Author: Tiffany Reisz

Nora, then still Elle or Eleanor, sat up straight in bed and stared down at him.

“You’re not kidding, are you, sir?”

“Of course I’m not.”

She shook her head and tears filled her eyes.

“I belong to you,” she whispered, and she put meaningful and desperate emphasis on the “you.”

At that the hint of a smile appeared on the corner of Søren’s perfect lips and within seconds she found herself flat on her back underneath him, her hands pinned over her head by his steel-strong arms.

“I’m a Jesuit,” he reminded her. “We share everything in common.”

Using his knees he pushed her thighs wide open and shoved two fingers inside her. As always her body responded to his touch even against her will.

“I don’t want to be with anybody but you. I waited for you.” She tried squirming away from him but he held her down hard and in place. There was nowhere to go.

“Kingsley’s been waiting for you almost as long as I have.” He lowered himself onto her and kissed her. At first she ignored the kiss, tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but his mouth was too insistent, her heart too willing. She gave into the kiss, gave into him. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

So it was decided entirely without consulting her feelings on the matter that the two of them would spend an evening at Kingsley’s the very next week. No amount of pouting and protesting would talk Søren out of it. Before they became lovers they’d talked at length about what her limits were. She had a hard time coming up with any. She knew he wouldn’t shave her head or cut off her arms or stab her in the heart. So she’d told him that she trusted him, that she knew he would never push her past her breaking point.

“I will never take you anywhere you don’t want to go,” he promised, taking her hand in his, raising it to his lips to kiss her palm. “But there will be times you might not enjoy the trip there. Will you still go with me?”

She’d answered simply with “Anywhere.” A mistake, possibly, because it appeared “anywhere” meant Kingsley’s bedroom.

* * *

“You let him force you to have sex with my brother?” Marie-Laure interrupted, pulling Nora out of the past.

“Your use of ‘let’ and ‘force’ are a tiny bit contradictory,” Nora reminded her. “Søren owned me. I was his property. I was his property because I let him own me. It was my choice to let him own me. Once he owned me, though, he owned me.”

“You didn’t want to be with Kingsley?”

“I didn’t want to want to,” she said, smiling. “I had this idea in my head that once you fell in love with someone and they loved you back, that was it. There was no one else, right? That’s how it should be. Don’t judge me. I was so young and foolish.”

“You were in love.”

“I am in love. Søren was kind enough to show me the folly of that sort of thinking early on. One person for your entire life? One? Ridiculous. Who needs that kind of pressure? Expecting someone to fulfill all your needs is blasphemy. You’re expecting a human to be God for you.”

“You have a strange theology. My husband let my brother rape you and you make it about love.”

“Rape? Are you serious? Have you met your brother? I don’t think he’s physically capable of raping someone. He speaks and your panties spontaneously combust.”

“You didn’t want to be with him and my husband made you. That’s not rape?”

“A rape victim can’t say a single word to get her rapist to stop. I could have. I had my safe word, and I chose not to use it.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want to disappoint Søren.”

“That’s all?”

“Well...and admittedly, I’d always been attracted to Kingsley.”

“Was he attracted to you? My brother?”

“You sound skeptical.” Nora raised her chin and stared down at Marie-Laure.

“I am. But I suppose I was wrong thinking my brother had good taste in women.”

“He has amazing taste in women. He’s probably fucked the thousand most beautiful women on earth.”

“And you.”

Nora laughed, low and throaty. Catfights...she didn’t get into them often. The women in her world were usually too scared of her to even blink wrong in her direction. She might not play this game often but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how.

“You know what they used to call me in the Underground?”

“Tell me.”

“The White Queen. The subs wore white. I wore it better than anyone. The other submissives were scared of me. They took orders from me like I was a Domme. Being Søren’s property made me something special in that world. I was envied, feared and desired. And you better fucking believe your brother wanted me. And he wanted Søren. That night we went to his house...he got us both.”

22

THE ROOK

Grace didn’t know the answer to Wesley’s question. She was rather certain she didn’t want to know the answer. Where was Kingsley going? Her heart tried to keep the answer a secret from her mind. If he was going where she thought there might be a chance he wouldn’t come back. She hardly knew the man but it didn’t matter. She didn’t know how much more stress and fear she could live with before she simply broke down.

They returned to the house and Grace left Wesley and Laila talking in the living room. Lovely place, it reminded her of a small English manor she’d visited as a teenager on a school trip. She remembered wandering the halls of that elegant old mansion and thinking it was such a shame it had become a museum. It had been built for a family and a family should live in it.

