She stepped into the shower and in an instant she was in his arms. His mouth was on her mouth, on her neck, on her breasts. The hot water poured over them both. She reached up and slicked his hair back, marveling at how much darker the blond turned when wet.

“Did I say you could get out of bed?” he asked, biting her hard on the neck. She shuddered at the sting of his teeth on her tender skin. He pulled her hair hard enough to elicit a gasp. He bit her lips again between kisses, dug his fingers into the soft flesh of the small of her back.

“No, sir,” she said, smiling in her defiance. She felt the tip of his erection pressing against her belly.

“Did I say you could steal my water?” he asked, pinching her nipples to the point of pain.

“No, sir.” She pushed her hips against him, eager already to have him inside her. They’d never made love in the shower before, and she treasured all of their first times. First kiss, first touch, first time he beat her in his bedroom, first time he beat her in the living room and then took her on the floor by the fireplace...she wanted all their firsts and all their seconds and all their thirds and she couldn’t get them fast enough. “But what are you going to do about it?” she taunted. “No floggers in the shower. No whips, no toys. How are you going to punish me in here?”

And then he smiled. The smile scared her.

“Like this,” he said and pushed her face-first against the tile wall. “This is how.”

There was, in her memory, a split second of pause. And in that split second she’d had three distinct thoughts.

I know what he’s going to do to me.

I don’t want him to do it.

How do I stop it?

Before she could remember the answer to number three, he was inside her with one vicious thrust. She screamed into her arm as he penetrated her anally. It felt like a burning blade sliced her body in half from neck to knees. His mouth was at her ear and she heard his breath catch in ecstasy. Her pain was his pleasure, he’d told her. So surely now he experienced the greatest pleasure of his life as she had never known pain like this. It was without beginning and without end and for all she knew in her blind panic she would feel like this forever. He came inside her.

And then it was over.

He pulled out of her and kissed the back of her neck. She stood stock-still as he stepped out of the shower. Slowly she sank down onto the floor of the bathtub. Her arm bled from a small cut. Wide-eyed and without recognizing her own body, she wondered how the cut had got there, whose arm that was and why it was bleeding. Oh, it was her arm. Of course it was. And the cut came from her teeth. She’d been bracing herself against the wall and had bitten her own arm. Silly her.

“Eleanor? Are you staying in there all day?” Søren pulled back open the shower door and looked down at her sitting with her knees to her chest, her arm bleeding, the water beating off her like a storm she didn’t notice was happening.

She looked up at him.

“I forgot my safe word.”

* * *

Elle turned and looked at Kyrie, who was staring at her wide-eyed with horror.

“That’s it,” Elle said.

“What is?” Kyrie whispered the words.

“The way you’re looking at me now is exactly the way he looked at me when I told him I forgot my safe word. I had never seen that look on his face before. I didn’t think you could shock Søren. No, it wasn’t shock. It was horror.”

“I can believe it,” Kyrie breathed. “What did he do when he realized what happened?”

“He turned off the water and opened a towel. He held it open and waited. I got up and stepped into the towel. What a pair we must have made right then. He was already dressed—collar and everything. And here was this naked girl, soaking wet, wearing nothing but a white towel. He picked me up and carried me to his bedroom. He didn’t say anything, not a word. He dried me off and checked to make sure I wasn’t torn or bleeding. I wasn’t except for my arm. So he cleaned the cut on my arm and put a Band-Aid on it. I think...I think I laughed then—when he put the Band-Aid on. I asked him why he didn’t have Snoopy Band-Aids. Those were my favorite as a kid. I’d get so excited when I scraped my knees or elbows as a kid because then I had an excuse to cover myself in Snoopy Band-Aids. Anyway...” She paused and took a much-needed breath. “He dressed me in my underwear and one of his white T-shirts. And then he held me in his arms, in a chair. He held me and I held him. And we didn’t talk about what happened. And we didn’t need to talk about it. It never happened again.”

“Never?”

“Don’t get me wrong, he hurt me. A lot. But never like that again. And he always had my explicit consent before doing anything new. But even when you’ve given your consent, sometimes you still don’t know what you’re in for.”

“Sounds like joining a religious order. Before I got here...I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

“Søren said the young seminarians he knew were all so bright-eyed and happy—thrilled even—to take their vows of celibacy, to give up family life for God and the church. He said you could watch that light visibly fading year after year. Ten years into their priesthood, twenty years, and they were running on fumes, drinking heavily, cheating every chance they got, or worse. They didn’t know what they’d signed up for. Same with being a submissive. You go into it wide-eyed and then reality comes along and kicks you in the ass—sometimes literally.”