скачать книгу бесплатно
“Why did you bring me down here?” Zach asked.
“I thought you needed to see what Eleanor is. You thought you knew her until tonight.”
“I do know her.”
“No, you merely think you know her. It’s one of her best tricks. She flirts, she teases, she confesses everything but reveals nothing. It’s the oldest magician’s trick—smoke and mirrors, misdirection. You are absolutely certain she’s here—” S?ren snapped his fingers at Zach’s right ear “—when all the while she’s right over here.”
Zach looked at S?ren’s right hand and saw the priest holding up his wallet.
“Nice trick.” Zach snatched his wallet and shoved it back into his pocket. “But I think I know Nora better than that.”
“Do you really? Tell me, what do you think her darkest secret is?”
“You,” Zach answered. “She was once lovers with a Catholic priest. I know that now and I couldn’t care less.”
“Me? Her darkest secret? Hardly. She keeps me a secret for my sake, not hers.”
“We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of. Everyone has a past.”
“Eleanor has a past, yes. But she has a present, too.”
Zach took a step forward and with more courage than he knew he had within him stared Nora’s priest down.
“You’re jealous,” Zach said.
“Am I?” The idea seemed to amuse him.
“Yes, because she’s found a life outside of you and away from here. She told me you want her back. But she won’t come back. She loved you once. But now you’re just a game she’s tired of playing.”
“I assure you the game has only begun.”
Zach didn’t back down.
“This game you’re playing with me is over. Show me anything you want to show me. Tell me all the horror stories you’ve got. But I know what Nora Sutherlin is.”
“Do you? What is she?”
“A writer.”
“Yes, she certainly is. And a very talented one. But a writer is not all she is, Zachary.”
“I don’t care about her private life. Whatever you say, she’s no monster.”
S?ren sighed and Zach saw something unexpected in the man’s eyes, something like sympathy.
“No, you are right. She is no monster,” S?ren said, turning his attention to the door. Zach followed the priest’s gaze. Unlike all the others the knob on this door was painted white and from it hung a familiar-looking riding crop—black with white braiding. And from within the room came a faint sound, a whimper of pain both poignant and plaintive like the cry of a child. Zach found S?ren’s eyes on him. “But she is no saint, either.”
22
Zach heaved a sigh of relief when they returned to the bar at the end of his tour of the 8th Circle. S?ren led him to a table elevated on a platform at the corner of the room farthest from the balcony. Clearly it was the best table in the house and reserved for S?ren alone. When he and Zach took their seats, a small army of attendants, Griffin included, rushed the table to serve them.
“Care for a drink?” S?ren asked as he reached out to casually stroke the hair and collared neck of the lovely young woman who waited at his feet.
“I’m afraid I’ve reached my two drink maximum.”
S?ren gave him a slight smile. “I do have some sway here.”
“Another G&T.”
“Of course.” S?ren leaned forward and the young woman rose up on her knees. He cupped his hand around her face and whispered something in her ear. She blushed, smiled and whispered something in reply. S?ren paused and seemed to consider her words. He turned his head, whispered again and the girl rose and hurried to the bar.
“May I ask what that was about?”
“Simply giving her our drink order.” S?ren snapped his fingers at Griffin and pointed to the floor. Immediately Griffin went down on his hands and knees at S?ren’s feet displaying for them a perfectly flat back.
“Giving her our drink order required hushed whispering?” Zach asked.
“Not at all,” S?ren said with dark amusement glimmering in his steel-colored eyes. “But even a drink order can be an intimate act when done properly.” He raised his legs, resting his feet on Griffin’s back. The girl returned with Zach’s gin and tonic and a glass of red wine for the priest. S?ren took the glass from her hand and pressed a kiss inside her palm. After another brief exchange of whispers, the girl floated off. Zach raised an eyebrow at him.
“Just saying a simple thank-you,” S?ren explained.
Zach glanced down as Griffin looked up at him and winked. He started to argue with S?ren—nothing about him seemed remotely simple—but at that moment Nora entered the bar through the side door and strode toward their table.
Rarely in his life had Zach been so glad to see someone. He ran his eyes up and down her—she seemed completely unharmed by whatever activity had distracted her for the past hour. She gave S?ren the most perfunctory of curtsies and stepped onto the platform, ignoring Griffin’s attempts to bite her ankles. She collapsed dramatically onto Zach’s lap and Zach wrapped an arm around her waist. Such possessive alpha male maneuvers were never his style, but he couldn’t resist showing S?ren that he and Nora weren’t completely in his thrall.
“Where have you been, my dear?” Zach wanted to see how S?ren would react to outright flirtation. He dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder.
“Sorry that took so long.” Nora took a quick drink of Zach’s gin and tonic. “Had to do a favor for a friend.”
Zach breathed in and recognized a sweet and heady scent on her skin—a familiar scent that Grace’s skin had carried after they’d made love. She hadn’t been with S?ren, he knew. Or Griffin…Zach remembered the lingerie in his pocket and wondered if she’d run off with another woman.
“Quite all right, Eleanor.” S?ren dipped his middle finger into his wine and delicately ran the wet tip slowly around the rim of the glass. “I kept your guest entertained in your absence.”
Nora shot Griffin a dirty look, but Griffin only shrugged a helpless apology from the floor.
“Well, Zach and I both had a long night then,” she said to S?ren. Leaning back against Zach’s chest, she asked, “You ready to go?”
“Absolutely,” Zach said and stared at S?ren. Zach saw no jealousy in S?ren’s eyes, but no mercy, either. Zach realized he could never win in a game with this man, especially not on his territory.
