PrimeDefender (4 page)

“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 would 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.

“Come on, slave, time’s wasting,” he said
as he gave her a leg up.

Later, Keisha spread a blanket on the
ground under a towering oak tree while Matt hobbled their horses at the edge of
a slow-running stream a few yards away. Her ass and thighs ached from the ride,
but she felt great as she sat and breathed in the crisp autumn air. The breeze
ruffled limbs that were bright with their fall foliage, sending a few gold,
orange and red leaves spinning around her as she set out their lunch.

She wrinkled her nose at the half sandwich,
cottage cheese, lettuce and fresh pear she set out for herself, unable to avoid
looking longingly at her Master’s pair of roast turkey sandwiches on fresh rye.
He’d give her part of his if she asked, but if she overate, she’d probably
throw up and that wouldn’t be fun.