With one hand still inside her, Søren reached up and unknotted the ropes. He turned her and pressed her back to the bedpost. With an arm under her left knee, he lifted her leg, opening her up so he could explore inside her more easily. She felt nothing but pleasure as he probed her with two fingers, moving in and out of her slowly. Her wetness eased his passage as he pushed deep into all her hidden places. When he pushed a third finger into her, she winced.

“I know it hurts, Little One,” Søren whispered as he kissed her and pushed into the band of tissue at the entrance of her vagina. “Let me do this. It’ll be better this way.”

“Not with your fingers, please,” she begged.

“It will hurt less this way. I’ll have more control.”

She shook her head.

“Please …” she begged and Søren pressed his forehead to hers. “It’s how I dreamed of it. Please …”

“You do beg beautifully.”

“I’ll beg more if you want me to.” She wanted him to break her hymen not with his fingers but when he penetrated her the first time. It had to be that way. She needed it that way.

“You’ll beg for mercy when I’m inside you the first time.”

“I don’t want mercy. I want you.”

He kissed her mouth as he lowered her leg to the floor. The entire back of her body from her knees to her shoulders throbbed from the beating. Why did people flee from pain and avoid it like the plague? Yes, it hurt, but so did everything that mattered. Love hurt, life hurt, birth hurt, changing hurt, growing hurt. The dead didn’t hurt, only the living. She had never felt so alive.

Søren kissed her again, but only long enough to wet her lips. When Søren gripped the back of her neck, she had an idea of what might be coming next. It didn’t surprise her when he forced her onto her knees. She opened his pants and remembered that she’d fantasized about doing this to him since she was fifteen years old. But she wasn’t fifteen. She was twenty now. A grown woman. No reason to be nervous. He’d grown hard while beating her and she licked her lips in anticipation. Wrapping her mouth around him, she sucked deep, relishing the taste of him. Søren dug his hand into the back of her neck with bruising strength. From his lips escaped the slightest of groans. The sound of his pleasure emboldened Eleanor. She sucked harder, deeper, licked him from the base to the tip over and over again.

This was what she’d wanted since the day they met. She’d wanted to serve him, to kneel before him, to offer herself to be used by him. Every day he sacrificed himself on the altar of the Catholic Church—gave up his time, his wealth, his freedom. That she could give this one thing to him, the pleasure of using her, and she would give it with all her heart, body and soul.

She winced as Søren dug his fingers even deeper into her skin. She knew she’d have a black bruise from his fingers tomorrow.

“Stop,” he ordered and Eleanor sat back on her knees.

Søren cupped her chin and ran his thumb over her lips.

“I think you enjoyed that.”

She smiled up at him.

“I live to serve.”

“You do now.”

With his hand on her chin, he guided her off the floor and back onto her feet.

“Wait by the bed.”

Søren left her standing at the bedpost while he pulled the top sheet of the bed down. He took more rope and another set of cuffs and laid them on the bed.

As he prepared the bed, Eleanor stared at the wineglass on the table. She walked to it and drank the last few drops of wine. She took a step back and then another.

When Søren turned back to her she held the glass out in front of her.

“Eleanor?”

She dropped the glass and it shattered on the floor at her feet … her bare feet.

“Eleanor—”

Before he could order her to do otherwise, she took a step forward onto the broken glass.

“You said nothing pleases you more than someone who will bleed for you.” She took another step. The glass cut into her heel, into her toes. Søren inhaled sharply as she walked to him—bare feet on shattered glass. She hardly felt a thing. The only sign that glass had cut her were the bloody footprints she left behind her. She looked into Søren’s eyes. His pupils had widened hugely and his bare chest moved in shallow pants. She crossed the four feet to the bed.

“If it had been fire, I would have walked through fire,” she whispered.

“If it had been fire, I would have carried you through it.” He lifted her and laid her in the center of the bed.

She wound her arms around his neck and he dug his fingers deep into her hair, bending her body back, baring her neck. He kissed the hollow of her throat, bit her collarbone and shoulder. With his knees he forced her thighs apart. He grasped her clitoris between his thumb and forefinger and she flinched from the marriage of pain with pleasure. He pried the lips of her vagina wide open and hooked his fingers over her pubic bone, pushing the tips into that soft hollow an inch inside her. Low moans escaped her lips as he took possession of her body. The pain in her feet was long forgotten as her inner muscles pulsed around his fingers. Before she could come, however, he released her from his grasp and pushed her hard and fast onto her back. In seconds he had her wrists and ankles cuffed to the bedposts, and left her lying there as she breathed and waited and wanted. She closed her eyes as he returned to her, a wet cloth in his hand. He wiped blood and glass off her feet, a move so careful and tender she could scarcely believe that he was the same man who moments earlier had nearly ripped her open with his fingers.