LearningControl Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Learning Control

  ISBN 9781419919916

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Learning Control Copyright © 2009 Ann Jacobs

  Edited by Sue-Ellen Gower.

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Electronic book Publication March 2009

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Learning Control

  Ann Jacobs

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  FedEx: Federal Express Corporation

  Ford: Ford Motor Company

  Jaws of Life: Hurst Performance, Inc.

  Mercedes: Daimler Chrysler AG Corporation

  Velcro: Velcro Industries B.V. Limited Liability Company

  Prologue

  Putting the kids to bed, slipping into a sexy nightgown and waiting…

  For the past few months this had been a pattern and Lynn Blackstone didn’t much like it. She’d almost think her husband of nearly fifteen years was cheating if she didn’t know that if he was, she’d have heard about it from his partners, or rather from their wives.

  She stared into the full-length mirror on one wall of the master bedroom. There’d been some changes since she and Mark had first met, even though she’d always taken care of herself. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised to see wear and tear. After all, all that time had to have exacted a toll somewhere. Still…

  She wore the same size she’d worn ever since she and Mark got married, in spite of having had four kids. Other than a few laugh lines around her eyes and mouth, she’d so far beaten off most outward signs of aging. But she felt old. Unwanted. In some ways, she’d become like the comfortable slippers her husband put on after a day of exhausting surgery. Except Mark had been slipping into those slippers a lot more often than he’d been slipping into her lately.

  It wasn’t as if he had said anything. But he’d been putting in even longer hours than usual, accepting emergency room calls when he could have signed off to other surgeons qualified to repair trauma injuries to peripheral nerves and the musculo-skeletal system, even if they weren’t as good as he was. Tonight, though, she had no reason to be angry, because Mark was working with both of his partners, trying to piece together what was left of a sixteen-year-old kid who’d tangled with a semi on the inner loop at rush hour.

  Opening her dresser drawer, she got the dildo that stood in for her husband most nights—but not very well. Lying back on the bed, she inserted it and let its vibrations trick her body if not her mind into believing it was Mark fucking her, bringing her to a much-needed release.

  Pressure built in her pussy, but the vibrator didn’t do it to push her over the edge. “Damn it all.” No toy could make up for the hot loving she wasn’t getting from her husband. Unable to control her frustration and fury, she grabbed the dildo and tossed it across the room. It gyrated obscenely, its motor whirring noisily now that her body wasn’t absorbing the vibrations. Something had to give, and she was pretty sure she’d given enough.

  What she wanted was her husband back in place of the constantly absent moneymaking machine he’d become. What if just once he’d walk in the room, look at her with lust in his gorgeous dark-brown eyes and make love with her the way they used to…

  She smiled. “We Got Married in a Fever” fit them to a “T” back then, except they were in San Antonio, not Jackson. The fire kept on burning for a lot of years, until recently when Mark had started working harder, growing more distant every day.

  In fact, at one time, they were very adventurous. Mark had gotten into tying her up and playing kink games, mastering her for their mutual pleasure. They’d toyed with getting more involved in the BDSM scene, joining a club he’d learned about from another doctor on staff at the hospital. He’d even visited the club, talked to her about what he’d seen. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant with their oldest about then, they’d have joined and taken their BDSM play to the next step. For a long time their vanilla sex life had been plentiful and good, even with the kink restricted as it was because there were always kids who might overhear them.

  Whether it was Mark’s absence or her own maturation in the last year or so, Lynn had been hungering lately for that overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling that came with being taken over by Mark’s Dominant side, surrendering to him completely.

  What had made the fire go out? They were the same people, just a few years older. They both loved their kids. Mark still treated her like a princess in lots of ways. She glanced down at the gorgeous sapphire-and-diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. He’d brought it home from a medical conference he’d attended in New York a few weeks ago and put it on her before going straight to sleep.

  Lynn felt like screaming. She didn’t want to be the cut-out trophy wife on whom he hung jewels. She’d rather have him than the costly presents he’d been showering on her, and she was ready to tell him so. The frequency of the gifts had grown in direct opposition with the way his interest in her as a woman had seemed to fizzle out.

  After she got up and washed the vibrator, she put the bracelet away and straightened the blown-up photo of them that he’d chosen to cover the wall safe. It broke her heart to look at it, remember how they’d been when it was taken a few months after they married, carefree and so in love they could barely keep their hands off each other.

  When she heard the distinctive crunch of car tires on the crushed limestone driveway, Lynn lit a fragrant candle on the night stand, crawled back in bed and arranged her silk nightgown.