“With your permission, sir,” she said to S?ren.
“Of course. I will show you out.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Zach stood by Nora and took her hand. She moved her fingers in his grip, wrapping them tightly around his thumb.
“I insist,” S?ren said. Nora squeezed Zach’s hand in a warning. Apparently S?ren was not to be denied.
S?ren stepped to the floor and set his glass of wine on Griffin’s back, balancing it on the flat plane between his shoulder blades. “Stay,” S?ren ordered Griffin who stayed stiff and motionless on the floor. S?ren offered Nora his arm and Zach was pleased to feel her reluctance to let him go.
S?ren and Nora led as Zach followed closely behind. They went back down the elevator and across the pit where the play had grown louder as more Circle denizens had joined in. Zach expected S?ren to leave them at the elevator, but the priest entered it with them, taking a key and inserting it under the down button. The doors closed and the elevator ascended. The door opened onto the first entry hallway and Zach stepped out.
“Excuse us, Zachary,” S?ren said, still inside the elevator. “I need another word with Eleanor.”
S?ren flicked his wrist and the doors closed once more leaving Zach alone in the empty hall.
* * *
“S?ren, let me out,” Nora demanded. “Zach and I want to get home.”
“He can wait. We have things to discuss.”
“We have nothing to discuss.”
“Not even Michael?”
Nora sighed. There was no point in fighting S?ren.
“Yes, of course. Michael was lovely. Thank you very much.”
“You are certainly welcome. I take it Michael is no longer a virgin?”
“No, of course not.”
S?ren nodded. “How funny.”
“What is?” Nora said, exasperated.
“Tonight you took the virginity of a boy you’ve never met…and yet you still think you can keep Wesley safe from you.”
“It’s different. Michael’s obviously one of us. Wes is vanilla. Michael’s a sub. Michael was born—”
“Michael was born fifteen years ago.”
Nora could only gape at him.
“You gave me an underage boy for our anniversary?” she breathed in shock.
S?ren smiled and moved closer to her. She backed into the farthest corner of the elevator.
“Yes, I did.” He stroked her face with the back of his hand. “Which you would have known had you asked. But I knew you wouldn’t ask. And so tell me again how safe Wesley is with you.”
“You bastard.” She tried to turn her face away from his hand but she had nowhere to go. “God, you’ll do anything to make a point, won’t you?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t for that reason alone. I had to give him some incentive to stay alive.”
“And I was the incentive?”
S?ren brushed her hair with the back of his hand. “You have kept me alive all these years.”
Nora shook her head, moved away from his hand.
“I will do whatever I can to protect you even if I’m only protecting you from yourself. You are a creature of appetite. You take what you desire without thought or remorse. And that is how God created you and it is much of why I love you. But do not stand there and claim to be otherwise. Not with me. I know you. You must make a choice, little one—bring Wesley into this world with you or let him go.”
“I won’t do either. And he stays with me for as long as he wants to.”
S?ren stared her down with a look of pure skepticism.
“Fine,” she said. “I admit it. I can’t be trusted with him. But it doesn’t matter because he can be trusted with me.”
“Wesley…you don’t even know him. The things he has kept from you—”
“Wes is perfect the way he is. I don’t care if he has secrets. He’ll tell me when he’s ready. I won’t ask him to change.”
S?ren turned away from her.
“Of course you won’t. God forbid you allow anyone to make any kind of sacrifice for you. Because if Wesley changed for you, then you would be indebted to him. And you won’t allow that. You are so in love with your own profligate freedom that you refuse to even be grateful to another person lest you be weighed down by the smallest shred of guilt or obligation.” S?ren faced her again. “Your obsession with your own liberty is why Wesley is still a virgin and I am still a priest.”
Nora raised her hands to her face. “Don’t bring that up. Please.”
“I offered to leave the priesthood for you and instead you left me.”
“You never wanted to leave,” Nora said, facing him angrily. “You just wanted to keep me any way you could. I couldn’t let you give up your life for me.”
Nora tried to pull away as S?ren reached out for her hands. But his grip proved too strong. He moved her hands away from her face and looked at her.
“You are now and always my life.” His voice was so soft and true that she couldn’t even look back at him.
“You love being a priest. The priesthood is a sacrament. You can’t quit it. It’s who you are.”
“Yes, I love it. Yes, it’s who I am. And yes, I was willing to give it up so we could be together. But you couldn’t allow that.”
“I still won’t. And I won’t turn Wes into something he doesn’t want to be, either. You say it’s because I refuse to be indebted to anyone. I say it’s because I won’t let you two fuck up your lives for me.”
“And we have no say in this?”
Nora finally found the courage to meet his eyes. Even after five years, no, eighteen years, she still couldn’t look at his face without falling in love with him even more. Time sharpened the edge of her love for him. It cut into her more and more with each passing year.
“No,” she said. “You don’t. And neither does Wes. Whatever he wants to do or be, that’s his decision. I don’t own him. And you don’t own me.”
S?ren rose to his full height. What charity had been in his eyes was now gone. He put his hand on the elevator key but did not turn it.
“I have seen both hell and purgatory. I assure you, purgatory is the more fearsome punishment.”
“I can be me and be with Wes, too. I don’t have to choose.”
“You will eventually. You will have to choose between this life or the one Wesley promises. You think because you’re a Switch in the bedroom, you can be a Switch in all aspects of your life. You will have to decide one day if you’re a professional writer, or just a professional who writes. And whatever you decide, you must tell Zachary who you really are. If you care about him at all, he must know.”
Nora growled. S?ren was merciless tonight.
