His Forbidden Bride: 50 Loving States, West Virginia (5 page)

B
ut I guess
I must have some clue. Because the next address I insert into Waze is my own. Yes, the place where I live. Even though I’m a doctor, with a medical degree, at the end of a three-year residency, driving around a former hospital patient who, up until a short while ago, I was supposed to drop off at a shelter.

“This is just for a little while,” I explain to John as we walk through the door of my one-bedroom apartment. “I’m going to talk with your social worker on Monday. I bet there are lots of housing programs for people with disabilities. Places where you can live until your memory comes back. She probably didn’t look into it because you didn’t have anyone to advocate for you, but I’ll call her. And I bet it only takes a week or two, tops, until we’re able to find you somewhere better than that shelter to live.”

John doesn’t answer, and I’m once again hit with the feeling that I’m providing more reassurance to myself than him—and not doing a particularly great job of it.

No matter how many words I throw at this situation, I don’t feel any better about my unorthodox solution to John’s current problem. John, for his part, seems more interested in checking out my little second-floor apartment than in listening to anything I have to say about him moving out of it soon. He walks around the living room, taking in everything, before coming to a stop in front of my beige couch. His self-tour doesn’t take long. There’s just not that much to see, thanks to the space’s total absence of pictures or anything else that would indicate someone actually lives there.

Luckily, the apartment had come fully furnished. Otherwise, John would be sleeping on the floor tonight. I haven’t added a stick of furniture or ambience to the place since I moved in, and it looks exactly like how I intended it to be when I came to the small college town of North Independence seven years ago. One step up from a hotel rental until I fulfilled my program obligations and could move.

Even so, I cringe at the beige couch. It’s perfect for me when I’m nestling in for a weekend of editing
Chemo Kids Sing
clips on my laptop, with the TV running old musicals in the background. But it’s only six feet long. His feet will probably hang over the sides.

Which is how I find myself offering, “Hey, why don’t you take the bed?” as I cross the room to stand in front of him. “I practically live on the couch anyway.”

He tilts his head to look down at me. “You brought me here, Doc. To your home. And you think I’m going to take your bed and let you sleep on the couch?”

“Well, the couch is probably not big enough to accommodate you, and I don’t want you sleeping on the floor—especially with your recent injuries.”

He holds up his right hand and shakes his head. “Doc, stop. Just stop,” he says, like I’m confusing him more than the amnesia. “You brought me here. To your home.”

“Yes,” I answer. “And I want you to be comfortable here.”

He considers my words, then says, “The only place I’m going to be comfortable is in your bed.”

“Yes, exactly!” I answer, relieved that he finally gets what I’m saying. “So please don’t feel bad about taking it—”

But then he steps closer to me and says, “That don’t mean I’m going to let you sleep on the couch, Doc.”

It’s the word
“let”
that sets off the first alarm bells. I find myself swallowing hard, my brain scrambling to deny, deny, deny what my instincts are telling me he’s really trying to say.

“Okay,” I say, taking a step backwards. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Maybe on your part.” He takes another step forward, and this time, he only leaves enough space between us for his cane. “You understand I ain’t a dog, Doc? That you can’t just bring me home and foster me.”

“Actually, I’ve never had a dog,” I babble.

“And you still don’t got one,” he informs me, his face somber. “If a dog’s what you want, take me back to that men’s shelter and go to the pound.”

“No,” I answer, my brain completely fried by what I’ve done, and what is happening now because of it. By his sudden nearness, the way he looms over me in the small space between the couch and the coffee table. But somehow I manage to say, “I don’t want a dog. First of all, it’s against the terms of my lease. Second, I don’t really have the time or the lifestyle to keep up with one. Third—”

He kisses me before I can finish with my list.

Not like a dog.

Not like a patient.

But like a man.

A man who knows exactly what he wants.

And is the world supposed to spin when someone kisses you like that? Maybe I need to schedule an MRI. Because I’ve brought a guy I barely know home with me. And when he kisses me, everything tilts and twists, whipping us around and around each other like we’re on a carousel.

But I’ve been in relationships before, and unlike his, my memory is still fully intact. I know this is not what a kiss is supposed to feel like. I know someone’s lips claiming yours shouldn’t suddenly unhinge you and make you feel like you’re going to fly away.

However, that’s exactly how I feel when John kisses me.

And I grab on to him, if only to make the spinning stop. Wrapping my arms around his neck to get my bearings.

But clinging to him only makes the spinning worse. And when John’s arms wrap around me as he deepens the kiss, the world spins even faster.

I can’t think like this. Can’t breathe. All I can do is kiss him back, waiting for it to stop.

