The Original Sinners: The Red Years. Tiffany Reisz

did say ‘no’ and that awful Nora Sutherlin just wouldn’t listen.”

      Zach swallowed hard. He remembered his safe word, knew all he had to do was say it and Nora would stop touching him. He didn’t say it. Nora let go of him and grabbed his wrist. She brought his hand between her legs and pushed his thumb and forefinger into her. She was so warm inside Zach groaned aloud.

      “I’m wet,” Nora said. “And you’re hard. I’ve got an IUD, no STDs and nowhere I have to be for the rest of my life. I know exactly what Griffin told you Søren used to do to me. I was there, after all. So yeah, maybe I did beg Søren to stop beating me, maybe I did scream when he caned me, maybe I did cry out when he slapped me, and maybe I did beg him to not share me with King, maybe I did lie underneath him and cry while he fucked me in the middle of a room full of people, or yanked a fistful of my hair and forced me to go down on him at that very table we were sitting at half an hour ago. But I never said my safe word, the one thing I could have done to stop it. And I’ll give you one guess why I didn’t stop it.”

      Unable to stop himself, Zach pushed into her a little deeper, spread his fingers apart a little wider. Nora inhaled, her breath caught in the back of her throat. Zach’s free hand held her thigh where her stocking met her bare flesh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this painfully aroused.

      Zach met Nora’s eyes.

      “You didn’t want to stop it,” he said.

      Nora nodded at him. “You can be taught. Zach, I was never Søren’s victim. We were lovers, we were equals, and what we did together was a game we were both very good at playing. Some nights he would make me orgasm so hard my lower back would hurt the next day. When’s the last time you felt something that good?”

      “On the floor of your office,” Zach admitted.

      Nora’s eyes glowed bright black in the dark of the car. “You know, you’re the second man tonight who’s had his fingers inside me. Does that bother you?”

      Zach recalled Nora’s flushed face when she raced from the elevator once Søren finally let her go. She was so wet that he could hear it as he turned his hand.

      “No.”

      “There’s hope for you yet, Zachary Easton.” Nora leaned in again and put her mouth at his ear. Her breasts pressed close to his face. “I still remember what you taste like.”

      Every nerve in his body fired at once.

      Nora turned her head so her ear was now at his mouth.

      “I’m still waiting to hear that safe word,” she taunted. Zach didn’t answer. A tendril of her hair brushed his cheek. He didn’t speak; he wanted her to do exactly what she threatened. More than anything he wanted to have sex with the world’s most erotic woman in the world’s most erotic car in a dank, dirty New York City alley where anyone who wanted to could stop and watch.

      Nora met his eyes again. Zach pulled his fingers out of her and waited. She lowered herself until the tip of his arousal pressed lightly against her wet outer lips. He started to lift his hips, to press into her. Then he heard a click as Nora opened the driver’s side door and she stepped out. The cool night air rushed in and Zach struggled to button his jeans back up over his straining erection.

      “Better let me take over,” Nora said. “You don’t need to be driving my baby in your condition.”

      Zach took a few calming breaths before exiting the car. He walked around slowly to the passenger side and got in. Nora dropped into the driver’s side and turned the engine on.

      “You okay?” Nora asked as she backed onto the street and headed toward his apartment building.

      “Haven’t decided yet.”

      Nora turned onto his street.

      “I’m just following your rules. No fucking until the book’s done. I guess I should hurry up and get that book finished.”

      Zach rubbed his face, breathed through his hands. “Please do.”

      “Better give me my homework then. If we’re going to play again, I guess I’ve got to get some work done this week. And for some reason I get the feeling you may want to play again.”

      Zach could still feel her heat on his hand. He could hardly think or speak and she was talking about the book.

      “I’ll email you tomorrow morning…when I’m lucid.”

      “Lucidity’s vastly overrated. I shall await your email with bated breath.” Nora pulled in front of his building.

      Zach opened the door and stepped out. Once exposed to the cold night air his senses finally returned to him. He walked around to the driver’s side and Nora rolled the window down.

      “What was that you said to Søren tonight right before we left? It sounded like Italian,” Zach asked, curious about their cryptic exchange ever since he witnessed it.

      “Cloro al clero. It’s pretty common graffiti around the Vatican. It means ‘poison the clergy.’”

      Zach laughed appreciatively. He could agree with the sentiment.

      “Are you ever going to tell me what you were doing when you disappeared for over an hour tonight?” he asked.

      “Nope.”

      “Are you at least going to tell me if it was fun?”

      Nora looked at him and didn’t smile. But there was dark mirth shining in her eyes as if she knew a great joke that she wanted to tell him.

      “I’ll tell you this…I didn’t have sex with a man. And it was so much fun it oughta be illegal.” Zach took a step back as she revved the engine. She rolled up the window.

      Then she was gone.

      Zach stared after the car and felt Nora take a shard of himself away with her. It was his rule, his proclamation that they wouldn’t become lovers until the book was finished. But for a few moments he’d felt no guilt, and the world hadn’t ended.

      Zach entered his building and took the elevator up to his flat. He was out of his coat by the time he got to his door. He pulled off his shirt, yanked down his jeans and kicked his clothes into the corner of the room before crawling with the reluctance of a weary soldier into the bitter trench of his bed.

      Closing his weary eyes, Zach couldn’t stop himself from picturing Grace. Some nights she would stop his hands, desperate to undress him herself. Her brief flirtation with aggression over, she would turn timid as her fingers, earnest and nervous, unbuttoned his cuffs, his collar, slipping the shirt off his shoulders so slowly he would shiver. And she would look at him with such wonder, such desire that he, a married man, a graduate of dozens of beds, and so accustomed to the appreciative stares of women that they no longer registered as flattery, would find himself feeling suddenly shy. She looked at him as if she’d never seen his bare chest before, his uncovered arms, his naked stomach and back until he felt he had never been seen like that before and knew, likely, he never had. The next day he would yawn and stretch and stumble through the hours grateful he’d gotten a better offer than a mere good night’s sleep.

      Zach came hard on his hand and rolled over onto his stomach. God, he missed his wife.

      * * *

      Nora stood at the foot of her bed and stared at the black silk abyss before her. Like many of her characters she slept on black sheets. But unlike them, she did so for reasons more practical than seductive. She wrote in bed and often fell asleep with her pens uncapped and dripping. Wesley’s moving in over a year ago put a stop to any overnight guests. These days the only stains on these sheets were from ink.

      Nora pulled on her pajamas, grateful to be in comfortable clothes again. What a night…she’d been so stupid to take Zach with her to the Circle. It was a miracle they’d made it out without anyone telling Zach she wasn’t just a Domme, but a Dominatrix and that the Circle wasn’t where she played but where