Author: Tiffany Reisz

“Younger men are a weakness of yours?”

“Kind of. I have a little soft spot for virgin boys. All that untapped potential makes a girl want to, you know, tap that.”

“So it’s merely sexual?”

“Not entirely. Although that’s a big part of it,” Nora said without apology.

“Is it? Have you been with a lot of virgin boys?”

“A few.”

“I’d love a number.”

Nora clenched her jaw again but repressed the urge to say something which would no doubt get her in death’s crosshairs again. Taking a deep breath, she reflected on her past as ghosts of long-ago nights flitted across her mind’s eyes.

Bram...a seventeen-year-old male submissive who Kingsley had introduced her to.

Alex...age eighteen, barely eighteen.

Noah...one of Wes’s friends from Yorke. She didn’t know they were friends until after Wesley had moved in. She suffered a couple of sleepless nights wondering if Noah would tell Wes about the night he’d spent tied to her headboard.

And, of course, her angel, Michael. Age fifteen. A gift from Søren, who knew about her weakness and had decided to put it to better use than simply getting her off.

“Five, counting Wesley. Enough for a pattern, not enough for a fetish.”

“Five. Impressive. Actual virgins?”

“Every last one of them. If we’re talking kink virgins, you’d have to triple the number.”

“No guilt at all?”

“None. Okay, maybe a little but only with Alex.”

“Alex?”

“He was the son of this bitchy book reviewer. Totally blasted my first book. Called all my lovely kinksters ‘sick’ and ‘abusive.’ So I got my payback by sickly abusing her youngest all night long.”

“And you felt guilty about that?”

“Not the sex. The note I sent Mom the next day.”

“You sent his mother a note after you seduced her son? What did it say?”

“It said...” Nora began, and paused for a breath. Not one of her prouder moments. “It said, ‘Your son gave me five stars last night. And five fingers.’”

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m trying so hard to feel bad about it. I swear to God I am.”

“You amaze me. Why all the virgins? They have no idea what they’re doing.”

“I had such an amazing first time that I like giving that experience to other people. Better than five minutes in the back of a Buick, right?”

“How altruistic of you.”

“I’m a giver.”

“And my husband doesn’t mind that? Doesn’t mind you cuckolding him left and right with other men?”

“Did you say cuckolding? I didn’t know people still said that.”

“It sounded more polite than calling you a slut and whore who’ll spread for anyone who pays you the slightest bit of attention.”

“Look, in my world slut is a term of endearment. Why do I have to keep explaining this to people? You’re going to have to find a new name if you want to actually hurt my feelings. Telling me I’ve had too much sex is about as insulting as telling me I’m too thin.”

“I’m simply stating the facts, not trying to insult you.”

“Fine, then. Here are the facts. The vanilla mind has a little trouble grasping these facts, but you’re going to have to trust me that I know what I’m talking about. Søren loves me and he loves what I am. He takes pleasure in my pleasure. He no more begrudges me enjoying myself sexually with someone else than he’d begrudge me going out for a nice meal with a friend. Sex is sustenance to me. He’d rather I eat than starve.”

“You say that and yet you lived with your young fiancé for over a year without...feeding on him.”

“I’m capable of some self-control on rare occasion. Wesley wasn’t a virgin because he hadn’t gotten around to getting laid yet. He was a virgin because he wanted to wait for someone special. He has a different philosophy of sex than I do. I didn’t share it, but I respected it.”

Marie-Laure sighed and shook her head.

“Fascinating...” she said again.

“What is?”

“Your capacity for self-justification and rationalization.”

“If it were an Olympic sport, I’d medal.”

“No doubt. I have to say after that speech about my husband’s love for you that I can’t quite understand why you’re so drawn to a young man with whom you have so little in common. Not only drawn to him, but you agreed to marry him.”

“I saw a death threat carved into the barn wall that wasn’t there before we went on our ride together. I saw a shadow moving in the background. I would have agreed to marry Satan himself if it meant getting Wes and me out of that barn safely.”

“You don’t actually love him at all, do you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Not wanting to marry somebody doesn’t mean you don’t love them. Marriage and love are two very different things. Ask a married person. They’ll tell you that themselves.”

“So you do love him?”

“Yes. I love Wesley very much.”

“Tell me why.”

“I can’t.”

Marie-Laure glanced at Damon.

“Wait, whoa. I can,” she said before Damon put her in a chokehold again. “I can and I will. Sorry. My editor kicks my ass when I tell and not show in a story. I’m out of practice with the telling.”

“Show me, then. You did offer me a bedtime story earlier.”

“I write erotica, not bedtime stories.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

“Touché.”

Marie-Laure leaned forward in the bed. She put her chin on her hands and smiled angelically.

“Tell me a story.”

“You’re going to have to talk to my agent. She handles all book deals.”

“Damon?”

Damon stepped forward again, knife at the ready.

“In the very olden times there lived a semi-barbaric king...” Nora began, and Marie-Laure sat back in the bed as she fluffed her pillows.

