"f.u.c.k."

"No," he said. "Not yet. I know it's not the answer you want, but I have my reasons for waiting. s.e.x was created by G.o.d and He made it pleasurable. But He also made it complicated. I've had intercourse with two people in my life, Eleanor. Two. And I will feel a lifelong bond with these people. I won't make that bond with you until I'm certain you're ready for it."

"Do you think you should only have s.e.x with someone you're in love with?"

"Complicated question. s.e.x between women and men is especially complicated. There's always the risk of conceiving. I would never tell anyone else who they should or should not be intimate with. For my own part, I choose not to do it except with someone I can imagine having a connection with for the rest of my life."

"I want that with you, forever," she said.

"I don't need to make love to you to want to be bonded to you forever. I have felt that connection since the day we met."

She rose off the floor and S0ren took her into his arms. She lay across his lap, her head on his chest, his arms around her.

"I'll wait for you," she said. "Always. I want you to be proud that you own me, sir."

S0ren tilted her chin up and kissed her.

"I already am proud to own you, Little One. As this proves." He touched the collar on her neck.

"Why am I wearing this? It doesn't seem like you."

"It's a symbol," he said. "A symbol others in our world will understand. You belong to me. This is a visual reminder of that."

"I love belonging to you."

"And this makes it official." He kissed her on the soft skin under her collar. "So we should celebrate it."

"Celebrate? How?"

"Like this ..." S0ren kissed her and as he did, he pushed her onto her back, his hand lightly on her throat, his mouth devouring her lips. A kiss from S0ren alone could bring her body to life with need. He kissed her possessively, obsessively, as if staking a claim on her body every time their lips touched.

He pulled back and pushed her thighs open. He took her hand and put it between her legs. He waited, an expectant look on his face.

"You're going to sit there and watch, sir?"

"I may lend a hand. If you're good."

"One question-am I doing this while you watch because it turns you on or because it's humiliating?"

"They are one and the same to me."

She took a deep breath and spread her thighs wider. If she had to put on a show, might as well make it a good one. And she knew S0ren wanted her, so why not make his waiting for her hurt him as much as it hurt her?

With both hands between her legs, she opened her v.a.g.i.n.a and pushed one finger inside herself. For some reason doing this while S0ren watched embarra.s.sed her less than sitting at the table and eating dinner. It made perfect sense to be naked while doing something s.e.xual. Being naked while having dinner felt awkward and embarra.s.sing. Being naked and touching herself? Not a problem.

"Show-off," S0ren said as she caressed her wet inner lips.

She trailed her finger up to her c.l.i.toris and started to rub it. Closing her eyes, she sank into her fantasy world where she and S0ren would need a telescope to see the lines they'd crossed so far behind them. He'd warned her he would have to hurt her before he could be aroused enough to f.u.c.k her. Fine. Good. She longed for the day she could be flogged and caned and treated like s.e.xual property, like a body to be used by S0ren and for S0ren. She reminded herself that even though she would be the one having the o.r.g.a.s.m, she did this for him, for his pleasure. It made it much less embarra.s.sing to do things under orders. She had no choice.

S0ren pushed a finger into her and found that soft spot an inch inside her that made her stomach tighten and her back melt into the sofa. He made tight circles inside her that left her groaning in the back of her throat.

Eleanor continued to rub her c.l.i.toris as S0ren slipped a second finger inside her. As she started to pant, he began to thrust his fingers in and out of her slowly, sc.r.a.ping the front wall of her v.a.g.i.n.a with his fingertips. She felt everything as he moved inside her. Her toes curled and her thighs shivered. Her hips tightened and her back arched. Her stomach fluttered and her c.l.i.toris throbbed. Her chest heaved and her nipples hardened.

"You can come whenever you like."

"I don't want to come, sir."

"Why not?"

"So you'll keep touching me."

S0ren softly laughed.

"Pick a number between one and five."

"What am I picking?"

"I can't tell you that. No, I can, but I won't."

"Then how do I know what to pick?"

"You won't."

"Then five."

"I should have guessed. Come for me, Little One."

She took a deep breath and focused on her own pleasure, on the thrumming of her c.l.i.toris against her fingers and the pressure building in her stomach. She rode the wave of pleasure to the top and crashed into it at full speed. Her inner muscles clenched around S0ren's fingers inside her and buried deep. As she panted, he pulled out of her and dragged her to him. "That was one," he said.

"One what?" She collapsed against his chest, spent and sleepy.

"You picked five. One down, four to go."

Her eyes flew wide-open.

"Five o.r.g.a.s.ms?"

He kissed the tip of her nose as he slid his hand down her stomach and between her legs again.

"Of course, next time I make you pick, you could be picking how many hours I'll tease you before I let you come." He gripped the back of her neck roughly; his tone grew forceful, dominating and cold. She loved it.

"You're a s.a.d.i.s.t."

"I am."

"I'll always pick the biggest number even if I don't know what I'm picking," she said, panting.

"And that, Little One, is why I love you."

"I love you, too. Even if you do torture me and make me wait and beg for you, sir."

"But will you always?" he asked, his voice suddenly serious and somber.

