The Original Sinners: The Red Years

But was he going through a divorce? Every day when he checked his mail, he expected papers from Grace’s attorney. Every time his home phone rang, he expected it to be Grace telling him they needed to stop putting it off. But so far he’d received no calls or legal papers. Was she waiting on him to start the process? If so, she might have to wait a long time. He couldn’t deny their marriage had fallen apart in the past year and a half, but he was in no hurry to put the final nail in the coffin. He’d hoped if he came to New York, she’d miss him enough to want to make it work again. But every day the phone stayed mute.

Zach closed the internet and exited from his empty document without writing a single sentence. He’d left Nora in her kitchen hours ago. Surely she’d sent him another email by now—she emailed him constantly. But his in-box sat empty but for a reminder from J.P. about the next staff meeting and a question from his assistant, Mary. Both could wait.

He clicked on New and typed in Nora’s email address. Of course she would have an address with “littleredridingcrop” in it. Ludicrous as it was, at least it made it easy to remember.

Nora, he wrote and stopped. Why was he writing her? They’d discussed her book for hours today. There was no more to talk about for now. And considering they already had a reputation for working too closely together, he knew he didn’t need to be writing her about anything but the book. What would he say if he did write her? He had those words, those sentences. But they had tumbled about in his head so much since meeting her that they had crashed against each other, against him, and broken into fragments.

Nora, I don’t want to I won’t it’s been so bloody long I can’t I think of you of her too much I still love but I I hurt her Grace Now it’s hell worse Limbo I hurt too young too much…

Zach deleted it all, even Nora’s address. He knew better than this, knew better than to get involved. He would not make this mistake again. She would not pull him off course.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. He was gone in five weeks. Off to L.A. where he could start over again and perhaps get it right this time. But did he want to start over? At forty-two a new life seemed a far more terrifying prospect than it had at thirty-two when he and Grace married and moved to London.

The blank email sat waiting before him. He looked down at his fingers poised above the keyboard. Was it the words that failed him or his hands? They felt too heavy now. It made no sense. Without the weight of his wedding ring they should have been lighter.

The screen still waited, the cursor winking at him like an eye.

Zach typed in another address.

Gracie, he wrote, using the nickname that never failed to make her smile. Please talk to me.

* * *

Nora stood at the kitchen window peering into the dark. Sunset came so early in the winter that whole days seemed to pass in darkness. Zach had left her several hours ago, left her with a thousand ideas and admonitions. But now she could only wait and think and gaze at the light falling in from the lamppost outside the kitchen window. It illuminated the tremulous flakes of snow and cast white shadows that gathered round but did not touch her.

She turned toward a sound and saw Wesley standing in the doorway watching her with the same intensity as she watched the snow-lit play between the light and the shadows.

“How long have you been hanging out here in the dark?” Wesley asked, stepping into the lone pool of light.

She sighed at a shadow. “For as long as it’s been dark.”

Wesley reached out to flip the light switch.

“Leave them off.”

Wesley dropped his hand back to his side.

“I didn’t know you could write in the dark.”

Nora gave him only the barest hint of a smile.

“You’d be surprised what I can do in the dark, Wes.”

Wesley grimaced. “Zach know what you do in the dark?”

Nora shook her head.

“No. He thinks I’m just a writer. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

“It’s not anything I’ll ever brag about.”

“Wes, you knew what I was when you signed up for this job.”

“And you knew how I felt about it when you asked me to move in.”

Nora took a slow deep breath.

“And yet you moved in anyway. Why is that?” Wesley lifted his chin and only looked at her. “His silence says it all.”

Nora stepped away from the window and took a wineglass from the cabinet.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he came deeper into the dark kitchen.

“If you’re going to pout, I’m going to drink,” she said, pouring herself a steep glass of red wine. “I read somewhere that red wine is good for diabetics. Want one?”

“I’m not pouting. And I don’t drink.”

“There’s a lot you don’t do.”

Nora sat on top of the kitchen table across from him. She watched him, daring him with her eyes to either speak or leave.

“I’ve got homework,” he said.

