Page 9 of His

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 - was 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."

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