The Virgin

Keys to the safe houses—one in Canada, one in Maine, one in Seattle.

A mobile phone and charger.

Beneath the duffel bag sat a black permanent marker. The marker was there for one reason only.

“I might be out of the country when it happens,” Kingsley had said, the “it” being whatever scenario had occurred that meant Elle would need to flee.

“Write a number inside the locker so I know why you went. And know this...if it’s number five, don’t go to any of the safe houses.”

“Why not?” she’d asked.

“Because whether I want to or not, I’ll help him find you if he asks. And if I’m helping him find you, I’ll find you.”

She’d shivered then, because he was telling the truth. Søren had Kingsley’s loyalty and his love. Even if Kingsley believed she was fleeing for the right reasons, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from helping Søren find her.

“What do I do?” she’d ask. “If I can’t go to a safe house, where do I go?”

“I can’t tell you that. You’re as smart as he is. Use your brain. Find somewhere he can’t follow. And whatever you do, don’t tell me.”

This was not a drill.

This was real.

Elle uncapped the marker. Inside the door of the locker she scrawled her message.

5.

3

ELLE STARED AT the number she’d drawn on the metal door and knew what it meant—she had to go somewhere Kingsley couldn’t find her.

Could she live with that? Never seeing Kingsley again? She would have to, wouldn’t she? If she wanted to leave Søren she had to leave Kingsley, too. From inside her purse Elle pulled out a six-inch length of intricately carved bone. A beautiful thing, or it had been once. She held it in her hand for a second longer than necessary. Kingsley would know what it was the moment he saw it. He would know what it was, and he would know what had happened.

And he would know it was her way of saying goodbye.

It hurt to let go of it, but there was no reason to keep it, right? She had the other two pieces in her purse. This third piece was for Kingsley. She laid it inside the locker, slammed it shut and walked away.

Use your brain, Kingsley had said. Go where Søren wouldn’t expect her to go. Go where Søren couldn’t follow.

She had three ideas. One she dismissed out of hand. As furious as she was at Søren right now, she would not bring his family into this by showing up on his mother’s doorstep in Copenhagen. The other two options were both bad, but one was worse than the other.

With the credit card from the bag, she bought a bus ticket to Philadelphia. Then she walked to another counter and with cash bought a bus ticket to New Hampshire. She threw the one she’d bought with the credit card into a garbage bin. The one she bought with cash she shoved into her pocket. She doubted the ruse would throw Kingsley off her track, but she had to try.

Kingsley had taught her how to flee from the press, from the church, even from Søren. But she wasn’t sure how to get away from Kingsley. He could track like a bloodhound. He had eyes and ears everywhere. She needed someone who would be on her side, not Kingsley’s. She needed someone who cared more about her than him. Or, more importantly, she needed someone who owed her a favor.

And only one man owed her a favor.

She got on the bus and found a seat near the back. Bus—when was the last time she’d sat on a bus? Maybe high school? Her senior year. Most days she walked to school, but if she was running late she took the bus. One morning she’d overslept because of Kingsley. The day before had been her eighteenth birthday, and he’d taken her to her first S and M club. She hadn’t played, only watched while couples and trios had engaged in acts she’d only read about and dreamed about. Kingsley had asked her if she liked what she saw, if anything intrigued her, if there was anything she wanted to do.

“All of it,” she’d answered.

She’d stayed out so late with him, she’d slept through her alarm the next morning and had taken the bus to school.

That wasn’t right, was it? That wasn’t normal. High school seniors shouldn’t be oversleeping because they were at kink clubs with notorious underground figures the night before, right? How had it seemed so normal at the time? Why had it seemed so right? Where was her mother in all this? Pretending Elle didn’t exist, more or less. They’d become strangers to each other, roommates at most. What if her mother had found out about her daughter’s secret life when she was still in high school? Why had her mom not stopped her and said, “What are you doing with these people, Ellie?” If her mother, if anyone had asked that question she would have answered, “Because these people are my people.” She was one of them.

But now she wasn’t one of them anymore.

So who was she?

