EXCERPT FROM ‘THE PRIEST,’ THE ORIGINAL SINNERS BOOK 9
Nora watched Søren as he opened the drawers of her curio cabinet, hunting for something very specific.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“I haven’t decided yet. But not this.”
Søren pulled a massive twelve-inch dildo out of a drawer and held it up. “Really, Eleanor?”
“That’s not mine, I swear,” she said. “I only use it on Sheridan.”
Søren raised his eyebrow. “She’s tiny.”
“She’s bigger on the inside. That’s a Doctor Who joke.”
“I went to school in England as I child. I fully understood the reference,” he said as he put the gigantic dildo back in the drawer.
“My God, you have enough butt plugs to start a butt plug emporium,” he said.
“You can never have too many butt plugs. If you’re looking for the scalpels and knives, they’re in the bottom drawer on the left.”
“I wasn’t…Or I thought I wasn’t.”
“I like that you can get an erection just by hearing the word ‘scalpel.’ It’s like Pavlov’s dog, except it’s Pavlov’s erection.”
“Don’t mention dogs if you want me to keep it.”
Nora grinned sleepily. “You can slice me up if you want. I don’t mind. You’ll be hard until breakfast.”
“Blood-play? On white sheets?”
“Hmm…good point. If they were cheap, I’d say go for it but this is Millesimo Egyptian cotton. Sheridan got them for me.”
“We’ll avoid bloodstains then,” he said. He took from a drawer a long thin carbon fiber rod—a misery stick—and set it on the bedside table by the lamp.
Clearly Søren was in a mood to bring the pain.
“Did you really not beat and fuck King tonight?”
“I did not. After last night, he’ll be needing more than a day to recover,” Søren said with a little sinister note of giddiness in his tone.
“Oh, great,” Nora said. “Now I have an erection.”
Søren lowered his head.
“What?” she asked.
He lifted his head. “Nothing. Except I’m glad you’ve decided you’ll never leave me. Because even if I could live without you, I would never want to.”
“You should kiss me after you say stuff like that.”
“I will,” he said. “But I’m going to torture you first. Adjustable spreader bar?”
“How short we talking?”
“Twelve to fourteen inches.”
“There’s a one-footer on the wall by the med table.”
“Ankle cuffs?”
“In the cabinet over the sink.”
“Stay put.”
Søren—magnificently naked—strode from the little bedroom into her dungeon. Like she’d go anywhere with that view…
He returned quickly with all his little wicked implements—the spreader bar and the ankle cuffs.
And one leather strip, about a foot long and a couple inches wide. He must have cut it off her flogger with the thick fat tails.
“What’s that for?” she asked as Søren passed her the leather strip.
“You may need to bite down on something,” he said. “Turn over.”
Just like that…all the sleepy two a.m. joking stopped. It stopped like someone had flipped a switch, turned off the lights, turned on the pain. He could do that, Søren, with a glance and a subtle change of tone that came with the standard warning—I am not playing anymore.
But neither was Nora.
She turned over as ordered and rested her cheek against the cool white sheets. Søren took each ankle in his hands and wrapped and buckled the cuffs around them. With small hooks, he secured the cuffs to the spreader bar.
Then he picked up the misery stick.
Then he grabbed the metal bar in the middle and pulled her into place as if she weighed nothing.
Then he lifted the bar, forcing her to bend her knees. Her feet were at his stomach on either side. Nora started breathing hard.
She had a very bad feeling about this.
“I’d bite down on the strap now if I were you,” Søren said.
“You’re going to beat the soles of my feet, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.” Nora grabbed the leather strap and put it between her teeth.
She hated foot torture.
Hated it.
Not the good kind of hate. Not the playful kind of hate. Not the “Oh no, not that, sir, anything but that, sir.”
She would rather take a hundred cuts from a scalpel, an hour-long session with a single-tail whip, or even red-hot wax-play that left her covered in first degree burns. Foot torture was one of her limits.
But it wasn’t a hard limit which meant she wouldn’t safe out if Søren tried it.
No, she wouldn’t safe out.
But she wasn’t going to enjoy it.
She couldn’t even enjoy Søren’s thumbs on her insoles, caressing them tenderly. She was too tense, too scared, already breaking out into a cold sweat.
