Author: Tiffany Reisz

Slowly, Kingsley pulled out of her and started to undress. Søren left her on the bed while he undressed, then lay next to her left side. Kingsley was at her right. Søren brought her leg over his hip and entered her. Face-to-face, no restraints tying her down... Had they ever had sex like this before? Not that she remembered. Usually he put her on her stomach or bent her over the bed if no bondage was involved. During face-to-face sex, her hands were almost always tied to the bed. The beating had even been mild compared to their usual level of pain he brought her to. Something about Kingsley being with them heightened Søren’s arousal as much or more than sadism did. Did Søren enjoy seeing her with another man that much? Or was there something else?

As he moved in her, Eleanor let herself simply enjoy the presence of him inside her, the taste of his mouth on her lips, the scent of skin—winter, always winter. She’d almost forgotten Kingsley was there until she felt a hand that didn’t belong to Søren roving over her side, sliding over her hips and down her thighs.

“Thank you.” Søren kissed her neck right under her ear.

“For what?”

“Trusting me.”

“I do trust you, sir.”

“How much?” he asked, a dark glint of amusement shining in his eyes.

“Try me,” she challenged.

“Dangerous words.”

“That’s why I said them, sir.”

Søren answered her challenge by rolling them both onto their sides. He dragged her leg over his hip and kept moving in her. She felt Kingsley’s hand caressing her from her neck to the small of her back. She relaxed into the touch and the hypnotic rhythm of Søren moving inside her. When she stiffened at the cold liquid on her and started to protest, Søren shushed her with a kiss and a hand on her face tracing her cheekbone.

“For me?” he asked.

She answered with a nod and buried her head against his chest as Kingsley began to push inside her. Eleanor whimpered in the back of her throat as both men pushed into her at once. Her first experience with anal had been horrific, but since then she’d come to love it. It was the height of sexual intimacy to her and Søren seemed to love it almost as much as she did. Maybe even more. But she’d never been penetrated anally and vaginally at the same time. She clung to Søren in need and fear. She felt filled beyond belief with both of them inside her. Her fingernails dug deep into Søren’s back. Søren took her hand from around his neck and pushed it onto Kingsley’s thigh.

“Him,” he breathed against her lips, and Eleanor scratched hard into Kingsley’s leg, hard enough she knew she broke the skin. Kingsley gasped as the pace of his thrusts increased. Receiving pain seemed to turn Kingsley on as much as it turned Søren on to give it.

Eleanor breathed deep as her climax built again. Kingsley’s hand wrapped around her hip and found her clitoris. She’d never known pleasure like this before. It consumed her, devoured her, swallowed her whole. She gave in to it, surrendering herself entirely. Never in her life had she felt so wanton, so shameless. She was nothing but a body that existed solely to be used for the pleasures of men. In that moment she embraced that purpose like the temple prostitutes of ancient times, spreading for the gods, men and beasts alike, for inside her body the three became one.

When she came, the climax gripped her stomach with iron claws and she shuddered for what felt like an eternity in Søren’s arms. She didn’t even notice either of them coming inside her, so lost as she was in her own ecstasy. Only when she lay on her back in the bed, emptied out, did she feel the wetness pouring out of her and dripping onto her thighs and the sheets.

Eyes were on her then and she knew both of them waited for her reaction. At first she only breathed, her eyes half-closed. But something welled up inside her, a powerful wave of emotion, and for whatever reason, whatever wonderful strange unnamable reason, she started to laugh. It bubbled up to the surface, lifting her heart so high she felt that she’d come off the bed. And two other laughs joined her own until a symphony of laughter filled the room to bursting. Søren pulled her close and kissed her deep.

“Jeg elsker dig, min lille en,” he said into her lips.

“You have no idea how much it turns me on when you speak Danish,” she answered, still laughing.

“Of course I do. Sleep now for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

Søren looked over her shoulder and she turned to see him meeting Kingsley’s eyes.

“Wine,” Kingsley said. “We’re going for wine.”

Wine...of course. They both loved their wine. A glass of red, no doubt. Or two. Wouldn’t take them long to drink it; she might as well sleep as ordered.

She settled into the bed. Kingsley and Søren pulled on their pants and shirts, not bothering to tuck anything in. They both looked so roguish, so dashing, in their disheveled clothes.

Hurry back, she thought but didn’t say aloud. Hurry back could be construed as an order. They gave the orders. She took them. Oh, how she took them.

They’d arrived at Kingsley’s house at midnight. Always safer to travel at night when the likelihood of an evening emergency call had passed. More than a few evenings had been lost by Søren being called away to attend to one of his parishioners. Every hour they spent together they stole. No wonder Søren had wanted her and Kingsley to share this night together. Perhaps in the future, when the church called Søren away from her, she could come here and not have to sleep alone.

But now she slept alone as Kingsley and Søren went to drink their wine.

They never got the wine.

* * *

“So what happened?” Marie-Laure interrupted. “No wine in the house?”

