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  This time, though, he took his time in showing her exactly what it was that he was using next, making sure she got an eyeful of it before he walked back to stand behind her.

  She wanted to shout "no" more strongly than she'd ever wanted to do anything in her life, but she knew that that would only make the situation much, much worse.

  And then the strap fell.

  When she awoke it was much later, and she was still wearing both of her collars - the more decorative one she always wore and the leather one she wore at home - as well as her wrist and ankle cuffs. Raina was on her stomach in their bed. It was, unfortunately, a familiar position. As soon as she stirred, he lifted himself up on his elbow, stretched out as he was beside her. He moved her hair off her back and began to rub it. "Are you okay?"

  She was certainly more okay now than she had been. He had only actually swatted her about twenty times, but with his strength and deadly accuracy, it was enough to make her scream so much and so loudly that she was now completely hoarse. When she answered him that she was fine, it only came out as a loud croak.

  "I told you when we first came together that I'd stretch your limits, and you know that I'd never consciously put you in any kind of danger. This was a very good test of your submission, however, because you really didn't expect it." They'd discussed, before she gave herself completely into his care, that neither one of them had any interests in sharing or swinging or swapping and whether or not that type of thing would be within his prevue, and they'd agreed that it would not be.

  He rolled away from her for a second, then rolled quickly back. "I know this is a strange time to ask this - "

  Anytime was a strange time for him to ask about anything. He didn't ask, he ordered, whether it was in conjunction with her, or his assistant or his chauffer. He was an equal opportunity commander - that was what made him such a natural dominant.

  "Y-you want to ask me something?" she said, barely above a whisper, as she tried only somewhat successfully to turn towards him without relighting the fires in her butt. But now she was exceedingly curious at this strange turn of events.

  "Yes," he answered, moving his hand to her cheek where he brushed back the hair then claimed it gently. "We've been together for long enough now -"

  Raina's eyes widened to an almost unhealthy point. Was he breaking up with her?

  " - and I want it to be a permanent arrangement." He held up a huge, open black velvet box, containing the largest diamond solitaire she'd ever seen. "Marry me."

  There was the absolute very last thing she ever expected to hear from him. He'd been extremely allergic to marriage, although he was considered quite a catch. He'd never been married, and as far as she could tell up to this point, didn't have any interest in ever being married. It had never entered their conversation - she certainly hadn't broached the subject. She wouldn't have.

  The silence extended for an uncomfortably long time, until Raina felt that she had to say something, anything. "This - " she tried again and cleared her throat, not that it helped. "This is a surprise."

  "I know."

  She could see that tic in his jaw that meant he was tense, but she didn't feel as if she could do much to alleviate it. All Raina could do was stare at that ring. It looked big enough to be a paperweight!

  Her Master wasn't going to wait forever for a response. He took the ring out of the box and put it on her left ring finger, retracting the choice he'd just given her. "As of right now, we're engaged. I'm going to give you a year - " he looked her in the eye and revised, " - six months to get used to the idea, but in six months I'm going to give you an order to marry me and you're going to obey it."

  Raina's eyebrow rose. That certainly had to go down in the books as one of the strangest proposals on record. But she didn't take the ring off. Instead, like most women, she moved her hand around, taking in how it sparkled on her finger.

  Her master sighed slightly in relief that she hadn't completely refused him. Raina may be his submissive, and a darned good one at that, but he couldn't always judge how she would react to things. That was probably one of the things he liked best about her, despite the annoyance factor that was sometimes inherent.

  When they'd first moved in together, he'd laid down some basic rules for her - setting curfews for any time that she wasn't with him, and of course, health and safety requirements, like taking her allergy and asthma medicines and not working past six p.m. She could get up any time she liked in the morning, but she had to be home from work by six unless she got permission from him. He'd found out quickly that she was at least as much of a workaholic as he was, but lately - because of her - he was finding that work wasn't everything and was determined to help her learn that earlier than he had.

  Her car had died one morning - she'd insisted on keeping it and using the old rust bucket, despite the fact that he would have preferred that she use one of his limos. He'd allowed her to continue driving her car every day more because he was stunned that she was insisting than anything else. She'd gone along with so much else, that it had surprised him when she'd become adamant about this, especially considering that she was still driving the same Toyota Corolla she'd had when she'd first made it big. The thing had over three hundred thousand miles on it from her trips across the country trying to convince cosmetics buyers to take a chance on her products.

  He wanted to take care of her in every way he could. What good was all of his money if he couldn't ease her way as much as possible - not that he really needed to? She had done a damned fine job of taking care of herself, and even though he hadn't had a hand in it, he was damned proud of her. If she'd wanted a limo service, she certainly could have gotten one for herself long before he entered her life.

