by Ann Jacobs
“She’s sleeping right now, so the talk can wait. You sit down, boy, and tell me why my girl’s lying in that bed with tubes stuck into her like she’s a pincushion.”
Matt let out a sigh but gave Charlie a summary of what Dr. Stein had told him. “I dread telling Keisha,” he said, swiping at the sudden pulsing ache in his forehead with one hand. “She’ll ask me who the hell I think I am, trying to act like I’m her husband instead of her slave.”
“Here’s what I think, boy. It’s about time for you to get some balls.”
“What the fuck do you mean?” Charlie had never said a word to Matt before about his and Keisha’s lifestyle, and he sure as hell had never set foot in Rebels’ Roost. Keisha’s dad was about as vanilla as anybody associated with the Rebels.
“I know more than I want to about the ass-backward arrangement you and my girl have, and I’ve got a pretty good notion of some of the shit that goes on at Rebels’ Roost. How the hell could I help figurin’ it out when you go around the locker room with your dick locked down half the time, and when you have on a dog collar when I visit you at home?”
Charlie had a point, but he certainly had never mentioned a word before. “I guess it would have been pretty hard to ignore the signs.”
“Don’t worry, just take over. Make her do what she needs to do. I’ll back you up if she tries to give you grief.” For a minute Charlie shut up, but then he shook his head. “I guess Keisha’s always had it rough, her being big like my ma when her mom was so dainty and all. I feel real bad for passing along my fat genes to her, especially now when you’re telling me she may die because of them.”
“Not your fault, Charlie.” But Matt wasn’t so sure. After Keisha’s mom had died, Charlie had sent Keisha to live with his mother and grandmother, a couple of the biggest women and best cooks Matt had ever met. “Like you told me last fall when we first talked about me switching positions, weight’s largely a matter of what and how much a guy eats. If I can lose a bunch of weight, why can’t Keisha do it, too?”
“Because food’s always been my girl’s security blanket. And the bigger she’s gotten, the less she’s wanted to exercise.” Charlie paused, as if he wondered if he should go on. “Mama and Grandma did that to me, too. If I hadn’t gone away to college and had a coach who clamped down on me, I’d have been in the same boat. Did you know I weighed three twenty when I was eighteen?”
Three twenty? Charlie was several inches shorter than Matt and the heaviest Matt had ever been was three ten. “No. I have trouble believing that.” Charlie had been an all-Pro defensive end, and though he’d been coaching now for ten or twelve years, he still kept himself in pretty good shape.
“It’s true. I used to eat a lot when I was happy and even more when I was sad. Just about every occasion was an excuse to eat at my house. And I sent my girl to live there after her mama died.” Charlie hung his head.
Matt reached over, patted the older man’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Charlie. Keisha loves her grandmas. And you did what you had to do.” The man couldn’t very well have played pro ball without having some help raising his daughter who’d been just eight years old when her mom had died. “But damn it, we can’t let Keisha kill herself.” Matt stood. He had to talk to Keisha now, and he had to make her listen. “I’m going in there to talk to her now.”
Charlie shook his head. “Good luck, son.”
* * * * *
“No way. You’re insane if you think I’m gonna have this surgery. That doctor is out of her mind. I just had a little fainting spell, but now I feel perfectly okay. If you don’t like me the way I am, get your white ass out of here and don’t come back.” Keisha sounded surprisingly strong. The fact she was hostile to his suggestions didn’t surprise him at all. “If you don’t, you’ll be sorry when I spring myself out of here.”
“Sweetheart—”
“I’m not your fucking sweetheart, I’m your Mistress and don’t you forget it.”
Matt should leave. If he did he would be following his Mistress’ express orders, something he’d been doing without question for the past five years, ever since he’d knelt in the dungeon at Rebels’ Roost and sworn to be her faithful, obedient slave. He had no doubt that Keisha meant it when she ordered him to go.
But he couldn’t walk away. He loved her too damn much. If she died, a large part of him would go with her. He clenched his fists and looked her in the eye. “I love you and want you to keep on being my Mistress for a long time. It nearly killed me to find you passed out on the floor and not to be able to rouse you. They say that sort of thing’s gonna keep happening until one day they won’t be able to revive you. I don’t think I could go on living if I lost you. That’s why I’m begging you to listen to the doctors.”
When he said that, she scrunched up her face and practically yelled, “Get out of my face now, I said. And don’t you come back in here unless it’s to help me get out of this bed to go home.” Matt noticed the zigzag patterns on a monitor above her bed start to jump as though they were on steroids.
When Matt would have said more, a nurse grabbed his arm and escorted him away. “Her blood pressure’s gone crazy. You can try talking to her later,” she said as she shoved him through the door.
* * * * *
“She threw me out.”
Charlie scowled at Matt. “If you care for our girl, you’ll forget what she told you and get your ass right back in there as soon as the nurse says it’s okay.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s so used to me doing everything she tells me to, that she can’t make herself believe I might have anything worthwhile to say.”
“Damn it, Keisha loves you though I admit she sometimes has a funny way of showing it.” Charlie punctuated those words with a shake of his head. “If there’s anybody on this earth she’ll listen to, it’s you.”