  A perfect site for a seduction. Maybe tonight…

  * * * * *

  It was all Mark could do to crawl out of his car. Nine hours on his feet in surgery at the end of a full day’s work had just about done him in. He glanced at the upstairs window at a soft glow that came from the master bedroom. Knowing Lynn was up there waiting sent blood rushing to his groin, made him walk a little faster despite the shooting pain in his thigh and a pounding headache he attributed to the harsh, bright lights in the operating room.

  The trek to the house and up the long, curved staircase pretty much cooled the lust that always overcame him whenever he thought about his wife. By the time he reached the room and saw her there, relaxing on their king-size bed, he knew sex was a no-go. Not only because he could barely stand up, although that was part of it. He had just six hours before he had to be back in surgery, doing a dicey secondary ulnar nerve repair He owed the patient the best job he could do, and that meant he nee
ded all the sleep he could get.

  Slowly, every muscle in his shoulders burning from exhaustion, he stripped down. Before he looked at Lynn, he felt her gaze on him, so hot it practically burned his naked skin. When he sat on the bed and took her hand, he saw the saddest look he’d ever seen on her beautiful face. “Sorry I woke you, babe,” he murmured, climbing into bed and reaching over to give her a quick kiss. “Long night again, but with a little luck, the patient ought to make it.”

  She hesitated then spoke. “Good. Mark, don’t you think you should lighten up your caseload? You look so tired…”

  She didn’t have to spell it out. Mark knew she was tired, too. Tired of spending lonely nights after the kids were bedded down. Tired of more things than he could bring to mind at one in the morning.

  Not that she ever complained. Hers had always been a true submissive personality. His mind drifted back to those years when they’d gotten pretty deep into BDSM games. “Yeah. I should.”

  “But you know you won’t.” Resignation hung from every word. “Go on, sleep now. I know you’ve got an early case tomorrow.”

  “I love you. Someday I’ll make up to you for all these nights you’ve been spending alone lately.” And he would. Somehow. If only the stock market hadn’t crashed around his shoulders, leaving not a whole lot of cushion to fall back on if he decided to slow down or brought in a new associate the way Kurt had done earlier in the year.

  But it had. And he couldn’t stay awake all night and do justice to that case in the morning. Sighing, Mark rolled onto his side and counted sheep until he dropped off to sleep.

  Chapter One

  Three months later

  This was the part about practicing medicine that Mark could easily have done without. He glanced across the conference table at his partners before returning his attention to all the predictions of doom and gloom being spouted by Doris Cabell, their practice manager he liked a whole lot better when she wasn’t telling them they couldn’t afford to bring in another associate, or anything else for that matter.

  “You may actually have to scale down the staff you have. Not you doctors, of course, but some employees in the physical therapy, radiology and clerical departments.”

  “Why?” Orthopedic surgeon Kurt Silverman never minced words, just cut to the chase. Mark wanted to know, too. At least he thought he did.

  Cabell looked at Kurt with expressionless, slate-gray eyes that reminded Mark of a great white shark he’d seen on a TV news show between cases yesterday. “Two big auto insurance companies filed for bankruptcy last month. Unfortunately, one of them is your largest debtor. Your attorneys say we’ll be lucky to get ten cents on the dollar, and even then it may take years.”

  So their receivables were up, but there wasn’t much chance they’d ever see a significant chunk of that money. Doris didn’t have to point out that much of their group’s revenue came from patients injured in some kind of insured accident, and that many of those patients wouldn’t likely have the money or the will to pay out of pocket if their insurers failed.

  Great. Just great. Mark halfway listened while Doris pointed out other depressing facts they already knew, such as that the practice had to cover fixed costs for this new building and equipment, and that variable expenses were rising as well. He looked across the table at Eli Calhoun, the thoracic surgeon who’d bought in less than a year ago as a junior partner. Eli looked positively green. Mark would, too, if he’d just found out his year-end bonus from the practice was likely to be a big, fat zero. Eli hadn’t been out of the Air Force long enough to have amassed a big nest egg from his surgery fees.

  Kurt looked none too happy, either, but he was in the best financial position of them all. Sure, his portfolio had shrunk like everybody else’s, but he’d been smart enough to stick with more or less recession-proof investments.

  “We can’t skip doing the holiday party next month,” Kurt said. “Everybody expects us to have it every year. We’ll save some bucks by doing it at my place instead of a hotel or club, and I’ll tell Shelly to take it easy on the refreshments. I don’t want to skip bonuses for the employees, although we can pare them down if we have to.”

  Maybe things would get better by this time next year, but Mark wasn’t holding his breath. “Good idea, Kurt. I’m sure Lynn will help out with the party.” Kurt already had an assistant just out of his orthopedics residency, but he paid the man’s salary from his own fees. Mark couldn’t afford to do that, so he’d have to keep on taking every case he could get and praying the patients’ insurance companies wouldn’t keep going out of business.

