The Saint: The Original Sinners Book 5 (21 page)

“What happened? Or do I not want to know?” For the first time she realized how right Søren had been. For over two years she’d begged to know the truth about him and he’d put her off. Now she understood why he’d kept his secrets.

“You don’t want to know. But you need to know. You see, I hadn’t seen Elizabeth in five years. We were strangers to each other. I tried to befriend her and after a few months back in this house, she started to speak to me a little.”

He paused and closed his eyes. Eleanor feared what he would say next but she knew she had to hear it.

“My father had to leave the country on an extended business trip. His wife decided to go with him—a second honeymoon. She demanded the children be left behind. I think she sensed his unnatural interest in their daughter. Whatever the reason, it set a series of events in motion that have brought me to this place. And that brings us back to question eight. No, I’m not a virgin.”

“When was your first time?”

“I’ll tell you, and I only hope you can stomach the answer. At some point Elizabeth had overheard my father telling her mother about what happened when I was at school—about the boy who’d touched me in my sleep and how I’d killed him. Elizabeth wanted to die. You can’t blame her. I certainly never have blamed her for what she did. Our parents left us alone in the house with only a few servants, and on the first night they were gone, Elizabeth came into my room. I was asleep, sound asleep. I didn’t hear her open the door. I didn’t hear her close it. I didn’t feel her pulling the sheets down. I didn’t even wake up until it was too late. When I did wake up, I was already inside her.”

Eleanor clapped a hand over her mouth.

“It happens, you see. Boys get erections in their sleep. I can’t blame her....” he said again. “She wanted me to kill her. She wanted to instigate an attack like what happened at my school. But she wasn’t an older boy I already loathed. She was my own sister, and I loved her.”

He closed his eyes as if to hide from something.

“So I didn’t kill her. Sometimes I wonder if she still wishes I had. I don’t remember much from that night. I know she ended up on her back. I know I left bruises on her. And I know...”

“What?” Eleanor barely heard herself asking the question.

“I know we liked it. Because the next night and every night after that for two months, we did it again.”

She didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to react. All she could do was take his hand in hers and twine their fingers together. His past reared up before them like a beast or demon. She wouldn’t turn away from it, wouldn’t run. They would face it and they would face it together.

“Eleanor, you cannot imagine what I did to my sister, or what she did to me. It’s beyond what even your powers of imagination can conjure. I never want you to imagine. Know only this—there is no act of depravity we did not try at least once that long summer. It’s a miracle we both survived each other. Please never imagine it.”

“I won’t. I promise.” She made the promise easily and knew she would keep it. She shoved away the images that attempted to enter her mind. Shoved them away, pushed them down and stabbed them through the heart.

“There is no room in this house we did not defile. But our favorite room to play in was the library.”

“Why the library?”

“Sometimes we would read to each other. It made us feel normal, I suppose.” Søren smiled then, a smile so pained it hurt to even see. She closed her eyes and buried her face against his leg. Every muscle in his body had gone tense. “But all horrible things must come to an end. At the end of the summer, we knew our father would be returning again. Elizabeth sometimes shook in my arms from the terror of knowing what would happen to her once Father returned. I told her we had to leave the house. We had to run away. I ordered her to pack, to call her grandparents, to find all the money she could so we could get as far away from this house as possible. She didn’t obey me. She thought he would find us wherever we went. She should have...” Søren’s voice trailed off a moment. “She should have obeyed me.”

“Why?”

“Because our father came home early. And he found us together.”

“Jesus Christ...” Eleanor breathed.

“We were lost children by then,” Søren said. “We knew what we did was wrong but were powerless to stop ourselves. Despair brought us to depravity and we couldn’t find a way out again.”

“How did it stop?”

“Our father stopped it for us.”

Eleanor pulled back and raised her hand.

“I need a minute.”

“I warned you.”

“I know you did. But I didn’t know.”

She leaned forward and rested both arms in his lap. He ran his hand over her back as if to comfort her when all she wanted was to comfort him.

“If God was in the world that day, He wasn’t in that room when my father came home. He saw us together and he threw me against the wall. I remember the blood on the golden wallpaper—red on yellow. And he started to rape Elizabeth, to re-mark his territory. I found the fireplace poker and struck him with it. He moved. I missed his head. But it got him off Elizabeth. He came after me instead. He hit me, breaking my arm. I don’t remember much from that day, but I do remember him tying me to a chair and telling me he would kill me. ‘You’re dead,’ he said, and I knew he meant it. Then he was down, unconscious. Elizabeth had struck him over the head with the poker to save my life. I passed out to the sound of her laughter. I woke up in the hospital.”

