Not My Type (9 page)

Claire gave her friend a reassuring
smile. "No fat rolls, and definitely not vulgar. I'd say Joe is
lucky you won't go to ToneUp; he'd have to fight the guys off of
you."

"Yeah, right! Okay, let's go before I
lose my nerve. I'm going to grab some sweats and we can get to
swimming."

The two ladies said goodbye to poor
Spike, left alone during the day for the first time in a long
while, and beat feet to Claire's red Toyota Camry. The cold ocean
air nipped at their ears and noses before they could get in the car
and turn on the heater, making them both voice aloud the wisdom of
swimming, even at an indoor pool, during the spring.

"I've come too far to give up now. Do
you have any idea how difficult it was pouring all of this," Elsa
gestured to herself, "into this damn bathing suit?"

Claire giggled; every woman, no matter
what size, has had to paint on some item of clothing at one point
in time or another. She herself could recall a favorite pair of
jeans and the pair of pliers required to pull up the zipper. She
eased the car out of Elsa and Joe's driveway and headed over to the
pool.

After she registered with the bland
woman behind the counter, Elsa followed Claire to the locker room.
They were the only ones there at that hour of the morning, and Elsa
was grateful. Claire worked part time at the high school as a
teacher's aide, helping kids with reading or other academic issues.
She promised Elsa they could come a few times a week at around the
same time without it interfering with her work. Elsa worked at the
restaurant from two in the afternoon until eight during the week,
and until ten on the weekends, so it was no problem for
her.

Once she entered the geothermally
heated water, all her worries about her body faded away along with
the pull of gravity. She felt graceful in the water, and hardly
noticed when an hour had passed. She noticed a lot more when she
got out of the water and dried off; every muscle in her body ached
and she was winded for a few minutes.

Claire dropped her off at her house,
having to hustle to get ready to go to work. Elsa's hair was still
damp so she took Spike in the backyard instead of for a walk. She
was going to have to get a routine down for him, too. She realized
when she got back inside that she'd missed Joe for lunch. She
grabbed her cell phone out of her purse and saw a missed call from
him, but no voicemail. She dialed the gym, but Jordan said he was
with a client at the moment and couldn't come to the phone. "Want
me to have him call you back, Else?"

"Sure Jordan, if you don't
mind."

"No problem," he replied, and they
rang off.

She worked on her recipe book for a
while, a nagging feeling pressing on her. She knew she was very
reliant on Joe for most everything, that she was terribly
co-dependent, but she couldn't help herself. She had few friends,
her parents, sister, and grandmother lived an hour away, and he
consumed her senses completely. Uneasy with the train of thought,
she waited for Joe to come home. It was her day off from the
restaurant, but never called her back, and he didn't come home
until after dark.

When he entered the house, she felt
his fury before he manifested physically; it preceded him through
the door. He leashed it long enough to pet the dancing Spike and
give him treats before pinning her to the couch with his
gaze.

"Busy day?" he asked, his tone
dripping with sarcasm.

"I went swimming...after you left, and
I sort of...lost track of time."

"Yeah, I bet." He tossed
his keys on the side table by the door and shed his jacket. Without
another word to her, he stalked down the hallway to their bedroom
and kicked the door closed.
What the
fuck?
she thought.
Because I went swimming?

Elsa started to get mad, herself. She
flung herself off the couch and stormed into the bedroom, finding
him sitting on the edge of the bed with his shirt off and his head
in his hands. She stopped, surprised to find him that way.
"Babe?"

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I can't do
this. I can't have you going somewhere else where I can't watch
you, can't protect you. I know it makes me a chauvinist pig or
something but...I just can't help it."

She dropped to her knees in front of
him and moved his hands so he would look at her. "I thought...you
were mad because I missed lunch?" she made it a
question.

"No, I'm mad at myself for being upset
that you went off somewhere where I couldn't go."

"Why? Why does it matter?"

