"Crazy."

Syria looked around for her bag, but it wasn't with her clothes. "I guess I'll have to go back out there for my purse." She put on her coat to cover the sheer top. "I think we've been dismissed."

Mia pulled her boy shorts on. "Yeah, I think I've had enough for one day."

Syria tied her belt. "I was surprised you said yes. You have no idea who those guys are."

Mia shrugged. "Risk is part of the job description. It seemed like an amazing thing to experience."

"It was." Syria opened the door a crack. "I think things are winding down. I don't hear any music."

"You want me to go with you? I just have to pull myself together." Mia looked in the mirror and grimaced. "I look like a used-up wh.o.r.e."

Syria laughed. "Your makeup is a little smudged."

"Ha. I'm a poster child for Pond's cream."

"I'll be all right. Let me find my bag and I'll be back." Syria opened the door and slipped into the hall. Her livelihood was in that bag. She hoped no one had peeked inside or worse, set it too sharply on the floor.

She tiptoed down the hall. All the doors were still closed. The lights were more dim than they had been when she'd come through with Kana. Where was everybody?

In the main hall, the chairs were still in place, but the men were gone, along with the white gauze girls. A couple stage lights lit the s.p.a.ce.

Her bag was still on the counter. She sighed with relief. As she headed for it, Erik and one of the men who'd been with Mia on stage emerged from the dark. An attendant rose from behind the counter to hand them their coats.

"Oh!" Syria stepped back. "I just came for my bag."

The attendant lifted it, but it had listed sideways, and a sheaf of Syria's business cards fell from an outer pocket. She picked up the bag and tried to scoop up the cards, but several dropped to the floor.

"Allow me." Erik bent to retrieve the errant cards, examining one. "Syria McMillan. You're a photographer?" He flipped over the image. "Boudoir?"

Oh boy. "I am." Syria wasn't sure if she should ask for the cards back, or offer him one. They would know who she was. This new life she'd been leading, which felt like a private secret with her and Tyson and Mia, now seemed to be leaking out. Her stomach quivered, imagining what might happen if she became known for this, if everyone who called her for photos thought she'd have s.e.x with them.

But Erik handed her the stack back. "Nice work. And nice meeting you." He bowed to her, and she awkwardly bowed back. He was Filipino, not j.a.panese, but it was a nice tradition. She wished more people bowed.

The other man also bowed and the two of them pa.s.sed her to exit down a different corridor. The real one, Syria surmised, not one for the help.

At least she had not had s.e.x with anyone but Mia. Somehow this made her feel better. She waved to the attendant and scurried back to the dressing room to catch up with her friend and escape.

3: Doubt Syria sat on the bed the next day with her coils of rope, trying to tie her own legs with a more elaborate knot than the double column. She wasn't flexible enough, or something. The loops wouldn't lie flat. She needed something to practice on.

A Santa doll sat on the bedside table. It was a gift her father had mailed to her from India when she was eight, the only time he ever acknowledged that Syria was his daughter. She kept it out year-round.

Syria picked the doll up and laid it in front her, quickly making a coin knot on his chest. That was always easy.

She undid the tie and began a chest bind. When Syria brought the rope down to his groin, the purple cord cutting into the white fur, she flung the doll across the bed. This was her father's only gift, and she was doing bondage with it!

She tried to picture this man, who had known her mother only a few days, and lied about his marriage and other children during their brief affair. Maybe she shouldn't be sentimental. She didn't even know him, and yet, something inside her insisted she find him.

Syria lay back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. If her father knew what she'd been doing at that exhibition, what would he think? Would she be the sort of daughter he'd want to have?

The tears flowed out then, hot and unexpected. Syria wasn't one for crying, hardly ever, but now they came, fast and unstoppable.

She'd chosen boudoir photography as a profession because she was good at it. Anthony, who'd taught her, told her she had an eye for lighting women. She'd felt until now that she'd made the perfect choice.

But even if she did contact her father, how could she show him her work? Her mother had simply nodded at the sample Syria had shown her, neutral about the whole thing. Of course, she'd only revealed the glamorous head shots, but still.

"What am I doing?" she shouted at the ceiling. Would she still be Photoshopping flabby arms and nipple slips when she was fifty? Seventy?

The sights and sounds of the exhibition came back to her, distorted like a dying carnival ride, skin slapping, men grunting, the gauze girls kneeling before c.o.c.k after c.o.c.k.

Syria rolled on her stomach and tugged at an envelope on the side table, spilling photographs across the bed. Her mother, glowing and happy, tight against her father. He'd lied! Why did she want him in her life at all? He'd let her go to save his own skin after getting caught, the eight-year-old secret busted wide open.

