The Doctor's Command Read online

  Paul felt his cock twitch at the words. Yes. Hell, yes, he wanted her to suck him. He wanted to use her sweet body myriad different ways, but he was trying to prove a point, trying to take some control of the situation. She’d orgasmed by his leave; if he came right now, then this would turn into nothing other than a sexual interlude and she’d think that he could be seduced into letting her get away with things. No.

  “I want you to go and stand at the end of the tent there,” he said, easing her off his lap with a little swat to her bottom. Her ass looked perfect, framed by her lowered leggings and soaked thong panties.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I’m giving you a taste of discipline,” he said. “Go stand at the end of the tent, facing the wall, keep your leggings down, and put your hands on your head.”

  Her mouth fell open. “But… ow!”

  A solid swat from his palm sent her scuttling to the end of the tent as he’d ordered. There, she assumed the position he’d told her to, though not before glancing over her shoulder to see if he was really serious.

  He wanted to do all manner of sexual things to her, but Paul managed to keep himself in check. Instead of following the impulses of his lust, he watched her stand where he had told her to stand, her graceful body a picture of feminine obedience. She was already much more of a handful than he’d anticipated, pushing at the boundaries of his own ability to maintain discipline simply by being herself.

  From the beginning, Paul had been determined to treat Chloe like any recruit. He’d dealt with plenty of green soldiers in his day and he’d figured that was the best way to interact with her. But that had gone out the window entirely, and not just because of her physical beauty.

  Watching Chloe, he realized that it wasn’t just her looks that made her a star. It was the sparkle in her eyes, the energy she brought to every breath she took. There was something wild and spirited and exciting about her, something a little untamed.

  He’d seen a few of her films in which her roles had been sweet love interests. She was quite an actress, playing innocent when there was very little innocent about her. She was pure mischief. Paul had figured there was little risk of falling for Chloe. She hadn’t seemed his type. She’d seemed shallow, spoiled, and maybe even somewhat stupid. He knew now that she was none of those things. He was going to have his hands full looking after her.

  “Come here,” he said, making his voice gruff and stern.

  She turned and looked at him underneath her lashes, her head held low in an expression of chastised repentance.

  “Now if you get yourself in trouble after this, there’s more where that butt whipping came from,” he informed her. “Minus the fun at the end.” He flickered a wink at her and she let out a little giggle.

  “It was fun,” she said, becoming arch. “I wish you’d let me return the favor…” She batted her eyelashes at him, tempting him all over again.

  “You can return the favor by doing as you’re told and reading the rest of the script,” he said. It was a little easier to maintain a professional exterior now; some of the blood had drained away from his cock and back to his head.

  * * *

  Chloe was confused. No man had ever refused her advances before. She hadn’t actually known that such a thing was possible. She sat down on her bed and looked at him with a confused gaze, her head cocked to the side as she tried to understand what was happening. How could he not be interested?

  “Are you gay?”

  He snorted, but didn’t answer the question.

  “It’s okay if you are,” she said. “Chase is gay. He’s into you too, he thinks you’re cute. I could set you up if you like.”

  “Read your script, Chloe,” he drawled, failing to rise to the bait or answer her question. “We’ll run lines after lunch.”

  More confused than ever, Chloe picked up the script. She didn’t read from it so much as hold it up and look over the top of it, examining him from a distance. Gay men didn’t usually make women climax. They didn’t usually know how to make a woman’s body sing like that. She could still feel the tingling between her thighs, the vestiges of unexpected pleasure.

  He caught her gaze and shook his head at her. “You’re supposed to be working, brat. Do you need a proper spanking?”

  “No,” she frowned, her hips squirming in response to his incendiary question. He was so damn handsome, so sure of himself. He was taking control of her without any of the concern and political correctness that made men treat her with careful deference. Weirdly, she felt more respected by him than she had by any of those men who treated her more like a concept than a person.

  “You’re still not reading,” he noted.

  “I’m working,” she said with a charming smile designed to deflect his questions. “I’m just trying to get a sense of the hero of the story.”

  “The sense you’ll be getting shortly is the sense of going back over my knee.”

  Chloe let out a little sigh and lifted her script higher so he couldn’t see her eyes anymore. She couldn’t see him either, which was a pity. The script danced by beneath her gaze, the words blurring as she barely took them in. There was far too much going on for her to be able to concentrate. There was being in the middle of nowhere, being stuck in a simple tent, feeling her butt sting when she moved even a little. Two weeks of this. Could she do it?

  She didn’t have a choice.

  Chapter Five

  After an hour or so of pretending to read the script, Chloe was relieved when Paul suggested they eat lunch, not because she was hungry, but because they’d have a chance to talk properly. He couldn’t expect her to sit quietly and work all the way through a meal, surely.

  “What’s for lunch?”

  “Well, we have a few MREs,” he said, hunting through a small case of foil packets. “I figured we’d start with those. Later on we’ll have to hunt.”

  Chloe screwed her nose up. “Hunt? I don’t like hunting.”