She touched her collar around her neck. She'd almost forgotten about it. In less than an hour it already seemed like a part of her, a second skin.

"I will love you forever. I'll wait as long as I have to for you, sir."

"What if I make you wait one more year?"

"I'll wait."

"Two more years?"

"I'll wait."

"What if you find someone else?"

"Not interested," she promised. "If you can't have s.e.x without pain, I don't want it, either. And I don't want anybody but you."

"Are you sure of that?"

She leaned her head against his chest.

"Completely," she said and meant it. There was no man for her but S0ren, now or ever. "You really think some other guy is going to try to steal me from you?"

Ridiculous idea. If she'd said no to Kingsley in the back of his Rolls-Royce, who on earth could ever tempt her to stray from S0ren? No one, that's who.

"Eleanor," S0ren said, kissing her on the forehead, "I'm absolutely certain of it."

27.

Eleanor "'TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN A WOOD, AND I ... I TOOK the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.'" Dr. Edwards closed her book with a wistful sigh, and Eleanor fought the urge to bang her head against the wall. Soph.o.m.ore American literature and they were reading the same poem she read freshman year of high school? Weren't there a few billion other poems out there they could be dissecting other than "The Road Not Taken," otherwise known as the only poem anyone remembered from high school?

"First thoughts on the poem?" Dr. Edwards asked.

A girl in the front row raised her hand-Rachel Something.

"I love this poem," she said. "It's about how you have to choose the path other people don't take. Be a leader, not a follower."

Eleanor felt her IQ dropping.

"Very good. Anyone else?"

A freshman raised his hand and parroted back almost the same interpretation. Guy walking in the woods. Sees two paths. He picks the road that fewer people had taken and that makes him a hero, blah, blah, blah. Eleanor mentally picked up a baseball bat and slammed it into the back of that freshman's head.

"Great thoughts. Other first impressions?"

"Yeah," Eleanor said. "You're all idiots."

The room went silent. Dr. Edwards's dark eyes widened. She raised her chin and stared Eleanor down.

"You need to have a very good argument to back up a statement like that."

"I have a great argument. Read the poem."

"I read the poem, and I agree with them."

"Then there is no hope left for humanity." Eleanor sank into her seat with a sigh. At the age of nineteen, she had come to the realization that unless she was in the same room as S0ren, Kingsley and Sam, she could count on being surrounded by idiots.

"Care to tell us what your interpretation of the poem is then, Elle?"

"Sure. Why not?" She held up her book and pointed at a line. "Did anyone happen to read something in the poem other than the last stanza? Lines nine and ten-'Though as for that the pa.s.sing there had worn them both about the same.' Anyone else see that part? One wasn't less traveled by. They were traveled the same."

"Then why does the narrator call one less traveled by in the last stanza?" demanded Dr. Edwards. "Can you explain that?"

"I can." A male voice piped up from the other side of the room. Eleanor turned her head and looked back at the guy who sat in the farthest corner of the room. She'd seen him before but never paid any attention to him. He had black hair with streaks of bright red through it, an eyebrow ring, black punk nail polish and tattoos on his hands.

"You can, Wyatt?" Dr. Edwards asked. "Tell us, then. Nice to hear you speaking in cla.s.s."

"I'm with Elle here. I can't keep my mouth shut around so much stupidity."

Wyatt. So that was his name. Seemed to fit him. Weird name. Weird guy.

"What do you find so stupid?" Dr. Edwards sounded less irritated with Wyatt than she'd sounded with her. Dr. Edwards always gave the boys in the cla.s.s more attention than the girls. But in this case, Eleanor couldn't blame her. Now that she looked at Wyatt she noticed for the first time how attractive he was. Piercings, tattoos, spiked punk hair and he read poetry and called people stupid to their faces? Her kind of guy.

"It's obvious. This poem is in two parts. The first four stanzas are about the actual event. The fifth stanza is the speaker telling us how he will narrate the event in the future. And he's an unreliable narrator. Like Elle says, in lines nine and ten he says the roads are the same. Neither one of them is more or less traveled. But in the last stanza he says that in the future when he's talking about this moment, he'll lie and say one of them was less traveled than the other. As a young man he made a totally arbitrary choice-left road or right road-and in the future he'll make it sound like the choice wasn't arbitrary. He'll give it meaning that it didn't have in the moment. He's not a hero. He's an old man telling lies to the younger generation."

"There is no road less traveled," Elle chimed in. "It's convenient fiction to explain why he went right instead of left. We have to believe the choices we made were for a reason if we want our life to have meaning. This poem isn't inspiring. It's creepy and depressing."

"Right," Wyatt said. "That's why I like it."

Eleanor looked back and smiled at him, mouthing a thank-you. He gave her a nonchalant no-big-thing shrug.

When cla.s.s finally ended, Eleanor grabbed her backpack off the floor and stuffed her book into it. She saw feet facing her feet. A note with her name on it appeared before her face. She looked up and saw Wyatt standing in front of her.

"It's a very important note," he said. "Life altering. Read at your own risk."

"You're kind of weird, Wyatt. You know that, right?"

"Should you be flirting with me, Elle? This is the first time we've talked, and I'm very shy and girls scare me. I'm probably still a virgin."