“Is that why you’re making me do it? To embarrass me?”

“No,” Elle said. “I think it’s sexy. There’s nothing embarrassing about a girl touching her own body.”

She gave Kyrie one more kiss on the lips, then a kiss on each of her nipples. She watched for a moment as Kyrie’s middle and index fingers found her clitoris and stroked it.

Elle picked up her makeshift cane and flicked Kyrie on the smooth skin above her knee. Kyrie flinched.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Elle asked, smiling.

“I can’t believe a little thing like that can cause so much pain.”

“Canes are vicious bitches,” Elle said.

“I was talking about you.”

Elle laughed. “I’m a vicious little bitch, too.”

Kyrie closed her eyes and Elle silently counted to ten. Every ten seconds she would strike Kyrie somewhere on her thighs. She worked her way up the leg and back down again. Kyrie continued stroking herself, kneading her own clitoris until she panted.

As Elle hurt her, she felt herself falling into a place of deep tranquility and calm. Everything outside the chapel ceased to exist. And all that mattered in the world was the world in front of her, this beautiful naked girl who’d given Elle her body.

Along with the tranquility, Elle felt something else. Power. Another human being had given up control of her body to Elle, had put her life into Elle’s hands. Elle cherished that trust. It honored her and aroused her. Was this what Søren felt with her? Did he miss feeling it now that she was gone?

Eight...nine...ten.

Elle hit Kyrie again. She could see angry red welts on Kyrie’s pale flesh. Elle smiled at them, loving the sight of them, knowing she’d given them to Kyrie and they wouldn’t fade for at least a day or more.

Kyrie’s breathing grew more labored. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly. She let out a soft cry, music to Elle’s ears. Her pain and her pleasure sounded the same to Elle’s ears—like music.

Her narrow hips rose an inch off the blanket and pulsed upward. Elle waited and watched. At the moment Kyrie inhaled hard, Elle struck her repeatedly while her orgasm washed over her. She collapsed back on the blanket with a sigh and a laugh.

“That’s my good little girl,” Elle said, stretching out at Kyrie’s side and stroking her face.

“That was really strong,” Kyrie said.

“Pain will do that,” Elle said. “I don’t know how or why, but it’s like putting nitrous oxide in a car engine. It’s a performance booster. Zero to sixty in five seconds flat.”

Kyrie laughed again and wrapped an arm around Elle’s neck.

“You’re explaining orgasms using car metaphors. You are the weirdest woman in the world,” Kyrie said. “No wonder I’m so crazy about you.”

“I might be crazy about you, too.” Elle slid her hand down Kyrie’s chest and stomach. “Especially this part of you.” She pushed two fingers into Kyrie and found her slick with her own wetness.

“That part of me is inordinately fond of you, as well.”

Kyrie opened her legs wide, and Elle massaged her inner muscles with two and then three fingers. She didn’t try to bring her to another climax again. She only wanted to touch, to explore, to feel. But it didn’t take long before Kyrie panted again and dug her fingers into Elle’s thigh. Elle lowered her head and sucked hard on Kyrie’s nipple. Soon she felt Kyrie’s vagina tighten and convulse around her hand with her second orgasm.

Elle pulled her fingers out and wiped the wetness off on the blanket.

“How was that?” she asked Kyrie, who slowly blinked her way back to awareness.

“I love orgasms. I say a prayer of thanks to God for them every day.”

“You say a prayer of thanks for orgasms?” Elle asked.

“Of course. I mean, they’re a gift from God, right? A woman doesn’t need to have an orgasm to get pregnant, right?”

“Right.”

“So if they have nothing to do with reproduction, then why do women have them?” Kyrie asked. She raised her hand and pointed a finger up at the ceiling, at the sky, where God lived. “Orgasms are God’s way of saying He’s sorry about periods and cramps.”

“Apology accepted,” Elle said.

Kyrie said, “Amen.”

Still laughing, Elle sat up and looked around the chapel. “This might be the weirdest prayer meeting ever held in here. Lord, we thank You for orgasms...”

“I don’t know. This place has been around for over a hundred years,” Kyrie said. “I’m sure we’re not the first people to use it for less than entirely angelic reasons.”

“You think other nuns have come out here for their liaisons?”

“Maybe,” Kyrie said. “And locals, maybe.”

“Can outsiders get in here?” Elle asked.

“Definitely. There’s a door. A secret door.”

“Where does it go?”

Kyrie sat up now and pulled her gown back on. “I’ll show you.”

She stood up and Elle followed her to what she’d thought was a storage room behind the prayer altar. But the door didn’t lead to a room. It led outside to a path in the woods. A long tall wooden fence stretched as far as the eye could see all the way from the chapel to the abbey in one direction and from the chapel to the edge of the convent’s acreage in the other.

Elle didn’t cross the threshold to the outside world. But she stared at it almost hungrily.