The Saint: The Original Sinners Book 5 (30 page)

“That was Beethoven?”

“The Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement. Otherwise known as the ‘Ode to Joy.’”

“No piano part?”

“I believe Beethoven simply felt the other instruments would be overpowered by the piano. It’s a large instrument. Some people find it intimidating.”

He winked at her and Eleanor laughed, grinning up at him.

“It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I think I saw God. He smiled at me.”

“I never appreciated the Ninth Symphony until I met you, Eleanor. When I saw you I heard it for the first time coming from inside my own heart. I was seventeen when I first dreamed of you. Kingsley and I were talking, fantasizing about the perfect woman. Green eyes and black hair or black eyes and green hair, we didn’t care, as long as she was wilder than the both of us together. Only a dream...and then you.”

“Mom asked me once what it would take for me to believe in God. I told her if I could meet one person who seemed like he was created in God’s image, I would start believing. And then you.”

They stared at each other as if they were two people who’d met in a dream and upon waking found they still saw each other.

“They say there are no atheists in foxholes. I can’t imagine there are many of them in symphonies. God created Beethoven and Beethoven created this.... You can hear hints of the melody in a much earlier work called the ‘Choral Fantasy.’ He dreamed of it long before he wrote it. Even the angels bend their ears to earth when the ‘Ode to Joy’ is performed. When you hear music so beautiful it gives you chills, those are angel wings brushing against you.”

“I have chills now,” she whispered.

“Angels have haloes and wings. We have free will and Beethoven.”

“I think we got the better deal.”

Søren smiled into the distance.

“Beethoven was deaf when he composed this piece. He couldn’t hear his own masterpiece anywhere but in his own head. But we are all deaf in a way. Life is a symphony composed by God, played by us with preludes, themes, movements, passages...and wrong notes, so many wrong notes. Heaven is where we get to hear the music played perfectly for the first time.”

“I think life is a book,” Eleanor said. “God writes it. We’re His characters. He knows what happens on the next page, but we don’t. Heaven is where we get to read the book cover to cover and see how it all makes sense.”

Søren cupped the back of Eleanor’s neck and she rose up on her knees to meet his lips.

“No one down there can see us up here, can they?” she whispered after the kiss.

“Even if they could, I don’t care today. Happy birthday, Little One.”

“Thank you, sir. Now, I believe you said something about two presents?” She batted her eyelashes at him.

“I do have a second gift for you. Pick a number between one and five.”

“Oh, I love this game. Five, five, five,” she said.

“Are you sure about that?” His gray eyes twinkled mischievously at her.

“I told you, I’ll always pick the biggest number. I’m greedy.”

“Very well. Five it is.”

Søren reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out five white envelopes, each of them with a number on the front, the numbers one through five.

“There are five dates on cards inside the envelope.”

“Dates for what?”

“Our first night together.”

Eleanor looked at him then back at the cards.

“You mean—”

“Open the card.”

With trembling fingers she picked up the card marked with a five. She resisted the urge to rip right into it. She could do this. She could be calm. From inside the envelope she pulled a piece of paper.

“And the winner is...” she said, opening the note.

“Holy Thursday,” Søren said. “Less than three weeks away.”

Eleanor stared at the words and forced herself to breathe. She’d been in love with Søren for four years and now in front of her was the day written in ink.

“I can’t wait.” She pressed the card to her heart. He cupped her face and she grinned up at him. This was happiness—simply being with him.

“I should go. I’m needed back in Wakefield.”

“Yeah, I have swim practice. I should go to that.”

“Eleanor, about that.”

“What?”

He said nothing and he didn’t have to. From the look on his face, she understood.

“Okay. I’ll quit the team.”

“I wish it could be another way.”

“This is how it is. I’ll tell them today.” If she and Søren were going to be lovers, she’d have to spend the rest of her life learning how to hide her bruises and welts. No way to hide bruises in a swimsuit. She knew there’d be a price to pay. This was a small one.

“Jeg elsker dig, min lille en.”

Søren kissed her again.

“I’ll see you soon,” he promised. “You should open the other cards and see what your options were.”

“Sadist,” she said, smiling against his lips.

