The Cherished One Read online

  The Cherished One

  By

  Carolyn Faulkner

  ©2012 by Blushing Books® and Carolyn Faulkner

  Copyright © 2012 by Blushing Books® and Carolyn Faulkner

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

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  Faulkner, Carolyn

  The Cherished One

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-60968-777-9

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images provided by Bigstock.com

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Chapter One

  It was pre-early morning, well before dawn, where he needed it to be, in the magnificent stillness of the night. The room was pitch-black, but it might as well have been lit like a stadium, as far as he was concerned. His eyes knew no deficit; he eagerly drank in every detail of the lusciously curved woman who was curled in the middle of their bed, even all these years as if she’d been seeking his non-existent heat and scent, as he sought hers every second he was conscious.

  She was sound asleep; as well she should be, considering the activities of last evening. She slept in her favorite position, on her right side, right leg extended, left drawn up, pillow scrunched to within an inch of its life beneath her head, those long red curls – what had attracted him to her immediately, on sight so long ago, flowing out behind her as if she were flying through the air instead of safe in Morpheus’ arms.

  As always unable to resist, Dag reached out from where he stood, fully dressed, leaning over the bed that still radiated that special essence that was hers and hers alone, breathing deeply of it once last time and let one of those eager burnished curls claim his finger, tightening around it with the same soft strength as she would, had she known what he was planning.

  He let the errant lock fall, following its descent along the curve of her creamy, flawless backside until it became slightly less flawless where wondrous cheeks betrayed the loving discipline he had applied there hours before. They still wore the rosy red blush of his avid attentions – signs of his handprint as well as the shape of the hairbrush he’d used - and the tip of his index finger naturally sought their increased warmth.

  Fawna stirred at his touch, as he should have known she would, and Dag stilled, unnaturally so, until she settled again, and his eyes settled where they had spent most of their time while she had been sleeping: those two seemingly innocuous dots on her neck, until he forced himself away from them. Fixating there wasn’t going to change what had happened.

  Or what had to happen.

  One last sweep of their room, long ago reserved only for romance that only last night had been blazingly so, all the lavender scented candles - her favorite - had long since been extinguished, the beautiful antique oil lamps extinguished, the fresh roses he had bought well away from any flames and nearer to her, where they would naturally thrive and fill the air with that unmistakable scent.

  Dag took a deep, entirely unnecessary breath. He’d made many exits in his life, said goodbye to his heart in very many different ways, but none as painful as this. He almost couldn’t make himself do it, but he knew he had to. He’d allowed her to be hurt in a way that she had every right to expect to be protected from, and there was precious little he could have done about it. What use was he to her if he couldn’t keep his enemies from threatening her like that? She could have been killed right in front of his eyes, exactly as he had killed another innocent soul. And what if he ended up destroying – yet again – that which he only sought to cherish?

  He would not – could not – exist if that happened again.

  He would eagerly embrace the sun rather than endanger a sliver of this – his – woman’s essence.

  As if departing a great ruler, Daggar backed away from her, bowing somewhat, feeling he was able to give her only the slightest part of the true honor she was due, as a lady, as his woman, as he faded away from her.

  For good.

  For her good.

  ***

  Fawna rolled and stretched, claiming much more of the bed than she knew was hers, but knowing he wasn’t going to be there by the sun she could feel was peeping through the lacy bedroom curtains. She had to give it to Dag. He wouldn’t let his handicap effect her decorating tastes in the least. She was all for blackout measures, so he would be more comfortable during the day, but he’d merely smiled that sometimes quite annoyingly beatific smile of his and assured her that he didn’t much miss the daytime any more, and that she was free to decorate any which way she liked.

  Fawna had figured he might have come to regret that statement, considering that he spent a reasonable amount of his time in an extremely feminine environment, but he’d never said a word against her choices, so she’d let it be. She’d gone a bit crazy, even for herself, she had to admit, and the bedroom was a frilly girl’s romp. It had tickled her, at first, to see her monstrously male, testosterone oozing man lying in a room that reeked of pastel pinks and purples and delicate laces and flowers, but somehow nothing – but nothing – managed to dent his masculinity in the least. And she found that their room became a wonderful, sensual refuge – even when she was being spanked, which, particularly in the beginning of their relationship, had been alarmingly frequent, and even later in their time together hadn’t become nearly as occasional as she would say she would have preferred.

