His by Carolyn Faulkner (best historical fiction books of all time .txt) 📗

what all the fuss was about, really. The suppositories were extremely small in consideration of what other things he'd plied that opening with over the past several weeks, but with the fuss she put up as he pulled her over his lap, you would have thought that he was going to kill her. She was crying and whining and moaning and saying "no" enough to more than make up for the restriction she'd been put under about it.

It was the tears that got to him more so than anything else. She wasn't a weepy woman - unless, perhaps he was holding the cane in his hand. But he steeled himself and pushed the bottoms of the only pair of pajamas she owned down to just below the full curves of her cheeks. She'd gone through various permutations of chills and fever - for which he'd also been taking her temperature every four hours, rectally, of course, with the same fussiness in evidence - and he'd had to rummage through her closet in order to locate them while she'd been literally shaking the bed with shivers behind him.

He had to admit, it was a damned cute picture, to see that luscious bottom framed by the hem of the top of her pajamas and the elastic waist of the bottoms as it clung lovingly to the tops of her thighs. He didn't want to undress her any more than that because he didn't want to set of those awful chills again. Instead, he donned the gloves he'd brought, not forgetting that eloquent snap around each wrist, unwrapped the first little white bullet from its protective foil, and opened those rounded pillows to expose his target.

For someone who was, he knew, absolutely exhausted, she certainly could wiggle enough, until he gave her a warning, "Raina," drawing out her name as if he was speaking to a six year old rather than his submissive wife.

Of course, he didn't just give her the suppository. He had to press his finger well up inside her, to make sure that she wasn't going to be able to just pop it back out. That was what she seemed to object to the most, not that it deterred him in the least.

When he was finished, he rolled her back into what had become her most comfortable position - on her side, in an almost fetal position. He made sure that she had a bowl within reach if she needed it, but she'd been very stubborn even when she was extremely weak, and had always gotten up and gone into the bathroom rather than just be sick in bed, which is what he would have preferred. He'd gotten up each and very time to go in there and hold her and help her and, if she couldn't quite stand the idea of a toothbrush in her mouth yet, then to hand her a mouthwash rinse that would help get that awful taste out of her mouth.

At one point, while they were waiting for the doctor, she'd lain there, curled around the toilet, with her feverish head pressed to the cold, cool porcelain, and whispered, "Just shoot me now, please."

His level of alarm about how she was feeling ratcheted up to an astronomical level. If he hadn't already called his doctor, he would have bundled her up and taken her to the Emergency Room. As it was, he soaked every towel he could get his hands on in cold water and simply lay them around and on her, hoping that evaporative cooling would help.

It took the lion's share of two weeks for her to start to feel human again, and he made her stand down for nearly all of it. He didn't allow her to even look at a piece of paper from work for ten whole days, and even then, when she finally coerced him into letting her try to get back into the swing of things, he allowed her secretary to come to see her, but only for an hour the first day, two hours the second day, and so on, and he was entirely unrepentant about it.

Raina was feeling quite a bit better and also feeling her oats a bit more than he was going to tolerate, whining loudly that that was nowhere near enough time to do what she needed to do.

He had gotten right into her face and asked her fierce scowl as she avidly avoided his eyes, "Would you prefer that I said you couldn't see her at all until next week? Because that's where you're headed, besides earning yourself a punishment for arguing that I'm going to give you on Wednesday of next week, if I'm sure you're fully recovered. Write it down with a star."

Sighing as loudly as she dared, Raina reached into her nightstand for her Punishment Book. It was something he'd created himself and had published at a vanity publisher online. It had a place for the date, the offense, and a number of stars - the more stars, the worse the punishment. It didn't get too much use, because there wasn't often a need for them to delay punishments. But occasionally he was going somewhere, or he was already gone and couldn't get to it in as timely fashion as he would like, so he made her write it down. And it was also her responsibility to remind him on Wednesday evening if there was an entry in the book, that she was due a correction. Raina knew that he would think long and hard at that time as to whether or not to actually go through with it, and that would depend completely on how well she felt.

That next Wednesday, she joined him in their bed at ten, which was the time he required that she retire - not sleep; that was eleven - but at least come to bed. "Sir?" she said, as he readied himself for bed. "I have a punishment coming this evening."

"Very good, Raina," he