Søren left her alone in the balcony with the four remaining unopened cards. She shouldn’t open them. She knew she shouldn’t. They were the roads not taken, so why even given them a second thought?

Fuck that, she wanted to know.

She opened envelope number one and nearly swore aloud as she read the one word written on it.

Tonight.

If she’d picked number one, she would have lost her virginity on her birthday.

God damn her and her greediness. Maybe card number two would have said Easter or some day after Holy Thursday.

“What the—”

Card number two also said
Tonight.

Card number three?
Tonight.

And card number four? Eleanor ripped the envelope open.

“Motherfucking priest.”

31

Eleanor

ON THE EVENING
of Holy Thursday, Eleanor stopped by her old house in Wakefield but didn’t go inside. After Eleanor started college, her mother had gotten an apartment in Westport closer to her job and put the Wakefield house on the market. Now it sat empty, abandoned, alone. Her mom had picked Wakefield because of its proximity to its good Catholic schools. Eleanor wondered if her mother regretted going through all that trouble. Her mom assumed Eleanor had turned into a godless heathen at her liberal arts school—the sort of girl who slept around and drank and never went to church. She was no saint, but she’d made it to twenty still a virgin. And God knows she loved the Catholic Church—at least one part of it—with all her heart.

Although she hated it then, now she was grateful that her mother had made her go to church. Otherwise she wouldn’t have met Søren, and through Søren she’d found her way to God.

She wondered about who might buy the house someday. Whoever it was, she hoped God took as good care of them as He had of her. Four years ago she’d sat in a police station thinking her life had ended at age fifteen. Now all she saw before her were endless beautiful possibilities.

A thousand times as a teenager she’d walked from her house to Sacred Heart. She could have driven to the church or asked Kingsley to drive her. But she wanted to walk tonight like she had so many times before. She would have walked all the way from New York if she had to. She would have walked barefoot on broken glass.

At the rectory she paused outside the door and removed her shoes. No one told her to, and she had no idea why she did it.

On bare and silent feet, she slipped in the side door and once inside the house she heard music. Piano music. She’d never heard the piece before but it spoke to her, whispered to her, beckoned her farther in. She found Søren at the piano, his fingers gliding across the keys, waltzing in the shadows cast by a single candle. She sat next to him on the bench, her back to the keyboard, and rested her head against his shoulder. He played until the end of the piece before lifting his fingers off the keys and letting the notes hang in the air. He closed the fallboard and looked at her.

“More Beethoven?” she asked.

“The Moonlight Sonata. I can’t complain Beethoven didn’t write a piano part for his Ninth Symphony. He did give us pianists the Moonlight Sonata as a consolation prize.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“So are you.”

Eleanor took a deep breath.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Little One.”

“Are you as nervous as I am?”

He exhaled heavily. “I haven’t done this since I was eighteen years old.”

“So you are nervous?”

“Not at all.”

“Me, neither,” she said and meant it.

Søren dipped his head and her lips trembled against his. She hadn’t lied. She didn’t feel a moment’s nervousness. Only peace and desire as if this moment had been waiting outside her door her entire life and at last she could let it in.

She reached behind her head and pulled out the pencil she’d used to hold her hair back in a loose knot. Søren smiled at the pencil lying on her palm.

“You’re so certain you’re going to pass this test tonight?” he asked her. She laid the pencil on the piano by the candle, thrilled Søren remembered their long-ago talk about how she’d take only a pencil to the tests she’d knew she’d ace.

“I plan on blowing the curve.”

They kissed again, kissed through their smiles.

“Stay,” Søren said as he pulled away from her.

She waited on the piano bench as ordered. From now until the end of time this would be her life—Søren giving orders and her taking them. She would wait when he said wait and where he said wait and she would not move until he told her she could move.

Søren returned to the living room carrying a large ivory basin, a glass pitcher of water and a small white towel.

Her heart caught in her throat when Søren knelt on the floor in front of her.

“Søren, please don’t—”

“It’s Holy Thursday. This is what priests do on Holy Thursday.”

“Why?”

“Because Christ washed his disciples’ feet on the night of the Last Supper.”

