She picked up this time. It was 10:30.
“Ah, Ms. Sutherlin,” he began. “This is Cyrus Tremont.”
“Good morning,” she said. “Isn’t it? I think it’s good.” Then she laughed.
“It is for somebody,” he said.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I have kind of a weird favor to ask.”
“That sounds interesting. Ask it.”
“If I bring you something, can you tell me what it is?”
“What is it?”
“If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t have to bring it to you, would I?”
“True. But can you give me a hint? Animal? Vegetable? Criminal?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Send me a pic?” she said.
“I’d rather not have a record of this.”
“Come over then. I’m in the French Quarter. Le Richelieu Hotel. Suite 301.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“If a well-groomed Viking opens the door, don’t worry. He’s with me.”
She hung up before Cyrus could ask about the Viking. He had a feeling she was trying to freak him out.
It was working.
Turned out she hadn’t been kidding about the Viking. When Cyrus knocked at the door to room 301, a tall, broad-shouldered blond man with a neatly-trimmed beard answered the door. He looked like he’d pillaged his share of villages.
“Mr. Tremont, I presume?”
“The Viking, I presume?”
The Viking smiled and Cyrus knew he’d seen this man somewhere before… It came to him—this was the guy arm-wrestling Kingsley Edge in the photograph on Edge’s mantel. Didn’t have the beard in the picture, though.
The blond held out his hand to shake. Cyrus took it, a little apprehensively, worried this was the sort of big guy who had to prove how tough he was by crushing fingers. But no. While firm and confident, the handshake didn’t hurt.
Cyrus stepped into the room. He figured the Viking explained Nora’s good mood. He saw an unmade bed in the other room, clothes on the floor, his and hers. Cyrus felt a pang of jealousy. Two more months, he told himself. He just had to make it two more months until the wedding.
“Is that Cyrus?” Nora’s voice came from behind a half-closed bathroom door.
“I assume so,” the Viking said, raising his voice so she could hear him through the door.
“Nora?” Cyrus called to her. “I just need to show you this thing really quick. Then I’ll leave you two alone.”
“Show the Viking. If he doesn’t know what it is, neither will I.”
Cyrus heard water sloshing in the bathtub. Reluctantly, he pulled the Nike duffel bag off his shoulder and unzipped the it.
“Well?” Nora called again from the bathroom. “What is it?”
“A male chastity device,” the Viking said loud enough for Nora to hear in the bathroom.
“There’s your answer, Cyrus. You’re welcome.”
Cyrus cleared his throat. “You can’t just tell me it’s a…that…and then expect me not to have follow-up questions.”
“What kind of chastity device is it?” Nora called out from the bathroom. “A PA-5000? A CB-6000? Custom?”
“That I don’t know,” the Viking said. “That’s your area of expertise, not mine. And I’d rather not touch it.”
“Can you bring it in here, Cyrus?” Nora asked.
“Are you dressed?”
“No, but it’s a bubble bath. You can’t see anything.”
Cyrus looked at the bathroom door and back at the Viking, at the door, at the Viking. The Viking only gestured with his coffee cup toward the door as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a man to let another man hang out in the bathroom with his girlfriend.
Cyrus generally tried to avoid making big sweeping generalizations about groups of people, but he was starting to get the feeling kinky people were a little on the eccentric side.
“So I should just go in?” Cyrus said to the Viking.
“You were invited,” the Viking said.
“All right. Going in. I’ll just take this bag of Satan’s toys with me.”
The Viking grinned behind his cup of coffee. Cyrus went to the bathroom door and leaned in a little while rapping one knuckle lightly on the frame.
“Nora?”
“Come on in. Show me what you’ve got.”
She hadn’t been kidding. The bathtub was full of bubbles that covered her all the way to her neck.
“Sorry to bother you at…bath time?”
“No bother,” she said. “Søren and I just finished breakfast. We weren’t doing anything that couldn’t be interrupted.”
“Wait. What’s his name? ‘Sir’?”
“Close enough,” she said, grinning. “Søren. A Danish name. S, slashed O, R, E, N. Looks like ‘SORE-in,’ but Danes say ‘SIR-in.’ Almost rhymes with ‘stern.’” She giggled for some reason. “You can put that in your notes. Don’t forget the slash. He hates when people forget the slash.”
“Got it,” he said, fumbling with whatever the hell a “slashed O” was supposed to look like. “He’s not really a Viking, is he?”
“Nah.” She stuck her foot out of the water and rested it on the bathtub ledge. “I’m only teasing him because he grew a beard while he was gone for a month on a cross-country road trip. I’ve never seen him with a beard before. I kind of like it. The Scandinavians were some of the first lumberjacks in America. We can thank them for deforesting most of the Pacific Northwest. Thanks, assholes!” She’d raised her voice for that last part.
“Judge not lest ye be judged, Kraut,” the Viking called back.
“Ohh…that hurt,” she said, wincing. “He always goes straight for Hitler. So unfair. Hitler was Austrian.”
“You two married?” Cyrus asked. The question made her laugh.
“No, why do you ask?”
“No reason. Look, I won’t take up any more of your time,” Cyrus said. “If you just take a look at this.”
Nora rose up out of the water to look inside Cyrus’s duffle bag, giving him a good peek at her wet bare back.
“Interesting,” she said. “Can you hand me a washcloth?”
Cyrus glanced around, found a stack of white washcloths and passed one to her. She wrapped it around her fingers and lifted the whatever from the bag.
“Have you seen one of those before?” Cyrus asked.
“Not this one exactly,” Nora asked, examining it. “Close, but this looks custom-made. Do you know anything about male chastity?”
“Only that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
She glanced up at him and smiled. Her make-up had been washed off. Her naked face looked young and vulnerable. But her eyes were something else entirely. This lady had seen things.
“Some dominants enjoy controlling a male sub’s access to his own body. Punishing unauthorized erections and that sort of thing,” she said. “It’s not necessarily long-term chastity that’s the goal. Maybe only a few hours or a night. Anyway, this is a nice cage. Very good work.”