Although she knew she shouldn’t, Grace opened every door on the first and then the second floor. Her heart clenched when she saw a bedroom that obviously belonged to two little girls. Twin beds, side by side. Pale pink and white walls, everything the color of cotton candy. Over the left bed hung a painted sign. Byrony, it read in block letters. Over the right bed in cursive was the name Willa. On each bed sat a mountain of stuffed animals—lions and wolves, sock monkeys and smiling dolphins. Grace picked up a small brown dog and held him to her chest. She’d had one just like this as a child. Still had it somewhere in her parents’ attic. She’d named him Bernard, “although he isn’t a saint,” she’d tell people, proud of her joke. How she wanted to have a room like this in her house someday—a tiny bed piled with toys with Zachary on story patrol every night. Knowing her husband, he’d read their son or daughter adult novels—Thomas Hardy or Virginia Woolf. At least they’d work to put their little one to sleep.

Grace ran a hand over her stomach and hated its flatness. She ran five miles four days a week, ate right, took her vitamins...and yet every month she failed to conceive. She’d prayed for a miracle, that God would heal the scar tissue inside her enough that she could have a baby. Now that prayer seemed so small, so selfish. Nora was trapped by a madwoman intent on revenge. She could only pray now that God was in the miracle-making mood today.

With reluctance, Grace put the dog back on the pile, and left the bedroom. She noticed a door at the end of the hall now open that she could have sworn was closed when she’d come into the girls’ room. Grace walked to the door and saw that it didn’t lead to a room but a staircase going up. She saw no light switch so in total darkness she ascended the stairs until she could go no farther. Running her hand over the dark door, she found a knob, opened it and discovered she’d come up to the roof of the house.

She stepped out from the landing and looked around. At the farthest corner of the roof stood Søren, staring out into the nighttime forest that surrounded the property. Grace froze at the sight of him so silent and solemn. She should go back and leave him alone with his thoughts. But she’d been alone all day and knew she’d go out of her mind if she didn’t get away from her own voice in her head.

Summoning her courage, she walked toward him and came to stand at his side. He held a steep glass of red wine in his hand, raised it to his lips and drank.

“Do you mind if I join you for a while?” Grace asked, suddenly fearful. Fearful of what, though? That he wouldn’t want her company or that he would?

“Please stay. Your company would be most welcome.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t stand to be around myself right now.”

He turned his head from the dark forest before them and studied her face. His gaze felt intimate and penetrating, like he was trying to understand her more than simply see her.

“You’ve been crying.”

Grace raised her hand to her face and ran her fingers under her eyes to wipe away the traces of tears mingled with mascara.

“Sorry. I must look a mess.”

“No, you look beautiful. And troubled.”

“Thank you,” she said with a low and weary laugh. “You aren’t put off by a woman’s tears?”

“Hardly,” he said, raising the glass to his lips and drinking. “I rather enjoy them under the right circumstances. I’m guessing, however, yours weren’t of the variety I’m referring to.”

“No, sadly,” she said, almost blushing at the thought of how Søren would bring a woman to tears. “I made the foolish mistake of wandering into one of the children’s rooms.”

“You and Zachary are still trying to conceive?”

“Yes, actually. How did you know?” Had she been speaking to anyone else, Grace might have been embarrassed at broaching such a personal topic. For some reason she seemed like she could talk to him about anything and it would go no further than his own ears. Priest, she remembered. Of course.

“Eleanor told me. She wasn’t spreading gossip, you should know. She asked me to pray a novena for you.”

“She did?” Grace’s heart clenched at the kindness.

“Eleanor is convinced I make God nervous and that He’s more likely to take my calls than hers, as she says.”

“So...you’ve prayed for me to conceive?”

“Novena. I’ve prayed for you to conceive nine times.”

“Thank you.” Grace nearly whispered the words. “Zachary wants to give up trying for a biological child. Says it’s too hard on me. He’s fine adopting, but I want to keep trying. But now that dream seems so selfish and small with Nora out there—”

“Don’t, Grace. Don’t think God isn’t capable of giving you a child and bringing Eleanor back to us. He is infinitely powerful, after all. He can handle more than one item on His to-do list.”

“I’ll remember that.” The night air ran its hands over her skin and Grace moved closer to Søren, instinctively seeking shelter. He didn’t move away when her shoulder met his arm. “Although...something like this happens and I can’t help but be a little grateful I’m childless. No child means no child for someone to take. People seem awfully fragile right now to me, the world terribly unsafe. Nora is someone’s daughter and there she is out there somewhere and scared...she must be so scared.”

Søren put an arm around her shoulders as the tears started to fall again. She huddled close to him, resting her head on his chest. She felt like a child now seeking the comfort of a father’s arms.

“Eleanor,” he began as he wrapped both his arms around her, “is the bravest woman I know. She wasn’t even afraid of me when she was only fifteen. And believe me, I did try to scare her.”

“I would have been terrified of you. I am terrified of you.”

“She wasn’t. You know her first words she ever said to me...I remember them like yesterday. She said, ‘You’re kind of an idiot, you know that, right?’”