Out of Control

by Roberts, Teresa Noelle

  The young EMT grinned. “Just up from the inlet, like it’s not a few miles, mostly uphill. I think I like you. Those few miles may not seem like much if you bike a lot, but it burns more calories than you’d think, and you didn’t have them to spare.”

  “Rest tonight, and keep nibbling steadily,” the female EMT said. “Juice and other carbs will get you going again quickly. Get some protein into you as well to stabilize. And if you’re not going to let us take you to the hospital, do remember to see the doctor to rule out a more serious condition, or even pregnancy. We’re not doctors, and we can’t do a full series of tests. However, fainting’s more common than most people realize. It’s usually something as simple as getting busy and forgetting to eat, like you did, or being dehydrated or overtired.”

  “All of the above, probably,” Jen admitted sheepishly, glancing at Drake as she did. “I’ve been working crazy hours in a hot glass studio and then…”

  The woman roared, leading Jen to think she may have been blushing as she looked at Drake. “Say no more. Love’s grand, but you have to sleep sometimes, even if you’re young and athletic.”

  “Yeah, well, sleep’s for the weak and feeble.”

  “Which you are at the moment. I’m not going to forget that, even if you try.” Drake glared again—it seemed to be a talent, along with advanced math, crazy sex, making good coffee, and simultaneously enchanting and irritating her with his controlling, overprotective ways. This time the glare was softer, more affectionate. She stuck her tongue out at him. The older EMT beamed. The younger one looked a bit disgusted. Jen suspected that if they’d met under other circumstances, he’d have been hitting on her and didn’t like the reminder that she was with someone else.

  Drake followed the EMTs out to lock up behind them. Jen checked the clock again.

  Shit! She’d have to scramble if she was going to make it to work. No time for a shower. They’d just have to put up with a rut smell. She grabbed clean clothes out of the drawer, pleased that the black cargo pants and green T-shirt would look all right together. She didn’t have time or free brain cells to coordinate the way she usually did. She popped the dirty T-shirt over her head, replaced it with the clean one, and stripped off the shorts. She was just stepping into the cargo pants when Drake reappeared, carrying a package of deli turkey and a roll from her own bakery—a fresh, perfect one that he’d paid for, not one of the stale or burned ones she appropriated. “Something that wants to be a sandwich when it grows up,” he announced. “Wasn’t sure if you prefer mustard or mayo.”

  “Thanks. Mayo’s fine, though at this point I’d eat it dry. If you could put that together for me, I’ll eat it on the way to work.” She paused. “You’ll drive me, right? I feel fine now, but biking would definitely be dumb even by my standards, and I’m running late. I can get a ride home in the morning.”

  Drake set the sandwich fixings on the dresser and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry about work. I already called in for you.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “What? When?” She didn’t have enough energy to actually yell, so she tried to convey her fury through tone alone. “Why?”

  “The EMTs told you to rest. You know you need to rest. And I figured your boss might get unhappy if you called in too late for them to see if someone could cover for you. I called while the EMTs were doing their thing.”

  Jen opened and closed her mouth, still trying to find words to convey how furious she was without completely blowing up. Behind the flame-orange fury, Jen understood why, to someone of Drake’s temperament, his behavior seemed reasonable. But couldn’t he see that by trying to take care of her or make sure she took care of herself, he was only adding to her troubles?

  “Andrea said she hopes you feel better, and to call her if you want to pick up an extra shift later in the week.” He looked proud as he added, “I almost told her you wouldn’t be doing that, but I figured that would piss you off.”

  That was the last straw, the way he seemed pleased at not completely wrecking her chances to make up the money she’d lost tonight. For that, she’d bother wasting some energy to pitch a fit. “You mean piss me off more than you already have? How dare you! I need those hours if you want me to pay you the rent. I’m already going to be short since I’m taking Friday night and the weekend off for the show.” She threw a pillow at him, wishing she could afford to break something more solid on his stubborn, idiotic head.

