Read Online The Angel (The Original Sinners) by Tiffany Reisz - Free Book Online Page A

needed to
say no more. “You belong to me…always.”
    “Always,” she repeated.
    “I will do whatever I must so you can come back to me.”
    “I know you will, sir.”
    “And we will keep our promise to each other.”
    Nora reached up and touched his face.
    “I will die in my collar.” She repeated her part of the
pledge.
    Søren turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm.
    “And I will die in mine.”
    * * *
    Suzanne sat cross-legged on her sofa with her laptop
open on her legs. She’d started a file on her computer called Asterisk and in it
she was putting all the information she could dig up on Sacred Heart and Father
Marcus Stearns. So far, it was a very small file. Patrick had gotten almost no
additional information on the boy who’d attempted suicide in the sanctuary. No
charges had been filed and the boy apparently still attended church there. What
sort of kid would keep going back to the same church that had inspired him to
kill himself? she wondered. Who was this priest who had that sort of pull on
him? It turned her stomach just to imagine it.
    She was dangerously close to thinking about her brother Adam
when her cell phone rang. She checked the number. Patrick, of course.
    “Any luck?” he asked as soon as she answered.
    “Not much. This guy is a ghost. What about you?”
    She heard a laugh on the other end of the line.
    “What?” she demanded.
    “I’m about to go into a dinner meeting so I can’t really talk.
But you’ll never guess who goes to Sacred Heart. Not just goes but apparently
never misses Sunday Mass.”
    Suzanne exhaled noisily. She didn’t have time for games.
    “I don’t know. The Dalai Lama?”
    “Even better—Nora Sutherlin.”
    Suzanne’s eyes widened and her stomach did a small flip.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    “I’ve gotta run. I’ll call you back tomorrow. But no, I’m not
kidding you.”
    Hanging up, Suzanne simply stared out at her living room for a
long time. She closed her computer and headed over to her bookcase. Scanning the
titles, she finally found what she was looking for—a book entitled The Red. On the cover was a picture of a woman’s
beautiful pale hands tied with a bloodred silk ribbon. The author? Nora
Sutherlin. It was the story of a woman who owned a failing art gallery called
The Red and the mysterious man who shows up and offers to save it in return for
her submitting to him in every possible way for one year. Lurid and graphic with
some of the most explicit sex scenes she’d ever read, The
Red was possibly one of Suzanne’s favorite novels. Not that she ever
told anyone that.
    A fourteen-year-old boy attempting suicide in the middle of the
sanctuary…the world’s most infamous erotica author attending Mass with the
constancy of a nun…and that mysterious asterisk by the name of its priest.
    “Jesus,” she breathed. “What kind of church is this?”

4
    Søren made love to Nora twice more that night. He
pulled her to the edge of the bed and took her while she lay on her stomach and
he stood behind her. And after that they lay side by side, her back to his chest
while he moved slowly and gently in her. As he thrust into her, he whispered how
deeply he loved her, how much he would miss her and what he would do to her when
she came back to him again. When Nora came the final time, she did so through
tears.
    “Hush, little one…it’s only for two months,” he promised her as
he kissed the tears off her face.
    She clung to him and cried even harder. “But I miss you
already.”
    Her tears dried, Nora lounged before the fireplace in the
living room—Søren had built a low fire to warm her up again—and smiled at the
sight before her. As if Søren hadn’t tortured her enough already tonight....
    Studying the board on the floor before her, peering at it first
through her left eye and then her right, Nora reached out and moved a pawn two
spaces forward.
    “Little one,” Søren said with thinly disguised disgust.