“Afternoon?” Suddenly, she panicked. “What day is it?”
“Sunday,” Sebastian replied. “You didn’t sleep through an entire day. Besides, it’s just four o’clock.” He squeezed her leg. “It’s okay, baby. We aren’t on a schedule here.”
“It was nearly eight o’clock when you went to sleep this morning,” Wyatt informed her.
“Well there’s nothing I can do about it now anyway. I just hated to sleep the day away.”
“You bring up an interesting point,” Sebastian said. “There’s nothing you can do about it now.”
Wyatt cupped her cheek. “That’s what we want to talk to you about. Whatever we tell you about your past, there are two things we need you to know.”
“Three actually,” Sebastian interjected.
“One, we don’t judge you, so don’t judge yourself. Two, you can’t change the past, so you have to let it go.”
“And three, we want you in our lives,” Sebastian said. “So let’s just put that on the table right away so you can start processing the fact. Whatever we know about you didn’t change what we thought about you from the start.”
“Why is it that you act as if you’ve known me all my life?”
Sebastian cleared his throat. “The first time I saw you, you were nineteen years old.”
Kimberly didn’t understand. “How do you know that?”
“Jason took you to an auction.”
She twisted her head about twenty degrees. “You’re wrong. I couldn’t have gotten in the clubs. They wouldn’t have permitted membership and my parents had such a presence in the community, Jason wouldn’t have gotten by with toting me along to an auction.”
“He did, Kimberly,” Wyatt said.
“No,” she said, adamantly shaking her head.
Sebastian took a deep breath. A sharp pain pierced her chest then as she watched him. He walked to the other side of the bed, opened a drawer in the nightstand, and pulled out a stack of images.
“We’re going to go through the proof one snapshot at a time,” Sebastian told her. “If you remember being at any of these places, tell me.”
Shock shot through her veins as she caught a glimpse of the first image. Her young body was hogtied, hanging upside down in a bondage suspension. Men and women ogled her as she seemingly spun out of control. Her hair was in a ponytail and she wore a bikini, but she was clearly on display.
“You were brought to the auction block as a virgin,” Wyatt said, pulling a glossy black and white by its corner and placing it on the bed in front of her. “I was there that night.” He glanced at Sebastian. “We both were.”
“We were dating a woman named Leah. She’s still a friend of ours and she’d probably attest to what so many others believed they witnessed that night as well.”
“What?” Her stomach churned as she stared at the picture, at the innocence found in youth when a girl was pure and untouched, available yet unavailable, at least by her heart’s limitations. And at that age, in that particular picture, she belonged to one man already.
“We fell hard for you,” Wyatt told her. “We couldn’t take our eyes off you.”
“And you had no idea you were on this planet, much less being auctioned off to the highest bidder.”
“I was auctioned?” she asked, her hands trembling.
Sebastian clasped his hands over hers. “Wyatt bought your time that night through an honorary member. We didn’t want to hurt Leah, but we overheard Jason bragging to other club members about your innocence. That particular night, there were a number of guests from several other countries present at Lynx, the club where—”
“I know the club,” she snapped.
“Do you remember being photographed here?”
“No.”
“Do you remember anything about that night?” Sebastian asked.
“The only thing I recognize about that picture is the bathing suit. It was given to me on my nineteenth birthday.”
“A gift from Jason?”
“Yes,” she replied, recalling the way she had teased him by modeling the swimsuit. He had deliberately purchased her a style that would accentuate her breasts.
“So you spent time with me that night?”
“That night, yes,” Wyatt said. “Sebastian and I took turns entertaining Leah and checking on you.”
“It must’ve been some date if I don’t remember one thing about it.”
“You shouldn’t,” Wyatt told her gently. “You slept the entire time.”
“I did?”
“Yes,” Sebastian assured her, quickly thumbing through other pictures. “Here.”
She accepted the next photograph and gasped when she saw it. “My twenty-first birthday.”
“So you remember this one?”
“I remember that outfight. Bright red spandex is hard to forget when it’s the first time you’ve worn it.”
“You were tested by a physician that night because the bidders at the Lynx auction wanted a virgin. You would’ve brought ten million dollars.”
“You brought ten million,” Wyatt corrected him. “Jason realized we were the same men who had paid for your time when you were nineteen. Apparently, he was afraid of what we’d tell you and he reneged on the deal at the last minute. The charity’s chairman refunded the money and told Jason to never bring you back to Lynx doped out of your head.”
“Doped?” Kimberly placed her hand over her mouth. “This is all starting to make sense now.”
“What, baby?” Sebastian asked, cupping the back of her head.
“For the longest time, no one took me seriously in the kink club industry. We’d go to trade shows, fetish events, and as soon as someone found out my name, they’d back away from doing business with me. Ansley and Patience never had a problem. Me? They all looked at me like I was crazy.”
“Maybe that’s in your head,” Sebastian suggested.
“See?” She rolled her eyes. “How can I get any respect now when I can’t even remember events in my life, special moments that should’ve been spectacular or meaningful?”
“They weren’t all that,” Wyatt said. “Or at least, the auctions you attended weren’t. You were typically out like a light after you left the auction block.”
“We can fill in a lot of blanks,” Sebastian said.
“You might say Sebastian took it upon himself to follow Jason’s every move.”
“Were you stalking me?” she asked.
“I was protecting you,” Sebastian said, squeezing her hand before he released her.
“But why?” she asked, searching his face for answers. He seemed to know so much about her, more than perhaps she even knew about herself.
“Because I cared,” Sebastian said, acting as if he were pained to admit the truth. “I still care—a lot more than you know.”
