Not My Type (10 page)

No way
, she thought. Scrubbing her eyes to make sure no cobwebs of
sleep were clouding her vision, she leaned forward slightly, an
apropos thought that perhaps her boobs were obscuring her vision of
the numbers on the scale's readout. Actually, though...her
boobs
weren't
in
the way for a change. Neither was her stomach, for that matter, and
the numbers on the scale didn't change. Rapidly, she did the math
in her head: based on these numbers and what she'd weighed at the
doctor's office--an embarrassing two hundred and seventy six
pounds--she had lost fifty pounds! She gasped, then covered her
mouth with her hands, staring wide eyed at the bathroom wall. Could
it be true?

Like a dreamer trapped in sleep mode,
Elsa stepped off the scale and drifted back into the bedroom. At
her departure, Joe had flipped over onto his stomach in his sleep,
the pillow bunched under his handsome head and one well muscled arm
disappearing beneath its fluffy surface. No sheets or blankets
covered the sculpted grace of his body and even in her shocked
state, Elsa admired the work of art she slept with. She sat slowly
on the edge of the bed and just stared at him for long moments, her
inner thoughts whirling around in a maelstrom inside
her.

Joe somehow felt her gaze in his
sleep; one chocolate brown eye opened with a sweeping arc of sooty
lashes to regard her with puzzlement. His baritone rumbled through
the mattress as he inquired, "Babe?" infusing the one word with a
questioning tone that encompassed all possibilities.

She smiled in reassurance. "I'm good.
I think our scale is broken, though."

A heavy eyebrow raised incrementally.
"Oh? Why's that?"

"It says I lost fifty
pounds."

Joe sat up and engulfed her in his
arms with one swift fluid movement. "That's awesome!" He pulled
back a bit and held her face in both of his big, rough hands. "I'm
so fucking proud of you!" he whispered fiercely. Tears pooled in
her eyes and shimmered on her lower lashes at the fervor in his
voice. "I could do none of it without you, Joe," she murmured
back.

He kissed her tenderly, thumbs wiping
away the tears that finally fell from her eyes. The bright sun
heated her back when he pulled off her tshirt to run his hands up
and down her body, enjoying the new curves and hollows of her. She
followed him down to the pillows, her hot tongue meeting his in a
dance of passion. She settled over him, taking the chance to pin
his hands above his head and play the dominant for just a moment.
Though she was anything but, it was fun to role play now and then.
She hoped it would give him the hint to go to the closet and take
out some toys but instead his hands kneaded the flesh of her ass
before urging her up and onto him.

Elsa let out a gasp at the sudden
feeling of him inside her. She never tired of feeling so full of
him, or of his hands on her body. She rose and fell like the tide,
urged to greater swells by his hands at her hips and his tongue on
her nipples. She buried her hands in his hair and rode the crest of
each wave of pleasure coursing through her body until it crashed
over her. Joe came an instant later, biting her breast as he did,
leaving marks she would cherish until they vanished a few days
later.

They stayed connected for long
moments, nuzzling and murmuring to each other. She pulled her hands
from his hair and instantly noticed something was very wrong, very
different. It struck her suddenly: her engagement ring was
missing!

"Oh, no! My ring is gone!"

He captured her hands in his, real
anguish on his face as he surveyed the desolate left ring finger of
her delicate hands. Damn! That ring was an antique and had cost him
a fortune. He swallowed his irritation that she'd lost it; after
all, it wasn't her fault and he should have thought about the
weight loss affecting her ring size.

"Don't worry, baby, we'll find it.
It's probably in the bed somewhere."

Together, they stripped the bed and
searched for her ring. As Elsa was beginning to despair they'd ever
find it, Joe finally popped up from the floor on his side of the
bed, holding it up like a trophy. "Found it!" his triumphant voice
rang out.

"Thank you, baby! I'll put it on a
necklace until I'm at my goal weight."

"Are you sure? I can have it
sized."

