“Are you? I mean, I still am.”

“Yes, Little One. Your virginity is no impediment and if you’d been sexually active before we met it would also be no impediment. I feel possessive of you now, however.”

“I don’t want to be with anyone but you.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“Entirely,” she said. “And maybe Sam. She is seriously …”

“Eleanor.”

“Sorry. Continue.”

“Your eighth question—am I a virgin?”

“You said you were with someone when you were a teenager so I’m guessing no,” she said, not sure how she felt about that no. She wanted one of them to have some experience, but then again, being his first would have been something special.

“You would guess correctly. Many priests are. Most are not. We weren’t born priests, after all.”

“How old were you your first time? Or am I not allowed to ask extra questions?”

“I promise we’ll get to that. But now onto question seven. Why do I want you to obey me forever?” He paused and seemed to weigh his words. “Let me give you the simple answer. In your Esther story, the king tied Esther to the bed. Is that something you think you would enjoy?”

She hoped the dim light masked her blush.

“I think so. It seems really sexy being tied up during sex. Is that weird?”

“Not at all. Many people, men and women, enjoy giving up control during sexual encounters and putting their bodies and even their lives in the hands of their partners. It’s called sexual submission. Others, like me, enjoy the opposite. Taking total control of someone and dominating them.”

Eleanor shivered at Søren’s words. She didn’t expect such a personal revelation from him about his sexual desires—he wanted to take control of her? To dominate her?

“Makes sense,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

“I enjoy your obedience to me much the same way you feel certain you would enjoy being tied up during sex.”

“It turns you on?”

Søren met her eyes and in them she saw the world set itself alight and burn to ashes.

“More than you can possibly imagine.”

Eleanor pressed her hand to his chest and felt his heart rushing under her fingers.

“Which,” he began again after taking a ragged breath, “answers question number five—whose feet should you be sitting at? I don’t know whose feet you should sit at. But I know whose feet I want you to sit at.”

He wasn’t hinting. She knew that. She knew he’d simply answered her question. Entirely of her own volition she pulled away from him, slid to the floor and knelt at his feet. With her head on his knee and his hand in her hair, she felt what Søren must have felt the first time he put on his priest’s collar. She found herself at his feet. This was where she belonged. This was who she was. She would never look further to find herself than his feet.

“I wish you’d let go and be with me,” she whispered against the fingers that brushed against her lips. “You wouldn’t have to worry about self-control then.”

“Eleanor, the first night we make love will be the greatest test of my self-control.”

She wanted to speak, to protest, but he’d said make love and the beauty of those words rendered her mute.

“Now to question six. Why does everyone think my name is Marcus Stearns, but my Bible says Søren Magnussen? This is a complex question and it will require a long answer. Get comfortable,” he said and forced a smile.

“I’m sitting in a bedroom at your feet. This is the most comfortable I’ve ever been in my life. I never want to leave.”

“I never want you to. But you may change your mind after I answer the rest of your questions.”

“Never. Trust me with the truth. Please.”

“As you wish. This answer to the question begins before I was born. My father was Lord Marcus Stearns, Sixth Baron Stearns.”

“The what?”

“A baron, and a minor one at that. My father was impoverished English aristocracy. His father squandered the last of the family fortune, leaving my father with nothing but a name and title.”

“Your dad was a baron?”

“Madness, isn’t it? Somewhere in Northern England there’s a moldering estate called Edenfell I could claim if I desired. I have no desire.”

“Your father’s dead. So you’re …”

“Surrender the tiara, milady. I am a priest. That’s all I am.”

“But you could be a baron if you wanted?”

“My father legitimized me. I suppose I could, although I have no interest in it.”

“So weird. Your father was a baron, and he left all that behind?”

“He had to. You see, my father did what generations of noblemen had done when faced with poverty. He joined the army and became an officer. He quickly rose in the ranks. Intelligent, cunning, deadly … In Northern Ireland they called my father the Red Baron for all the blood he left in his wake. When he left the army, he fled England. He’d made so many enemies in the IRA he feared for his life. He came to America, ingratiated himself into New England society and married a wealthy young woman, an heir to a great fortune.”

“I thought your mother was Danish.”

“She is. My father’s wife was not my mother. My mother—her name is Gisela—was an eighteen-year-old Danish pianist who came to New Hampshire to attend a music conservatory on scholarship. Her scholarship covered only tuition. She needed a place to stay. She was hired as my sister’s nanny. My father’s wife nearly died giving birth to Elizabeth, and only an emergency hysterectomy saved her life. It left her barren. My father wanted a son. He got a daughter and no chance for more offspring. He was a cruel man before that incident. After, he became a monster.”