A shallow cut only an inch long, it bled out slowly. Nora’s blood welled up and slid in a thin line over her hip, drying on her skin before it reached the black sheets.

Second, Søren cut her stomach right at the edge of her rib cage.

“Talk to me, Eleanor,” Søren ordered as he made a third cut, only a half inch long, on her chest.

“Ow.” Nora laughed a little. Søren looked down at her, love and desire burned in his eyes.

“It will hurt less if you talk to me. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we haven’t done this in a long time, sir.”

The last time they’d done blood-play was over a year ago, just two weeks after she’d returned to him. That night they’d recommitted themselves to each other—Nora pledging to belong to him again, and him promising that he would do everything in his power to make her happy and keep her safe. Like their first night as lovers fourteen years ago, blood was spilled that night, her blood. Their very first night together, the blood of her torn hymen had stained his sheets; the night one year ago, the blood came from eighteen cuts all over her body. Eighteen…one cut for each year he’d known her, one cut for each year he’d loved her.

“It’s for the best we do this rarely,” he said, gently caressing the side of her face with the back of his hand. Søren seemed perfectly calm right now, his face a mask of utter serenity. But she knew him like no one else did. Under the surface of his placid demeanor rippled dark, dangerous and barely restrained desires.

Nora looked down as Søren brought the blade just underneath her right breast and made a deliberate cut.

“You love this,” she said and Søren solemnly nodded. “We could do this more often if you wanted, sir.”

“Of course we could,” he said simply, and Nora smiled even as the eye-watering pain from the stinging, burning cuts bit into her. They could and would engage in blood-play every day if he decreed it so. “But we both do have to work.”

Søren smiled down at her and she grinned through her tears.

“Work? What is that again?” Since quitting her other job as a dominatrix, Nora worked only as a writer these days. A job that required little more than drinking coffee and tea and wearing pajamas until four in the afternoon didn’t really qualify as work to her. Søren, on the other hand, gave his life to the church. Up nearly every morning at five to run, he was in his office at Sacred Heart by seven at the latest. He heard confessions, visited the sick and dying, counseled married couples, performed weddings, christenings, baptisms, funerals and celebrated Mass four to eight times a week.... Nora knew if it came out that she and Søren were lovers, it wouldn’t be the sex that caused the greatest scandal. Søren was himself nearly an object of worship at Sacred Heart and within the diocese. If the Church discovered he was a sadist who beat women, even consensually, he would be expelled from the priesthood. Søren would not give her up, would not repent and would never agree that their relationship was a sin. And so the Church would excommunicate him. Few outside the Catholic Church understood what excommunication meant. It wasn’t just being fired or kicked out of the church. Søren would be denied the sacraments, shunned and condemned.

“I’m scared, sir,” she finally admitted.

“Do we need to stop?”

She shook her head. “Not of this. Of what might happen. What about Michael? What if it gets out what he is? What if they learn about The 8th Circle?” Nora didn’t even want to think about how bad it could get if the press found out about them. Kingsley Edge guarded the members of their underground community with terrifying tenacity. But not even he could stop the sharks once the blood was in the water. A Catholic priest and an erotica writer who’d belonged to him in one way or another since she was fifteen…a teenage boy who’d attempted suicide over his sexual orientation and who had lost his virginity to Nora during a ritualized S&M scene…and The 8th Circle, where everyone from a high-level FBI agent to the governor’s stepdaughter were key-carrying members. If the world found out about her and Søren, there would be no end to the digging. The 8th Circle, named for the level of Dante’s Inferno where dwelled those who abused their power, would become a real hell for those who thought they had found the one safe place where they could be themselves.

“Eleanor, what did I promise you the last time we did this?”

Nora inhaled and bit her bottom lip.

“You promised you would keep me safe.”

“I meant it. I will handle this, and nothing bad will happen to you or Michael.”

The fifth cut was short and sharp and fell along the edge of her collarbone.

Søren set the knife aside and spread her legs. He kissed her inner thigh; the kiss moved higher until he touched her clitoris with his lips and opened her with his tongue. Blood-play made Søren even more amorous than usual. As blood welled up and dried on her skin, Nora felt her climax building hard and deep within her. Søren knew her body like no lover ever had or ever would.

“Permission to come?” she asked and knew Søren wouldn’t deny her, not tonight. The orgasm, like the hot bath, had a utilitarian purpose. The more endorphins flooding her system, the more pain she could take.

“Come,” Søren ordered as he slid a finger into her and pushed into the front wall of her vagina. As Nora’s orgasm waxed, Søren picked up the small knife again and made a quick slash to her thigh. She flinched but only a little. The pleasure and pain danced together without touching.

Nora panted as Søren brushed her hair off her forehead.

“Can you take more?” he asked.

