Everything She Ever Wanted: A Different Kind of Love Novel

by Liz Durano

  “So, how’s the chafing?” I ask before I can stop myself. Great! Of all things, it’s what comes out of my mouth, like I’m back to doctor mode again. Of course, there’s no chafing. It’s almost become a running joke between us although we did have many sessions that first night and I had to pick up some water-based lube while I was in town this afternoon. Just in case.

  “It feels fine,” Dax replies. “But it’s probably better if I have a professional examine it, don’t you think?”

  I nod. “I highly recommend it. Care to step into my office and lie down?”

  He stands closer. “How much is it going to cost me?”

  “For you, I think I’ll knock down the price. Maybe a kiss to start. You know, installments.”

  “I see. Are there any specifics about this kiss? Duration and location, maybe?”

  I think for a few seconds. “Why don’t you just show me? Usually, that’s more accurate.”

  “You’re right.” Dax cups my face in his hands. “Like this?”

  The kiss starts as a feathering of our lips. He tastes of peppermint, his lips soft and warm. My hands automatically land on his hips, my fingers resting on his firm ass. Dax groans, his tongue slipping between my teeth, his erection rubbing against me. My mind is filled with so many possibilities. What position are we trying this time?

  Part of my online research yesterday had to do with new positions or the names of the ones we tried the day before. Reverse cowgirl, shoulder holder, crisscross. I feel like a student trying to make up for lost time. And boy, what a lot of time I’d lost!

  When Dax lifts me off my feet, I wrap my legs around his hips as he carries me to the bedroom. I can’t believe how we seem to fit so well, our bodies molding so easily with each other. We tumble onto the bed, the momentary separation of our bodies leading to clothes flying in all directions. In our jammies, it’s pretty easy—one tug of my bottoms, and they’re off, and another tug of my top over my head and I’m unabashedly naked in front of him. When he pulls off his shirt, I’ve sat up, and my lips graze the skin of his taut belly, his six-pack abs tensing.

  Together we take turns exploring each other with our hands, our mouths, our bodies. He licks and sucks his way down my body, his hands palming my breasts before he takes a nipple in his mouth, his tongue swirling lazy circles that send me gasping. Then he makes his way lower down my torso and I feel his beard grazing the top of my pubis, his tongue tracing the sensitive scar just above it.

  “You’re so beautiful, Harlow. Everything about you is fucking amazing.”

  I look down, swallowing nervously when he traces the scar of my C-section with his tongue. “Even my scar?”

  “Especially your scar. It’s what makes you even more beautiful.”

  He dips his finger inside me. I close my eyes, letting the sensations wash over me. He inserts two fingers, letting it go deeper as I open my eyes and see him watching me. “Fuck, you’re so wet.”

  He brings his fingers to my lips, and I taste myself. I hear him groan as he watched me before bringing his hand back down. When Dax slides his tongue along my clit, I shudder with expectation and soon, I’m moaning his name as his finger hits my G-spot and his mouth and tongue work their wonders, sending me through the roof with multiple orgasms I’ve lost count. Wait! Why the hell am I counting them anyway?

  By the time Dax moves up on top of me and kisses me, letting me taste myself on his tongue, I’m so far gone. When he enters me, the sensation is exquisite. Lights flash behind my eyelids as I muffle my cries with my hand. His strokes are deep and slow, rhythmic, his gaze never leaving my face. Each thrust sends me moaning and I realize I feel no shame at all in what we’re doing. When Dax orders me to touch my breasts and play with myself, I don’t even think twice. I do what he says, squeezing my breasts and pinching my nipples as he rubs his thumb over my sensitive nub. I feel like I’m in unexplored territory, discovering parts of me I’d never allowed myself to discover. My nipples, my clit, my… my pussy. There, I said it.

  New Harlow in the house.

  Dax lets go of my knees, and I wrap my legs around his waist as he kisses me again, soft, gentle kisses on my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids. I love the way his cock fills me with each thrust, and oh, how I hate it when he pulls back. My moans fill the room as I feel my orgasm building up again, stronger this time. I’m so close now, and Dax knows it, his strokes deepening, speeding up. When his mouth finds the sensitive spot behind my ear, I shatter, crying out his name as my body shudders beneath him. My fingers rake the skin on his back, leaving new marks over old ones. I feel Dax swell inside me, before he buries his face in my neck, allowing his release to claim him as he utters my name.

