The Original Sinners: The Red Years. Tiffany Reisz

he ordered, and Nora started to growl. Arrogant son of a bitch.

      He never said anything about not swearing in her mind. Just that she could never curse out loud.

      Søren put a finger over her lips.

      “No growling. Begging.”

      Clenching and unclenching her jaw, Nora took a deep breath.

      “Please, sir, will you let me go so I can drive my as—bottom home, take a shower, eat breakfast for once this week, throw on some clothes and drive back to church so I can sit in my pew looking prim and proper all the while imagining you naked as you’re giving some homily on sin and how, shockingly, God’s against it? Pretty please with you on top?”

      Søren slapped the back of her thigh hard enough she yelped. But still he reached up and unknotted the black silk rope from her ankle. With obvious reluctance, he withdrew from her and rolled onto his side.

      Now free, Nora started to crawl out of his bed.

      Søren propped his head on his hand and stretched languidly across his white sheets. She wasn’t going to look at him. If she looked at Søren, she’d crawl right back to him.

      “In a hurry, little one?”

      “To leave you? No. To not be late for Mass and earn yet another beating this week? Yes.” Søren caressed the back of her calf and Nora turned back to stare daggers at him. “Are you trying to make me late … sir?”

      Sighing, Søren pulled his hand away from her. It wasn’t fair. The rectory stood all of two minutes’ walk from the church; being male and not having to worry about what outfit to wear, Søren could get ready in ten minutes.

      “A vicious accusation, Eleanor. Of course I would never try to make you late. You are a role model for the young people in the church after all.”

      Snorting a laugh, Nora started picking up her clothes. She pulled her shirt off the top of the bedpost she been tied to last night while Søren had flogged her senseless. Her skirt lay in a crumpled heap on the floor where it had landed after Søren unzipped it and let it fall before bending her over his bed and strapping her ankles to a spreader bar. Somewhere under his bed she found her bra, and her underwear was at home in a drawer. She rarely bothered with underwear around Søren—counterproductive really.

      “A role model? Nora Sutherlin—erotica writer, ex-dominatrix. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She held out her hand to shake. Søren only looked at it and raised his eyebrow at her.

      “You’re a role model to Michael. He adores you.”

      “But Michael’s one of us, sir.” She smiled at the memory of Søren’s anniversary gift to her last year: the virginity of possibly the prettiest teenage boy in the known world. Pretty, kinky and unfortunately deeply troubled. “Of course he’s got a soft spot for me. Or a wet spot. Anyway, none of those vanilla twerps at church need to look up to me.”

      Nora shoved her feet into her shoes as Søren got out of bed. Her heart pounded at the sight of all six feet four inches of his perfectly sculpted, unashamedly naked body coming toward her. No one watching him now would ever believe Søren was forty-seven years old. And no one seeing them last night and this morning as he beat her and fucked her repeatedly in a variety of delightfully degrading positions would have dreamed he was one of the most respected Catholic priests in all of New England.

      “You give them hope that one can be an adult Catholic without being conventional or condescending.”

      “You’re trying to say the kids think I’m cool, aren’t you?”

      “My sentiments exactly.”

      She turned her face up to him for a quick goodbye kiss. Instead he bent down and kissed her long and slow … deeply, possessively. No one had ever kissed her the way Søren did, as though he was inside her body even when he was only inside her mouth. After nearly five minutes of pure passionate kissing, Søren finally pulled back.

      “Eleanor, you really should stop dawdling.” His steel-gray eyes glinted wickedly.

      Nora glared at him. “You bas—” Nora began, and Søren glared at her. This “no swearing on Sundays” thing was going to kill her. But she would do it come heck or high water. “Bastion of evil intentions. You just stole five minutes by kissing me. God Almighty.”

      “Young lady, if you don’t stop using the Lord’s name in vain, I’m going to reintroduce caning into our relationship. Are you really complaining that I kissed you?”

      “Yes. You’re cheating. You want me to be late so you’ll have an excuse to beat me.”

      “As if I need an excuse.” Søren smiled at her, and she was torn between the twin impulses to either slap him or kiss him again.

      “I’m gone. Goodbye. I love you, I hate you, I love you. I’ll see you at eleven, and I’ll try very hard to listen to your homily this morning instead of having flashbacks from last night. But no promises.”

      Nora headed for the door.

      “Eleanor … forgetting something?”

      Nora spun on her heel and came back to him. Reaching up she wrapped her arms around his neck.

      “Am I, sir?”

      He bent to kiss her again.

      “The bed.”

      Nora rolled her eyes. She pulled away from him and quickly made his bed, fluffing his pillows with near-hurricane force.

      “There, sir. Happy now?”

      Søren pulled her to him and ran his fingers over her cheek.

      “You’re here. Of course I am.”

      Nora sighed at his words and his touch. In the years she and Søren had spent together—those ten beautiful years in his collar before the incident, until she’d left him—they usually spent two or three nights a week together at the most. Then, after five years apart, she’d come back to him, and since returning, she spent nearly every free moment she could with him—at the rectory, at their friend Kingsley’s Manhattan town house or at The 8th Circle, the infamous underground S&M club where Søren was practically worshipped. She hated being at home alone these days. The house seemed too big, too empty, too quiet.

      Søren’s hands left her face and reached around her neck. She heard a click, felt something give way, and Søren removed her white leather collar. As always, the moment her collar came off her neck, she felt something tighten around her heart. Søren opened the rosewood box that sat on his bedside table, took out his Roman collar and replaced it with Nora’s collar.