“You broke someone’s foot tonight,” he said. Nora didn’t say the kid deserved it. Søren knew that.
He just didn’t care. If he could use it as an excuse to push her to the edge of her pain threshold, he would use it.
On nights like this…she hated him as much as she loved him.
“There is no one in the world that respects your sadistic impulses more than I,” he continued, “but I would be very disappointed if you got yourself arrested or sued. One of these days, Eleanor, you really are going to have to learn to control that temper of yours.”
He caressed her ankles, all those delicate little bones. She wanted to cry. Instead she grabbed a pillow and shoved her under her breasts. It would help to have something to cling to during…
“Only five, I promise.” He ran his fingertips gently over the tops of her feet.
Five.
She could take five. She could survive that.
“On each foot.”
Nora whimpered. Not as a joke. Not being playful. Not to get his sympathy. Not trying to be funny.
She whimpered because she was scared.
And she knew he knew that.
But he picked up the misery stick anyway.
The thing about misery sticks, Nora knew from experience, was that they were deceptive little toys. They didn’t look like they could hurt much. Nothing but very long, very thin metal rods. That’s it.
Except when you pulled the tip of the rod back and let it go, flicking it against the bare skin, it hurt worse than being sliced open by a knife that had been sitting in a red-hot fire.
And she was about to take five strikes on each foot.
The metal spreader bar rested across Søren’s stomach. She could flinch and twist but there would be no getting away from him.
“Shall we get this over with?” he asked.
Nora nodded her head quickly. The sooner the better. The building anticipation was only adding to her misery.
They were called misery sticks for a reason, after all.
“Left foot or right first?” he asked. Nora shrugged. “I wasn’t asking you. Only talking to myself.”
His tone was taunting. Sometimes when he got like this, she could almost believe he hated her a little, too. But she knew better. As cruel as he could seem when he was hurting her, she knew it was a kind of love. Søren’s sadism was as much a part of him as his faith and his love and his mercy. That he could be like this with her without fear meant he loved her enough not to hide this side of himself from her.
She told herself that as he picked up the misery stick off the table.
“Feet flexed,” he said. “Both of them. No curling the toes or I’ll make it ten.”
Nora had to fight every instinct in her body to flex her feet. A hot tear ran from her eyes and down onto the Millesimo Egyptian cotton sheets.
Her entire body was tense as a violin bowstring.
And Søren plucked it.
One.
He flicked the misery stick once and the strike landed at the back of her left heel.
Nora flinched. She couldn’t help it. Flinched and whimpered again as her teeth dug deep into the leather strap in her mouth.
Two.
He flicked it again, half an inch down the heel, inching closer and closer to the sensitive arch.
Three.
The arch was next. She knew it. She braced herself and wasn’t surprised when the next thing she felt was nearly the worst physical agony in her life.
She screamed into the pillow.
“I shouldn’t enjoy it so much when you’re in this kind of pain,” he confessed. “But I do.”
Four.
He struck her again, even higher, closer to the toes.
Nora’s head swam. She thought for a second she might actually pass out.
“Flex, Eleanor. Flex.”
She couldn’t. She was in so much pain, she couldn’t make herself flex her foot.
“Oh, fine,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”
He took her toes in his hands, and pushed, forcing her foot to flex.
“Now keep it there,” he ordered.
She did.
Five.
He hit the ball of her foot.
“Five,” he said. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
He set the stick down on the table again and Nora shuddered. She shuddered because he’d started rubbing her foot, tenderly stroking all the burning places.
“I know you hate this,” he said softly. “And deep down, there is a small part of me that hates myself for how much I enjoy it. Sometimes I wish it didn’t have to be like this. You understand?”
With the leather strap still clenched between her teeth, Nora could only nod, so she did.
“But,” Søren said, “it is like this. And we have five more to go.”
He picked up the misery stick again.
The last five hurt as badly as the first five, but she took them better, mostly because she was nearly out of her mind with pain. At five, she went limp, as limp as a rag doll or a corpse. She barely felt it when Søren unhooked the spreader bar, hardly noticed when he removed the leather strap from her mouth.
“You nearly bit through it,” he said. He sounded impressed.
Nora rolled into the fetal position, toes curled, feet aching.
