Kyrie laughed for seemingly no reason. She danced away from Elle, clutching her nightgown to her neck.

“Come and get me,” Kyrie taunted, running to the small chapel. She crooked her finger at Elle before disappearing through the wooden door.

Elle didn’t follow at first. She looked around, eyeing the trees, the twigs on the ground. At last she found what she needed, a long thin twig with smooth slick bark and a lot of give to it. Elle bent it and released the tip. It bent easily and sprang back in an instant. Perfect.

After she peeled the leaves off the cane and stripped it of extraneous twigs, Elle entered the oratory and found Kyrie at the front by the prayer altar spreading blankets on the floor.

Elle grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her in for another kiss.

“I brought these here earlier today and hid them,” Kyrie said with a bright smile when she saw Elle.

“Premeditated sexual assignations,” Elle said. “You’ll have so much tell Father Antonio next time you confess.”

“He’ll be so excited,” Kyrie said. “Hope I don’t give him a heart attack.”

“Priests hear everything. Takes a lot to shock them, I promise.”

“Still...it’ll be fun to try.” Kyrie sat on the blanket right in the middle.

“So where’s my present?” Elle asked. The only light in the oratory came from the moon through the windows. Elle took two candles out of her duffel bag and lit them. She wanted light but not too much. She didn’t want anyone from the abbey waking up in the night and seeing light emanating from the chapel windows.

“I’ll give you your present later,” Kyrie said. “I don’t want to distract you from, well, me.”

“A nuclear bomb blast couldn’t distract me from you right now.”

Once they had light, Elle sat on the blanket in front of Kyrie and unzipped her duffel bag.

“Did you bring me a present, too?” Kyrie asked.

“Nothing for you,” Elle said. “This is for me.”

“What is?”

Elle pulled out a comb and a hair band.

“What are you doing to me?” Kyrie asked as Elle moved to her side and gathered a lock of hair in her fingers.

“Anything I want to do to you,” Elle said. “As usual.”

“Good. I like everything you do to me. Even if it means pulling my hair.”

“Not pulling it, braiding it. You’re my fairy princess tonight so you need princess hair.”

With nimble fingers that had twenty-seven years of experience taming her own wild tresses, Elle plaited Kyrie’s hair into a thin French braid at the side of her head. She moved to the opposite side and gave Kyrie a matching braid. While Elle worked, Kyrie closed her eyes.

“That feels good,” Kyrie said of Elle’s hands in her hair. “I miss having my hair touched.”

“You’ll miss it even more when you don’t have any hair at all.”

Kyrie didn’t say anything to that. Elle wondered how much their one night together had changed Kyrie’s thoughts about taking her final vows. Did she still plan to become a nun? Would she stay? Go? Had she thought about it? Elle didn’t ask her. She didn’t want to know.

When she finished the two braids, Elle gathered them in the back of Kyrie’s head and used the band to tie them together. Now her two braids formed a crown, like a Daphne wreath.

“Perfect,” she said, pleased with her work.

“Is it?” Kyrie asked, smiling shyly.

“You’re so beautiful. I can’t believe you’re mine.”

“I am yours,” Kyrie said, and leaned in for a kiss, a kiss Elle was only too happy to give her. As they kissed, Elle pulled Kyrie’s nightgown down to her stomach. She pushed Kyrie onto her back, not breaking the kiss once. She licked and kissed a path from Kyrie’s lips to her quivering flat stomach and lower as Elle dragged the gown all the way off her and tossed it aside.

“Are you warm enough?” Elle asked as she surveyed Kyrie’s naked body, her small pert breasts and long lithe limbs.

“I am,” Kyrie said, a nervous hitch in her breath.

“I want to hurt you tonight. Can I?”

“You can do anything you want to me.”

“Do you want to be hurt?”

“I want to do anything you want to do,” Kyrie said, and Elle could have laughed at her eagerness. Those could have been Elle’s own words to Søren seven years ago on their first night together. Anything...anything at all... His pleasure and happiness had meant so much more to her than her own.

Elle kissed Kyrie on the forehead.

“I want you to touch yourself,” Elle said. “Like you do when you’re alone.”

“You’re going to watch?”

“I am. And while you’re doing that, I’ll hurt you. And I’ll keep hurting you until you come. And once you come, I’ll stop hurting you.”

Kyrie swallowed and took a ragged breath. She spread her legs and slipped her right hand down her stomach.

“Nervous?”

“No one’s ever watched me do this before,” Kyrie said. “You?”

“I have lost count of how many times I’ve done this for an audience,” Elle said as she ran her hand up and down Kyrie’s soft inner thigh.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” Kyrie admitted.

“That’s why Søren would make me do it for him.”