Eleanor tasted copper in her mouth. If she wasn’t careful she would vomit from her horror at what Søren had suffered so young.

“What happened to Elizabeth?”

“Her mother heard her laughing and came to investigate. When she saw the scene before her, she could no longer deny the truth of who and what her husband was. She took me to the hospital and took Elizabeth away. She and my father divorced quietly and split all assets equally. Better to pay him off and keep things quiet than go through a messy public court battle.

“Question six was why does everyone think my name is Marcus Stearns and I told you my name is Søren? Søren is what my mother named me. Magnussen is her last name. I’ve tried for years to reject my father, his money and his world as much as I can. So I reject his name—at least in private. I wanted you to know the real me. To know the story of my name is to know me. There are few people who I want to know me.”

“I want to know you.”

“Now you do.”

“Is what happened between you and your sister why you became Catholic?”

“Yes. My father came to his senses a few days after the incident. He remembered I was his only son, but he didn’t want me in the house. I think he feared my retribution. I wanted to kill him, so I can’t blame him for sending me away to a Jesuit boarding school in rural Maine. I felt polluted by what had happened between my sister and me. When Father Henry taught us about confession and reconciliation, about forgiveness...I knew I needed that. I converted to Catholicism and started studying to join the Jesuits.”

“That’s where you met Kingsley, right?”

“Kingsley... He was a gift from God. I kept away from everyone but the priests at Saint Ignatius. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I did...but I didn’t. I wanted to but I didn’t want to want to. When I lose control, it’s not a pleasant sight.”

“I trust you.”

“You’re in love with me. Of course you trust me. I hope I never betray that trust. I cannot promise you I never will. And now after all that, I can answer your remaining questions quickly. Question five—you asked whose feet should you sit at. I hope the answer is mine. Question four, you asked me why does a priest have his own handcuff key. Eleanor, I’m a sadist and for the sake of my own sanity I must inflict pain on someone every now and then. It’s a powerful need and it grows maddening if I deny myself too long. You saw at Kingsley’s house the sort of parties he has, the company he keeps. I haven’t had sexual intercourse since I was eighteen. I do beat someone at least once a month, sometimes once a week.”

Eleanor’s eyes widened in shock.

“That night at Kingsley’s...?”

Søren nodded.

“That woman you saw me with is a friend of Kingsley’s. She’s a trained masochist who enjoys receiving pain as much as I enjoy inflicting it. Bondage is part of the sessions. A person tied up is defenseless. I’m less likely to overstep my bounds with a defenseless person. Question three—you asked why my friend would help you. That is a question only Kingsley can answer, and that is all I will say. The answer to your second question—what’s the third reason being with you is problematic—is what I told you. I am a sadist and I can’t get aroused unless I hurt you in some way first. I wish it could be otherwise, of course.”

“Of course,” she repeated, not even hearing herself. “So you...you can’t—”

“Eleanor, you joked about us breaking the table during sex. I don’t break furniture during sex. I break people.”

“I see.”

“As for question number one—what’s the other reason I helped you the night you were arrested? The answer to question one is the same as the answer to question twelve. Because I’m in love with you and always will be. So there you have it. The whole sordid truth of me.”

Søren fell silent and Eleanor let his words settle into the room. She knew he waited for her to speak, to pass some judgment, to make some declaration. He’d bared his very soul to her, laid out the humiliations and horrors of his past and confessed how they tormented him even to this day. She had no idea what to say to comfort him, or if she even could. But first she had one question.

“Is that all?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Is what I told you not enough for you?”

“No, the sadism thing is plenty. I was worried it was something really serious.”

“You have a different definition of
serious
than the rest of the English-speaking world.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Like
serious
serious. Like if you were a criminal on the run or you had terminal cancer. Or worse, you could be impotent. I mean actually impotent. Sounds like you just have a different definition of foreplay.”

“My definition of foreplay is usually classified as assault.”

“Obviously you and I are reading different dictionaries.”

“You don’t seem to understand the gravity of this situation. I am a sadist. I cannot escape that. I’m like my father.”