Matt doubted that, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away. Now that he’d taken a little while to mull over what Dr. Stein had said, he knew it was true. His Mistress was a walking time bomb just waiting to explode, and she’d just get worse if she didn’t have the surgery. If Keisha died, he might as well die, too, because without her he knew he wouldn’t want to stick around.
He’d lost too fucking many people he cared for, and he wasn’t about to lose another one if he could do anything to prevent it. Even if it meant he’d have to break a vow he made to himself twenty years ago, a promise that he’d never use his strength against a woman or force her to do anything against her will. Even if it meant he’d have to give up the security of submitting to his Mistress to save her life.
Matt squared his shoulders. He tried to still the tremor in his hands and squelch the terror in his mind. If he was going to help Keisha help herself, he’d have to take control, something he hadn’t done except on the football field since he’d become her slave.
* * * * *
Drip, drip, drip. The clear stuff flowing from a plastic bag above Keisha’s bed and down a tube into her arm reminded her of tears—the tears she positively wasn’t going to shed. She was no sniveling girl, no way.
Annoying beeps from machines kept disturbing her every few seconds, as regular as the raindrops that often pelted her office window during spring storms. She saw worried faces that weren’t there. Her daddy’s. Matt’s. The skinny fucking doctor’s somber look when she’d told her with a somber tone that she was lucky to be alive, this time.
This time. Who’s the bitch to say I’m gonna keep having these episodes over and over until one of them kills me? Great-Grandma is close to eighty and she’s okay. So is Grandma. Both of them are heavier than me.
Or are they? I’m not sure of that anymore.
Keisha tried to move around but they’d attached her to all fucking kinds of tubes and machines. She had to get out of this place right now. “Matt,” she yelled when it became obvious she would need his help to escape.
Good slave, she thought when she saw him standing in the doorway.
No one wou
ld guess by looking at him that he was a slave of any kind, much less a totally submissive sex slave. With his short, curly, sable hair—she missed the Jamaican braids he used to wear—and his newly slimmed-down, buff body that looked a hundred percent muscle in his tight T-shirt and snug jeans, he came across as a man who ought to be feared. That suited her now, as much as it did for him to show the guys he was her obedient slave when they played at Rebels’ Roost. She needed somebody to intimidate the doctors and nurses in this place. They all seemed to think their words were law. She needed somebody strong who wasn’t hooked up to a dozen or more instruments of torture.
“What do you need?” He came up to her bed, grinned and then bent low to whisper in her ear. “Mistress.”
Matt looked scared when he met her gaze. But not of her. He looked as though he thought she had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. I’m not that bad off, am I? “Help me get out of here. I want to go home.”
“I’ll take you home, sweetheart, as soon as your doctor says it’s okay.”
“I want to go now, I said.”
Matt took her hand and shot her a very unsubmissive-looking grin. “You don’t want to leave against medical advice and lose your chance to sue these folks, do you?”
Keisha couldn’t help grinning back. He’d been tossing his supposedly superior knowledge of the law at her, albeit in a properly submissive way, ever since he’d passed the bar six months ahead of her. “I want out of here. Listen. The damn beeping of these machines is driving me crazy. And I can feel every drip, drip, drip of the fluid from that IV into my arm. When I get home I’m gonna tie you down in a bed and make you listen to noises like this. It’ll serve you right for dragging me in here.”
“Maybe I ought to tie you to this bed.” The way he said it made her think he just might mean it. Then he met her gaze, his expression sober. “Damn it, Keisha, I’m gonna take control for once. Somebody’s got to make you listen to what the doctors are trying to tell you.” He paused, as though he had as much trouble as she was having, believing he’d just said that. “Sweetheart, I don’t know if I could go on if I lost you. Dr. Stein may not have put the fear of God into you, but she’s certainly put it in me.”
“You think you can take over, slave? Think you’re up to making a switch?” The possibility made Keisha’s pussy go all soft and…but no, she was no sniveling sub. She couldn’t imagine letting her slave turn around and Master her. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Believe it, sweetheart. If it means you dying if I don’t, I can do almost anything.” He laid a hand on her cheek, his touch firm and confident. “Let me take control and help you do what you need to do. When you’re well again, I’ll gladly hand the reins back to you.”
Matt bent over her and kissed her mouth, something she hadn’t let him do for ages. Something he’d never done before without asking her permission. “C’mon, let’s give it a shot.” Taking advantage of her helplessness, he kissed her again, this time slipping his tongue between her lips and slowly moving it in and out.
She imagined him claiming her cunt that way, only with his cock. It had been too long since she’d opened the hasp on that padlock and watched his big cock come to instant, impressive erection.
“How about it, Mistress? Are you up for trying out a new game?” he murmured against her lips. “Do you have the guts to let me be your Master for a while?”
Did she? Could she? The last time she’d let anybody tell her what to do, she’d been seventeen and still living with her grandmother, shoveling down the biscuits and fatback as if there were no tomorrow. Grandma’s words still rang in Keisha’s ears. Eat up, girl, you don’t want to be one of them skinny minnies. Man wants a woman with some meat on her bones.
