Carefully she set the candle on the center of his chest. A short, wide candle, it would stay in place as long as he didn’t flinch. She didn’t have to tell him that. She’d spent many a terrifying hour with a votive candle balanced between her breasts while he worked some sort of erotic havoc on another part of her body.

With the slightest, lightest touch, she carved a quick shallow N over his heart. His eyes closed as bright red blood welled to the surface of his skin. Now an O made from two parentheses, made to kiss. She let the blade do all the work as she cut the R into him, even as his hips moved slightly under her, his cock pulsing inside of her. Her concentration was unbreakable. She would cut him, carve him, slice him open, but she wouldn’t harm the man to save her life. With a last little flourish, she finished off the A.

She lifted the candle off him, put it on the table. The key gleamed gold in the firelight.

“Can you come?” she asked.

“I want to,” he said. “I don’t know if I can.”

The vulnerable honesty in his answer broke something in her that needed breaking.

“Let me help.” She picked up the key and released his right wrist, but left his other cuffed to the bedpost. She offered him the scalpel. “One for you.”

Again, he waited a full three seconds before obeying her—she counted. But he did take the blade from her at last. Nora sat up, arched her back, offered her body to him, offered all of her.

The blade grazed her lower stomach. She dug her fingers into his thighs to steady herself. As aroused as she was, she barely felt the cut. Only when she opened her eyes did she see what he’d done—with one practiced cut, he’d carved an S under her bellybutton over that aching place where the tip of his cock met her cervix. She’d claimed his heart. He’d claimed her cunt.

She could only smile. The smile evaporated instantly when Søren used his free hand to grab the key off the bedside table and release his left hand. Free, he pushed her onto her back, mounting her like the whore who’d taken his last penny. He dragged her against him, holding her hard in place under him. She lay trapped beneath him, her head half off the bed as he speared her.

Trapped, she didn’t put up a fight. She simply let him have her. Her one act of revenge was to bite his chest where she’d cut him, causing him to let out one small cry even as her blood stained his belly.

He pounded her hard and slow and the harder he pounded her, the harder she wanted it. Split and speared, her surrender was complete. She gave him her breasts and he sucked her nipples sore. She gave him her neck which he bit to the point of bruising. She gave him her heart and he swallowed it whole. A thousand heady nights ached in her memory, a thousand heavy hours under him, keeping her screams silent and careful with her cries. But those were the old nights, long gone, spent in the bed of a man who would turn back into a priest in the morning. She wasn’t sure who this man inside her was, only that she wanted him there, beautiful stranger that he was.