  Today, I’m not a surgeon whose only care in the world is her reputation. I’m just a woman in the arms of a man. And I don’t even care that when this is all over, Dax and I will go our separate ways and life will go back to normal. But until then, I’ll take whatever I can get.

  Chapter 18

  Dax

  By the time my alarm chirps to remind me of Gabe’s barbecue at three, it’s one in the afternoon. Harlow and I are lying on our sides, her back nestled in front of me as I spoon her.

  Since we returned to bed this morning, all we’ve done is fuck and fuck some more, with Harlow showing me more than her adventurous side. She’s funny and curious, wanting to try out different positions beyond the ones I already know that she somehow has given names to. The one she named crisscross was interesting, although I’m sure we’re going to need a bigger bed if we keep at this. I’m all for new positions, sure, but some of them could fracture a dick or worse, break it. I also might need to look into yoga.

  I love to hear Harlow laugh. It’s a throaty laugh that’s so fucking sexy it sends tingles up and down my spine. Shit, so much about her does exactly that. I love how she’s so enthusiastic about just about everything we do in bed as if she’s never done them before. Hard to believe, but she’s never gone down on a man, and I believe her. She’s too formal sometimes it takes her a few tries to let herself go, but when she does, man, but it’s a damn beautiful sight. It suits her more than the armor she carries around with her even if it’s because she’s lost so much. She did tell me that she did try going down on someone, but then, I don’t know what that means. She tried, and he said no? Was he out of his fucking mind? Oh, well, his loss, not mine.

  Harlow can get all nerdy in bed, too, naming the parts of my dick while running her tongue over them, like she’s giving a demonstration. Name the part, then lick. Name what it does, and then lick and suck some more. I did have to put a stop to having her tell me how erections work because I sure as hell know how, at least as a man and not a doctor. I don’t need to know what seminal vesicles are. What matters to me is that my junk works just fine, if they’re not being overworked as it is. But I’m not complaining. When she takes my cock in her mouth, there’s nothing like seeing her look up at me, watching my reaction to everything she does.

  I’m stupid for not wearing protection, but just as Harlow believes I’m clean (hell, even Gabe can attest to that), I believe her, too. We even have the damn paperwork to prove it, like two candidates applying for the same job and showing off their achievements. But instead of saying how long we’ve been at some previous position and with whom, what really matters are names like Hepatitis and HIV, and the accompanying words, NON-REACTIVE. It’s crazy, but I don’t care. Hell, I’ll believe everything she says at this point, though right now if she wants another round, I’m going to beg off. I’m too exhausted even to think of sex, and Lil D is beat. I’m also starving, and somewhere in Taos is a barbacoa with my name on it.

  But first, I need Harlow to talk and maybe even trust me a little. I pull her closer to me, and she moans, reaching behind her to squeeze my ass. “Tell me about New York. About the Harlow James who lives there.”

  She doesn’t answer right away, but I wait.

  “There’s not much to say. She was, by all accounts, uptight. S
he was interesting when it came to her work and boring when it came to everything else. She didn’t cheat on her husband, or took vacations. She just worked like it was the only thing that mattered to her, saving lives and,” she pauses, chuckling dryly, “trying her darnedest to get pregnant. She hoped that maybe a baby would make her whole and even save her marriage so she’d have a semblance of a family. But when that didn’t happen… well, you roll with the punches and move on.”

  Her openness breaks my heart. I’m too young to think of kids, but I’ve changed enough of Dyami’s diapers and babysat him to say I wouldn’t mind a couple of my own. “I’m sorry, Harlow.”

  “It’s okay. Things are looking much better. Well, out here instead of back there.”

  I pull her closer, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair as I decide to ask the question that’s been bugging me since I first returned to the Pearl that night. “Has it ever gotten so bad for you that you thought of, you know, ending it all?”

