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Nora coughed a hint.
“Thank you…mistress.”
21
S?ren brought Zach to another hallway—this one strangely silent and empty. Although quiet, it was far more colorful and elaborate than the other more nondescript hallways and rooms S?ren had shown him. Here every door was decorated—some with extravagant S&M scenes, some with startling graffiti. One door had a faux coat of arms painted on it—a unicorn fellating a griffin. Zach had no doubt whose room that was. They stopped before a door painted only with words.
“‘We’re all mad here,’” Zach read the famous Alice in Wonderland quote aloud that was scrawled across the door in Gothic lettering. “I think she’s right.”
“There is a method to our madness. Sadomasochism was once considered a mental illness. Now for many psychologists it is an object of study rather than derision. One in ten people are said to have experimented with S&M…although I would be surprised if the number were not higher.”
“I would be in that nine.”
“I’m sure that will change. Eleanor is nothing if not persuasive.” S?ren smiled at him with a smile Zach knew women must find charming but he found alarming.
“She won’t talk me into this.” Zach waved his hand at the ominously closed doors.
“Everyone should try it at least once. S&M has a curious effect on those who practice it.” S?ren sounded professorial now. “The Dominant undergoes a surge of testosterone while the submissive experiences a euphoria that has been likened to the effects of opiates. But for most of us the physical sensations are the least of why we do this.”
“Why do you do it?”
S?ren paused and seemed to consider the question.
“To call what Eleanor and I had ‘bliss’ would insult it. Owning her, dominating her, training her to react to the slightest command, the merest crook of my finger, the barest change in my tone, and to love someone so much that anything less than complete and utter possession is unacceptable…that is the purest joy.”
“But she left you,” Zach reminded him.
“Disobedience is as much a proof of authority as obedience. You cannot be a rebel without acknowledging a government. You cannot be a heretic until you are first a believer. And I could leave the priesthood, but I would still be a priest. The church would endure with or without me. Some vows are merely promises. But some are sacraments. Like marriage,” S?ren added and met his eyes for a moment. “Yes, she did leave me, and I let her go. But she will return. Still, I imagine it isn’t simply the mix of pleasure and pain that you find disturbing, is it?”
“The hierarchy is disturbing. Women being enslaved to men. Women have fought against such treatment for hundreds of years and yet here—”
“Yet here they willingly and bravely choose to explore those aspects of their sexuality that are less than socially acceptable. Another study revealed that a shockingly high percentage of women have rape fantasies. What is the likelihood that your wife is in that minority that has not?”
“I won’t discuss my wife’s fantasies with you.”
“Did you ever discuss them with her? Forgive me. You don’t have to answer that,” S?ren said in a way that was both offhanded and pointed. Zach knew S?ren wasn’t asking for forgiveness at all. “Yes, we have a power structure here. Some require a power structure as they are born submissives. Others require a power structure as they are born subversives.”
“Which is Nora?”
“Which is she?” S?ren smiled. “Shortly after Eleanor and I became lovers I introduced her to the blindfold. She loathed it at first.”
“Why?” Zach asked.
“I’m sure it is nearly impossible for you to imagine a virginal Eleanor, but once she was actually both timid and shy. The loss of her sight during our interludes terrified her. So naturally I employed the blindfold often.”
“Naturally.”
“One evening I noticed something strange. Just before I blindfolded Eleanor she would close her eyes. It seemed counterintuitive. Surely someone so afraid of forced blindness would keep her eyes open to drink in every precious second of sight. Then I realized what she was doing. By closing her eyes first she was choosing the darkness, blindfolding herself in a way, and subverting me with her very surrender. Astonishing. I had never been so proud of her. That’s what this place is. This is where we come to close our eyes.”
S?ren opened the door with the Alice in Wonderland quote. Zach let S?ren enter the dark room first. When a light appeared Zach stepped inside. S?ren stood by a massive bed piled high with red and gold linens. He had an oil lamp in his hand. The lamp sent lambent light into every corner of the room. It seemed to be only a bedroom, albeit one festooned like a French bordello.
“Decadent, isn’t it? Eleanor has never learned the meaning of subtle. Perhaps you could help her with that.”
“So Nora has her own room here?”
“Yes. The top seven Dominants are given their own quarters for personal use. As you can see,” S?ren said, bending down and picking up a white lace garter off the floor and laying it on the rumpled bed, “she has been making use of it.”
Zach looked at the discarded lingerie and grinned.
“White…I wouldn’t have expected it of Nora. She’s always in red or black.”
“I doubt it belongs to Eleanor,” S?ren said.
“Then why—” Zach began and stopped before he said something foolish. Of course, Nora had been with another woman. He tried to be bothered by the fact, but the images that tiny slip of lace brought to mind evoked feelings distinctly different from disgust.
