Page 32

I kissed her neck once, my hands on her sides before we parted. "C'mon."

She watched as I unfastened the strap-on from my hips and pulled it free without ever taking off my pants. It made her laugh as she followed me to the playroom.

"Can you put it on without getting undressed, too?" she teased.

"Nah." I tossed her a grin over my shoulder. "Not that skilled. But when you said you were coming over, I knew to buckle up." Once in the room, I set it down on the stack of totes.

"It looks so amazing in here," she said when she noticed the stark change in décor.

Deep maroon paint covered the walls, casting an almost gothic appeal to the room. Coupled with the black baseboard and curtains, the dark room closed us in a sort of erotic hug. I loved using Samirah as a designer. Although she rarely used it for her own benefit, she was more than willing to share her talents with me.

"It's a little smaller because I had the contractors add in a second layer of soundproof insulation. I got special permission from the building owners. They think I record music." I grinned at her and began shifting the bins around.

Along one wall, a giant black mat wrapped in plastic leaned against it along with some other unassembled furniture I had yet to tackle.

We worked in silence for a little while, my thoughts running their course while I unpacked a tote filled with different costume items. Most of them involved some sort of sexy lingerie, while others included various Halloween-themed gear.

Nora stared down at the tote with pictures in it, pinching a Polaroid between her fingers. Her expression shifted from its baseline complacent to idle amusement. I approached her, looking over her shoulder down at the photo of a young boy.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"My brother when he was like ten." I smirked when she handed it to me.

"I…didn't know you had a brother," she said, relinquishing the picture. "You resemble."

"We do when his hair is longer, yeah."

"How long since you saw him?" she asked, when I set the photo down on the small stack by the mantle of the unlit fireplace.

"A few months. We talk sometimes though now that he's escaped the thrall of our parents," I said, blandly at best.

"What do you mean?" Her brow furrowed with the question. It struck me then that, although I knew some of the details about Nora's past, she probably knew almost none of mine.

"We were raised in a very hate-filled household. Our parents are florid Evangelicals who kicked me out the same moment they found out I was gay. Literally packed up my bags and dropped me off at the Department of Social Services." I let the explanation fly from my lips without bothering to filter them. Maybe her words hit me harder than I thought, and my vulnerability shields lowered.

"What?" She gripped the center of her shirt. "You never told me that."

"I never told you a lot of things." I tossed a stack of pictures back into the tote, then shoved it into the corner. "Let's hang up the costumes."

"Wait a minute. You can't just…drop that on me and walk off like nothing happened." She grabbed my elbow when I shifted past her. "Caroline."

"Leave it, Nor. There isn't anything more to the story. I emancipated myself the same year and finished high school. I never needed them. Their faith was more important than their kids. There's nothing else to know." Tension twisted my gut, and the last thing I wanted to do was get into an emotional dance with someone I cared too much about.

"Yeah, but…it upsets me to know that your family treated you that way." Her voice softened, and her sweet face bore the compassionate expression I'd grown used to when I saw her working with victims.

"Sorry," I said, glancing at her over my shoulder, a cocky smirk tugging the corner of my mouth. "Next time I won't tell you."

"That's not what I meant!" she protested and dropped down to sit on the edge of the unmade bed.

"I know what you meant," I said, watching her while I affixed a sexy witch costume to a hanger. "It's not worth getting upset over."

"It is though. You deserve better than that," she told me, leaning against the pole of the four-post bed. "Also, this bed is like a sexy vampire's sleeping quarters."

"That was my hope. The shaped brass keeps it sturdy enough to tie down my willing playthings." I grinned, wagging my brows at her.

She laughed a bit, shaking her head at me. "You are the queen of kinky."

"Hmm. No. I'm the Mistress of Kinky. Get it right." I chuckled and winked at her.