"I want you to finish that, Anna."
She wasn't much for the taste of wine and made a face at his order.
"And what are you going to do?"
Anna sighed. "Finish it."
"Exactly. Close your eyes, hon. I have a few things I want to get done, but I'll just be in the other room, and I'll come back in here and hold you as soon as I can." Dev leaned down and kissed her temple, then, after closing the curtains and turning of the lights, he left.
If her cramps would just calm down, she'd be able to sleep, but it didn't seem like they were going to cooperate, despite his lovely efforts.
When he came back in, only a few minutes later, he lit a clean linen candle that bathed the room in a warm glow, undressed her completely – allowing her to move only minimally – then did the same thing for himself before climbing onto the bed behind her and pressing a heating pad over her lower tummy.
"Is there anything I can get you? Anything else I can do to help you feel better?"
It was very unlike her, but she put it down to the date when her eyes filled with tears at his thoughtfulness.
"No, thank you."
Suddenly, the wine glass appeared in front of her eyes, and she obediently took a large sip.
"This should be empty by now, Anna honey."
Ignoring the urge to cringe a bit at the scolding, she whined, "I'm working on it!"
"Work a little harder, then, darlin'."
She took another swig, then his fingers began to massage her shoulders, and she groaned aloud.
"I'm just going to massage here and there – let me know if there's someplace you want me to avoid, besides the obvious, or someplace you want me to concentrate on," he offered.
No man had ever treated her like this – usually she was the caretaker – God forbid he got a cold – the world ended! It felt a bit uncomfortable for no reason she could put her finger on, but his fingers were working miracles and she didn't want him to stop!
Eventually, she grew relaxed enough from all of his tending that she actually said, "C – Would you do my lower back? If I have cramps, I have a lower backache – they seem to come in pairs. But – just be very gentle, because I have an old injury there and it's really easy to hurt me."
"Of course, honey," he soothed. And, when he made his unhurried way down there, he kept his touch extremely light and gentle. Especially at first, then, very gradually, he began to rub more thoroughly, but always listening and watching her attentively for clues as to whether he was helping or hurting, cursing himself the few times he'd been a bit too eager and she'd flinched away from his touch.
But he was persistent and learned from his mistakes, and, eventually, she grew so relaxed she didn't even notice when he slipped her top leg back over his and opened her up to him; he did it so carefully and slowly. She didn't even really notice anything different until the hand that had been massaging her shoulders and down her arms ended up on her hip, and then slipped naturally down just a bit further to hold the core of her in his big palm.
"There is a pretty avid school of thought that says orgasms can help menstrual cramps, and I thought we'd test that theory." He kissed her ear as his fingers found her. She wasn't wet, as he'd found she usually was with him. But he had expected that and had dipped his fingers into a tub of coconut oil he kept in the headboard before he'd brought them to her. Her body heat melted it and slickened them very nicely, allowing him to slip them easily back and forth over her while just the presence of his outer fingers kept her accessible to him.
It took a little while longer than he'd experienced with her, and she began to squirm within his arms as if she wasn't into this at all.
"Am I hurting you?" he asked, stopping all movement.
Anna didn't answer him immediately, bending forward, away from him and saying softly, in a way he knew meant she hoped he wouldn't hear her, "Noooooooooo…"
"Put your ear next to mine." This forced her to straighten up and press herself back against him, giving him even further access to her. "Are you hurting too much for this to feel good?" he asked, taking advantage of her position to reach down to find incontrovertible evidence to the contrary before she even answered him.
She was soaking wet, but he wasn't going to let her get off that easy.
"Anna, even though I already have my answer, you know by now that I expect you to answer me when I ask you a question, and that I am not at all fond of waiting for you to do so…"
"No," she answered petulantly.
"No what?"
Another heavy sigh. "No, you're not hurting me, and, no, I'm not hurting too much for it to feel good."
"Then why are you acting as if you want to get away from me when you know I'm not going to let you go until you've come hard at least a handful of times – to see if it helps your cramps?"
And because he wanted to, she knew he didn't say – he loved to watch her writhing in ecstasy – and she wasn't allowed to say no to him without a very good reason. Anna imagined that trying to escape his arms was tantamount to telling him no, in his book.
"Because…" She wished she thought he would just leave it at that, but she knew better. "Because the cramps do distract me a bit, and I'm taking way too long to get there."
"Anna!" He sounded truly disappointed in her, and that made her heart and her stomach twist right along with her uterus. "You know I don't run a timer in my head about these things, just like I don't keep score about how many times I've come as opposed to you. It takes however long it takes, and there's little else I'd rather be doing than bringing you pleasure and helping you feel better at the same time. Hell, I'd rather touch you much more than I'd rather touch myself, woman."
Hard arms tightened around her. "So no more of that talk. Ever. If you felt better, I'd be giving you a spanking about now. But I think that's contraindicated, for the evening, anyway."
