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Kato’s eyes narrowed as he faced off with Sam. Though the man was taller than Kimberly’s five-seven and a half, he was still several inches below Sam’s six-five. Kimberly had watched Sam pummel a man into unconsciousness with his bare hands, but looking at the two of them now, she had the insane urge to pull Sam behind her back and protect him.
“I’m glad to see you have at least that much integrity,” Kato said, not sounding glad at all. “However, Michiko has been a student of mine for over ten years and we both were students of the same Master five years previous to that.”
“The two of you were mesmerizing together. It was breathtaking to watch. Thank you for allowing us to be here.”
Kato turned his ebony eyes on Kimberly, and she felt the impact of his undivided focus for the first time. There went that urge to hit her knees again.
“How long have you been in a D/s relationship?” Dean asked—not aggressively, but Kato looked challenged nonetheless.
“I have no such relationship with Michiko.” He sounded bored. “I never have, nor ever will. What you witnessed is merely an extreme workout for her. The caning we did is a well-used practice in martial arts conditioning to strengthen the body and toughen it against pain. We use several methods to accomplish this.”
“You do that to all your students?” Kimberly blurted in astonishment.
Kato cracked his first smile. “No,” he said, “Michiko is a one-of-a-kind student for me. We discovered her penchant for pain while we both studied under Master Jong. During conditioning, one of the exercises was to plunge our hands into cauldrons of hot ash repeatedly. I noticed Michiko leaving her hands in for longer and longer intervals. She was sweating and grunting and began to yell. I rushed to her side, thinking the coals beneath had caught her somehow, and when I pulled her from the basin, her hands were blistered to her forearms. She was also in the throes of an extreme orgasm.”
Kimberly was horrified. The men were flabbergasted. Kato waited for them to process before he went on. “It was clear to me immediately that she could not be trusted with her own well-being. I took her to the changing room and had her disrobe. Her body was covered in bruises, new and old. It’d been clear she was pushing herself to the breaking point with absolutely no regard for her own safety. It was also clear she could not be trusted to monitor her own training any longer. I began overseeing her conditioning. Since then, I provide Michiko the pain she craves, and she has stopped seeking it elsewhere. She has been safe with her needs met here. Now, I see you three, watching her like a sideshow, and no one offers me an explanation to allay my concerns. Tell me, gentlemen, would you offer up your lovely companion so easily? Michiko would see herself maimed permanently in pursuit of what she craves. In the wrong hands, she’d allow the very life to be drained out of her. Whatever is happening right now has me far more than just concerned.”
Kimberly was impressed. He wasn’t overstepping his place from what she could tell. As Michiko’s Sensei and her Master, for all intents and purposes, he had a right to be worried about his star pupil. Kimberly wondered why Michiko hadn’t confided in him, then reasoned it had to do with classification or something along those lines.
“Do you know where Michiko works, Master Kato?” Dean asked.
“Yes, the FBI.” Kato answered readily enough.
“Well, all I can say is that we’ve all been given the same undercover assignment. We’re going to keep her safe.”
“I don’t know anything about your jobs,” Kato said thoughtfully. “I do know it’s important work. And dangerous. I hope you understand the position this puts me in.”
“We’ll keep her safe,” Sam answered. “We’re both experienced Dominants and now that you’ve shown us what to expect and what to look out for, you’ve made it a hell of a lot easier for us to do so.”
Kato eyed the three of them in silence for a long, intense moment. Then, apparently having come to accept there was nothing he could do about the situation, he gave a slight incline of his head. “So be it, then,” he told them, resigned. “I will stress this only once more and leave it at that. Michiko will not say when—that task will be on you. You will hurt her if you go too far. That too will be on you, not her. And I will seek retribution in her honor. Whether she wills it or not.”
Both her men acknowledged and shouldered the responsibility with wordless nods. Kimberly just stood between them and goggled.
When Michiko emerged later, she was dressed in a pair of beat-up jeans and an FBI T-shirt that looked about a hundred years old.
“Okay, so we got that part over with.” Michiko told them as she tucked in her shirt and hoisted a duffle on her shoulder. “If the ice isn’t broken yet, that shit is never gonna crack. I’m starving. Let’s eat and we can talk about when I get to watch you three stripped bare to your souls.”
Sam and Dean chuckled but Kimberly kept her flat-out amazement of the beautiful woman to herself. It was the principle of the thing.
“Fair enough,” Dean told her and the look he gave her was too close to wonder for Kimberly’s peace of mind. “Where would you like to go?”
“My house,” Michiko informed them with a slight grimace. “Might as well get that part over with, too. I still live at home with my family. I don’t want to have to put on restaurant manners after all that, and takeout will get cold by the time we get to where we can eat it. And I won’t settle for anything less than a hot meal right now. A big one. Besides, once you spend an hour with Miwa and my sisters, you’ll understand how I learned to ignore pain.”
Michiko livedin a house that looked as if its original design had been a multiplex, but all the divisions had long since been eradicated. It still clearly had five units with their own entrances, but there was only one fence around the entire complex. Three of the doors were open, children of all sizes and ages running in and out of them.
As soon as the four of them stepped out of the car, Kimberly’s mouth began to water. “Oh my God in heaven, what is that smell?” The air was filled with such succulent aromas Kimberly stopped in her tracks and inhaled like a junkie in front of a pile of coke.
“That’s Miwa’s cooking,” Michiko told them, breathing deep herself.
“Are you sure it’s okay for us to barge in on her like this?” Kimberly knew her meticulous, quirky ass would drop dead of a heart attack if she’d been cooking all day and three unexpected mouths showed up.
Michiko waved away her concern as if annoyed by it. “Nah,” she said, marching ahead of them and into the corner unit. “Miwa is obsessed with cooking. She even started her own YouTube channel. She’s always making too much.”
“Yeah, and then she yells at us for not eating it all.” A girl who looked no older than thirteen was slouched on the couch. There was a book in her lap, and the television blared while she texted furiously on her cell. “Like, we all are gonna be so fat if she doesn’t get another hobby.”
“Right? Now, get off your phone until you finish your homework,” Michiko ordered and switched off the TV with the remote. “These are my work friends. Sam, Dean and Kimberly. Guys, this is one of my kid sisters, Miyoko. Say hi.”
Michiko popped her kid sister on the head when all she did was gape at the three of them.
