My father responded in his usual slow, measured voice, “Now, Charlene, calm down. I don’t think we need to worry much about it —”

“Not worry? Not worry?!” Mom’s voice had reached that ear-splitting pitch that usually sent me running out the door. “You want her dealing with these men? Who knows what they could do? They could be traffickers, Roger!”

“Mom, they’re not traffickers —”

“You never know, Jessica. That’s the thing, you never know.” She jabbed her finger at me in warning. “Just the other day, Jeanie’s daughter said that some couple was following her around the Walmart, probably trying to snatch her up. People have been talking about it all over Facebook.”

“Ah, yes, Facebook, the epicenter of breaking news,” I muttered, and Mom’s fork clattered on her plate. “Listen, Mom, I swear they’re fine. They’re not dangerous.”

That wasn’t exactly true. Those men were extremely dangerous, but not in the way she thought. They were a danger to my pride, my reputation, and my panties.

“One of them threatened your boyfriend with a knife,” Mom snapped. “I swear, how did I raise a daughter with no damn sense?”

I dropped the subject because there was truly no point in arguing with her, and the rest of dinner passed in strained silence.

But her words still bothered me once I’d retreated upstairs. She knew only the barest details about those men, but that hadn’t stopped her from making wild assumptions about them. Just like most of the people I’d gone to high school with, Mom was more interested in gossip than in the actual truth.

I paused to take another sip of coffee. I’d gotten through almost the entire list Manson had given me and the questions had become pretty obscure. I had to Google the definition of “katoptronophilia,” only to realize it meant getting turned on by having sex in front of a mirror.

That was a five out of five on the interest scale for me, along with dozens of other fetishes that had never even crossed my mind.

Extreme bondage. Impact play. Whips, chains, domestic discipline, marking, scarification, degradation; the list went on and on. In a weird way, it was reassuring to see things I was interested in on a list like this. It was a reassurance that someone else out there — more than a few someone’s — had the same desires I did. But it also made me feel like I was in over my head.

Spanking and handcuffs felt acceptably kinky, even a little trendy. But there were fetishes for stalking, kidnapping, and captivity, all of which had me practically shivering with desire. They fell under the umbrella of “consensual non-consent,” which involved the submissive person roleplaying that they weren’t willing. All of it got a five out of five from me.