  * * * * *

  Speaking of cases, he had one booked for an hour from now. No point in going home for dinner once the meeting had ended. Instead Mark joined Eli at the hospital cafeteria across the street, envying Kurt for getting to go home early for once.

  “We’ll be okay,” Eli said. Then he looked over at Mark. “Won’t we?”

  Mark must have been wearing his worries on his face. Although he didn’t want to alarm Eli, he needed to talk with someone. Six months ago, everything had been going great. He’d interviewed some surgeons fresh from residency, would have hired one if the salary he’d offered had attracted somebody trained as he was, with residencies in orthopedics as well as neurosurgery. Now he couldn’t have hired one even if he’d managed to find a good one who’d work mostly for experience. Not and keep Lynn and the kids in the way he’d promised himself he would, back when they were living in a studio apartment at a rundown apartment complex near the hospital.

  Of course they hadn’t actually had to live so frugally, if he’d have set aside his pride and accepted help from her wealthy family. But he’d been determined they’d do it on their own and promised himself he’d give Lynn everything she’d had as a child, and more. In fifteen years, he’d achieved all he’d dreamed of. They had the big two-story house, two new foreign cars every few years. In the past few years he’d even been able to shower her with jewelry worth more than the hefty stash of family heirlooms she’d inherited when her mother died. And he’d paid off his medical school loans and started salting away that money for his kids’ higher education.

  “Mark?” Eli repeated. “We will be all right, won’t we?”

  “Yeah. We’ll be okay. I’m just thinking that the belt-tightening’s going to be hard on Lynn. I was just wondering whether she’ll miss me while I work nearly all my waking hours, as much as she’ll miss me adding to her jewelry collection.”

  Eli laughed. “Maggie’s okay with us having to make a few sacrifices. Guess we’re both used to living from paycheck to paycheck. At least, with the market down the way it is, we were able to find a house in town that we can afford. It’ll be a whole lot more comfortable than my apartment, particularly after the baby arrives. Maggie will go back to the hospital and finish her residency, and then come join me while she studies for her specialty boards.” Eli dug into his lasagna. Mystery meat, they called the cheesy casserole that might include beef, chicken or pork on any given night. Sometimes even leftover shrimp or crabmeat. “I don’t envy you and Kurt with your big houses and families to take care of. Guess I should be happy I’m the poor doc in the group.”

  Mark stuck with his usual tuna salad and pie—blueberry today, his favorite. “You know, I was as poor as any medical student, with no family to fall back on and school loans mounting. I used to wonder how long it would take me to pay them back. When I first saw Lynn, I was sitting right in this cafeteria making a meal of soup and crackers.”

  “Fell hard, did you? I know I did with Maggie, even though I figured I’d get thrown off staff for lusting after one of the residents on my service. Lynn’s hot as hell now. She had to have been a perfect ten back then.”

  “She was. Still is, at least to me.” Not only had Lynn set off Mark’s libido and been just as hot for him as he’d been for her, she hadn’t cared that he had no money, or that the only place they had to fuck had been an empty resident’s sleeping room wh
ere a resident might barge in any minute. “I think we must have broken in every on-call room in this hospital that summer.”

  “So how long did it take you to rope and tie her?”

  Eli apparently was into ropes and ties, because he often mentioned how much Maggie enjoyed it when they spiced up sex with toys and light bondage. “Not long, once we realized we meshed not only in our interests but in the variety of kinks we liked in bed. We got married as soon as I finished med school the following spring.” Those had been fun times. Times when Mark had lived to get back to his wife and their enthusiastic sex play.

  “I didn’t know you and Lynn were ever into BDSM games.”

  “We were, before the kids started coming along.” Mark recalled how they’d started off with toy blindfolds and handcuffs and a purple silicone gel dildo he used to accuse Lynn of liking more than she liked his cock. She’d come back with a smart remark about the dildo being more readily accessible than he was, most of the time. He’d even bought a flogger and practiced using it to tan her gorgeous ass without inflicting any real damage. “After that,” he said, amending his denial, “we pretty much turned vanilla. Sometimes I miss it, but lately I’ve been working such miserable long hours I don’t often have the energy for sex at all.”

  “Ever hear of Club Rio Brava?” Eli’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  “Yeah. I even went there once, not long after I finished my residency and joined the medical staff here. One of the radiologists—he’s no longer in town—asked me if I’d like to join. Lynn and I almost did, but then we found out she was pregnant. Just as well, I guess, because back then I wasn’t especially anxious to display my scars to a bunch of strangers. You know, she’s gotten me over that, for the most part. In the years we’ve been together, she’s never once flinched when she’s seen or touched my gimpy leg. I damn near lost my leg, and what’s left is not pretty.”