  When she'd gotten out of work and gone down to the parking garage under her building to her usual spot where she expected the mechanic to have delivered her old clunker, she'd instead found he'd had a Jaguar XK coupe, in frost blue to match her favorite color delivered and parked in her spot, complete with an obscenely huge red bow.

  He didn't know exactly what it was that he expected her reaction to be when he gave her something like that. She never asked him for anything nor acted like she expected anything from him except his complete participation in their intense relationship. Other than that, they hadn't merged their finances at all, although he still paid for everything about the house and their living style.

  But apparently, with that car, he had overstepped some unforeseen boundary. When she arrived home that evening, via taxi, she walked into his den and dropped the keys onto the desk in front of him. "Where's my car?" There wasn't a trace of submission in her tone. This time, he was dealing with the CEO he hadn't much seen much of in the past year or so.

  Or maybe it was just the outraged woman she'd become. Either way, he didn't see what all the fuss was about. "Gone."

  "Gone?" Apparently she hadn't been expecting that reply, and he nearly smiled at her surprise, but managed to cover it. "What do you mean gone?" Outrage was thick in her voice.

  Leaning back in his big leather chair, he very deliberately caught her eye. "Watch your tone of voice when you speak to me, missy."

  Raina frowned. He only called her "missy" when he thought that she had overstepped her bounds, and she hated it. It made her feel like a five year old in front of her father. Very obviously trying to control her anger, she'd asked, "What did you do with my car?"

  "It was a jalopy. I had it compacted."

  Up till that point, their relationship had gone alone more smoothly than any he had ever had. Despite the fact that she was a fighter and a type A at work, Raina was very relaxed at home, and her submissive side made that even easier. Although he'd set down some strict rules about how she was to behave, he didn't want to stifle her, and she was always welcome to, respectfully, give him her opinion about anything.

  But she almost never had. He'd never lived with a woman who was so easy going. The only thing they'd ever really grappled over - besides this - wa
s his moratorium on make up when they were at home. He liked the way she looked au natural, and that was the way he kept her most of the time when they were alone. But he didn't want a beautiful, natural body and then a painted face.

  Of course, he'd gotten his way about that.

  But it didn't look like he was going to win this one. She was well and truly pissed. He sat back in his chair and watched the struggle as it crossed her face. She was very angry; for the life of him he couldn't understand why, but she was - and yet she was submissive to him, and he had just reminded her very gently of that fact.

  She reminded him of himself when he was trying to deal with his recalcitrant mother years ago - angry as all get out, yet needing to be respectful, because that was how he was raised.

  It was the way of things that he taught her lessons occasionally - although that wasn't the only reason for him to take a whip to her, and she was, as he sometimes told her outright, depressingly well behaved. But this time, he was the one who learned that she did, indeed, have some boundaries.

  Raina didn't do big scenes. She didn't storm out. She didn't rant and rave - not that he would have put up with it if she had. But what she did do had had him frantically wishing he had left well enough alone, despite his safety concerns. Hiring a tow truck to follow her around would have been less expensive, and would probably have annoyed her, but at least she wouldn't have descended into a deep funk, as she had.

  If there was one thing he couldn't legislate, it was her moods. She didn't give him the cold shoulder, didn't ignore him, and continued to obey him to the "t". But he knew that her heart wasn't in it. Finally, he'd ended up scouring the country for a replacement for the Jaguar, which she had never once driven. And one evening he'd met her at work and guided her down to the parking lot, where a reasonable facsimile of the car she'd been driving sat, complete with the high mileage count - although not quite as high as hers had been. He hadn't told her that before he'd brought it to her he'd had it gone over with a fine toothed comb by his own mechanic, and everything that even just might have needed fixing had been replaced or updated or upgraded, mechanically speaking.

  It was the first time he'd been able to make her cry when hadn't involved giving her either a sore butt or a screaming orgasm, and it seemed that he had been forgiven for a sin he didn't understand how he'd committed.

  But this evening, he'd literally held his breath for her response to his somewhat unorthodox proposal, and he'd been amazed when she'd simply lain there not saying anything. The silence had stretched out almost uncomfortably, and he had come up with his somewhat forcible proposal on the spur of the moment. He'd really expected that she'd say yes right then and there - there was a line of women out there who would have killed to be in her place, he thought angrily for a split second.

  But not really in her place. Not with all her interests, her few restrictions, and her darned near perfect submission, to say nothing of her wonderful body and quick mind. She had rapidly become the focal point of his life, and had come awful close to replacing his business, which no one and nothing had ever been able to do in his lifetime. He wanted her with him permanently, and not just on her say so alone. He wanted her bound to him in every possible way, and if that entailed marriage, then he was more than willing to take that step.