  I feel her body stiffen for a few seconds, and she turns to look at me, frowning before she rests her head back on the pillow. “Don’t we all?”

  Not really. Some of us drink or work it off, I almost tell her but keep my mouth shut.

  “Maybe. But I’m still here, aren’t I? With you,” she says, shrugging. “And that’s about it to Harlow James, the uptight pediatric kidney transplant surgeon, assistant professor, imperfect woman, and incompetent wife.”

  “No one’s perfect, Harlow, even transplant surgeons and master craftsmen. But just because you’re going through a divorce doesn’t make you an incompetent wife either. Some marriages just don’t work out.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve never been married, have you?”

  I shrug. “No, but it doesn’t mean I’m clueless about it. My parents had a happy marriage, even if Dad had to travel.”

  She sighs. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “Yyou’re one amazing woman, with or without your degrees. And if you weren’t aware of that before today, then I hope you are from here on. You’re fucking amazing, Harlow James. Really. And I’m not just saying that because we’re sleeping together. I really mean it.”

  “Thanks,” she says, giggling. “Can you head my fan club?”

  “Anytime.” Suddenly I don’t want to talk about this New York version of Harlow James, the one with no friends to go back to. I like the New Mexico Harlow so much better, the one I went on hikes with just days earlier, climbing up cavates and searching for petroglyphs with a constant smile on her face.

  “Tell me what makes you smile,” I ask her as she rolls onto her back to face me.

  “You,” she replies, smiling as she strokes my bearded jaw and I can’t stop grinning like a schoolboy, all thoughts of New York Harlow forgotten.

  “What else?”

  “Your smile,” she replies, tracing my bottom lip with her index finger before moving down my neck and my chest. “Your pecs, and your abs. Your ass, and your…”

  I grab her wandering hand and bring it to my lips. “What else—one that’s not on this bed, for starters.”

  She giggles. “Oh, that’s what you meant.”

  “Yes, Harlow, that’s what I meant.”

  She turns serious. “This place. Even the name—Pearl—is so peaceful and so perfect. And this state. It truly is the Land of Enchantment as the brochures say. Your family and your friends make it even more special.”

  “By friends, you must mean Gabe, because as far as I know, he’s the only one you’ve met.” So far. I just hope she’s ready because I have a ton of them.

  She nods. “Yes, and I forgot to tell you, but he hopes to see us at the barbecue this afternoon.”

  Thank God for friends like Gabe. “And would you like to come with me? Nana and Sarah are going to be there. Dyami, too, and Benny, of course. I just hope my family won’t be too overwhelming.”

  “They’re not overwhelming at all, Dax,” Harlow murmurs, her expression turning distant. “You’re a lucky man. You have family and friends who love you. Really love you.”

  “I’m sure you do, too. They’re just back in New York.”

  “No, they’re not,” she replies, sighing. “I paid more attention to my career than I did in my personal life to keep friends.”

  “What about family? Your parents? Brothers and sisters?”

  She sighs. “I’m a foster kid, Dax. I went from family to family, counting the days until someone would adopt me but no one ever did. It wasn’t their fault; I was a sickly kid, always having these crazy asthma attacks at the mere sight of a dust mite, or an A-minus on my paper. I’m sure that didn’t help make me good enough to adopt.”

  “Dyami sometimes gets asthma attacks when the winds kick up, but I’ve seen nothing like it with you, not when we went to Bandolier.”

  “It disappeared when I was eighteen after I graduated from high school. But by then, I’d aged out of the system,” she replies, shrugging. “Someone said it was all psychosomatic, that I was so stressed out over my changing surroundings that it must have manifested in my lungs, and maybe they’re right. But by then, I’d won a scholarship to a college, and I kept on going until I got my MD. And even when I should have stopped because I’d achieved everything I thought I wanted with my career, I still kept on going. It wasn’t unusual for me to put in seventeen-hour days, Dax, and looking back now, that’s just not normal, not for a married woman who wants to be a mother, too.”

  “Something’s gotta give, Harlow. Seventeen hours is crazy.”

  “I know.” She pauses, her gaze distant. “No wonder I always miscarried. And even when I was pregnant with Marcus, I kept on going, thinking I could be a transplant surgeon, and still be wife and mother, too. Ambitious, isn’t it?”