  In a heartbeat, he was on her, pinning her hands to her sides. “Forget about the rent. I don’t need the rent. You’re my sub and my girlfriend. I should probably stop taking rent from you anyway, but we can talk about that when you feel better. You need to rest now.”

  “Don’t you get it? I can’t rest! I can’t afford to!” She tried to squirm away, but his strong arms pinioned her. What would normally be sexy was now just infuriating. And he wasn’t letting her get a good angle to kick, especially not with her pants still around her ankles.

  So she sank her teeth into his shoulder, as hard as she could. He didn’t flinch, even though blood was welling in the deepest areas of the bite. Jen felt vaguely queasy.

  “Why you little…” To her surprise, Drake sounded like he was laughing. “I said you were brave, and I was right. Not too sensible sometimes, but brave. Relax and stop fighting. I’ve got you.”

  The way he said, “I’ve got you,” sounded like the way he spoke when she was soaring on pain and pleasure, risk and safety. It stroked her clit, or maybe it was her heart, urging her to relax and let him take over.

  Then it punched her in the gut. He would take over. He had taken over. It was costing her precious money, which was precious freedom. And no amount of great kinky sex was worth that, even coupled with cheap rent on a turret and stained glass windows. “Let go of me, or I’ll do it again.” Jen’s attempt at defiance was countered by the way her voice shook.

  Just like her knees were shaking. And her hands. Most of her, in fact, and while her gut felt like it was quivering from rage, the more physical trembling was probably because she needed more food. Now.

  But how could she say that and admit he was right, that at the moment she needed to be pampered, or at least sit down and relax and have that not-quite-sandwich?

  “I’ll let go if you sit down and eat something,” he said. And since that was what her body desperately needed to do anyway, she nodded sullenly and plopped onto the bed, stepping out of the encumbering pants as she did. Drake wordlessly handed her a couple of slices of turkey, which she inhaled while he put an actual sandwich together.

  It took her a few desperate bites before she slowed down enough to catch any flavor. “It’s smoked,” she said, joy coloring her voice more than she’d intended. “Black pepper smoked turkey. My favorite.” She didn’t buy deli meat as a rule. It was too expensive compared to beans and rice and noodles and the occasional dollar-a-pound whole chicken to stretch for a week. But once, at someone else’s art opening, she’d tasted the smoked turkey with black pepper and had fallen in love.

  “Only the best for my girl.”

  Again the searing joy, followed by the sucker punch that this wasn’t real, couldn’t be real, couldn’t work as anything but occasional sex. But damn, she might as well enjoy the sandwich.

  She devoured the sandwich and several more slices of turkey before she sighed and conceded, “Maybe calling in tonight was a good idea. Being on my feet all night might have wiped me out enough I’d have trouble finishing the prep for the show. But you should have let me make the decision. My dom or not, that one wasn’t your call.”

  “Would you? Or would you have made yourself tough it out even if you knew it was a bad idea?”

  She ignored the question. The answer was she’d have sucked it up and gone in, and that wouldn’t help her cause, wouldn’t help her focus on the important problems: how to make up the money quickly and whether she needed to extricate her life from Drake’s when she was living in his house.

  And, God help her,
in love with him.

  If only because he had possession of the smoked turkey and her body was telling her she needed more.

  “Would you make me another sandwich? I have bread.” Some kind of bread, stale and probably deformed but perfectly edible, and right now that was all that mattered.

  “Agree that I’ll take you to the walk-in clinic tomorrow and the answer’s yes. Otherwise, you’ll have to get up and make it yourself. And no turkey, just whatever you have in your kitchen, which looked like carrot sticks and some sad salad.”

  She snarled. It was his turkey and he wasn’t obliged to share it with her—but blackmailing her with it was something else. “Planned Parenthood, and I can get myself there. But I promise I’ll see a doctor. Well, nurse practitioner, but someone who can order blood work and stuff.”

  “Dear God, are you pregnant?” he blurted.

