Loving Control

by Ann Jacobs

  “More,” he growled, tangling his hands in the silky strands of the sub’s hair and encouraging her to deep-throat him. Her increasing ardor sluggishly raised his own. He might actually come and manage not to shame himself by rewarding her efforts. “That’s it. Suck me hard. Make me come.”

  The beeper he’d set on a nearby window ledge suddenly went off. Its rattler-like vibration against the well-seasoned wood immediately turned his mind away from the faceless woman giving him head. “Stop, sweetheart. Duty calls.”

  Just as well. His heart wasn’t in the game. Not only because he couldn’t stop dwelling on that crumpled, brittle widow and her four fatherless kids. Or hearing the echoes of her wails or seeing the stark pain in eyes glistening with tears.

  It wasn’t just that. He hadn’t been “on” with his sex partners for a while.

  Maybe it had more to do with wanting a particular woman he dared not take. When Eli thought about it, he was pretty sure his sexual paralysis had happened that day when Margaret Berman kissed him and awakened fantasies that would never come to fruition.

  Eli pulled up his pants, hurried to his SUV, started the powerful engine and merged into light freeway traffic. Damn, for early fall, it was unusual to encounter this all-encompassing fog. He stepped on the gas, figuring the best he could do was cut the usual forty-minute drive to thirty, even though from what the ER charge nurse had said, he guessed the patient might not make it until he got into the OR.

  And Margaret was on call. She was the one up to her elbows with no backup in sight, hiding her fear behind a veneer of iron control.

  Even though he knew Margaret was a competent surgeon and that she’d maintain her cool no matter what. Only the sweat on her brow would hint she wasn’t fully confident, fully in control. He’d be sweating too. Gunning the engine, Eli held on to the wheel, watched the speedometer creep up to a hundred m.p.h., then backed off to eighty-five. He wouldn’t do Margaret or the patient any good if he killed his crazy self. “Call surgery,” he said as he pulled off the outer loop and headed for the hospital.

  “This is Dr. Calhoun. I’ll be at the hospital in less than five minutes,” he said when the OR night supervisor came on the line.

  * * * * *

  Margaret could do this. She had to. Where was Eli? The OR supervisor had sent word that he was on his way. And where was the circulating nurse? Margaret blinked. “Wipe!” she snapped as sweat rolled off her forehead into her eyes. “I need more retraction.” She could barely see the tear in the pericardium for the rapidly darkening pool of blood obscuring the operative field, couldn’t tell how far the bullet had been sucked into the victim’s heart. It didn’t help her concentration, listening to Chief of Orthopedic Surgery Kurt Silverman fire instructions to his resident who was desperately trying to help staunch bleeding from the patient’s shattered femoral artery.

  “Cardiac arrest!” The anesthesiologist’s voice carried the usual controlled terror that accompanied such unplanned crises in surgery.

  Both OR teams stepped back from the table. Margaret reached for the defibrillator paddles as Eli stepped up, paddles in hand. “Easy there. I’ve got it. Stand clear!” Once, twice, three times, he shocked the patient’s heart. Nothing.

  He’d come. She’d known somehow that he would. His take-charge presence served to slow the racing of her pulse, although her breathing became as erratic as the read-out on the cardiac monitor had been before the patient arrested. She stared down at the dying man, watched his body shudder with each jolt of electricity. I’ve killed him. As surely as if I were the one who’d put that bullet through his chest wall.

  She wondered if her fellow resident felt the same overwhelming guilt that flowed through her. Probably not. After all, Tim was male and about to finish his orthopedics residency. Besides, he was busy holding a tourniquet on the patient’s thigh while she was standing back, doing nothing but taking in the tragic scene.

  “Blood flow’s slowing down,” Dr. Silverman said, his tone serious.

  “I know.” Eli shook his head, stepping back from the table. “He’s gone.” A defeated scowl on his ruggedly handsome face, he followed Dr. Silverman out of the suite, leaving Margaret to suture the gaping chest wound while Tim closed up the leg. No need for finesse now. This corpse, victim of a drive-by shooting, was headed to the autopsy table.

  “Time of death, eleven-forty-one p.m.,” the anesthesiologist said, his gaze on the pristine white clock hanging on one pale green tile wall. “Sorry ’bout that. Shit happens, but everybody did their best.”

  Numb, Margaret followed Tim from the OR, leaving the nursing staff to finish readying the body for the morgue.

  Mechanically, she stripped off her bloody scrubs, showered and dressed. She started to shrug into a fresh lab coat but changed her mind. Rounds could wait until morning. For tonight at least, she’d had enough of hospitals and death and dying.

  Come on, Margaret. You did your best.

  Her best hadn’t been good enough. “You could have saved him if you’d been here from the first,” she told Eli when they practically collided a few minutes later in the surgeons’ lounge. “Not that I resent you having a night off now and then.” The last thing she wanted was to hang a guilt trip on him when it was all her fault.

