The Saint

by Tiffany Reisz

  “I did, too. Where did you touch me?”

  Eleanor groaned and dropped her head onto the table.

  “Eleanor, you’re eighteen years old. If you want to be treated like an adult you must act like one. Sit up straight and answer the question.”

  She sat up and straightened her spine like an iron rod.

  “I kissed you on the mouth and the neck and shoulders and chest. I think that’s all.”

  “It is. In the future, I will allow you more access to my body.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Where did you touch me?” He reached into his water glass and pulled out an ice cube. He placed it at the top of her spine and she gasped at the shock of the cold.

  “I touched your face and your neck and your shoulders and your chest and back and penis, and there, I said it. Are you done torturing me yet?”

  “No.”

  “A girl can dream.”

  He traced the length of her spine with the ice cube from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. She gripped the arms of the chair and tried not to squirm.

  “I want to talk about pain with you tonight,” he said as the ice cube melted against her skin. “Does this hurt?”

  “A little. It makes all my muscles contract.”

  “That’s your body’s way of trying to protect itself from the cold. I’m using my bare hands. The ice hurts me, too.”

  “Kingsley said dominants and sadists use floggers and canes and stuff so they don’t hurt themselves while inflicting pain.”

  “That’s part of it. There is another part.” He lifted the ice cube off her skin and put the remnant of it in her mouth. She swallowed it.

  “What’s the other part, sir?”

  He fed her another bite of soup. He seemed uninterested in his own dinner.

  “People have an instinctive trust of authority figures. It’s almost a cliché. Women are attracted to men in uniform. Boys grow up and marry women who remind them of their mothers. We fantasize about our teachers, our doctors—”

  “Our priests?” She grinned at him.

  “Even priests.” He took another ice cube out of the glass. This time he ran it down her neck and over her chest. Goose bumps exploded all over her body.

  “Do you see me as an authority figure?”

  “Yes, sir. Obviously.”

  “What sort?”

  She bit her bottom lip out of simple nervousness. Søren rubbed his thumb over her mouth to remind her not to do that. Dumb girls. She’d never forget that talk.

  “It won’t make me uncomfortable if you say you see me as a father figure. I’m addressed as ‘Father’ daily by people twice my age.”

  “People would say it was weird to be in love with someone who’s like a father to you.”

  “Why do we care what those people think?”

  A good question. She had an even better answer for it.

  “We don’t.”

  “Do you enjoy submitting to my authority?”

  “I do. It’s embarrassing right now. But I trust you. I know you’re not going to rape me or kill me. Just humiliate me by making me eat dinner naked and forcing me to talk about your penis. Sir.”

  “This is only the beginning, Little One. There will be other, greater humiliations. And we aren’t even close to playing with real pain yet.”

  “I want to do everything with you, anything you want to do, sir.”

  Søren leaned in and kissed her. She loved these nights when they were together at Kingsley’s and could be together without fear and without judgment from the outside world.

  “Go stand by the fireplace,” Søren ordered. “Warm up.”

  “I’m fine, I promise.”

  “I gave you an order.”

  Eleanor stood up and, feeling ridiculous in her high heels and collar, went to the fireplace. Søren picked up the wineglass and brought it over.

  “Feel better?”

  “Yes,” she admitted without shame. “I thought that ice cube might kill me for a second there, sir.”

  “So how does the fire make you feel?”

  “Warm. Grateful. Relieved.”

  “Relieved? Grateful? If you hadn’t been cold to start with, how would the fire make you feel?”

  “Warmer, I guess.”

  “So it would be only a physical sensation, not an emotional reaction?”

  “Right.”

  “If you were in pain and then suddenly the pain stopped and you experienced pleasure, what would you feel?”

  “Pleasure, of course. And relief. And gratitude. Happiness.”

  “So again, an emotional reaction instead of simply a physical reaction?”

  “Yeah, that. Is that what S&M does?”

