“And that is?”
“The Nora Sutherlin Story.”
“It would be a page-turner,” Zach agreed. “Is he actually going to keep her all night?”
Zach glanced at his watch. Nora had been gone only a short while but he was already impatient for her return.
“If he wants to. The minute he steps into this place, martial law is in effect.”
“Does she come here often?”
“Used to come all the time. Had to. But she dropped off the face of the earth about a month ago.”
“That was when we began work on her book,” Zach explained.
“And when she began work on you, too, huh?” Griffin grinned at him. Zach tried not to let himself be embarrassed. After all, Nora and Griffin were clearly occasional lovers.
“What do you mean she had to come here?” Zach asked after a moment’s silence.
But Griffin only laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Come on. Let’s check out the pit.”
* * *
“I really should get back to my guest.” Nora didn’t want to leave Søren, but she knew she needed to. God only knew what Griffin was telling Zach right now.
“Not quite yet. We still need to plan how to celebrate our anniversary next week. Or have you forgotten what next Thursday is?”
“If I forgot every other day of the year, I would remember that one. But we aren’t celebrating it. Not this year or ever again.”
“I see.” Søren gave her a cool, appraising stare. “Was last year not to your liking?”
Last year…what he did to her that night was beautiful and brutal and it hurt to even remember.
If you come back to me, will you run or will you crawl?
I’ll fly.
Nora shook her head, tried to forget how much she still wanted him.
“Last year was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened. It went too far.”
“You are never satisfied until it goes too far.”
“I nearly lost Wes over that night.”
“Yes. What was that promise you made? That if you ever gave yourself over to me again he would leave you? Was that it?”
“You can’t blame him, can you? He doesn’t understand us.”
“I am certain he does not.” Søren reached out and caressed her cheek. Those fingers, she thought. Those hands. Hands that knew every corner of her body as their owner knew every corner of her heart. “My Eleanor…such a creature of Divine Discontent.”
“Divine Discontent?”
“God’s dirty little secret. He will make you suffer, little one, until He makes you wise.”
“No more sermons. Please,” she pleaded.
Søren responded with only the merest suggestion of a smile on his lips. “If you won’t come see me on our anniversary, I suppose I’ll have to give you your gift early. Good thing I brought him with me.”
He pulled something from his pocket and opened his hand for her. A key with a delicate white ribbon in place of a key chain lay across his palm.
“What is it?”
“The key to the White Room, of course. It’s where your anniversary present is waiting for you.”
His hand still open and waiting, Søren took a step toward her.
“He’s a virgin, Eleanor,” he whispered into her ear. “You can close your eyes and pretend he’s Wesley.”
Nora wanted to withdraw, wanted to push Søren away. Zach was out there waiting for her. And she knew better than this. Søren’s gifts were always double-edged swords, and there was no way to take them except by the blade. She heard the voice of reason reminding her that she should find Zach and get him out of here. And then she remembered what she promised him—to show him a place of no regret, no shame and no fear.
She took the key from Søren’s hand.
“I see He’s not finished making you suffer,” Søren said.
Nora didn’t reply. Closing her fingers around the key so tightly the teeth bit fiercely into her hand, she slipped from the room and into a back hallway. Nora felt Søren’s eyes on her. She didn’t look back.
20
Z
ach followed Griffin to the balcony section of the bar. Leaning over the railing, they studied the show below.
A lovely dark-haired woman with sinister-looking chopsticks in her hair and wearing a kimono stood on a platform below them. She twined a black rope around a shapely red-haired girl who stood calm and naked next to her.
“That’s Lady Noy. She’s the queen of Asian Rope Bondage around here.” Griffin pointed out two women down in the pit. “And that babe she’s tying up is Alyssa Petrosky.”
“Petrosky?” The name sounded vaguely familiar.
“Yeah, that Petrosky. She’s the governor’s stepdaughter. She’s a pretty infamous submissive down here. Really into exhibitionism.”
“I can see that.” Zach marveled as Lady Noy finished her work and hoisted the girl into the air with a complicated rope and pulley system. The girl lay back in an elegant asymmetrical arch and seemed completely at peace with both her nudity and her bondage.
