Author: Tiffany Reisz

“You’re doing it again.” She pointed at him. “You’re trying to play with my mind.”

“I am and entirely without remorse.”

“You’re the one who’s half-drunk. I’m the one who should be in control of this conversation.”

“You’ve already forgotten what we were talking about.”

“That is not true. You were...” She paused and retraced their conversational steps. The “mouthful” remark had blown her far off course. She would get back on it. “Kingsley. You were telling me why your encounters,” she said, trying for the most tactful word possible, “with Kingsley are rare.”

“Good girl.”

“Thank you,” she said, basking in the praise. “And...?”

“Kingsley didn’t choose the last name Edge at random. It wasn’t an affectation. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t even a nickname. The choice of the last name ‘Edge’ is a warning.”

“Warning of what?”

“Kingsley is a connoisseur of a certain style of BDSM known as edge-play. Eleanor keeps a running list of what she calls ‘The lies kinky people tell vanilla people.’ On that list are things like ‘All scenes are prenegotiated.’ And ‘No, of course the floggers and singletails never break the skin.’ And ‘Yes, we all use safe words and the submissive is the one truly in control.’”

“None of that is true?”

“It is true...for some of us. For others, we play by different rules. With his clients and in his clubs, Kingsley is a great enforcer of the rules of safe play. Kingsley, the man in private, he prefers more dangerous games. No safe words, no safeguards. He is particularly fond of breath-play and rape-play.”

Another chill passed through Grace, a chill that had nothing to do with the night air.

“Rape-play...that seems self-explanatory. Breath-play?”

“Choking,” Søren said simply. “Erotic asphyxiation. I’ll admit I’ve enjoyed the same activities but under much more tightly controlled circumstances. Blood-play for instance. It’s by far my favorite form of sadism. And yet, Eleanor and I engage in it no more than once a year. She bathes before the cutting and we clean her wounds and mine thoroughly after. No safe words necessary during because if she says stop, I stop. With Kingsley...you can beat him bloody, brutalize him, violate him in every way, and he won’t try to stop you. He has no limits. I gave him a safe word to use when we were teenagers. He never once uttered it, and I broke him into a thousand pieces simply for the pleasure of putting him back together just to break him apart again.”

Grace inhaled deeply and let the words sink in. She knew she should be horrified, disgusted...but nothing about this man or his confession created any reaction in her other than fascination and compassion. Even desire, if she dared admit that to herself.

“You see,” Søren continued, “everyone instinctively understands that the submissive partner in the scene should feel safe and be safe. But it’s often forgotten that the Dominant should also feel safe and secure. When I’m intimate with Eleanor, it’s difficult to remain self-aware, but I can. If I start to forget myself she reminds me who I am.”

“How so?”

“She’s rarely used her safe word with me. Almost never. But if she needs me to stop for a moment she’ll tell me. If something is starting to go too far, she’ll pull me, pull us both, back from the edge. But not Kingsley. It’s far too easy to forget myself with Kingsley, far too easy to go to the edge with him and fall over. And since I love him and would rather not be the architect of his destruction and therefore mine...”

“You don’t touch him because you love him.”

“The self-control required to hold back and not cause harm is often exhausting, especially when losing control is so intoxicating—far more so than even five glasses of wine. That’s why Eleanor and I have had an open relationship from the beginning. Sometimes a few days or a week is necessary to recover from a night with me.”

“So if she wants sex without welts and bruises, she goes to someone else.”

“And if I want to paint a fresh canvas with welts and bruises, I go to someone else.”

“You have other lovers?” Grace asked, utterly shocked. She knew Nora did, but from what she’d said, Søren was faithful to her alone.

“Eleanor and Kingsley are the only two lovers I’ve had since becoming a priest. But there are several other women who submit to me when Eleanor’s out of town or needs a few days to heal.”

“Only women?”

“Yes. I’m more careful with women than I would be with a man. And quite frankly, Kingsley is the only man who I’ve ever been attracted to.”

“So she sleeps with others and you beat others?”

“An arrangement that works beautifully for us. Or did.”

“She loves you. Whatever she had to work out with Wesley, it doesn’t change that fact. Any more than me sleeping with Ian or Zachary sleeping with Nora didn’t change the fact that he and I were married, that we loved each other and that we belong together.”

“That’s why you don’t hate Eleanor?”

“Exactly. Because I hated Zachary like I was supposed to.” She took another drink of the wine. If she was going to talk about her separation from Zachary, she’d need all the liquid courage she could get. “That’s why the wife always hates the other woman. It’s good for her to hate the other woman. The other woman—” Grace stretched her arm far out in front of her “—is other. She’s not even a person. We can heap all our hatred, all our disdain, on her even though deep down we know she’s not the one to blame. She’s the scapegoat.”

“Did you know the scapegoat is an Old Testament concept?”

“I had no idea.”

