Author: Tiffany Reisz

“There’s something wrong with your back,” Griffin breathed into Michael’s lips.

“There is?”

Griffin grinned at him. “My welts aren’t on it.”

Michael laughed but the laugh turned to a gasp as Griffin hit a spot inside him that made every nerve in his body sing. He’d never dreamed it would feel this good. Arching his back, he took Griffin in even deeper. He tossed his leg back over Griffin’s thigh. His hands formed fists and the pain in his wrists made the pleasure all the more potent.

He let go completely, let his ego die, his fears fade.... With Griffin inside him, he couldn’t begin to care what his father thought, what anyone thought. No way was this wrong. And no one would ever convince him of that.

Griffin pushed his hand hard into Michael’s lower stomach as his thrusts grew faster and harder.

“God, Mick…” Griffin rasped into his ear. “It’s never felt like this before. And it’s not…”

Not the condom thing, Michael knew Griffin meant. But he didn’t have to say it. Griffin’s body said it, his hands that held Michael like the world was about to end, his lips that couldn’t stop kissing his neck and shoulders, his desperate breaths that matched Michael’s.

Michael felt the muscles in Griffin’s thigh going taut as steel. He pushed one, twice, and with a final thrust, Griffin came hard, his mouth at Michael’s ear. Michael grunted in shocked pleasure as he felt Griffin pouring into him.

For a few minutes or a few hours—Michael was too spent to notice the time—Griffin stayed inside him after catching his breath. Michael felt the first stirring of awkwardness. What did they do now? What was he supposed to say? Would things be weird now that they’d had sex? What happened now?

Griffin wrapped a strong arm over Michael’s chest and held him close.

“I want to own you,” Griffin whispered into Michael’s ear.

Michael smiled, and for the first time in his life knew exactly what to say and how to say it.

“You already do.”

* * *

“Ellie? What on earth are you doing here?” Nora’s mother, Sister Mary John, stepped forward and pulled Nora into an embrace, an embrace Nora returned quickly and perfunctorily before taking an awkward step back.

“Long story. How are you, Mom?”

Nora felt her mother’s eyes on her face, studying her intently. Nora kept her expression neutral as she returned the gaze. The years were being kind to her mother. At fifty-two, the woman looked barely forty-two. Of course cloistered nuns were notoriously healthy. Their lives were so regimented and cut off from the stresses of the world that many of her mother’s sisters in the order lived well into their nineties and remained active during even their final years.

“I’m well. Very well. Come, let’s walk, shall we?”

“Sure.” Nora followed her mother through the gate and into the motherhouse. A sign warning that all men were barred from entering the enclosure greeted them as they passed into the recesses of the house. No men…not even priests. It was for that reason Nora fled to her mother’s abbey when she left Søren. As much as he’d wanted her back, he would never have stepped foot inside this place. At night sometimes she’d wake up in the tiny cell she’d been given and imagine him waiting outside the gates of the abbey for her. She’d sworn she’d heard the unique roar of his motorcycle engine more than once. All that time they’d been apart, he’d known exactly where she hid.

“How have you been, Ellie?” her mother asked as they passed through the back door and onto the lawns.

“Great. Amazing. I started working with a new editor last year, a new publisher. The new book hit all the big lists.”

“That’s wonderful for you.”

Nora cringed at the placid tone in her mother’s voice. Wonderful for you. Not wonderful. Just wonderful for her. Her mother disapproved of her books, her erotic writing. Always had. Always would.

“You might like the new book. Almost no sex in it. Well, compared to my other stuff.”

“That’s quite a change for you. What brought that on?”

Nora shrugged and said nothing as they stepped onto one of the winding paths. Out of the corner of her eye, Nora studied her mother. She hated how much they looked alike—the same small straight nose, the same changing eyes, the same pale complexion.

“Nothing. Just playing around, trying to write something different. Expanding my horizons…” Nora cringed. God, she sounded like she was giving an interview with her trite answers.

“You look well. In one piece at least.” A slight smile played across her mother’s lips.

“Is that your way of asking if we’re back together?”

“You can’t blame me worrying about you, can you?”

Nora sighed. Classic motherly deflection. She loved how her mother could take all the aspects of Nora’s life that were the most personal, the most private—her relationship with Søren, her sex life, her need to submit, her hunger to dominate…things that had nothing to do at all with her mother—and make them about her. Mothers must go to some sort of school to learn how to do that so well.

“We’re back together. And we’re happy. And I love him. And I always will. Oh, yeah, we’re still kinky as hell too. In case you were also wondering that.”

Her mother exhaled angrily.

“Eleanor, his is a man of God. He is a priest. Do you have any idea what seducing a priest means for your soul?”

“Seducing a priest?” Nora rolled her eyes. “Back in the day he was an abuser who’d seduced me. Now suddenly I’m the seducer here?”

“You’re a grown woman now, not a child anymore. You know better now. You know you could have a life apart from him. Going back to him? That’s willful disobedience.”