“And that’s Agent Byers—he’s high-level FBI,” Griffin said, pointing out a man strapped to a cross and being flogged by a woman half his age. “And a sub, too.”
“Are you allowed to tell me all this?”
“What? You’re going to tell someone? No one would believe you if you did tell. And if you spill a word, Kingsley Edge will destroy you. He watches all our backs—it’s part of the membership fee. I’d bet you my bank account that he’s already got a file on you.”
“On me? Are you serious?” Zach asked. He remembered how Nora seemed to know so much about him at their first meeting.
“You get within five feet of Nora and you get a file. And it sounds like you’ve been a helluva lot closer than five feet.”
“I’m hardly blackmail material,” Zach protested.
“Really? Anybody out there you’d prefer not know that Nora blew you?”
Zach flushed and said nothing. Yes, there certainly was.
“Point taken,” Zach said.
“You gotta know, Zach—Nora’s not just some smut writer with a wild sex life. She’s the motherfucking queen of the Underground. And Kingsley Edge is, obviously, our king.”
“And him? What is he?” Zach didn’t even want to say Søren’s name.
“He’s whatever’s higher than a king and queen.”
“An emperor?” Zach guessed.
Griffin smirked. “A god.”
“A god,” Zach repeated and looked down at the worshippers beneath them. The FBI agent Griffin spoke about was now being dragged from his cross and the woman in leather wrapped a collar around his neck and attached a leash to it. She led him on his hands and knees across the floor.
“I can’t believe you put collars on human beings,” Zach said with renewed disgust.
“The collar is everything down here. Subs love their collars.”
“Do all submissives wear collars?”
“Not all of them. House submissives, those are subs that work here at the Circle, wear house collars to show they’re on the payroll. They look like this,” Griffin said, pointing at the collar he wore as part of his punishment. Where a dog tag usually would be hung a small silver number eight inside a circle. “But in private a Dom will use a collar either for utility, for love or both. A collar can be as meaningful as a wedding ring to some couples.” Griffin laughed. “Holy shit…you should have seen Nora and Søren back when they were still together. I’d only been coming here a year before she left him. But I got to see them in their glory days. Collars are leather usually, black or brown, right? Guess what color her collar was?”
“I don’t know. Red?”
“White,” came a voice from behind them. Zach and Griffin turned around and found Søren watching them in a white collar of his own. “What else would it have been?”
* * *
The halls and stairways of the 8th Circle were a labyrinth to most, but Nora knew them better than her own home. She could have found her way around blindfolded. A few times in the past she’d had to. She turned corner after corner and descended a small staircase to the lowest level of the building. At the end of the quiet hallway stood a door identical to all the others except this door and its knob were painted completely white.
Nora stood before the door and took slow, deep breaths. She couldn’t even imagine who or what waited behind the door. The White Room was reserved only for the highest-level Dominants—not even Griffin had earned White Room privileges yet.
Slowly, she opened the door and hung her riding crop on the knob outside to show it was occupied. The White Room door had a lock, one of the few at the Circle that did, but Nora knew better than to lock herself in with a stranger. She’d learned that the hard way.
Nora took a cautious step inside. At the center of the room stood an iron four-poster bed heaped with luxurious white linens and pillows and surrounded by a semitranslucent white bed-curtain. For all its pretensions of purity and innocence, Nora knew for a fact that some of the most lurid sex acts in the history of the world had been performed in this room.
She crept to the bed and pushed the bed-curtain back. In the center of the bed lay a young man sleeping on his side. Nora studied him for a moment as her heart beat ferociously in her chest. He appeared to be about seventeen years old. He had straight black hair that fell past his shoulders and the longest, darkest eyelashes she’d even seen on a boy. They rested on his pale cheeks and fluttered in his sleep. Her eyes roamed down his body. He wore a frayed T-shirt, jeans with tears in the knees and white socks, one with a hole in the toe. He’d taken off his shoes but not his watch. It was leather and as wide as a bondage cuff. He’d covered his other wrist with a black wristband. He appeared tall but his hands and feet seemed disproportionately large. He hadn’t finished growing yet. Nora sighed and cursed Søren with everything within her. The boy—her gift—was inexpressibly lovely.