  That broke any resolve she had to stay serious in the face of obdurate male idiocy. Sometimes you just had to laugh, no matter how mad you were, no matter how weird and intense the situation was. “Aren’t mathematicians supposed to know how to count? My period just ended. I go to Planned Parenthood for most things. They have a sliding-fee scale, and my insurance is only useful if I’m actually on my deathbed.”

  “I’m taking you to the walk-in clinic. They have a lab onsite so you can get blood work done there. I’ll take care of the fees.” He had the grace to look embarrassed. “As for the other… Yeah, I knew that. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Like you weren’t when you called the ambulance? Or when you called in sick for me? Or when you just decided to override my wishes about where I want medical treatment?”

  Drake clenched his fists, as if Jen, not he, was the one who’d been high-handed and wrong. “If I left it up to you, you’d have picked yourself off the floor, maybe gotten around to eating something if you didn’t get distracted by sketching out the idea for your next piece or color-coordinating the contents of your fridge. At least that wouldn’t take long, since it’s pretty much empty. Then you’d go to the bakery, even though you just passed out. And you probably wouldn’t get to the doctor at all, because it would interfere with your precious work.”

  Jen sprang to her feet, making sure Drake wouldn’t see how dizzy the sudden motion made her. “That’s what grown-ups do. They work, and they earn the money to pay their bills, and they don’t rely on anyone else to take care of them. Why is this so hard for you to understand?”

  She pushed past him so he wouldn’t see the sudden, horrifying weakness of tears. “And keep your goddamn overpriced turkey!” she yelled as she headed for the kitchen.

  Drake had exaggerated how bare her cupboard was, but not by much. Someone else had scooped most of the reduced-for-quick-sale produce at the co-op before she got there this week. The freezer was empty except for the mushrooms she’d frozen last week and some chopped onions. She hadn’t taken the time to make one of her usual pots of bean-and-whatever soup because she’d been wrapped up in Drake and the new turn their relationship had taken.

  She hadn’t really bought groceries this week. She’d needed supplies for the show and the budget only stretched so far. And she’d resolved not to break into the money she was saving for a car.

  But she had tuna. One last, lonely single-serving can of tuna. And since it had a pull top, she didn’t even need a can opener. She was sitting on the floor, eating it straight from the can because mixing it with mayo seemed too much like work, and gnawing on some sourdough that had gone from chewy to challenging, when Drake entered. “Can we talk?”

  “No. Get out of my kitchen.”

  He ignored her and sat down on the floor. “Let me rephrase that. I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen.”

  Oh, the nerve of the man! She had many things she wanted to say to him, and none of them were polite. He should be thankful her mouth was full of slightly stale bread. Otherwise she might say, “Turnip,” and safeword the conversation just to spite him.

  “When we got together, I warned you I need to make the rules. You’ve been fine with that as long as it was sexy, but when you are actually having some problems and need guidance, you act like a toddler who’s just learned the word no.” He reached toward her, then had the sense to withdraw his hand. “Maybe I’m going about this wrong.”

  Surprised, she nodded and let him keep talking.

  “We seem to have found each other’s hot buttons. My instinct is to push through it. I want to figure out why you need to defy me when I’m just trying to make sure you’re all right—and, for that matter, why taking care of you comes off as being an asshole to you. At this point I can’t tell if you’re overreacting or I am. But I think pushing things isn’t the best idea right now.”

  Jen sat stunned, the bread halfway to her mouth, staring at Drake as if he’d grown a second head. A head that actually contained sense, as opposed to the one he’d been using ever since she’d fainted. She opted against saying something about him being the overreacting asshole, not her, because she couldn’t swear it was the truth.

  Oh, he’d been overreacting like crazy, but from the best of intentions. Of course, those were the kind that paved the way to hell. But maybe she was overreacting herself. Her head wasn’t clear enough to tell. She was still right, and he was still meddling, but maybe there was more to it. She did have a few hot buttons of her own and he’d managed to push all of them.

