The Saint(89)

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.