The pictures slid toward her, into the valley created by her elbows. Her father looked at her earnestly, his dark eyes a match for hers. Did he have many affairs? Was her mother a one-time thing or a regular habit? She tried to picture him in the chairs before the stage, a girl on his lap, watching a s.e.x show, watching her. h.e.l.l, she didn't know who he was. Who's to say he might not show up at something like that?

G.o.d, this was f.u.c.ked up.

She had normal friends, people she hung out with before meeting Tyson and Mia, people she'd photographed and liked. She should call them up, do normal things, like go to movies and eat pizza and sit around coffee shops.

Except she didn't want that, not any of that.

She wanted the bondage and the s.e.x and the photography and the thrill.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up her phone, sending a video chat request to Tyson. It wasn't quite noon. He shouldn't be working.

Request failed.

The phone automatically connected with a regular phone call. Instead of Tyson's chipper voice, she got a generic message that the user was not in a coverage area. Weird.

Syria face-planted into the pillow. Buck up, bimbo. Her life was great, really. She felt so much more alive than before. Sure, she was probably going to run into a hairy situation now and again, like at the exhibition. Her face bloomed hot just thinking about it. Tyson and Mia were used to this sort of public attention. He was a stripper and Mia was a contortionist in a s.e.x show.

But not her. She'd just had s.e.x in front of strangers.

She thought of the gold coins sitting on her dresser. For money!

"Arrrghh!" She shouted into the pillow. She needed to work out or something. Take a walk. Actually, she knew just the thing.

4: Surprise Vist "Bend your knees, tuck the pelvis in, chest up, arms in second position."

Syria tried to follow the instructional video on her TV screen, but her body had a mind of its own. The woman snapped her hip in one direction with a sharp pop. The bells around her waist jingled merrily.

Syria tried again. Snap. Pop. Her bells sounded like crushed metal.

"Squeeze right. Squeeze left." The instructor showed the move from the back. Syria felt sure they'd removed frames or something. A hip just didn't DO that. Be in one place one second and further to the side in the same second.

She tried a few more pops and burst into giggles. Maybe she should take a live cla.s.s, let someone diagnose her faulty hips. She spun in circles, trying to make the bells tinkle as fetchingly as the girl on the screen.

A voice came from the hall. "Now that is a tempting beck and call."

Syria dropped her arms. Was she hallucinating?

Tyson leaned against the doorframe to the living room. Syria wanted to scream, laugh, cry. He was here!

"Don't you ever knock?" she asked.

"Don't you ever lock your front door?"

In two steps they were in a tight embrace, a hard-core hug, like they were the only two people left in the world.

"You said mid-December."

He pulled back to look at her. "I like surprising you."

"But how-"

"Mia called me. Said if I could come, I should come."

Syria stepped away and sat on the sofa. "Did she tell you about the exhibition?"

"Not really. But I got the feeling something happened. I only had to cancel two gigs, and they weren't good ones. Worth it."

"But the ticket must have cost you a fortune, last minute, the weekend after Thanksgiving."

"Nah, mom works for an airline. I can go non rev as long as I'm willing to get b.u.mped. It wasn't too bad. Most people traveled last week." He sat next to her and pulled her close. "You want to tell me what happened?"

She leaned into his shoulder. For once he wasn't wearing workout clothes, but a crisp white shirt and khakis. He smelled heavenly, like detergent and a masculine soap. "I had s.e.x with Mia on a stage while she got g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ged."

He sucked in a breath. "Now, that's something."

She felt the tension in his arms and chest. Maybe she'd gone too far, beyond even his open mindedness.

"Did any of them hurt you?" he asked.

He thought she'd had s.e.x with them too? She pulled away to look up into those gray eyes, noticing for the first time little creases around them. He was tired.

"None of them laid a hand on me, well, one dripped wax on me, but Mia had to be hurting. She was tied up, twice, and then the men came..."

She didn't want to talk about it anymore. The visual was both exciting and upsetting. All those men watching. Mia nodding to one, then another, then taking the one who came for Syria. She sucked in a breath.

"Shhhhh." He stroked her hair. "You're all right. It's fine. New things are frightening." The tension moved out of him, and Syria felt certain it was because she hadn't actually had s.e.x with anyone else, and that he cared. Despite what he kept saying about keeping the relationship open, he wanted her for himself.

She reached for his jaw and ran a finger along the stubble. Never clean shaven, this boy. "You've done something to me," she said quietly. This was a risk, maybe a bigger one than getting on stage with Mia. "I just want you. What have you done to me?"

He jingled some of the bells on her wrap. "I don't know, but you've done it to me too. d.a.m.n nuisance, only wanting one girl in an occupation like mine."

He slid their bodies sideways so that they were lying on the sofa. "I think about you all the time."

