You have only seen him by day. She remembered Kingsley’s words. All light and shadow. But the night will come and you will see the darkness.

So this was the darkness? Then may she live the rest of her life by night.

After binding her to the bed with leather cuffs and black rope, Søren stared down at her helpless body.

“Mine,” he said and met her eyes.

“Yours, sir.”

When he’d finished binding her, she lay on her back unable to move her legs or her arms. This was how it would be. This was how it would happen. This was the beginning. This was the end.

Søren stripped out of his clothes. She had dreamed of his naked body and now she saw it bathed in moonlight and candlelight and his own light that came from within him. Even naked he still seemed clothed with dignity and strength, and he wore his strength like a shield. With his body, he covered hers. His thighs felt like marble against her thighs. His skin shone like polished gold. His lips tasted as sweet as the wine and she drank deep of him.

“Why did the king tie Esther to the bed?” he asked.

“Because he loved her.”

32

Eleanor

SØREN LINGERED AT HER MOUTH. HE KISSED HER AND she returned the kiss with equal and even greater fervency. Their tongues mingled and she drank of the wine on his lips, swallowed the heat of his mouth. Eleanor winced as Søren nipped her bottom lip.

Søren dusted kisses across the sensitive skin of her chest. Under his mouth her heart pounded, her blood throbbed. She ached to touch him but every time she tried to move her hands the bonds held her. Kingsley had warned her about the bondage. Søren needed to stay in control as much as possible. The more helpless she was, the more he would feel compelled to protect her.

She inhaled as Søren licked the tip of her right nipple. He brought his mouth down on her breast and sucked gently as he teased her left nipple with his fingers. Tied down as she was, she couldn’t do much but arch her back to offer more of her br**sts to him. He moved his mouth to her left nipple. Heat gathered in her br**sts and melted through her stomach, settling into her hips. She wanted him inside her. No, not wanted, needed.

“Please, sir …” she begged.

“Please what?” He raised his head and cocked his eyebrow at her as if amused she would even dare beg for anything.

“I want you.”

“You have me.”

“I want you inside me.”

“I’m always inside you, Little One.”

Eleanor entertained a brief fantasy of stabbing him in the neck. But then he moved his lips to her mouth again.

“Patience,” he whispered against her skin. “I have waited years for this night. I won’t rush it.”

“Did you really want me from the day we met?”

“So much it scared me.”

He ran his fingertips down the center of her body until he rested his palm against her clitoris. It pulsed against his hand.

“I want you to come for me. I need you as wet as possible before I enter you. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” She started to breathe heavier as Søren pressed the heel of his hand in deeper. He dipped two fingers into her vagina before pressing his now wet fingertips against her clitoris. Desire engulfed her as he made tight circles on the swollen knot of flesh.

Her hips rose off the bed and she went still underneath him. Her entire body locked up before exploding with pleasure. Her vagina clenched and released rapidly, fluttering inside her and pressing against nothing. She couldn’t wait to come around him, to let him feel her own pleasure on his body.

“Good girl,” he said, brushing a lock of hair off her forehead.

He kissed her ni**les again as she recovered from her orgasm. He sucked leisurely, lazily, at them as if he intended to spend all night lying between her br**sts. She had a vague memory of Wyatt kissing her ni**les like this. When he had done it she’d watched him and felt tenderness toward him like a mother to a child. They might have been the same age but she felt so much older than him. But with Søren she felt like the property of a king, like Esther in a harem, captured and conquered. And like Esther, she knew she had conquered the conqueror with the greatest of all powers—love.

Søren kissed the valley between her br**sts and his lips traveled down her stomach and over her hips. He nipped her hip bone with his teeth and the moment the pain registered, Søren moved between her thighs. Eleanor stiffened as he licked her, kissed her, made love to her with his mouth.

“Fuck …” she groaned, unable to contain herself. She hadn’t expected him to go down on her. He’d said he would pleasure her but this act seemed almost submissive to her as he knelt between her legs. But then he increased the pressure on her clitoris with his tongue and he pushed in two fingers and rubbed that soft hollow on the front wall inside her. He mastered her with his mouth. With his fingers he spread her folds so wide, exposing the entrance to her body. She couldn’t hide from him. He saw all of her, all her most secret places. He licked her clitoris again and again, and when she came, she clenched at his lips and fingers.

He rose up and kissed her. She tasted herself on his mouth and couldn’t get enough of it. Had she imagined anything so erotic before? His hand traced a line down her body from her collared neck to her thighs. He slid his thumb into her and she winced at the strange sensation. The wince turned into a gasp of pure pain as he pressed down hard against her hymen, not hard enough to tear it but hard enough that tears sprang to her eyes. He inhaled sharply as if he registered her pain inside his own body. He experienced her pain as his pleasure. Let him hurt her, then, so he could feel the pleasure of it. Let him destroy her so she could be reborn.