Doctor Dom Series Sequence One (Triage | Observation | Diagnosis): A BDSM & Medical Play Series

by Tara Crescent

  “You eat with your hands,” Lisa said cheerfully. I nodded. I had eaten Ethiopian food before and quite liked it. But I’d never eaten it with a woman I craved constantly. Our fingers kept brushing against each other as we reached for the same food, and to watch her tuck little morsels of food in her mouth was the sweetest kind of temptation. All I wanted to do was fuck her.

  For fuck’s sake, Anderson, I groaned to myself, shocked by the desperation with which I wanted her. Her tongue reached out and licked a tiny bit of food from the tip of her mouth, and I growled, unable to help myself.

  She looked startled for a second, and then, she realized the reason for the growl, and that slow, sexy smile curved on her face. “I’m flattered,” she said.

  I grinned and changed the subject. “You play guitar in a band? Tell me about that.”

  She pouted a bit, but answered my question. “I used to. My friend Mandy is a singer. When she was younger, she experimented with a lot of different styles – punk, rock, even heavy metal once.” She shuddered at that memory. “I was her bass guitarist.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “Just work. Starting your own business takes a lot out of you. I was working crazy hours, and my schedule was really unpredictable. I couldn’t commit to setting aside time for rehearsal.”

  “Do you regret stopping?” I asked her. My parents had enrolled me in piano lessons as a kid. I had hated it. But Lisa spoke of music with a fondness I had never felt.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “She’s now singing jazz mostly. If she ever looked for a bass player, I might do it again. My business is better established now.”

  “I’d like to hear you play,” I told her simply, and she blushed.

  ***

  We went to sleep at my place. No sex, just comfort. She was nervous about her mother and on edge, and the best I could do for her was just be there.

  In the middle of the night, I woke up freezing. She was curled into a ball, hogging all the covers, and I looked at her, and all I could do was smile indulgently.

  My schedule for the next two week was hell. I was on ER standby. At any moment, a phone call could come from the hospital that pulled me away. I’d never minded my schedule before, but I wanted to hang out with Lisa and find out what made her tick. And, I wanted her to talk more about her ex-Dominant.

  It was in the past, and I hadn’t been lying when I said I wanted to move forward. But the past had an impact; how could it not? And it was clear that the eight months that she’d been this jerk’s submissive had mattered. She held something back when she spoke of him. I wanted to know what and why.

  For the longest time after Andrea, I tried to avoid dominance and I tried to let go of my need for control. And I hadn’t found anyone that made me happy.

  It was Saturday; I didn’t have to be at the hospital today, and so I pulled her and the blankets she was wrapped around into my body, and just lay there, my hands around her, smelling her hair, and listening to her peaceful breathing. This woman, she fit in my arms and in my life, and I didn’t want to lose her.

  ***

  She stretched when she woke up, and she turned to look at me. “Hey,” she said. “You aren’t usually in bed with me in the morning, how late is it?” I saw the flash of worry come into her eyes as the sleep dissipated, and thoughts of her mother once again rose to the fore.

  I kissed her. She groaned and kissed me back. “I have morning breath,” she mumbled when she pulled away, her cheeks flushed.

  “So do I,” I shrugged. “Do you know you steal the covers at night?”

  She flushed even harder. “I’ve heard that complaint,” she said, cheeks flaming. “Sorry.” Then she grinned and winked at me. “You should spank me, maybe that’ll prevent me from doing it again.”

  I laughed, entwined my fingers in hers. “First, coffee,” I said. Gods, but this girl was amazing.

  “Fine,” she mock-pouted at me. “Be that way.”

  ***

  After coffee and breakfast, she had to rush off. She looked at me with a crease in her forehead when she said it, as if I was going to start yelling at her for having a life. “I have to go into the office for just a bit, and then, to the hospital,” she said. “And I’m beat. Is it okay if we don’t hang out tonight?”

