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suddenly doing this bizarre form of flirting like a madwoman with Lord
Dream-Jake. It was thrilling. “Maybe Your Majesty? You were my
Homecoming King, after all. So you want to help me as a friend? Were we ever
just friends? Even you can’t make me stop talking, Hogan.”
    “I was thinking I’d gag you. You’d look cute in a ball gag.”
    “They don’t have a store in Cranston or even Smithville that
sells that stuff.”
    “Yes, I know. But you’re assuming I’d need to buy one.”
    “Oh you have one in your nightstand, do you? Why not do it
then, Mr. Freaky Sex Toys?”
    “For you? No, I was joking about that part. I wouldn’t use a
gag on you. That would only give you another thing to think you had to fight
against. It’d be all about resisting the gag, and that would defeat the
purpose. It can’t be external. The motivation and the control need to come from
here.” He reached over and tapped her forehead twice, then ran his finger down
to tap the tip of her nose. His expression was bland as rice. “And I don’t keep
it in my nightstand. I have a custom-made cabinet for my special toys, with a
lock on it so my cleaning lady doesn’t get the shock of her life.”
    She blinked and tried to puzzle through what he’d said, how
he’d said it…and then it hit her like a brick. The whole conversation took on
new meaning.
    Oh, look over here, Alice. A rabbit hole. Mind the edge.
    “You’re…you’re not kidding, are you?”
    He smiled, cool as a cucumber. “About gagging you? Or about
having a ball gag at my disposal?”
    Tess studied his face for a moment, her thoughts too fast
and improbable to capture. Her toes were at the crumbling rim of that rabbit
hole, and the temptation to let herself fall was almost too much to bear. “You
have more than just a ball gag, don’t you?”
    He acknowledged it with a tip of his head. “Quite a bit
more. The gag is really the least of it, Tess. But those are props. Like I
said, it’s all up here.” He tapped his own temple this time.
    She shivered as the memory of her recurring dream ghosted
through her, recalling the pressure on her wrists, the weight of his body over
hers. “How long have you…you know…been doing stuff like that?”
    “Since I became aware of, you know, stuff .”
    Tess tried to slow her breathing to a normal rate. “But you
went out with Allison. She isn’t into all that. I’d know if she were.”
    “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jake countered, sounding almost
weary. “People who do…this sort of thing, whatever you want to call it, we can
be very good at hiding it. We have to be. But no, she wasn’t into it, at least
not back then. I doubt she is now.”
    “Then why were you with her, if you already knew?”
    “Why were you with Danny Fields?”
    She glared at him for making the suggestion that her dear
cousin had been his female equivalent to her own placeholder boyfriend. His
beard. “You asshole.”
    Jake was already shaking his head, searching for the words
to explain. “I was talking about the similarity between you and me, not between
Allison and Danny. Why do you think we broke up? Look, I liked Ally. Hell, I
would’ve slept with her if I’d had the chance. God knows I wanted to. I was a
kid, I was still figuring stuff out. But I liked her too much as a friend to
string her along, to pretend we were ever going to last, once I realized she
and I needed different things. Can you say the same of Danny?”
    He clearly didn’t expect her to answer, which was gracious
of him considering they both knew she could not say the same. She had
used Danny until she’d no longer needed him. Not that he had ever complained;
he’d had his uses for Tess too.
    But Jake was going on. “Ally is pretty open-minded. I think
she would have played along with some of it, if I’d tried. But she isn’t a
natural submissive. I think Lindy’s a bit that way, but she was always more
like a little sister to—”
    “Lindy? My sister Lindy?