“Then go.” Nora gestured to the door.

Wesley moved to walk past her. But Nora reached out and stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“Or stay,” she said as she took a deliberate sip of her wine before setting the glass down on the table next to her. “Staying is better.” She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled Wesley to her, positioning him between her knees. His face was a blank mask and his eyes would not meet hers.

Nora laid her hand on his stomach, smiling as the taut muscle quivered through his T-shirt.

“Nora, don’t—”

“Søren and I used to play a game on his kitchen table,” Nora said, ignoring the plea in Wesley’s voice. “Did I ever tell you about that?”

“No,” Wesley said, visibly tensing as Nora raised his shirt and slid her hands underneath, pressing her palms into his warm skin. She saw his fingers curl into fists.

“Simple game—he’d fill a wineglass with one of his expensive reds and set it on the edge of the table. Then he would fuck me. Hard.” Nora grinned as Wesley flinched. “If I thrashed too much, or fought him and knocked the glass off…then the wine wasn’t the only red that we spilled that night.”

Wesley closed his eyes as if trying to block out the image.

“The secret is,” Nora said as she raked her fingernails up Wesley’s chest and back down his stomach, “sometimes I’d knock it off on purpose.”

“I won’t play that game with you,” he said as Nora continued relentlessly caressing the delicate skin of his chest and sides. “I won’t play this game with you, either.”

“But it doesn’t have to be a game, Wesley.” She narrowed her eyes like a cat’s. “It can be very real.”

“Don’t do this.” His voice was a plea. His breathing was getting harder, everything was getting harder now. “Not to me.”

“Your heart is racing.” She let her hand rest on the left side of his chest.

From his chest she traced a languid path down his stomach, his breath catching as she deftly unbuttoned the top button of his jeans.

“Nora…”

“I’m not holding you here. You can go if you want to. Do you?”

She grabbed his belt loops and pulled him even closer until his hips pressed against her inner thighs. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. But Wesley was a constant source of frustration. Sometimes she had to retaliate. And she knew that every now and then he forgot what she really was. It didn’t hurt to remind him.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered.

“Now that is a refreshing bit of candor on your part. Since we’re being so honest now, tell me, why are you being so pissy about Zach?”

Wesley’s eyes widened. Nora bit her bottom lip as she waited for his answer.

“You like him.”

“I do like him.” She took another deep drink of the wine and set the glass down again. “But we’ve just met and we’re not fucking. Not even I work that fast.”

At that Wesley gave a grim chuckle and looked up at the ceiling.

“I couldn’t care less if you were fucking him.”

“My God, did you just say ‘fuck’? You’re a good, clean Methodist. You don’t swear.”

“You have no idea what I do.”

“I do know what you do. I know you sleep with your bedroom door unlocked,” Nora retorted. “Expecting company?”

“I know you stand in my door at night and watch me sleep. Expecting an invitation?”

Now it was Nora’s eyes that widened. But she recovered herself quickly.

“You’re pretty good at this game,” she said, nodding her approval. “For a beginner.”

“I told you. I’m not gonna play with you.”

“Too bad. I think you’d like the prize.” Nora went for the next button on his jeans, but Wesley grabbed her by the wrist to stop her.

“Harder,” she instructed. Wesley let her go as if her skin had burned him.

“I thought so. Go,” she said, dropping her hands to her sides. Wesley took a step back, his palm pressed into his stomach. “Go do your homework, kid.”

She picked up her nearly forgotten wineglass and lifted it to her lips. But before she could drink, Wesley took the glass from her.

He held the glass in his subtly shaking hand before raising it and drinking. Finished, he lowered the glass and set it next to her on the table. He left the kitchen without another word.

Nora picked up the glass and stared inside.

He’d drained it to the dregs.

Nora set the glass back down and turned to follow Wesley. She hated when they fought even though it was almost always her fault.