She pondered that question for the next two hours, only stopping when another stomach cramp hit her. She doubled over and rested her head on the back of the seat in front of her. Only June nineteenth but it was already as hot as August. The bus was air-conditioned—barely—and the stifling air added to her misery.

“Carsick?” an older man asked her. He was black with gray hair and sat on the seat opposite hers. He had a face like the grandfather you wished you’d had growing up. She nodded her head and squeezed her eyes shut tight.

“Hang in there. You want some crackers?”

The mention of food sent her stomach rumbling. Without answering him she raced to the bathroom at the back of the bus and vomited hard into the toilet. She prayed no one had heard her getting sick. People would remember a young white woman in a Mets cap on a Concord bus puking her guts out. But she couldn’t worry about that yet. When she was done being sick, she rinsed her mouth out and splashed cold water on her face. Then she pulled her pants down and checked her bleeding. It was heavy and thick. She tried to feel sad, feel remorse or regret. Instead, she felt only relief. She held on to that relief as she made her way back to her seat.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. The man in the seat next to her patted her clammy hand and she opened her eyes. He placed three saltines in her palm. For the rest of the trip she nibbled on her crackers. In her weakened state and on her empty stomach, they tasted like manna from heaven.

“Thank you,” she said. He reached out and patted her shoulder. A kind, grandfatherly touch. She ached so much for human warmth right now she wanted to sit next to him and lean against him. When another cramp slammed into her back, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“It’s all right,” the man said in a low voice. “We’re almost there. I get carsick too sometimes. Especially if I try to read. You’re gonna make it.”

She smiled so he knew she heard him, but didn’t tell him the truth. She wasn’t carsick. Elle Schreiber did not get carsick. Any car, any kind, she could drive it. She’d been driving since she was twelve years old. She could hot-wire a car in under fifteen seconds. She could shift like a race car driver. She felt more at home in a car than she did anywhere else on earth—except for Søren’s bed. Carsick was the last thing she was.

When the pain passed, she lifted her head and rested back against the seat. For a few minutes all she did was breathe. Long breaths. Slow breaths. Breaths that filled her lungs and emptied her mind. At first she didn’t realize what she was doing. Then she remembered.

“Little One, take deep breaths when you’re on the cross. Deep full breaths. Fill your lungs and empty your mind. When I beat you, it’s for us, for our pleasure—yours and mine. Don’t be afraid. Never be afraid of me.”

“Never ever, sir,” she’d whispered back to him.

But now she was afraid.

“You running away from home, young lady?” the man in the seat next to her asked. She could hear the joking tone in his voice.

“I don’t run,” Elle said. “It’s not running away from home if you’re not running, right?”

“That’s a good point. Visiting friends or family here?”

“A friend,” she said. “I think he’s a friend. I hope he is.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

“I broke his heart once,” she said, smiling again.

“You look like a heartbreaker.” The man nodded sagely and Elle laughed.

“I don’t mean to be. I never mean to hurt anybody,” she said. “But I do.”

They’d been joking the way strangers packed into a crowded elevator or jostled about on an airplane joked. But what she’d said was too true and too somber, and he gave her a look of curiosity and compassion.

“A little girl like you couldn’t hurt a fly,” he said kindly.

Elle looked up and took a breath. If he only knew.

“I could hurt a fly,” she whispered.

After six hours and two bus changes, she finally arrived in New Hampshire. She wasn’t done with her journey yet. At the station she followed a young woman to a parking lot and offered her a hundred dollars to drive her forty miles. The woman seemed skeptical at first, but Elle held up the money. That did the trick.

Elle sat in the backseat of the beat-up Ford Thunderbird. The front seat was taken up by a child’s car seat, and Elle was happy to sit in the back and not look at it. She thought about asking the woman where the kid was, but she didn’t want to talk, especially about children. She apologized for her lack of conversation. Still recovering from car sickness, Elle said. The woman turned on the radio to cover the silence, and Elle kept her eyes closed all the way there.

A little after one in the afternoon, she arrived at her destination. Elle almost wept with relief at the sight of the long curving driveway she remembered so well, the columns, the stairs, the rows of windows in this old Colonial mansion.

