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relaxed.
    Sully must have noticed her expression. “Sorry. I don’t want to freak you out, but since you’ll be living here, you need to understand who we are. Usually no one outside the lifestyle sees us like this. As you can see, he enjoys this as much as I do.”
    Her mind whirled. She didn’t know what to say.
    “What you witnessed on the boat,” Sully continued, “is just one aspect of what we do. I own the boat. Mac is the captain. I decided that as captain, we could play by his rules when I went out with him. I don’t get to go out with him all the time. Sometimes it’s fun for me to sit back and let him have fun. He enjoys topping on occasion. It mixes
     

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    things up.”
    Clarisse stared.
    Sully gave her a moment, obviously realizing she was still processing information, before he continued. “As I said, we will never expect you to join in this with us. Although if you were curious and wanted to learn more, we would be happy to answer questions or help you out. Hopefully, after a few days, you will be more comfortable with this. Of course, we expect you to not say anything to anyone about this aspect of our relationship.”
    She nodded.
    “Normally I would have told Mac we’d act vanilla. Under the circumstances, because you’ll be with us for the foreseeable future, I’d rather be up front about this from the start instead of hiding what and who we are.” He patted Mac’s head. “Show her to her room, get her anything she needs. Then you and I need to shower and get dressed so we can take her to visit Tad.”
    He stood and flashed her a smile. “I already laid stuff out for you.
    Come on, this way.”
    He led her down a hallway to a bedroom. At first, she thought maybe they’d walked into the master suite. The house she’d lived in with Bryan hadn’t had a master bedroom this large.
    Mac walked over to the bathroom door and flipped the light on. “I got you Epsom salts to put in the water. That’ll help with the soreness.
    I put out towels and some shampoo and conditioner for you. I’ll get with you about a shopping list, things you like and want, so I can buy them next time I go. I also put a disposable razor in there, and some shaving cream.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “Don’t have any shaving gel, sorry.”
    She felt numb, in a good way. “That’s okay. That’ll be fine.”
    Anything to shave and quit feeling like a filthy Sasquatch would be a blessing.
    “Just leave your dirty clothes and the towels on the floor for me,”
    he said over his shoulder as he walked out.

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    “What?”
    “I do the laundry,” he said from the bedroom. “And most of the cooking. The cleaning.” He paused. “I need to talk with Sully. He’ll probably want to let you do some of it. Anyway, we can work that out later. Tad’s going to be so glad to see you. He’s really missed you, talks about you all the time.”
    With that, he walked out and softly closed the bedroom door behind him, leaving her feeling guilty as hell.
    Uncle Tad was her only living relative besides a few distant cousins she didn’t even know. She should have stood up to Bryan, kept in better contact. He never should have had to go through this alone.
    Well, bitching and moaning wouldn’t get her there any sooner.
    She sorted dirty clothes from clean ones in her bag and dumped them in the bathroom. That didn’t feel right though. She felt guilty again, this time over saddling Mac with her laundry. She tried to tidy the pile a little.
    Must be exhaustion.
    She gave up, stripped, then turned, and studied herself in the bathroom mirror.
    What a mess.
    Turning, she saw the huge purplish-green swaths of bruises around her kidneys in addition to all the others.
    That dealt the final blow to her psyche. She burst into tears, loudly sobbing. How had she let her life get so out of control as to reach this point? What was that stupid line, relying on the kindness of strangers?
    Had she really sunk to that?
    A knock sounded