  I nodded. “You busy tomorrow?” I asked her. “My buddies and I watch football Sundays, typically. Would you like to join us, take a break from the hospital for a bit?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t, Patrick,” she said, and her voice was cautious. “Is that okay?”

  I raised an eyebrow. Her mother was in the hospital, recovering from brain surgery. It was perfectly understandable that she wouldn’t have much time to hang out with me. I didn’t understand why she was so wary about something so normal. It was almost like she was afraid of my reaction.

  “Your fear? Another gift from your ex?” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded. She nodded slightly, and I leaned forward and kissed her. “Of course that’s okay,” I said quietly. “I’ll call you. My schedule is crazy next week. I’d like to hang out mid-week, but I don’t know what night yet, is that okay?”

  I wanted to reassure her, to tell her I wasn’t this jerk that she used to date, but she already knew that. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be in my kitchen, sipping coffee. She wouldn’t have laughed that gorgeous, smoky laugh last night in my arms. She’d been hurt, and she was a little skittish. I could understand that. We just needed to get used to each other.

  ***

  Every week, my buddies and I would gather, watch football on TV and cheer our team on. It was usually at Doug’s place. Sunday, I grabbed a jacket, and walked over. Doug’s place was a fifteen minute walk.

  Doug’s girlfriend Sara opened the door, her eyes twinkling. “We’ve been talking about you,” she said.

  “You’ve been talking about him,” my friend James corrected, walking up. “Sara and Alison. They won’t shut up. Patrick, I beg you – just tell the girls what they need to hear, quickly, and we can get on with watching the game in peace.”

  I laughed. Doug had been travelling for work the last few weeks, and we’d skipped football, else I would have faced the inquisition sooner. I put my coat on a hanger, and walked into the kitchen. Doug handed me a beer. “Get it over with quickly, Patrick. Like pulling off a band-aid,” he joked.

  “Right,” I looked at Sara and Alison. “What do you need to know?”

  “Everything,” Alison said instantly. “One moment, you were going up to talk to this girl, and the next moment, we get a text from you saying you are leaving. Then, a couple of weeks later, I get a phone call from you, and I’m buying lingerie for her. Spill.”

  “Her name’s Lisa,” I started. I didn’t really kiss and tell, and I found I was protective of Lisa. I didn’t want to gossip about her. “She’s pretty awesome. I’ll bring her over one day to football; you can meet her then.”

  That shut them all up. Andrea had come to an occasional football game when we’d been married, but after that, I’d brought no other women over. But I wanted Lisa to meet my friends and I wanted to meet hers.

  “Umm,” Sara said, completely at a loss for words. “The game, then?”

  Doug grinned at her expression, and then looked at me. He alone knew most of what had gone down between Andrea and me and what a mess that had been for the longest time. He nodded, raised his beer silently to me, and we went into his living room to watch the game.

  Chapter 14

  Lisa:

  The weekend flew by with no incident. I spent most of my time at the hospital, but didn’t run into Patrick. He called me once Sunday afternoon, just to check in, and again, he warmed my heart with his genuine niceness.

  Patrick. He was amazing and perfect. He was hard and dominant, but he was also lovely and sweet. If I could have designed a guy from the ground-up, adding a pinch of dominance, a teaspoon of gorgeous hunk, a tablespoon of humour, and a cupful of kindness,
I wouldn’t have been able to make anyone more perfect than Patrick. And he was my boyfriend. I felt like I was living in my own Cinderella story.

  My mom was doing great, according to Dr. Janokovic. She’d been a bit dazed and confused on Saturday, but she was significantly more lucid on Sunday. While full recovery would take months to achieve, she was due to be discharged from the hospital on Friday, exactly one week after the surgery.

  ***

  On Monday, Mandy and Monica came to the hospital to visit my mom. “Is he here?” Monica whispered, dissolving into giggles.

  “Who?” I asked in genuine puzzlement.

  Mandy rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Patrick, you idiot. We want to meet this guy who has snapped the famous Lisa Preston no-commitment streak.”

  “Yup,” Monica piped up cheerfully. “Ethan won, you know.”

