“That’s Bill. He was your daytime bodyguard,” Ben explained.
She raised her brows. “I had a nighttime bodyguard, too?”
“Moe.”
Bataar looked at them from where he was standing guard over Vince, whom he had lying face down in the foyer with his hands behind his back. “Moe’s going to be okay. He sustained a minor concussion. And Chin found his way to the hospital.”
“Who’s Chin?” she asked.
“The guy we had on Jake,” Ben explained.
Claire was sitting on the doorstep, shivering and in a daze, her cheeks stained with mascara. Ben took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. Kimani was about to sit down next to her, but Ben grabbed her. He looked her over again, and there was an edge to his voice when he spoke.
“When you get checked by the doctor, and if I find out you fucking lied about what Jake—”
“Then you get to punish me,” she interrupted. She made her voice sultry. “I hope you punish me good, Master.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Punish me good, Master.”
It was music to his ears. Ben smiled as he circled Kimani. In his playroom, he had set three thick bamboo poles in a tripod as if to form the frame for a teepee. From the center, where he had tied the poles together with a clove hitch, Kimani dangled by her arms near the floor. Her right ankle was tied to the bottom of one pole while her other was pulled asymmetrically up toward another pole, forcing her thighs open. She had on one of his button-down shirts that she’d knotted at the waist. The rest of her was as naked as sin.
Squatting down, he undid the buttons of her top. Slipping a hand into the garment, he squeezed a breast and tugged on an already-erect nipple.
“Mmmm,” he murmured.
He pinched the nipple, making her strain against her bonds. He pulled the top open to expose both breasts, then caressed each of the areolas and teased the nipples to further hardness.
Crop in hand, he landed the end of the implement on her chest. She grunted. He struck the side of her breast. She gasped. He smacked her breast dead center. She cried out.
“Thank you, Master,” she whimpered.
He slapped her other breast with his hand before applying the crop. She yelped and writhed beneath the tripod. Rising to his feet, he tapped the crop along her midsection to her thighs. He slapped the crop on an inner thigh, making her jump. Standing in front of her, he admired the bare and supple folds between her legs. Earlier, he had taken a razor and trimmed the curls at her mound.
“Such a pretty pussy,” he complimented.
Squatting down again, he caressed the smooth flesh and toyed with her clit, encouraging it to emerge and swell. She purred as she watched him intently. Their gazes met over the hills and valley of her body. Her stare made his cock harden against his pants.
He had come home to his place in Pacific Heights from his office with the intention of taking Kimani out to dinner, but she had looked utterly too hot in his shirt, sans a bra, and a pair of his basketball shorts that looked ready to fall off her hips.
She hadn’t wanted to stay at his place initially, but since coming back from Trinity County, he had refused to let Kimani out of his sight for the first few days. Even though Jake and Vince, who had both been denied bail, were an unlikely threat and Bataar was on duty as her primary security, Ben didn’t trust anyone.
He drew the moisture between her folds to her clit and fondled her till she groaned.
“Can I come, Sir?”
“This being a punishment, what do you think the answer is?” he replied.
She let her head fall back. “Ugh.”
He tapped the crop up the inside of one thigh and down the other, then slapped it on the bottom of her raised foot. She cried out.
“Hold the crop,” he instructed, placing it between her teeth. “Make sure you don’t drop it.”
He rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt and, from a nearby table, selected a small wooden stick with a point at the end, almost like a pencil. He grasped her foot and ran the point down the arch of her foot. She bit down harder on the crop. Her body writhed forcefully, tugging against her bonds. He poked the bottom of her foot with the stick, then dragged it up the arch. She screamed around the crop.
Finished, he kissed the bottom of her foot.