The woman seemed stunned that this house, this mansion, was her destination.

“Old friend,” Elle said by way of explanation. “I hope.”

She paid the woman her one hundred dollars from the cash in her duffel bag. Five thousand dollars wouldn’t last very long, but a deal was a deal.

The relief Elle felt faded as she walked up the long, curving cobblestone driveway to the house. Her back spasmed with every few steps and the heavy duffel bag dug into her shoulder. The blazing sun followed her every step. She took off the Mets cap and ran her hands through her sweat-drenched hair. As she walked, she wondered...would he take her in? Would he help her? She’d broken his heart, yes, but she’d also helped him when he needed her most.

Elle rang the doorbell and waited.

As rich as he was, no one would have begrudged him a housekeeper or a butler. But it was the master of the house who opened the door. His blue eyes widened as he looked at her and took in her paleness, her exhaustion and her fear.

“Oh my God...Eleanor. What did he do to you?” he asked.

Elle almost laughed. If she’d had the energy, she would have.

“Don’t ask, Daniel,” she said as she walked past him into the house. “Just don’t ask.”

4

DANIEL GAVE HER tea and put her in the downstairs guest room. The entire time she was in his presence she stared at the gold band on his left hand.

“Where are Anya and the baby?” Elle asked. She hadn’t seen either when Daniel brought her into the house.

“Upstairs in the nursery. Marius has the flu. We’re taking shifts. She’s on the day shift. I take the night shift so she can sleep.” He smiled and she saw the contentment on his handsome face.

“God, you’re so married.”

“I am. Again,” he said and smiled.

“Enjoying it? Being married again? Being a dad?” Elle asked as she pulled the blanket to her stomach.

“You show up on my doorstep with no warning and nothing but a bag and the clothes on your back and you want to talk about me right now?” Daniel pulled a chair up to the bed. It was barely two o’clock in the afternoon, but Daniel had seen right away that all she needed right now was rest. “Eleanor, please—”

“Elle,” she said.

“What?”

“I told him the day I met him that I went by Elle. Not Eleanor. My whole life my mom called me Elle or Ellie. That’s who I am. But he called me Eleanor anyway. He calls me Eleanor. I prefer Elle.”

Daniel looked at her, rubbed his hands together.

“Elle,” he said. “Please tell me what’s happening. Can you do that for me?”

“You don’t want to know.” She tried to smile. She hoped he appreciated the effort that took her.

Daniel met her eyes, and she held the gaze. Back when he was a regular player in Kingsley’s world, his blue-eyed Dominant glare was the stuff of legend. His late wife, Maggie, had even named it—The Ouch, she called it with equal parts fear and affection. When he gave her that look she knew she’d be saying “ouch” the next day, maybe the next week. But it wasn’t the infamous Ouch he gave her now. Instead, he looked at her steadily with curiosity and compassion. And pity.

She hated pity.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I needed to get away for a few days.”

“You didn’t come here because you needed to get away for a few days. You go to the Hamptons to get away for a few days.”

“You go to the Hamptons to get away for a few days because you’re rich. Normal people do not go to the Hamptons.”

“Elle.” Daniel met her eyes. “You’re the most famous submissive in the entire city of New York. You’re owned by a Catholic priest, and you’re sleeping with the King of the Underground. You are not normal people.”

“I am now,” she said. “Trying to be anyway.”

“How did you get here?”

“Kingsley’s driver dropped me off.”

“Kingsley drives a beat-up Ford Thunderbird now?”

If she had had the strength to give Daniel The Ouch, she would have.

“I have security cameras,” he said. “I saw someone drop you off. It wasn’t King.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Does King know where you are?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me what happened.”

“You don’t want to know,” she repeated. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m here, okay?”

“I think I do want to know. Remember, I’ve known Søren for years. Not only do I know him, I like him. We’re friends. If I can know him and still like him, I think I can handle anything you tell me.”

“Maybe you can handle hearing it. I don’t know if I can handle saying it.”

Daniel moved from his chair to the bed. She tensed immediately and he seemed to sense it.

“I’m not going to touch you if you don’t want me to,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.

