“I see.”

“I’m a Switch,” she said. “Maybe not even a Switch. Maybe I’m a Dominant and it took me this long to figure it out. But I’m not a sub. If I know anything, I know that.”

“Then what, pray tell, have we been doing together for the past six years?”

“I love submitting to you. Most of the time. Tonight, I hate it. I loved dominating Kingsley. I want to do it again. I want to do it with other people. I want to have a submissive of my own—maybe Kingsley if he’ll let me—and I want to hurt him as much as I can, as often as I can and as hard as I can.”

She’d said the words to hurt Søren but as she spoke them, she knew them to be the truth.

They stared at each other in silence. Finally Søren spoke.

“No,” he said.

“No, what?’

“You don’t have my permission to top Kingsley again.”

“Your permission? I don’t remember asking your permission to top Kingsley.”

“You didn’t ask. If you had I would have said no. I’m saying it now. No.”

“Why not? You don’t want him anymore. Why can’t I have him?”

“Do not presume to tell me how I feel about Kingsley, Eleanor.”

“Fine, then I’ll tell you how I feel about Kingsley. I want to top him as often as I can. I’m not a submissive. I’m a switch.”

Then he took from her hand the antique wooden riding crop with the carved bone handle and broke it into three pieces.

“Also,” he said as he threw one broken piece across the room, flinging it like a newsboy tossing the morning paper. “Entirely.” He threw the second piece. “Immaterial.”

The wooden fragments of the riding crop hit the wall with a heinous crack and clattered to the floor.

A sound came out of Elle’s mouth. A sort of animal whimper like the sound she’d once heard a dog make after being hit by a car.

On leaden feet she walked over to the pile of now-worthless wood and dropped to her knees. One by one she picked up the pieces.

“You bastard,” she said, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. “That was a gift from Kingsley to me.”

“You’re no longer allowed to have any contact with Kingsley. Not until I say you may.”

“He gave this to me. It was mine. Not yours.”

“Everything that is yours is mine,” Søren said. “I own you. Your body is mine. Your heart is mine. Your future is mine. Your decisions are mine. Your life is mine. You are mine.”

She didn’t think she could do it. She didn’t think she had the strength to stand up one more time. But somewhere she found the strength and she came to her feet a final time.

“I am mine.”

“What did you say to me?” Søren asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

“I am mine,” she said again, gathering the broken pieces of her riding crop to her chest. She turned her back to him and started to walk away.

“Where are you going?” Søren called out.

Eleanor didn’t answer. She kept walking. She walked down the hallway and down the stairs. She found her coat and her purse and walked to the back door.

“Eleanor, where do you think you’re going?” Søren asked, his tone chiding. You’re not leaving, his tone said. You and I both know you aren’t actually leaving. “Eleanor, come back here this instant.”

At the door she stopped and turned around. She looked at Søren and spoke one final word.

“Jabberwocky.”

30

Upstate New York

ELLE LOOKED AT Kyrie who had tears on her face.

“Then I left,” Elle said. Three little words to sum up the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life. “After I safed-out, I got into the car, and I drove away. I shouldn’t have been driving, not then. And not with all the pain I was in. But I did it. I left him.”

Kyrie didn’t speak. Elle reached out and brushed the tears off Kyrie’s face with her hand. Elle’s throat was tight, painfully constricted. But she had no tears, none. She’d cried them all out on the floor of the bathroom when she told Søren what had happened. She had no tears left for herself or him.

“Why are you crying?” Elle asked, smiling at Kyrie. “I’m the one who left him.”

“He broke your riding crop,” Kyrie said, gazing down on the three pieces of the broken twig on the blanket.

Elle reached out and grazed them with her fingertips.

“It would have hurt less had he broken my own body into three pieces,” Elle said. With each snap of the wood as he broke the crop, Elle had felt something snapping inside her. As he’d thrown the pieces across his bedroom, she’d felt as if he was throwing her against the wall, throwing her away.

“You did the right thing, leaving him,” Kyrie said.

“I know. But knowing it doesn’t make it any easier. You’d think it would.” Elle took a long ragged breath. “I used to think I wanted to marry Søren. I mean, I did want to marry him. When I was sixteen and that was the only thing I knew you were supposed to do with someone you’d fallen in love with—get married, have babies. I got older and my dreams changed. He was always in them, though. And in my dreams, he was always a priest. Because he is a priest. That’s not what he is. That’s who he is. And a good priest, too. I couldn’t let him give up who he is for me.”