The Angel (The Original Sinners) Page 17

  Thank you for saving our marriage, Father. Bless you, Alex and Rachel, read another.

  Is it a sin to combine a priest’s birthday and Christmas presents? We’ll talk about it in Confession if it is. Merry Birthday, Dr. and Mrs. Dr. Keighley, read a tag on a box that held a Montblanc pen and pencil set.

  Combine Christmas and birthday? With that sentence, Suzanne realized she’d been right. Father Marcus Lennox Stearns, born December 21st, 1965, was indeed the son of Marcus Augustus Stearns, the English baron who’d moved to New Hampshire and married money. Amazing. So her target had actually given up a title in the British peerage for the Catholic Church? Unbelievable. Not only did he give up his mother’s wealth and his father’s title, he’d given up women for the Church. Most priests she’d met in her day seemed of the “doomed to die a virgin” variety. Humorless, unattractive, socially awkward…the opposite of Father Stearns in every way.

  Shaking her head, Suzanne pulled out one last box, this one red, and flipped open the card.

  Meine andere Geschenk wird nicht in einer Box passen. AABYE

  Good God, how many languages would she have to deal with tonight? Rolling her eyes in frustration, Suzanne pulled out her notebook and copied the words down. At least this language she could recognize—German. And for some reason the last word, AABYE, rang some kind of bell with her. She searched her memory for whatever it was that seemed so familiar about it but came up empty. Stuffing her notebook in her purse, she scanned the top of the desk once more with her flashlight.

  On the desk Suzanne found one item of interest—a photograph. She stared at the picture for a long time. A young woman of only about seventeen or eighteen years old, she looked remarkably like Father Stearns—pale blond hair, gray eyes, strikingly attractive. Suzanne eased the photo out of the frame and flipped the picture over. Jeg elsker dig, Onkel Søren. Kom og besøg snart, Laila, it read. Again with the Scandinavian inscriptions. Suzanne opened her notebook again and copied every word. Briefly she wondered if she was staring at Father Stearns’s daughter. Had he fathered a child at some point during his years as a priest? Could that be the reason for the anonymous fax and its mysterious “Possible conflict of interest” footnote?

  Seemed unlikely. After all, if he did have a love child, she doubted someone as obviously intelligent and well educated as Father Stearns would simply keep a photo of his teenage daughter on his desk. She shook her head in frustration. She’d hoped for answers. All she had now were more questions.

  As quietly as she could, Suzanne abandoned Father Stearns’s office and returned to the hallway. For some reason she felt drawn to return to the sanctuary instead of her car. Patrick’s information from the Wakefield sheriff indicated that Michael Dimir had made his suicide attempt in the actual Sacred Heart sanctuary. Trying to kill oneself was the ultimate cry for help. Whatever had inspired it, something in Suzanne wanted Michael Dimir to know she heard it.

  Suzanne found the doors that lead from the narthex and into the sanctuary. Easing the heavy wooden door open, she slipped inside. Upon entering the sanctuary Suzanne discovered someone had left candles burning on the altar and scattered about the sanctuary. She froze as her eyes took in the candle nearest her. The burning wick had only begun to turn black. From behind her she heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

  She wasn’t alone.

  * * *

  Michael cast one last look back at Griffin before leaving the bedroom. Griffin gave Michael a little wink on his way out the door and a tiny part of him wanted to stay and keep talking. But he knew he wanted to spend the night submitting to Nora, needed it even. He just sort of wished Griffin could be there too.

  For some reason, Michael had assumed he’d spend the night with Nora in her room. But Griffin’s butler led him instead upstairs to the third floor and all the way to a room at the end of the hallway.

  The butler paused at the door, nodded politely to Michael and walked away. Michael took a deep breath, turned the doorknob and stepped into the room and into another time.

  Holy crap, he thought as his eyes tried to take in the scene around him. He’d seen a lot of Griffin’s house by now. Every room matched Griffin—sleek and modern, minimalist, arty and sexy. But this room seemed as though it belonged in a medieval European castle. Plush oriental rugs covered the stone tile floors. Candles burned on every horizontal surface and a few logs simmered in a stone fireplace. In the middle of the room stood a bed, large and wrought iron, not unlike the one he’d lost his virginity in.

  But where was Nora?

  “Not bad for a dungeon, right?” came Nora’s voice behind him. Michael tensed, not knowing what to do. Was he allowed to talk? Move? He decided to stay frozen in place and not talk until Nora told him what to do. “Griffin’s dungeon at The 8th Circle is much more mod. I think he wanted a different vibe for his house up here. Like it? You’re allowed to answer.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s beautiful,” Michael said, hearing the quiver in his own voice.

  He felt Nora’s presence behind him and took in a quick breath.

  “So are you,” she said, blowing under his ear.

  Nora stepped in front of him and Michael’s eyes went wide. Nora had grown…a lot. She met him almost eye to eye before stepping away and walking toward the center of the room. He glanced down and saw she wore thigh-high platform boots with killer stiletto heels. His eyes grazed her body from foot to face—red leather boots laced up the back, bare thighs, red leather skirt, red-and-black corset… Nora looked back over her bare shoulder and crooked her finger at him.

