But he grabbed her wrist before she touched the doorhangers. Suddenly, only half an inch separated his body from hers. Adrenalin spiked through her, but, momentarily mesmerized by the emotion flaring in his eyes, she didn’t try to escape.
“Benji!”
His hold on her wrist loosened, and she took the opportunity to both slip away and grab most of the doorhangers from him. A few fell to the ground, and she hurried to pick them up before they got dirty.
Having collected all the doorhangers, she stood up to see a tall, beautiful woman approach Ben and wrap an arm around his waist. A few steps behind her was another Asian woman Gordon had introduced to the volunteers earlier as his wife, Alice Lee.
At the risk of appearing rude but realizing this was her chance to get away, Kimani said quickly, “I should get going to my precinct.”
Campaign materials in hand, she scurried away.
“Who was that?” she heard the woman who could have been a Victoria Secret model say.
Kimani didn’t hear Ben’s reply, bu
t her ears burned as she imagined the possible answers: damn reporter who can’t be trusted, a pet I played with for a few days...nobody important.
The last one was probably the hardest to take.
IT HAD BEEN DARK FOR half an hour when Kimani decided to call it quits. She had passed out hundreds of doorhangers and spoken with dozens of registered voters. She had half the neighborhood to go, and then she would be completely done with the last precinct, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched again. Was she just being paranoid because of the break-in or was someone truly tailing her—and why? Had Jake hired someone just to spook her?
Marissa called her as she was taking the BART train back into San Francisco.
“When are you going to be back?” Marissa asked. “I’m kind of nervous being home alone.”
“I’m about thirty minutes away,” Kim answered.
“God, I wish I hadn’t given up smoking.”
After hanging up, Kim leaned her head back against her seat. She felt bad for Marissa. None of this would be happening if she hadn’t tried to expose the Scarlet Auction. Claire might have been just fine with Jake. Gordon would not be investigated by the FPPC, and though her efforts had landed her a job at the Tribune, she was going to end up unemployed soon anyway. Plus, she would never have met Ben.
If she could do it all over again...
But he gave you the most mind-blowing orgasms. You sure you would give those up?
Closing her eyes, she replayed her first time squirting. She had actually thought she had peed her pants, or his pants, rather. Jake had disallowed clothing for his subs, but Ben had lent her his sweats and shirt. Looking back, she should have seen earlier that he was different from Jake and the other two frat boys, Derek and Jason. But she had been prejudiced towards Ben, judging him guilty of assholeness by association and because he had offered to buy her for sex. The $200,000 he had paid for her could have gone toward a worthier cause.
So could the four dollars you spent on your morning latte. Who cares how much he spent? The guy made you squirt. And not just once.
A shiver went through her as she recalled her first night in his Pacific Heights penthouse. He had made her come ten times in succession that night. She would never have thought she could get exhausted through coming. She seemed to have an endless reservoir of arousal where he was concerned. He always found the right spots on, and in, her body, and he worked them relentlessly. She liked the way he dominated her—no, she loved the way he dominated her. She now fully understood why Marissa was so attracted to BDSM. Which shouldn’t have surprised her that much because anything involving power was sexy, in money, politics, and sex itself.
Kim wondered if vanilla sex would prove too plain for her now. Would she need to search for future partners at places like The Lair? Would she find someone who could take her to the heights Ben had? Would she ever squirt again?
Feeling her carnal cravings begin to stir, she turned her mind to Gordon’s campaign. What else could she do for him? She could walk all of Havenscourt herself, but she could tell that a number of the people she had spoken to were disinterested and a lot of the doorhangers she had passed out would probably end up in the trash.
“I don’t vote anymore,” one voter had said. “It hasn’t changed a damn thing for me or the neighborhood. Just look at that basketball court there. It hasn’t been fixed up in years. I’m not even sure it’s safe for the kids to play on it.”
“You want me to vote for a Chinese guy? What’s he going to do for our community?” asked another.
“I’m a Republican, so my vote doesn’t matter since a Republican hasn’t won in Oakland since...probably since before I was born!”
“I understand where you’re coming from,” Kimani had said to the first apathetic voter. “This community has so many needs that haven’t been addressed. But if you don’t vote, for sure things will just stay the same.”
She thought about the basketball court in the center of the neighborhood and how it was just one of many things that could benefit from attention, but she understood that government resources, even in a city where voters were not adverse to raising taxes, were far short of what was needed.
Kimani sat up. Maybe she could organize an event to draw attention to the dilapidated basketball court. And if she could involve Gordon’s campaign, he’d get visibility, too—a win-win.
The more she dwelled on her idea, the more excited she became. The campaign could register voters at the event. Maybe it could even raise funds to at least fix the holes in the fence and put actual nets on the hoop.