“I’m not playing Twenty Questions.”

“Come on. What harm could it do? Ten questions, then.”

Give me something here, woman. Anything to show me there’s an actual human person in there somewhere.

She rolled her eyes. I was about ready to go tell Rami this wasn’t going to work when she surprised me. “Five questions.”

She looked like she immediately regretted it, but it was a concession and I would take it.

“Okay, you start.” I wanted her to set the tone.

She looked away, contemplating quietly, then swung her eyes back to me. “What time is it?”

For a fraction of a second, I thought she was legitimately checking the time, then it sunk in that was the question she was asking. It was A+ trolling and I couldn’t help laughing aloud. I swore I saw her lips quirk like she might actually smile as well.

A dark sense of humor was hiding under that icy facade.

“So that’s how you’re going to play, huh? Well, don’t expect me to waste my questions.” I reached over and tilted the phone in her hand so I could read the time she could easily have seen herself. “It’s 11:47.”

I slid forward to the edge of the seat, rubbing my hands together in mock eagerness.

“Okay, my turn. How did you start working as a dominatrix?”

“I have a master’s in Clinical Psychology and was working on my certification in sex therapy. Victoria came to do a guest lecture and I was fascinated. She let me shadow a few sessions before I begged her to train me. I was hooked.”

She looked out the window thoughtfully, so I let the silence do the work to see if she'd tell me more.

She said, “I had so much more of an impact on my clients than I ever saw in a clinical space. You’re free to explore and they know it’s a judgment-free zone, so they’ll open up in a way that no one ever does in a therapist’s chair. I worked more and more at the dungeon and didn’t bother to finish my certification.”

Her whole demeanor changed as she talked about her job, but she looked as surprised as I was that she’d gone from terse answers to a thoughtful response.

There. Finally. A human being was lurking beneath that frigid shell. A fascinating one from what she’d just said. She would bring perspective to this role that I wouldn’t have access to any other way. If she was willing to teach, I could tolerate her hating me.

“Thank you,” I said, waiting for her to meet my eyes. She’d trusted me with a real answer and I wanted her to know I appreciated it. "Your turn.”

She took a moment to think, like I'd upped the stakes and now she wanted to pick her question more carefully.

“What’s it like being a brand?” she asked with just a hint of mischief.

I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll be honest, I’ve never really gotten used to being a brand, but it didn’t seem to matter before because the brand was just me being myself. That brand is so strong that every single role I’m offered is just a variation of the same guy and I’m starting to have an existential crisis about it. But I don’t know what it looks like if the brand is me pretending to have something in common with Lucas Steel.”