The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,112

collar on a poodle puppy but on an untrained Rottweiler? Simply good sense.”

“I did growl at you all the time, didn’t I?”

“All the time.”

“There is one little difference though,” Nora said. “As evil as the means were…you enjoyed it. You got off on it. You weren’t putting a choke collar on a Rottweiler because you were afraid of getting bitten. You were putting it on because it turned you on. Yeah, your method worked, but don’t get all Father Flanagan with me, S?ren. You loved what you did to me. The jokes about tying me up with rope to make me behave, making me water the stick every day for six months, withholding answers to my questions until I jumped through all your hoops, whistling at me like I was a dog you had to make come to heel. It made you hard. You didn’t just do it for me. You did it for you, because you liked it.”

“No,” S?ren said. “I didn’t like it. I loved it. Hence the shame. At the time, I didn’t see any other way to help you, none that would work. Certainly, no other way that you would willingly go along with. You weren’t the sort of teenager who’d respond well to Outward Bound, were you?”

She almost laughed. He almost had her there. But she didn’t laugh and he didn’t either.

“You didn’t see any other way to help me,” Nora said. “But did you really look?”

He glanced away, not meeting her eyes. “I didn’t look. I was afraid I’d find another way, one that meant walking away from you.” He stood and turned. She saw him staring out the window onto the street, one hand on the windowsill, the picture of deepest contemplation.

“I wanted to be like Father Henry to you, the way he was to me. I wanted to be the kindly caring father figure you were missing in your life,” he said. “But I was more like Father Murran than Father Henry. Father Henry’s love for his students was pure. I can’t say that about my feelings for you. I wish I could.”

“I wish I could, too.”

“Let me ask you this.” He turned from the window, faced her. “Now, twenty-three years after we met—what would you go back and change? Here. This is my key to the TARDIS. Take it.”

She knew he expected her to not take the key, to change nothing about their shared past.

She took the key.

“I remember something King told me once a few years ago,” she began, feeling the bite of the teeth of the keys against her palms. “You all had a Plan B if King couldn’t help me stay out of juvenile detention for helping my dad steal all those cars. You remember Plan B?”

“Of course. It was my plan. Kingsley would smuggle you out of the country and take you to live with my mother in Denmark. He knew people who could forge all the necessary documents. Do you wish we’d gone with Plan B?”

“Sometimes, yeah,” she admitted, nodding. “My own mom could barely stand me when I was that age. I think…I think I needed a mother then a lot more than I needed a sexy priest flirting with me. As much as I liked it—fuck it, I admit it, I loved it—I have to wonder if Plan B wasn’t the better plan. For me, anyway. Your mom always took such good care of me. A kid needs that. It probably wouldn’t have worked. Someone would have noticed I’d gone missing and started asking questions. Maybe even my own mom. Still, I’ve wondered…”

“Would we still be together if it had been Plan B?”

“I have no doubt in my mind we’d still be together.”

“What’s different then?”

She looked away, afraid to tell him the truth knowing it would hurt him. Then again, she wanted to hurt him.

Meeting his eyes, she said, “No Nico on the B timeline. I wouldn’t need him. I wouldn’t need someone in my life who…who never hurt me.”

He lowered his chin to his chest. He raised his chin, didn’t meet her eyes.

“I’ll await your verdict and accept whatever sentence you impose on me.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Can’t judge you without judging myself. I’m no saint either.”

She’d had more than her fair share of underage lovers, after all. For some reason it didn’t seem so bad with a teenaged boy dying to lose his cherry to a sexy, experienced older woman. But now she had to wonder…if she could give the keys for