“You’re married, you have a kid and I’m—” she paused to find a suitable lie and decided on a half-truth instead “—not feeling well.”

He reached his hand out but didn’t touch her with it, only waited. Slowly Elle leaned forward the three necessary inches and rested her face against the palm of his hand.

“You don’t have a fever,” he said.

“No.”

“I don’t see any bruises on your arms or your neck.”

“Søren didn’t beat me up or rape me,” she said, annoyed that he would even think something like that had happened.

Daniel nodded.

“But he did hurt you.”

“You didn’t put a question mark at the end of that sentence.”

“I told you, I’ve known him for years. It wasn’t a question.”

“Yes,” she admitted finally, closing her eyes. “He hurt me.”

“Kingsley?”

She shook her head. “This isn’t his fault,” she said, rolling over onto her side. “This is my fault.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Daniel said. “But you have to give me something here. If Anya left me, ran away, I would be so sick with worry I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Søren pisses me off too sometimes, and I consider him a friend, but I have never doubted his love for you. Unless you have a very good reason to scare him like this, you need to go home.”

“I can’t go home.”

“Tell me why you left him or I’m calling Kingsley right now.”

Elle weighed her options. She could tell him the whole truth, which would hurt more than the pain she was currently in. She could lie and come up with a suitable story he would believe to explain why she left. Or she could tell him a half-truth, just enough truth to get him to stop asking questions.

She went with option three.

“Do you remember that thing you told me?” she asked.

“I told you a lot of things.”

“I told you I was happy, content. You said that I should enjoy my contentment because someday something would happen and it would be gone.”

He nodded. “I remember.”

“It happened.”

“What happened?”

“Søren ordered me to marry him,” she said.

Daniel looked at her and looked at her and looked at her, and finally he spoke.

“Get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

“You have any other sheets?” she asked, her face warming.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” she said, pushing the blankets. A red stain had formed underneath her. “I’m bleeding.”

It took ten minutes of begging and pleading to convince Daniel not to call an ambulance. This was just part of the process, she told him. Nothing to worry about. She was fine. A little blood never killed any woman...

Even after calming him down Daniel still seemed dubious and worried. He stayed in the bathroom with her while she took a quick hot bath. He kept his back to her to give her privacy although he’d seen her naked before. Once upon a time she’d been his lover. They’d fucked in this very bathroom. Down the hall was the library where he’d bent her over his desk and taken her from behind. In the living room by the fireplace, he’d fisted her and given her one of the better orgasms of her life. In the bed he now shared with his wife, he’d fucked her more times than she could remember. But now that felt like a lifetime ago. Had it only been two years ago she’d last been with him? So much had happened in those two years. He’d fallen in love with someone who wasn’t her, got remarried, had a son. And her? What had she done since then?

Elle got out when the water turned pink, and she drained the tub before Daniel could see it.

He ordered her to eat to some soup and then ordered her into bed. There was nothing at all erotic about any of these orders.

“You really are a dad now, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t get any ideas. I don’t do the Daddy-Dom thing,” he said, pulling the covers up to her chest.

“Could have fooled me,” she said.

“Don’t flirt. Anya’s the jealous type.” He winked at her so she would know he was kidding. Not that he needed to tell her. She’d known Anya before he did. Knowing Anya, she would worry Elle would catch the flu from Marius, not that she would sleep with her husband. For the first time in Elle’s adult life, sex was the last thing on her mind.

He kissed her on the forehead once and on the lips twice.

She smiled up at him.

“Get some rest, Elle,” he said.

“It’s not even night yet.”

“I don’t care. You’re exhausted. Sleep.”

“Is that an order?”

He smiled down at her. “If I gave you that kind of order, would you obey me?”

“No.”

“Then no, it wasn’t an order.”

He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. A fatherly touch. She didn’t remember him ever touching her like that. Becoming a parent had changed him, changed him for the better. But she knew that didn’t happen with every man. Her own father was proof. Her father, Søren’s father, her mother...

Her mother.

“Good night, Elle,” Daniel whispered, and she saw his reluctance to leave her alone.

