Part 33 (2/2)
”I think so. It seems really s.e.xy being tied up during s.e.x. Is that weird?”
”Not at all. Many people, men and women, enjoy giving up control during s.e.xual encounters and putting their bodies and even their lives in the hands of their partners. It's called s.e.xual submission. Others, like me, enjoy the opposite. Taking total control of someone and dominating them.”
Eleanor s.h.i.+vered at S0ren's words. She didn't expect such a personal revelation from him about his s.e.xual 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 s.e.x.”
”It turns you on?”
S0ren 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 S0ren 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 S0ren 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 t.i.tle.”
”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 n.o.blemen 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 Hamps.h.i.+re to attend a music conservatory on scholars.h.i.+p. Her scholars.h.i.+p 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.”
”What did he do?”
”He raped my mother.”
Eleanor gasped. She pulled back and looked at S0ren but found his face was blank, his eyes empty of emotion.
”She had you.”
”Yes. I don't know if it was intentional, raping my mother so she could give him the son his wife couldn't. Deliberate or not, that's what happened. She had me and named me S0ren, a family name. My father named me Marcus after himself.”
”That's why you hate the name Marcus?”
”For many reasons. My mother wanted to flee, and would have, except she loved Elizabeth like her own child and couldn't leave her with my father, couldn't leave her unprotected. So we stayed in that house. My father pretended I didn't exist. It was the only way to keep peace between him and his wife, jealous of the beautiful Danish girl who cared for her child. I think my father was waiting for something, waiting to see something in me. And he did see it.”
”See what?”
”I spoke my first words six months earlier than my sister had. I started playing piano at age two. I mastered new skills quickly. My father decided I showed enough signs of high intelligence that I deserved to be acknowledged as his son. I pleased him enough that he paid the necessary bribes, had paperwork altered. His wife became my 'mother' and he my father.”
”And here I thought my parents had a rough marriage. What happened to your mom?”
”I was shunted off to boarding school in England when I was five, and my mother summarily dismissed and returned to Denmark. We didn't see each again, not for a long time.”
”How long?”
”Thirteen years.”
Eleanor's eyes filled with tears at the sorrow in S0ren's voice.
”Thirteen years ...”
”School was difficult for me. I knew there was something different about me. My father had seen it. I saw it.”
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