The sun was gone now. The only light came from the candles on the mantel, the candle by the bed. She returned to the bed and crawled next to him. Because she could, she touched his face, his lips, traced the perfect lines of his perfect ears. He wasn’t aroused, but Nora was, wet and shaking like a sapling in a storm inside. Her training went too deep, however, so she feigned calm on the outside, collected and in control.

She straddled him at the waist, pushing her vulva against his still soft cock. She bent to kiss him, because she had to, because she had never wanted him more than she did right then. She kissed him hard and deep, forcing his lips to part and pressing her tongue inside his mouth. When he returned the kiss, it was tentatively at first, letting her have her way with him, humoring her, she knew. Then something changed. The room darkened, the darkness deepened. He kissed her back harder. He pressed his tongue to hers. As she moaned in response, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth and bit it.

Nora gasped, sat up, and pressed her fingertips to her lip, saw he’d drawn blood. He licked the blood from his lips. Her blood. Then he lifted his hips and she felt him growing hard against her. With her hands on his chest for support, she pushed down and back onto his cock, rigid now and thick. It slid along the slick seam of her vulva. She spread her knees, pushed down again, and he entered her. With each slow roll of her hips, he filled her more and more. Slowly she rose and sank down again, taking more of him into her, letting him fill her, spread her, pierce her until he was so deep inside her body she felt the tip of his penis nudge her cervix.

She clenched her inner muscles around him, squeezing him. His head fell back and his throat was bared. And there she was with a set of knives in a case on the bed. With one little flick of her wrist, she could kill him and he couldn’t stop her, couldn’t fight back. As strong as he was, the iron bed was stronger, the steel cuffs were stronger. For the first time in their twenty-three years together, he’d put himself entirely at her mercy. Maybe, possibly for the first time since he was a child, he’d made himself this physically vulnerable to another person.

“Why did you do this?” she asked him softly.

He opened his eyes, met hers.

“If the day comes when I can’t give you anything, at least here, now, I can give you everything.”

“I will never leave you,” she said.

He nodded solemnly. “Now that’s all I wanted to hear.”

With their bodies locked together, Nora reached for the leather case. She took out the smallest, thinnest, sharpest scalpel and used the flame of the candle to clean it. His watching wolf eyes followed her every move.