“You have sex with my husband often?”
“I didn’t know he was your husband at that time he and I were f**king. You’re the one who faked your death. Can’t blame me.”
“I don’t blame you. I blame him, and I blame my brother.”
“They didn’t know you were alive, either.”
“I don’t blame them for not knowing. That was the plan. I blame them for not caring.”
Nora’s blood momentarily turned to ice in her veins. She felt as though she was standing on the edge of a cliff, maybe even the very cliff Marie-Laure had supposedly fallen from. But this time it would be her who would fall off it if she wasn’t careful.
“They did care,” Nora said, weighing her words.
“That’s not what you said earlier today. You said my revenge against them didn’t work. And you promised me a story to prove it. I want this story of yours.”
Fuck... Nora felt the wind rushing past her as the ground sped toward her. Marie-Laure had set a nice little trap and she’d fallen into it.
“I said your revenge didn’t work because it didn’t break up Kingsley and Søren. I never said they didn’t care.”
“It’s the same thing to me. If my love for someone had killed my brother, I would never want to see that person again.”
“Yes, I can tell how much you love Kingsley.”
Marie-Laure leaned forward and rested her elbows on her legs. With her chin on her hand and a dangerous glint in her eyes, Marie-Laure only responded with four words.
“Tell me the story.”
“You sure you want to hear a graphic narration of me having sex with your brother?”
“But of course. Leave us, Damon. She’s shy.”
Damon finished off Nora’s knots and left them alone in the bedroom. Marie-Laure reached into the nightstand and pulled out a gun. She laid it by the lamp and leaned back against the pillows. A nice little taunt. The gun lay pointed at Nora. Nora ignored it.“Get comfortable,” Nora warned Marie-Laure. “This story, much like sex with Kingsley, takes a while.”
* * *
Four years...that’s how long Eleanor waited to have sex with Søren. Too long for her tastes but then again, knowing her, she would have let him have her the day they met. Stupid priest had scruples, however, and this weird idea that she should be fully mentally and emotionally prepared for what it meant to share his bed. He said it like that, too. Share his bed. So classy...respectful even. He never said anything about “fucking” her. He only swore when he wanted to deliberately provoke or shock someone. She, on the other hand, swore like a sailor with Tourette’s syndrome. She never told Søren how much she liked the way he talked to her about their private life, how it made her feel like a lady to have sex discussed in such discreet civilized terms. Of course, it wasn’t until they became lovers that she realized how much of a mindfuck that delicate talk of his was. Outside the bedroom, he was all euphemisms and elegance. Once she started “sharing his bed,” she discovered the gentleman outside the bedroom turned almost savage inside it, inside her. Sex with Søren was raw, brutal and merciless, and she’d loved it, reveled in it, couldn’t get enough of it, enough of him.
Three months after they’d become lovers, she lay across his strong stomach, spent from the beating he’d given her and bruised from the sex. She made the mistake of uttering a very dangerous sentence to a very dangerous man.
“I wish I had two of you,” she said, dropping a kiss onto the center of his chest as she traced his rib cage with her fingertips. “I want this every night.”
All she meant by it was that she loved him, that she loved being with him, submitting to him, seeing the real him that he kept hidden away from the world and who only came out at night.
But instead of laughing at her insatiable desire for him, teasing her about her libido that rivaled any teenage boy on earth, he simply said, “I’ll speak to Kingsley.”
Nora, then still Elle or Eleanor, sat up straight in bed and stared down at him.
“You’re not kidding, are you, sir?”
“Of course I’m not.”
She shook her head and tears filled her eyes.
“I belong to you,” she whispered, and she put meaningful and desperate emphasis on the “you.”
At that the hint of a smile appeared on the corner of Søren’s perfect lips and within seconds she found herself flat on her back underneath him, her hands pinned over her head by his steel-strong arms.
“I’m a Jesuit,” he reminded her. “We share everything in common.”
Using his knees he pushed her thighs wide open and shoved two fingers inside her. As always her body responded to his touch even against her will.
“I don’t want to be with anybody but you. I waited for you.” She tried squirming away from him but he held her down hard and in place. There was nowhere to go.
“Kingsley’s been waiting for you almost as long as I have.” He lowered himself onto her and kissed her. At first she ignored the kiss, tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but his mouth was too insistent, her heart too willing. She gave into the kiss, gave into him. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”
So it was decided entirely without consulting her feelings on the matter that the two of them would spend an evening at Kingsley’s the very next week. No amount of pouting and protesting would talk Søren out of it. Before they became lovers they’d talked at length about what her limits were. She had a hard time coming up with any. She knew he wouldn’t shave her head or cut off her arms or stab her in the heart. So she’d told him that she trusted him, that she knew he would never push her past her breaking point.