  “Won what?” I asked stupidly.

  “We all had a bet. I was out ages ago, my guess was that you’d be twenty-eight when the streak snapped,” Monica laughed. “Mandy had twenty-nine, we thought that confronted with your thirtieth birthday, you might relent and keep a guy around. In the end, Ethan won.”

  I just laughed. I guess I could have been irritated, but honestly, it was kind of funny. Their bracing assessment of my life was often what I needed. Whenever I sunk into self-pity because of the disaster that had been Nick, Mandy and Monica spoke soothing words of comfort and then told me to get over myself. They were perfect.

  The three of us had become best friends when we had bonded in college over a particularly brutal undergraduate class. They’d always been there for me. We’d drunk vodka and bitched after my disappointing first time with the fumbling college boy who couldn’t find my clitoris with a map in one hand and a flashlight in the other. We’d giggled over the outrageously large bouquets of flowers that Nick sent me when he’d been in determined chase mode. We’d lost touch a little during those eight months when every bit of my mind and body was consumed by Nick O’Malley, but they had been my rock when I needed out. They had painstakingly put the shattered bits of me back together into something that resembled a functioning human being.

  They had always been there for me. Mandy especially. Nick had been her boss, and she had had ringside seats to the sexual dynamics between us. I’d been concerned that when I ran from Nick, I had put her job at jeopardy. She had wanted to quit, but I wouldn’t let her. The job market had been tight, and Nick wasn’t the sort to mix work with pleasure.

  We never talked about Nick. She still worked for him; I knew that. But she never mentioned him to me. She always made me feel like she was on my side.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said, returning to the discussion at hand. Patrick.

  “Call him. Didn’t you say he did rounds here?”

  I glared at my determined friends, but they were unrelenting. I sighed, pulled out my phone and dialled Patrick’s number. He picked up on the first ring. “Lisa,” he said, warmth filling his tone.

  “You aren’t at the hospital, are you? My friends want to meet you, they are here visiting my mom.”

  He laughed. “I’m just finishing up rounds. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  ***

  He charmed the pants off them. In thirty seconds, they had morphed from grown-up, competent, capable women into giggling, blushing girls. Finally, Mandy took a break from giggling, and looked at me. “Hey, I have a favour to ask. I have a gig in a couple of Saturdays, and Perry can’t make it. Will you play?”

  “If everything’s okay with my mom,” I said.

  “Patrick, you should come watch Lisa play.” I shot Mandy a look, but there was no stopping her. Sigh.

  He grinned. “I love watching Lisa play,” he said, winking at me. I blushed beet-red. He was definitely not talking about the guitar.

  “Mandy’s singing in a couple of weeks,” I explained, trying to calm my racing pulse.

  “And you are going to play bass?” he asked. He smiled at me. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Chapter 15

  Patrick:

  We had dinner on Wednesday at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant that she picked. “Okay,” she said to me, blushing prettily. “I can eat. A lot. Try not to judge.”

  I’d been married to a woman who fretted constantly about how much she ate. The last thing I was going to do was judge. A woman who enjoyed food was a relief. Instead we both loaded our plates with sushi, and sat back down.

  We chatted for a few minutes about her mother’s stay in the hospital. She was doing great, was on track to be discharged in a few days and Lisa’s relief at that was clear and palpable. Then, I asked her something that had been piquing my curiosity for the last few days.

  “Your friends seemed really eager to meet me. What was that about?”

  She winced. “Ah, I was afraid you were going to ask that,” she said. She made a face. “You are sort of my first boyfriend in a really long time.”

  “How long?”

  Her voice was quiet, but she met my gaze evenly. “Twelve years.”

  I looked at her, trying to keep the shock I felt out of my eyes. “What did he do to you?” I asked her, my voice harsh. I’d asked her before, and she had always evaded the topic. But today, she sighed and answered.

  “He started taking over my life,” she said softly. Almost a whisper. “He had all these rules for me. What I should wear, when I should call him. It didn’t matter what I wanted, who I was. I was just there to be moulded into whatever he wanted.”