Søren pulled her to him and held her back against his chest.
“You can cry if you need to.” He spoke softly into her ear as he ran his fingers through her sweat-damp hair.
“I hate that so much,” she said, a small sob escaping her throat.
“I know, Little One. I know you do.” He slid over her, on top of her and positioned her under him. He was so aroused, she felt the tip of his erection against her stomach, throbbing like it wanted to force its way into her, any way it could.
He kneed her thighs open and she was too weak to stop him, even if she wanted to.
“That was almost too much for you, wasn’t it?” he asked. She nodded again. He smiled. “My brave little girl,” he said and kissed her forehead.
Søren braced himself over her and through watering eyes she saw him lick two fingertips and then press those same fingers against her vulva. He pushed through her folds and into her vagina. She yielded to him easily, her body offering no resistance.
“And this is why I would never let you leave me,” he said. “You hated that with every fiber of your being…and you’re dripping wet.”
She was still crying when he entered her, splitting her. His thick cock went deep on the very first stroke. She cried out again, in pleasure this time, not pain.
Sometimes she hated herself, too.
But not very much.
Søren found her mouth and kissed her, his cock slipping ever deeper into her as they kissed. Since her feet hurt so much every time they brushed the sheets, she wrapped her legs around Søren’s lower back as he thrust into her. They fucked in a frenzy, and the need was as much as hers as his. His hands dug into the tender flesh of her breasts as he held them, squeezing them as he rode her.
It wasn’t enough to let him have her. She had to have him in return. Nora clung to his shoulders and with her legs twined around him, she lifted her hips again and against to him, taking his cock as hard as he gave it to her. The pain wasn’t the thing. She wasn’t aroused by having her toes stepped on by a stranger in a crowd any more than she was aroused by the strike of a metal bar on her insoles. It was him, Søren, and who he turned into when he let himself free with her. The master. The monster. The beautiful sadist. That was the secret she never told anyone, not even herself, that she loved him more for his cruelties than his mercies. He was kind to everyone he met.
He was only cruel to his lovers.
Pavlov’s cruelty.
Søren hadn’t bound her wrists so she was free to pass on a little cruelty of her own. She slid her hands down his long back and every time his cock made her vagina spasm, she dug her fingernails into his skin. He let her do it—but only twice.
Then he pulled out and turned her onto her hands and knees. Søren forced her legs wider from behind, so wide her belly touched the bed. He entered her with a rough thrust, impaling her hard enough she cried out. But his fingertips found her clitoris and stroked it as he used her from behind, stroked her until she was nearly blind with the need to come.
Søren gripped her by her shoulders, thumbs on the back of her neck, immobilizing her against the bed.
His thrusts seemed endless but so did her desire for them. Long moans escaped her lips that she stifled as best she could in the sheets. Søren’s fingers knew her body too well. He had her trapped at the edge of orgasm but wouldn’t let her fall over yet. He held her there with his touch and the organ that pinned her place as it slid in and out of her slick hole. He might punish her if she came without permission.
She came anyway. She couldn’t help it or stop it. She was too wet and the fingers stroking her were too wet and everything inside her quivered and tensed and there was no telling her body no when it was ready to scream yes.
When she came, she buried her mouth against the bed to scream and only the last syllable of it hit the air as Søren lifted her bodily back against him. She sunk down on his cock as he held her on his knees. His hand came around and clasped her throat. His mouth was at her ear so she could his ragged breaths. He fucked up and into her until his own release. He inhaled and inhaled, his breath hitching and she knew he was coming inside her, filling her with semen and she craved it.
Only when he finished with her, did he release his iron grip on her throat. He let her go and she nearly collapsed onto the bed. Søren lay down on his back next to her, ran one hand through sweat-soaked hair and then used his hand as a pillow.
“You’ll have to apologize to Sheridan about the sheets,” he said.
“What? It’s okay. Come comes out.”
“Blood might not.”
“Blood?”
“I should have just cut you up,” he said, laughing softly.
“Did you make me bleed?” she asked, holding her foot out, studying it for wounds.
Søren rolled onto his side away from her.
He had eight bleeding claw marks on his back just under his shoulder blades.
“Fuck,” Nora said, then laughed. “Oops?”
* * *