Nora gasped, sat up, and pressed her fingertips to her lip, saw he’d drawn blood. He licked the blood from his lips. Her blood. Then he lifted his hips and she felt him growing hard against her. With her hands on his chest for support, she pushed down and back onto his cock, rigid now and thick. It slid along the slick seam of her vulva. She spread her knees, pushed down again, and he entered her. With each slow roll of her hips, he filled her more and more. Slowly she rose and sank down again, taking more of him into her, letting him fill her, spread her, pierce her until he was so deep inside her body she felt the tip of his penis nudge her cervix.
She clenched her inner muscles around him, squeezing him. His head fell back and his throat was bared. And there she was with a set of knives in a case on the bed. With one little flick of her wrist, she could kill him and he couldn’t stop her, couldn’t fight back. As strong as he was, the iron bed was stronger, the steel cuffs were stronger. For the first time in their twenty-three years together, he’d put himself entirely at her mercy. Maybe, possibly for the first time since he was a child, he’d made himself this physically vulnerable to another person.
“Why did you do this?” she asked him softly.
He opened his eyes, met hers.
“If the day comes when I can’t give you anything, at least here, now, I can give you everything.”
“I will never leave you,” she said.
He nodded solemnly. “Now that’s all I wanted to hear.”
With their bodies locked together, Nora reached for the leather case. She took out the smallest, thinnest, sharpest scalpel and used the flame of the candle to clean it. His watching wolf eyes followed her every move.
Carefully she set the candle on the center of his chest. A short, wide candle, it would stay in place as long as he didn’t flinch. She didn’t have to tell him that. She’d spent many a terrifying hour with a votive candle balanced between her breasts while he worked some sort of erotic havoc on another part of her body.
With the slightest, lightest touch, she carved a quick shallow N over his heart. His eyes closed as bright red blood welled to the surface of his skin. Now an O made from two parentheses, made to kiss. She let the blade do all the work as she cut the R into him, even as his hips moved slightly under her, his cock pulsing inside of her. Her concentration was unbreakable. She would cut him, carve him, slice him open, but she wouldn’t harm the man to save her life. With a last little flourish, she finished off the A.
She lifted the candle off him, put it on the table. The key gleamed gold in the firelight.
“Can you come?” she asked.
“I want to,” he said. “I don’t know if I can.”
The vulnerable honesty in his answer broke something in her that needed breaking.
“Let me help.” She picked up the key and released his right wrist, but left his other cuffed to the bedpost. She offered him the scalpel. “One for you.”
Again, he waited a full three seconds before obeying her—she counted. But he did take the blade from her at last. Nora sat up, arched her back, offered her body to him, offered all of her.
The blade grazed her lower stomach. She dug her fingers into his thighs to steady herself. As aroused as she was, she barely felt the cut. Only when she opened her eyes did she see what he’d done—with one practiced cut, he’d carved an S under her bellybutton over that aching place where the tip of his cock met her cervix. She’d claimed his heart. He’d claimed her cunt.
She could only smile. The smile evaporated instantly when Søren used his free hand to grab the key off the bedside table and release his left hand. Free, he pushed her onto her back, mounting her like the whore who’d taken his last penny. He dragged her against him, holding her hard in place under him. She lay trapped beneath him, her head half off the bed as he speared her.
Trapped, she didn’t put up a fight. She simply let him have her. Her one act of revenge was to bite his chest where she’d cut him, causing him to let out one small cry even as her blood stained his belly.
He pounded her hard and slow and the harder he pounded her, the harder she wanted it. Split and speared, her surrender was complete. She gave him her breasts and he sucked her nipples sore. She gave him her neck which he bit to the point of bruising. She gave him her heart and he swallowed it whole. A thousand heady nights ached in her memory, a thousand heavy hours under him, keeping her screams silent and careful with her cries. But those were the old nights, long gone, spent in the bed of a man who would turn back into a priest in the morning. She wasn’t sure who this man inside her was, only that she wanted him there, beautiful stranger that he was.
Nora moaned because she could. Her cunt hurt from needing to come. Every thrust was a punishment until she came. Once more, twice more, three times more he rammed her and with that third thrust she came writhing and crying out his name. As her stomach spasmed, he poured into her, filling her until his scalding semen slicked her thighs.
After, they lay entwined, cock and pussy, arms and legs, blood and sweat and come. Her vagina pulsed around him even as the organ inside her softened. Søren released her wrists and stroked her hair. He held her to his chest.
“I’m sorry. I tried.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, meaning for that, for them, for everything. “I’m not.”
Slowly they pulled themselves apart and tenderly tended to each other’s wounds. Nora cleaned Søren’s cuts with alcohol and gauze. The S on her stomach had stopped bleeding. A little antiseptic ointment, and she was good as new. She started to ask him if he wanted some water when a small squeak sounded through the door.
Søren turned his head.
Nora said, “Was that your pussy or mine?”
“Mine, I think.”
He rose up off her, opened the door, and the little black cat sashayed into the bedroom like the guest of honor. She hopped onto the bed with one nimble leap, sauntered over to Nora and let out a meow.
“Guess she’s made herself at home,” Nora said.
Søren sat on the bed, scratching the cat under her chin.
“Are you all right?” Nora asked him.
“I am. You?”
“Still in shock.”
He smiled, almost shyly. “It went better than I thought it might. But if you tell Kingsley, it’ll be foot torture for a month.”
The cat, still unnamed, sat between them. Nora reached across her and touched Søren’s hand.
“Eleanor?”
“You’re cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“You were cold from the second I put the handcuffs on you. Cold sweat. Cold skin. Symptoms of panic.”
He said nothing. The cat shook herself, seemingly for no reason, then leapt onto the pillow. She turned in circles to soften a place for herself, and laid down again, making herself into a soft black donut.
“You were scared the entire time,” she went on, “but you didn’t stop me.” He stroked the cat, long gentle strokes from between her ears to her happy twitching tail. “Things happened to you as a child so awful you begged me once to never even think about it. And I’ve never even asked you what this has done to you.” It seemed fitting they would have this conversation, both of them naked.
She waited. Still, he stroked the cat. Still, he said nothing.