Damn it, Keisha had been feeling lousy the past few months. She’d worried this morning that she wouldn’t be able to make it down the long jetway and onto the plane to come home. And it was fucking scary, being here in this high-tech torture chamber, hooked up to all this noisy, scary equipment. Maybe the skinny doctor was onto something. But… “You know my grandma and great-grandma are both big women, and they seem to be okay.”
Matt raised his head and looked into her eyes. “Charlie told me your mom was little. Maybe you got genes from her that are trying to tell you that you shouldn’t haul around so much weight.”
Maybe so. Her mother had been a tiny, Japanese-American woman her dad had met in San Francisco while playing football there, nothing like the grandmothers who’d raised her. Keisha figured it was possible her mom had passed along some skinny genes, the way Matt was suggesting. Then again, she thought darkly, Matt might be regretting a little bit that he has a Mistress who weighs more than he does. “You sure you don’t just want a Mistress who’s skinny like Tawny Winters?”
“Jack’s welcome to Tawny. She’s too easy on him, but of course that’s not to say she isn’t drop-dead gorgeous. But I only want you and you can take that to the bank.” He paused and dropped another gentle kiss on Keisha’s lips. “I want you to get healthy, so we can play with each other ‘til we’re old and gray. Baby, you know I lost my mother and dad when I was twelve years old—Mom to death and Dad to prison. I don’t think I could stand to lose you, too.”
Keisha saw a couple of tears escape from his expressive brown eyes and make their way down his cheeks. If she could move her hands without disconnecting the IV tubing, she would reach up and brush those tears away, but she was afraid she’d pull something out, so she looked up at him and said, “I’m not goin’ anywhere. I promise. I suppose if this other doctor that’s coming to check me out says I ought to have an operation, I’ll do it. And I’ll let you take control over me for a while, the way I’ve been controlling you. I guess turnabout’s fair play. Think you can do it?”
“Count on it, sweetheart. I’ll do whatever it takes to help my Mistress get back in fighting shape, even if it means taking charge of us for a while. I’ll even try to keep your clients happy while you’re recuperating.”
* * * * *
At first it had been hard, but as time had gone by, Matt had started to enjoy what he’d feared he couldn’t pull off—the switch. Part of him enjoyed commanding Keisha’s pleasure, but a larger part of him still longed for the day when he could go back to being her obedient slave.
She had taken back her agent work three weeks after the lap-band procedure, but it had been months now and he was still in charge of her diet, her exercise and most important, her sexual satisfaction—in addition to his job playing football for the Rebels. When he had to be away on road trips, their housekeeper would oversee her diet and remind her to do her exercises.
Not that he’d have it any other way, even when it seemed he’d been in control 24/7 for the longest time in his life. The longest time since he’d handed over his sexual freedom to Keisha, anyhow.
This stint at trying to be her Master wouldn’t go on for much longer now, and he was glad, because he realized what a stretch it was for Keisha to submit. She’d already lost more than half the weight the doctor had insisted upon, her diabetes was under control and her sleep apnea had almost disappeared. The vomiting and nausea she’d suffered at first following the surgery had stopped as her body got used to a new way of eating.
Matt chuckled. Dr. Stein had mentioned today when they had gone in for Keisha’s checkup, that she should reach her weight goal before the year was out. He could hardly wait, because then she’d be taking back the reins in their relationship. Not that he minded being the one issuing the orders, it was just that it got damn tiresome after a while, trying to dominate a reluctant sub. He even found he sometimes missed the pull of that lock she’d told him to take off his cock the day she’d agreed to put herself under his temporary control.
* * * * *
They had just gotten home from her doctor visit, and he figured it was time to nudge Keisha toward resuming some of the activities that were too much for her before the operation.
“Barney and
Bill need some exercise, and so do you,” he told her when he found her in their bedroom putting away her jacket and purse. “We won’t have too many nice days like today before winter sets in.”
Without saying a word, she obediently stripped and slipped on a pair of jeans that now fit almost as loosely as a clown suit. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she tugged on her favorite cowboy boots and pulled one of his sweatshirts over her head. Obediently, she followed him to the barn where he lifted a saddle off its stand and handed it to her. “I had Maddie fix us a picnic to have out by the stream at the back of the property.”
She shot him an incredulous look. “We’re riding that far? Oh, I’m sorry, Master, I shouldn’t be questioning you. You’ll have to punish me.”
“I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something.” He swatted her bottom and then turned to saddle Bill.
She laughed as she tightened the cinch on Barney’s saddle. “You’re not a very demanding Master, did you know that?”
He knew it. He was sure he’d feel more natural playing quarterback, which he’d never done, than he did pretending to be a sexual Dominant. “I think I’ll have to take you to Rebels’ Roost tonight and show you how demanding I can be.” He tried not to think about how hard it was for him to tie up the woman he worshiped and display his control over her. Or how terrified he was that someday he’d lose control and do something to injure the woman he adored.
Every time they’d played since they made their bargain, he thought about that night so long ago when he’d crawled to her, eagerly accepting pain and humiliation at her hands as his due. A large part of him missed the sense that gave him—a sense of belonging to her in body as well as in soul.