“This one, ma’am,” he said, picking up the cat-o’-nine-tails. He turned around and Nora gestured for him to bring it to her. She was standing at the foot of the bed. She took it from him. His pulse quickened as she twined the lashes through her fingers.
“Angel,” she said as she gripped the thongs and pulled them taut. “This will hurt you. Badly.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nora raised her eyebrow at him.
“One for you. And one for me.”
She tossed the cat onto the bed and picked up the cane again. Michael swallowed hard but said nothing.
“Come,” Nora said. “Stand dead center between the bedposts. Face the bed. Back to me. Take heavy, deep breaths. Focus on the heat from the fireplace. Let it seep into your muscles.”
Michael obeyed as best he could. He knew he needed to relax. As he stood and breathed as instructed, Nora clamped leather bondage cuffs around his ankles. The tension in his legs started to dissipate. She grabbed his scarred wrists and yanked them behind his back. As she cuffed his wrists, the stress he carried in his arms and shoulders flowed through his veins and out of his fingertips. He inhaled sharply as she brought a black leather collar around his throat and buckled it at the base of his neck.
“Now, Angel,” Nora whispered in his ear as she ran her hand over the one part of his body that remained tense, “let’s spread your wings.”
She raised his left arm and bound it to a leather cord at the top of the bedpost. With his right arm she did the same. His arms stretched out into a full, wide wingspan.
“Breathe the heat of the fire into your arms,” Nora said as she strapped a two-foot spreader bar to his ankles. “Feel them getting longer with each breath.”
Michael pulled on his bonds and found he couldn’t move. They had no give at all. He couldn’t run away, couldn’t escape. Trapped, imprisoned, helpless…
Nora picked up the flogger from the bed.
There was nowhere else in the world he wanted to be.
“What’s your safe word?” Nora asked.
“Wings.” Michael answered.
“You’ll say that word if you want me to stop, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good boy. Now take one more breath. This will only hurt a little bit. Oh, wait,” she said, laughing. “No, it won’t. It’ll hurt a lot.”
With that one last taunt, Nora took a step back and landed a hard blow right in the center of Michael’s back. He gasped from the shock of the pain. He had the time to inhale and exhale only once before the second blow hit. The third one struck his left flank, the fourth his right. Nora painted crosses across his back with the flogger and each slash left him crying out.
Fire…she’d lit his back on fire. When the blows finally ceased, Michael could do nothing but drop his head to his chest and pant. His heart raced, his blood burned. He’d never felt calmer in his life.
“Here,” Nora said as she brought a small glass of water to his lips. “Drink.”
She tilted the glass and he drank the water with a grateful gulp.
“You did very well,” Nora said. “You took a lot of pain for a beginner and didn’t even beg me to stop. Think you can take more?”
Could he take more? Did he want to take more? His entire back smoldered from neck to hip.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“God, I love masochists,” Nora said, setting the glass aside. “Such gluttons for punishment.”
Nora slid the cane off the bed and Michael’s body stiffened in fear.
“Six-bar gate,” she said. “Just one. Upper thighs. Then we’re done. Ready?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say yes. But he swallowed air again and nodded. Behind him he heard that hissing whistle again.
“You know, Angel, some people say it’s the sound of the cane that’s the worst part. Personally, I think that’s bullshit. What do you think?”
At that, he experienced a pain so excruciating that it would have dropped him to his knees had he not been tied up.
The second strike came before he could recover from the first.
“You see why it’s used for interrogations?”
“Yes—” he cried out as the third blow fell. The pain stabbed into his legs and shot through to his stomach. The agony was so acute, the pain so precise he could feel exactly where Nora placed each blow. Perfectly spaced, one inch apart.
The third felt like a knife on his skin instead of a cane.
The fourth and fifth he couldn’t even feel.
But the sixth landed diagonally across all five and the sound that escaped his lips sounded foreign to him, strange, like the cry of a wounded animal instead of a person.
Michael sagged in his bonds, barely aware of his surroundings. When Nora untied his arms, they dropped like dead weight to his sides. She unshackled his ankles and he hardly noticed.
Nora pressed her body into his burning back.
“Good boy,” she whispered. “I’m very proud of you.”
Proud of him? When was the last time anyone said they were proud of him? If Nora said she wanted to cane him again, he would have said, “Yes, ma’am.”
She stepped away and sat in a large leather armchair. She snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor by her feet.
Michael floated to her more than walked. A pleasant light-headedness gripped him. The sharp pains in his back and thighs had turned into a gentle throbbing. When he knelt at the floor by Nora’s feet, he half hoped she’d let him curl up in her lap and sleep.
“You did such a good job, Angel, that I’m going to give you a reward. Well, both of us a reward really.”
Nora’s shifted in the chair and draped one leg over each chair arm. Underneath her short, tight skirt she wore absolutely nothing.