She wanted to say no and end it. The pain was almost too much even for her. But the intensity of it was heady, intoxicating. The intimacy of it greater than even sex. Only with Søren would she ever submit to this act. Søren did not demand sexual fidelity from her. She continued to see Sheridan, the favorite of all her old clients, and Søren still shared her with Kingsley on occasion. But when it came to pain, only he was allowed to hurt her.

“Yes, sir.”

Søren pushed her over onto her stomach.

The sixth cut sliced open her shoulder.

Nora bit into the sheets trying to stifle her cry of pain. Turning her head to the side she swallowed hard and braced herself.

The seventh cut didn’t come at all.

“Look at me, little one.”

Nora turned over again, wincing as her raw and bleeding shoulder made contact with the sheets.

“You will come back to me. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, nodding. Søren had never failed her before. When she’d been arrested at fifteen, it was Søren who’d kept her from going to juvie. When her fuckup of a father had tried to take her away, Søren had stopped him. When she’d gotten into trouble at school over a story she’d written, it was he who’d come and pulled her ass out of the fire yet again. He’d helped her get into college, helped her graduate, kept her safe, kept her close, kept her happy, and shown her a world that few even knew existed and then had made her queen of it…and all he’d ever asked in return was that she give herself to him, heart, body and soul.

It seemed such a small price to pay.

“How many cuts tonight?” she asked as Søren studied her bleeding body with reverent eyes. She saw his chest heave; his eyes had turned black from desire. Blood-play aroused him like nothing else. And nothing aroused her more than seeing him like this…so desperate for her it made even him almost weak.

“Seven,” he answered, his voice low and breathy. She’d already survived the first six.

“A good biblical number,” she noted.

“Five for the years we were apart. And one for the year you’ve been back with me. And one for the rest of our lives.”

The final one was always the worst. And she didn’t have to ask where it would be. Søren waited and Nora worked up her courage. This was Søren, she reminded herself. The man she’d loved for nearly twenty years. She’d only ever loved one person other than him, and for Søren she’d given him up. If she could give up Wesley for Søren, she could do this.

Nora spread her legs wide-open. Søren positioned himself between her thighs and with shockingly steady hands, spread her wide.

Nora closed her eyes tight and breathed through her nose as Søren ran the flat of the blade along the seam of her vagina and left a small cut on her labia. She refused to flinch as she knew her bravery would be rewarded.

The pain had already faded even as Søren took her hand and laid the knife in her palm. Nora steeled herself as she raised her hand. With one swift and sure motion, she cut his chest over his heart. She lowered her hand and sat the knife aside. Lifting herself up, Nora brought her mouth to his skin and licked his bleeding wound. The act severed the last thread of Søren’s restraint. He shoved her onto her back and opened his pants. When he pushed into her bleeding body, she felt a pain so acute it threatened to overwhelm her. Her safe word sat poised on the edge of her tongue. But she breathed in and swallowed it whole as Søren began to move in her.

She wrapped her arms and legs around him, dug her fingernails into his back and scored his skin. He bit at her neck and breasts, dug his fingers into her skin. Her body came alive with pain, pain that turned to pleasure as he continued his assault on her. She pressed her heels into the bed and arched back into his hips. When she came, she came hard. The orgasm racked her back. The pleasure spiked through her, clawed at her and cut into her like the sharpest of knives.

Søren kept thrusting and she clung to him in love and desperation. At moments like this, he was lost to himself, lost in the shadows that hid beneath his heart. Rarely did he let himself go, and when he did it was only with her. Nora lay beneath him and let him use her body as a vessel for his need. When he came at last, it was with a final thrust so fierce Nora knew she would be bruised inside from the force of it. He gasped her name as his whole body shuddered in her arms.

Nora held Søren as they lay intertwined, his body still embedded in hers. For a long time they said nothing, merely lying together content in their silence and their nearness to each other.

“You’re shaking, Eleanor,” Søren finally said, touching her cheek with his lips.

“A little. I’m just cold,” she admitted. Nora ran her hands through Søren’s hair and kissed his forehead.

“You’re shaking too.” His arms, his back trembled beneath her hands.

“Not from cold,” he confessed. She knew why, and he needed to say no more. “You belong to me…always.”

“Always,” she repeated.

“I will do whatever I must so you can come back to me.”

“I know you will, sir.”

“And we will keep our promise to each other.”

Nora reached up and touched his face.

“I will die in my collar.” She repeated her part of the pledge.

Søren turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm.

“And I will die in mine.”

* * *

Suzanne sat cross-legged on her sofa with her laptop open on her legs. She’d started a file on her computer called Asterisk and in it she was putting all the information she could dig up on Sacred Heart and Father Marcus Stearns. So far, it was a very small file. Patrick had gotten almost no additional information on the boy who’d attempted suicide in the sanctuary. No charges had been filed and the boy apparently still attended church there. What sort of kid would keep going back to the same church that had inspired him to kill himself? she wondered. Who was this priest who had that sort of pull on him? It turned her stomach just to imagine it.