It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. No matter. His sympathy only went so far because she should have thought of that before she signed up for the Scarlet Auction, and he was too selfish not to make use of his purchase, especially when he wasn’t one who normally threw around two hundred thousand dollars lightly. Of course he would honor the safety word if she used it, but he was confident he could push her to edge, just short of using the safety word.
He narrowed his eyes when she didn’t comply right away. Did she not learn her lesson on that already? She read his expression, squared her shoulders and stalked over to the bed.
At the dresser, he pulled out the silk kerchief she had picked out from the thrift store. He folded it till it would serve nicely as a blindfold.
“What’s that for?” she asked when he stood before her.
“What do you think it’s for?” he replied.
“Is it necessary?”
“Doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t. Now, are you going to be a good pet or do you want it to be a long night? I can last the night. The question is, can you?”
Maybe it was a bit of a stretch saying he could last the night. He’d done it before, but it was with a sub who had been his girlfriend at the time and whom he had trained to be well behaved. She could almost come on command, rather like Pavlov’s dog.
And he wanted Kimani so badly right now, he’d bust a nut if he had to wait the whole night. He could do it if he had to, to make good on his word, but it would be a long and torturous night for the both of them.
She remained still while he tied the silk kerchief over her eyes. Her breath grew shallow.
“Lie down,” he told her.
After a pause, she held her towel and flopped backwards onto the bed. The move was hardly sexy. She looked as if she were getting ready for her annual gynecology exam. But her demeanor would change soon enough. He would see to that.
“Scoot up,” he instructed.
Doing so meant lifting her legs. He thought about reminding her that he had already seen just about every inch of her but decided to let her wallow in her discomfort. Fear, in the right dose and place and time, could have aphrodisiac qualities.
She placed her feet near her arse to conceal as much as possible and pushed herself toward the top of the bed. Back at the dresser, he took out the rope he had purchased from the hardware store.
“I’m going to tie you to the bed,” he said as he unwound the rope. “Nothing too challenging tonight.”
The sleigh beds and simple rectangular headboards of modern beds were less fun to tie a person to than the four-post bed he had in his penthouse in San Francisco, but this camelback headboard had two small posts on either side, enough to bind the ropes to. He took her left wrist, the one that wasn’t clinging to her towel, and gently wound the rope around her. She looked like she had difficulty swallowing.
“You’ve been tied up before,” he assumed.
“Not by a stranger,” she replied with a slight hitch in her breath.
He tied the other end to the post. “Does that make it more exciting for you?”
“It makes me more nervous.”
“Nervous in a good way?”
“I don’t know. It could go either way. This could turn out g—”
He had taken her other wrist.
“—good or bad,” she finished, not fighting him when he began to bind her right wrist to the other bedpost.
“It could,” he acknowledged, “and you have a lot to d
o with it.”
“So you say, but...you’ve shown you can be an asshole sometimes.”
He pulled the rope tight, making her gasp as her arm stretched taught. He secured it before saying, “Let me give you a tip about behavior in people: you should praise that which you want to see from them. If you want a child to eat her veggies, praise her when she does. Don’t highlight when she doesn’t. That just reinforces the negative in her subconscious.”
He threw open the towel, laying her entirely bare. She tensed and strained against the ropes.