"I do too." Her heart was hammering. All these new experiences, so many opportunities, and now she would fall in freaking love, now she would crave monogamy? "Why is that? When we have so many choices?"

"I don't know. Let's see if we can remember." He untied the jingling belt and laid it on the floor. Syria wore only a work out bra and spandex shorts. He teased the heavy elastic band over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I think I found two reasons right here." He mouthed a nipple, suckling, his hand already moving to the waist of her shorts.

She tugged at his b.u.t.tons, dying to feel his skin against hers, to see those incredible abdominals and the heat of his belly.

"I can't take this." He stood up and took off his clothes so fast they were just a blur of color. When his erection popped from his boxers, she reached for it, pulling him close, and enclosed her mouth over it, licking the prec.u.m from the tip, rolling her hands under his b.a.l.l.s.

This felt right. All the things she'd done and felt in the last weeks were fun, but this was different. s.e.x with Tyson engaged so much more than her c.l.i.t and her desire, but a need that rocked her even before they touched. Something opened inside her, making the pleasure penetrate more deeply than just her body.

He tugged the workout bra the rest of the way over her head. Now they were free to explore everything, and he shifted neatly around to lie over her. He pressed his face between her legs while she still worked him from below.

Syria pushed on his rib cage to keep him at just the right distance, matching the rhythm he was setting against her folds. She was tightening against him already, so alive and alert and feeling everything.

His muscles twitched in her mouth and now she knew he really was saving himself for her, having so much less control than that first time, now that his partners weren't regular, just when he came to her.

This thrilled her and she wanted to cry again - so much emotion lately - but he sensed something had shifted and pulled away, turning around to a more traditional position, pulling her knees up. "You've caught me, Syria," he said. He rubbed his thumb along her face, tracing a tear that had managed to escape. "I'm not even sure how to go without you."

"We'll figure something out," she said. "We'll find a way."

He slid inside her then, the whole length, and she cried out immediately. He filled her completely, and everything about it felt exactly right, his elbows braced by her head, the pressure and weight of him over her. And the long, slow strokes, so vanilla, and still, just the right thing. There would be time for more bondage, and crazy play, and toys, and maybe even extra partners, like Mia or Sam. But for now, she had him, just him, and it was perfect.

He sped up, his eyes squeezed shut. Syria felt him getting close and let herself go, opening wide, the o.r.g.a.s.m blossoming low and spiraling higher. He groaned and let loose in her and she'd been wound so tight that the release was like coming free of the bindings, the spreader bar hitting the floor, the ropes in coils around you, blissful and light.

The emotion rushed through her so d.a.m.n hard that she burst into heavy sobs. Tyson pulled her in close and yet the weeping went on, coming not from her eyes, but deep inside.

He rocked her, smoothing her hair. "We're here baby, we're here."

Syria quieted in degrees. Nothing she'd ever experienced came close to that. A cry-gasm? She thought it was a myth, a joke, a punch line. But it was real, this expulsion of emotion along with release.

Tyson pulled her up on his lap, still inside her, strong arms encircling her completely.

This journey had only begun. They'd figure things out. And maybe she'd even take Tyson to India. Find her dad with him by her side. This is what she'd been waiting for all along. Someone to shake her up, make her move. This was going to work.

5: Santa on Screen A few days later Syria pushed away from her desk, only to b.u.mp her chair against a stack of boxes holding images and photo books ready to be packaged to deliver to her clients.

She needed an a.s.sistant, but really, only the busy season right before Christmas required help. The other eleven months of the year, she didn't have enough work to pay someone else.

She'd muddle through.

Her back muscles protested as she stretched her arms toward the ceiling, trying to work out a kink from sitting too long at her computer as she airbrushed women to perfection. Tyson's unexpected visit seemed like a dream now, but they had spent all their time in bed and she'd gotten way behind on her work.

Syria moved aside the boxes and padded through the house to the bedroom. She could not get further behind. For one, these were gifts. But Tyson was due back the week before Christmas, and she couldn't let her work interfere with the little time they carved out together when he was in town.

She sighed at the clock. Midmorning and she still wore her clothes from yesterday. She really needed a schedule now that the actual photo shoots were done and only the retouching work remained. Without the ballast of a work routine, her days and nights were becoming a blur.

Her phone chimed, and she picked it up absently. "Coming over!" chirped a perky message from Mia, surrounded by text hearts and smilies.

Mia never actually asked if she could visit. She just announced it. Probably time for a break anyway.

Syria headed for the shower. Inside the spray, Syria debated between hurrying up to finish before Mia arrived, or slowing down for a repeat performance of their last shower together, which had ended in Syria's introduction to fisting. But Mia had her moods, so Syria rushed, wrapping a towel around herself just as she heard Mia opening the front door.