She wished he would carry her, and she padded quickly after him.

“Wait,” she said, and wrapped her hands so fiercely around his forearm that when he finally reached the kitchen he had to pry her off to turn on the faucet.

“Josie,” he said. “You have to let go for a second.”

She did, but she could feel her anxiety spike and wished she could wrap herself around his finger like a ring. If he had seen her so clearly, had read her in only one look, what could other people see? She tried to remember what he had said—those wants, those needs—they were all natural, and the naughty girl stuff—that was just play, but she now felt bandaged in uncertainty. Even if other people did want these things, she was sure they didn’t want them for real.

“Did you”—she paused—“did you think those things when you were little?”

“What things?” He put down the water glass and wiped his mouth.

“About being beaten … like you said about all children.” What she wanted to ask was not only this, but if he had carried—still carried—that constant ache of shame and need in his belly.

“Did I imagine being beaten? No. I imagined being grown and spanking women. I was a precocious child.” He smiled.

“How come?”

“How come women? It turned me on. If I had been attracted to men, I would have been beating them, I suppose.”

She nodded, but he had misunderstood her. She wanted to know if he really believed what he said, if he was one-hundred-percent sure that there was no reason for a little boy wanting to bring a leather whip violently down on a woman’s bare skin, no shameful explanation behind this desire.

“But … why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you think those things?”

“I don’t know, bunny. Nature? Must there be a reason for everything?”

She was silent. If he was really so completely unashamed, then why the very expensive wooden toy chest he had commissioned? It was two feet deep with a false bottom that hid his whips, and paddles, and cuffs. “If the house is robbed,” she had teased, “they’ll take the TV and computer, but they won’t find the toys!” But she knew his explanation. He didn’t want his father stumbling upon a leather flogger when he visited from India, didn’t want his mother discovering the restraints while searching for bedsheets. He couldn’t risk their embarrassment. Still, wasn’t there more? She wondered if it was really possible to be so untroubled by all this. She looked at him. His bare chest was dark and strong with thin black hairs running along his belly, and she wanted to feel small and close to him, wanted him to take away that marble of shame she had carried in her heart for all these years. “Pick me up.”