He adjusted her back into position, brought her wrists above her head and held them there because he knew how much she enjoyed being helpless against what was being done to her. Then he put his free hand back where it belonged – touching her, teasing her, doing his best to adjust his movements by the gasps and whimpers that his fingers wrung from her, adoring the way she trembled against him. Her hips pressed her up against the source of her desire, he leaned down to bite the back of her neck then around to just below her earlobe as he forced her to lose control. Forced her to surrender herself – her pleasure – to him, vowing to himself as he heard her fighting against herself not to scream, that he would soon have a place where she could scream her head off and no one would call the police.
Or come to her rescue.
She felt his satisfied growl against her ear, even though she could feel how unsatisfied he really was. "God you are even more gorgeous than usual when you come – I wish I could just keep you in a constant orgasmic state."
He did the best he could on that – bringing her to peak after peak until she begged him to stop, then he brought her to one more, and that seemed to be the hardest of all of them.
And he never once made her feel as if she had any kind of obligation – even as his submissive – to help him with the powerful erection she could feel pressing against her rear end.
Knowing Anna didn't like to leave lube all over herself, Dev left her momentarily to return with a warm, wet cloth, with which he tended to her like a child as she lay there with an arm thrown over her face to hide her embarrassment. She wondered if she'd ever really get used to the way he so naturally did such personal things for her.
"Sleepy?" He had learned that sometimes orgasms put her right to sleep, sometimes they energized her, and it was only about seven or so. "Feeling any better?"
She smiled, and that instantly made him feel better, he didn't know about her. "Not particularly, and I think I do. The cramps are still there, but they're not as ferocious as they were."
He kissed her cheek. "I'm glad."
"Thank you for taking care of me, Dev."
"Of course, baby. And it's not over yet. You just rest, and I'll be right back. We'll watch whatever you want on TV." Dev was not a TV person – besides the occasional documentary on World War II, which he was a bit of an amateur historian about. Movies were okay, but he would never voluntarily sit down to binge watch anything – as she was wont to do – so this was a big concession.
When he returned, it was with a big tray. One of those on which breakfast in bed was usually served – and he plunked it down over her, laden with all sorts of things he was trying to encourage her not to eat, although he had yet to make it mandatory when she wasn't with him—soda, chocolate, chips, and Chinese food. Her favorite, General Tso's, was there, its sauce laden with sugar, with pork fried rice to put it over, two tubes of plain Pringles, which he wouldn't have touched with someone else's mouth, and an enormous bag of Rolos.
Somewhere in this mess was his steamed broccoli and chicken over brown rice, but it was lost – overwhelmed by a forest of bad food.
He'd used one of those delivery services that would go wherever you wanted them to get all the different things, and it hadn't been cheap, but it had made her smile, so it was more than worth it as far as he was concerned.
Dev gave her a bowl and a spoon and told her to go to town, but warned her that as of midnight all of this food would turn into pumpkin seeds, kale, and tofu, so she'd best enjoy it while she was allowed to have it.
But she didn't dive immediately into the food, or the chocolate, or the potato chips. Instead, she turned towards him and hugged him. "I know I said it before, but thank you so much for taking such wonderful care of me." Anna's eyes flitted to his, then down again. "I don't know what I thought having a Dom would be like, but I know it wasn't this."
He was glad she was looking down – she didn't catch his blush at her words. "Well, I hate to see you feeling badly. And I know, as much as you wanted this, that it hasn't been easy on you, nor have I. So every once in a while, you deserve to be spoiled."
Anna hugged him harder at that, then turned back towards the food and clicked the TV on to Netflix. "Yay! Red Dwarf!"
"Yay," Dev repeated, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, which got him smacked yet again.
Eventually, maybe, he'd learn what caused that…
Chapter 4
Anna was even more tied up than usual.
She was at Dev's new place, which was scads swankier than his little third floor walk up had been, even if she sort of missed it, sometimes. The casino was going gangbusters, and, having closed a deal with a high-end chain of hotels to build a resort style hotel in partnership with his Aces Casino, he had indulged himself a bit – for the first time in a long time – and had bought this beautiful condo.
He had tried to get her to consider doing so, too, but she was adamant about staying where she was. She liked it, it was cheap, and she had no interest in moving. Anna knew he felt as if he wanted to order her to do it, but they had long since agreed that his purview didn't extent to her finances, which would definitely be affected by the purchase of a residence.
He did do his best to keep her with him as much as possible, so much so that they had, in essence, drifted slowly into living together, not that either one of them would ever admit it or call it that. But between work demands and his demands, she barely spent one day a week at her flat.
But they definitely weren't living together.
He'd gotten in on the ground floor of this place and had been able to make certain modifications specific to his own tastes. Anna was just very glad that she hadn't been there when he had made those requests, the majority of which she knew pertained to her and what he wanted to do to her, rather than the usual carpeting or fixture upgrades.
She knew he'd requested that the place be soundproofed – especially the bedroom. She knew she would have died of the blush she would have been sporting if she had been there when he'd asked for that from the developer! There were also hidden, but built in, hooks everywhere, in the walls and the ceiling, even the bathroom. And she was currently attached to one in the ceiling of his expansive bedroom, naked before him as usual, body pulled taut but bent slightly, legs apart but not held that way by anything but the quiet submission of her will to his.
"It occurs to me," Dev was saying conversationally. "That, at one point, a couple of years ago, you got quite chummy with Tarin Simms. Do you remember that, Tink?"