  He could barely feel his feet as he walked toward her. Suddenly the room and its beauty faded into the background and all he could see was her…Nora and the swell of her breasts over her striped corset…Nora and the heavy, dramatic eyeliner that made her look like Cleopatra…Nora and her hair that curled in wild waves down her back…Nora and the black fingerless gloves just like the ones she’d worn the night she took his virginity. He couldn’t wait to feel the soft supple leather against his skin again.

  When he reached Nora she raised her hand to his neck and gently pulled his ponytail loose. Slowly, gently she ran her fingers through his hair.

  “I read your checklist, Angel,” she said as he closed his eyes. If he’d been a cat, he would have started purring. “I found it very interesting. You want pain, don’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Michael breathed.

  “Pain makes you feel better, doesn’t it?” Nora asked, her voice soft and hypnotic. “It’s like white noise…soothing, calming, blocks out the real pain, the bad thoughts, that other pain that you don’t want. Right?”

  Michael’s eyes opened wide.

  “Yeah. Exactly, ma’am. How did—”

  “You aren’t my first masochist, Angel.”

  Michael laughed a little. Griffin had told him Nora had hundreds of clients back when she was a dominatrix. Hundreds of clients who made her hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course he wasn’t her first masochist. Just looking at her, feeling himself falling under her spell, he could easily understand how men would mortgage their souls just to be able to kiss the toe of her boot.

  Nora’s fingers found that tight knot at the base of his neck, that place where he stored most of his tension. Michael tilted his head toward her, gave him better access to his stress.

  “I think,” Nora began in a half whisper, “that I’ll beat you tonight. But I don’t think I’m going to punish you
or be mean to you like I did with a lot of my clients. I think you’ve had enough people being mean to you in your life already.”

  Michael’s eyes clenched tight as her words burrowed a hole into his heart. Ever since the night his parents had discovered what he was, Michael had suffered nothing but insults—freak, sicko, fag—from his father and abandonment by his mother. No one touched him anymore, no one hugged him, no one ever even wanted to talk to him except for Father S, and even he had to keep his distance because of the Church. But now the most erotic woman in the world was touching him, talking to him, making him feel like the center of the world.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said in a voice he could barely hear.

  Nora caressed his face with the back of her hand. Leaning in she pressed a little kiss to his lips before moving her mouth to his ear.

  “Take your clothes off,” she ordered.

  Michael reached behind his head and yanked at his T-shirt, pulling it off with one swift motion. He unbuttoned his black plaid skateboard shorts and pushed them and his boxers off, kicking them off his ankles into the corner of the room. The night he and Nora met, he’d fumbled so nervously with his watchband that she’d had to take over and unbuckle it for him. Now he felt no such jitters. The watch and wristband that he always wore in public were off and on the floor in seconds.

  “Your swiftness to obey is touching,” Nora said, smiling at him. “But you have to slow down and let me enjoy watching you undress. Your priest makes me strip for him, you know.”

  Michael felt a coil of need begin to twist in the pit of his stomach.

  “I didn’t know, ma’am,” he said as Nora looked his naked body up and down.

  “We’ll be having a lovely evening at the rectory. He’ll be reading in his armchair, I’ll be sitting at his feet writing, and out of nowhere he’ll snap his fingers and order me to take my clothes off.”

  Michael said nothing.

  “Sometimes,” Nora said, pressing close to Michael’s body, “he doesn’t even look at me. He keeps reading. He orders me to do it just to humiliate me. Jealous?”

  Once again Michael closed his eyes. He tried to imagine what it would be like to belong to someone, to be owned like Nora was. What would it be like to give his body to someone so completely that they could order him out of nowhere to strip naked. God, it would be so embarrassing, so humiliating, as Nora said. Degrading, almost.

  “Very jealous,” he admitted and Nora laughed.

  “Do you ever imagine what your priest and I do when we’re alone together?” she asked as she made a circuit around him. Her stiletto heels clicked against the stone floors.

  A blush flared up on Michael’s cheeks.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, swallowing hard.

  “Tell me what you fantasize,” Nora said and he heard the hard edge of the order in her voice.

  His fantasies about Nora and Father S were beyond humiliating. Sometimes he saw them at church and Nora would be trying to annoy Father S. Nora would put her innocent face on and say something like, “Father Stearns, about St. Elmo…” And Father S would barely glance at her and say, “Patron saint of sailors. What about him, Eleanor?” And Nora would say, “Was he, by any chance, ticklish?” And Michael would hide in the shadows and imagine his handsome priest bending Nora over the back of a pew and brutally fucking her. That was just the PG stuff he thought of. When masturbating it got really intense—threesomes, foursomes, orgies, vicious beatings… The stuff that went on in his head freaked even him out sometimes.

  “I…” he began and swallowed. His fingers clenched in nervousness.