She’d struggled with what to wear tonight, struggled until she remembered it wouldn’t matter. If she’d shown up in torn rags, Søren would still love her, still want her. And she’d be naked any moment anyway. She’d dressed in jeans and a sweater. Underneath she wore white lingerie that Kingsley had paid for and Sam had picked out. As weird as it was to get lingerie from Kingsley and Sam, she couldn’t fault their taste. Even if it was weird, she liked that. Life would be weird from now on. She was the mistress of a Catholic priest who was the best friend of the king of an S&M empire. Life was weird and wonderful and all she could say to it was Amen, Amen.

So be it.

Søren took her right foot in his hand and she shivered at the gentle touch. As he poured warm water over her feet, she sighed from the heat. So this was love? She tucked this feeling in her heart and hid it there. Someday she would write about this moment. She would write a book about a girl who fell in love with a god and then, to her complete surprise, discovered the god loved her back. Since he couldn’t be a man she would be a goddess and leave the mortal world behind for him.

He poured the water over her left foot and dried both her feet with the towel. Not even kneeling at her feet diminished Søren in her eyes. His long eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks. One mutinous strand of hair wanted to fall over his forehead. She pushed it back and Søren pressed his cheek into her hand. As much as she railed and fought against waiting this long, she now understood why it had been for the best. They met each other as equals tonight. Her submission meant more because she chose it freely instead of letting the law or their age difference or anything in the world impose it on her.

Søren stood up and took her in his arms. He lifted her off the piano bench and carried her upstairs. She’d never been in his bedroom before, and it didn’t disappoint. It seemed a sacred space to her, the room where Søren slept. The white sheets covered the bed like a new-fallen snow. The dark wood of the four-poster bed appeared to her like the trunks of trees—strong and eternal. She felt like a virgin sacrifice brought to an ancient forest. Blood must be spilled for the gods to be appeased. She offered her own blood tonight and would pour it like wine on snow.

A glass of red wine sat by the bed. Søren raised it and drank from the glass. He handed it to her.

“Drink. It will relax you.”

She drank as ordered.

“I will be as careful as I can be tonight.”

“The more pain I feel, the more you enjoy it, yes?”

Søren opened a box on the bedside table and pulled her white collar from it. He stepped behind her as she kept drinking the wine.

“Yes. But I can still enjoy myself without torturing you.”

“You don’t have to be careful with me, sir.” She inhaled as he locked the collar around her neck. She breathed into its grip.

“You are my most precious possession. I will guard you with my life.”

He took the glass from her hand and sat it on the table again. She stared at it, taking her eyes from it only when Søren sat on the side of the bed facing her.

Without a word, he ordered her to remove her clothes. She could do that now, read his wants and desires without requiring his words. He’d trained her well, trained her for this night. And so she obeyed without hesitation, pulling her sweater off and dropping it to the floor. Her jeans she slid off next. She unhooked her bra and stepped out of her panties. It had been like this once upon a time in Eden. A man and a woman in paradise with nothing between each other, nothing between them and God. It had been like this once, and tonight when they made love they would step one foot back into Eden and see what had been lost and what could be found again.

“I want you to hurt me,” she said. “As much as you want, sir.”

“You say that, but you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.”

Søren slapped her.

Eleanor started. In openmouthed shock she stared at Søren. She raised a hand to her cheek. It burned.

“Now do you still want me to hurt you as much as I want?” Søren asked. The question wasn’t a question but a gauntlet thrown down.
This is me,
Søren was saying.
Take me or leave me.

She took him.

She held out her hand, and Søren took it. For one second she thought she saw relief in his eyes.

He led her to the bedpost. A large trunk sat at the foot of the bed next to her calves. Søren turned a key and opened the box. Inside it she first saw nothing but more sheets. He lifted the sheets and from underneath them pulled a set of white leather cuffs. He stood and took her right hand. He pressed her palm to the center of his chest as he locked the cuff around her wrist. He did the same to her left wrist. After she could only marvel at the sight of her hands in the cuffs. So this was what love looked like? Now she knew.

“Say your safe word.”

“Jabberwocky,” she said.

“Good. At any time you can tell me if you need to stop. Tell me what you need and your request will be honored. Say your safe word only when and if you need me to stop everything. You give yourself freely to me. I would never force it on you.”

