“I wouldn’t mind having your DNA inside me,” Nora said, trying to make him smile. It worked but only for a second.

“Amber never expected she’d have to deal with an injured homebound husband. I never expected to be an injured homebound husband. And God knows I never expected my wife to lose all interest in sex after having a baby.”

“This sounds like a recipe for disaster,” Nora said, feeling nothing but sympathy for Lance. She couldn’t wrap her mind or any other part of her body around the concept of not being interested in sex. And she knew lots of women with children in the kink scene who had libidos to match her own.

“It was. I didn’t want a divorce. I thought eventually Amber would go to a doctor, go to a therapist. Something. I tried flowers and compliments and cuddling. Everything. Nothing worked. She simply decided she would never have sex again. But Maya was, is the light of my life. Amber threw herself into motherhood so I threw myself into fatherhood. Pretty soon Maya was the only reason Amber and I were together. We didn’t even speak unless it was about our daughter. I had to have an outlet, though. I have a strong sex drive and was going nuts in that house.”

“You had an affair?”

“No. Unless you consider porn an affair.”

“Depends on how much porn we’re talking about.”

“A lot,” he said without hesitation. “I moved into the guest room-slash-office, found S&M porn, and just got lost in it. I didn’t think about Amber caring. She didn’t want to have sex with me. Why would she care I watched internet porn? But when she used the computer one day and found some of the stuff, she went off the deep end.”

“I would think she’d prefer porn to you sleeping around.”

Lance shrugged. “Me, too. Seemed harmless. She didn’t think so. She kicked me out of the house—the house I’d paid for—filed for divorce, and sought full custody of Maya. The judge allowed the porn into evidence. I lost custody.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Nora put her empty coffee cup down so hard a tiny piece chipped off the bottom. “For porn? You weren’t cheating, you weren’t abusing anyone.”

“If it had been normal vanilla porn, I might have at least gotten visitation. Amber’s lawyer argued I was a porn addict who had abusive, violent, anti-women proclivities.”

“What? Because it was kinky?”

“The sites I visited were all BDSM-related. I only watched the male submissive-women Dominant stuff, but that didn’t factor in. That I’d visited websites that had videos of women being whipped and play-raped killed my defense. No one even cared I’d never watched that stuff. Guilt by association.”

“Son of a bitch...”

Nora knew she shouldn’t be surprised. The world didn’t understand anything about their community, their culture. Søren was one scandal away from excommunication. That he played only with consenting adult partners wouldn’t even factor into the equation. That Lance had zero desire to hurt any woman on earth didn’t factor into the equation, either. “Do you ever get to see her?”