Nora paused and swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t remember the rest.”
“‘On their hands they will bear you up / So that you will not dash your foot against a stone...’”
“Or crash your motorcycle,” Nora said. “Or get shot or stabbed or beaten up by mean priests or juvenile delinquents.”
“I don’t recall those verses in Psalm 91.”
“It’s my own translation,” she said, digging her fingers into the back of his neck to hold him as close as she could. There was nothing she wouldn’t give right there and then in exchange for a promise from God that Søren would come back to her in one piece. But God wasn’t offering her that deal so she could do nothing but let Søren go.
“I’ll come home,” Søren said. “I promise.”
“Please,” she said. “You take my heart with you.”
He kissed her forehead. “Little One, you are my heart.”
After one last kiss, there was no more to say. By the time she heard the roar of his Ducati’s engine starting, she was already on her way back to Kingsley’s bed. She found Kingsley awake and waiting for her, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Nora stood in front of him and he rested his head against her breast, wrapped his arms around her waist and she kissed the top of his head.
“You saved me,” Kingsley said, clinging to her as tightly as he’d clung to Søren. “You found a way to keep him here. Four months is nothing next to forever. You were going to go with him?”
“If that’s what I had to do,” she said softly.
“I was wrong.”
“About what, my King?” she asked in a gentle tone. The time for pain was over. Now was an hour for solace.
“I told you there were three ways to be a queen. There are four.”
“What’s the fourth way?”
“You can be born a queen.” He looked up at her. “That’s why you are a queen. Not because I made you one or you stole a throne or a crown. You were born to be the queen and you are.”
“You know, in chess the queen is the strongest piece on the board.”
Kingsley chuckled softly. He pushed the robe aside to kiss her nipples.
“I know. And the king is the most vulnerable.”
“There is one person stronger than the queen or the king combined,” she said.
“Who?”
“The man who moves the pieces.”
35
The Call
NORA WOKE UP with a hangover and a body in her bed.
The hangover was from drinking with Kingsley last night.
The body was Griffin’s.
How the two had converged was a bit murkier.
Nora considered crawling out of bed but Griffin chose that moment to put his heavy arm over her lower back, pinning her against his sleeping form. His naked sleeping form. That didn’t necessarily mean they’d had sex. Griffin always slept naked. She wasn’t naked. And she was in her own bed in a too-large black shirt still wearing panties. Through the dark she could see her shoes on the floor by the chair, her skirt and bra over the back. Griffin must have undressed her for bed because as drunk as she’d been last night, there was no way her clothes would have ended up laid out that neatly. The shirt she wore felt expensive. Must be Griffin’s.
Nora settled in against Griffin’s chest and tried to remember what he was doing here. She searched the stormy recesses of her mind and found a memory—she and Kingsley at his town house and several empty bottles of wine. It looked like a party but it wasn’t. They weren’t celebrating anything. They drank to forget and she woke up remembering. Griffin had shown up at some point and had driven her home. Knowing her she’d asked him to stay. Knowing Griffin, he would have stayed anyway just to keep an eye on her.
Finally, Griffin shifted in his sleep, allowing her to move. She crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom, drank a glass of water, brushed her teeth. When she walked back into her bedroom, Griffin was still asleep. She took his watch off the nightstand and squinted at the face in the dark. Almost 6:00 a.m.
Six o’clock Tuesday morning. Søren’s plane left for Damascus in twenty-four hours. She couldn’t let him go somewhere so far away and so dangerous without taking her heart with him. Her heart and her collar.
Nora opened her closet door as quietly as she could. In the back on the floor inside a rosewood box was her collar, the one he’d given her when she was eighteen, the one that marked his ownership of her. She unlocked it with the key and held the collar in her hand.
If Nora could lie to herself, she’d say that it was last night she made her decision, sometime between her third and fourth glass of wine. But it was actually Sunday night when she held Søren in her arms and prayed God would keep him safe in Syria...that’s when she made her decision. As soon as she was certain to find Søren alone at the rectory, she would go to him and give him her collar, and she would tell him he could put it on her again when he returned from Syria. It would give him a reason to stay safe for her. Because she could never do this again. It would take everything she had to let Søren leave even for four months. What was she going to do for four months? How would she sleep at night knowing she couldn’t see him when she needed him? When he needed her? No, she was done. She was done running because she knew all this time, for three years, she’d been running on a treadmill, exhausting herself and getting nowhere. She loved him as much as ever. She wanted him more than ever. And she had looked into a future without Søren and knew she couldn’t live in that world. She wouldn’t be Mistress Nora anymore. She would have to give up that part of herself. But better to sacrifice part of herself than lose all of Søren.
Wasn’t it?
So today she’d go back to Søren and give him her collar. Then she’d have nearly four months—September, October, November, a couple weeks in December—to put her house up for sale and find a day job. She could go on the freelance circuit or teach writing to the aspiring. One of her clients, a big shot computer company CEO, had just lost his personal assistant of ten years to her new baby. He’d already asked Nora to come work for him and keep him in line. Maybe she would take the job. Babysitting a billionaire could have its perks. She’d take the three and a half months to find her clients new dommes. She could downsize her life and rent a small house in Wakefield so she could be close to Søren, at his beck and call once more.