  Something small exploded in a sneeze under the duvet, then rooted its way towards the warmth of the curve of her waist. Cookie, her somewhat asthmatic Chihuahua, who was not to be outdone by Teo, her pure white, bulimic, gay male cat, who promptly demanded to occupy – none too reticently – the other side. Cookie didn’t like Dag at all, which Dag found somewhat surprising, since he had always been able to call all manner of canids. Apparently,
no one had told Cookie that. Teo, however, adored him, an affection that Dag did his best to discourage, but his firm but gentle attempts at disaffection only seemed to make Teo love him just that that much more. Teo’s unrequited love was a source of constant amusement to Fawna, and a thorn in Dag’s side that he bore with his usual stoicism.

  Fawna stretched again, a full body indulgence complete with a long, throaty moan that, if it had been a lesser quality apartment, might have awakened their neighbors - disturbing the animals and ignoring their protests. She was extremely careful not to rub her bottom against the silk sheets, having learned long ago that overnight was definitely not long enough to recover from one of Dag’s spankings.

  That man was going to be the death of her yet. She could see the headlines – “Death by Spanking”. Fawna wasn’t at all sure whether it was the spanking that was going to kill her or the sex. Because last night he had broken one of his cardinal rules.

  And rules – order – was extremely important to Dag, along with obedience, especially as pertained to Fawna. He’d always felt, since they’d met, that she didn’t have nearly enough rules in her life, and she had long since learned to obey first and ask questions later. Although she’d certainly never admit it to him, she thought he was right. She was the doted upon only girl, and the youngest, and her family, much to her older brother’s disgust, had pretty much let her get away with murder. Her parents hadn’t expected much from her in the way of behavior, beyond the basics of not being hauled home by the police or getting hooked on drugs.

  She’d managed to avoid those pitfalls, along with unwanted pregnancy, and had basically been a good girl, but she’d definitely been a spoiled princess, and she wasn’t much into changing that status. After all, it had certainly worked for her!

  Then last night the spanking had been different somehow, and followed by something it had never been followed by before, due to his own rule: pleasure. He had long since decreed that, if she were going to be punished, then he wasn’t going to reward her by making love to her ; not that he ever denied his own desire for her. Indeed, spanking her made him absolutely rock hard, although she knew there was a definite dichotomy at work there, because she knew that he detested hurting her. But if she was over his lap when he punished her, which was a favorite position for the both of them for the physical closeness, his arousal was undeniable as it poked uncomfortably into her stomach the entire time.

  So, she often found herself being made love to after a spanking, lying on her recently singed bottom, feeling everything that she always felt when he loved her – his strong, sure hands on the parts of her that only he had access to - rubbing and squeezing, pinching just slightly, rasping her open every time as if it were her first, making her gasp at his size, her body never quite learning to accommodate him easily as he stroked himself up against her over and over again - only he made very sure that it never came to a culmination for her. And she knew that wasn’t easy, since she was so connected to him that his mere voice – in or out of her head – could set her off, and being spanked – as awful as it was, and it definitely was, especially at the time – made her terribly buttery, as he called it, in and of itself.

  He would tweak and suckle at her nipples, deep kiss her for long moments, even taste of the very heart of her before possessing her, but would very carefully steer away from the exact movements that he knew would afford her the release she would sometimes literally beg for, while availing himself of his own explosive culmination. Then he would tuck her against him, spoon fashion, her seared rear pressed back against his now flagging manhood, still throbbing with need of him, only to remain sorely unsatisfied until he deemed she might find release.

  Last night was different, though, in more ways than she could put into words. He had taken her out to her favorite little restaurant – a hole in the wall place that you didn’t have to dress up for but she did, purely to see the look of possession in his eyes when she finally made it out of the smallish dressing room slash punishment room just off their master bedroom in a clingy silk and lace sheath that loved every curve she owned. Small gold, diamond and pink sapphire droplets hung from her ears, matching the droplet that nestled at the top of her cleavage, where she knew his tongue watered to be.

  She’d been surprised when he’d offered to take her out. He was supposed to be furious with her. Why wasn’t he lining up implements and telling her she’d better hope she had enough pillows to last her, because she wasn’t going to be sitting comfortably for quite some time? That was what she’d come to expect from Dag. He almost never yelled at her. Well, he had last night, but that had been the extenuating circumstances that she would have sworn would have earned her a doozy of a punishment. He rarely needed to yell, and considered it to be a considerable loss of control, especially in front of a woman. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d heard him raise his voice. He didn’t need to, dammit. All he needed to do was reach for the hairbrush he kept on the nightstand.