She was already at her jewelry box,
digging for a silver chain. She found a sturdy one and gratefully
accepted the ring from his massive hand, threading it on the chain
and holding it out to him in mute appeal. "Turn around," he
commanded. The tone was so similar to the Joe who was her dominant
in bed that she shivered with pleasure, goosebumps making her
nipples stand up in firm peaks. He noticed, but said nothing,
merely clasping the necklace around the slim column of her neck
before planting a kiss on her shoulder and declaring himself ready
for a shower. She enjoyed the feeling of the heavy ring between her
breasts and knew it would remind her of their bond whenever it
swayed beneath her clothes.

They showered together, managing to
make it a long, drawn out affair before heading off to the kitchen
for coffee and breakfast. Elsa did her blood sugar reading and was
satisfied with the better than normal readout on the small digital
display. She showed Joe, who grinned and kissed her. She said, "I
noticed my clothes were getting too big, but I was too afraid to
hope. Thank you, babe, for everything you do to support me with
this. I know I haven't been especially easy to live with," she said
drily, noting his eye roll to the heavens at her last statement,
"but hopefully, that's all behind us now. And let's pray the rest
of the weight just falls off over night, and that I don't spend too
much recreating my entire wardrobe, and that I can make cake
again..." she laughed at her laundry list of wishful thoughts. Joe
smiled in response, a smaller, sadder replica, hearing the
undercurrent of wistfulness behind her teasing tone. He pulled her
in for some passionate kissing and groping that any health
inspector would frown upon in a kitchen.

He left for the gym not long after,
promising to come home for lunch so they could do their workout
routine early. She went to the pool with Claire twice a week for
two hours, usually just before going to work at the restaraunt, but
today was not a pool day and without recipes to write, Elsa felt
restless. She decided to post some recipes to her blog and added a
feature that would allow her readers to post questions directly to
the site rather than just the comments section, though not without
her approval of course. Happily engaged in her work, Elsa barely
heard her phone ring in time to answer it, noting before she
pressed "talk" that it was Martha calling. She felt a thrill of
excitement and nervousness in her stomach at the thought of
whatever Martha's news might be.

"Elsa, sweetie, it's Martha." Martha
had not fully embraced technology yet and in spite of Elsa's
assurances she always knew it was her calling, Martha felt it
necessary to announce herself at every call. Elsa grinned. "Hey
Martha, what's cookin'?"

Martha always loved that joke; she
hooted with laughter and then got down to business. "Listen, honey,
the cookbook is a smash hit! I love the blend of humor, the little
references to Joe and Spike, and how you have recipes for dinner
parties and recipes for every day...it's the perfect cookbook for a
diabetic and for anyone else for that matter! Even a dope in the
kitchen like me can make these recipes but it takes a genius like
you to create them. Well done, sweetie, well done!" Martha kept
talking through Elsa's glow of happiness at her praise. "So now,
the next thing we need to do, and the publisher is adamant about
this, is we need to get you down here for a photo shoot and to take
pictures of the food, step by step. When can you come?"

A little dazed at the speed of things,
Elsa replied, "Well, I have to talk to my bosses at the restaraunt,
and of course I need to talk to Joe..."

Martha interrupted. "Darling, what a
great idea! I just had an epiphany. Would your boss let you use the
restaraunt for these photos? I mean, it would show you in your
element, and you can make the food in a nice, well-appointed and
well-lit kitchen. What do you think, hon, will they go for that,
d'ya think?"

Elsa was sure Allen and Marybeth
wouldn't mind. Bemused, she promised to ask them, secure their
approval, and call Martha back with a good time to get started. She
accomplished the call to her bosses, speaking first with Marybeth
and then with Allen, both of whom were ecstatic for her to have her
cookbook photo shoot at the Sandpiper. "Don't forget to put the
name of the place in your book, dear," Marybeth implored. "When
you're a big Food Network star, it will help us poor remnants have
some shred of fame by association." Elsa reassured her she wasn't
going anywhere and of course they would put the location in the
cookbook. She just hung up the phone when Joe came home for lunch,
loving on Spike with soft baby words incongruous for a man of his
size and countenance. It always made Elsa giggle to hear him call
the dog his "wittle bat-eared gentleman, yes him was..."