“Not that story. I want a story about you. Tell me a story about this younger man of yours. You have the love of my husband and yet you walk away from it for a boy. There must be a reason.”

“Reasons aplenty.”

“I’d love to know them. Tell me. Be my Scheherazade.”

Nora’s stomach tightened. She remembered Scheherazade’s story, the bride of the sultan who told him a thousand and one stories simply to keep him from executing her. Nora took a deep breath. Damon watched her, his knife in hand. Andrei stood at the door, gun in hand. Marie-Laure watched her, madly grinning.

All she needed now was a story that explained why she loved Wesley. She had hundreds of them. Picking only one of them would be the hard part, but she’d have to pick one of them if she wanted to live to see her next birthday. And with that thought she knew exactly what story to tell.

“Once upon a time,” Nora began again, “I was fucking my friend Griffin when the phone rang...”

14

THE ROOK

Grace sat alone in one of Kingsley’s guest bedrooms and stared at her phone. She should call Zachary and tell him what had happened. She knew she should. And yet something kept her from dialing his number, something much more than a long-distance bill to Australia. It would take days for Zachary to get to the States if he knew what was going on. The flight alone could be an entire day, and it would take him at least that long before he could even get to the airport. All that time he’d be in a panic. She imagined him sitting in the airplane seat with no ability to contact her and find out what was happening. It sounded like misery to her, the purest hell. He loved Nora and it gave her no grief to acknowledge that. He turned to her for advice, for laughs, or simply when he wanted to get in a good fight with someone who wouldn’t back down. She never had to ask who he was on the phone with when she stumbled across him talking to her. No one else got under his skin like she did, got him so passionate, so annoyed.

Perhaps another wife would have been jealous of their friendship. But how could she be jealous when she reaped all the benefits? The minute he hung up, he’d grab Grace by the waist or the wrist and drag her off to the bedroom. Sometimes they didn’t even make it to the bedroom. Married almost twelve years and he still loved bending her over the kitchen table, shoving her skirt to her hips and burying himself inside her. And always after he’d come inside her, he’d pull her close, whisper that he loved her. She knew he did love her. He’d crossed an ocean for her and left Nora behind on the other side.

No, she couldn’t do this to him, bring him into this nightmare and force him to suffer through it in impotence. Ignorance was bliss, he’d reminded her. She’d tell him only if and when she had to. Until then...

After shoving her phone back down into her purse, Grace exhaled with some relief. To call Zachary or to not call Zachary had finally been decided. One less thing to worry about.

Now she only had everything else in the world to worry about. Foremost on her mind was Søren. The look Kingsley had given Søren after reading the note Laila had delivered had been a look she’d only seen once before. Twelve years ago, when the doctor had come into the hospital room to tell Grace and Zachary that there was no hope, their baby was gone, and they’d have to face the fact Grace might never get pregnant again—it had been that look.

Sympathy from the executioner.

The note contained a death sentence. She knew it in her soul.

She left the room in search of Søren or anyone else who would give her some company. She couldn’t stand to be in the presence of her own thoughts anymore. Wandering around the house, Grace saw Griffin again, the young man who’d first let her in the house. He paced by a large picture window, his ear glued to his phone. She stayed on the stairs and out of his line of sight. She couldn’t hear anything he said but whatever he’d heard must not have pleased him very much as he abruptly ended the call and threw his phone across the room. He buried his face in his hands and only looked up when a younger man with black hair pulled back in a low ponytail came up to him. The younger man, more a boy than a man, took Griffin’s wrists and gently pulled them away from his face. For a moment they only looked at each other. Grace couldn’t blame either of them. Griffin was undeniably attractive with his chiseled chin, his dark spiky hair, his tattooed biceps peeking out from the sleeves of his T-shirt. But the boy had an ethereal beauty to him the likes she’d rarely seen before. Only teenage boys could achieve that level of lithe loveliness, that almost angelic air. Griffin grabbed the young man by the back of the neck and pulled him into a kiss so powerful, so passionate, that Grace almost gasped aloud. They kissed like the world was about to end. Perhaps it was. Perhaps they should all find someone to kiss like that if only to remember they were still alive. Riveted by the display of near-apocalyptic lust at the end of the hall, Grace didn’t even hear the footsteps behind her.

“New love,” came Søren’s voice from behind her.

“No wonder Kingsley works from home. I’d need twenty-four-hour access to a bed, too, if I was surrounded by sights like that all the time.”

“Kingsley takes near-constant advantage of his twenty-four-hour access to beds.”

“I don’t blame him.” Grace turned away from the scene at the end of the hall. “I don’t blame any of you.”

“Not even me?”

Grace sat down on the top step and put her back to the stair railing.

“Not even you, Father Stearns.” She smiled as he sat down next to her on the step. “My grandfather was a minister in the Presbyterian church. He had a wife, children. Zachary’s brother Aaron is a rabbi and has a wife and children, too. I’ve never understood the Catholic church’s insistence on celibate priests.”