She didn’t answer. He was forced to leave a message. “This is your principal, Miss Moore. Call me right away.”
So what could she have said to Smith’s wife that would make the man foam at the mouth? He thought about the client whose husband wanted her to have sex with other men. Instead of denouncing the desire, Charlotte’s suggestion had been to fantasize about it. She was certainly unorthodox, but he wouldn’t call her deviant. Not for creating a fantasy for him that damn near blew his brain circuitry. Good God, if she would be considered deviant, what was he after all the things he’d made her do? Sex in his back seat. Anyone could have returned to the Park and Ride to pick up their car. What about that night at Lookout Point? Risky, public sex. But he still wouldn’t call anything they’d done deviant. People thought about having sex in public all the time. It was probably a universal fantasy, at least for men.
She returned his call half an hour later. Glancing at the time, it was close to the top of the hour and he realized she must have been with a client.
“I’m at your service, Principal Hutton.”
Just her voice made him smile. Her words made him hard. “We need a meeting.”
“Tonight.”
“Today.” It was a delicate situation and a phone call wouldn’t suffice. Or maybe he was just searching for an excuse to see her.
“Well, um . . .” She did a little hemming and hawing. “I have back-to-back appointments with only half an hour at lunch. I can’t get to the school and back and have any time to . . . talk.”
“I’ll come to you. Where are you?”
She gave him brief directions to her office.
It wasn’t far. “What time do you finish your last appointment before lunch?”
“A little before noon.”
“Thirty minutes. That should be enough time. I’ll be there at noon.”
He wouldn’t touch her. He wouldn’t spank her. All they had time for was the discussion about David Smith and his wife.
* * *
A NOONER. CHARLOTTE DIDN’T HAVE TIME, BUT SHE COULDN’T SAY no either. Not because he was her master or any such thing, but because she wanted it. That sexy little episode last night in his car had only whet her appetite for more. And so what? What was wrong with getting dirty during lunch? If a married couple had come to her and said they’d made time for a little noontime nookie, she’d have cheered. People needed to make time for intimacy, do something wild and crazy, add pizzazz to their lives.
But if a woman had said she was having nooner sex with her boss?
This was different. Lance wasn’t her boss, at least not directly. She sounded like she was making excuses.
Her client left ten minutes before noon. Charlotte rushed to the ladies’ room, freshened up. And removed her panties.
Okay, she was definitely crazy.
She had physical signs, too, like the way her heart raced when he sauntered through her door and her nose twitched for the scent of him. How she watched him for signs of approval over the décor and her degrees and certificates on the wall.
She remained seated at her desk, controlling her physical urges while he strolled from door to window.
“Very nice,” he said. “The comfortable corner group by the window with a view of the trees.” He glanced out. “You can’t even see the parking lot or the other buildings. Almost like you’re in the woods.” He adjusted the tissue box. “Everything right at hand.”
She could have beamed with pleasure, but caught herself before she fell all over him with gratitude. Instead she folded her arms across her chest and crossed her legs. “May I ask what was so important, Principal Hutton?”
He pulled a chair closer to the desk and sat in front of her. “I had a visit from David Smith this morning. It seems his wife is your client.”
Her stomach dropped sickeningly. She’d been thinking sex, sex, sex, but he was here for something altogether different. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss that.”
There were near imperceptible changes in his face, a slight flare of his nostrils, a flatness to his lips. Then he said, “You should have at least warned me after the meeting yesterday.”
“I couldn’t. I can’t reveal anything a client tells me or even that they are a client.”
“Fine.” His voice was clipped. “Now it’s out in the open. Let’s discuss it.”
She pursed her lips. His attitude was starting to rile her. “I don’t have her permission to discuss anything.”
“Well, her husband is claiming that you suggested she commit deviant acts.”
Deviant acts? David Smith had proposed the deviant act to his wife, for God’s sake. But she couldn’t say that. “Like what?”