  “I doubt it. You did nothing wrong. He was too far gone. Come on. I arranged coverage for you and signed you out. I’ll buy you a drink. You look as though you need one.” Eli turned to Dr. Silverman. “Kurt, do you want to join us?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got to get home. For some reason Shelly expects me to do diaper duty every now and then.” That didn’t surprise Margaret. Everyone at the hospital knew the story of how the renowned workaholic had reformed once he married his long-time buddy, Shelly Ware, a physical therapist who’d resigned a few years ago to play full-time mom to his son, their twin toddlers and the baby girl who’d been born last month.

  Margaret needed more than a drink. She needed… “All right.” While she had no desire to rehash the events in the OR, she could seriously use a drink and some down time with Eli. Even though he was technically her boss, he also was a friend. Not to mention a hot male animal who fired her blood the way nobody had done for ages, since Dale her old master had moved his construction company headquarters down to Houston. Since that kiss a month ago, she hadn’t thought a lot about Dale. It was Eli’s face she saw in her dreams, the taste of his lips that lingered on hers.

  She still went hot and weak when she recalled that kiss, the strength and vitality of his big, heavily muscled body. Unlike most of the men she’d dated since breaking up with Dale a year earlier, Eli might be able to make her come. Excitement built in her as she relived that kiss, imagining a repeat of it—and more. Of course, she might just be fooling herself because of the stress and post-adrenaline flow of the surgery. How many times did she have to be disappointed to realize once and for all that she needed a Dom for full release?

  Still, she couldn’t stop the excitement from building in her when she watched Eli sign them out for the night, saw the stubborn set of his jaw, the massive shoulders she imagined could carry not only his burdens but her own.

  * * * * *

  He’d take her back to the lounge down the street from the hospital, with its fuck-me music. Same place where she’d kissed him. They’d dance again, and if he got lucky she’d kiss him again the way she had before. This time maybe he’d invite her home, tamp down his compulsion to control and enjoy… But damn it, he wanted to control her. Why shouldn’t he give her what he really was, see if she could handle it?

  He knew why. Because for the first time in a long time, this mattered. Margaret meant something to his heart as well as his libido. He’d take it slow, even if it killed him. “Leave your car here. I’ll drive us to the lounge, and afterward I’ll take you home.”

  “All right.”

  She didn’t seem worried about how she’d get to work in the morning. Instead, she smiled up at him after settling on the passenger s
eat of his SUV, which he took as silent assent to his seduction plan. “You need some peace and quiet after a day from hell, don’t you?” He remembered the first time he’d had to crack a patient’s chest without the comforting feeling that there was a chief resident or attending thoracic surgeon backing him up. Margaret had to have been at least as terrified as he’d been back then. “Cat got your tongue?”

  She turned to him, her lips turned up in a semblance of a smile. “I guess so. That poor man. I still say you’d have cracked his chest faster. So would Jerry. Either of you could have saved his life.”

  “Doubt it. What you’re feeling now is aftershock from being called in to start a serious emergency case because your chief resident’s on vacation and I wasn’t close enough to get there right away. Go easy on yourself. You’re good. Good enough that I’d trust you to operate on my mom.”

  “Thanks. I think.” He loved her soft, sure voice, a blend of budding confidence and femininity. Not even the baggy sweats she had on managed to mask the fact that she was a supremely female woman. As he pulled into the parking lot behind the lounge, he found himself imagining her in silk and lace. In nothing. He tried to conjure up a mental image of her in a black leather bustier like those he associated with the Dommes he occasionally played with at the Club. The image didn’t fit, other than the piercing she kept open with the unobtrusive disk that hinted she might have flirted at some time with the BDSM lifestyle. Not that a lot of vanilla chicks these days didn’t pierce body parts other than their ears, but Margaret didn’t seem the type to have ever gone for the Goth look.

  Once he’d helped her out of the car, Eli laid a hand on the small of Margaret’s slender back, felt the tension there. She’d always hidden that tension under a tightly controlled, unflappable exterior. And pushing down his leaping desire, he thought about how many women in demanding careers nurtured the souls of desperate submissives in the bedroom. He had a feeling Margaret might be one of those driven women who needed to relinquish control in their private lives to achieve balance with the tight leash they had to keep on their emotions to succeed in their careers. If he was right, then Maggie might be the sub of his dreams. She might not even know her sexual mindset, but maybe he could be the one who would open her up to it. A sub beyond his wildest fantasies, lust that went hand in hand with liking, professional respect.

  Under his touch, he felt her sigh, heard the ragged sound of her breathing. “Relax, Maggie,” he murmured. “If you don’t, you’ll crumble.”

  “I know.” Her voice was small, needy.

  “Leave Dr. Berman at the hospital and just be Maggie.” The mellow sounds of jazz coming from a live piano player embraced them when Eli opened the door and waited for her to go inside.

  * * * * *

  Eli’s big, steady hand felt warm, protective as they crossed the dance floor toward a table for two in the corner of the lounge. Some feminine sixth sense told Margaret he wouldn’t be a dud in bed, the way her latest lover had been. Unfortunately, the successful tort attorney had pretty much convinced her she needed more than just any attractive man to find satisfaction. He hadn’t satisfied her in bed, either, but then he hadn’t cared.

  Frigid. Ice queen. His parting words reverberated in her head, silent warning that she’d be letting herself in for the same sort of frustration and rejection if she started up a relationship with another vanilla hero.