“Do I need to tell you what to do?” Nora asked.
Michael licked his suddenly dry lips.
“Good start,” she said.
Heart pounding, Michael laid his hands on her inner thighs and brought his mouth to her. He’d dreamed of doing this to Nora, servicing her sexually. And now he could feel her swollen clitoris against his tongue. He took the little silver ring that pierced her hood between his lips as he brought his fingers up and slid two of them inside her. He had no idea what he was doing. Apart from a few awkward preteen kisses and gropings, he’d never been sexual with anyone other than Nora. He had zero experience with oral sex and nothing going for him but enthusiasm. From the sound of her ragged breathing, the enthusiasm seemed to be doing the trick.
She felt so wet and warm on his fingers, tasted so sweet and tart on his lips. How did Father S get anything done with this woman waiting for him back at the rectory?
Michael pushed his tongue far into her and her hips rose off the chair.
“Stop,” she ordered and Michael pulled away, wiping his lips off with the back of his hand. “On the bed. Now.”
He remembered Nora’s instructions and moved slowly, not hurrying too much to do her bidding. Kneeling on the bed, he waited as Nora came to him and shoved him onto his back. She grabbed his arms and pushed them over his head. Using a snap hook to connect his wrist cuffs, she secured his hands to the bars of the bed.
“Knees up,” she said. “Spread your legs.”
Just then he noticed the tube of lubricant in her hand.
“Forgive me,” Nora said. “I’m just a little a curious about something. Some men love this. Some hate it. Some are indifferent. I don’t care
either way. Your order is to be honest and tell me if you like it or not. Say ‘yes, ma’am’ if you understand.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Michael said, his hands going numb with nervousness. He wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do to him. But if it involved lube he had a fairly good idea.
She rubbed the liquid over two fingers on her right hand, and with her left hand, moved his knees farther apart.
“Shallow breaths, close your eyes,” Nora said. “This won’t hurt but it will feel weird at first.”
Michael nodded and obediently closed his eyes. He felt Nora’s fingers on him. If he had any shame or pride left he would have been mortified by how ridiculously aroused he was. He inhaled sharply as he felt Nora’s cold, wet fingers on him. Gently, so gently he sighed, she slid one finger inside him.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She pushed in deep and went deeper. Michael fought the urge to tense, to push her out.
“Now you know what women go through every time we get penetrated,” Nora said. “Like it?”
“It’s…intense.”
“Good word for it. It’s about to get more intense. Ready?”
Michael nodded.
Nora slid in deeper and Michael felt her fingertip against what felt like a tight knot of tissue deep inside him. Gently she rubbed and Michael’s back arched off the bed as a lightning bolt of pleasure shot through him.
“Oh, God,’’ he thought he said but he wasn’t sure if he spoke any actual words.
“I’ll take that as a yes, you do like it. Yes?”
Michael swallowed and gasped.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The sensation of her finger on that spot inside him caused every muscle in his back to knot up. His heels dug into the bed and he panted as if he’d just run a mile.
Vaguely and in the distance he heard Nora laughing as she continued to knead him.
“Born to be a bottom,” she sighed. “Can’t wait to torture Griffin with this news.”
At the mention of Griffin’s name, Michael squeezed his eyes tighter. Nora had said Griffin was bisexual. He’d been with men…sexually. Even maybe done this to other guys. Maybe even more. And without warning an image came unbidden into Michael’s mind. Griffin over him with his eyes half-closed with desire, bracing his strong, muscular body over Michael’s slighter frame…Michael’s leg over Griffin’s back, Griffin’s hand in Michael’s hair, Griffin’s lips on Michael’s throat, and Griffin’s…Griffin inside him. And not just his fingers.
“Come, Angel,” he heard Nora order before she brought her mouth down onto him. Once more Michael arched, pushed his feet into the bed, and came with desperate shuddering gasps that left his chest heaving and the muscles of his arms straining.
Nora pulled her fingers out of him. Slowly Michael opened his eyes and saw his bound wrists, the leather of the cuffs dark against his pale skin. If only he could stay here forever, cuffed and safe, he would never have to see the scars on his wrists again.
As Michael came back to himself, he felt Nora beginning to stroke him again. So soon after coming, her touch felt almost painful. But a good pain, a pain that set his nerves on edge again.
Raising his head he met Nora’s eyes. She leaned forward and kissed him. The kiss turned into a bite that broke the skin of his bottom lip. In one kiss he tasted the copper of his blood, the sweetness of her body, the salt of his semen. Nora moved over him, straddling his hips with her thighs.
“Is it really safe?” he asked nervously as she took his bare penis in her hand and started to guide him inside her.
“Don’t worry,” she said, caressing his chest, his shoulders with her lips. “I’m on the world’s best birth control.”