“He wasn’t specific.”
“So how do you know if my suggestions were really deviant?”
“I don’t.”
“Then how can you come here and accuse me of—”
He cut her off. “I’m not accusing you. I’m telling you what he said. This is a warning.”
She was so angry, her back teeth started to chatter. “Warning me about what? That you’re going to fire me?”
“Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. You’re threatening me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m only warning you that he’s upset.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re accusing me, like you believe him.”
He raised a brow. “I have to admit I was reminded of that little scenario with your boyfriend taking a video of you and another man.”
“That was a fantasy,” she snapped. “I didn’t suggest my client actually do it, only that she fantasize about it with her husband.” That bastard. Smith was telling lies. He was the one who wanted to loan his wife out to other men. What had she told Lance? She hadn’t said it was a current client. She’d made it sound like it was someone in the past.
He held up a hand. “Don’t get upset, Miss Moore. I’m not questioning you.”
The Miss Moore pissed her off. This wasn’t one of their sex games. “Then what exactly are you doing? Besides warning me.”
“Smith is uncomfortable with the idea of a sex therapist counseling students.”
“Oh my God.” She gaped. “He wants you to fire me?”
“He simply said that he didn’t want you to talk to his son one-on-one.”
She made a sound in her throat, indicating her disgust. “What the hell does he think I’m going to do to Eric?”
“You just need to be prepared. Steer clear of Eric and deal with Melody only. It’s what we’d already decided to do anyway. I calmed Smith down, but he’s got a bug up his ass. I’ll stand by you.”
“Well, thank you very much,” she said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm.
“Charlotte. It’ll be fine.” He cocked his head. “Would you rather I hadn’t told you?”
“No.” She would have preferred that he’d told her a different way instead of making it sound like an accusation. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I didn’t say anything after I realized she was my client, because our sessions are confidential, as is the fact that she sees me.”
“Then perhaps you should ask her what she told him.”
She stood, paced. He stayed in his chair, and her skirt brushed his arm in the cramped space as she passed. Her office was meant for sitting, not pacing. “She’s ended her sessions with me.” Charlotte had, however, planned to make a follow-up call in a couple of days, just to check that everything was all right.
She stopped mid-pace. “You don’t think—” She cut herself off. She’d been about to wonder aloud if David Smith had done something worse than harp on Jeanine until she told him why she’d run out of the meeting. Coupled with Jeanine’s ominous words about it not being her fault. But anything Charlotte said about the Smiths came dangerously close to breaking confidentiality.
Lance wrapped a hand around her forearm. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this.”
She looked down at his fingers gripping her. “I don’t need you to tak
e care of anything.”
“Don’t you?”
The atmosphere heated. His hand branded her flesh through the thin, silky blouse. His gaze was dark, penetrating. Suddenly this wasn’t about the Smiths at all. Her breath caught in her throat. Her nipples tightened, aching.
She wasn’t even wearing panties.
Lance let go of her arm. His fingers touched her calf lightly. Slid up, stroking the back of her knee. Then higher, slipping around to caress her inner thigh.
This was absolutely crazy. Because she actually wanted it. Even after he’d marched into her office and accused her of malfeasance. “No.”
“Yes,” he whispered, sliding up, high enough to graze her pussy with his index finger.
She swallowed. Her throat was dry. Everything else was wet. “No is my safe word.” But her voice didn’t sound assured. It was almost a question.
He held her gaze, mesmerized her like a hypnotist or a magician. “Are you sure you want to say no? You aren’t wearing panties. That indicates intention, my dear Miss Moore.”
His finger barely moved, but it was enough. Simply with the heat of his skin, he made her body clench with need. Her lips formed the word No but the sound didn’t come out.
He shot her that devilish grin of his. “Which means you’re not sure you want to say no.” Delving deeper into her sex, he let out a low groan. “Oh, Miss Moore, you are so very wet.”
