“And you really, actually, swear-to-God liked that? If not, I may have to settle things with him.”
“I really, actually, swear-to-God loved it. Don’t beat up my dominant, please. But if you do, I’d appreciate it if you left his pretty face alone.”
He studied a wall of canes but didn’t touch any. This wasn’t fuzzy handcuffs and silk blindfolds sort of stuff. This was the real deal.
“Tell me something,” he said, glancing around, eyes wide, “how do you get into this? I mean…this is a lot.”
“Everybody finds their way to kink by a different path. I know dominatrixes who learned the trade from their own mothers. I know male submissives who just got curious one day, Googled BDSM clubs, and fell down the rabbit-hole.”
“What about you?”
She smiled. “Mine’s a pretty common story. You fall in love with someone already kinky—Søren, in my case—and you discover you’re as into it as they are. Kink is often sexually-transmitted.”
“He just up and said, ‘Hey, I know I’m your priest, but I’m also kinky as hell. Wanna play?’”
“He actually kept it a secret from me for a long time. He’s…he’s a little more kinky than your average kinky guy. Pain’s his fetish. If there’s no pain, there’s no sex. That’s a hard thing to tell the girl you’re in love with.”
“You mean it’s kink 24/7/365?” he asked. “And he’s always the one calling the shots?”
She nodded. “Always. No days off.”
“But you’re into calling the shots, too.” He reached out and stroked the tails of one of the floggers on the wall. It was shockingly soft, suede probably. “Doesn’t it get old? Him being in charge all the time?”
“It is what it is. If you fall in love with a foot fetishist, you have to accept a lifetime of high heels and weekly pedicures.”
“So it does get old?” He knew when a witness wasn’t telling him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She took a seat on a big black throne-sort of contraption, a throne with D-rings screwed into it. She crossed her legs and sat back, looking almost like a real queen.
“I’ll admit to having the occasional fantasy about topping him. But it’s about the same as dreaming about what you’d do with the lottery money you’re never going to win. I get all my topping out of my system in here. And there,” she said, pointing at the curtained bedroom. “And in France.”
“Yeah, yeah, with your ‘other’ lover.”
“Now you’re catching on.” She smiled tiredly. He only looked at her. Nothing got a suspect talking faster than silence. “It doesn’t get old, being with him. It never gets old. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Søren is the most powerful man I know. Therefore and ergo, Søren is the ultimate aphrodisiac. But…just once might be nice. There. You got me to confess. Now your turn.”
“No.”
“You acted very strange the day we met when I mentioned the word ‘Daddy.’ Why?”
“No,” he said. “No way. I am not having this conversation with you.”
“You’re in my dungeon now. My dungeon. My rules. We’re having this conversation. You brought it up.”
He glared at her.
“Who called you ‘Daddy’? Ex-girlfriend. Ex-wife? First lover? Tell me. The Mistress is listening…” She put her hand to her ear and leaned in.
He exhaled, hard and heavy, but he said it anyway. “Paulina.”
Nora’s eyebrow raised half an inch. “Really?”
Cyrus nodded.
“You like that?”
Cyrus nodded again.
“Nice,” Nora said.
“You think she’s kinky?” he asked.
“Because she calls you ‘Daddy’? Maybe. Maybe just a pet name. Now if she calls you ‘Dad’…that’s definitely kinky.”
“What happened to you as a child?”
“Nothing,” Nora said with a shrug. “Totally normal childhood. I mean, other than getting arrested for grand-theft auto, my Catholic priest falling in love with me when I was fifteen, and my father getting whacked by the mob. Why do you ask?”
Cyrus groaned and rubbed his forehead. There was a lot that needed unpacking in what Nora just said. He decided to leave it packed.
“Do you think she’s kinky?” Nora asked, sounding suddenly—and eerily—like Cyrus’s therapist.
He looked for a place to sit. Nothing except for the medical bed. Ah, hell. Why not?
“Her father is career Navy,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and letting his feet dangle. He felt like a kid again about to get a tetanus shot. “He runs the house like he’s captain of a ship. Everything on schedule. Everything in its place. Everybody behaves and does their job. No backtalk. No tears. Paulina never called him ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy.’ She always called him ‘Sir.’ Still does. She says he’s gotten more affectionate as he’s gotten older, but he’s still more ‘Sir’ to her than ‘Dad.’”
“That’s gotta be tough.”
“She loves her father. Respects the hell out of him. But yeah, not a lot of hugging and kissing and laughing and goofing together. She says she calls me ‘Daddy’ because I make her feel safe and loved and, you know, we’re goofs together. Always laughing. I don’t know if I’ve ever even heard her father laugh. I think that’s all it is. She just, you know, that word to her means ‘the man who loves me, takes care of me, and we play together.’”
“Does she call you ‘Daddy’ in bed?”
Cyrus barked a laugh. He didn’t mean to. It just came out.
“What?” Nora asked. “That was a weird reaction.”
“Nothing.”
“Something,” she said. “Come on. Tell me. If it helps…I’ve called Søren ‘Daddy’ during sex before.”
He should have said, I don’t need to hear this, Nora. What he did say was, “Really?”
“One of those fantasies you think you want to try out, and then you do and it’s so intense and awkward that you can barely handle it.”
“You couldn’t handle it?”
“I cried,” she said. “It was…” she paused and exhaled. “Intense. Intense and humiliating. And sexy. That’s where kink gets so complicated. That you hate it and love it at the same time.”
“Sounds intense,” Cyrus said. “Maybe too intense for me.”
“It’s okay. Paulina might not have any Daddy-kink in her at all. That’s why I asked if she did it in bed or just whenever. ‘Fuck me harder, Daddy’ is a slightly different scenario than ‘Pass the ketchup, Daddy.’”
Cyrus needed a few seconds to process all that. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“We, ah…” He took another few seconds, tried to figure out if he could say what he wanted to say. If he should say what he wanted to say. Then he just said it. “We’ve never had sex.”
Nora’s eyes nearly fell out of her head.