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Amused by her ramblings, I decided to go easy on her.

“That’s fine. It’s only for the earlier part of the day. If you’d like, I could have Hale drive you and Allyson to and from your appointment.”

“Allyson would get a kick out of that for sure,” she laughed. And if I wasn’t mistaken, she almost sounded relieved.

“Consider it a done deal. Just email me the reservation details, and I will forward it on to Hale.”

“I’ll do it in the morning. Right now, I’m going to change into pajamas, eat my dinner, then collapse on the couch. Maybe I’ll catch up on a few television shows I’ve been wanting to watch,” she said.

“That sounds exceedingly dull,” I teased.

“Oh, not to me. A stormy night, house to myself…I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing.”

“I could think of a few things,” I said suggestively. I could hear rustling in the background. “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what I said I was going to do.” Her voice echoed as if she’d switched me over to speakerphone. “I’m changing my clothes.”

An image of her slipping out of her bra and panties caused a stirring in my groin.

“What are you wearing right now?”

“Um, a tank top,” she said, sounding slightly confused.

“Anything else?”

“Just my…” she paused. “My underwear.”

Sweet Jesus…nothing but panties and a tank top.

I suppressed a groan as the image of Krystina’s lithe, naked legs clouded my vision. I stood up and began pacing the room in an attempt to work off the restless energy that had suddenly come over me.

“Are you trying to torture me?” I asked.

I could hear her fumbling with the phone, switching it off speaker.

“No, I’m not.” However, her words sounded raspy, a sure sign she was connecting the dots, and her mind was beginning to gravitate to the same dark place as mine.

“I don’t believe you. In fact, I may have to leave Boston right now just to come home and punish you.”

“Oh, really?”

“You sound excited by the possibility, Miss Cole.”

“Maybe I am,” she teased.

“You’re asking for it,” I warned.

“I’m not asking for anything. But now that you mention it, how would you punish me exactly?”

Oh, game on, baby.

It was time to enlighten Krystina on the many ways I could punish an obstinate submissive.

“I would bind you face down, with your arms and legs spread to all four corners of my bed. You wouldn’t be able to move,” I told her. There was dead silence on the other end of the line. I waited a moment before continuing, hoping she was forming a visual. “You would be blindfolded so you couldn’t see what was coming. You remember the bite of the flogger, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“It would be different this time. I would run it torturously slow down the length of your body, over and over again until you begged me to mark you with it. But even then, I wouldn’t. The more you begged, the more I’d introduce new tortures, ones that would bring you near to the edge of your breaking point and keep you there.”