  “Precisely that. Instead of the simple pleasures of vanilla sex, S&M adds the emotional and psychological component. Fear. Humiliation. Trust. Longing. Desire. Relief. Gratitude. Also, a young woman like yourself who feared her father and didn’t respect or love him can explore those feelings with a father figure she trusts and loves and has a healthy fear of.”

  “Sounds like good therapy. With orgasms.”

  “I won’t even charge you by the hour.” He dipped his head and kissed her again. She heard a clink as he sat the wineglass on the mantel and sighed as he wrapped both arms around her.

  He ran his hands up and down her naked back, cupped her bottom.

  Taking her hand, he led her to the fainting couch. He sat down first and he pointed at the floor. She knelt at his feet and rested her head in his lap. He tickled the back of her shoulders with his fingertips.

  “Now that I’m collared, can we … you know?” She made a hand gesture.

  “Use your words, Eleanor.”

  “Fuck.”

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. I know it’s not the answer you want, but I have my reasons for waiting. Sex was created by God and He made it pleasurable. But He also made it complicated. I’ve had intercourse with two people in my life, Eleanor. Two. And I will feel a lifelong bond with these people. I won’t make that bond with you until I’m certain you’re ready for it.”

  “Do you think you should only have sex with someone you’re in love with?”

  “Complicated question. Sex between women and men is especially complicated. There’s always the risk of conceiving. I would never tell anyone else who they should or should not be intimate with. For my own part, I choose not to do it except with someone I can imagine having a connection with for the rest of my life.”

  “I want that with you, forever,” she said.

  “I don’t need to make love to you to want to be bonded to you forever. I have felt that connection since the day we met.”

  She rose off the floor and Søren took her into his arms. She lay across his lap, her head on his chest, his arms around her.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she said. “Always. I want you to be proud that you own me, sir.”

  Søren tilted her chin up and kissed her.

  “I already am proud to own you, Little One. As this proves.” He touched the collar on her neck.

  “Why am I wearing this? It doesn’t seem like you.”

  “It’s a symbol,” he said. “A symbol others in our world will understand. You belong to me. This is a visual reminder of that.”

  “I love belonging to you.”

  “And this makes it official.” He kissed her on the soft skin under her collar. “So we should celebrate it.”

  “Celebrate? How?”

  “Like this …” Søren kissed her and as he did, he pushed her onto her back, his hand lightly on her throat, his mouth devouring her lips. A kiss from Søren alone could bring her body to life with need. He kissed her possessively, obsessively, as if staking a claim on her body every time their lips touched.

  He pulled back and pushed her thighs open. He took her hand and put it between her legs. He waited, an expectant look on his face.

  “You’re going to sit there and watch, sir?”

  �
��I may lend a hand. If you’re good.”

  “One question—am I doing this while you watch because it turns you on or because it’s humiliating?”

  “They are one and the same to me.”

  She took a deep breath and spread her thighs wider. If she had to put on a show, might as well make it a good one. And she knew Søren wanted her, so why not make his waiting for her hurt him as much as it hurt her?

  With both hands between her legs, she opened her vagina and pushed one finger inside herself. For some reason doing this while Søren watched embarrassed her less than sitting at the table and eating dinner. It made perfect sense to be naked while doing something sexual. Being naked while having dinner felt awkward and embarrassing. Being naked and touching herself? Not a problem.

  “Show-off,” Søren said as she caressed her wet inner lips.

  She trailed her finger up to her clitoris and started to rub it. Closing her eyes, she sank into her fantasy world where she and Søren would need a telescope to see the lines they’d crossed so far behind them. He’d warned her he would have to hurt her before he could be aroused enough to fuck her. Fine. Good. She longed for the day she could be flogged and caned and treated like sexual property, like a body to be used by Søren and for Søren. She reminded herself that even though she would be the one having the orgasm, she did this for him, for his pleasure. It made it much less embarrassing to do things under orders. She had no choice.

