Dom cocks his head at the mirrors. “I don’t think it’s quite a sex dungeon. I don’t see a swing or a Saint Andrew’s Cross with a mean and surly Dungeon Master waiting to flog you.”

“I don’t know what any of that stuff means!” It’s come to my attention that I’m either a prude or I really need to bone up on my studies of all things sex. Ha. Bone up. That’s funny, in an “I’m about to freak out hysterically” kind of way.

“I’d be worried if you did,” he assures me.

“How do you know what that stuff is?”

“I got strapped to the cross once,” he said. “Whipped within an inch of my life.”

My mouth drops open. “You what?” Who in the hell is this masochistic stranger standing in front of me, and what has he done with my friend? (And, as a random side note that I can’t quite push away, what exactly does one wear when one is strapped to a cross and whipped?)

He rolls his eyes. “It was a joke, Tyson. I’ve busted some kinky people, that’s all.”

“I knew that was a joke!” I most certainly did not and am lying through my teeth.

He sets his bag on the bed. I, for some reason, look up at the mirrors again. There are three of them, all pressed flush against each other. I guess I’ve never really thought about how such a thing could be good for sex, but now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure you could see absolutely everything if, as a hypothetical, someone was on his back and another someone was going to town on him from above. I mean, I guess I can sort of see the benefits of such an angle, and it’d be all fast and hard and dirty and—

Nope! No, sir! I do not need to be thinking about such things, because they will most likely lead to inappropriate erections. And if there’s one thing that ruins a platonic sharing of what is possibly the smallest bed in the world between two friends who used to be like brothers, it’s an inappropriate erection. Well, not that I know that for a fact, but I can pretty much make the assumption here. I don’t want to have to wake up in the middle of the night and explain to my heterosexual bedmate why I’m sporting wood and staring at him in the mirrors above the bed. That is not a conversation conducive to a lasting friendship.

“If you want,” Dom says without turning around, “we can get a hotel. I saw a couple just right down the road.”

Well, that would be the easy way out, wouldn’t it? Say yes and then we’d be in a generic-looking room with scratchy sheets that smell like clinical detergent and oversized pillows that have some stranger’s long black hair on them. But isn’t that what they’re expecting? Of course it is. I’m now utterly convinced that this is part of some master scheme by the psychotic villain known as Kori and her sidekick, Sandy. She may look innocent, and she may play the part well enough for most everyone around her to be convinced, but I see right through her. She obviously called ahead and coerced the drag queen (either by blackmail or brainwashing) into changing what was probably a tea- and sunroom or library or storage area for wigs and feather boas (of which I have to see evidence of any—is she really even a drag queen?) into a guest room. If that’s the case, then Sandy/Helena Handbasket is against me and already a lost cause.