  Or, hell, all he needed to do was look like he was going to reach for that blasted hairbrush. Or the paddle. Or the tawse. Or the cane. Or the crop. Sometimes she felt like the cat with the spray bottle of water they kept so that he wouldn’t claw the curtains! But she couldn’t help it – his spankings hurt, even if he chose to use no implement at all but his formidable hand!

  But there he was, looking practically illegally gorgeous in a pair of worn jeans that clung to all the right parts of him; he had a phenomenal butt that most men lacked any part of, she’d noticed, so that his jeans in the back didn’t just drop from the waistband to his legs, they molded to those wonderful curves, making her palms itch to grab and squeeze them as she did when she was beneath him in their bed. He favored black T-shirts and jackets, and that was exactly what he was wearing. Fawna didn’t give a damn. He could have been wearing the proverbial potato sack, for all she cared. She washed his clothes for him, and deliberately ran his all cotton t shirts through a hot wash and then the dryer on high heat, which shrank them, so that they strained nicely over all of those hard won chest and arm muscles.

  Fawna was all for eye candy, and Dag was the very definition of the word. She even forgave him for being a blonde. She’d always thought that blondes weren’t her type, but here he was to prove her very, very wrong.

  The Roma was a family run place that knew them well enough to bring her a menu and Dag a glass of good red wine, knowing he wasn’t going to be ordering anything. He could eat – and would eat, if she wanted him to – but she’d banned that idea as soon as she found out that it caused him to have to void the food later. She wasn’t about to be the cause of someone having to throw up; it just went against her grain to support bulimia, even for his kind, when she knew it did him absolutely no harm whatsoever.

  He was being so secretive, so... mysterious that it was in the back of her mind that he might propose, although she knew that they had already decided that marriage really wasn’t for them. And she was fine with that. Besides the fact women supposedly were no longer pressured by human society to grow up and get married, their own particular social backgrounds forbid what would still be considered a mixed marriage, and one that could possibly end in her death.

  Nothing like being dead to put a damper on a marriage, Fawna thought to herself as she watched the suburbs flow by outside the window of his Jag.

  She’d had her usual – a baby antipasto salad with their just right oil and vinegar dressing, cheesy garlic bread, and a meaty braciola with homemade angel hair pasta on the side.

  Dag loved watching her eat. She wasn’t like a lot of the women he’d dated, in more ways than one. She enjoyed eating, and didn’t hide that fact. How she managed to stay so slim, he’d never know, but she did. It had been a very long time since he’d enjoyed a meal, but he enjoyed eating vicariously through her. She was a sensual woman, and her taste buds were definitely a part of that package. Her moans when she was indulging that side of herself were nearly as rhapsodic as those when he
was pressing her home to ecstasy within the confines of their bed.

  She was just tucking into the tender layers of stuffed beef when she stopped and looked him straight in the eye. “So why haven’t you taken me to task for last night?”

  In some ways, she had grown to hate that half smile of his. She knew she amused him on a lot of levels, and that fact annoyed her on a lot of her own levels.

  He took a swallow of his wine, taking his time answering as always. He would not be budged, and sometimes that drove her crazy. “I shall, in my own time.”

  Fawna sighed. Of course. His tone said she should have known better than to ask, and that she was probably going to regret having done so later. But dinner – and his presence across from her – was enough of a distraction, for the moment. Dear God, how had she managed to rate even a moment of his attention? Despite the fact he was slightly paler than he probably should have been, he was drop dead gorgeous, and she still wondered at her luck that he’d deigned to be with her.

  After all, she really wasn’t anything special.

  “I should spank you right here and now for even thinking that, petite.”

  She knew he’d read her mind, but spoken those words out loud in response in a voice he hadn’t bothered to tone down in the least. Dag wasn’t the slightest concerned with modern conventions about not correcting one’s woman. To him, that was the most natural thing in the world to do. But Fawna frowned and sat forward uneasily in her chair, looking around them as if he’d shouted his intentions from a bullhorn. She could feel the blush creeping up to her hairline, knowing that, an hour or so from now, the color of her bottom was more than going to match that of her face. “Stop that.”