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"Only you can answer that"

11

Eleanor

ONLY YOU CAN ANSWER THAT

For days after her exchange with Søren about the stained-glass , Eleanor pondered his words They’d lodged the them out with all the scalpels in the world

It was late on Thursday night Nothing going on She walked to church in the hopes of finding Søren in his office She wanted to talk to him about what he’d said, about how only she could answer that question--whose feet should she sit at? It felt like the answer to that question would determine the rest of her life But she didn’t understand why

Once she stepped through the front door of Sacred Heart, she could tell fro sound of her footsteps she was alone Søren’s office door was closed She knocked but heard nothing With a shaking hand, she turned the doorknob and found the lights off, the office abandoned

On nervous feet she stepped inside the office She shouldn’t be in here, but curiosity got the better of her In the darkness she reached out and ran her fingertips across the books on Søren’s shelves Cloth Leather Paper Cloth She pressed her hands to the back of his chair--an old leather-and-wood number that had probably been here since the church was erected two hundred years ago In the dark she traced the spiraling scrollwork of the chair’s arm and ran her hands over the smooth leather of the chair

Eleanor returned to the door, shut it and locked it Light frolass roseand made a shadow of her body on Søren’s desk She eased into his chair and shivered as she sat where he sat The desk in front of her had featured in soSøren

She sat up in the chair and pulled her tank top off She stood and slipped out of her shorts And when she closed her eyes again she heard the door opening She didn’t need light to tell her it was Søren in the office with her She’d know his footsteps anywhere, his breathing, his scent And now she knew his touch as his arms came around her and rested on her lower back She turned her face up to his and his ue He didn’t simply smell like winter, he tasted like it, too, like new fallen snowin her mouth

His hands roamed up her back and unhooked her bra He pulled it down her arood? Should she stop him? Could she if she wanted to? Did she want to?

No

He sat in the chair in front of her and slid her panties down her thighs Without a word she stepped out of the, but the faint light frolow over her body

"Mine," he said as he gripped her by the hips

"Yours," she replied, bending her head to kiss him

He kissed her htly danced across the sensitive flesh of her chest He took a nipple in hishis head to her breast She’d never dreaood as his hands and mouth on her body

Søren stood up and took her in his ar her back on his desk The surface of the desk was cold and sh her even as his every touch set her blood burning Without being told to, she opened her legs for his apart even more With his hands on her hips, he used his thumbs to part her inner lips He spread her wide and slipped a finger into her wetness Then a second one She opened up as hethe deepest parts of her

His fingers left her and she heard the sound of a zipper being lowered She shut her eyes tight when he pulled her hips to the edge of the desk Then he was entering her She’d expected it to hurt but it didn’t, and her body opened up to receive him as if she’d been created for him and him alone He filled her until she could take noback and then thrusting in again Her body enveloped his hardness, coating it with her wetness, coaxing it in farther as she raised her hips in her eagerness for more He held her brsts while he ainst the desk with his hips and his hands, and she lay there helpless, naked and defenseless before and beneath him This hat she’d wanted fro he could give her