“Then why—” Zach began and stopped before he said something foolish. Of course, Nora had been with another woman. He tried to be bothered by the fact, but the images that tiny slip of lace brought to mind evoked feelings distinctly different from disgust.

“You appear troubled, Zachary. What is it?” Søren asked, and Zach did not trust the note of concern in the priest’s voice.

“She joked about threesomes with other women. I suppose it wasn’t a joke.”

Søren gave him a dark look.

“Eleanor is always joking. Eleanor is never joking. Best to learn that as soon as possible. Care to see the rest of the suite?”

“Suite?”

“Eleanor’s earned very posh accommodations here.”

Søren raised the oil lamp to shine a light on a door to the left of the massive bed.

“How does one become a top Dominant here?” Zach asked as he walked around the bed to the door. As soon as Søren’s back was turned, Zach took the white garter off the bed and shoved it in his pocket.

“The same way anyone else would ascend to the heights of her chosen field.” Søren opened the door. “Practice.”

Zach inhaled sharply as he entered the second room of Nora’s suite.

“Good God,” he breathed. In the center of the room stood a massive wooden X. Leather thongs were attached to the tops and bottoms of the wood planks—a large-scale cross of her very own. Zach had no doubt what Nora used it for. He’d seen the pit, seen a man lashed to it and beaten until he came.

Eyes wide with shock, Zach turned his attention to the walls. On hooks and racks, in rows of military precision hung whips, floggers, bamboo canes, crops…a hundred various instruments of torture. On a small table lay an assortment of spreader bars like the one Nora had in her toy bag at home. He opened a drawer and found cuffs and collars, leashes and leads. In addition to the cross was a large examining table, the kind found in a doctor’s office. Except this one came equipped with four-point restraints.

Søren’s voice came from over his shoulder.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

“No,” Zach said. “It’s appalling.”

“Really? Such a strong word to describe sensual activities shared between consenting adults.”

“Hurting people for pleasure? For sexual pleasure?”

“Holding Eleanor down while she struggled underneath me and begged me to stop…that was beauty.”

“Rape isn’t beautiful.”

“But you see, it wasn’t rape,” Søren said, his tone light and conversational. “She enjoyed the struggle, enjoyed feeling overpowered and taken. I take rape very seriously, Zachary. My mother was a rape victim.”

Zach turned and looked at Søren in shocked sympathy. His distrust of the man wavered.

“I’m sorry,” he said with sincerity. “That must have been traumatic. For you and her.”

“It was.”

“May I ask how old you were when it happened?” Zach asked, trying to find the origin of Søren’s violent sexual proclivities.

“It happened roughly nine months before I was born. But that is neither here nor there. You seem uncomfortable with women fully owning their sexuality.”

“That isn’t true. Women have as much right to their bodies and desires as men. Nora accuses me of being a stuffy Englishman and she isn’t far off the mark. But I am no prude.”

“You say that and yet the thought of a woman allowing herself to be violated appalls you.”

“Of course it does. There are limits to what’s healthy.”

“Healthy…interesting word choice. Are you much familiar with the disease leprosy?”

Zach furrowed his brow at the odd question.

“No more so than the next man, I suppose.”

“I mention it for a reason.” Søren began to make a slow circuit of the room. “During my summers at seminary I worked in a leprosy camp in India. There is a disturbing amount of misinformation about the disease. The idea that it is the disease that infects the limbs and causes them to rot and fall off? Pure myth. Leprosy, Hansen’s disease as it should be called, is a disease of the nerves. It destroys the nerves that experience pain. And once the ability to feel pain is gone, then it is a simple matter to burn the hand off while cooking dinner over an open fire, or to step on a small nail and not realize it until a doctor pulls it from a festering wound a week later. There were mornings,” Søren said as he took a whip from its hook on the wall and examined it, “I awoke to the sound of screams. Without the capacity for pain it is all too easy to slumber in peace as a rat chews off your fingers in the night.”

“Pain is a necessary evil,” Zach said, fighting off the chills produced by Søren’s hypnotic speech. “But still an evil.”

“Pain is a gift from God. It imparts understanding, wisdom. Pain is life. And here we give pain as freely as we give pleasure.”

Zach watched Søren’s hand as he gripped the handle of the whip and coiled it neatly. Every movement the priest made was precise, his fingers as deft as an artist’s, his muscles lean and taut as a dancer. And on his face he wore an expression of quiet peace, of intelligent disinterest. A true believer, Zach could tell. But a believer in what? Words from Paradise Lost came to Zach’s mind—“Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven.” Somehow, Zach realized, Nora’s priest had found a way to do both.