  She’d wanted at the time to tell the guy he was wrong, taunt him with stories of how she’d gone wild with hard-edged Doms, lovers she could hardly have dragged with her to hospital social functions.

  It would have done no good. The lawyer wouldn’t have understood why she needed him to take control of her body yet allow her the freedom to exert control over her own professional life. Besides, he hadn’t been a dominant man. If she’d voiced her needs to him, he’d have labeled her some sort of pervert.

  Would Eli? When they first met she’d fantasized about the big, muscular surgeon being a Dom, but he’d never given her any overt signs. Finally she’d decided her hunch had been wrong. Eli was a mentor and friend, nothing more. Still, when he laid a hand on her thigh, she couldn’t help imagining…

  Him, stripping her naked in the surgery lounge. Using some sterile gauze dressing rolls to bind her arms…her breasts. Rendering her helpless to his sensual onslaught. Her nipples tingling as he bent his dark head to one straining peak.

  God, just thinking of him making her give in to his will and her own desires made her juices start to flow. Eli Calhoun was a good man, one she could so easily love—if he proved half as commanding in the bedroom as he was in surgery.

  “Come on, Maggie,” he said, his expression fierce. “You’ve got to learn to trust that you did all you could. Otherwise, you’ll drive yourself crazy. I know.”

  Margaret blinked, hoped her cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt. “I’m okay. I was just thinking.”

  “Are you still worried about the case? Don’t. No one could have saved him. Not with him having a bullet lodged in his heart and another one that wrecked his femoral artery. It was a miracle he lasted long enough to make it onto the operating table.” Eli tilted her head back, looked her in the eye. “You’re well on your way to becoming one of the best thoracic trauma surgeons around here. Don’t doubt that for a minute.”

  If only. If only she’d been thinking about business and not about the way his big, long-fingered hands would feel skimming over her neediest places…or how he’d make her let go of inhibitions so strong that they needed force to overcome them. He’d release the pent-up need that gripped her. “I’ll try not to. I wasn’t rehashing the case just now, though,” she said, forcing a smile and lifting the frozen margarita the waiter had just slid in front of her, removing the empty at the same time.

  While she finished her drink, Eli sipped his half-full Scotch on the rocks. “Shall we dance?”

  Margaret’s stomach, already assaulted by those margaritas, rebelled at the thought of swaying to the beat of the incredibly sensuous piece the pianist had just begun. “I don’t think I want to dance, but I could use some…” She dared not tell him what she really needed. “Coffee.”

  “What you need is to let go of all that frustration. I see it in your face, in the tight set of your shoulders. Come on now. Loosen up for me.” Was she imagining things, or had his voice taken on the tone of command?

  Her skin grew warm, and her pussy contracted at the thought of Eli taking over, making her submit. It had been a long time. Too long. Ever since the kiss they’d shared, he’d hinted now and then—very subtly, so subtly she’d told herself she was only imagining his intent—that he’d like to fuck her. She drew a deep breath, gathered her courage. “Do you have any ideas about how I might accomplish loosening up?” She met his gaze, hanging on that precipice, wondering if he’d know, if he had what she needed. If he did, he’d pick up that gauntlet.

  “In bed.” He spoke in a husky whisper and took her hand, laying it over the bulge of his half-hard cock and grinning. “With me.” He couldn’t have gotten more specific than that. Without a moment’s hesitation, he’d picked up the gauntlet, and it was as if she were watching him take it to his nose, inhaling her scent as a tracker would when he knew he’d trapped his quarry.

  Holy God, it was possible. Eli might be a Dom, whether he practiced his sexual mastery in a dungeon or in the privacy of a bedroom, behind closed doors. She saw it, even under his wrinkled scrubs, in the broad, muscular shoulders and narrow waist and in the huge, pulsing sex beneath her fingers.

  Margaret couldn’t help imagining those straight, white teeth nibbling her nipples, the rasp his short mustache and goatee would make against her tender skin. When she met his compelling gaze, she saw promise—promise she prayed he could deliver on. Mastery.

  She wanted to submit to him. At least at this moment, she was too aroused at the prospect to think clearly. So she closed her hand, tightening it around his throbbing cock. Fantasizing about what he’d look like naked,
she decided he had everything she needed to turn her into a helpless lump of erotic submission.

  Why hadn’t she paid closer attention when he’d introduced himself to her early last summer, his first day in the OR as her senior attending? If she had, she realized now, she’d have seen all the signs of a Dom. The aura of supreme self-confidence, of his taste for benevolent control, had hung on his shoulders like a mantle. She should have known, instead of reading him as sure of himself as most surgeons were, maybe a bit more so because of his impressive size.

  His retaliatory squeeze on her upper thigh and the challenging look in his eyes assured her that he knew what she wanted. And that he was more than ready to deliver it. If she was lucky, she might have found a true Dom looking for a new sub. When Margaret imagined Eli pinning her to the mattress with his strong, capable arms, making her take his hot male flesh in her mouth, she creamed her panties. He’d fuck her until she begged for mercy. And then he’d fuck her some more.