Wesley would be fine, she told herself. He needed a little toughening up anyway. She’d never forget the first day she saw him. She walked into his classroom at Yorke, and the first thing she’d noticed was a pair of big brown eyes looking at her like he’d never seen anything like her before. And the minute he opened his mouth and those soft Southern syllables came out, she knew this kid was going to be no end of trouble. She’d made all her students talk about their favorite story. Wesley had said his favorite was O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi—the story of the wife who sold her hair to buy her husband a watch chain and the husband who sold his watch to buy his wife combs for her hair. Nora had called it a horror story. Wesley had objected and called it a love story. The debate had continued even after the class ended. Two people who give up their most precious possessions for love and end up with nothing—that’s a love story? she’d demanded. Wesley had argued that they still had each other. She’d laughed and told him he might see things a little differently when he was her age.

She knew she’d been too rough with him tonight, but she couldn’t stop herself sometimes. After all, Søren had put her through ten kinds of hell when she was Wesley’s age. And now she was grateful for the discipline he’d taught her, the fortitude he’d instilled in her. Now a guy like Zach could look her in the eyes and tell her she wasn’t worth his time and energy, and she could look back and smile and ask him if that was the best he could do. Søren had made her strong and for that she’d be forever grateful. And Zach was making her a real writer, which was the one fantasy Søren could never make come true for her. And Wesley…she looked down at the empty wineglass and quickly refilled it in his honor—Wesley was just making her crazy.

Nora turned and saw her book and Zach’s notes lying on top of the kitchen table.

“Goddammit, Zach,” she said to herself and poured the wine down the drain. “Why did you have to tell me it was going to work?”

7

Five weeks left…

A tear formed in the corner of Nora’s eye and fled down her cheek before she could stop it. She rubbed it off with her sleeve and made herself blink. She’d been staring at her computer screen for so long her eyes were watering. Stretching while she backed up her work, Nora decided to check her private email account before taking a bathroom break. She breezed through a note from her agent and deleted a few bits of spam. Just before logging out a new message popped into her in-box. From Zach, it bore the subject line “Regarding Sex.”

“Why, Zachary,” she said, chuckling to herself, “yes, I think I will regard sex.”

The email dragged on for two pages and detailed every reason why she needed to cut out the majority of her sex scenes. She stopped reading after the fifth use of the word gratuitous.

You’re no fun, she wrote Zach back. Can’t I just keep three of my scenes?

Zach was obviously still at his computer. He quickly replied with one word.

No.

Two? she wrote back.

No.

Nora was about to fall out of her chair laughing. She could imagine his stern but strikingly handsome visage right now, his brow furrowing deeper with each annoying little email from her.

One? I promise I’ll make it good. Please? I’ll buy you a puppy.

I’m allergic to dogs, he replied.

Nora bit her lip as the wheels in her head turned.

Let’s play a game, she wrote back. I’ll give you fifty extra pages this week if you let me keep three of my scenes—heavily edited, of course.

She held her breath as she waited for his reply. An email finally popped up in her in-box.

Fine. But any sex on the page must serve both the plot and the character development. Now stop playing and start writing. You’ve got five weeks left and over four hundred pages to rewrite.

I’m keeping the puppy, she wrote back. She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t reply.

Nora was rereading Zach’s most recent note on her new chapters when her hotline rang. She heard its Klaxon ringtone in her office all the way from the kitchen. Rolling her eyes, she stood up and headed in that direction in no particular hurry. When she got there, she found Wesley standing by the counter with the phone in his hand. He looked oddly tired and grim. He handed it to her without a word and walked past her. “King, I swear I’m going to beat the shit out of you if you don’t stop calling me.”

“Now you’re flirting, ma chérie.”

Nora ground her teeth together and took a deep breath. Was there any man in the world more infuriating than Kingsley Edge? Søren, she remembered. Only Søren.

“I am not flirting. I am working.” She said the words slowly as if she were speaking to a child. “I have another job, recall?”

“I try everything I can to forget your other job, maîtresse. Your other job costs me money.”

“Well, it makes me money.”

“And that helps me how?”

“Kingsley, tell me what you want and then leave me alone. My editor is making me rewrite my entire book.”

“The Nora Sutherlin taking orders from a man. I thought those days were long over.”