“Good night, Daniel.” He started to leave. She stopped him with a question. “Daniel—what am I going to do?”

Daniel turned around in the doorway and looked back at her.

“If you took orders from me, which you don’t, but if you did...I’d order you to go back to Søren and marry him.”

Elle rolled onto her side and gazed at Daniel through the dark.

“Now I remember why I left you,” she said.

“Because I wanted to take care of you?”

“Because you don’t know me at all.”

The smile faded from Daniel’s face.

“Rest,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

It wasn’t an order, but Elle followed it anyway. She slept an hour or two and when she woke up, there was a terrifying moment when she couldn’t remember how she’d got here. But the moment passed, and she remembered.

What was she going to do? No Søren. No Kingsley. No town house. Jesus, she didn’t have a real job. She had a little less than five thousand dollars to her name, a college degree in English literature and almost no work experience other than a few years at a bookstore. What was she going to put on a résumé? That she gave good blow jobs and could take a beating better than any masochist in New York?

She sat up in bed and buried her face in her hands. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Slowly she breathed, slowly she calmed herself. She would not cry. She could not cry. If she started crying over Søren, she’d never stop. And if she cried, that would mean it was real, that she had left him and that she was never going back.

When she was calm again she whispered into the quiet of her room, “What am I gonna do?”

No one answered, not even her.

Wincing as her sore muscles protested the movement, Elle got out of bed. She walked down the hall to the bathroom where she’d stored her duffel bag. On the way back to bed she noticed a light on in Daniel’s library. Wasn’t he supposed to be on the night shift taking care of Marius?

She crept to the half-open door and heard him speaking to someone. She saw no one else in the room and then noticed he had a small mobile phone to his ear.

“She’s not well,” Daniel said. “Let her stay here a couple days until she feels better. Than you can come get her.”

Elle froze.

“Not tonight, King. She’s not in good shape. Mentally or physically. Let her rest. We’ll take care of her.”

Rage welled up in Elle. She took one step forward and then stopped. Kingsley had warned if she had to flee, she’d have to be smart about it. She’d been stupid before but she wasn’t going to be stupid again. She crept back to the bathroom, grabbed her duffel bag and got dressed. As quietly as she could, she left the house. She didn’t leave a note, didn’t lambast him with accusations and recriminations. She didn’t call him a traitor or an asshole or an arrogant piece of shit who thought he knew what was better for her than she did. She did something much worse and much better at the same time.

She stole his car.

Thankfully Daniel wasn’t some rich dipshit who drove a flashy Maserati or a Ferrari to show off his money. Daniel had a classic black Mercedes-Benz sedan. Nothing that would attract any unnecessary attention. She took the keys right off the rack in the kitchen. She coasted out of the driveway with the lights off and resisted the urge to squeal the tires as a final fuck you and fare thee well.

He wouldn’t call the police. That wasn’t Daniel’s style. And he wouldn’t have to. She’d dump the car somewhere the cops would find it, and it would be returned to him in one piece.

More or less.

After ten minutes on the road the adrenaline rush faded and the reality that she was alone again with nowhere to go set in. No...not nowhere to go. She had lots of places to go. Unfortunately there was nowhere she could go where Kingsley wouldn’t find her eventually. Especially now that she’d stolen a registered car. Wherever she dumped the car, that’s where Kingsley would start looking, and he would find her in a matter of hours.

Which left only one option. She would have to go somewhere Kingsley and Søren couldn’t follow her. Even if he knew where she was, it would be somewhere he couldn’t enter. She thought about getting herself arrested and sent to prison. Seemed a better option than her only other choice.

Then again, she’d faced prison once before and Kingsley and Søren had got her out of going then. He would do it again if she was foolish enough to get herself arrested. Kingsley took care of things. That’s how it worked. She needed a ride somewhere? Kingsley’s driver would take her wherever she wanted to go. If she needed a vacation, Kingsley would send her and Søren to Europe. If she got injured during kink, he’d send her to his doctor, who knew how to keep his mouth shut. If she got pregnant...well, he took care of that, too, didn’t he? Whether he wanted to or not.