“I know, sir. All I want is to please you tonight.”

“You will. You already have. I will flog you first, cane you after. I won’t slap you again.”

“You can,” she said. “I think I liked it, sir.”

Søren dropped a kiss on the back of her neck.

“If you’re good. I’ll tie you to the bedposts after. I want you faceup during sex tonight for the first time. I will give you as much pleasure as I give you pain, perhaps more.” He pressed against her back. She felt him unbuttoning his shirt. She pushed back into him, needing his skin against hers.

“What is your favorite sort of pain to inflict, sir?”

“Cutting. Nothing arouses me more than someone who will bleed for me.”

“I’ll bleed for you, sir.”

“On the bed, when I’m inside you, you will, yes. That is enough blood for one night.”

Eleanor knew he referred to her virginity. She wanted to give him more. She would give him more.

He pulled a short length of rope from the trunk and weaved it through the buckles on her cuffs. He turned her toward the bedpost and secured her arms high over her head. She stretched out, breathing into the position, feeling exposed from her ankles to her neck. She couldn’t move her hands, couldn’t run away. Leaving him was no longer a choice. She couldn’t if she wanted to. She never wanted to.

Søren ran his hand over her back, touching every inch of skin. No one existed but her and Søren. The world had begun the moment she stepped into his bedroom. It would end when she left it. Everything outside his bedroom door disappeared into nothingness. She didn’t miss it at all.

The first blow of the flogger landed between her shoulder blades. Her back exploded in pain. She almost laughed from the shock of it.

He struck her again. Breath exploded from her lungs. Then again and again the flogger landed, sometimes in the same spot over and over again until tears filled her eyes. She could never guess where the next blow would fall. After fifty she stopped trying to guess. After a hundred she didn’t even care. It stung brutally, and her skin burned like fire. More, she wanted. More. Let him burn her to the ground. Let her rise again from the ashes.

The flogging ceased and Søren pressed his chest into her bare back. She cried out as his heat scalded her raw skin.

“Too much?” He slid his hands up her sides and cupped her breasts. He teased her nipples and now she groaned in pleasure. He’d become the master of her body already. Tied up like this she could give herself neither pleasure nor pain, nor any sort of release or relief. All sensation came from him and him alone.

“No, sir.”

“You want more pain?”

“I want all the pain you want to give me, sir.”

With her arms tied to the bedpost she could only see in front of her. Søren pulled something else from his trunk. She couldn’t see it, but she could guess from the sound of the air being sliced in two. When the cane contacted with the back of her thighs, she screamed. She didn’t mean to, but the pain pushed the sound out of her. Søren paused as if waiting for her to object, to ask him to stop. If he waited for her to ask him to stop he’d be waiting all night.

He struck her again.

A third time.

A fourth.

She’d never known pain like this pain. She’d never known strength like the strength she summoned to endure it. And soon she no longer endured it, she enjoyed it. The pain became a game to her. How much could she take? How much could Søren give? He enslaved her with the pain. No one would suffer this willingly, so if she suffered it, it must be because he owned her and could hurt her like this. And yet she’d come here of her own volition. And a single word could stop him. He owned her for the same reason. It made no sense, none at all, and yet her body understood. She knew her body understood because Søren dropped the cane onto the floor and wrapped a hand around her hips. He pressed two fingers into her and sank deep into her wetness. She’d never been this intensely aroused in her life.

With one hand still inside her, Søren reached up and unknotted the ropes. He turned her and pressed her back to the bedpost. With an arm under her left knee, he lifted her leg, opening her up so he could explore inside her more easily. She felt nothing but pleasure as he probed her with two fingers, moving in and out of her slowly. Her wetness eased his passage as he pushed deep into all her hidden places. When he pushed a third finger into her, she winced.

“I know it hurts, Little One,” Søren whispered as he kissed her and pushed into the band of tissue at the entrance of her vagina. “Let me do this. It’ll be better this way.”

“Not with your fingers, please,” she begged.

“It will hurt less this way. I’ll have more control.”

She shook her head.

“Please...” she begged and Søren pressed his forehead to hers. “It’s how I dreamed of it. Please...”