Nora clenched her jaw. She would not let him goad her into a fight today.

“I’m une petite peu busy, monsieur.”

“Never too busy for a client. For this client in particular.”

Nora leaned her head against the cold metal of the refrigerator. Most of her clients were on her time; she saw them at her leisure. Just part of the mystique of being a Dominatrix. But there were a handful of clients not even she felt comfortable keeping waiting. She guessed it was Jake Sizemore, CEO of some company that made something that kept the world going. King never let her turn Sizemore down when he came to town.

“Fine. What do I need to know?”

“Just wear your finest and be there in an hour. C’est ça.”

Nora scribbled the time and place down in her datebook. She’d been trying so hard not to take any jobs while working with Zach. Zach had all the signs of someone going through a fairly serious depression. She knew depression well, knew it was anger turned inward. That much depression signaled an impressive cache of anger lurking under that ridiculously handsome exterior. Her gorgeous blue-eyed editor already oozed disapproval of her at every turn. She could only imagine how bad his reaction would be if he found out that writing wasn’t her only job. For over a year now she’d dreamed of quitting the game altogether, but without a signed contract from Royal, she was scared to give up her day job.

“I’m getting a little sick of this, you know, King?”

“You say that and yet I hear la petite morte under your breath. You know you love this job.”

“I love the money. That’s it.”

“You love him, chérie.”

Nora closed her eyes and swallowed the growl in the back of her throat.

“He has nothing to do with this.” Nora refused to get into a discussion of Søren with Kingsley. Kingsley reported to Søren.

“Ma petite,” he chided. “You do this for his attention. C’est vrai, oui?”

“That’s like saying criminals commit crimes to get the cops’ attention.”

She heard Kingsley’s soft, heady laugh.

“Exactement. One hour, maîtresse.”

Nora hung up and went to her bedroom. The house was too quiet. She couldn’t hear Wesley anywhere. Usually at this time of day he was working on his homework and listening to music. Or if homework was light that night, he’d be playing his guitar and singing softly to himself. She remembered the first time she’d caught him playing and singing. She’d told him he sounded a little like the nineties band Nelson. He’d said, “Who’s he?” and Nora had thrown a book at him.

She dressed in her black leather skirt with the back slit and her black-and-red brocade bustier. She found her black gauntlets and pulled them on. They laced up her arms and she had a horrible time tightening the laces and tying them off on her own. She went to find Wesley. He hated that she worked as a professional Dominatrix, but he tolerated it more or less. Before he’d moved in over a year ago she’d explained what she did, what she was. He’d been shocked. He didn’t even know such things existed. He was relieved, however, when she explained she was in no way a prostitute and that she never had sex with clients—not the male clients anyway. They weren’t even allowed to kiss her except on the toe of her boot. No, she was no prostitute, she explained. She was, if anything, a kind of massage therapist who simply inflicted pain instead of pleasure. Despite his shock, Wesley moved in anyway. She’d been so impressed by how well he took it, she’d even told him about Søren.

“Just don’t ever let me in the same room with him,” Wesley had said when Nora revealed the nature of their relationship.

“You think you can take Søren?”

“You said he was, what, forty-five? Eighteen versus forty-five? And any guy who beats up on women doesn’t know what to do around a guy who’d only hit another man.”

Nora had laughed then, so hard she’d almost fallen over. Could Wesley get any more precious? When she’d stopped laughing, she’d taken Wesley’s chin in her hand and forced him to meet her eyes. Søren once told her she had the most dangerous eyes of any woman who’d ever lived. He told her when men looked in her eyes they saw their own darkest fears reflected back. Usually she tried to tamp down that particular trick of hers. This time she’d let Wesley see all her fears and all of his in one glance.

“Kid, Søren could eat you for breakfast and not even need to chew. Don’t ever fuck with a sadist, Wesley. For Søren, torture’s just foreplay.”

“Why did you stay with him?” he’d whispered.

Nora had grinned at him, and she saw a new fear in Wesley’s sweet brown eyes.

“I like foreplay.”

