“Three bedrooms, two bath,” she said. “Sounds like a lot for one but one room’s my bedroom, one’s my dungeon, and one’s my guest room.”

“Wait. You’ve got two dungeons?”

“One’s business. One’s personal.”

Nora reached for the door handle.

“You’ll be okay?” he asked.

“Yeah?” The question had caught her off-guard. “Oh, you mean because of the guy? I’m okay. Little shaky but I’ve survived worse, I promise. Comes with the territory.”

“Bourbon can be pretty wild.”

“No, I mean ‘comes with the territory’ of being a woman.”

Cyrus pursed his lips, slowly nodded. “Yeah, I see that.”

“But you know how it is. You got your own problems in your own territory.”

“That is also very true.”

“I really appreciate your help tonight. I think I could have gotten away from him on my own, but maybe not. It’s that ‘maybe not’ that I’ll be thinking about when I wake up at three a.m. Glad you were there. Søren is, too.”

“Glad I’m in his good graces. Hope I stay there.”

“You’re fine. He’s cool.”

“Is he?” Cyrus asked. “We been spending a lot of time together. And he’s already got to share you.”

Nora almost said that she had to share Søren with someone, too, but she bit her tongue. What happened between Kingsley and Søren was nobody else’s business.

“He’s not jealous of you, I promise,” she said.

“I guess if he doesn’t trust you by now, he never will.”

“Søren? Trust me?” She blurted out a single, sarcastic “Ha!”

“What? He doesn’t trust you?”

“If by ‘trust’ you mean Søren has full faith in me and can sleep at night knowing that I will not do anything stupid or dangerous, then no, he doesn’t trust me. He’d be insane to trust me.”

“And that’s okay with you?”

“He doesn’t trust me, but he accepts me. And I’ll take that over misplaced trust anyway.”

“Paulina trusts me,” Cyrus said. He said it simply but deliberately, and those three words said what a thousand words didn’t have to say.

“I’m not going try to seduce you,” she said. “Even if you are cute.”

“Fuck, I am not cute.”

“I’m keeping that tuxedo pic in my spank bank.”

“Go away, Queenie.”

“Night, Cy.”

Nora appreciated that Cyrus didn’t drive away until she was safely inside her house.

Paulina was a lucky lady.

Nora changed out of her insane tit-boosting bustier and into a comfortable black bra and tank. The skinny jeans she tossed aside for red lounge pants. She went out back in her slippers, through the off-street alley to collect Gmork from Kingsley’s backyard. He followed her back home, wagging his bushy black tail behind him. She fed him, gave him fresh water, and found her dog brush to tackle his coat. She had him lie on a large towel in front of her on the living room floor.

“Good boy,” she said as he lay still and let her run the brush through his wiry coat. “I wish all boys were as well-behaved as you are. Then again, we did cut your balls off. Maybe that’s the secret to making men behave. You think?”