home, Mom. She’s nice. She’s not like you think she is.”
“I think she’s a very dangerous woman. And I think you could get hurt if you spend any more time with her.”
Michael thought about Nora, how she lived so brazenly. Would he ever be as fearless as her? Michael remembered a few months ago he’d been lurking around the hallways after church, eavesdropping on Nora’s conversations. One of the resident old bats had been going on about the abomination of sodomy. Nora had patted the woman on the back and said, “If it’s an abomination, it’s because you’re doing it wrong. Bear down hard, then relax. It’ll fit better.” Then she’d breezed off, leaving the old ladies blushing and huffing. Michael had run into the bathroom and laughed his ass off in one of the stalls.
Fearless. He could do that.
“I like getting hurt,” he said.
His mother shook her head. “Don’t remind me.”
Michael started to turn and walk away. He felt as though he’d spent most of the past two years turning and walking away from his mom. He’d much rather run up to her and hug her than walk away from her yet again. But that didn’t seem to be an option anymore.
“I’m going to be gone this summer. I leave on Thursday. That’s okay, right?”
“Fine,” his mom said. He thought he heard a note of relief in her voice. “If that’s what you need to do. You’re going to be a camp counselor again?”
“Something like that,” he said. “I’m good on money and stuff. So you don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’ve been worried about you since the day you were born. Won’t stop now.”
Michael tried to laugh but the sound didn’t come out quite right. He started to leave.
“Michael?”
Slowly Michael turned around and faced his mother.
“You aren’t really going to camp, are you?”
“Mom, I—” Michael said and stopped.
“I don’t think I want to know what you’re doing this summer, do I?”
Michael weighed his words.
“No, probably not.”
Søren placed the first cut on her hip.
A shallow cut only an inch long, it bled out slowly. Nora’s blood welled up and slid in a thin line over her hip, drying on her skin before it reached the black sheets.
Second, Søren cut her stomach right at the edge of her rib cage.
“Talk to me, Eleanor,” Søren ordered as he made a third cut, only a half inch long, on her chest.
“Ow.” Nora laughed a little. Søren looked down at her, love and desire burned in his eyes.
“It will hurt less if you talk to me. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we haven’t done this in a long time, sir.”
The last time they’d done blood-play was over a year ago, just two weeks after she’d returned to him. That night they’d recommitted themselves to each other—Nora pledging to belong to him again, and him promising that he would do everything in his power to make her happy and keep her safe. Like their first night as lovers fourteen years ago, blood was spilled that night, her blood. Their very first night together, the blood of her torn hymen had stained his sheets; the night one year ago, the blood came from eighteen cuts all over her body. Eighteen … one cut for each year he’d known her, one cut for each year he’d loved her.
“It’s for the best we do this rarely,” he said, gently caressing the side of her face with the back of his hand. Søren seemed perfectly calm right now, his face a mask of utter serenity. But she knew him like no one else did. Under the surface of his placid demeanor rippled dark, dangerous and barely restrained desires.
Nora looked down as Søren brought the blade just underneath her right breast and made a deliberate cut.
“You love this,” she said and Søren solemnly nodded. “We could do this more often if you wanted, sir.”
“Of course we could,” he said simply, and Nora smiled even as the eye-watering pain from the stinging, burning cuts bit into her. They could and would engage in blood-play every day if he decreed it so. “But we both do have to work.”
Søren smiled down at her and she grinned through her tears.
“Work? What is that again?” Since quitting her other job as a dominatrix, Nora worked only as a writer these days. A job that required little more than drinking coffee and tea and wearing pajamas until four in the afternoon didn’t really qualify as work to her. Søren, on the other hand, gave his life to the church. Up nearly every morning at five to run, he was in his office at Sacred Heart by seven at the latest. He heard confessions, visited the sick and dying, counseled married couples, performed weddings, christenings, baptisms, funerals and celebrated Mass four to eight times a week…. Nora knew if it came out that she and Søren were lovers, it wouldn’t be the sex that caused the greatest scandal. Søren was himself nearly an object of worship at Sacred Heart and within the diocese. If the Church discovered he was a sadist who beat women, even consensually, he would be expelled from the priesthood. Søren would not give her up, would not repent and would never agree that their relationship was a sin. And so the Church would excommunicate him. Few outside the Catholic Church understood what excommunication meant.
It wasn’t just being fired or kicked out of the church. Søren would be denied the sacraments, shunned and condemned.
“I’m scared, sir,” she finally admitted.
“Do we need to stop?”
She shook her head. “Not of this. Of what might happen. What about Michael? What if it gets out what he is? What if they learn about The 8th Circle?” Nora didn’t even want to think about how bad it could get if the press found out about them. Kingsley Edge guarded the members of their underground community with terrifying tenacity. But not even he could stop the sharks once the blood was in the water. A Catholic priest and an erotica writer who’d belonged to him in one way or another since she was fifteen … a teenage boy who’d attempted suicide over his sexual orientation and who had lost his virginity to Nora during a ritualized S&M scene … and The 8th Circle, where everyone from a high-level FBI agent to the governor’s stepdaughter were key-carrying members. If the world found out about her and Søren, there would be no end to the digging. The 8th Circle, named for the level of Dante’s Inferno where dwelled those who abused their power, would become a real hell for those who thought they had found the one safe place where they could be themselves.
“Eleanor, what did I promise you the last time we did this?”
Nora inhaled and bit her bottom lip.
“You promised you would keep me safe.”
“I meant it. I will handle this, and nothing bad will happen to you or Michael.”
The fifth cut was short and sharp and fell along the edge of her collarbone.
Søren set the knife aside and spread her legs. He kissed her inner thigh; the kiss moved higher until he touched her clitoris with his lips and opened her with his tongue. Blood-play made Søren even more amorous than usual. As blood welled up and dried on her skin, Nora felt her climax building hard and deep within her. Søren knew her body like no lover ever had or ever would.
“Permission to come?” she asked and knew Søren wouldn’t deny her, not tonight. The orgasm, like the hot bath, had a utilitarian purpose. The more endorphins flooding her system, the more pain she could take.
“Come,” Søren ordered as he slid a finger into her and pushed into the front wall of her vagina. As Nora’s orgasm waxed, Søren picked up the small knife again and made a quick slash to her thigh. She flinched but