  The next thing she said blew him away as much as his original proposal had done to her.

  "I want a pre-nup."

  Chapter Five

  Her breasts were killing her. She thought they were going to fall off - worse than that, she thought they were going to stay attached. He had bound them at the base, as usual commandeering a pair of her own stockings and looping them around each breast in a figure eight that he cinched tight and tied off between her breasts, then tacked each of them individually. Not only were they each very tightly bound, but her now almost nonexistent nipples had also been previously clothes pinned, so that now, only the barest tips of them remained between those terrible wooden jaws.

  This was a very different situation from their usual. Not in their location, which was their bedroom, where she'd been punished and her limits had regularly been tested since they'd met. And not in circumstance - she had been spread eagled and attached to the recessed hooks in the ceiling more times than she could count. A long, thick spreader bar kept her legs well apart, and her ankles were also anchored to recessed hooks in the otherwise immaculate hard wood floor.

  She wasn't going anywhere. Raina was subject to whatever whim came into his head at the time.

  The difference this time was that he was mad.

  He'd been mad since she'd mentioned a prenuptial agreement. Not that he had wanted to have mentioned it first, and had to talk her into it, which should have been the case and probably would have with any other woman but Raina. But because she had mentioned it first, and even spoken - as far as he was concerned, as if she thought that if they ever ended up parting company, which he didn't intend, he would somehow try to come after her for money, or her business.

  He had flatly refused to sign one, even if it was drawn up by his own lawyers. He knew that this could simply be a trick, some sort of reverse psychology on her part to get him to be just that much more generous with her, to make him think that she wasn't after his money.

  But the bald truth was that he'd never thought she was a gold digger. She was doing too well on her own - granted, she didn't have the blue blood, blue chip money that he did from generations of ancestors profiteering in various industries; she was nouveau riche, and her millions couldn't compare with his billions. But he'd never thought that she looked at him as a dollar sign. Hell, the woman never spent any money of her own - except on the cooking gadgets she insisted on collecting or the occasional piece of Waterford that caught her eye - much less his own. She'd always taken him to task when he'd tried to spend any of his own money on her, complaining - genteely, because that's what he required, but complaining none the less - that she had her own money and had no need of his.

  For some reason, though, her suggestion that she would be requiring a prenup before she'd say yes incensed him. It was as if she could trust him with her body and soul - and did on more intimate occasions than he could count - but she couldn't trust him financially.

  She should have known him better than that, and he was struggling with himself not to take it out on that very pretty hide - and he was losing. Badly.

  He often inflicted pain on her just because he wanted to - not when she'd done anything to deserve it, but because he could, and because it always amazed him that, even though her bottom was striped to within an inch of its life, she would still be literally dripping wet when he cut her down - if he hadn't already brought her to a thundering orgasm that outstripped any amount of pain he'd inflicted.

  He adored her breasts, and adored torturing them even more. They were perfectly shaped, as far as he was concerned, and definitely had not undergone any sort of enhancement surgery, which he personally detested. They were still relatively high and firm, though, even more so now that he'd gotten to work on them with those stretchy stockings of hers.

  Standing directly in front of her as he forced her to throw those slim white arms wide, he began to lazily flick those clothespins up and down with one finger of each hand, letting the sounds of her anguished whimpers flow over him like the auditory aphrodisiac they were. He was, of course, rock hard, tenting the dress pants he hadn't bothered to change out of when they'd gotten home. He was still in his Italian leather shoes, the sleeves of his hand tailored, white silk shirt rolled up to just below his elbows, accentuating the heavily muscled forearms he was using to fiddle with those poor, beleaguered breasts, as well as when he'd laid deep lines of anguish across her bottom and the back of her thighs.

  Now, though, he'd put the thick leather belt he'd used to decorate her backside down, and, instead, had taken up a small leather flogger where each small strand was knotted at the end. It was designed for maximum sting with minimum effort. He could stand there
and abrade her breasts for hours without breaking a sweat.

  And she knew it.

  He'd blindfolded her, with a comfortable, padded leather blindfold that he'd had custom molded to her face, so that she could wear it for hours and it wouldn't become uncomfortable, and not so much as a peep of light leaked in. Since she couldn't see what he was doing, he was very careful to tell her. She'd seen every implement in her closet, and she knew how pretty much all of them felt against that tender skin. He'd seen her flinch when he'd dropped the belt to the floor with a clunk, and then flinch again when he told her what it was that he was picking up as he made his way to stand in front of her.

  At first, all her master did was just draw the small cat over her burgeoning, already over sensitized flesh, letting some of the tendrils dance down onto the edges of her nipples where they were squashed out the sides of the clothespins.