“Should I use your legal name in any context?” Did she use it with people who were close to her?

“Elena feels more like me now, so I just use it with everyone.”

I nodded and fiddled with my phone, trying to figure out what else we could talk about. It didn't feel like she was interested in this subject. I finally thought of a topic we could bond over. “You must have complicated feelings about Crown of Swords, huh?”

She sighed. “Why would you say that?”

“Because everyone says it’s got all kinds of issues in the way it portrays BDSM. Everyone talks shit about it and no one can figure out why it’s so successful.”

She stared at me for a moment like she was deciding whether to even bother answering me, then let out an even deeper sigh. “I’m so sick of hearing all the reasons why ‘everyone’ hates it and it sucks. I’m much more interested in why lots of women love it so much and I refuse to be one more person shaming them for that love.”

Apparently, everything out of my mouth was going to piss her off. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why do women love it so much?”

“Because no matter what you think of the writing or the portrayal of BDSM, it manages to capture the excitement of submitting for the first time, of discovering there’s someone out there who knows your deepest fantasies before you’ve ever spoken them aloud. It evokes everything I love about being a sub. I wouldn’t use it to teach BDSM, but there’s no denying the power of the cultural movement it’s started.”

“I thought you were a dominatrix?”

She blinked slowly at me like I was a dumbass. “I have no idea how that’s related to what I just said.”

I was pretty sure the last time I’d felt like this much of an idiot, I was in a principal’s office explaining why I’d left dog poop in my middle brother’s locker. To be fair, he deserved it.

“Don’t you…you know, dominate people? You just said it evokes what you love about being a sub.”

“I can be a dominatrix and a sub, Mr. Chase. My personal preferences and my professional ones don’t need to align. Subs sometimes make the best dominants because we’ve been there and know how to get in your head.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I let the silence drag again before trying a different angle, getting desperate. “We’ve got time to kill and are going to be spending a lot of it together. Let’s play Truth or Dare.” I grinned playfully at her. Surely, there was a fun side of her buried deep under all those layers of buttoned-up control.

“Are you twelve?”

Maybe not.

Here lies fun, slain by Lady Elena.

Was she uncomfortable opening up and just needed time?

“Okay, fine, not Truth or Dare. You’d probably get me arrested anyway and Asha would not be amused at the media circus. We’ll play Twenty Questions like respectable grown-ups.”