  “It still doesn’t change the fact that you changed children’s lives, Harlow, and their families, too. You didn’t just change their lives; you saved them. Never forget that.”

  She weaves her fingers with mine and kisses the back of my hand. “How do they say it online? TL;DR. Too Long; Did Not Read. I took everything for granted.”

  “And now?”

  “I honestly can’t afford to anymore,” she replies. “Anyway, I may take a position in New Haven or I may not. But right now, I have no idea.”

  “But is that what you really want, more of the same thing?”

  “If I take it, it’s only because I don’t know how to do anything else. I thought I wanted to be a mother but that never happened. Being a doctor is all I’ve ever been, and so I go back to what’s familiar.”

  “Don’t you want to do anything different? Try living in a different place, maybe?”

  She shrugs. “I really have no idea, Dax. But what I do know is that I’ve never felt as happy as I do now, right here with you. But then, it could be because I’ve got vacation on the brain and when this is all over, my life goes back to normal again.”

  I don’t like her version of normal at all, not when what we are right now is perfect for me. It’s my new normal and I like it. I want more of it.

  “I don’t know about you, Harlow, but I like this kind of normal.” I kiss her and for a few moments, that’s all we do, kiss and explore each other like we haven’t already been doing that all morning. But I also need a reprieve from everything she’s told me so far if only to process the life she’s had which is so opposite to mine. How would she react when she sees just how extended my family can get, that it goes beyond Nana, Sarah, and Dyami? It’s such a different world from the one she knew with her asshole soon-to-be ex-husband.

  At the thought of her ex-husband, I pull away from her. “What about Jeff?”

  She looks at me, surprised. “What about him?”

  “What if he wants you back?”

  “Why would he want me back? He hasn’t wanted me in two years.”

  “But what if he does now? What if he has a change of heart?”

  “He won’t, and even if he did, I can’t go back to anyone who’s hu
rt me as much as he has,” Harlow says. “Can you?”

  I think of Claudia and the night she cheated on me. I’ve forgiven her, but I can’t forget the humiliation and anger I felt in that men’s bathroom, first when the idiot told me he had fucked her, and later, when she admitted it was true.

  “No,” I reply. “Forget it. That was a stupid question anyway.”

  “No, it wasn’t, but you got your answer, Mr. Drexel. TL;DR. No, I’m not going back to Jeff.”

  “You and your internet lingo,” I say just as my phone chirps to remind me about Gabe’s barbecue again. “We better start getting ready. We need to hop in the shower.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The moment they take one whiff of us they’ll know what we’ve been up to, that’s for sure,” Harlow says as she rolls out of bed, smacks my ass and then runs to the bathroom shrieking with laughter when I follow right behind her. I catch up with her in front of the mirror and whip her around to face me.

  “And what exactly have we been up to, Dr. James? Because I just want more of it.”

  Harlow’s eyes grow wide in shock as my erection presses against her belly, ready for another round just when I thought I couldn’t go again. She bites her lower lip playfully before I kiss her and feel her body mold into mine like she was made for me.

  TL;DR, Harlow James, I think I’m in love with you.

  *

  Harlow is a hit at the barbecue, especially among the women who can’t stop asking her health-related questions like, so what do you think of this blood pressure reading? But she handles it like a champ although she lights up the most when she’s with children like Dyami who can’t stop telling everyone that he met her first. The kids love her, and she loves them right back. Her face just lights up at the sight of them, especially babies.

  I should have warned her that Gabe has a big extended family that pops out kids like it’s going out of style. Luckily, they’re all so tight-knit they could form their own daycare if they wanted to, and everyone would still get a few days off. Already, Gabe’s got ten nephews and nieces, four of them from one cousin, Letty, who just had quadruplets three months ago. If I had thought Sarah having Dyami was a full-time job, I can only imagine having four of them all at once. But all I need to do is look at Alex, Letty’s husband, and I get it. Sure, he looks just as exhausted as Letty, but nothing can beat the glow on his face when he’s with his family. It’s the same glow that fills Harlow’s face right now: pure bliss.