit. That wasn’t cool of me, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I promise. You mean so much to me,” she said, knowing the words weren’t as good as “I love you,” but it was all she had for him right now. “Let’s forget about it.”

“No, I don’t want to forget about it. Let me make it up to you. Dinner? No sex required, I promise. But if you insist,” he said and laughed nervously.

Suzanne smiled, grateful beyond words for his call, his apology, for his presence in her life that kept her from succumbing to the grief that threatened to overwhelm her at times.

“Dinner sounds lovely. But actually, you can make it up to me in another way,” she said, staring at her closed and useless laptop.

“Anything,” he pledged.

She’d spent the past eight years in countries with bombs and guns and death all around her. If she could face enemy armies she could face one Catholic priest.

“I need to borrow your car again.”

* * *

Michael adjusted his position just slightly to better capture the fading evening sun. His pencil flew over the paper as he traced a series of curving lines. He paused, looked at his work, erased one line and redrew it. As he turned closer to the window he inhaled and caught a whiff of something in the air. He breathed the scent in again—sort of spicy but also subtle and masculine. It wasn’t cologne or anything that strong. Just…Michael inhaled again and closed his eyes…just mouthwatering. God, whatever it was, he wanted to smell it for the rest of his life.

“Damn,” came a voice over his shoulder, making Michael jump in surprise. He turned his head and came face-to-face with Griffin, who stood next to him wearing nothing but boxer briefs. At least he knew the source of that incredible smell now. Michael stared at him in silence for a moment and took in the lack of clothes and the wet hair. Griffin had just gotten out of the shower obviously, and that incredible scent came from his skin. “You drew that?”

Griffin took Michael’s sketchbook from him and sat opposite him on the bench in the bay window.

“It’s not done.” He reached out to grab his book back, but Griffin raised his finger at him, and Michael dropped his hands.

“Submit, submissive,” Griffin said, stretching out his legs next to Michael. “I’m not your dom, but I am a dom, so behave.”