“Were you angry at him?” Kyrie asked. A good question, she had to admit. Elle wished she had a good answer. She wished she’d been angry at him. That would have been healthier than blaming herself. But she’d given him permission, and he’d taken her at her word. Who was to blame? Maybe nobody.

“Back then I was only mad at myself for forgetting my safe word. And I was ashamed. Which was a foreign feeling for me that day. I felt so stupid. I had one job as his submissive—say my safe word if and when I wanted the scene to stop. That would have stopped it. One word, and I couldn’t even do that right. It took me a few weeks to get over that feeling. Søren, he was more careful with me after. And when we had anal sex the second time about a month later, it was amazing. Like the best sex we’d ever had. I think he was trying to make up for what happened in the shower. That morning in the shower, I think maybe...”

“What?” Kyrie asked.

Elle smiled and remembered the story Kingsley had told her about his first time with Søren on the forest floor. He fucked the life out of me, Elle. Every other time we used lube but that night, there was only blood. My blood. And I hope God is as understanding as you two like to tell me He is, because if I get to Heaven and God wants to wipe my memory of the night and take away the blood and the pain, I’ll turn on my heel and walk straight into Hell just to keep the memory.

“Søren had one other lover before me, a hard-core masochist. I think Søren forgot who he was with for a second. If so, he never forgot again. And I never forgot, either. But that didn’t stop me from whispering my safe word to myself over and over again for the next two weeks until it was the only word I knew. At night before bed, when I woke up the next morning, before lunch, after lunch and into my coffee. It’s a miracle I didn’t introduce myself to people that way by mistake. ‘Hi, I’m Jabberwocky, nice to meet you.’”

“Why did you pick that word?”

“I loved Lewis Carroll’s books as a kid. So did Søren. It was something we had in common, and if you compare his childhood to mine, you’d see how crazy it was we had anything in common at all. I loved the books because I thought they were funny. But he... When Søren was five years old, his father sent him to England to live with relatives and go to boarding school. He said he loved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass because he wanted to believe there was another world out there he could get to by stepping through a mirror or falling down a rabbit hole. But he didn’t want a Wonderland with Mad Hatters and March Hares. He wanted to see his mother again, and he didn’t know how to find her. He’d walk past a mirror and catch a glimpse of his own blond hair and he would...he’d think for a second it was her waiting just around the corner of the world inside the mirror.”

Elle closed her eyes and let herself love the lonely little boy Søren had been once upon a time.

“So Jabberwocky was my safe word because it meant something to both of us,” Elle said, clearing the knot from her throat with a cough.

“Did you ever use it?”

“Once more,” Elle said. “The night I left Søren once and for all. But that’s a longer story than this one and you need to get back to your room. It’s almost 3:00 a.m. You have to get up soon.”

“I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you all night.”

“I know,” Elle said, kissing Kyrie on top of her head. “I know that feeling. But if you want another night with me, we can’t get caught.”

With obvious reluctance, Kyrie rolled up. Elle saw her wince.

“How are you?” she asked Kyrie. “Are you sore?”

“Sore,” she said, nodding. “And happy. Are you happy?”

“I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.”

“I’m going to be thinking about you...what we did, all day tomorrow.”

“Me, too,” Elle said, tying a knot in the cord of Kyrie’s white robe. “All tomorrow and the day after and the day after...”

“We can do it again, right?”

“Yes, definitely. But we’ll wait a couple days until you’re healed. Take warm baths. That’s an order.”

Kyrie grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Kiss me good-night. That’s another order.”

Kyrie bent down and kissed Elle on the mouth. It should have been a quick kiss but it lasted far too long and yet ended all too soon.

“Good night, my dove,” Elle said, brushing Kyrie’s hair over her shoulder. “Sleep well.”

She started for the door but stopped and turned back.

“You used your safe word the night you left him?” Kyrie asked.

“I did.”

“Was what he did to you that night...was it worse than what he did to you in the shower?”

Was it worse? The night she’d left him Søren hadn’t laid a hand on her. He hadn’t hit her, hadn’t touched her and didn’t fuck her in any way.

Elle glanced away, let herself remember what had happened, forced herself to forget.

“Much worse.”

25

Haiti

“ARE YOU OUT of your Haitian mind?” Kingsley demanded, to which Juliette had a cruel retort.

“Are you out of your French courage?”

“I’m half-American.”

“I thought Americans were supposed to be brave, always running off to play war.”