“From Leviticus. The sins of the Israelites were symbolically placed onto the head of a goat and then the goat was driven into the wilderness never to be seen again. It was a form of atonement.”

“That’s what it is exactly. You put all the sins of the husband and wife, of the marriage, onto the head of the other woman. You pray she will go away forever and take all that misery with her and leave your husband behind.”

“You wanted to reconcile with Zachary?”

“Yes. So much. Which is why, at first, I was angry with everyone but him. There were dozens of other women. The job was another woman I blamed. Zachary’s boss, John-Paul Bonner. I blamed him. He knew we were having problems and he took advantage of that. America...she was the trollop that had seduced my husband away from me.”

“The whole country?”

Grace grinned. “Yes. I blamed the entire country. Typical bitter wife behavior. And then he mentioned Nora Sutherlin on the phone, one of his writers, he said. But he said it with heat. I looked her up, saw a picture of that beautiful woman. Then I hated her. But that didn’t work for me, the scapegoat game. The sins were still there in the marriage. They couldn’t be driven out so easily simply by blaming J. P. Bonner or Nora or the entire bloody country. I knew that if I wanted Zachary back, and I did, I couldn’t blame anyone but us. Our problems were my fault. Our problems were his fault. Our problems were our fault, not hers.”

“It takes a wise person to realize this. I’ve counseled many married couples who never see the truth of that. They blame everyone but the real culprit.”

“I didn’t want to see the truth of it. But I had to. Made a fatal mistake when I came rushing to New York.”

“You met Eleanor.”

Grace raised the glass in a salute.

“I met Eleanor. And instead of the ‘other woman,’ she was Nora to me. Beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, understanding Nora. She’s impossible to hate. My God, I showed up at her house like a madwoman hunting down my husband, and she gave me tea and told me Zachary was still in love with me. You asked me why I don’t hate her. All I wanted was my husband back. I got him back. That’s all any wife wants.”

Søren stood up and looked away from her, looked into the darkening woods around them. And as if someone else had said them, Grace heard her own words.

She’s the scapegoat... We know she’s not the one to blame... All I wanted was my husband back...that’s all any wife wants.

“Marie-Laure,” Grace said as a terrible realization dawned on her. “She doesn’t want Nora at all, does she?”

At first Søren said nothing to her question.

“No,” he finally answered.

“She would have kept Laila if Nora hadn’t volunteered to stay. She didn’t care if it was your lover or your niece she had as long as it was someone you loved.”

Søren’s mouth tightened into a hard line.

“What did the note say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. What did it say? Tell me, please.”

“It said something to the effect of ‘Dear Husband, Have you missed me? I’ve certainly missed you. I have someone here you love. If you want this loved one of yours to keep breathing, I would highly suggest you and I mend this rift between us. It’s a big decision. Take your time. But don’t take too long. You have until noon on Friday. Love always, Your devoted wife. P.S. Tell my brother, Love thy sister.’”

Grace couldn’t speak for a moment. She had to let his words sink in.

“She wants you,” Grace said at last.

“She does.”

“How were you supposed to find her? I know Laila told us but what if she didn’t recognize the room?”

“‘Love thy sister...’ Last week someone broke into my sister Elizabeth’s house and wrote those words on my childhood bedroom wall in ashes.”

“You knew from the note where Nora was, not from Laila and her locket. Marie-Laure wanted you to know.”

“She wants me to come to her. If anyone but me goes, she’ll kill Eleanor.”

“You can’t go. This woman has killed before. Wesley told me she murdered a teenage girl. She’ll kill you, too.”

“Or worse.”

“What’s worse than being killed?”

Søren held out his hand and Grace gave him the glass of wine. He raised it to his lips and drank it down in one swallow.

Grace waited. Søren never answered the question.

23

THE QUEEN

In all her twenty years on God’s green earth, Eleanor had never been so nervous. Not even waiting for the judge to hand down a sentence on her for five counts of grand theft auto had been as terrifying as the prospect of sex with someone other than Søren. She’d met Søren, and her teenage plan to lose her virginity as soon as humanly possible hit a six-foot-four, blond wall of celibacy. No amount of flirting, begging or attempted seduction could entice Søren into divesting her of her virginity at age fifteen or sixteen, seventeen...eighteen. She had high hopes for nineteen but even then he held back. Years later she finally realized what he’d been doing by making her wait so long. He’d given her a reason to leave him. A very good reason. He loved her enough to let her go even before he’d had her. And she’d loved him enough to wait for him.

Waited for him she had, and now she wasn’t a virgin anymore. Her first night with Søren felt as natural as breathing, so natural that she couldn’t imagine that she’d ever feel comfortable being with anyone else. His hands belonged on her, his mouth on her mouth. He was the only man she wanted inside her...but Søren was adamant, unyielding.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” she’d finally said after arguing with him about it for an hour that night.

“Of course you will.”