Wings clipped. The bird safely back in a cage.
But it was such a beautiful cage...
“Nora?”
Nora placed her collar back in the box and closed her closet door.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was trying to be quiet.” She slid in next to him, and he rolled onto his side facing her.
“You feel okay?” he asked in a sleepy voice. He reached for her and pulled her close.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You don’t remember last night, do you?”
“What did I say?”
“You said I should say goodbye to Mistress Nora, because she was going away tomorrow.”
“That was melodramatic of me, wasn’t it?”
“To say the least.”
“It wasn’t a cry for help, I promise. I’m not committing suicide or anything like that.”
“No, you’re going back to Søren.”
“I told you that, too?”
“You didn’t have to. I knew what you meant.”
Nora nodded.
“Did we have sex?” she asked, lifting the cover playfully, hoping to change the subject.
“I don’t fuck drunk girls,” Griffin said, lightly rubbing her back. “So...you sober yet?”
Nora held up two fingers in front of her face and saw three.
“Give me a minute.”
Griffin took her in his arms and she stretched out on top of him.
“Sorry to give you a scare,” she said. “King and I were drinking last night. And the night before. And the night before...”
“You’ve been partying too
much lately,” Griffin said. “When I say that, you know there’s a problem.”
“There’s a problem,” she said. “I thought Søren was leaving us—forever. Turns out it’s just a few months. And the relief I felt when he said he would come back by New Year’s...” Nora paused and searched her mind for just the right word to describe the sensation. She was a writer. The right word was everything. Finally, she found it.
“Humiliating.”
“Humiliating? How is that humiliating?” Griffin asked.
“I left him. I shouldn’t care if he leaves for four months or forty years. I’m supposed to his ex-lover, his ex-submissive, his ex-everything, and I swear to God, Griffin, most days I feel like I’m his wife and not his ex-anything. We’re not even divorced. Just separated. This isn’t how I want to live my life, in this constant struggle to get free. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to him, either.”
“Don’t give up, Mistress,” Griffin said, cupping the side of her neck. “Please?”
“King interferes every time I try to get involved with someone else.”
“Find someone to be with that he can’t fuck with then. Someone with money and power of his own. Someone he can’t blackmail.”
“Good idea. I’ll just run out and find someone with money, power and no dirty secrets. Dime a dozen, right?” Nora rolled her eyes. Griffin laughed and kissed her. Nora let it happen. Whenever her heart was in turmoil, she let her body take over. Griffin’s kisses were familiar, comfortable, warm and getting warmer, hot and getting hotter.
“My days of freedom may be numbered,” she said. “Want to help me go out with a bang?”
“I’ll give you all the bangs you want...”
Nora pushed Griffin onto his back, and he surrendered control to her. He surrendered and let her put the condom on him. He surrendered and let her guide him in. She felt the penetration of his cock inside her like a puncture wound. In her bitterness and defeat, she’d closed herself off and it hurt to let someone inside her. Despite the pain she let him sink into her depths, and she grew more aroused, more herself as she moved on top of him.
“Mistress Nora...” he whispered into her ear as he brushed her hair back and kissed her throat. “Queen Nora...”
“You’re trying to seduce me,” she said.
“You’re on top of me, and I’m inside you.” He yanked her shirt off her and threw it on the floor. “I think I succeeded.”
Nora leaned over him, put her hands on his shoulders and arched her back, offering him her breasts to suck. His tongue swirled around her nipples, his fingers pinched and teased them. He lifted his head and latched on to her nipple, drawing it deep into his hot mouth. Nora sighed as she felt the pleasurable sensation of pulling, of tugging, of heat on her breast. All the while she rocked her hips into him, grinding her swollen clitoris against the base of his penis.
“You’re trying to seduce me into not going back to him.”
“I am, Mistress,” he admitted shamelessly, which was how Griffin did everything. He took her breasts in his hands and massaged them. “He won’t let you play with me anymore if you go back to him.”
“I admit, it’s a compelling argument.”
“You know you’d miss me, Mistress.”
“I would miss you...”
She’d miss Griffin. She’d miss freedom. She’d miss her house and her life.
And she’d miss being Mistress Nora. She’d grown so accustomed to being called Mistress or Mistress Nora it felt like her real name and Eleanor had become the name of an old friend she’d lost touch with.
She lay on top of Griffin, pressed her breasts to his chest, and he whispered her name in her ear over and over again—Nora... Mistress Nora...my Nora...
On top of Griffin, Nora came with a cry. Griffin kept pushing up and into her even as she lay immobile and panting on top of his chest. It felt wonderful; sex with Griffin always did. But it wasn’t enough. With Søren she had the opposite problem. He was more than enough, almost too much for her. Between not enough and too much, she’d choose too much any day.
“See?” Griffin asked as he wrapped his arms around her. “Won’t you miss that?”