Wesley…she couldn’t find him anywhere. She stood in the living room and noticed a note taped to the door. It said he was at the library but he’d be home around six. And at the bottom of the note were the words he always said when she went out for a job—“You don’t have to do this.” No, she didn’t have to. But she owed it to Kingsley. Nora grabbed her coat and toy bag and made a quick stop in the bathroom. She took a pill bottle from the medicine cabinet, swallowed one without bothering with water and left.

It took forty minutes to get to the hotel. Her clients were among the elite of the world—only the wealthiest and most powerful men and women could afford her. Quite a few were even household names. So it was rare she ever went in through the front doors of a home or hotel. But Kingsley hadn’t mentioned the need for discretion so she didn’t bother.

She strode through the front lobby of one of the grandest and oldest hotels in the city and worried for a second that someone from Royal might recognize her. She shook off the worry—no one who worked in publishing could afford this place. The lobby was littered with women dripping with Prada and men stuffed inside their Armani suits. Nora bit back a smile as she breezed past them in her leather and lace with her black toy bag slung across her back and her sunglasses on even though she was indoors and it was still winter. She wasn’t ashamed of what she did. But it was fun to be around people who were nervous just being in the same room with her.

A couple standing near the elevator walked off when she joined them in their waiting. Vanilla people were so cute sometimes. She entered the elevator, hit the button for the nineteenth floor and headed up alone.

Nora stepped out, got her bearings and made her way to room 1909. A key card lay hidden under a newspaper in front of the door. She unlocked the door, stepped inside and saw a tall, blond man in black standing with his back to her.

“Hello, Eleanor,” he said.

Nora gasped and her bag hit the floor with a nervous clatter of metal.

“Oh, my God…Søren.”

* * *

Zach sat at his desk in his office at Royal. He checked his email one last time before shutting down the computer. He was surprised he hadn’t gotten more of a fight from Nora about paring down her sex scenes. Perhaps she now understood the kind of book she was writing, was starting to understand she could write something erotic without being an erotica writer.

Straightening the papers on his desk, Zach found a copy of the contract that the legal department had worked up. It wasn’t signed yet. And even if Nora signed it today, it wasn’t valid until he signed it. He looked over the terms. J.P. had been very generous. Royal didn’t dole out significant advances very often. Of course, Nora brought her own impressive fan base with her. Zach knew J.P. hoped she would bring a certain libidinous cachet to the rather staid old publishing house. It was a bold move that might actually pay off if Zach did his job right.

Zach smiled as he flipped through Nora’s unsigned contract. When he and Grace had bought their first house, the paperwork hadn’t been half this preposterous. Poor Grace. He remembered watching her at their tiny kitchen table in their first horrid little flat they’d rented sight unseen when they’d moved to London. They’d been married less than a year. She thought she was supposed to know what every word of the contract meant, what every clause referred to. She sat for hours poring over every page. He’d leave and come back and she would have another twelve questions to ask him. What did first right of refusal mean? Did they know the assessed value? Did they need a variance if he worked from home?

It was so damn endearing watching her spend an entire day trying to understand everything as if she thought she should that Zach finally had to come over, shove the papers away and make love to her right on top of their settlement statement. He remembered it so clearly, the shock on her face when the papers scattered to the four winds. She thought he was angry with her. But he remembered her smile when he kissed her so fiercely the table scooted a foot back. He remembered her red hair against the dark wood, how her legs had wrapped around him with almost childlike eagerness as he moved inside her.

He’d heard once there was nothing like buying a house together to make or break a relationship. That was the day he decided they were going to make it.

Zach put the contract down, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Maybe they should have bought more houses.

* * *

An hour later Nora left the hotel and strode to her car cursing Søren under her breath the whole way. She kept cursing, knowing if she let up on the fury for one second, she would collapse into tears. It had been months since they’d spoken. She did everything she could to avoid him. Sometimes she saw him at the club and they only looked at each other across the room while bystanders subtly moved a few steps back like unwitting townspeople caught between two gunslingers. Søren wasn’t on the attack today, however. Worse—he’d wanted to talk.