“You appear troubled, Zachary. What is it?” S?ren asked, and Zach did not trust the note of concern in the priest’s voice.
“She joked about threesomes with other women. I suppose it wasn’t a joke.”
S?ren gave him a dark look.
“Eleanor is always joking. Eleanor is never joking. Best to learn that as soon as possible. Care to see the rest of the suite?”
“Suite?”
“Eleanor’s earned very posh accommodations here.”
S?ren raised the oil lamp to shine a light on a door to the left of the massive bed.
“How does one become a top Dominant here?” Zach asked as he walked around the bed to the door. As soon as S?ren’s back was turned, Zach took the white garter off the bed and shoved it in his pocket.
“The same way anyone else would ascend to the heights of her chosen field.” S?ren opened the door. “Practice.”
Zach inhaled sharply as he entered the second room of Nora’s suite.
“Good God,” he breathed. In the center of the room stood a massive wooden X. Leather thongs were attached to the tops and bottoms of the wood planks—a large-scale cross of her very own. Zach had no doubt what Nora used it for. He’d seen the pit, seen a man lashed to it and beaten until he came.
Eyes wide with shock, Zach turned his attention to the walls. On hooks and racks, in rows of military precision hung whips, floggers, bamboo canes, crops…a hundred various instruments of torture. On a small table lay an assortment of spreader bars like the one Nora had in her toy bag at home. He opened a drawer and found cuffs and collars, leashes and leads. In addition to the cross was a large examining table, the kind found in a doctor’s office. Except this one came equipped with four-point restraints.
S?ren’s voice came from over his shoulder.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
“No,” Zach said. “It’s appalling.”
“Really? Such a strong word to describe sensual activities shared between consenting adults.”
“Hurting people for pleasure? For sexual pleasure?”
“Holding Eleanor down while she struggled underneath me and begged me to stop…that was beauty.”
“Rape isn’t beautiful.”
“But you see, it wasn’t rape,” S?ren said, his tone light and conversational. “She enjoyed the struggle, enjoyed feeling overpowered and taken. I take rape very seriously, Zachary. My mother was a rape victim.”
Zach turned and looked at S?ren in shocked sympathy. His distrust of the man wavered.
“I’m sorry,” he said with sincerity. “That must have been traumatic. For you and her.”
“It was.”
“May I ask how old you were when it happened?” Zach asked, trying to find the origin of S?ren’s violent sexual proclivities.
“It happened roughly nine months before I was born. But that is neither here nor there. You seem uncomfortable with women fully owning their sexuality.”
“That isn’t true. Women have as much right to their bodies and desires as men. Nora accuses me of being a stuffy Englishman and she isn’t far off the mark. But I am no prude.”
“You say that and yet the thought of a woman allowing herself to be violated appalls you.”
“Of course it does. There are limits to what’s healthy.”
“Healthy…interesting word choice. Are you much familiar with the disease leprosy?”
Zach furrowed his brow at the odd question.
“No more so than the next man, I suppose.”
“I mention it for a reason.” S?ren began to make a slow circuit of the room. “During my summers at seminary I worked in a leprosy camp in India. There is a disturbing amount of misinformation about the disease. The idea that it is the disease that infects the limbs and causes them to rot and fall off? Pure myth. Leprosy, Hansen’s disease as it should be called, is a disease of the nerves. It destroys the nerves that experience pain. And once the ability to feel pain is gone, then it is a simple matter to burn the hand off while cooking dinner over an open fire, or to step on a small nail and not realize it until a doctor pulls it from a festering wound a week later. There were mornings,” S?ren said as he took a whip from its hook on the wall and examined it, “I awoke to the sound of screams. Without the capacity for pain it is all too easy to slumber in peace as a rat chews off your fingers in the night.”
“Pain is a necessary evil,” Zach said, fighting off the chills produced by S?ren’s hypnotic speech. “But still an evil.”
“Pain is a gift from God. It imparts understanding, wisdom. Pain is life. And here we give pain as freely as we give pleasure.”
Zach watched S?ren’s hand as he gripped the handle of the whip and coiled it neatly. Every movement the priest made was precise, his fingers as deft as an artist’s, his muscles lean and taut as a dancer. And on his face he wore an expression of quiet peace, of intelligent disinterest. A true believer, Zach could tell. But a believer in what? Words from Paradise Lost came to Zach’s mind—“Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven.” Somehow, Zach realized, Nora’s priest had found a way to do both.
“If pain is a sign of love,” Zach said as S?ren hung the whip on the wall once more, “then I must love a great deal.” He thought of Grace now, wondered what she would say if she knew where he was, what he was doing.
S?ren’s eyes found his and the look he gave Zach was one of the most profound compassion.
