The email sailed off with a whoosh from my computer, and then I shut it and sat back.
I blinked awake later. The room had darkened, and shouting echoed down the hallway. I stood groggily and poked my head out the door.
An older woman, Kory’s mother, whom I recognized from the news, stood there clutching her daughter’s arm. I almost stepped out, but they looked like they were trying to be private with their conversation. I waited to catch her in a moment when they were done speaking.
Her mother shook her arm, and I ground my teeth together about to step in. She whispered fiercely, “We made a deal. You stay here and get your rest. You stay here, don’t fight, don’t fuss, and certainly don’t cause your attending doctor to put in late night requests for outside help.” Her tone grew a notch louder. “Do I make myself clear? Or perhaps I need to remove these comforts you are so fond of to remind you why you do as I say.”
Something skittered through me like a flash of cold on warm skin. My fingers went numb, and my mind tried to play the conversation on repeat. I looked at Kory’s face, and she shook her head vehemently. The vulnerability and shame written there threatened to gut me.
She shook her head again and said, “No, I’ll behave, and I’ll talk to the doctor. He won’t be a problem.”
“Do I need to take care of him too?”
Another head shake. “No, he is a team player and will do whatever you need. He’s only here for the six months, and then he will go about his life.”
Her mother leaned in and said something I didn’t catch. Then Kory jerked her hand back. “I said I will take care of him. You don’t need to trouble yourself.”
Her mother turned, dug something out of a large bag, and pressed the roses into her daughter’s arms. Then her face smoothed and shifted to the strong politician the world loves. She raised her voice louder than necessary in the empty halls now. “My dear, I just wanted to stop in and make sure you were being properly cared for. I also brought you flowers.”
This change disturbed me more than witnessing the complete collapse of a system I believed in. A system I cared about greatly. I stepped into the hall and both of them turned toward me. Her mom immediately stepped forward, hand extended to shake mine. I met Kory’s eyes and shook her mom’s hand.
Kory wasn’t as good as her mother at wiping away all traces of her emotions. She suffered greatly just standing next to her mother. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Doctor, and thank you so much for your diligence in taking care of my daughter.”
I watched Kory’s face now, but she refused to look at me. I pointed to the flowers she held limp in her hands. “Unfortunately, I’ll have to take those. The thorns might be a danger to any other patients we might receive.”
Her mother’s eyes went wide and then another politician’s grin. “Of course, Doctor. Whatever you think is best.”
I could easily see the resemblance between the two ladies. Demeter had about twenty years on her, but the genes ran deep and true. I could spot her Greek heritage and how well Kory would wear her age in a few years. They were both lovely women.
Kory looked uncomfortable and ready to bolt. Everything in me wanted to draw her close and shield her from the obvious danger. I gave Demeter a smile and shoved my hands in my pockets. The picture of medical ease. “Also, I think visiting time is almost over. Can I walk you out?”
Her mother didn’t even flinch. She hugged her daughter around the shoulders, looking at me the entire time, and turned toward the door. “I don’t need an escort doctor; my security detail is downstairs.”
She shook my hand again and walked out in a cloud of Chanel no 5 and Armani. I turned to speak to Kory, but she’d disappeared, the flowers on the floor where she stood only seconds before.
I picked them up and took them into my office. They sat there accusing me of pushing my beliefs on her. My training, my experience, everything I was, told me she was ill and I was helping her. Now, the revelation she was trapped here, actually locked away by her opportuning mother knocked me back. What kind of person did that to their own child? Someone who did deserve to be here.
I stood in the center of my office, unsure of what to do with myself. Not only had her mother locked her away, she used me to do it, used me as a jailer when I promised to do no harm. And she prohibited the treatment her daughter did need.
Fuck, holding someone prisoner definitely counted as harm. And worse, I’d agonized over wanting her, fantasizing about her, berating my every inappropriate thought. Not only had I betrayed her by not believing her, but also by pushing her back, and bottling up everything I felt for her.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. How did I come back from this? How did I make this up to her? Plus, I wasn’t sure how to get her out of here without her mother’s approval. Holding her here longer was unacceptable to me. Unacceptable and it turned my stomach.
I picked up the roses and tossed them in the trashcan. I wanted to plant my foot in the center and smash them to pieces. Instead, I sat down and stared at them a moment longer. I needed to talk to her—now.
I surged into the hallway and walked as fast as possible without drawing the nurse’s attention to her door. I knocked and held the handle waiting for her to tell me to come in. But nothing. I knocked again.
From inside a muffled voice. “Go away.”
“Please. I need to speak to you.”
“I said go away! I don’t have my own free will in a lot of things, but I can tell you to stay the fuck out.”
I sighed and pressed my head into the door. I dragged my hand down the steel and pushed off. I had a lot to make up for, but there was no way I could do it if she refused to let me. She’s spoken to me like a friend only hours ago. She only pushed me away now trying to protect me from her mother’s special form of crazy.
