The Original Sinners: The Red Years

“Yes.” She remembered the ghost of Grace that haunted his eyes from the day they met. “I knew…at the back of my mind, the back of my heart.”

“Where you love Wesley, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And me?” he asked, his voice soft and earnest in that way it so rarely was with her these days. “Where do you love me?”

Nora did not hesitate before answering. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Everywhere else.”

Søren looked at her as if he’d already known that would be her answer, as if for all eternity it would be her answer. Perhaps it would, she thought.

“Come to my office,” Søren said. “We can talk about it.”

Nora smiled. “Your office. I remember when you’d make me cocoa and help me with my math homework on that bench right outside your office.”

“I always knew when you were working on your math homework. The litany of profanities echoing through the halls was always an excellent indicator. Shall we? I’ll see what’s in the cupboard.”

He held out his hand and Nora reached into her pocket. She laid her collar on his waiting palm.

“I didn’t come here for the cocoa.” Nora met his eyes. For perhaps only the second time in eighteen years, she saw she’d surprised him.

Søren said nothing, merely closed his fingers around her collar. She’d seen those same fingers wrapped around his rosary a thousand times. He held her collar with the same love, the same devotion, the same grim determination to make heaven bend to his ear.

Without a word, Søren turned on his heel.

Nora followed him through the sanctuary and through door after door. A final door opened to a shadowy tree-shrouded pathway that led from the church to the rectory. How many times had she furtively stolen from the church to his home? A million times, she thought. A million was still not enough.

Secluded by a copse of old-world elms and oaks, Søren’s rectory stood graceful and quiet in the sheltered sanctuary created by the trees. A small two-story Gothic cottage, it afforded him both beauty and privacy—two very precious commodities.

Nora waited in submissive silence as Søren built a fire in the living-room fireplace. Glancing around, Nora saw the secret signs of their long association: the Bösendorfer piano she’d given him as a gift last December 21 for his forty-sixth birthday, the tassel of an embroidered bookmark she’d made for him at church camp the summer she turned sixteen peeking out from a volume of John Donne poetry, a lock on the bottom door of a cabinet under one of the bookcases. Only she and he knew what he kept behind that lock. And on the fireplace mantel were ten slight scratches in the wood left by her desperate fingernails on a night he had shown her no mercy. She knew she might add another ten there tonight.

Søren came to her and gazed down at her face. She kept her eyes respectfully lowered. It had been the first submissive act he’d taught her.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“To give myself to you, sir.”

“You wish to be mine again?”

“Yes.”

“Completely?”

“And utterly, sir,” she said. “Without conditions or constraints.” The words came so easily to her she knew they must be true. Coming back felt as easy as falling, as simple as death.

“You weren’t mine last night, were you?” Søren demanded and Nora blushed.

“No, sir,” she whispered.

“You were with your editor last night. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“And did you do as I told you? Did you make him hurt you?”

“Yes, sir.”

From the corner of her eye she saw him raise his eyebrow at her in clear skepticism.

“Show me.”

Nora held out her hands and displayed her wrists, the purple bruises on her skin.

“He held you down,” Søren said. “Your arms were over your head.”

“Yes,” Nora said, amazed how Søren could read that simply from the angle of the marks.

“What else?”

Nora unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall to the floor. She unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it. Without shame or fear she shed all her underclothes, as well. She stood naked before Søren and waited. He studied her body with appraising eyes. Stepping behind her, he raised her hair off her back.

“He bit your shoulder, I see. Several times. He took you from behind.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anal?”

“Once.”

Søren moved to her front again. He reached down and slipped his hand behind her knee. He raised her leg, inspecting the inside of her thigh with the perfunctory expertise of a judge at a dog show.

“Finger marks,” he said, releasing her leg. “And knees. You fought him.”

“I made him work for it.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you fight me tonight?”

“No, sir. Not now or ever again.”

Søren said nothing as he continued to study her naked body.

“A few bite marks, a few bruises…I’m afraid your Zachary is something of an amateur in the art of pain. Isn’t he? Not like us.”

The vicious slap landed across her cheek with such speed that Nora gasped as much from the shock of it as she did the pain. She inhaled and tasted blood in the back of her throat. She swallowed it and met Søren’s eyes.