"Because I can't protect you from
yourself, goddamit!" his eyes blazed at her with the force of his
emotions.

"Are
you...
jealous
?"

"No. Yes. Fuck I don't know. I'm
worried you'll hurt yourself and I won't be there to stop you, or
fix it if you do. I'm jealous, okay yes, I'm jealous you want to
swim with Claire and not with me. Mostly, I'm upset about all these
fucked up feelings and I'm worried that I'm going to lose you
because I'm being a colossal pain in the ass."

She smiled a little,
relieved to find out what was wrong. This, she could handle. "Well,
then
stop
being a
colossal pain in the ass. I told you, I love working out with you.
I just really used to like swimming and I read it's really good
exercise. Honest. You're not losing me to Claire. She doesn't have
the right equipment."

He snorted. "I wasn't
worried about
that
...though I am now, thanks very much. You...stopped me...this
morning."

She regretted it instantly,
remembering how she'd been in a hurry to get him out the door so
she could go swimming. If she'd known it would make him feel this
insecure...briefly she thought back to her musings about
co-dependence. She wasn't the only one, it seemed; their fights
were so stupid, so full of each other's insecurities. She always
pictured Joe as strong, but he needed her as much as she needed
him. She knew of only one way to prove how much she loved and
desired him above all else.

She was still holding his hands,
kneeling in front of him, but she released him and pulled her shirt
over her head, revealing naked breasts beneath. She took both of
his hands again, placing each one in a strategic location while she
surged forward to kiss him with every ounce of passion in her body.
She felt lithe, supple, and strong; she wanted him to revel in the
changes in her body, not become unhappy because of them.

He was slow to respond but finally
did, running his enormous hands up and down her body, feeling the
new curves and mourning the loss of the old ones. It had not been
that long since they had sex, it never was, but this time felt
different. She felt different. It was disconcerting.

She leaned into his touch, pushing him
down on the bed, aggressively taking his mouth with hers and
plunging her tongue inside. She released him, stripping his pants
off of his long legs as suggestively as she knew how, running her
tongue up each muscular thigh until her wet mouth touched him, her
tongue circling his hard, fevered flesh until he thought he would
explode. He made a sound deep in his throat and she dug her nails
into his thighs in response. The familiar pinch of pain from her
claws wakened him from his strange fog; this was his Elsa, his
lioness. Nothing was changed, and that was the way he liked
it.

Elsa could tell the moment Joe
returned to himself; he reached forward and pulled her to her feet,
tearing her pants from her body. He pulled her up his body with his
hands on her ass, rubbing the hard ridges of his flesh on the soft,
wet center of hers. She gasped, her hands locked behind his neck,
as she clung to him and rode the sensations his body was giving to
hers. He turned to the bed and deposited her in the center of it.
He kissed her deeply, his hands roaming all over the territory of
her body, memorizing the changes and reveling in the feeling of her
soft, satiny skin. He tormented her for long minutes with his
tongue and his teeth, grazing her nipples roughly with his stubbled
cheeks as he nibbled every inch of her body.

When he finally came into her, his
body was propped on one powerful elbow while his other hand rested
on her throat. His fingers were curled at the back of her neck and
his palm spanned the surface of her throat, the thumb caressing the
hollow above her collarbone. She cried out in pleasure when he
pushed into her slowly, the pressure of his hand at her windpipe
matched by the press of his shaft into her body, increasing as he
reached the end and decreasing as he pulled out in agonizing
inches. Her eyes flew open at the implied request; blue crashed
into brown as he sought her permission without speaking. He held
himself still inside of her, allowing her a few moments to decide.
She finally nodded, a faint glimmer of fear lurking in her eyes
that pained him. He almost decided not to go through with it, but
then was determined to never see that look in her eye
again.