“Okay,” he sighed. More than okay. Her body burned like fire around him and he groaned as her heat enveloped him. She moved and he moved with her, into her. “If you’re sure, ma’am.”
“Very sure,” she said, moving against him. “Learned that the hard way.”
* * *
Slowly Suzanne turned around and found herself face-to-face with Father Stearns. He stood there looking at her with barely concealed amusement.
“Ms. Kanter, how nice to see you again.”
It took Suzanne a good three seconds to regain her composure enough to even speak.
“Father Stearns…I’m sorry. I just wanted to check out the sanctuary.”
“At ten o’clock on Saturday night?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
Suzanne racked her brain trying to find the perfect lie. But nothing came to her. And something told her that no matter what she told him, he’d see right through it. So she decided to take a risk, a big risk, and tell him the truth.
“I’m investigating you,” she confessed.
“Yes, I know.”
“That doesn’t bother you? Doesn’t surprise you?”
“Neither.”
She raised her chin and stared into his steel-gray eyes. Steel, the perfect color to describe them. She’d never seen harder eyes in her life.
“They say you can tell an innocent man from a guilty one by arresting him. An innocent man panics and paces his jail cell. The guilty one relaxes. He’s caught. He’s done.”
She saw his eyes soften with a hint of amusement.
He stepped forward. As he brushed past her he dipped his head and whispered in her ear, “I’m not afraid of you.”
Suzanne shivered. For some reason nearness of his mouth to her ear and his fearless defiance did something to her stomach, something not entirely unpleasant. She spun on her heel and followed him down the center aisle of the sanctuary.
“I got a tip about you. A fax with your name and the names of the two other priests up for bishop. Next to your name someone put an asterisk.”
“A terrifying piece of punctuation to be sure.”
“It is when it indicates a footnote. And that footnote said ‘Possible conflict of interest.’ Can you tell me what that conflict of interest is?”
Father Stearns stopped at a brass plaque with a roman numeral I above it. She stood a few feet away from him. As tall as he was, the distance made it easier to meet his eyes.
“I’m quite familiar with all of my interests, and I assure you none of them are conflicted.”
“Being a priest and having an interest in children is a conflict of interest. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would agree if it’s an unhealthy interest in children. Something I don’t have. If you doubt me, you are welcome to talk to every parent at this parish.”
Suzanne’s certainty that Father Stearns was a sexual predator wavered slightly at his calm conviction. But she pressed on, determined to find some sort of chink in his armor.
“What about Michael Dimir? Do you have an unhealthy interest in him?”
“I cannot and will not discuss Michael with you. I am his confessor.”
“Are you Nora Sutherlin’s confessor too?” she asked, putting suspicious emphasis on the word confessor.
Finally she seemed to get a reaction from him. He sighed heavily and turned to face her again. Once more she felt overpowered by his incredible handsomeness. Why would any man that attractive choose the celibate life of the priesthood when he could have any woman on the face of the earth?
“I am.”
“Are you sleeping with her?”
“Not since last Monday.”
Now it was Suzanne�
��s turn to sigh heavily.
“I can’t get a straight answer out of you to save my life. It’s not helping your case any.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her intently.
“If you asked me an actual question instead of simply making accusations, you might receive an actual answer. You’ve never met Eleanor Schreiber, the woman you know of as Nora Sutherlin, have you?”
“No.”
“Do you make it a common practice to pry into the personal lives of women you’ve never met before, women who’ve never done you any harm?”
Suzanne rolled her eyes.
“God, you Catholic priests. Masters of the guilt trip.”
“I’m very good at my job,” he said, mirth shining in his eyes. What kind of man could find a conversation like this funny? This priest had balls of steel to go along with his eyes. “I’m still waiting on a question, Ms. Kanter. If you can ask it without including an accusation, I might consider answering it.”
“Okay. Here’s one. Why are you a priest?”
“I’m glad you started with such a simple question.”
Suzanne couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“It was simple to ask.” She smiled despite herself.
He paused and seemed to mull his words over.
“I was not raised Catholic. I didn’t encounter Catholics until I was sent to a Jesuit school in Northern Maine at age eleven.”
Suzanne inwardly winced. She couldn’t imagine a child so young being sent away to a school in the middle of nowhere.
“The Jesuits priests, my teachers, were the best men I’ve ever known. Their erudition coupled with their kindness and dedication to their work humbled me. I felt called to join their ranks. I converted at age fourteen and at age nineteen I went to Rome and started my training.”
“That’s it?”
“I apologize for not having a Road to Damascus story to tell you.”
“You were only nineteen when you started seminary. You never wanted to get married? Date? Have kids? Have…” Her voice trailed off.
“Have sex?” he finished for her. “I’ll tell you something shocking if you promise not to share it with anyone.”
The Angel (The Original Sinners) Page 18