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She pins me with a stare. “Yes. You are.” Her eyes flash to the phone. “What’s the deal between you two anyway?”

For a moment, I contemplate dodging her question, but it wouldn’t exactly be fair, especially after everything she just finished telling me.

“Leo is…”—I search for the words—“complicated.”

“Oh, well, thanks for clearing that up for me,” Kira says, her voice laced with sarcasm.

“He was my hero growing up. I wanted to be just like him. Even though our temperaments were opposite, I’ve always respected the way he carries himself. He has these freakishly unrealistic expectations for everyone, but especially himself, and he always does the right thing…”

“As opposed to the town’s favorite Mr. Golden Boy?” she says in challenge.

“Not quite. As much as I’d love it to be, I’m far from perfect.”

“Yeah, and so is everyone else.”

“True.” I nod. “But some mistakes weigh more than others.”

That must get her attention because she goes quiet, and her fingers twirling in my hair go still.

“The biggest difference between the two of us is that I’ve always been charming and good with people, whereas Leo can put on a happy face when he needs to, but he doesn’t draw people in the same way. He doesn’t have the same warmth about him.”

“And he’s also the only person who’s ever been able to see through my bullshit.” I eye her. “The only person other than you, that is.”

That seems to please her because her lips twitch like she’s trying to bite back a smile.

“And as much as I idolized him, he always seemed so hypercritical of me, like he was waiting for me to mess up. There was always this tension between us that I never quite understood.”

“I was in my early twenties when I started getting into the BDSM lifestyle. I fell in love with rope play. I loved the control it gave me, loved perfecting the knots and binds, and more than anything, the connection I felt to my rope bunny. For someone to surrender themselves to me like that made me feel so powerful, and it fed my ego in a way I’d never experienced.”

Hell, I’m still riding the high from last night. Kira has no idea what her willingness to try my rope kink meant to me. For the first time in my life, that part of me didn’t feel lonely. I wasn’t carrying it by myself anymore. I had a partner who not only trusted me, but someone I trusted just as completely.

Now I just hope that my being honest doesn’t ruin it.

“One day this girl came into the club. At twenty-one, she was barely old enough to join, four years younger than my twenty-five. It doesn’t seem like much of an age gap, but she’d grown up extremely sheltered and hadn’t lived the same life as most of the other women her age.

“She was drawn to me immediately and begged to be my rope bunny. Up until that point, I’d only fooled around with experienced rope bunnies around the club, and I didn’t see anything wrong with it. If anything, I figured she was safer off with me than some other fake Dom who may try to take advantage of her.

“But Leo was completely against it. He warned me she was too naive and didn’t understand what she was getting herself into.” I brush a hand through my hair and let out a heavy sigh. “But I was young and thought I knew everything. So, of course, I didn’t listen.”

Kira sits up a little. “Oh damn. What happened?”

I prop a hand behind myself as I lay back against the headboard. “We hooked up one night after a particularly intense rope scene, and it was only afterward that she told me she was a virgin.”

Her eyes widen, and she slaps a hand over her mouth. “Shit.”

“Trust me, I was just as surprised. She started crying, telling me how connected she felt to me, and I didn’t have the heart to break it off with her right away. So I tried to slowly distance myself from her.”

Just thinking about it fills me with so much shame. I’ve never been able to bring myself to be this vulnerable with anyone before.

“No…” she drags out, her fingernails digging into my chest as she braces herself for the rest of the story.

“Once Leo caught a whiff of what I was doing, he told me to break it off, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I told him I had it under control, and I actually believed it too…but she was only growing more attached.

“We’d only ever hooked up at the club, so once I started stretching out the time when I’d see her, I started bringing girls back to the apartment I had close by. One night, she showed up and caught me with another woman…”

“Uh-oh. I’m assuming she didn’t take it well?”

“That would be putting it mildly,” I say, thinking back to that awful night. “She freaked out. Started breaking shit and screaming, and there was nothing I could do to calm her down. She started ripping her hair out and threatened to hurt herself. I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do. It was all my fault, and I didn’t want to call the police or for her to get into trouble. So I called Leo.”