  Søren pushed a finger into her and found that soft spot an inch inside her that made her stomach tighten and her back melt into the sofa. He made tight circles inside her that left her groaning in the back of her throat.

  Eleanor continued to rub her clitoris as Søren slipped a second finger inside her. As she started to pant, he began to thrust his fingers in and out of her slowly, scraping the front wall of her vagina with his fingertips. She felt everything as he moved inside her. Her toes curled and her thighs shivered. Her hips tightened and her back arched. Her stomach fluttered and her clitoris throbbed. Her chest heaved and her nipples hardened.

  “You can come whenever you like.”

  “I don’t want to come, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “So you’ll keep touching me.”

  Søren softly laughed.

  “Pick a number between one and five.”

  “What am I picking?”

  “I can’t tell you that. No, I can, but I won’t.”

  “Then how do I know what to pick?”

  “You won’t.”

  “Then five.”

  “I should have guessed. Come for me, Little One.”

  She took a deep breath and focused on her own pleasure, on the thrumming of her clitoris against her fingers and the pressure building in her stomach. She rode the wave of pleasure to the top and crashed into it at full speed. Her inner muscles clenched around Søren’s fingers inside her and buried deep. As she panted, he pulled out of her and dragged her to him. “That was one,” he said.

  “One what?” She collapsed against his chest, spent and sleepy.

  “You picked five. One down, four to go.”

  Her eyes flew wide-open.

  “Five orgasms?”

  He kissed the tip of her nose as he slid his hand down her stomach and between her legs again.

  “Of course, next time I make you pick, you could be picking how many hours I’ll tease you before I let you come.” He gripped the back of her neck roughly; his tone grew forceful, dominating and cold. She loved it.

  “You’re a sadist.”

  “I am.”

  “I’ll always pick the biggest number even if I don’t know what I’m picking,” she said, panting.

  “And that, Little One, is why I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Even if you do torture me and make me wait and beg for you, sir.”

  “But will you always?” he asked, his voice suddenly serious and somber.

  She touched her collar around her neck. She’d almost forgotten about it. In less than an hour it already seemed like a part of her, a second skin.

  “I will love you forever. I’ll wait as long as I have to for you, sir.”

  “What if I make you wait one more year?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Two more years?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “What if you find someone else?”

  “Not interested,” she promised. “If you can’t have sex without pain, I don’t want it, either. And I don’t want anybody but you.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  She leaned her head against his chest.

  “Completely,” she said and meant it. There was no man for her but Søren, now or ever. “You really think some other guy is going to try to steal me from you?”

  Ridiculous idea. If she’d said no to Kingsley in the back of his Rolls-Royce, who on earth could ever tempt her to stray from Søren? No one, that’s who.

  “Eleanor,” Søren said, kissing her on the forehead, “I’m absolutely certain of it.”

  27

  Eleanor

  “‘TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN A WOOD, AND I … I TOOK the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’” Dr. Edwards closed her book with a wistful sigh, and Eleanor fought the urge to bang her head against the wall. Sophomore American literature and they were reading the same poem she read freshman year of high school? Weren’t there a few billion other poems out there they could be dissecting other than “The Road Not Taken,” otherwise known as the only poem anyone remembered from high school?

  “First thoughts on the poem?” Dr. Edwards asked.

  A girl in the front row raised her hand—Rachel Something.

  “I love this poem,” she said. “It’s about how you have to choose the path other people don’t take. Be a leader, not a follower.”

  Eleanor felt her IQ dropping.

  “Very good. Anyone else?”

  A freshman raised his hand and parroted back almost the same interpretation. Guy walking in the woods. Sees two paths. He picks the road that fewer people had taken and that makes him a hero, blah, blah, blah. Eleanor mentally picked up a baseball bat and slammed it into the back of that freshman’s head.

  “Great thoughts. Other first impressions?”

  “Yeah,” Eleanor said. “You’re all idiots.”

  The room went silent. Dr. Edwards’s dark eyes widened. She