“So a week after we started hanging out in silence, Owen’s sitting there across the cafeteria table from me, minding his own business as usual, and this fucking asshole, Jasper Barnes, picks up Owen’s chocolate pudding cup and smashes it into his chest. ‘You still going to eat that shit?’ he said. ‘I bet you will, Piggie. Lick it off. Eat your own shit, Piggie.’ And then he starts making those pig-squeal sounds.”

“That’s so mean.”

“I was pissed, not going to deny it, but I probably would have just sat there and tried not to watch, grateful it wasn’t me being targeted. Then Owen lifted his head and he looked at me. I saw the shame in his eyes. Shame. What the fuck did he have to be ashamed of? That fucking bully was the one who should have been ashamed. When Owen started to clean the pudding off his shirt with a napkin, I fucking lost it. I was a scrawny kid and didn’t have a chance against a big jock like Jasper Barnes, so I went after him with my fork. I didn’t even get the chance to stab him with it before the teachers pulled me off him. I got suspended for using a weapon at school and later got my ass kicked by that bully and half the defensive line of the football team, but it was worth it because Owen started talking to me after that. Actually, he hasn’t shut up since.”

Kellen smiled as he thought about Owen’s ceaseless prattle. He was definitely a talker. And something about sitting in the dark with Dawn O’Reilly made Kellen a talker too.

“I’m glad you became friends. I can tell he means a lot to you.”

“I’d die for him. I don’t say that lightly. Owen’s always saying how I saved him by protecting him from the bullying, but he saved me a thousand times over. No telling where I’d be today if it wasn’t for him and his family. He didn’t see the dirt-poor bastard that everyone else in town saw. He never judged me based on my mother’s poor choices. Owen just saw me. It didn’t bother him that his mom gave me his older brother’s hand-me-downs. Owen said great things like, ‘You have no idea how glad I am that I don’t have to try to squeeze into Chad’s old clothes anymore’ and ‘I can’t believe my mom gave you socks and underwear for your birthday. The woman is so embarrassing.’ The woman is a saint, is what she is. I hit my growth spurt in eighth grade and if it hadn’t been for Janine, I’d have been wearing high-waters and ripping the seams out of my Spiderman T-shirt.”

“Did Owen realize that his mom was helping you?”

“He never said anything, but he had to have known. Everyone knew that I’d never met my father and that my mom took a welfare check because it’s hard for a drunk to hold down a job. She’d given up hope for a better life long before I was born. Our lack of money was what defined me. But not to the Mitchell family. I was Owen’s friend, so I was their surrogate son. His mother is a true treasure. Best woman I’ve ever known.”

“So there’s another woman in your life that I’ll never measure up to,” Dawn said.

Kellen chuckled. “No other woman can measure up to you either, Dawn. You are the only woman who sexually excites me with a mere song.”

She leaned in and whispered close to his ear, “I’ll take what I can get.”

It wasn’t only her song that sexually excited him. The tickle of her breath against his skin drew a soft moan of longing from the back of his throat.

“Kellen?”

He loved the way his name sounded when she spoke it. “Dawn?”

“How long has it been since you last had sex?”

He sat stunned that she would ask him something so forward.

“Uh, why?” he said after a moment.

“I don’t usually have sex with men I’ve just meet, but I want to with you.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed. How could he turn down her offer? It wasn’t that women never propositioned him. They did it all the time—rubbed up against him, shoved their hands down his pants, whispered suggestions into his ear—but he hadn’t been interested. Sara’s memory had given him the strength to say no. Hell, when he was alone with a woman, he found forwardness downright repulsive, but he was alone with Dawn and her words didn’t have the usual effect on him. He wanted her. God, he fucking wanted her.

Promise you’ll never make love to another woman, Kellen. Sara’s words echoed through his head. They were like a slap to the face.

“It’s been five years,” he said.

“You haven’t done anything in five years?”

“I didn’t say I hadn’t done anything. I just haven’t been inside a woman in that long.”

“Oh,” she said.

He could hear the disappointment in her voice. This time he was glad it was dark so he didn’t have to see it on her face.

“What kinds of things have you done?” she asked unexpectedly.

“Alone or with Owen?”

She gasped. “With Owen? Are you gay?”

“I’m not gay, Dawn. A bit confused maybe.” He rubbed at his eyebrow with two fingertips while he gathered his thoughts. “Can I talk to you about something? Something I haven’t even talked to Owen about? Something I need to tell him but am so worried about how he’ll react that every time I try to bring it up, I can’t form the words.”

What was it about the darkness that allowed him to open up? Or maybe it wasn’t the darkness at all. Maybe it was the kindred spirit within the woman beside him that made him feel he could tell Dawn anything.

“I’ll listen,” she said. “I probably won’t say the right thing though.”

He doubted there was a right thing to say. “Soon after Sara died, Owen started going to sex clubs and guilting me into going with him.”

“What’s a sex club? Is it like a whorehouse?”

He smiled and couldn’t resist running a hand along the base of her spine. Oh the naughty things he could introduce her to, Miss Sweet and Vanilla.

“No, you pay for a certain service at a whorehouse and that’s what you get. Sex clubs are where people of certain sexual tastes congregate and hook up.” He turned his face to whisper in her ear, and the tickle of her hair against his nose set off nerve endings that sent waves of pleasure to his groin and triggered alarm bells in his head—alarm bells he chose to ignore. “What are your sexual tastes, Dawn? I can tell you where there’s a club for it.”

“I wouldn’t be comfortable hooking up with some stranger in a club,” she said. The muscles of her back were taut beneath his palm.

No matter how much he enjoyed it, he needed to stop touching her. This thing between them wasn’t going to happen. “I wouldn’t want you to hook up with a stranger,” he said, which was the truth, but he had no business saying that to her. And he really did need to talk about what was going on with Owen. Maybe someone outside their relationship could make sense of it. “So one night while I was waiting for Owen to finish up spanking and screwing some chick he’d just met, I caught the eye of a man named Toshi.”

Dawn shifted beside him, squirming slightly.

“I didn’t have sex with Toshi,” he said.

“It’s none of my business if you did.”

“Do you want me to not talk about this? I can tell it’s making you uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, uncomfortable,” she whispered. “We’ll go with that.”

“Toshi is a master in the Japanese art of Shibari.”

“Does that involve swords and disembowelment?”

“No, ropes and release. Toshi spoke of tying knots as if it were a high art form—the way an inspired painter or a poet or a musician talks of his work. I was intrigued. I guess I’m a sucker for an artist. I let him show me a few techniques on one arm. He taught me to tie a couple of knots and then when Owen came to collect me, Toshi told me to keep the rope and if I wanted to learn more, where I could find him.”

“So I guess you found him.”

“I did a lot of research about Shibari on the Internet, even read a few books, but ultimately I did seek him out, because nothing compares to being taught one-on-one by a master.”