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“That’s one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you.” Those smiling eyes weren’t smiling now, but she’d been right, she thought—they still looked kind.
“All right, I’m happy to answer any questions you have. Go ahead, shoot. Oh, and hey…” Kimberly waved her hands between the three of them like she was laying down the law. It wasn’t until she was fully committed to the gesture that she realized she must look like a teenager about to share secrets. So, she did what she always did when she got herself in those situations; she leaned into it. She leaned hard.
“Lemme tell you guys something.” Kimberly licked her lips exaggeratedly, flipped her hair over each shoulder, twice, braced her forearms on the table edge, and blinked owlishly between the two of them. “You guys. You two… can tell me anything. And I will never,evertell a soul. Like ever.”
They gawked at her. Kimberly kept up the show, since it seemed to have rendered them dumb, grabbed Dean’s fork—hers was long gone—and speared a scallop off Samuel’s plate. A blatant type of flirting teenagers did, but there was nothing childish about the way his eyes followed the fork to her mouth.
“Careful,” Samuel warned, one eyebrow lifted charmingly, “that’s hot.” His smile was giving her back everything she’d asked for and more.
“That’s okay,” she told him and slid the sauce-covered morsel between her lips. “I like it hot.”
“We noticed,” they said in unison as if they rehearsed, and somehow it wasn’t funny. It was synchronous—how completely in tune they were with each other was a turn-on. It made her wonder where she was at on her decision about threesomes. Was she now hoping they would ask her more than hoping they wouldn’t?
God, what was she doing? Kimberly looked back down at the array of smiling female faces and sobered. She forced her mind back to business. This wasn’t a game.
“All right. How can I help?” she asked.
Dean tapped Shawna’s photo. “We are going to need to know everything you know about Shawna, especially her connection to the club. We also need to know if you recognize any of these other women.”
Kimberly was good with faces, good with hair. She could recognize a head of hair from fifty paces. It helped in her line of work; people tipped better when you greeted them by name, then followed up with personal details to show you paid attention the last time they were in.
“No.” She shook her head slowly after a careful study of each one. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember seeing any of the others before.”
“That’s all right,” Dean told her and put Shawna’s photo back on top. “Let’s move back to your friend then. She was why you were at the club? You were looking for her?”
“Yes.” Kimberly nodded heavily, somehow feeling as if admitting it was admitting she’d failed. “She started seeing this new guy, and he was a Dom. She told me about the club and about how she was getting into BDSM, and she wasreallygetting into it. I mean big time. And him. Then one day, she was gone.”
“Tell us about him,” Samuel said in a voice that was coolly authoritative.
“I don’t know much,” Kimberly admitted. “She was forbidden to speak of him; it was her first test as his submissive. I can tell you he had a big cock.” Her shoulders went up helplessly; she felt useless.
“Did she ever describe any of their scenes to you?” he asked and put a hand over hers encouragingly. “You’d be surprised how many people have their own special kink or their own flare. It’s like a signature.”
“If he has one and she shared it with you,” Dean interjected, “it’ll help us find him. Which will hopefully lead us back to her and the rest.”
“Well, I’ll have to think.” Kimberly’s mind boggled. They’d be here all night if they expected her to tell them everything she and Shawna shared about their sex lives. They were girls, after all. “That’ll be a lot. I do know he liked chains over rope, and he liked to be mean. At first, Shawna hated it. He wanted to call her filthy names and spit on her and stuff.” She remembered how revolted she’d been when her friend confessed that to her, how shocked she’d been to find out Shawna kept that part a secret for months before she’d been able to admit it to her over three entire bottles of wine.
Kimberly was gratified to see the men were as unsettled as she was. “She didn’t tell me until after she was okay with it, or I would have gotten her out right then. I’m sure of it. I know I could have talked sense into her—Mr. Wonder Schlong be damned—but she told me she’d been having so much trouble with it and was so ashamed every time she let him try that she couldn’t even tell me.”
“What did she say gave her the change of heart?” Dean asked and took her other hand. She squeezed his fingers back gratefully.
“Well,” she went on, bolstered, “she said he was always nice about it before and after. Never did it without asking permission first and all, so she never blamed him for it. And she told me he always acted really guilty afterward and felt bad that he hurt her.” Kimberly’s brow wrinkled as things she’d never thought about before started clicking into place. “You know what though? Now that I think about it, the way she said it was fishy.”
“Fishy how?” Dean asked it, but both men’s hands tightened on hers.
“Well,” Kimberly went on, trying hard to remember it right and not just weave it together the way she wanted because it fit in with her idea of what might have happened, “Shawna told me he always felt so bad for her, but then now that I’m pulling the conversation up in my head, it sounded more like he was always mad at her afterward. You know? Like because she’d agreed to it, that meant she was honor-bound to enjoy it or something. And then she said she’d get all confused, because she did enjoy the sex. In fact, the times he was the worst to her emotionally were the times it was the best physically. And that really fucked her up. No wonder she always cried once the son of a bitch was done with her.”
Kimberly was crying now. Angry for her friend and angry with herself for not catching this. She snatched her hands from the men, not feeling worthy of their comfort at the moment, and swiped at her tears. “The thing is, she told me all this after the fact. After she’d already worked through it.”
“How did she tell you she’d done that?” Dean asked and, ignoring her self-imposed exile, rubbed a gentle, soothing circle on her back.
“It was him again, if you can believe that,” Kimberly said bitterly. “Another major red flag I missed, but we were drunk, and she made it sound like the most thoughtful and caring thing in the world.”
“What?” Samuel asked.
“She said he felt awful about her struggles with her own sexuality.” Were fumes coming out of her ears? Kimberly was pretty sure there were fumes. “I mean, she told me she was the one conflicted; he loved every second of their time together. He hated to see her so anguished after such heights. Her words. So, like a loving, concerned, and thoughtful boyfriend beyond compare, he suggested she go to therapy to help her understand that it was okay to like what he did to her.”
“Bingo,” Samuel said.