“I would,” she said. Because she loved Griffin as a friend and a lover she didn’t tell him the whole truth. Yes, she would miss him.
But she missed Søren so much more.
Thus it was decided. She would go back to Søren today. She would give him her collar today. She would tell him she would be his again today and forever, without conditions or constants and if he told her to quit her job she would and she would be his property again as soon as he came home. And she would never look back.
Nora was at peace.
Eleanor was at peace.
The phone rang.
She answered it, hoping for nothing from the call except that it would put an end to her conversation with Griffin.
“This better be good,” she said as she answered the phone.
“I have a little job for you,” Kingsley said.
“It’s six in the morning.” Nora groaned, rolled off Griffin and onto her back. “What sick sadistic pervert needs me at six in the morning?”
“A sick sadistic pervert doesn’t need you. Twelve sick sadistic perverts need you.”
“Twelve?” Nora sat up in bed. “I don’t do group sex. Wait. How much does it pay? Forget it. I don’t do groups.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?” Kingsley asked. He sounded as sleepy and irritated as she felt.
“Will I like it?” she asked.
“I think you will. It’s a job uniquely suited to your particular talents.”
Without any hope whatsoever that she would like what Kingsley had to say to her, she told him two words. Two words she’d said before the night her life changed. She said those two words again not realizing it was about to change one more time.
“Tell me.”
36
Professor Nora
ONE HOUR LATER, Nora kissed Griffin goodbye and told him to sleep as late as he wanted. She had on a black pencil skirt, a white blouse, and her black hair was wrapped in a loose bun. She wore her favorite high heels, not the stilettos but the retro pumps with the strap around the ankle. The woman looking back at her from the mirror looked like every man’s exaggerated fantasy of a sexy librarian or schoolteacher.
Fitting as today she would be a schoolteacher.
Twenty minutes from her house, thirty minutes in traffic, was a small liberal arts school called Yorke College. She knew of it through Noah. He was about to start his sophomore year there. Today. Noah started school today and so did she.
But not as a student.
She’d had to apologize to Kingsley for being so rude to him on the phone. Instead of calling and asking her to go meet a very special client at his hotel room or to fly to another state or another country to woo a rich and infamous pervert into Kingsley’s coterie, he’d asked her if she’d be willing to teach a writing class for a few weeks.
“A what?” she’d asked him.
“Our friend Dean Howell, who is, as you know, related to the Newport Howells, has a little problem,” Kingsley had explained when Nora finally started listening. “Every semester they hire a professional writer to teach a freshman creative writing course. The teacher they hired is an older man, and he’s had a heart attack. Our friend the dean knows you live near the school and was wondering if you’d step in until they can find a permanent replacement.”
“King, I write erotica.”
“It’s a college, not a high school. They’ll find you eccentric. Liberal arts colleges love eccentrics.”
“I’ve never taught a class before.”
“They’re students. You’re a teacher. They’ll do what you tell them to do.”
“So you mean I should top them?”
“Young people respond well to authority. Either they submit to it or rebel against it. Sounds like a win-win, non?”
“You realize this is the w
orst idea you’ve ever had,” Nora had said. “Me teaching college freshmen how to write. You understand this is insane.”
“It’s only a writing class,” he said. “Not even you could get yourself in trouble teaching grammar to terrified teenagers.”
“Have you met me?”
“Don’t fuck any of them.”
“You forget who you’re talking to.”
“Fine. Don’t fuck all of them.”
She’d agreed to teach the class and save Dean Howell’s ass on the one condition—no new clients. She hadn’t told Kingsley she was quitting yet. She’d talk to Søren first and let him know that while he was in Syria, she’d be slowly dismantling her new life so she could go back to her old one. Going back to Søren was something Kingsley would understand. He’d be happy for them. Happy for himself, too. She knew he missed the old days of their friendship and their threesomes and their late-night drinking binges as much as she missed the old days of their romance. It was all up to her. She could do it. She should do it.
And she would do it.
Today. Right after she finished up this class she’d agreed to teach.
Right after.
The second after.
She wouldn’t dally one minute. She would go to the rectory and hand Søren her collar, the collar that she’d put in her handbag that very morning before she’d left. Then she’d call Kingsley and put in her four months’ notice. The day Søren came back from Syria would be the day Mistress Nora died once and for all.
Story over.
The end.
Nora parked her car in the faculty lot and with help from a student, she found her building. Five minutes late—her students would have to get used to that—she walked into the classroom.
“Hello,” she said as she strode through the door. “My name is Nora Sutherlin, and I’m a New York Times bestselling author of lots of dirty books. I know you were expecting a nature writer to be teaching this class, but I’m afraid he’s had a medical emergency. I realize I’m not what you signed up for, but in my defense, my books are full of natural behavior. And quite a bit of unnatural behavior so I wouldn’t recommend reading them unless you actually want to learn something. If you have a problem with me teaching your class, there’s the door. I’m sure you can find an Add/Drop form in the registrar’s office. Also, I’m hungover so if I behave oddly, please forgive me. Why does this class meet so fucking early in the day?”
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