I went back to my office and looked at the roses leering at me from inside the trashcan. I plucked one from the plastic wrapping and stared at the sharp thorns along the stem. If she didn’t want me to talk to her, then I’d show her I knew the truth. I knew what she faced, and I knew she’d no longer be alone in this.
I plucked one of the sharp thorns with my index finger. The scratch of it soothed me. Penance. If only it were so easy.
We’d slept together. She became my patient. But now…I couldn’t treat her after confirming the truth. I didn’t even know if I could look her in the eye.
She deserved so much better than her mother. She deserved so much better than me.
Chapter Nine
Kory
A single rose lay in the middle of my bed. The petals shone carmine in the slatted afternoon sunlight. Along its stem were two small leaves and a neat row of thorns. Beside the flower lay a note with two words.
I’m sorry.
I drew a full breath for the first time in days. He believed me. The jagged edges of those thorns told me so.
A vice loosened from around my torso. I sucked in air like it might constrict again any second. I fumbled down on the edge of the bed and tears started hot and wet down my cheeks.
He believed me. He believed me. He fucking believed me.
I picked up the note and brought it to my nose sniffing it, hoping it held the subtle scent of his cologne and soap. I’d pushed him away last night, hoping I might protect him from her. Keep him out of her crosshairs, ride out my time, and then he could move on with his life completely oblivious to Demeter and her plotting.
I shoved the rose away. It was from her, but the note… I lay back on the bed and cradled it to my chest. I wished it was his head I tucked against me. We were keeping things professional, and I agreed out of fear of losing even the few moments I got to keep of him. But now he believed me. Things were different.
I grabbed a copy of Persuasion from the stack by bed and settled in. I tucked the note between the pages toward the front and started reading the book from the middle. A distraction until he came to speak with me.
“Do not say that man forgets sooner than women, that his lov
e has an earlier death.” I read my favorite quote out loud and closed my eyes.
I was never a woman who took to fancies. Imagining men felt one way, imaging the elusive spark existed when it didn’t. No. That wasn’t me. But something about the doctor felt different. Like we did have that damn spark, and something instinctual inside told me to protect it, nurture it, and cut down any bitch in my way who thought to extinguish it.
I hugged the book tight and waited. He’d come to me soon enough, and we could talk about this. The night decanted, and I waited. My senses attuned to every single sound emanating from the hall way. When he finally arrived, it was with head bowed, eyes somber. He swallowed heavily, and I simply opened my arms to him. Praying he’d walk into them. Accept them. Because if he didn’t, I’d have nothing else left.
He walked to my bed until his shins and knees knocked against the wood. Then slumped down the no doubt chilly linoleum. His eyes searched mine. “Can you forgive me?”
I reached out, but he flinched back. “No, I need to hear you say it.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. You were doing your job. I can’t blame you for that.”
“You can blame me, and rightly so. I should have listened. That is my job. Hearing you. I don’t know why I wasn’t.”
His hands shook as he molded them to the mattress and slid them achingly slow toward my legs. When he reached my shins, my heartbeat sparked harder in my chest. Something delicious shimmered between us. He climbed from his knees and planted himself on the bed beside me, never taking his finger from my skin.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
I countered. “Are you? You’re shaking.”
He cleared his throat heavily. “I’m nervous. All my medical training is screaming at me to get out of here. To not let this happen. And yet, my—I don’t want to stop. All I’ve thought about since I saw you at the bar was touching you. And the one time wasn’t anywhere near enough.”
I reached out and traced the arch of his neck and down where his Adam’s apple stood pronounced. I met his eyes while I wrapped my fingers around his neck. There were pale against his slightly sun kissed skin.
Once he licked his lips looking so much like a caged animal waiting for the right second to strike, I continued my trek tracing over the strong muscles of his chest.
He trembled harder under my hands. Vibrated with the pent up desire to move, to grab, to conquer. I could feel it under my fingers. “Don’t hold yourself back from me. I want it all.”
His lips turned down in an alluring present. He stood, and I almost cried out for this. But he walked to my door, closed it and then took off his shoe and wedged it under the space. If anyone tried to enter, we’d get fair warning.
I chuckled. “This feels kinda naughty.”
He smiled. God, I liked that smile on his face. He’d been wearing a frown almost since the night we met. I put that frown there, which didn’t help.
“I hate this,” he said, as he slid back onto the bed beside me.
“What?”
“Having to be locked away with you? We should go out to dinner. Drink too much. Then I would be a proper gentleman, take you home, fuck you stupid, and make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
I laughed at the image. How could I not? Him naked, striding across a worn, but well-furnished bedroom to bring me a sandwich in in bed. I liked it. Too much. I swallowed the panic threatening to push up from the bowels of my heart where it constantly lived.
“It’s okay. From someone who has been living this life for so long…I am at least happy not to be alone for once.”
He picked up the book rumpled in the covers. “You’re not alone. You have plenty of friends.”
I sighed dramatically. “If only Mr. Darcy could reach out from the pages and whisk me away with an impassioned speech. I wouldn’t say no to that.”