"Trust me?" he breathed. She nodded
more firmly this time and he rewarded her with a passionate kiss,
pushing himself into her with that torturous slowness again and
again increasing the pressure of his hand at her throat. Only this
time, when he pulled back, he didn't decrease the pressure on her
airway. She watched him, seeing the electric jolt of desire cross
through his entire being at what he was doing to her. She would be
unable to safeword if he went too far. She was putting her life in
his hands.

But this was Joe. And while she was
afraid of not being able to breathe, she was not afraid of Joe. He
would do anything to keep her safe. As the pressure on her throat
increased with each push and pull within her, she watched his
desire course through him and realized it matched her own. She felt
her body respond to the lack of air with a thrill of fear, yes, but
more than a thrill of passion. All of her sensations increased
tenfold as her body struggled without oxygen. Joe watched her face
carefully, waiting for that penultimate moment. The second before
she began to seek his eyes with her own and convey her desperation,
her body shattered like a mirror thrown on the ground and she came
harder than she ever had in her life. Joe released her throat and
surged into her as hard as he could, her muscles clenching him over
and over, milking his seed from him and making him shout out his
pleasure in the darkened bedroom. He trembled over the top of her
for what seemed like a long time while her orgasm continued to
shake her body long after he was through. He bit her nipple softly
and she cried out again, still coming underneath him. Finally, her
sweat drenched body relaxed and her internal muscles released him
enough so he could unsheathe himself without fear of tearing her.
She lay limply on the bed with her head turned to the side, eyes
closed peacefully, her breathing even. Elsa had passed
out.

He checked her throat and neck to make
sure he hadn't been too rough. Apart from a slight redness, there
were no bruises. As to her mental state at what they'd done, well,
he'd see when she woke up. Joe wasn't sure they should play these
kinds of games again, though. What if he'd gone too far?

There was no way the old Elsa could
have done that with him, he realized; her stamina just hadn't been
that great. Joe was beginning to understand that her weight loss
might not be a bad thing, after all. He pulled her limp body to him
and molded her to his spoon shape, just the way he liked her, and
draped the covers over them, content in the knowledge that she
still wanted him, after all.

Chapter Eleven: The Big
News

The day Elsa discovered she had lost
fifty pounds dawned as brightly as any other, brighter in fact. She
had finished her cookbook the previous morning and fired it off to
Martha, and was now pensively waiting for her agent's opinion
before they agreed to send it to the publisher.

She woke before Joe,
enjoying the sight of him sprawled naked on their bed and taking up
most of it with his manly bits. She loved to watch him sleep.
He
would probably think it was
creepy
, she thought, not knowing that he
watched her sleep, sometimes,too. Asleep, his normally vivid and
animated features were smooth, making him look younger and even
more god-like than ever. She wanted to trace a cool finger over his
unlined brow and brush her thumb across those kissable
lips.

Ever since the night Joe had withheld
oxygen from her, thereby giving her the most intense pleasure she'd
ever felt in her entire life, their sex life had been pretty
vanilla. It almost seemed like Joe was afraid of what they had
done, or what it had done to her, but she missed the spice to their
bedroom antics. Not that regular sex with Joe was bad; far from it!
She noticed an increase in flexibility and stamina on her part
since she'd started losing weight and that made the sex even
better, no matter how ordinary what they were doing might be. She
felt better, was able to go longer, and could do positions she had
not been able to manage before. Still, she worried that the all
fighting they'd been having, and then the way they'd made up, had
soured him on their fun and games. She resolved to try and find a
way to talk to him about it.

But first, she'd need a shower, a cup
of coffee, and some breakfast. She slipped silently from beneath
the sheets and padded off toward the ensuite bathroom. Her face
felt puffy from sleep, her teeth were feeling moldy, and she dimly
imagined her hair was surely a wild, tangled mess as she stepped on
the scale in a half asleep, half awake state of consciousness. She
had a vague notion that she couldn't remember the last time she'd
weighed herself but it had to have been...what, weeks ago now. Not
since before the swimming started anyway. She yawned widely and
then looked down to see her results.