Nora leaned forward and brushed an errant strand of hair off the boy’s cheek and tucked it behind his ear.
“Oh, Søren,” she said as she sighed to herself. “You shouldn’t have.”
* * *
Zach searched for a suitable reply. He found himself strangely speechless in Søren’s presence. The priest seemed to find Zach’s discomfort amusing.
“Where’s Nora, sir?” Griffin asked for him.
“She will be occupied for some time with Circle business. While she’s off, I thought I should entertain her guest for her,” Søren said with a magnanimous air.
“But Nora told me I had to stay—”
Søren’s hand snaked out with the subtle speed of a cobra and grabbed Griffin by the throat. Zach stepped forward but Griffin shot him a warning look. At least it appeared Griffin could still breathe.
“Mr. Easton, may I call you Zachary?”
Zach attempted to tamp down his nervousness before answering.
“Do I call you Father Søren? Or sir?”
“I understand you aren’t Catholic. And you aren’t part of this community. You may call me Søren, of course. Would you care for a tour?”
Zach sensed that Nora’s priest desired his company for a reason or reasons he didn’t care to find out. But he decided to use it as a bargaining chip.
“Will you let Griffin go?” Zach asked.
Søren seemed to find this amusing.
“I’d hardly be a sufficient tour guide with a corpse in my hand, would I?”
Zach glanced worriedly at Griffin who thankfully still seemed calm even as the priest continued to hold him in his vicious grip.
“I suppose not. A tour would be fine.”
Søren let Griffin go. Zach noted that on Griffin’s neck right under his jawline were distinct red impressions of the priest’s fingers. “Shall we then?”
Reluctantly, Zach left Griffin at the balcony. As flirtatious as the young man was, Zach far preferred his genial company to Nora’s priest.
“What’s Nora doing?” Zach asked as Søren guided him from the balcony to an unmarked exit at the opposite end of the bar.
“Eleanor is doing what she is always doing, Zachary—anything she wants to.”
* * *
At Nora’s touch the sleeping boy’s eyelashes fluttered open. She bit her bottom lip to stifle a laugh as the boy scrambled into a sitting position.
“It’s all right. Don’t be scared,” she said as if talking to a frightened animal. “It’s only a dream.”
He looked at her with silver eyes moon-wide. His face flushed and he pulled his knees tight to his chest.
“Do you talk?” she asked.
“Not usually.” He raked his hands through his long hair and shoved it behind his ears.
“You can talk me to me. You can say anything you want to me. I want you to. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded and Nora nodded back. She was gratified to hear a small, nervous laugh.
“Okay, I understand.”
“Good boy. Do you know who I am?”
He nodded again and Nora raised her eyebrow.
“Yes. Father S., he told me about you, that he knew you.”
“What did he tell you?” Nora asked.
“He said you were an old friend of his. I mean, not old—”
“We’ve known each other a long time,” she said, coming to his rescue.
“Right. And he said you were the most beautiful woman who ever lived.”
Nora blushed slightly. “What else did he tell you?”
The boy inhaled sharply and met her eyes.
“He said you’d help me.”
Nora cocked her head slightly. She reached out and touched the top of his foot.
“Do you need help?”
The young man didn’t answer at first.
Slowly, the boy relaxed his arms from around his legs. He started to take off his watch but his fingers fumbled too much and he exhaled in exasperation.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Here. Let me.”
The boy tenuously stretched out his arm. Nora unbuckled his watch and nearly gasped when she discovered why he wore a watch with such a wide band.
Down the center of his wrist stretched a white scar and the crosshatch outline of stitches. He held out his other arm and slid off his wristband and showed her the matching scar and stitches. The wounds appeared fully healed. With her knowledge of scars she guessed his suicide attempt had been around a year ago.
“Why?” she asked.
“My dad, he caught me…” He took a hard breath. “I had stuff in my room he found. He saw the bruises and burns. He said he refused to have a sicko for a son. He left a couple of months later. Mom—she’s not okay anymore.”