When he got to Kimani, she ignored the churning in her stomach and lifted her chin. Jake glanced over at Ben and decided not to say anything. He tossed Claire a bottle of sunblock.
“You get to spread it on each other,” he explained. “Wouldn’t want you sluts getting sunburned.”
Kimani made a silent groan. She often went without sunblock, especially the kind that didn’t absorb well and sat like white paste on her darker skin. Claire squeezed some sunblock on her hand, then passed it to Lisa.
“I can do it,” she said to Claire.
Jake gave her a wide grin. “Yeah, but you’re not gonna.”
She looked to Ben, who had taken a seat opposite her. Was he going to let Jake dictate everything? She had gotten the sense that Ben didn’t care much for Jake.
“Be a good pet,” he said.
Her heartbeat stumbled. It was not the response she wanted. She allowed Claire to apply sunblock to her arms but fumed inside. She wasn’t as angry about having another woman touch her as she was with the fact that Ben was complicit with Jake and had called her a pet in front of everyone.
Jake hopped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Jason sat down next to Ben to enjoy the view of Lisa rubbing sunblock all over Ryan.
At first, Claire avoided the breast, pelvis, buttocks, and inner thighs.
“Make sure you apply it everywhere,” Ben said.
Kimani frowned in his direction but said nothing when Claire rubbed the sunblock on the parts she had passed up earlier. It was weird to have a practical stranger touching her private parts, but Kimani treated it as a clinical experience no different from her annual visit to the gynecologist.
“Now return the favor,” Ben directed when Claire had finished.
Getting some sunblock, Kimani took her turn. She didn’t rush through it, deciding she preferred applying sunblock to Claire over whatever else the men might have in store for
them.
“I get to even out my tan now,” Claire said to Kimani. “It’s like we’re on the French Riviera.”
Kimani looked at her own arms to see the sunblock hadn’t seeped into the skin yet.
“Come here,” Ben said. “I’ll rub it in for you.”
She didn’t want to go over to him. She was miffed at him. He gave her a wordless look, and she suddenly felt like a petulant child.
“I’d rather not discipline you in front of everyone,” he told her.
She sucked in her breath. What happened to the nice guy from yesterday? And what kind of discipline did he intend? Not wanting to find out, she stepped toward him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
He was fairly intuitive for a guy, but she wasn’t in the mood to acknowledge his better qualities. She replied, “You letting Jake be the alpha male now? He gets to dictate everything?”
Ben chuckled as if he found her statement to be adorable nonsense. Pulling her closer, he began massaging the sunblock into her skin. Unlike the soft and light touch of Claire’s hands, his were firm and hard.
“What did you think you were getting into when you signed up for the Scarlet Auction?”
She couldn’t think straight when his hands were on her buttocks. “I don’t know.”
“You know how domination and submission works, right?”
Now his hands were on her thighs, perilously close to where they had been the night before. “Sure.”
“Then tell me.”
“It’s a role-playing dynamic in which one person is in control and the other person submits to the one in control.”