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 those 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.

The longer he kept her there without bringing that tawse down across her ass, the more agitated Anna became about the potential for that to happen in the next few seconds. "Y-yes. You asked me to p-promise you that I wouldn't do drugs at her party."

His hands began to wander over the tantalizing flesh that was on display before him, cupping the taut muscles of her behind, the backs of her thighs, up over her hips and around to her less than petite breasts, pulling her butt back against him and rubbing his bulge into her cleft threateningly. Dev had never tired of touching her anywhere, any time he could. It had become such a primal urge in him that he wondered how he had managed to keep his hands to himself all those years. Her skin was like satin, damned near perfect, and it made his fingers literally itch for want of more of her.

All of her was never going to be enough for him. He already wanted more from her, but wasn't about to bring it up. He figured fortune wasn't going to smile on him again in another big way, like letting him have her in his life on a permanent basis or even exclusively.

Not that he thought she was seeing someone else. He thought he knew pretty well that she wasn't. He kept her much too busy for that at work and sexually sated elsewhere, to make her feel she needed to look for someone new.

He sincerely hoped.

And he was doing his best to learn to take what he could get, although it wasn't much in his nature to do so. He tended to go after what he wanted, but then, technically, he already had her in a lot of different, very intimate ways.

"And did you?" He placed the tawse over her butt cheeks gently, but she still flinched, which brought a small smile to his lips.

"I didn't do drugs at her party."

"Good. Now I want a further promise from you that you won't do recreational drugs at all, ever, with anyone."

"Even weed?" she asked, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them.

The tawse left her butt abruptly and came down on it just as smartly, once, very hard.

Or hard enough to make her not just moan but very nearly sing with the burning sting it left behind. She shuddered to think that there was a level that was worse than that, but she knew that, with his strength, that was wishful thinking. As much as she had tried, the reality of it pointed out to her very starkly that she would never have been able to ready herself for that.

"Yes, even weed."

Before that one stripe, she might have argued a bit with him – the "But" died on her lips, though. That implement inspired a desire to acquiesce – and quickly! That wasn't usually a part of her personality.

"I promise." She sounded overeager, even to her own ears.

Dev tried not to grin. He'd debated about what implement to use on her next. He preferred his hand probably the most, because it was so personal. He made her bottom hot, and she, in turn, made his palm warm, and he could easily – and did often – take a few seconds to slip his fingers between her thighs and tease her while he was spanking her.

The psychology of putting something between them with which to punish her was different on both ends. He had fewer body language clues about how she was doing. He was standing much further way from her than he usually did, to account for the length of the leather. Although he certainly spanked hard, the paddle, which he'd used on her occasionally, and the tawse were each much more severe than just his hand, so he was ultra conscious of what he was doing to her.

This time, however, was less of a punishment and more of a challenge to him – to see if he could get her hot this way. He kind of thought that, once she overcame her fears, she would come to the same love/hate relationship she had with a spanking.

At least he hoped so, because doing this to her – hell, who was he kidding? Doing anything to her – got him so riled up he was having a hard time not just grabbing her and drilling himself into her, slapping his hips up against that round white flesh with its angry slash of red marring – and further enhancing – its perfection, as far as he was concerned.

He laid four more of those wide swaths across her bottom, his cock becoming just that much harder with every squeal she emitted. She had gotten used to trying to squelch her cries of pain – and pleasure – in his old place and was having a hard time letting go here, even though she knew that no one could hear her.

But Dev wasn't about to let her get away with that. He loved to hear Anna's moans of distress almost as much as her helpless screams as she came, and he was going to prove to her that she didn't need to – nor was she now allowed to – suppress her responses to him any longer.

He wanted to hear her scream – full-bodied, unchecked by embarrassment or concern at who heard her, screams. He wanted to fill the room with them, to make them echo off the walls of his bedroom to remind her – to remind the both of them – just who he was to her.

And so he did, starting off slowly but building steadily, making her dance, kicking her legs apart when they ended up too close together for his liking then bringing the stiff leather down on the insides of her thighs. Twice each – to remind her where they should be, which earned him indignant squeals that were as close to screams as he'd gotten her to so far.

But then he began to strap her in earnest, falling into a rhythm from which he didn't vary, hearing her distress compounding with each splat of the leather across a backside that had no more pristine areas to cover; every bit of it was already a deep shade of red.

To her horror and humiliation, it didn't take many of those after that to wrench a ragged scream from her throat and several fuller ones after that as the tawse continued to fall.

In all, she gifted him with ten unselfconscious cries. On the tenth, he threw the tawse away and stepped between her legs with a ferocious growl. Gripping that seared flesh and snapping his hips forward against it while pulling hers back onto him, pounding himself into her as he held her still for his invasion, feeling his own slight embarrassment when his body wrested control from his mind and sent him spurting within her much sooner than he would have wanted. For a few seconds, as he was jackhammering himself into her, he felt a bit lightheaded, as if he was going to faint, but he somehow managed not to do so.

