She sobbed louder, hoping he would relent, but he didn’t. The whacks sent tremors of pain through her torso. Despite the sting and humiliation, she felt her body begin to wear its welcome frock—wet pussy, swollen clit, hard nipples.
“Kiki, you’re a beautiful, fun, intelligent woman. A very worthwhile woman.” He smacked her along her thighs and sit spots and she cringed and wriggled. “I like you the way you are! If I went for some airhead, stick-figured, gold-digger, I’d deserve what I got.”
“Please, Jim.” Her voice cracked. “I won’t be so stupid again!” He’d never touch her where she needed it; punishment was not supposed to be fun. Maybe if she held her legs really tightly together there’d be enough friction. She squeezed her thighs and her clit sparked.
The paddle—whatever it was—struck again. “You don’t seem to get it! You’re not stupid. You’re stubborn and sometimes undisciplined, but you’re not stupid or ugly or any of that nonsense!”
There was a pause in the action and he put a hand on her inner thigh. “What are you doing? Spread your thighs, Kiki.” He tugged her legs apart and she felt his hand sliding in the wetness that had accumulated there. “God, Kiki,” he said, his voice gravelly. “If you only knew what you do to me.”
She could smell her own arousal and felt shame for making Jim suffer for her bad behavior. She knew putting herself down aloud just reinforced her internal feelings of inadequacy. But that was an intellectual understanding, not an emotional one. Jim was right.
She needed to feel him inside her and she wouldn’t get that. That was perhaps the worst part of the punishment.
“I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“Don’t you see that by denigrating yourself, you’re also putting me down? You’re saying that I have no taste in women. That the person whom I’m most attached to is beneath me.”
Oh God, have I done that? Jim didn’t deserve that. She didn’t think that about him. “I didn’t mean it that way, Jim. Please, please forgive me.”
He stopped paddling her. Her fanny ached and burned and itched. The handkerchief around her eyes was soaked with tears.
Emotionally, she was drained. She felt his hand move over her raw butt. It hurt, but at the same time, it was reassuring, affectionate. Her pussy throbbed. Shut up, bitch!
“I’m so sorry, Jim,” she croaked.
She felt his hands on her face and the blindfold came off. Kiki blinked a few times and turned her head to look at him. He looked glum, his lips compressed. “I know you’re sorry, baby. I wish it didn’t take sessions like this to get things into your head.”
His razor strop lay near his hand. “You spanked me with the strop?”
He nodded.
“Can I get up now?”
Jim gathered her up in his arms, carefully removing her panties, and pulling her slip over her head. Naked, she cuddled into his bare chest. Her butt protested, but the worst was over and she found she could ignore it…mostly.
“No more self-effacement, Kiki.”
She hiccoughed and wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’ll try.”
“Say something nice about yourself. I want to hear you start trying now.” He stroked her arm and shoulder, his hand moving to her neck.
Kiki turned her face and kissed his palm. “I…I guess I’m…um…tenacious.”
He laughed softly. “That’s another word for stubborn. I’m not fooled.”
“You’re always telling me how stubborn I am.”
“True enough.” He paused. “Kiki, you respect me, don’t you?”
“Absolutely and totally.” She loved him. She trusted him. She needed him. But she couldn’t stand the thought that he was thinking of someone else: Isabella. Her body rebelled at the thought. Look at me, Jim! Don’t think of her. Only me!
“Then don’t suggest that I haven’t got the common sense to pick a woman who is good enough.” He stroked her cheek. “Have more confidence in yourself than that. Have more confidence in me.”
What would Isabella say? “Yes…I will. I promise.”
* * *
Summer was winding to a close and Kiki had received a call from John Heath at Wildwood Academy. There was a staff meeting and she was to attend. Jim was working from home that day, but he wasn’t too busy to wish her well as she left.
Other teachers were walking in from the parking lot as Ernie dropped her in front of the administration building. Several did double-takes at the Lincoln town car as she exited, and she felt conspicuous. I can do this. Squaring her shoulders, she smiled as she walked up the sidewalk and into the faculty conference room.
The meeting went well. She felt like it prepared her for her new position, giving her some ideas about how things worked and what was expected of her. Kiki met several of the teachers, who all seemed friendly enough.
After the meeting, as they were all standing around in small groups chatting, John walked up and smiled genially at Kiki. “I just want to say thank you, Kiki.”
She returned his pleasant expression. “You’re welcome. What did I do?” The others chuckled politely.
“Well, we’re grateful for the contribution, of course. We’ve been sending in grant requests to Rocket Flare Foundation for several years now and have only been getting a few thousand. The enormous gift this year was unexpected.”
Alarm bells went off in Kiki’s head as she felt her cheeks warm up. “I can hardly take credit for it. How much was it? I forget.”
“No need to be so modest. We know you had some influence on Mister Chesterfield. Rocket Flare is giving us a whole new computer lab. We’ll be updating and expanding everything. The students will be delighted. I’m delighted.”
That bastard. He bought me the fucking job! “Really, Jim makes his own decisions.”