Sebastian handed over the stack of photographs. “Flip through these and tell me if you remember any of these.”
Kimberly reluctantly accepted the pictures. One by one, she shifted through the eight-by-ten photos.
A few times, her skin heated and she trembled so violently she wasn’t sure she could contain her rage. She shuffled through them quickly as the portrayals became more and more provocative.
“It’s like I was leading a double life.”
Wyatt and Sebastian locked in this suspicious gaze.
“What?” she pressed. “You think I’m crazy. Don’t you? You think I wanted this, asked for it?”
“Absolutely not!” Sebastian yelled, grabbing her by the shoulders. “What we think is that you were terribly vulnerable.”
Wyatt said, “Admittedly, we started doing a lot of follow-up, Kimberly. We took it upon ourselves to research your daily activities and behavior when you weren’t around Jason.”
“You thought I had multiple personalities?”
“Yes,” Sebastian quickly replied. “You were acting like someone with dissociative identity disorder.”
“I pushed that,” Wyatt said, taking credit—or rather blame. “It seemed like the only explanation in the beginning. Jason would stand back and tell some of the older, more distinguished club members that you had insisted on being part of the charity auctions.”
“The way he’d pull you out at the last minute seemed to suggest he was telling the truth. In the beginning, the man always seemed terribly pained to watch you perform.”
“But you said you realized I was drugged the first time you saw me.”
“By your own hand,” Sebastian told her. “That’s what we thought.”
“When did you realize Jason was drugging me?”
“When did
you
?” Wyatt asked.
Kimberly dragged her fingers across her forehead. “I didn’t know.”
“You must’ve known,” Sebastian said.
“No.”
“You never suspected anything?” Sebastian asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You don’t remember losing time or feeling as if blocks of your life were missing?” Wyatt asked
“On occasion, after a night out, I felt like there were a few unanswered questions. It was like I might have forgotten something that I meant to try and remember for whatever reason, but no, I didn’t walk around thinking I’d lost a lot of time.”
Sebastian blew out a hard breath. “Kimberly, you were drugged with an advanced formula of a date rape drug that had a near toxic mix of GHB and an unknown substance. It’s called the ‘eraser’ on the street because of its potency. The drug completely erases the user’s memory.”
Wyatt said, “There are supposedly no known side effects after the drug wears off. Within fifteen minutes of taking the drug, the effects are seen. The person taking the drug is highly sexual and very aroused for about eight hours. There have been incidences of women having sex with up to twenty partners during a ‘sex trip’ experienced on the drug. Lucky for you, you typically passed out.”
“How do you know so much about this ‘eraser’ drug?” she asked, looking at the evidence, the snapshots proving her apparent bad behavior.
Cherie stepped in the bedroom then. “They know because they saved me from a very bad situation when I was drugged.”
“Hi, Cherie,” Kimberly said.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” she said warmly. “I was worried about you.”
Kimberly was worried about Cherie now, too. The little spitfire acted as if the mere mention of the drug had taken her back to a place in time she had no desire to revisit. “I’m sorry if we upset you, Cherie.”
She waved her hand in front of her face. “I was just passing by and heard the word ‘eraser.’ I thought it might help if you knew others in the BDSM community had been exposed to it.”
“Which angers me all the more,” Kimberly said.
“Yeah, me, too. We have a great community of friends who enjoy the lifestyle clubs and then this Sweden prick comes along and—”
“Wait a minute,” Kimberly interrupted her. “This isn’t just about a date rape drug. Is it?”
“No,” Sebastian replied. “There’s more.”
“I’ve heard Sweden mentioned in several circles. Submissive women swear he’s a god.”
“I would go ahead and give him that much,” Cherie said. “He practically ruined me for any other man.”
“You know him?” Kimberly asked.
“I know him,” Cherie admitted. “In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t at least met him. He’s been at a lot of Carolina underground club functions.”
“The name is so familiar,” Kimberly said, pointing at Sebastian’s pictures. “Is he in those?”
“No,” Sebastian replied, exchanging a peculiar glance with their houseguest.
“If you love the continual mix of pleasure-pain, Sweden tries and tests a sub in ways…” Cherie stopped abruptly, flicked Wyatt a glance, and continued, “in ways most Doms won’t test or try their submissive partners.”
“But he’s drugging these women? How can that be okay with the underground club owners and community?”
A faraway look washed over Cherie’s face. “Sweden isn’t the one drugging the women. It’s the people recruiting for him.”
“The hell he isn’t, Cherie.” Wyatt shook his head in disgust.
“My Master—”
“How many times do I have to tell you, he is not and was not your Master!” Wyatt raised his voice and Cherie looked as stunned as Kimberly.
Cherie took a step backward.
Wyatt dragged his hand down his face. “Damn it, Cherie. I’m sorry, hon. I just cringe whenever I think of—”
“Don’t worry about it.” True sadness emanated from the young woman then.
Kimberly watched her, understanding her dilemma perhaps more so than Cherie realized. She’d apparently been Sweden’s pawn, one of his many women. The BDSM practices kept her tied to him in an unhealthy relationship she was still ready to defend.
“I owe you an apology, by the way,” Sebastian said, clearly changing the subject.
“No you don’t,” she said coolly. “We’re best friends. We forgive one another without all the brouhaha.”
“Well, now that we’ve had a good Sweden debate, I’ll let the two of you have some time with Kimberly,” she said. “I’m really glad you’re okay. Just wanted to pop in and tell you.”
“I’ll be down for dinner. We’ll talk then,” Kimberly said, suddenly guarded.
“Get some rest. Let these two wait on you hand and foot. God knows they’ve waited a lifetime to do it.”