She pulled off her jacket, unbuttoned her vest. And when she started in on her shirt, Kingsley did the only thing he could do.

He took off his own shirt and offered it to her.

“King.” It was all she said.

“Take it.”

“This is one of your new fancy shirts from Vitale.”

“It is.”

“And you’re going to let me sleep in it?”

“I’m asking you to sleep in it.”

“What happened to that whole thing about how a woman wearing your shirt is like a man coming on her tits?”

“I said ‘back.’”

“Tits are sexier.”

“Wear it. Sleep in it. I won’t come on your tits or back.”

“Face guy, eh?”

She took the shirt into his bathroom, an act of modesty he found unbearably endearing.

“I sleep naked,” he called out to her when she closed the door behind her. “Does that bother you?”

“What? Is all your underwear in the dirty laundry?”

“I don’t own any,” he admitted.

“I should have known.” Sam sighed.

Kingsley stripped out of his clothes and climbed back into bed. Sam emerged seconds later wearing his white dress shirt. On her bare feet she padded across the carpet, came to the bed and slipped under the covers. He hadn’t failed to notice her long bare legs and the tantalizing skin of her chest. They glowed in the gentle lamplight, and he dug his fingers into the sheets, a reminder not to touch her.

Sam rolled on to her side to face him.

“Naked?” she asked.

“Completely.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“More than I should,” Kingsley admitted.

He smiled but Sam didn’t. Instead, she reached out and touched his shoulder where the crack of a cane had left a two-inch black bruise.

“What happened to you?” she asked. “Please, tell me this was consensual.”

“It was consensual. And all your fault.”

“How is this my fault?”

“You’re the one who told me to woo Mistress Felicia. I sent her flowers. She showed up in my bedroom the night of the party.”

Sam’s eyes went comically wide. He had to laugh at her.

“You’re subbing for Mistress Felicia?” she asked. “Seriously?”

He reached out and covered her lips with one finger.

“It’s a secret,” he said.

“Why? Everyone knows you’re bi. How is this different?”

“A man who likes to fuck other men scares straight men. A man who likes to get the shit beat out of him is a laughingstock.” Their world could spout of all it wanted about sexual freedom and acceptance, but male submissives carried a stigma and he wanted no part of it.

“I think it’s sexy,” Sam said. “I like a man who isn’t afraid to be vulnerable. It’s how women feel all the time. And if it makes you feel any better, I guessed you might have a little masochistic streak in you when I found out it was Søren you were in love with.”

“I didn’t mean for you to know that. You’re too easy to talk to. It all came out.”

She ran her hands through his hair, tenderly and carefully, as if afraid to hurt him more than he already was.

“You can tell me anything. I don’t care what Søren says—you can trust me.”

“I want to. But you don’t make it easy with all the secrets you keep.”

“What secrets do you think I’m keeping?”

“You went to that camp the Fullers run and you won’t talk about it.”

“Do you like talking about when you got shot and ended up in the hospital?”

“Only if it’ll get me laid.”

Sam laughed.

“Would it really make you feel better to know about my ugly past?”

“I want to know you,” Kingsley said. “All of you. And you know so much about me.”

“Your secrets are sexier than mine,” she said. “I don’t have any bullet wounds or secret lovers.”

“What kind of secrets do you have?” Kingsley asked.

Sam didn’t smile, which scared him. Sam almost always had a smile for him.

“Ugly ones.”

26

KINGSLEY WAITED WHILE Sam settled herself into the covers. She rolled on to her side to face him, and as Kingsley gazed at her, he made the troubling discovery that he loved seeing her in his bed. She looked so small and defenseless in his grand red bed, almost like a little girl with her pixie cut mussed and her hands under her chin like a child.

“My family failed miserably at turning me into a girly girl. So my church talked to my parents, and they decided to send me to summer camp. It wasn’t the usual sort of summer camp. It was this place upstate where gay kids got sent to get their brains fixed.”

“Sam...” Kingsley wanted to reach for her, but he held back. If he touched her, she might stop speaking, and he realized now he’d been starving to know the truth of her.

“I met a girl named Faith on the bus to this camp—this nasty awful camp where God wouldn’t go if you paid Him. Faith had gotten caught in bed with someone at her church, someone important, and they shut Faith up by sending her to that camp.”

“Where was this place they sent you?”

“Pleasant Valley Camp and Nature Center. Can you believe that’s what they called it? What bullshit. There was no canoeing, no archery, no nature walks. Instead of that, there were ‘prayer sessions’ where they made us kneel for hours and pray out loud for God to take our sin away and heal us so we would desire men the way God intended. And there were fun ‘therapy sessions’ where we had to watch slide shows and were given electric shocks whenever the picture of a pretty girl appeared on the screen. Not electric shocks on the arms or the legs. No—electric shocks on our nipples and clits. But the best part was the drugs.”