  “Truce?” Drake asked, extending his hand.

  Jen thought about it for a second. She still wanted to storm off into the night, away from his well-intentioned interference, at least long enough for them to get some perspective and figure out what the hell had brought on the perfect storm of asshattery—but she was pretty sure that was a bad idea. If only because she couldn’t storm very far in her current condition on a bicycle.

  This way, at least, she could get to bed and wake up in her stained glass paradise before deciding if she really had to leave it—and Drake—forever. Maybe they could just agree to ignore each other. Or, more optimistically, in the light of day, they’d both see where they were being unreasonable and be able to work through this.

  “Truce,” she said reluctantly.

  “About the walk-in clinic…” Drake said tentatively.

  “I’ll go.” It was a good idea, probably better than going to Planned Parenthood, where they might or might not be able to help. “I’ll even take a ride. But I’m paying.” Which meant she wouldn’t be getting her father’s truck as soon and might even have to put charges onto the credit card she hadn’t used in three years, but it was worth it.

  Drake shrugged. “Anything involving you, me and money is covered in the truce. Touchy subject at the moment.”

  Rather than responding, since she was pretty sure any answer would come out wrong, Jen ate her last few bites of tuna. When she was done chewing, she dared one word: “Bed.”

  She was tired. That was definite. Woozy and tired and badly in need of pulling the sheets over her head and forgetting the horrendous end to what had started out as a great day.

  And she wouldn’t be tempted to argue more with Drake—or worse yet, to yield to him without thinking it through—if she was safely tucked into bed alone.

  “Bed,” he agreed. He took the tuna can and scrap of bread from her hands before she could protest, throwing the bread out, setting the can in the sink. Jen had a feeling she’d find it clean, label-less and in the recycling bin by morning, and she didn’t have the strength to tell him to leave it for her to handle.

  Not to mention that she’d probably end up leaving it there for a day and a half until she was actually home long enough to cope, and by that time, it would stink.

  She started to rise but discovered her usual grace had deserted her and just rocking forward and standing was not going to work. Instead, she shifted onto her hands and knees, got one foot under her, then the other. She attempted to push up using the strength of her legs, which had always worked before, but wobbled and had to sit
again. Drake took her hands on her second attempt and half pulled her to her feet.

  To her feet and into his arms.

  She wasn’t sure if that was the intention or just momentum, but she staggered forward and found herself pressed against Drake’s body. He changed his grip to hold one wrist in that sexy-imprisoning way that was such a trigger for her, slipped the other arm around her back. With that move, the possibly accidental became deliberate.

  “Don’t shut me out,” Drake said in a throaty whisper. It was half a plea, half an order, and she couldn’t tell which would be worse, which would crack her already fragile grasp on why she had to pull away from him. “Don’t let me push you too hard in ways that are bad for you, but don’t let me push you away either. Just let me take care of you. I love you. Love means taking care.”

  She turned her face away as his lips started to close over hers. I can’t cope with this. I just can’t, she thought as her body tingled to reluctant life.

  But I can’t not kiss him. Can’t not forgive him. Not ready to give up. Not ready to lose this. And I swear he just said he loved me, though I’m not clear-headed enough to react.

  Then she touched Drake’s face to convey she’d changed her mind, turned her face back toward him, opened her lips softly.

  It wasn’t one of his usual devouring kisses. This one was gentle, tentative, almost sweet, like a young boy kissing the girl of his dreams and afraid he’d be rejected. Which he almost had been, of course. But his hand kept a firm, possessive clasp on her wrist, and the other cupped her ass, and he canted his hips forward so his cock pressed into her body, hard but not urgent, not demanding.

  She wanted more. Wanted the demand. Wanted to have him grab her, bend her over the counter, spank her stubborn ass until she broke down and shed the tears she’d managed to fight back earlier. Wanted his fierceness, his possession, his sensual cruelty and cruel sensuality.