“The scary stuff?” He glanced around the room again at the cages and whips. “You’re saying this isn’t the scary stuff? How much does this shit cost you?”

Nora turned her back to him, lifted the bottom of her t-shirt a few inches. Cyrus could just see the tail end of a red welt at the bottom of her ribcage.

“Damn.”

“Belt,” she said. “Basic black leather, fifty dollars. All he used on me. His own belt in a hotel room. No dungeon necessary.”

“And you really, actually, swear-to-God liked that? If not, I may have to settle things with him.”

“I really, actually, swear-to-God loved it. Don’t beat up my dominant, please. But if you do, I’d appreciate it if you left his pretty face alone.”

He studied a wall of canes but didn’t touch any. This wasn’t fuzzy handcuffs and silk blindfolds sort of stuff. This was the real deal.

“Tell me something,” he said, glancing around, eyes wide, “how do you get into this? I mean…this is a lot.”

“Everybody finds their way to kink by a different path. I know dominatrixes who learned the trade from their own mothers. I know male submissives who just got curious one day, Googled BDSM clubs, and fell down the rabbit-hole.”

“What about you?”

She smiled. “Mine’s a pretty common story. You fall in love with someone already kinky—Søren, in my case—and you discover you’re as into it as they are. Kink is often sexually-transmitted.”

“He just up and said, ‘Hey, I know I’m your priest, but I’m also kinky as hell. Wanna play?’”

“He actually kept it a secret from me for a long time. He’s…he’s a little more kinky than your average kinky guy. Pain’s his fetish. If there’s no pain, there’s no sex. That’s a hard thing to tell the girl you’re in love with.”

“You mean it’s kink 24/7/365?” he asked. “And he’s always the one calling the shots?”

She nodded. “Always. No days off.”

“But you’re into calling the shots, too.” He reached out and stroked the tails of one of the floggers on the wall. It was shockingly soft, suede probably. “Doesn’t it get old? Him being in charge all the time?”

“It is what it is. If you fall in love with a foot fetishist, you have to accept a lifetime of high heels and weekly pedicures.”

“So it does get old?” He knew when a witness wasn’t telling him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She took a seat on a big black throne-sort of contraption, a throne with D-rings screwed into it. She crossed her legs and sat back, looking almost like a real queen.

“I’ll admit to having the occasional fantasy about topping him. But it’s about the same as dreaming about what you’d do with the lottery money you’re never going to win. I get all my topping out of my system in here. And there,” she said, pointing at the curtained bedroom. “And in France.”

“Yeah, yeah, with your ‘other’ lover.”