“It’s love. And I’m not disobeying anyone. Until God Himself tells me he and I aren’t allowed to be together, then we’re going to be together. It hardly renders him unfit for the priesthood. Almost all Protestant ministers are married, and Jewish rabbis. We Catholics are the freaks making our ministers stay celibate. Can you get more medieval than that?”

“He chose to become a priest knowing celibacy was one of the requirements. If he cannot honor that, he should leave the priesthood.”

“Yeah, let’s take the best priest in New England and turn him into, I don’t know, a piano teacher just because he’s in love with me. And we’ll let all those priests who like to rape the altar boys stay in the Church. Last time I read the Bible, I don’t remember sexually assaulting children being part of doing the Lord’s work.”

“You were fifteen—”

“I was fifteen when I fell in love with Søren. Fifteen years old when I told God, the devil and anyone who would listen that I would sell my soul for one night with him. When will you believe, when will you understand… Mother, I seduced him.”

“And that’s why he doesn’t belong in the Church. There are some priests who manage to keep their vows.”

“Yes, the ones who haven’t met me,” Nora said purely out of spite.

Her mother winced and Nora suppressed a twinge of guilt. Goddammit. She had a priest for a lover and a nun for a mother. Between the two of them she had enough Catholic guilt to start her own religious order. After ten years, Nora still couldn’t believe her mother had made good on her threat to have her marriage annulled and become a nun.

“I pray for you, Eleanor.”

“I know you do. It won’t be answered. Not with a yes anyway.”

Nora knew her mother prayed for her every single day, prayed the same prayer every day—Father, please save my daughter from that man.

But Nora never wanted to be saved.

“For the record,” Nora said, breaking the awkward silence, “I’m only here because he wanted me to come see you. He wants us to get over our problems.”

“How thoughtful of him. Now when is he planning on getting over his problems?”

“He doesn’t have any problems. Except that he’s up for bishop, a position he doesn’t want.”

“I’d hardly worry about that. God would never allow such a man to take a position of power.”

“That’s true. God’s very good about making sure only saints get to rule kingdoms and countries.”

“You lost your mind and your faith when you went to his bed.”

“Neither actually,” Nora retorted. “Just my virginity, and I sure as hell don’t miss it.”

“Ellie—”

“This is ridiculous. He’s the one who’s lost his mind if he thinks you and I are ever going to work this out. I love him. He’s a good man. He’s the best man I’ve ever known. I know you don’t get what we are, but I don’t care. It’s not your private life, it’s mine.”

“I’ve accepted that, obviously. Otherwise I would have called the bishop on him years ago.”

Nora clenched her jaw to keep quiet. The reason her mother hadn’t called the bishop on Søren had nothing to do with what she did or didn’t believe. The day her mother discovered the truth about her and Søren, Nora had threatened that if her mother did anything to harm Søren in any way, Nora would leave forever and her mother would never see her again. The threat worked, although only God knew why. When they did see each other, they always fought…just like this.

“Ellie…” Her mother stopped in her tracks and turned around. Nora avoided eye contact at first. She hated seeing her mother like this, swathed in a wool habit, her hair covered with a wimple, her entire body hidden in a sea of fabric.

“What, Mother?”

“Can you just try to love someone or even let someone love you who doesn’t want to hurt you? Is that too much to ask?”

Nora bit her bottom lip and didn’t answer. The question hit far too close to home for her.

“Nora? Will you answer me if I call you Nora?” her mother asked in a voice soft with concern. At the utterance of the name she’d chosen instead of the one her mother had given her, Nora blinked and two tears fell from her eyes and to the ground.

“I tried,” Nora whispered hoarsely. The muscles in her stomach clenched and her throat tightened.

“You did?” Her mother sounded both shocked and happy. “Who was it?”

Nora swiped at her cheek.

“His name’s Wesley. He worked for me. But it was more than that. He was my best friend. And…” Nora paused for a breath. “I love him so much. He got sick once and I couldn’t find him. And I’d never prayed so hard for anything in my life, prayed that he would be okay.”

“He loved you too?”

Nora nodded. “Like crazy. I didn’t realize it for a long time. I never thought someone that sweet and pure really would ever want someone like me. But he didn’t see me like that. He didn’t see Nora Sutherlin who writes erotica and does kink…I was just his Nora, his crazy friend he wanted to love and be with and keep safe. I think he would have stayed with me forever if I hadn’t kicked him out.”

“Why…why would you kick him out of your life if you loved him so much? If he loved you?”

“Because all that kid wanted was to love me and not hurt me. And you have no idea how much that hurts someone like me. And I wanted to love him without hurting him…and I hurt him so badly. He deserved better than me. I made him go.”

Nora flinched as her mother reached out and cupped her face in her hands as she had so many times when Nora was still Ellie, still a child, still needed a mother’s touch.

“My Ellie… You sent him away on a fool’s errand. There is no one better than you, my beautiful girl. Not in all of God’s creation.”