Elsa threw together a salad for the
pair of them and talked animatedly throughout lunch, telling him
about her conversations with Martha, Allen, and Marybeth. When she
finally wound down, he said, "So, Martha and the publisher are
sending a photographer down here? To the middle of
nowhere?"

"Better they come here than I have to
go down to California." She shuddered. Elsa hated driving in
traffic that consisted of more than two lanes.

"Don't worry, babe, I would have gone
with you."

"You are so good to me, Joe Malone. I
don't deserve you."

His gaze darkened. "Don't you? Why's
that, Elsa? Have you been...a bad girl? Something you wanna tell
me?"

Her breath caught in her throat. Ooh,
did that mean what she thought it meant? Wearing nothing especially
sexy, just jeans and a t-shirt four sizes too large, she sashayed
over to him and ran a finger down the front of his Under Armor clad
chest.

"I'm full of big news
today, babe. And I'd like to be full of you, too...as for being a
bad girl, why, yes I sure am. I think...no, I
know
...well, I just need to be
punished, don't you agree?"

Joe tried with every fiber of his
being to resist her siren's call but it was no use. The way she had
turned into a mass of gooseflesh this morning when he commanded her
to turn around preyed on his mind all morning at work. He told
Jared he was taking Elsa out to the movies to celebrate her big
weight loss news, but honestly he just wanted to tie her up and
fuck her. He hadn't meant to use that tone with her this morning,
the dominant male sex voice that just came out of him where she was
concerned, but as soon as he did, and noted her reaction, it was
all he could think about. He'd been afraid to do anything remotely
bondage related since the last time...what if he went too far and
really hurt her? She was much smaller now, far smaller than he was
comfortable with. His hands still retained the memory of the
delicate bones in her throat working against his palm when he'd
deprived her of air, and they itched to do it again. But Joe was
afraid of losing control. And that's why, when he picked Elsa up
and packed her off to her room for their lunch time rendevous, he
made love to her with every fiber of his being but without ropes or
whip. He poured his soul into hers and hoped, prayed, it would be
enough and that those invisible bonds tied her to him as surely as
the tangible bonds they both enjoyed so much. He feared very much
that they did not.

Chapter Twelve: Worth a
Thousand Words

Elsa was sorely disappointed Joe
hadn't used any of the bondage toys on her during lunch and pouted
a little through the movie. She didn't know how to explain to him
that when he tied her up, whipped her, or did other, more dangerous
things to her, she felt more loved and yet more empowered at the
same time. She lacked the words to convince him she needed him to
do those things to her as much as she needed his tender affections
and it frustrated her immensely.

By the time they left the theater,
however, she had resigned herself to their new bedroom reality. She
didn't need the extra attention, she told herself, and Joe's love
for her shone out of every pore on his body. She was a lucky woman
no matter what. To have the love of a man like Joe was worth more
than any bedroom games. Her good mood recovered, they enjoyed the
rest of their impromptu day off together, ending the day snuggling
in bed and watching old movies from their childhoods, each pointing
out the things they loved about those old shows.

The next few days were uneventful.
Elsa worked at the restaraunt, confirming with Martha she was able
to use the facilities for their photo shoot. Martha and the
photographer, Alex Sandusky, were coming up from California the
following Monday, since the restaraunt was closed on that day. Joe
insisted he wanted to be there for the whole thing, and Elsa was
surprised at how annoyed she was by his heavy handedness. Did he
think the photographer was going to take nude photos of her with
the food? It was business, nothing more. On the other hand, it was
sweet he wanted to be involved and she agreed, of course, to have
him present, knowing his lurking form in the doorway would calm her
nerves. She would arrive before Martha and Alex, prepare the
ingredients, and then make the food while they were there. It was
possible they would have to break the session up into more than one
shoot; she wasn't sure she could cook fifty recipes in one
round.