Charlotte’s breath came faster as he stroked her clitoris, light, teasing swirls around it. Her legs shifted of their own volition, giving him better access.
Then both his hands were up her skirt. She grabbed his shoulder to steady herself.
“You want it, Miss Moore. You can’t help yourself. You need it badly. Because you’re such a dirty girl.” He talked and stroked, drove her up on the ledge, her legs beginning to quiver. “You love sex. You love to come. You need a man inside you every day. You need my tongue on you, my cock in you. Don’t you, Miss Moore.” No question about it.
“Yes. God, yes.” She sank her fingernails into his shoulder, the climax building, exploding, carrying her away. Red lights flashed before her eyes, bright spots of color, on, off, on, off.
Lord. The light on her phone was flashing. How had they used up half an hour? Her next client was here. And she was letting the principal make her come right here in her office as if nothing else mattered.
She’d lost her mind.
17
“JEANINE, WE SHOULD REALLY TALK.” IT WAS AFTER FIVE O’CLOCK, and Charlotte was thankful Jeanine had at least answered her phone.
“I told you I can’t see you anymore, Dr. Moore.”
“That is your choice. But we need to discuss your husband’s mistaken impressions.” Charlotte couldn’t go to David Smith and tell him exactly what she’d told Jeanine, but she could ask Jeanine to do it. “He believes I encouraged you to”—she put her finger to her lips as if Jeanine could see—“hmm, I think the words were ‘to commit deviant acts.’” Yes, her sarcasm was showing. She should have curbed it, acted professionally. But even therapists got angry. “Why would he think that, Jeanine?”
Jeanine stuttered before she finally got her words out. “I don’t know, Dr. Moore. I didn’t tell him what you said, honestly.”
Charlotte wanted to beat her head against the desk. She hadn’t been able to call Jeanine until after her last appointment of the day. But that created a problem, too, because she couldn’t properly concentrate on her other clients between wondering what David Smith knew, what he planned to do, and the way Lance had made her come against her will. Okay, it wasn’t totally against her will, but she’d started out saying no. She just hadn’t stuck to it, dammit. The man could talk her into anything.
Note to self: You are losing control of the entire situation. Fix it.
The least she could do now was concentrate on Jeanine. “I’m sure it was a very difficult session with your husband after you two left the meeting. You might have said things you didn’t mean because he flustered you.” It was better than saying that Jeanine had lied. “So I suggest one last session where we can get all that off your chest. Or we could schedule something with you and your husband, clear the air and work toward straightening things out between you.”
Jeanine gave a strangled sound. “Nooo.”
All right, she simply had to be blunt. “What did you tell your husband about our discussions?”
Jeanine stuttered again before finding her voice. “Just that I discussed his—I mean our sexual problems, and that you suggested fantasizing.”
There had to be more than that. “He seemed angrier than I’d expect if that’s all you said. He went to my principal.”
Jeanine sniffed. “I know. I’m so sorry. He just got all wound up about Eric and you being a sex surrogate and—”
“What?” She almost shrieked.
“A sex surrogate,” Jeanine said softly, a note of terror in her tone.
“I’m a sex therapist, not a surrogate. I do not have sex with my clients.”
“Oh, oh, yes, I mean sex therapist.”
“You need to make the distinction with your husband. I would like to talk to you both to work this out.”
“He won’t come,” Jeanine said bluntly. “He wouldn’t consider it before. Now he’s angry because I didn’t tell him and I went behind his back. So he’s not going to do any sort of counseling.”
Then how the hell was Charlotte supposed to fix this?
“Please, Dr. Moore. I’ll take care of it. I’ll talk to him. Please.”
I’ll take care of it. That’s what Lance had said. She didn’t like it any better when Jeanine said it. “If I could talk to him—”
Jeanine cut her off with an even more forceful plea. “Please, Dr. Moore. I’ll do it.”