  I reached out and grabbed her hand, and held it, and in that gesture, I tried to convey how amazing I found her. How strong she really was, though it was clear she didn’t see it. This jerk had abused her right when she was on the cusp of figuring out who she was and what her sexual needs were. That she still had the courage to ask me or anyone to spank her, that she let me tie her hands together with my tie the first time we had sex – these spoke to both courage and a sexual honesty that was incredibly rare.

  She looked bleak, as she took a sip of her tea. “I let it happen, I didn’t stop him.”

  “You were twenty-three,” I said softly. “He was a lot older. Can you not see that? Is there no forgiveness possible?”

  “Forgiveness,” she whispered, “forgiveness is always possible. But trust? I stayed away from boyfriends and relationships and love for twelve years because I don’t trust myself.”

  I don’t trust myself. She’d worded that in the present tense. And I didn’t know what to do with that, because she’d have to learn to trust herself. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t help her with that.

  ***

  “Tell me about Andrea,” she said, after a while.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “24/7 is different for everyone, what was it for you?”

  “It wasn’t anything I either wanted then, or want now,” I stressed. I had no desire to go through another situation the way I had with Andrea, and Lisa needed to be completely sure of that. Things had escalated between Andrea and me far beyond my comfort level. I had shamefully allowed it to, thinking it was easier to go along with what Andrea wanted, rather than hurting her feelings. But in the end, we’d both been hurt, and we both felt like we’d entered the marriage under false pretenses. Our marriage hadn’t survived the resulting loss of trust.

  She didn’t look convinced, and so I sighed and elaborated. “It was the little things and the big things. She wanted me to make all the decisions, all the time. It got… tiring.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Lisa said, her eyes on her tea.

  I shrugged. “Sure. It ceased to matter pretty quickly.”

  She met my eyes. There was a challenge in hers. “So tell me, Patrick, if it stopped mattering that quickly, why did you stay married for eight years?”

  ***

  I was being open and honest about Andrea. I was staying away from the other stuff. My parents, the obligations I had walked away from, my struggle to convince myself I ha
dn’t shirked my responsibilities. I’d finally made my peace with all of it, but I wasn’t still entirely comfortable talking about it.

  I met her eyes. “I’m going to be a bit vague here, because some stuff, I just don’t want to talk about.” I saw the surprise rise in her eyes. To this point, I’d always answered her questions. “But, for a long time, it was critical that I fulfil my obligations. And marriage was a pretty big obligation, and I didn’t walk away from it lightly.”

  “Is that why you came to the hospital when I called? Cause you felt obligated to do it?”

  I laughed aloud. Lisa was a bright, shining gleam of light and sunshine. I wanted to be with her, and duty and obligation had nothing to do with it. I found her sexy and funny and smart and real and unexpected. And so, so fuckable.

  We were sitting in a booth in the corner, out of sight of most of the restaurant. “Slide next to me,” I said with a wink. She grinned and obeyed my instruction with sweetness and the amused awareness that was so uniquely her own. I reached out for her hand, and placed it over my dick, which was rock-hard underneath my jeans.

  Her lips twitched. “I’m just pussy then,” she said, laughing.

  “The best pussy,” I replied with a grin. “But the rest of you is pretty awesome too.”

  She blushed beet-red, and my cock twitched in response. “You are pretty damn awesome yourself, Patrick,” she drawled, in that sexy, smoky voice of hers.

  ***

  All I wanted to do was take her back to my house and fuck her senseless; I tried my level best to resist that. “What do you want to do?” I asked her.

  She looked at me with heat in her eyes. “I want to play, Dr. Anderson,” she said clearly.

  I was lost and drowning, but I tried one last time to be gallant. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  There was no doubt in her voice. “Absolutely.”

  ***

  Lisa:

  “Can we avoid the examination room today?” I asked him when we pulled up in front of his house. “Is that okay?” My voice was hesitant.