His, Carolyn Faulkner [books to read to be successful .TXT] 📗

the last, the sixth, cut across her butt from top to bottom, interlacing with the previous ones there and setting them all afire anew.

Only then did he reach for her sobbing, writhing body and lift her into his strong arms, depositing her with every possible care on her stomach on the comforter, then tucking her gently beneath it, making sure that not even the silk sheet came into contact with her obviously throbbing bottom.

Her Master left her only long enough to complete his own evening ablutions, then shut out the lights and joined her there, tugging her to him so that she was draped along his side. She was still sniffling, and he somehow found that incredibly endearing. She'd never become jaded about her punishments in any way, and he heartily enjoyed the dichotomy of having caused those tears, yet needing to comfort her afterwards.

Raina lay her head on a thick pec, which made a surprisingly comfortable pillow as she felt the horrid, searing pain in her bottom very, very slowly convert to a dull ache. Master put his hand lightly over her rump, and she had to resist the temptation to try to wiggle out from under it, even though he wasn't doing anything that added to her discomfort.

His big hand was just... there, fractions of inches above her very sore spot, and Raina didn't much like the reminder. Her mind was adrift on endorphins, full of flashes of unbelievable pain and pleasure as she drifted slowly off to sleep, more secure and happier than she'd ever been in her life.

The man who had created this reality for her, who kept her in line, who orchestrated her life completely, and, in doing so, made it the most fulfilling thing she'd ever experienced, lay wide awake, holding her well into the night.

In an unusually affectionate move, he leaned down and kissed the top of her sleeping head. He had some decisions to make, and, in a manner that was contrary to everything that he was, he was avoiding making them.

But not any longer.

Chapter Four

Raina slammed her car door shut and stomped into the house. She was just about at the end of her rope. The day had gone horridly, and he hadn't been there to hear her complaints about it - not that he ever let her do much of that anyway, but it was the principle of the thing. She slammed the door in from the garage, and then slammed the refrigerator door when a quick, scowling glance yielded no cold bottle of Diet Coke. He restricted her intake of soda pretty severely and she was only allowed about two cans of it a week. But if ever any night deserved a chemically enhanced beverage, it was tonight.

She turned, ready to paw through the pantry to see if there she could dig one up there, and suddenly he was in front of her, holding her leather collar, which she would normally have donned in their bedroom while she shed her business clothes and became what she truly was.

Eyebrows already raised at her snitty behavior, he buckled the soft leather collar in the back, then quickly and efficiently removed every stitch of clothing she'd worn that day - folding it neatly and putting it on the counter for her to retrieve and put away later - and led her through the house towards his den, paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to all of the wide open windows and curtains. That was one thing that Raina had had a very hard time getting over. She was a very shy woman, and he had absolutely no consideration of that whatsoever when it came to trotting her around the house naked. Of course, the chance of anyone but staff seeing them wasn't very great, being that the estate was set well back from the road, but that idea was even worse! She could just see being dragged into court because they'd given their sixty something gardener a heart attack by flashing him in the big bow window.

She wondered where he'd come from - he wasn't supposed to be here until much later this evening. He always kept her informed of where he was going to be - almost as a reciprocal of the fact that he was always to know where she was and how to get a hold of her - and had told her this morning that he might be very late.

When he walked into the den, she stopped quickly, but he continued to walk, and she had no choice but to trail along reluctantly behind him. There was a man in one of the comfortable overstuffed chairs that faced the door as they came in, and he'd already gotten an eyeful of her.

Raina began to pull at her arm, trying to get him to let go of her so she could run and hide. He turned, almost mid stride, and gave her a look that she was most uncomfortably familiar with, and she ceased her tugging immediately. That look meant that she was going to get a lesson later about comportment, no doubt about it, and she didn't want to give him any sort of reason to punish her now, in front of the stranger instead of later, when they would be alone.

He brought her next to the man's chair, not letting her shrink back behind him as she naturally wanted to. "Daniel, this is my Raina."

To her horror, the man extended his hand to her, as if they were meeting in a board room instead of a situation where the smallest of them was stark naked.

Raina was just as happy to let the man's hand die there on the vine, but her Master was not. "Raina!" came the sharp correction.

She sighed, knowing that she'd just earned herself an even worse punishment whenever he decided to mete it out, so she forced herself to shake the man's hand, but released it quickly as if he'd stung