Her hands were tied, and not in a good way. She couldn’t talk to David Smith without Jeanine’s permission.
“All right, Jeanine. But I must insist you come in for one last session on Friday.”
“I can’t make it Friday.”
Charlotte flared her nostrils and narrowed her eyes. If looks could kill . . . But Jeanine couldn’t see her. That was a good thing. She was the psychologist after all and needed to maintain some decorum. “Then I’ll put you in at your regular time on Monday.”
She was pushing, sure, but if she let Jeanine go now, she’d be worse off than when she’d first come to Charlotte. And so would Charlotte.
How had she let things get so out of control?
* * *
ON THURSDAY MORNING, MELODY HAD SHUFFLED INTO Charlotte’s office wearing the same shapeless brown hoodie, head down, hair lanky and hanging over her face. She’d flopped into the chair opposite and had immediately begun beating her fingernails on the armrests.
Charlotte had been patient. When she thanked Melody for coming in, the reply had been something surly about how she’d been forced. When Charlotte told her they had permission to discuss what happened in the one-on-one session with Melody’s parents on Tuesday, she got an eye roll.
Charlotte had trotted out the trite phrase They only want to help you, feeling it was necessary. She didn’t want to turn them into the villains in Melody’s eyes, especially since she intended to disagree with some of the things they’d done.
Yet nothing had much effect on Melody. Charlotte simply couldn’t engage her. After fifteen minutes, she’d gotten nowhere. Since it didn’t appear she had anything to lose—Melody was already alienated from everything and everyone—Charlotte went to the issue that bothered her the most.
“Your mother said she offered to pay for your surgery to have breast implants. How do you feel about that, Melody? Is it something you want to do?”
Melody’s lips pursed and Charlotte sensed she was gritting her teeth. Finally she said, “No,” her voice clipped, angry.
“Why not?”
Melody turned the question back on her. “Do you think I should do it?”
It was the first time Charlotte felt she
’d truly engaged the girl. She wasn’t going to cop out by asking another question. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think breast implants solve the fundamental issue.”
“How would you know?” Melody pointed at Charlotte’s chest. “Obviously you’ve never had to worry about it. You never had kids make fun of you.”
True, her breasts had never been an issue for her. But funnily enough, they weren’t something Lance had gone gaga over. He was all about spanking her. And other things. At her age, breasts didn’t really matter anymore, except to worry about sagging.
“You’re right. That wasn’t one of my problems. But there’s always something you don’t like about yourself. If you have breast enlargements, that solves that. But then you’ll worry about your acne. And when your acne is gone—”
“What if it’s never gone?”
Charlotte gave her an earnest look. “It will go away. It just doesn’t feel like that now.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Yes, it is. But the issue is that we’re worried about the outside, not the inside. If all we ever like about ourselves is what we look like on the outside instead of who we are on the inside, then we’re never satisfied.”
Melody shook her head. “That’s for sure.”
The fact that the girl sounded neither sullen nor combative gave Charlotte hope. “Women will always find something they don’t like about themselves. They look in the mirror and they hate this or they despise that.” She rolled her eyes. “And don’t even get me started about how we react when we start to age.” She tried to smooth out the wrinkles across her forehead. “No one told me not to frown when I was a kid.”
“Maybe you should try Botox.” Something glinted in Melody’s eyes, and Charlotte realized the teenager was looking at her, not hiding behind her hair. And that perhaps the girl had made a joke.
Charlotte smiled slightly. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not? My mom gets it.”
Yes, and Kathryn Wright wanted her daughter to get injections, too. But Charlotte gave Melody her most honest answer. “For a lot of reasons. First, it’s botulism, and I just have a problem with injecting deadly stuff into my forehead. Second, I’m the type of person that when I fix one thing, I’ll start wanting to fix something else. I’m not sure where it would stop. And what if I didn’t like the results?” She pointed at Melody. “But you’re young enough to remember not to wrinkle your forehead.”
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