“How badly do you hurt the people you play with? Like do they have to go to the hospital after or anything?”

“As a teenager I lost control once. It was consensual, but I crossed a line. Since then, no. I had a teacher in Rome who taught me ways of inflicting enormous amounts of pain without causing harm. At worst the person will have bruises for a few weeks. Bruises and welts. The masochists I play with are as well trained as I am. They trust me and do as I tell them to do. They put their lives in my hands, and I honor that trust.”

“Your father hurt people against their will. You don’t do that, right?”

“Never. I only hurt those who wish to be hurt, who enjoy it.”

“So you’re the opposite of your father, then. Right?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“If you stick your dick in a woman who wants it, it’s sex. If you stick your dick in a woman who doesn’t, it’s rape. It’s the same act but totally different, right? If this is why you’re holding back from me, you can stop that right now.”

“Something broke in me a long time ago, Eleanor. Or perhaps I was born broken. But yes, when the time comes for us to make love, I will have to hurt you.”

Eleanor’s hands shook as the words
make love
escaped Søren’s lips again. She tucked her toes under her and rolled back. She rose up in front of him.

“Eleanor?”

She pushed her shorts down and pulled off her T-shirt. Naked and unashamed, she stood before him in the moonlight.

“Then hurt me.”

22

Eleanor

SØREN
GAZED UPON
her naked body with reverent eyes. Still, he made no move
to touch her. She took his right wrist in her hand and pressed his palm flat
against her bare stomach. His hand slid to her back and he pulled her into his
lap.

She straddled his thighs in the chair as he scored her back
with his fingers. Her head fell back as he kissed her neck, her throat. His
teeth found the tendon where her shoulder met her neck. He bit down hard, hard
enough she gasped, and he shuddered in her arms.

“More,” she whispered.

The world around her drained of color. Flesh and fire turned to
black-and-white. Music thrummed in the back of her mind. For no reason and every
reason, she felt like laughing.

Søren lifted her easily and carried her to the bed,
throwing her down onto the sheets. She lay there, still, as he unbuttoned his
shirt. With his knees he pushed her thighs apart. When she raised her hands to
touch his naked chest, he captured them and pinned them above her head. He put
his full weight into holding her down. The muscles in her forearms contracted in
agony, and she cried out in real pain.

“This is how it is,” Søren rasped into her ear. “Do you
still want this?”

“I want more.” She turned her head and kissed his collarbone
where it met his shoulder. “Hurt me.”

He scoured her skin as he dragged his fingers down her body.
Pushing his thumbs into the hollow of her hipbones, he pressed down hard. She
cried out in the back of her throat as she felt a deep wrenching in her legs.
Panting through the pain, she looked up at Søren. Søren...her
Søren, he was the one inflicting this pain on her. What did she have to
fear? Nothing.

He released her hips and brought his mouth down onto her lips.
Panting had left her parched as the desert and his kiss was the only sea that
could quench her thirst. He cupped the back of her neck with one hand and held
her head, cradling it like a father holding an infant.

“I love you.” She fought the pain, the fear, to release the
words. He let her go and rose up over her. In the moonlight she watched as he
pulled off his shirt and let it fall to the floor. She had never desired anyone
as she desired him and knew she never would.

“Your eyes change color,” he said, gazing down at her. “I
noticed it the day we met. Green one moment, black the next. I’ve never seen
anything like it.”

“You’ve never seen anything like me.” She smiled up at him.

“Have you ever had a dream feel so real that upon waking you
thought you were still asleep?” He took her hand in his.

“Once or twice.”

“I felt like that the moment I saw you, Little One. I dreamed
you once. I think I’m still dreaming.”

Eleanor kissed his hand. He cupped the side of her face.

“Call me
sir,
” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me I own you.”

“You own me, sir.”

“Say I am the only Father you will ever obey.”

“I will obey you only, sir.”

They spoke the words—call and response—like the most sacred of
liturgies.

“Do you like the pain?” Søren gripped her thighs.

“Yes, sir.”

“Even now?”

His impossibly strong hands pressed deep into her skin. She
arched against the sheets, her body awash with pain. Søren covered her
mouth with one hand and she screamed against it. How could bare hands hurt so
much? How could she want more of it? Because it was him, the pain. Søren
and pain became one in her mind and her body. She could never get enough of
either.

At last he released her and she sank into the sheets. He traced
a path down her neck with his hand, sliding his palm over her breasts. Her
nipples hardened in response to his touch.