“I am certain that you do.”
Zach held the priest’s gaze as long as he could, but the moment grew too intimate and Zach turned away. A good priest, Griffin had called S?ren. He was certainly adept at inspiring confessions.
A mural adorned the fourth wall of the room. Zach picked up the oil lamp and threw light against the familiar monster on the wall.
“The lesson of the Jabberwocky,” Zach said, studying its line and angles. S?ren came to stand at his side. “I saw a book at Nora’s. The Jabberwocky. You, I presume it was you, wrote, ‘Never forget the lesson of the Jabberwocky’ inside it. But it’s a nonsense poem. It has no lesson.”
“But it does,” S?ren countered. “A handsome prince fights a terrible, beautiful dragon and slays him then carries the head home strapped to his saddle. The lesson is obvious. When one is a monster, one does well to beware knights in shining armor. A good lesson for Eleanor.”
Zach heard the meaning behind S?ren’s words. “Nora is not a monster. She’s not perfect obviously. But she’s a good person, and to call her a monster is ridiculous.”
“You know her that well, do you?” S?ren asked, turning to face him full-on. “Before tonight she scared you, didn’t she? Her fearlessness, her brazenness, I’m sure it’s terrifying at first. Foreign to those who lead the proverbial life of quiet desperation as I imagine you do. She scared you with the sheer force of her life and being. But now you look around and think her courage is merely a byproduct of her damage. You imagine I abused her, changed her. And you would save her, as Wesley imagines he can? You would be her knight in shining armor? Yes, before you feared her and now you pity her. I assure you, Zachary, you were right the first time.”
* * *
This was her favorite part.
Nora ordered Michael to lie on his back in the middle of the bed. She pulled out from under the bed a silver spreader bar. She laid the bar, a length of rope and a pair of scissors on the bed next to Michael’s hip. She lit three candles and let them burn on the table next to the bed.
“Don’t be scared, angel,” she said. “You are completely safe here. You have your safe word. You can stop this at any time. You don’t have to do anything but lie there and take what I give you. Do you understand?”
Michael eyed the scissors warily. He took a deep breath.
“Yes, mistress. I understand.”
Nora took two snap hooks and locked Michael’s ankles to each end of the bar. She threaded rope through the buckle on his ankle cuffs, tied the cuff to the bedpost and neatly snipped off the excess rope. She came to the head of the bed and took each of Michael’s wrists in her hands. She spread him out like an X and tied him down. He could move neither his hands nor his feet. She bent and bit the soft skin above his wrist—a shiver passed through his body. His eyes looked to the ceiling and stared placidly at nothing. Nora knew that look, had worn it herself a thousand nights in S?ren’s bed.
“Michael, stay with me.”
“I’m here.” His eyes focused again on her face. She knew how easy it was to disappear into the moment. But she wanted him to remember it, to be with her every step of the way.
“Good boy. How do you feel?”
Michael tugged on his bonds but not in a struggle. He seemed simply to take pleasure in their existence.
“Free,” he said and she knew exactly what he meant.
Nora slipped off the bed and unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the floor. She crawled back onto the bed and sat next to Michael’s hips. She ran her hands over his skin…smooth and cool to the touch. She caressed his face, stroked his arms and lingered along his inner thighs.
Finally, when it seemed he could wait no longer, she straddled his hips, took him in her hand and guided him inside her.
Michael arched underneath her as she wrapped herself around him. She watched as his eyes closed in shocked wonder and opened again darkened with knowledge. He gasped as she pushed and clenched her muscles tight around him. She bent over, dipping her mouth to his, his lips eager and artless and tasting of snow. She remembered the last kiss S?ren gave her before he penetrated her the first time. Such pleasure coupled with such pain…the pain, like the flash of a camera, rendering the moment forever fixed in her mind. Michael would remember this moment, too. She would make sure of it.
She pushed against him again and let herself enjoy his body inside hers. Closing her eyes for a moment, she imagined someone else under her, inside her, someone with blond hair instead of black, someone with brown eyes instead of silver…Nora felt her climax start to build and she pushed it back and opened her eyes.
Rising up, she reached for the candle burning beside the bed. She brought it to her carefully, not letting any of the wax drop. Michael’s eyes followed the glowing wick as Nora held it over the center of his panting chest.
“And now how do you feel?” she asked, rocking her hips to evoke another gasp.
Michael turned his gaze from the candle to her face. He wore an expression of fearful trust, of trusting fear.
“Safe,” he said.
Nora smiled down at him and let the scalding wax fall.
* * *
S?ren doused Nora’s oil lamp and shut the door behind them. Zach followed Nora’s priest down another set of stairs and hallways. He stopped in front of one of the doors but did not move to open it. They faced each other across an invisible threshold.
