The Saint(105)
He came back to the bed and slid in next to her. Gathering her in his arms, he pulled her to him, pressing her back to his chest and dragging the covers over both of them.
“What happened after your father died?” Nico asked, perhaps sensing she couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about their future anymore.
“Like I said, I got into NYU. I had a future and the money to pay for it. And then the moment I’d been waiting for happened.”
“What was that?”
“I turned eighteen. I got my driver’s license finally. And Søren and Kingsley started training me. Kingsley took me to my first BDSM club—a little one a friend of his ran. It wasn’t like coming home. It was better than that—like when you go to a new city and feel like ‘yes, I could live here the rest of my life,’ and you mentally start packing your bags.”
“I know that feeling,” he said and she saw something flicker in his eyes. Was he packing her bags for her so she could stay with him?
“Good feeling,” she said, trying not to fall under Nico’s spell. “I was so eager to join that world. And yet, there I was, still a virgin.”
“Tell me. I want to know what you were like when you were a virginal teenager.”
“I was a teenager but never virginal. Even when I was a virgin.”
“When did you lose your virginity?”
“I was twenty. Barely twenty. And you?”
“Fifteen. She was thirty-six.”
Nora pursed her lips. “That sounds familiar.”
“Hard to believe someone with your passion waiting for so long. Was it worth the wait?”
“It was,” she said, her mind falling far back into the past. “But he was right to make me wait that long, as much as I wanted him sooner. I understand that now.”
“What do you understand?”
“I was ready for sex long before my first time. But I wasn’t ready for him, for what he would want from me.”
“And that was?”
“Everything. I had a lot to learn before we became lovers. And Søren had some interesting teaching methods.”
Nico raised an eyebrow, arched it high. She wished she had a ruler with her. Wonder who could do that eyebrow arch better—Kingsley or Nico?
“Case in point—my first training dinner with Søren the night I got my collar.”
“What happened?”
“Well, we were at Kingsley’s.”
“A good start.”
“Dinner was served.”
“Keep going.”
“And I was bare-ass naked.”
26
Eleanor
A DATE.
A real date.
A normal date.
Dinner. Dressing up. Making out. Finally at age eighteen, Eleanor was going on the first real date of her life.
With her priest.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t a normal date, after all. But she had a new dress—a short white strappy number—and they would have Kingsley’s town house all to themselves since the king was not in residence this week. Close enough to a real date. Søren even promised he wouldn’t wear his collar tonight, but the suit she loved on him so much. After he’d made the promise he said something cryptic that had her pondering his words all day long. Only one of us will be in a collar tonight. I promise it won’t be me.
Kingsley’s dining room was illuminated by dozens of candles and the flickering light from the fireplace. Søren was there. Food was there. And yet all she could see was the white box that sat by her plate.
As she stared at the box, Søren came up behind her, kissed the back of her neck, and pulled down the zipper on her dress.
“Whoa, what’s going on? We’re not eating?”
“You are.”
“And you’re taking my dress off because …?”
“I want you naked,” he said, as if that was the most obvious answer in the world, so obvious she shouldn’t have even asked the question.
“This is a naked dinner?”
“For you, Little One. I’ll keep my clothes on.”
Søren started to pull the straps of her dress down and Eleanor stiffened. He paused.
“Something wrong?”
“No. Nothing. Except you’re making me eat dinner completely naked.”
“Does that make you uncomfortable?”
“Incredibly uncomfortable.”
“Understandable,” he said and started sliding the straps of her dress down again.
“But we’re doing it anyway?”
“Eleanor,” Søren said, turning her to face him. “Tonight is a special night for us. You’re old enough now to begin learning what I expect from you if we’re going to be together. This is how it will be if you belong to me. I will own you. It’s not a metaphor or romantic hyperbole. It’s a statement of fact. I should be able to take your clothes off you at any time and whenever I please. Taking off your clothes should require as little explanation or planning as taking off my own collar. I do it when it pleases me to do it and for no other reason.”