“Tell me to stop.”

“Is that an order?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then don’t stop, sir.”

In the next breath Søren slammed her flat on her stomach,
grasped her arm and pinned it behind her back.

She felt teeth at the nape of her neck, teeth in the center of
her back, teeth in the small of her back. All the while her shoulder burned like
fire as the muscles strained to hold it in the socket. The pain threatened to
overwhelm her.

The pain ceased as he released her arm. In that moment when the
pain stopped, a relief far greater than pleasure suffused her.

Søren stretched out on top of her. He covered her hands
with his hands, twined her fingers in his fingers, buried his face into her
hair. The full weight of his body on top of hers, the feel of his bare chest
against her naked back, caused her stomach to knot up and blood to rush to her
hips.

His hand traveled between their bodies. She heard a zipper open
and felt his erection pressing against the back of her thigh.

She loved him. He would never take her anywhere she wasn’t
ready to go.

She trusted him. He pushed up and pressed her into the bed, his
hand on the back of her neck, his hips riding against her.

She needed him. He inhaled softly and liquid heat rained on her
back.

A sigh escaped his lips—or was the sigh hers? She lay beneath
him, warm and naked, and welcomed his semen on her body.

Eleanor wanted to roll onto her back, but she waited, sensing
an order would come. How simple it seemed, obedience did, when she loved the man
she obeyed so completely. There was nothing he could order her to do that she
wouldn’t do, because she knew he would never order her to do anything she didn’t
want.

She waited in silence and listened as he cleaned himself off
and righted his clothes.

Søren slid a hand under her hip and turned her over onto
her back. His mouth captured hers again. She breathed in and inhaled that
winter’s scent on his skin.

“Is that what it will always be like?” she asked as his right
hand cupped her breast.

“No. Some nights it will be much worse.”

“Worse?”

“More pain.”

“I can take it.” She smiled at him through the dark and he
raised his eyebrow at her.

“But do you want to take it? Will you always?”

“From you? Yes, always.”

He brought his mouth down onto her breast. She arched into his
mouth as pleasure spiked deep into her belly. More, more, more, she wanted to
beg. His tongue teased her nipple. His fingers toyed with her other breast. He
kissed his way back to her mouth.

“For you, pain is the prelude,” he said into her lips.

“Prelude to what?”

“The reward.”

“What is the pain to you?”

“Its own reward,” he said, and she saw a shadow cross his
face.

Søren slipped a hand between her legs and found her
clitoris. Her body twitched from the shock of the touch, so intimate and
unexpected. She spread her legs for him, wanting to offer all of herself to him.
She met his eyes in the dark and he pushed one finger inside her.

Eleanor nearly came right then simply from him penetrating her
so suddenly. She gripped the sheets as he explored inside her. He pushed in deep
and slid out slowly before pushing in again.

“It’s been so long...” He breathed the words, his eyes
closed.

“Since you’ve been inside someone?”

He nodded and inhaled sharply as she raised her hips into his
hand.

“Does it feel...” She paused and asked the question she really
wanted to ask. “How do I feel?”

“There’s not a word that’s been invented to describe how you
feel inside, Little One.” He sat up and wrapped her leg around his back so he
sat between her open thighs. He pressed his finger into a spot deep within her
and sank into her softness. He seemed to be so far inside her she could feel him
in the pit of her stomach. “Has anyone ever been inside you?”

“No one but me.” She flinched with pleasure as he scraped the
front wall of her vagina. He hit a spot inside her that made her shoulders come
off the bed.

“I can feel your hymen,” he said, turning his hand and pressing
down. She winced at the sudden burning pain and he inhaled as if suddenly
aroused.

“Feel free to get rid of it.”

“That would be a terrible idea.”

“You don’t want to take my virginity?”

“No, I want it too much. I’m not entirely sure I could control
myself to keep from truly hurting you.”

“Is your... I mean, are you—”

Søren pulled his hand out of her and started to open his
pants.

“Wait, I’m not on—”

But before she could finish protesting, Søren had taken
her hand and wrapped it around him.

“Oh, fuck,” she said.

“Does that answer your question?”

Even after coming a few minutes earlier, he was hard again,
incredibly so. She stroked him from the base to the still-wet tip of his
erection. He was big—big enough it made her nervous. When they had sex the first
time it would hurt and hurt badly. That didn’t stop her from wanting it.

