He almost didn’t care if she said “yes” or “no.” The whole thing had been worth it just to see her blushing and shivering and taking those shallows breaths.

Paulina had never looked so beautiful to him before—not in her sundresses, not in her church clothes, not even in that black bikini of hers that made him thank Jesus for allowing mankind to invent the two-piece. Just her, there, on her pillow, lips parted and breathing hard and blushing and burning and all for him. And he hadn’t even laid a hand on her yet. His words had done it to her. And if she thought he was good with his words…she ain’t seen nothing yet.

“What are you going to do to me, Daddy?” she asked.

“Nothing you don’t love. Is that a ‘yes’?”

Slowly, tentatively, looking scared as a child in front of her first roller coaster, and brave as a woman who wanted to show the man she loved how much she loved him…she nodded her head.

“Yes, Daddy.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Nora watched Søren as he opened the drawers of her curio cabinet, hunting for something only he knew he was looking for.

“If you tell me what it is,” she said, “I might be able to help you find it.”

“I haven’t decided what I’m looking for just yet. But not this.” Søren pulled a massive twelve-inch dildo out of a drawer and held it up. “Really, Eleanor?”

“That’s not mine, I swear,” she said. “I only use it on Sheridan.”

Søren raised his eyebrow. “She’s tiny.”

“She’s bigger on the inside. That’s a Doctor Who joke.”

“I went to school in England as a child. I fully understood the reference,” he said as he put the gigantic dildo back in the drawer. “My God, you have enough butt plugs to start a butt plug emporium.”

“You can never have too many butt plugs. If you’re looking for the scalpels and knives, they’re in the bottom drawer on the left.”

“I wasn’t…or I thought I wasn’t.”

“I like that you can get an erection just by hearing the word ‘scalpel.’ It’s like Pavlov’s dog, except it’s Pavlov’s erection.”

“Don’t mention dogs if you want me to keep it.”

Nora grinned sleepily. “You can slice me up if you want. I don’t mind. You’ll be hard until breakfast.”

“Blood-play? On white sheets?”

“Hmm…good point. If they were cheap, I’d say go for it. But this is Millesimo Egyptian cotton. Sheridan got them for me.”

“We’ll avoid bloodstains then,” he said. He took from a drawer a long thin carbon fiber rod—a misery stick—and set it on the bedside table by the lamp. Clearly, Søren was in a mood to bring the pain.

“Did you really not beat and fuck King tonight?”

“I did not. After last night, he’ll be needing more than a day to recover,” Søren said with a little sinister note of giddiness in his tone.

“Oh, great,” Nora said. “Now I have an erection.”