He sat the book carefully on a stack near the head of bed. And in that moment, I fell hopelessly, irrevocably, in love with him. No take backs. No refunds. No redos.
The weight of it pressed in so tight, I couldn’t breathe. So I kissed him and pressed my mouth to his with all the emotion I’d had to keep locked up and away. He pulled back and gentled the kiss by cupping my cheeks. “We have all night,” he whispered.
“I don’t need all night. I just need five minutes.”
The smile returned, and I memorized the lines on his face. How they crinkled and folded to create this man.
He kissed me this time, and I let him be gentle and take his time. I let him pour the softness of his heart into my mouth. The brittleness soothed just a tiny bit. Nothing I could do but hold on tight to him and live in this moment like I seized each six month holiday in sand and surf.
His lips parted and he swept his tongue into my mouth, tasting of caramel and peety Scotch. I wasn’t a Scotch girl before, but now…
I succumbed further to his hold, his hands molding themselves down my curves to cup me over and onto his lap. He pressed his back into the wall to give us better leverage. And even though I sat straddled across him, there was no doubt he controlled my every twitch. He cupped his hands under my ass and tilted my hips at an enticing angle, so I rubbed across the thick length of him pressing through his pants.
Dry humping like teenagers. I let him continue, his fingers gripping tighter with every pass. I clutched the top of his shoulders and held on while he took me somewhere I’d never actually been.
The friction, the heat of our bodies between my legs and torso sunk into me, and before I could let myself fall into my doubts, he’d sent me to the edge and shoved me lovingly over. I cried out and pressed my face into the curve of his collarbone muffling the sound of my orgasm with his shirt.
But he wasn’t done yet. A few more moments of him arching his own hips up into me and he slumped, releasing me to settle back on his lap with a few adjustments.
I kissed his forehead. “You know, we could just have sex. I won’t tell my mom we were necking in the backseat.”
He nipped my nose with his teeth and leaned back with a sigh. “I don’t keep condoms in my office. And I couldn’t wait to watch you come again.”
His words spiked through me with heat. Fuck. “Well okay then.”
I shifted off his lap and curled up under his arm.
“How often does the nurse come in?”
“She doesn’t.”
He pulled away so he could peer down at my face. “Really? What do they get paid for except bring you food?”
I shrugged. “Make sure I don’t walk out, I guess. What do you get paid for?”
His eyes widened, and then guilt seeped from the edges until he pulled me close into his chest again. “Also nothing, I guess. Because I can’t think about what else.”
I wanted that smile back, so I pulled his face to mine and kissed him. “I can think of plenty of things so many women would pay you do for them.”
That won him over. A little upturn at the corner of his beautiful lips. I lay down against his chest again. “What do we do now?”
Experience and reason taught me not to let hope grow. As soon as it sparked, I needed to stamp it out. But in his arms, I couldn’t even get near enough to push it down. It blazed inside me, begging me to let it win just once. I didn’t want to doubt him. In fact, I wanted to let him carry me out of here right now.
He sighed heavily. “I’m not sure. I’m going to look into things, see if there are any documented cases of this sort of thing.”
I snorted. “I can help you there, Doc. There isn’t.”
“You’ve searched them all?”
“What else do I have to do in here for six months? I read. I read. Then I read some more until I can practically memorize.”
He blinked at me a few times, and I waited for everything to click into place. “That’s what’s up with all the psychologist references. You’ve researched your conditions to see what was going on, why you weren’t getting better.”
I nodded. “Everything. I�
�ve read every bit of information I could get access to. It wasn’t until my mom practically told me I was living in a fancy jail that I stopped and started reading what I wanted to. I couldn’t do it anymore. Let the hope grow…” My voice trailed off, and I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see the pity there. Not when only moments ago he’d lavished me with sexy smiles and gasping breathes.
I shifted on the bed, and he dragged me back into him. “No, you don’t get to push me away because it’s convenient for you. That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?” I threw my hands up. “Tell me, please. I don’t see a future between us when you could lose your license for looking at me sideways. Let alone if anyone found out what we just did.”
He bit his bottom lip and stared over my shoulder. “Nothing has to be decided now. We have time. We can think about it and figure out the right steps.”
I poked his chest. “No, you have time. You have the freedom to go out there and find whatever you want to find. I am stuck here until my mother deems fit to come and pick me up. Every second I’m stuck in here, I lose a little bit more…” A knock at the door interrupted my speech.
Chapter Ten
Ash
I froze, but she surged off the bed and kicked my shoe as far as she was able before facing the partially open door. “Did you need something?”
I almost didn’t recognize the ice in her tone. Not when she’d burned for me minutes ago.
The nurse must have recognized it, but I couldn’t make out which one was standing at the door.
“No. I spilled a bottle of water and wanted to clean it up before it got to my books. If the door had opened when it did, they would have gotten wet.”
Deranged: Twisted Myths Book One Page 6