Nora sighed as Marie-Laure’s question ripped her out of the story. How she longed to stay in that memory of the night the seeds of the woman who would become Nora Sutherlin were sown in Kingsley’s bed.

“Oh, plenty of wine in the house. Kingsley has a well-endowed cellar.”

“What happened then, after my brother and my husband had both violated you?”

“I don’t know,” Nora admitted, hating her ignorance on the matter. “Not everything, anyway.”

“But you know something.”

“I know something.”

“Tell me what you know.”

Nora looked Marie-Laure dead in the eyes. This woman didn’t deserve these stories she told her, and for no reason other than to save her own life would Nora reveal such beautiful secrets that rightly belonged only to Kingsley, Søren and her. She’d never told Wesley any of this. She’d told Michael about Søren and Kingsley, because she understood the boy needed to know he wasn’t alone. Wesley would have been horrified by it all, by the thought of Nora getting fucked by two men at once. He would have considered it, as Marie-Laure said, a violation, something disgusting and vile that only women in pornos allowed men to do to them. But that wasn’t why she hadn’t told him any of these stories. They were too private, too special, too sacred, to share even with him.

Nora sighed heavily and silently prayed Kingsley and Søren would forgive her.

“Søren and Kingsley didn’t get the wine. They had gone to another room and fucked. I knew it when they came back to bed.”

“My brother told you?”

“No.”

“My husband told you?”

“No.”

“Who told you, then?”

“The bruises told me.”

24

THE KNIGHT

Wesley would have rather died than do what he was about to do. But spending a day with Laila made it impossible to ignore for one minute longer the nagging of his conscience. Kingsley was gone, thank God, and so he wouldn’t have to deal with that guy hanging around making snide comments the entire time Wes was attempting to do the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

Laila had gone to her room as soon as they’d arrived back at the house. He should probably check on her later. The cut on her face might need to be cleaned again, and in this house with a married Welsh woman, a French pimp and a sadist priest, Laila was like a gift from God sent to keep him sane and focused on something other than all the horrible scenarios running through his mind: Nora tied up in that house, a madwoman keeping her captive, men with guns who would do anything they were ordered to. Wes buried the thoughts under other concerns. They all needed to eat. He could cook something. That was something he could actually do. He could call his parents and let them know everything was fine. Lie, in other words. He could pray like he’d been praying since the moment he’d woken up on the stable floor and found Nora gone.

He wandered through the second floor of the house and didn’t find what he was looking for. As he descended the stairs, he heard strains of music coming from a room he hadn’t entered before. Wes followed the music to a door. Opening it, he saw Søren sitting at a baby grand piano. Only a few candles illuminated the music room. No way was there even enough light for Søren to see the sheet music. But still he played with incredible ease, each note flawless. The sound hit the walls and echoed back, amplifying itself into infinity.

The piece ended and Søren closed the fallboard and picked up a wineglass from atop the piano.

“I won’t insult you by asking you how you are, Wesley.”

“Thank you,” Wes said, taking a seat in the window of the music room a few feet from where Søren sat on the piano bench. “But I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared out of my mind and trying not to be. I’m not succeeding at that.”

“None of us are. Myself included, if that gives you any comfort.”

“It does. A little.”

“There’s no shame in being afraid. Even Christ was afraid in the Garden of Gethsemene. He prayed that the cup of his crucifixion would be taken from him. And he was so scared he sweat blood. I keep checking my forehead.”

Wesley half laughed.

“She’d love this, you know. You and me alone in a room together talking,” Wes said, wishing Nora could be here to see this.

“She would certainly enjoy seeing both of us so discomfited.”

“When she’s back, we’ll all go out for a nice dinner together and she can watch us be all awkward and uncomfortable while she sits back and eats up every second.”

“A lovely thought...her being back. Dinner notwithstanding.”

“Kingsley...he’s going after her now, isn’t he?”

Søren nodded. “If he can. I told him that under no circumstances is he to do anything to risk his own life. If he can get her out without risking himself, he will try. Otherwise, I’m afraid he’ll come back empty-handed.”

“Are you more worried about him than her?”

“I am equally terrified for the both of them. Eleanor is a symbol of something Marie-Laure hates, a symbol that I moved on and found happiness with someone else. But Kingsley is her own brother, who she thinks betrayed her. She would be merciless to him if he were caught.”

“What’s she doing with Nora, then?”

“Marie-Laure is being merciless to me.”

“You’re not the only one who loves her, you know. I love her, too.”

“I know you do. And she loves you.”

Wesley’s eyes widened in the shock of hearing those words from Søren’s mouth.

“Don’t look so surprised, young man,” Søren said, almost smiling. “I’ve known how much she loves you for well over a year now.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

He inhaled and didn’t answer at first.

“Does it bother me that she loves you? No. God is love. I’m sure you’ve heard that somewhere. When someone loves someone else, they are acknowledging the God inside that person. It’s a spiritual act, loving someone. She sees God in you. So do I.”