Søren held the belt steady, keeping the pressure constant, and she felt his chest panting and heard his breaths coming as quick as her own. It was a sacred thing to be loved by a sadist like Søren. Sacred like a sacrifice, like a vestal virgin offered to a god. What was a god, anyway, but one who held the power of life and death in his hands? By that measure, surely Søren qualified, if only when they made love.

A long minute—maybe two or three—passed before he lowered the belt from her throat. Nothing would happen quickly tonight. She understood this, and accepted it. Other men who’d gone a month without sex would rush to the deed quickly, no delay. Other men would have had her in bed already. Ah, but Søren wasn’t other men. He wasn’t other men and that’s why after, twenty-three years, she was as alive to his touch as she’d been at seventeen. She tried to touch him with her hands and he caught her wrists in his iron grasp. She gasped, the sound loud enough to echo off the ceiling and drop to the floor.

“Shh…” he said again, not to silence but to soothe her. He brought her arms down to her sides and then pulled them behind her back, the fearsome grip unrelenting as he held her still in that spot, her back arching. They still stood by the window. Although she was blindfolded, there was a chance anyone passing by could see them. He knew this as well as she did. There was only one explanation for why he hadn’t moved her from the window—Søren wanted them to be seen.

He pulled harder on her wrists and her back arched even more. He pressed his body to hers but didn’t kiss her. Ten minutes or more had passed since she’d stepped foot into the room…yet he hadn’t once kissed her on the mouth.

The cruelest thing he could deny her was himself.

In the blackness behind her blindfold, she’d lost track of what he’d done with his belt. But now she felt it as he pushed even closer to her. He’d slung it over his shoulder, and the cold metal buckle tickled her back. That he still had it with him, hadn’t dropped on the floor meant he wasn’t done with it yet.

Søren released her wrists, but only long enough to wrap the belt around them. Using the belt as a leash, he pulled her backward into the room, taking her slowly, very slowly, a step at a time to where-she-didn’t-know. Likely the bed. She wondered if anyone out on the street had seen the sight of the naked, blindfolded woman and the statuesque blond man behind her? Let the whole world watch if it wanted. What did they have to be ashamed of, now?

He brought her to the bed. The heavy fabric of the duvet brushed the back of her thighs. He took the belt off her wrists, and blood rushed back into her grateful fingers. When he took her wrist in hand again, it was gently this time, though his purposes were no less nefarious than before. He brought her hand to his crotch and pressed her palm into his erection. She felt the hardness, the thickness, the long length of it even though the thick denim of the jeans he almost always wore when riding his Ducati.