John poo-pooed Kiki’s modesty and then the topic moved on to other matters. All the while Kiki fumed behind her polite smile. Jim had used his influence to secure a job for her. Exactly the kind of thing she didn’t want, had told him explicitly that she wouldn’t accept. It would serve him right if she quit on the spot. Then his contribution would be wasted.
But she wouldn’t quit. She needed this job. It was a good opportunity, and she could do it. She could make it be about Kiki being capable rather than Jim being rich. She would do it.
When she got back to Jim’s house—a place she had to constantly resist thinking of as “home”—she went directly to the bedroom and began organizing her three suitcases. She dragged the first one, thunking down the stairs and to the foyer, then went back for the other two. As she brought them down behind her, she came around the curve in the staircase to find Jim standing near the bottom, eyeing the bag she’d left below.
“I don’t suppose you could be throwing out empty suitcases, could you?”
She wouldn’t bite. “No.”
“Where are you going, Kiki?”
“Back to the women’s shelter. My job starts in two weeks and I’ll find a place of my own.”
He faced her at the bottom of the stairs. “But I like having you here, Kiki. You don’t need to move just because you’ll be able to afford to.”
“Oh yes I do need to move.”
His eyebrows slashed down. “Why?”
One of the suitcases fell over behind her, but she ignored it. “Because I won’t be bought. I hate your money and I don’t want to be a dependent. We’re like oil and water, Jim.”
He put a hand on her shoulder gently, his eyes meeting hers. “What has gotten into you? Things were alright this morning.”
She brushed his hand away. “I found out about Rocket Flare’s grant to Wildwood, that’s what.” Her temper rose as she thought about it. “How dare you try to buy me a job!”
“Buy you a…” He pushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead. “I didn’t buy you a job. I got you an interview. You got the job yourself.”
“Then it was a damned expensive interview! Money buys so little these days,” she added sarcastically, picking up
her suitcases and heading for the door. Let him go back to nurturing his love for his dead wife. Kiki couldn’t compete with a ghost. Hell, she couldn’t even get a job by herself.
“Now just a minute!”
“No. No more, Jim.” Oh how she wished she could stop the tears. Fuckin’ stupid emotional wimp. “It’s over.”
“Kiki, I-”
“Good-bye.”
There was a cab waiting for her outside, and she carefully rolled her bags there and got into the car, closing the door firmly. On Jim, on his money, on her love. She’d get over him. Yeah, like probably never. She reached into her purse for a tissue and came up with one of Jim’s handkerchiefs. It made her bawl all the harder.
* * *
Jim snapped at Ernie, complained about Evangeline’s cooking, and generally made a huge pain of himself at work and at home. He knew he was doing it, but just didn’t have it in him to hold back his frustration. He tried to reach Kiki. Left her voicemail, email, text messages. He even went to the shelter where they firmly shut the door on him.
His new hardware line was almost ready for release and the public speaking engagements were crowding his calendar. Pre-orders were coming in better than expected and the money was flowing freely. He’d have given it all to have Kiki back though.
In fact, he seriously considered it. She hated his money so thoroughly. If he gave it all to charity, got back to his used Rabbit and take out Chinese, maybe she’d come back to him. But thousands of people depended on him. All his employees and their families, all those people out there who didn’t want to use the software and computers that the big two were selling. They all looked to him and Rocket Flare to be there, strong and steadfast.
He still didn’t know why Kiki had left because he knew he hadn’t given the school any money; he checked with his accounting staff and no checks had been issued to them. Her complete about-face floored him. They’d been going along so well. He had just about gotten up the moxie to tell her he loved her. And he did love her. He couldn’t remember ever caring so much about a person. Isabella had been his love while she was alive, but his adoration of Kiki was even stronger than that. Isabella’s pull on him had faded so much that he couldn’t even quite remember how it felt to have her beside him.
Kiki would be at Wildwood, teaching, very soon, and so he’d know where to find her and when. It tore at him to think of her there, stubborn, opinionated, beautiful…not his anymore. He considered showing up at the school and confronting her. He needed to know why she’d gone. Sure, he’d gotten her the interview, but getting the job was entirely her success. She wouldn’t lie to him and make it all up. It nagged at him late at night, no matter how exhausted he was, no matter where he was.
Women at receptions and pre-release parties fawned, and all it did was make him more irritable. Many of them were the very type of women he had had flings with after Isabella. But none of them tempted him now. He was lonely, even in crowded rooms, even with women pressing their perfumed air kisses on him.
When the product preview press conference rolled around, he had put on his CEO face and smiled confidently for the cameras. If the eyes that looked into the mirror at him in the mornings were dimmed, and the lines around his mouth were a little more pronounced, people would just chalk it up to being over forty and having too many late night events.
He made his appearance, but he was a brittle shell of himself. He was James Chesterfield, rich guy, computer entrepreneur. No one saw the real Jim. Kiki’s Jim.
