Page 24 of Wanted
Water under the bridge. She was married now to some guy she’d met at Black Light. More than that, she was pregnant with their first. Which, he supposed, just went to show how things had a way of turning out.
As he began to show Pony her new warmup routine, Marcus was prepared to feel that same old sense of irritation at having his alone-time invaded by another. Right from the start, though, this felt different. Pony offered no complaint and she needed very little instruction beyond a few posture corrections as she tried to copy him through his stretching exercises. She was quiet, she paid attention. She was flexible as hell too, and that was a pleasant surprise which in retrospect probably shouldn’t have been. Her Dom had been a jackass. Of course, he’d want his slave to be flexible when he wanted and fit.
“You have a morning routine?” he asked, watching as she straightened and spread her legs, then bent down with him to press first her hands and then her elbows to the floor. That was impressive. He had no problem getting his hands palms flat without feeling more than the pleasant pull of his leg muscles relaxing in the stretch, but Pony was damn near folding herself in half.
“Not for a while,” she confessed. “But we used to exercise every morning and every day at noon.”
“Your choice or his?” Like he had any room to judge Ethen on this level.
“We had a scale in our house too,” she said, rising back to her feet as he did.
She didn’t elaborate. He connected the dots without needing her to.
“Again,” he said. “Was that your choice or his?”
“His,” she said softly.
They moved into the next position.
“What was your required weight?” he asked, almost certain it was going to piss him off to hear it.
“One hundred five.”
Yeah. He had no problem judging the man on that one.
“You realize I’m not going to give a shit what the scale says. I’m going to make you gain until you start looking healthy. After that, it’s up to you if you want to gain more. But there will be no dropping under the healthy mark, not under my roof. Got it?”
She folded herself when he did, bending into another low stretch, and didn’t say anything.
Having her here beside him didn’t irritate him, but not being answered did.
He pulled out of the stretch, crossed onto her mat, grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled her all the way up until she was nose to nose with him.
“I asked you a question.”
Her face was every bit as blank as it had been in the hospital. The only thing missing from it then was all that misplaced anger he’d since watch her exorcise. She looked perfectly calm now, perfectly... defiant in a very quiet, non-confrontational way. One had to look very closely to see the glitter of that defiance in the depths of her too-blue eyes as she studied him.
“When does it become mine to control?” she finally said.
“What?” he countered. “Your body or your weight?”
“Both.”
Oh… good girl. Annoyed as he was, that she would stand up to him on this was almost a reason for pride. “Depends. Do you like being a human skeleton?”
“Not particularly.”
“So long as you’re healthy, I won’t have a problem with your weight.”
“So long as I’m not losing weight.”
“That’s right.”
She hiked her chin. “And when I start tipping the scale in the other direction? What are you going to do then?”
Now he really was proud of her.
“So long as you’re healthy,” he repeated, “I don’t care what you weigh. If you’re waiting for me to say the punishments’ll come out, you’ll be waiting a very long time. I don’t work that way.”