  “If you like eating, you’ll like hunting,” he said, handing her one of the packets. “Here you go.”

  Used to being served by deferential waiters and waitresses, her first meal under Paul’s command wasn’t appealing from the outset. She pulled at the foil tab as indicated on the packet, and matters didn’t improve much. Out from the foil, something like a sandwich emerged. But it wasn’t a sandwich as Chloe knew it. It was like a bread pocket filled with what the packet said was BBQ chicken.

  She pulled off a corner of the bread rectangle to inspect the insides and discovered that it was as if someone had described a sandwich to some kind of alien who had synthesized something vaguely resembling human food, but without any attention to texture or taste. A little nibble confirmed her suspicions. The chicken was dry, the BBQ was a sickly aftertaste and the bread was crumbly in a way that made her feel as if her mouth were being assaulted with grainy sand. She delicately put the ‘sandwich’ back into its packet and shook it down into the foil-y depths.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said as Paul looked at her askance. He was more than halfway through his sandwich, not appearing to mind the pallid taste at all. He actually seemed to be enjoying it. She supposed he wasn’t used to proper food. After all his experiences in the field, he was probably grateful for anything.

  “You need to eat,” Paul advised her once he’d swallowed his meal. “When you’re on the run, there’s no guarantee you get to eat regularly. Turning down a meal can mean the difference between fainting from hunger and falling into the enemy’s hands, and surviving.”

  “Well… there aren’t many enemies out here, are there?” She put the packet and sandwich down on her knee and looked at him with a disappointed gaze. She wasn’t really that hungry anyway, and she was used to skipping meals, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to her to just not eat the sandwich, but if he was going to get all stuffy about it, that could be an issue.

  “You’re sure you don’t want it?”

  “Definitely,” she said, shaking her head
. “It smells like the inside of an old boot.”

  “Okay.” He extended his hand and she handed him the packet.

  Chloe watched as her food disappeared into Paul’s mouth. At least he hadn’t come over all dad-like and made her eat it, she figured. There was something about Paul that was pretty paternal, though also confusingly hot. She didn’t know whether she wanted to curl up with him and have him read her a bedtime story, or fuck his brains out.

  Not that either of those things seemed likely to happen. He really didn’t seem to be interested in her sexually; well, aside from making her come. The man was confusing, that was for sure.

  He made some black tea, which she did sip. It felt good to have something warm in her stomach.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested when they were both done. “Get an idea of the lay of the land.”

  That didn’t sound terrible to Chloe. Going for a walk was something normal people did. It was the first ‘normal’ thing that had been suggested since she had arrived.

  They stepped out into the sun and Paul led the way, Chloe following half a step behind him. The terrain around the camp was very rugged and hilly and it got more rugged and hilly the further they walked.

  “There’s a stream down there,” Paul pointed. “That’s where we get our water from. It needs to be boiled for four minutes and left to cool before you drink it. Don’t go scooping it out of the stream. That stuff will give you an enema the wrong way.”

  Chloe blushed.

  Something on his wrist started blinking. “Okay,” he said. “The countdown’s started. Let’s go.”

  “The countdown? The countdown to what?”

  He didn’t answer her, just strode back toward the tent with a purposeful, long jogging gait that left Chloe scrambling after him.

  “Paul,” she said, pulling at his sleeve as she caught up. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s an enemy unit a mile away,” he said. “Let’s get back quick, get our stuff, and get out.”

  “Wait. What enemy unit?” Chloe stopped. “Tell me exactly what’s happening.”

  Paul turned toward her, an expression on his face that transformed him entirely. Gone was the easygoing, handsome man. In his place was a commander who expected to be obeyed. He pointed in the direction of the tent and uttered an order.

  “Run!”

  Her confusion turned to shock as he strode back to her, slapped her butt hard enough to make it sting, and repeated the order more forcefully. “Get your butt moving now! Run!”

  She started running, still not clear why. When she tried to slow down, to ask a question, to speak at all, he kept her moving with an ear-splitting bellow.

  “Run!”

  She scurried ahead of him, her designer sneakers making the dust and sand puff around her feet in little clouds as she headed into the desert ahead of him, propelled by his voice and occasionally, the palm of his hand meeting her pert cheeks.

  Chloe was suddenly glad that she was pretty fit. Physically, there was no reason why she couldn’t handle the run back to the tent. It wasn’t her body that made her slack, it was her rebellious mind that couldn’t quite grasp that she actually needed to do as she was told.

  As she started to flag and slow, he slapped her bottom again, making her skip a few steps forward, clutching her butt.

  “Cut it out!” She stopped and turned, her hands on her hips, a pout on her features. “Stop making me run!”

  She was staging a little rebellion. It didn’t work.

  “Move!” He thundered the word at her. Chloe could practically hear the echoes of a dozen tours in war-torn zones that made it easy for him to inject urgency and pure authority into his voice. “Now!”

  She scurried back a few steps, then stood her ground again, looking both defiant and confused. “I don’t want to!”