Chapter 8
Kiki put aside the envelope from Rillerhouse Publishing thinking it was some sort of magazine sales pitch. Only after it sat on the little desk in her room at the shelter for three days did she take the time to look at it. Inside was a publishing contract. Rillerhouse wanted to publish A Flamingo Named Fred! She was floored. Because she’d lost that bet with Jim several months ago, she knew he was working on getting a publisher to take a look at it. She had no idea he’d be successful. And here was a contract. The terms were gobbledygook to her, though. She had no idea what some of it meant. Kiki realized she’d need a lawyer to figure it out before she signed it. But, of course, she couldn’t afford a lawyer.
Should she take a chance and sign it without getting it vetted? How stupid do you feel today, Kiki?
Jim would know a lawyer. Unfortunately, Jim would also want to pay for that lawyer. Maybe she’d just have to wait it out in the shelter for an extra two weeks in order to use her paycheck on legal advice rather than an apartment.
She still didn’t know a lawyer she could trust, though. It appeared that a call to Jim was required.
Kiki picked up her cell phone and tapped a few keys then hovered her finger over the “talk” button. It would open an unhealed wound to hear his voice. She could almost smell his cologne and feel his warm arms around her as she thought about talking to him. Stop it!
She hit the “cancel” command and changed to text messaging.
Thank you for getting me the contract with the publisher. Need a lawyer to vet it. Any recommendations?
After hitting “send” she stared at the phone for a minute and then put it down. He must be busy. No surprise there.
She started folding laundry but before she could finish, her phone rang. It wasn’t her text ring, it was her voice ring. She looked at the caller ID suspiciously. Jim. Memories washed over her and her heart ached as she let the call go to voicemail. Apparently, he didn’t leave a message there, however. A text came through a minute later.
Call Jessica Dentin: 555-8088. Intellectual property attorney. Tell her I referred you. Send me the bill.
Kiki’s answer was brief.
Thank you. I’ll pay the bill myself. Take care.
He wasn’t giving up though, and her phone chimed a minute later.
Call me, Kiki.
Kiki had to mutter her reasons for breaking up with him several times before she put her phone down and walked away. Oh how she wanted to talk to him. But it would be too tempting to chat a little, meet for coffee, have dinner together, end up in bed. The progression would be as inevitable as an avalanche after a gunshot.
* * *
Jim stared at his cell phone for a full five minutes before he sighed deeply and put it in his pocket. The car jounced over a pothole and he looked at the back of Ernie’s head, biting back a sharp comment, then back down to the computer in his lap. He couldn’t focus on it.
If she’d only call him.
He rubbed the place on his right temple where tension made his head ache, and then went back to his speech. Rocket Flare would release the new hardware tomorrow and there was going to be a big event around it. Jim’s PR department had prepared written remarks for him to make and he needed to add his own notes to them, to personalize them. One paragraph caught his attention and set off emergency bells in his head.
To commemorate this new achievement for Rocket Flare, we’re equipping 100 California schools with new computer labs. This includes hardware, software, and any needed structural improvements to house the centers. Rocket Flare is proud to help the next generation of computer users find their way to computing excellence.
Jim immediately pulled out his phone and called his PR department.
“Janet, I need to know more about the charitable giving of the new computer labs to schools. Is Wildwood in Cupertino on the grant list?”
“I’ll check, Mister Chesterfield.”
The wait seemed interminable. If this was the reason why Kiki had left him, he’d be able to allay her argument over “buying” her the job. Maybe he could get her back. His heart thumped loudly, the blood rushing through his veins with new urgency.
“Mister Chesterfield?”
“Yes.”
“Wildwood Academy in Cupertino is among the 20 private schools receiving computer lab grants.”
He could see why Kiki would be suspicious. “How were they chosen?”
“I’m not sure about them specifically, sir. I do know that the priva
te schools were schools that we’d given to in the past, and which we had not given to this year.”
“Okay. Thanks, Janet.”
He hung up and dialed in Kiki’s number. Predictably, she didn’t answer. Damn caller ID. She didn’t answer his text messages anymore. Their recent exchange had been the first since she’d left him. He needed to tell her in person. He needed to see her face when he explained that Rocket Flare’s grant to Wildwood was just a coincidence. She was wrong about his buying her a job, and now he could prove it.
But if he couldn’t get her to meet with him, he couldn’t impart the information. He thought about sending her an email, but she hadn’t answered his notes since she’d left. He suspected they went right in her digital trash or maybe even her spam filter. She was a stubborn one.
The Lincoln pulled up in front of Rocket Flare’s San Jose shipping facility, ending Jim’s consideration of how to get Kiki to listen to him. He was there to give his employees a rah-rah speech as they prepared for the onslaught of orders tech pundits were predicting.
* * *
“Don’t be like that, Cal,” Ginny said. Her voice had a pleading quality. “You know I love you.”
He looked at her closely, but couldn’t get past the impression that she was being false with him. There was something cold about her eyes, a calculating gleam maybe. And her mouth was stiff, as though she was forcing her lips to say words she didn’t mean.
“I’ve heard nothing but complaints from you lately, Ginny. I don’t do this right or that the way you’d like it. Even my dog doesn’t meet your suitability requirements. You say you love me, but it seems like all you want to do is change me.”
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