With his last few, still powerful, thrusts, he leaned a bit over her, and he heard something he never wanted to hear from her again.

An scream of pain that had nothing to do with discipline at all, that shriveled him completely, almost causing his balls to creep back into his body and had him immediately reaching up to unhook her wrists. She collapsed into his arms and he sank with her to the floor, cradling her gently and using one hand to remove the cuffs from her wrists. "Baby girl, what is it? Did I hurt you? I'm so sorry!"

As her raw, bare butt connected with the carpet, raising the residual bite she felt from the strapping he had given her to new heights, Anna almost smiled at the irony of the situation. He was beside himself, thinking he might have hurt her. She should have pointed him to her butt!

When she got her breath back, she whispered roughly, "Sorry – your weight just pulled a bit too much on my arms and it –" She hesitated, because she didn't want to alarm him, then shrugged and told him the truth. "Really hurt."

His hands went to her shoulders and upper arms, rubbing carefully. "Does it still hurt? How about if I put you in the shower? Hot water will help." She wasn't given much choice, or even opportunity to answer him, before he'd bundled her up in his arms and brought her into the huge, open shower stall with spray coming at her from all sides. He adjusted the temperature and washing her all over, paying particular attention to her right shoulder, which she told him was beginning to ache a bit.

Anna was touched at how utterly horrified he looked. If she hadn't known him better, she would have said he was about to cry at the idea of how he had hurt her.

She put her hand on his chest. "I'm fine, you know, Dev. It's just a kink or something. It'll work itself out."

He smiled, but she knew it was perfunctory – he was just doing it for her benefit. He hadn't heard a word she'd said, continuing to rub and wash her thoroughly, even shampooing her hair, then drying her off and carrying her back to the bed, dancing attendance on her to make sure she was comfortable.

She gave him a disbelieving look at his behavior. "I think I need to get hurt more often – I like seeing you all worried like this."

After getting her a cold glass of ice water and some Aleve, then tucking her in, he joined her on the bed but didn't pull her to him as he usually did. In fact, he remained about a foot away from her, for some reason, and Anna was unsure what to do about it, hoping it didn't have anything to do with what had just happened, but afraid that it did.

He grabbed the remote and turned on the television, putting it on a WWII documentary that she wouldn't have any interest in, but knowing that it would help her fall asleep faster.

Finally, when he'd made no move at all to get closer to her, she whispered softly, longingly, "I'm afraid that I can't get to sleep any more unless I'm in your arms." All the while, scooting herself backwards until she could feel her back against his chest, yet he still didn't curl himself around her and pull her close, as he normally would.

"Dev? Is something wrong?"

He didn't answer her immediately, then said, "Yes, of course there is! I hurt you and I can't – it's just unacceptable. I'm your Dom. You're in my care, and I let you get injured. I've never hurt a woman in my life – I mean, not counting spankings."

Anna turned towards him, doing her best not to wince at the pain in her shoulder as she did so. "That's enough. You're acting as if you deliberately wrenched my arm out of its socket, when it was just a bit of a sex injury – nothing more, nothing planned or intentional, in the least. Considering the differences in our sizes, it's probably going to happen again. It just…happened, and you have to get over it."

"Yeah, but –" His overactive sense of guilt where she was concerned refused to let go.

"So what? You're never going to touch me again?"

That thought was abhorrent. He could barely make it through a workday any more without touching her inappropriately, despite his moratorium on combining work and their private life together.

His arms finally made their way around her, however gingerly.

"Of course, I am. I'm just – sorry."

"Apology accepted. Now, if you'd like to swear off strapping me like that or spanking me, I'm all for that –"

His rich chuckle tingled in her ear. "No, I don't think so, darlin'. You're not going to get off that easily."

She sniffed loudly and repeatedly, trying to sound as if she was crying, "But my butt! It hurts! Ooh – horribly! Ow! Oh! The aaa-go-knee!"

That got him laughing.

"Well, it does," she said in her normal voice. "Why can't I get you to feel guilty about the very real state of my behind?"

Dev nuzzled the hair at the back of her head, saying, "Because you know you need it. You need me to keep you in line, to hold you to account, to paddle that little bottom of yours until you cry then make you faint as you come on my mouth…"

No response.

He poked her in the ribs. "Ahem. This is where you're supposed to say an enthusiastic, 'Yes, Dev!'"

Anna snuggled more comfortably into his arms, saying sleepily, "What am I, an idiot? I'm taking the fifth on that. And just in case, I'm taking the first, the eighteenth, the nineteenth and the twenty-first, too."

Dev laughed. "Free speech, prohibition, a woman's right to vote, and the repeal of prohibition?"

"Definitely. Just in case."