Eleanor’s hands trembled slightly. The world around them had gone quiet, as if even the walls were listening in on their conversation.

“What advice would you have given Esther?” Eleanor asked again, refusing to back down. He never answered her important questions. She wouldn’t give up until he answered this one.

Søren leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. As he thought about her question, her mind started to wander. She could easily imagine herself as Esther. Girls in that day married young, Søren had said. She and Esther were probably about the same age. If she lived back then, would she have been one of the virgins brought in to audition for the role of queen? What would she have done in that situation? Esther asked the guard for advice, and according to the Bible Esther took only what Hegai told her to take. She took less than the other women. But what was it? What did he tell her to take? And what did she do when she was alone with the king?

“I think if I had to give Esther advice as a man and not a priest—” Søren leaned forward to rest his elbows on the desk “—I would tell her to go to him without fear and with total trust. She should offer herself to him in a spirit of submission. After all, it was Queen Vashti’s refusal to submit that infuriated the king. Clearly he prized submission highly. She should tell the king she was his to do with as he pleased, that she would obey his every whim and submit to his every desire. I would tell her to let him bare his most secret self to her and accept it without question and to show her most secret self to him. She should submit to him in love and without fear, giving her body to him like a holy offering and making their bed an altar.”

Eleanor’s knees trembled at Søren’s words. She couldn’t help but picture herself in a silken gown being escorted to the bedroom of the king, a king who bore a strong resemblance to the priest in front of her.

“Eleanor?” Søren prompted.

“What?”

“You whimpered.”

“Did I?” She had. She knew she had. “Sorry about that.”

He leaned back in his chair again and looked at her without a smile on his face but with a dark and amused gleam in his eyes. Right there—she saw it. That look. Those eyes. He knew he’d turned her on with his words and was congratulating himself for it. The expression on his face was arrogant, patronizing and imperious. She wanted him so much it hurt.

“Who’s disconcerted now?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him. Without a doubt, he was the only man who’d ever lived who could make the word disconcerted sound sexy.

“Whatever this game is we’re playing,” she finally said, “I’m going to win it.”

If she expected him to be thrown off or confused by that statement, she was sorely disappointed.

“If you trust me and obey me,” he said, “we might both win.”

Trust him. Obey him … She could do that. And out of nowhere came the answer. Eleanor knew exactly what Esther had taken with her.

“I know what Esther took with her to the king,” she said, looking up at him with a smile.

“You do?”

“When I know I’m going to ace a test, I go to class with nothing but my pencil,” Eleanor said. “If Esther knew she was going to ace her audition, she wouldn’t have taken anything with her at all.”

“You might be right.”

“Might? I’m sure of it. But I wish the Bible writers hadn’t skipped all the good details.”

“I told you it had sex in it if you used your imagination.”

“Oh, I’m using it. I’m using it hard.”

“Go use it to do your homework.”

“First day of school. I don’t have any homework.”

“Did you do your other homework I gave you?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re totally full of shit. Psalm 116. And I quote, ‘The Lord is the keeper of the little ones, I was little and he delivered me.’ God loves little people, He keeps them and He delivers them. I’m short so God is going to keep me and deliver me because I am a little one. Considering He sent you to keep me out of prison, I think I have all the proof I need.”

“Very good, Little One.” He smiled broadly and for a moment she was nearly blinded by it.

“Don’t call me Little One.”

“Do you hate it?”

“Totally.”

“Good. Now go find something to do, Little One. I’m working on my dissertation and you are detrimental to my powers of concentration.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You could use your impressive powers of imagination and your newfound prowess as a Bible scholar to formulate a theory on what Esther did to earn the king’s favor.”

“So I’m supposed to figure out what made her better in bed than anyone else?”

“Precisely.”

“My kind of homework.”

Eleanor left Søren in his office with his eight billion books and his dissertation. She hid out in the food bank pantry and rearranged the cans of green beans on the floor into columns like she’d seen in pictures of exotic palaces.

As she stared at her green bean palace in front of her, Eleanor picked up a pen. On the top of a clean sheet of notebook paper she wrote:

One Night with the King.

For the fun of it she wrote underneath, By Eleanor Schreiber. And then she wrote for four straight hours.

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