Nora responded by wrinkling her nose at him in mock disgust.

“What?” Zach said. “Your parents don’t know you and Nora are living together?”

A faint blush suffused Wesley’s face. “There’s a lot they don’t know. They were going to pull me out of school and send me to the state school down there. It was money reasons, the usual, and Nora offered to let me live with her and work for my room and board. They just know I got a job to cover it and a place off-campus. They don’t know what I’m doing.”

“How did you two meet?”

“School,” Nora answered for Wesley. “His school was obviously a little desperate—they asked me to be their writer-in-residence that semester. Wes was in my class.”

“You were her student?” Zach asked, his hands going cold even as he said the words.

“The class met at one.” Wesley smiled at Nora. “I needed to meet my Humanities requirement, and I would have taken anything that let me sleep late on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“I’m very flattered.” Nora stuck her tongue out at him.

“I’m very leaving. Later,” Wesley said. He reached for Nora’s mug and she slapped his hand.

“What are your numbers?” she demanded.

“One-seventeen. I can have a sip,” Wesley protested.

“Not on my watch. Drink your coffee black, and keep your hands off my cocoa.”

Wesley feinted to the left and stuck his finger in her cocoa and licked it off as he disappeared through the kitchen door. Zach felt a pang at the easy intimacy between Nora and Wesley. He missed his play-fights with Grace in the kitchen and the bargains they struck to make up. He would cook dinner if she would wear the lingerie he’d gotten her for her birthday. She’d do the dishes if she could be on top tonight…amazing how they both came out victors in those battles.

“So he’s…nineteen?”

“You have a dirty mind, Zachary Easton. Wesley’s as pure as, well, I’m not.”

“You’re telling me that Wesley’s a virgin? The young attractive houseboy of an infamous erotica writer is a virgin?”

“Believe it or not, I do have some self-control. And even if I didn’t, Wes certainly does—apart from sticking his damn hand into my cocoa every now and then. He’s a good Christian kid and I respect him more than I can say for his decision to wait. Mark my words, Zach, I will put the first randy bitch who lays a hand on him in the hospital.”

“And he doesn’t mind what you write? What you do?”

Nora leaned back in her chair. “We made a deal. I can top, but not bottom.”

“Are you secretly a gay man?” Zach eyed her curiously.

“I’m not so secretly kinky. Top and bottom are S&M terms, too. Wes leaves me alone about my sex life as long as I’m not the one coming home with the bruises.”

Zach swallowed. “Did you ever come home with bruises?”

Nora bit her bottom lip.