  “You can tell me,” she said, her voice coming from behind him. “Trust me, I’ve heard worse. And even if I haven’t, I’ve thought worse. Just say it.”

  Michael took a deep breath. He hated disappointing Nora. He wanted to say it. Wanted to say everything to her. But the words turned to glue and stuck in his throat.

  “I can’t,” he said, his voice flush with anguish.

  Nora grazed his face with the back of her hand again.

  “It’s okay, Angel. We’ll get there. If you’re going to be a sub you have to learn how to talk about what you want and need. This,” she said, indicating the room and then pointing at herself, “is a basic fantasy. Dominant woman, gorgeous dungeon full of S&M toys, big bed. Generic even. Start talking and tell me what you fantasize about in your most private moments, and we can change it. Do you want to see me in black instead of red? In lace instead of leather? Would you prefer scening outside at night? Do you have fantasies that take place in the kitchen? The shower?”

  Michael shifted nervously from foot to foot.

  “Maybe,” he admitted.

  “You do know what you want matters, don’t you?”

  Michael rubbed at his arms. “I guess, ma’am. Trying.”

  “I’ll teach you that this summer. You’ve got a lot to learn. Let’s get your lessons started.”

  Nora strolled off toward a table covered in a black cloth. Once she reached it she turned around and crooked her finger at him again, beckoning him to her side.

  Naked but for his blush, Michael came to stand beside Nora. With a flourish she pulled the black cloth off the table.

  “Wow,” Michael said at the sight before him.

  “Thank you. I packed a few of my favorites. A few are Griffin’s he’s letting us borrow. Griffin’s very fond of you. You’ve made quite an impression on him.”

  Michael’s blush deepened at the insinuating tone in Nora’s voice. Did she know he’d watched her and Griffin having sex in the dining room? Did she somehow intuit that ever since seeing Nora on her knees in front of Griffin, he’d been having trouble not imagining himself in that same position?

  “He’s really cool” was all Michael could get out before clamping his lips shut. Nora only eyed him before turning her gaze back to the table.

  “Do you know what these are, Angel?”

  “Some of them…but not all, ma’am.”

  “Let me introduce you then. This,” she said as she lifted the first object, “is a basic flogger. Six-inch handle, eighteen-inch suede thongs. Feel?”

  Michael reached out and ran his fingers over the flogger. The suede felt so soft to the touch.

  “Used lightly,” Nora explained, “it will feeling like a tickling sort of massage. Used with full force, however, the impact on your back will knock the breath out of you. Tricky thing. I could beat you with this until you cried and within the hour it would appear no one had laid a finger on you.”

  She laid the flogger back on the table.

  “And this…you know what this is, don’t you?” She lifted another object, this one similar to the flogger but more sinister looking.

  “A cat-o’-nine-tails, ma’am,” Michael answered.

  “Very good. This is a lighter variation of the kind used to discipline sailors in the British Navy. Even this lighter version could break your skin if I wanted it to. But if I use it on you correctly, you’ll have the loveliest freckle bruises on you tomorrow courtesy of these little knots on the ends of the cords. Here,” she said, handing it to him.

  Michael accepted it with almost trembling hands. He touched the knots, hefted its deceptively light weight.

  “You know, there was an even smaller version of this that was used on the cabin boys aboard ship,” Nora said with laughter in her voice. “Guess what it was called?”

  “I don’t know,” Michael said shrugging
.

  “A boy’s pussy,” she said, grinning wickedly. She took the cat back from him. “You didn’t know you were going to get a history lesson tonight, did you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I believe in the value of a thorough education. Tawse,” she said, naming the heavy leather strap that lay next to the flogger. “Used to discipline schoolchildren in the nineteenth century. It won’t break the skin but it will burn like fire. And this,” she said sliding one more object off the table, “is exactly what it looks like.”

  “A cane, ma’am.”

  “Exactly. Rattan cane, ten millimeters thick, seventy-six centimeters long. So painful that its use on prisoners has been condemned by the United Nations. It can not only permanently scar a person but permanently disable them as well. Even used lightly on the buttocks or thighs, the pain will be so intense that you will choke on it. Traditionally six strokes are delivered at a time; five horizontal and one diagonal. That is called barring the gate. It’s sadistic enough that your own priest rarely uses it on me. Although, admittedly, sometimes I do deserve it.”

  Nora stepped back and with astonishing expertise twirled the cane in her fingers like a baton. He could hear the hissing sound as the reedy wood sliced through the air.

  “Now…” Nora placed the cane back on the table. “Choose.”

  “Choose?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off the dozen or so various kinds of floggers, whips and canes on the table.

  “Yes. Pick one. Whatever you pick I will use on you tonight. So think about it carefully.”

  Nora stepped away and left him alone at the table. He heard her opening a trunk near the bed to take out something. But he didn’t dare turn around to see what it was.

  Michael raised his hand and passed it over the objects on the table.

  I could beat you with this until you cried.

  Loveliest freckle bruises.

  It will burn like fire.

  You will choke on it.