Breathless

by Maya Banks

  “You may ask any questions you like, Zachary.”

  “Your voice,” Zach said, wondering if the priest would answer questions about himself. “You have an English accent. A very faint one, but it’s there.”

  “Very good,” Søren said with approval. “You would notice. Most Americans don’t. They simply assume I’m overeducated. I was born in America, but I attended school as a child in England. My father was English. And he was evil. I pray daily that it is only the trace of his accent I’ve inherited.”

  “You seduced a young woman in your congregation. You don’t think that’s at all evil?”

  “Since I became a priest, Eleanor is the only woman with whom I’ve been sexually intimate. No children, either, I assure you. But you are welcome to ask Eleanor if she ever once felt taken advantage of or abused. I believe you’ll find her answer enlightening.”

  “Why do you keep calling her that?” Zach couldn’t reconcile his Nora with the priest’s Eleanor. “She changed her name to Nora years ago.”

  “She was born Eleanor and it was Eleanor with whom I fell in love. She has made decisions in her life that I do not approve of these past five years. I prefer to remember her for who she was, not for what she’s become. She can forsake her name and her past. I never will.”

  Søren’s words stirred another memory. “She hasn’t forsaken it,” Zach told him, wanting to prove he knew something about Nora the priest didn’t. “Not entirely. I went to one of her book-signings not long ago. She was reading to some children. They called her Ellie.” Zach glanced at Søren’s face, but other than a glint of a smile, the revelation seemed to have no impact on him.

  “Yes, well,” Søren said as they passed under an archway into another hall, “Eleanor always did have a way with children.”

  * * *

  Nora slipped off the bed and brought Michael with her. She bade him stand still while she knelt down and reached under the bed. She pulled out a metal briefcase, entered the numeric combination and snapped the locks open.

  “Are you scared?” she asked.

  “A little.” Michael looked down at her.

  “Here, I’ll give you something to help with the fear. It’s called a ‘safe word.’”

  “I’ve read about safe words…in your books.”

  “Good. Since you’re an angel, yours will be ‘wings.’”

  “Wings,” he repeated.

  She dug through the briefcase for all the supplies she needed—rope, condoms, scissors. “If at any point you want to stop everything and just go home, you can say ‘wings’ and we’re done. We’ve all safed out. It’s completely okay.”

  Nora shut the suitcase and slid it back under the bed. She rose up and faced him. With him in his bare feet and her in her high heels, they were almost the same height.

  “Let’s practice,” she said. “I’m going to ask you to do something and you’re going to say your safe word to stop everything. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Nora took a step back and looked him up and down.

  “Take your clothes off,” she ordered. Michael raised his arm and grasped the neck of his T-shirt.

  “Wait,” she said and he stopped. “You’re supposed to say your safe word, angel.”

  He lowered his arm slowly.

  “But what if I don’t want to?”

  Nora grinned at him and came so close to him she could almost hear his heart pounding in his chest.

  “Then don’t.”

  Michael raised his arm again and stripped out of his T-shirt. He bent over and pulled off his socks. When he got to the top button of his jeans, his courage seemed to fail him.

  “Here. Let me help,” she said. Nora reached out and laid her hands flat on his stomach. They traveled down to his waistband and to the buttons. She made quick work of them and slipped a hand into his pants.

  “No underwear,” she said, and Michael blushed again. “You really are one of us, aren’t you?”

  His mouth was near her ear. “I want to be.” He shuddered as Nora took him in her hand. She stroked his hard length before releasing him to pull his jeans all the way down.

  Michael stepped out of his jeans and stood naked in front of her.

  “Do you know what these are?” she asked from the floor.

  “Cuffs,” he said.

  “Very good. Bondage cuffs. Two sets. One set for your ankles.” She clasped the first one around his left ankle and then his right before standing up again. “And one set for your wrists. You’ll like these.”

  Michael held out his arms. Nora took his left arm in her hand. She raised it to her lips and slowly kissed the scar on his wrist. He breathed in as her mouth met his ravaged skin. She buckled the cuff around his wrist and kissed the scar on the other. She buckled his other wrist and took a step back.

  He examined the cuffs on his wrists. He looked down at the cuffs on his ankles. Michael met her eyes. In his face she saw herself at age eighteen when Søren first began her training. That moment when he first revealed to her what she would become to him, how he would possess her completely when the time came…looking down at her bound wrists and ankles; it was the first time she knew what love looked like.

  “Thank you,” Michael breathed.

  Nora coughed a hint.

  “Thank you…mistress.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Søren 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 Søren 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.” Søren 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.” Søren 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?”

  Søren 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 unti
l 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,” Søren 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,” Søren said in a way that was both offhanded and pointed. Zach knew Søren 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?” Søren 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.”

  Søren opened the door with the Alice in Wonderland quote. Zach let Søren enter the dark room first. When a light appeared Zach stepped inside. Søren 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,” Søren 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,” Søren 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?” Søren 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.”

  Søren 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.”

  Søren 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 Søren’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.” Søren 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.

  Søren’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,” Søren 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 Søren 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 Søren’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.” Søren 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 u
ntil a doctor pulls it from a festering wound a week later. There were mornings,” Søren 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 Søren’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 Søren’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 Søren 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.

  Søren’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 Søren. 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. Søren 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,” Søren 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.”