Nora tied off her thread and taped a gauze pad over the stitches.
“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“I think I almost enjoyed it,” he admitted, rolling onto his back.
Nora laid a hand on his inner thigh and slid it up to his crotch.
“I don’t think ‘almost’ is the right word. Fucking masochists.”
“If I didn’t think you’d tear my stitches, I’d insist upon it.”
She raised her eyebrow and started opening his pants.
“I won’t tear a thing,” she promised as she pulled her top and panties off. He’d never seen a blacker, uglier bruise than the one on her side. And yet she still seemed uncrushed to him, unbroken. “I can be gentle, believe it or not.”
“Where did you learn how to be gentle?”
“Where else?” she asked, the shadow of sadness briefly crossing her face. “Wesley.”
The sadness disappeared as the Nora he knew and loved and hated and loved again reappeared in her wild green eyes.
“Now stay still while I blow you. Doctor’s orders.”
“Mon Dieu...” He gripped the bar of the headboard as she worked her siren’s spell on him with her lips and tongue, with her hand that knew his hungers as well as he did. She pulled up and straddled him before sinking down onto him an inch at a time.
He started to raise his arms to touch her, but she grabbed his wrists and pinned them to either side of his head.
“Behave yourself,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. Slowly she began to move on him. “We’re both wrecks. If we’re going to survive this f**king, we have to be careful.”
“If you insist...”
He relaxed underneath her, surrendered to her will, her body.
“You would have died,” Kingsley said as she bent over and kissed him on the mouth, the neck, the chest. “You know that? Stabbing her instead of him—they would have killed you both. You committed suicide yesterday.”
Nora looked up and grinned.
“More like martyrdom. I’m working on my bid for sainthood.”
He glanced down at their joined bodies, indicating their current erotic position.
“Work harder.”
She worked her hips harder against him and when they both came, it was with as much pain as pleasure. It didn’t matter. To those of their kind, it was one and the same.
After one round of sex they both collapsed into bed, too sore and too tired to do anything but sleep. Long day. He’d called Griffin to tell him the good news about Nora. Then called Juliette and told her to come home to him. Then he’d hung up the phone and buried his sister, buried her for a second time. He’d brought in a trusted crew to deal with the cleanup, but he’d insisted on taking care of Marie-Laure himself. He owed her that much. As he covered the grave with the last of the dirt, he felt almost nothing, not even sadness. It wasn’t his sister he buried, but a stranger. His real sister had saved them all by being willing to die with her priest. Stabbing Marie-Laure instead of Søren had caused the chaos and confusion that had given him the two seconds he needed. If he ever doubted Nora’s love for Søren before, he would never do it again.
With such thoughts in his head he fell asleep. When he woke, night still surrounded them but he sensed he and Nora were no longer alone.
Kingsley reached out and found the bed empty. He heard something and turned over. A few feet from the bed in Anya’s large rocking chair sat Søren. In his arms he held Nora wrapped up in a blanket. She barely made a sound but from the shivering of her body, he could tell she sobbed against his chest. Of course she wept after all she’d been through. The breakdown had been inevitable.
He watched them together, watched Søren bending to kiss her forehead, to whisper in her ear, watched her wear herself out with crying until she finally fell asleep.
Sliding out of bed, Kingsley pulled on his pants and came over to them. Søren opened his eyes. Kingsley laid a hand gently on Nora’s head.
“For a split second, I almost considered killing her,” Kingsley confessed in French. “When I thought she might kill you to save herself.”
“But then?”
“Then I remembered who she was. And I remembered who I was.”
“I never forgot who you were,” Søren said, slowly starting to rock again in the chair. Nora slept against his shoulder, her face tearstained but peaceful.
“I’m glad one of us didn’t.” He caressed Nora’s hair before taking a step back. “I’ll leave you alone with her.”
Søren shook his head.
“Stay. Please.”
Kingsley smiled at him through the dark.
“‘Jacob have I loved,’” Kingsley said in English once more. “‘Esau have I hated.’ Romans 9:13. I paid attention in school sometimes.”
“Not nearly enough attention.”
“I was preoccupied.”
“Obviously. You learned all the wrong verses. First Samuel 18:1. ‘And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’ First Samuel 20:16-17. ‘So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “Let the Lord even require it at the hands of David’s enemies.” And Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him: for he loved as he loved his own soul.’ Second Samuel 1:26. ‘I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan...thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’”