“You’re gonna kill me with that, aren’t you?”

“Very likely.”

“I can think of worse ways to die.”

He removed her hand from him and she whimpered in protest.
Laughing, he settled next to her on the bed again.

Once more he slipped his hand between her legs.

“I want you to come for me. Will you do that?” he asked
her.

“Hell, yes, sir.”

Even in the dark she could see Søren arching his eyebrow
at her.

“I mean, yes, sir.”

“Better. Now show me how you need to be touched.”

Covering his hand with hers, she guided his fingers to her
clitoris. Once they’d made their deal, she’d begun learning her own body and its
responses. She’d snuck into the adult sections of the library and read every sex
manual she could find, hiding them behind books on fall foliage and European
architecture. She considered herself the only virgin sex expert in the world.
She should win some sort of prize for that. This—Søren’s fingers on her
clitoris—must be that prize.

With her fingers over his, she showed him how to rub her in the
way she knew would bring her to orgasm. Her hand fell from his as the pleasure
built hard and high in her back. She’d been teetering on the brink of orgasm
simply from lying naked in a bed with him for the first time. All her senses
were on highest alert. Her entire body buzzed with desire. Wetness stained her
thighs and the sheets beneath her. Looking down, she watched his fingers on the
most private part of her body. Blood pounded in her ears. Her heart slammed
against her ribcage. Muscles deep inside her started to clench and release. She
closed her eyes and felt her body rising off the bed.

“Come for me, Little One,” Søren ordered, and her body
obeyed before her mind even registered the command.

She climaxed hard, gasping aloud as Søren pushed a finger
into her and pressed it against the contracting muscles. It trebled her pleasure
as she felt herself spasming around him over and over again.

Søren stayed inside her as she came down from the high.
They kissed again, and the kiss stoked the fire still smoldering inside her.
Søren kneaded her clitoris again and she came a second time, nearly as hard
as the first time. She collapsed onto the sheets, limp and spent.

“Stay here.” Søren slid off the bed and left the room for
a minute. When he came back in, he locked the door behind him once more and sat
on the edge of the bed. He ordered her to sit up with her back to him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her as he started to wash the
slight residue of semen off her back with a warm, wet cloth.

“I think my brain exploded.”

He paused to kiss her naked shoulder.

“You’ll have bruises tomorrow. On your thighs, on your back,”
he said, retracing the path of the pain he’d given her with his fingertips.
“They’ll start out pale and turn black soon after.”

“I can handle bruises. I won’t wear short skirts and backless
dresses.”

“Kingsley recommends his masochists take zinc. It helps the
bruises heal faster.”

“Is Kingsley like you?” She turned around and faced him, her
knees pulled to her chest to cover her nakedness.

“A sadist, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“He enjoys pain play enormously, although he can and does have
sex without it often. It’s safe to say Kingsley enjoys...everything.”

“My kind of guy.”

“There is something else you need to learn about Kingsley.”

“What?” She wrapped her arms around her legs, suddenly
chilly.

“There is God, there is you and there is Kingsley. Those are my
three nonnegotiables. You understand?”

She nodded solemnly, wondering why Kingsley meant so much to
Søren, but decided not to ask. Kingsley had been his best friend in school
and their friendship had survived the death of Kingsley’s sister. Søren
called Kingsley a non-negotiable. She needed to know nothing more.

“I may have Kingsley instruct you about our world, the
rules.”

“It is that complicated?”

“It is. This world of ours is structured, hierarchical and
ritualistic.”

“Sounds like church.”

Søren smiled broadly.

“Perhaps that’s part of the appeal for me. It takes eroticism
seriously, treats it as the sacred thing it is, that it should be.”

“This feels sacred to me. It didn’t feel like a sin. Was
it?”

Søren turned her to face him. She should have felt
embarrassed being naked with him like this, especially since he still had his
trousers on, but instead she felt pride in her naked body, pleased she could
finally display it for him. He took her breasts in his hands and held them while
he kissed her.

“Did it feel like a sin?” Søren asked when he pulled back
from the kiss and released her breasts.

“No. It felt like love,” she said.

“Your friend St. Teresa of Avila who had the erotic encounter
with the angel might have agreed with you.”

“Really?”

“She said, ‘It is here that love is to be found—not hidden away
in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin.’ Perhaps she was right.”