Who could have forgotten it! That woman was a whirlwind of devastation that somehow had gotten through Dev's strict hiring practices, who had managed to drink and do drugs at work, pit best friends against each other, stole an employee's husband, and then got herself arrested for prostitution and ended up spending time in jail – serious jail for being a drug dealer. It was the talk of the casino for months afterwards, and from that point on, any time anyone stirred up dissension in the ranks or was being a first class drama queen, they were accused of "pulling a Tarin."
She had latched onto Anna like a barnacle, professing disingenuously that she wanted to be Anna's protégé, but doing her best to be a first class pain in the ass instead. Anna, of course, saw right through her. There was no doubt in her mind that the only reason she was so obsequious around her was that she was so close to Dev, who was well on his way to becoming one of the most eligible bachelors in Vegas.
Tarin wanted Dev in the worst way, but he had more than enough good sense to steer clear of her.
"Yes…"
She wasn't sure she liked the idea of where this was going, and she was nervous enough about what was happening in the first place. She might have had unusual fantasies and fetishes along these lines, but they were – for the most part – relatively tame. She wanted to be spanked and disciplined and fucked by a man who was a good, attentive Dom.
But this? She wasn't at all sure about this.
And she'd told Dev about her reservations, as he required her to, and he had listened to her – even more attentively than he did at work, it seemed, and that was saying something. But he had also quietly reminded her that he intended to stretch her limits as he cupped her face and pressed a wonderfully tender kiss to her lips.
Dev was keeping a close eye on her – closer than he usually did. He knew that she was wary of the newness of being put into this position. And definitely the tawse he had in his hand – that, although she did find it quite erotic, it didn't fit into the surprisingly tight parameters of what she had fantasized about, but he trusted that she knew she was always safe with him, even if what he was doing was making her a bit uncomfortable.
Anna couldn't move very well and maintain the position he had put her in, but she did her best to whip her head around and turn herself as far as she could while keeping her feet planted where they were supposed to be, to keep her eyes on him at all times.
She was only about twenty percent successful.
But she kept at it, because if he was going to use that horrid looking thing on her, she wanted to have some warning about when it was coming.
"Do you remember the promise I asked you to make when you told me you were going to a party she was throwing?"
He caught that frown she threw at him before she thought of hiding it. It was a bit of a sore spot between them, one of the few in all their time together. He hadn't had any authority over her then – boss/employee certainly didn't extend into her private life. He was her best friend, and she his, but even that only went so far.
But Dev knew what was going to happen at those types of parties – and the booze, illegal drugs and sex was just the beginning. He didn't want to see Anna get mixed up in that, not that she would, necessarily, but he understood the allure better than most folks, having grown up around it and fallen victim to it when he was very young.
Nowadays, he'd just tell her she couldn't go, which – although he wouldn't hesitate about it – he truly hated to do. She worked hard, and she deserved to play hard. But not like that. He'd put his foot down, but then he'd do his level best to make it up to her. He wasn't one of tho
se Doms who tried to prevent his sub from ever going anywhere without him. That would have driven the both of them crazy.
In fact, he was in the middle of encouraging her to try to reconnect with a brother she had pretty much written off.
And when he felt he had to tell her 'no' about something that cropped up like this, when he couldn't, in good conscience, allow her to do something that he thought might actually be detrimental to her health, he felt guilty about it. He ended up spending the day spoiling her instead – which, he was both horrified and tickled to know that, for her, didn't mean being taken to an expensive show or having him splash out all kinds of money on her. In fact, she rarely let him pay for anything.
No, his little woman – which he had taken to calling her more because she hated it so much than because he liked the expression – was just about as low maintenance as it got. She liked to have breakfast out at the same place where they'd been eating for years – where they alternated buying. Get food for the birds she fed in his back yard – which she insisted on paying for, since it was her hobby – which meant that his yard was now full of birdfeeders and the accompanying squirrels – come home, have sex, nap, have more sex, then order in – usually Chinese, but sometimes pizza, and watch television.
Sometimes, she even graciously allowed him to pay for dinner.
As he watched her nervously trying to twirl around, he marveled – not for the first time – at where he was, what he was doing, but most of all, to whom he was doing it. If he had been asked not too long ago if he ever saw himself doing this with her, he would have laughed himself sick.
But she was standing there, just as he wanted her, all petite and naked and distracting, having allowed herself to be cuffed – carefully and comfortably. But secure, nonetheless – and stretched up to find herself unable to come down, those tiny feet of hers nudged wide apart to reveal her secrets to him, and wholly unable to defend herself against anything he might decide to do with her.
If he allowed himself to think about it too much, he'd find his eyes misting over at the thought of the profound trust she placed in him each time they came together, even on those rare occasions when they just had sex. He was so much bigger than she was. Six-four to her five-two and he thought he might overwhelm her at first, but she had shyly confessed to him, in the darkness, after he'd taken her as his for the first time, that she loved how big he was. That it made her feel safe, and he had to wonder if she still felt that way, considering the things he did to her, but it seemed to him that she did.
Only Her Page 4