  His face contorted into an animal snarl that frightened her almost more than his words did. “Move now, or I’ll blister your ass until you can’t sit down for a week!”

  The threat made her stop stock-still and stare. She didn’t know what he was doing. Her lower lip trembled for a second and then she turned and raced back toward the tent as fast as her legs would carry her.

  Just before she darted back into the tent, Paul overhauled her in a few steps, grabbed her by the arm, and swung her around to face him.

  “This is training,” he explained in calmer tones. “This is a fraction of what it was really like out there. I’m going to do my best to emulate those conditions as best I can. That means running when I say to run, not talking back, and not stopping until I tell you it’s safe to. Understand?”

  * * *

  Paul had suddenly gone from the nicest person on the planet to the meanest man she’d ever known. Breathless and panting, Chloe was shocked by the way he was treating her, towering over her with his hands on his hips as he gave her drill sergeant treatment.

  “I don’t like you,” she said, gathering shreds of pride and resistance. “And I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t expect you to like me. And I don’t expect you to like this. I expect you to do it because you agreed to do it.”

  “Your expectations can suck it,” she said rebelliously. “I don’t care what you expect.”

  A slight smile passed over his lips. “I bet this usually works for you. I bet you throw a tantrum and everyone rushes to give you what you want. It’s not going to work out here with me.”

  WWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEBOOM!

  Somewhere nearby, something loud detonated strongly enough to make the ground beneath their feet shudder. Chloe fell to the ground, Paul covering her with his body.

  “What the hell!” She screamed the words before he clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “Shh,” he said in hushed, urgent tones. “They’ll follow sounds of distress.”

  Her eyes were wide, her heart pounding. She didn’t know who ‘they’ were, she didn’t know what had happened. She was utterly confused and scared in a very primal, basic way. The world wasn’t supposed to go boom.

  “It’s okay,” he said, his hard body pressed against hers in a way she found reassuring. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth,” he said. “Just don’t scream, okay?”

  She nodded mutely and a moment later, his hand left her face.

  “What’s happening? What was that?”

  “The producers had the idea,” he explained. “Part of the whole method acting plan.”

  “The producers had the idea to blow me up!?” Her voice reached a pitch of total and utter indignation that broke the ‘no screaming’ rule and made Paul quickly clamp his hand back over her mouth.

  “No,” he said. “That charge was set at a distance. A good five miles away. You’ll be safe if you follow my instructions.”

  “And if I don’t?” Her question was muffled by his fingers.

  “You’ll be less safe.”

  Before she could ask him if he was totally out of his mind, he pointed to a hillock in the distance where a small column of men was making its way over the ridge.

  “See them?”

  “Who the hell are they!” Her question was no less understandable for being muffled by his palm.

  “Those are the enemy units.” Paul said. “Looking for us. We have to take what we can and get out of here. Now.”

  He pulled his hand away from her mouth and hauled her back into the tent. She felt as though she had all the free will and self-determination of a rag doll as he dropped her on her bed.

  “Get ready to go,” he said. “Grab essentials. Underwear. Socks. Socks are really important. Use the small pack at the end of your bunk.”

  Shocked, Chloe did not grab socks or underwear. After a couple of seconds of inactivity, a question fell out of her mouth. “What do you mean, enemy units?”

  He looked at her, dark brow raised over green gaze. “Did you think we were just going to sit in a tent for two weeks? This is a real simulation, Chloe, as close as it can get and still be
safe, anyway. I told you you’d be lucky to get two pairs of panties.”

  She stared at him, hardly able to believe what was happening. She felt as though the reverberations of the explosion were still rumbling under her feet, though they had long since died away. The boom had set her nerves on edge and made her mind race.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that was going to happen? Why didn’t anyone warn me? That’s fucked up!”

  “Because we wanted you to know what it was really like out there. To have the world suddenly rip itself apart and have to react to that. That’s the situation Jodie found herself in. She went from being part of a well-funded organization to having nobody but me for protection. She was scared. You agreed to this, Chloe. We told you it would be difficult.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” Chloe said, her eyes welling with tears as she picked up a pair of socks. She was crumbling, and she couldn’t help it. “I can’t do this… I want to go home.”

  “Good,” Paul said firmly.

  She looked up at him through a watery gaze. “What? What do you mean, good?”

  “This wouldn’t mean much if you thought it was fun, or were enjoying yourself,” he said. “This is training, Chloe. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to push you to your limits. You’re going to hate everyone. You’re going to hate me especially. Now get your underwear and let’s go.”

  He’d been packing the whole time with an efficiency that far outclassed her. He didn’t seem to need to grab very much, everything was ready for him. Because he’d known what was going to happen. Asshole. Chloe stuffed the socks and panties into her pack and wondered what else to take. The script seemed fairly useless now she was living the experience for herself, but she rolled it up and shoved it into the bag anyway. Paul pulled it out of her hands after that and put some other bits and pieces in it. Her head was spinning, her mind was racing, and she didn’t know what or even how to think. She had been anxious since arriving, and the sudden detonation had put her over the cognitive edge.