And then it does. Not because the kiss ends, but because we collapse on the couch. His cane crashes against my uber-bland, seven-year coffee table. Then his heavy body is on top of mine. Rolling and kissing, rolling and kissing. So much muscle memory as he shoves down his hospital-issue sweatpants.

I can’t believe this is happening. But then again, I can. It all feels so inevitable. His lips claiming my mouth…me kissing him back. His hands pulling down everything beneath my waist…me watching as my joggers and underwear go flying over the coffee table. His long body settling on top of mine…

My thoughts cut off when he suddenly pushes into me. Penetrating me deep with one claiming thrust. Not like a first-time lover, but like someone who was always meant to be there.

And the way he looks at me in this moment, like every dream of his has finally come true…

“I knew you’d be ready for me,” he tells me. “Knew you wanted this just as bad as me.”

With a lazy smile, his hips lift and he pushes in again, his dick dragging against my clit as he does so. He sinks into me even deeper this time, and I moan as my core tightens around his cock, swallowing it whole.

The grip of my sex pulls a matching groan out of him. “Oh God, you fit me, Doc. Can’t believe how good it feels here inside you.”

I chuff out a laugh and answer with the truth, “Me either.”

Then his lean body starts moving between my legs, hard and powerful despite the accident. At first his strokes are slow. As if he’s relearning his broken body, learning me.

But he proves to be a quick study, because soon the lazy smile is back on his face. He watches me, eyes hooded with lazy intention as he takes me with deep, penetrating strokes.

I watch him. So curious about him and the one-of-a-kind feelings he’s arousing in me. But not for long. A crude orgasm erupts inside me, and all too soon I’m crying out, my sex tugging on his as a wave of unadulterated pleasure courses through my body.

My only solace for coming so quickly is that he is not unaffected.

“Doc…” he groans, kissing me again. His thrusts take on a certain sharpness, becoming way more intense before he explodes inside me with another pained groan.

“Ah fuck, Doc,” he says, lowering his head again. His forehead presses into mine as he kisses me. Then he asks, “Is it…is sex always like that for you?”

For a moment, I can’t talk. But eventually I find the words to confess, “No, it’s never like that. At least it’s never been like that until now.”

He considers my words. “I don’t think it’s ever been like that for me either.”

“And, um…” This part makes things even more awkward. “We’re supposed to use a condom. Condom—is that new or old for you?”

“Old. Real old,” he answers like it’s a very familiar concept. But he doesn’t seem cocky about it, just matter-of-fact.

“Yeah, well, we should have used one. I have an IUD, so we’re okay on that front—”

I cut off when I see his confused look and explain, “You know, birth control?”

“Yeah,” he says with a nod. “That’s old, too. But not this IED.”

“IUD,” I correct. “It’s kind of like permanent birth control that they surgically put inside you, so no kids, but, um…we don’t exactly know…”

Unfortunately, I have to be blunt because, hello, amnesia victim! “We don’t know if you have any sexual diseases.”

“I don’t,” he answers. “They told me I didn’t at the hospital.”

“Okay, but still, I’m a doctor and I should’ve known better. I have no business having unprotected sex.” I wince. “Especially with a patient.”

He doesn’t know me. Not really. But he must sense how close I am to unraveling into a panicked spiral, because he calmly answers, “Doc, I’m not your dog. And I’m not your patient.”

Then before I can respond with another “but” he says, “
But
I will promise to put on a glove next time… as long as you promise to let me sleep with you in your bed tonight.”

I
’m pretty
sure I’m going straight to hell for what I just did with John. Or at least straight to the front of the hospital’s review board. Maybe both.

I still can’t believe it after my shower, even as I replace the Henley and joggers I was wearing earlier with a t-shirt and pair of jeans. Did I seriously bring a John Doe patient home? And then almost immediately spread my legs for him?

I think about hiding in my bedroom for longer than I want to admit, but eventually I make myself return to the main room. There I find him with his clothes back on, bent over my empty fridge.

“Sorry about the no-food situation. I get a regular delivery from the grocery store on Sundays and Wednesdays,” I explain to him. “That way, the ingredients are always fresh, and I have to cook or risk them going bad. It’s my way of trying to stay healthy. Plus a lot of the stuff I need to cook is special order, so that gives the grocery store time to get it in…”

I trail off. I’m babbling again. And I once more think about how cool and confident I used to be before I burned my old life to the ground in order to move out here without my parents’ support or approval.

“What do you do on Saturdays, then, Doc?” he asks, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

“Well, I tell myself I’ll go out to eat. Like drive into Pittsburgh where they have vegan restaurants. But usually I just end up ordering enough Chinese food to get me through the weekend.”

“All right. I guess I’m about to find out if Chinese food is old or new.”

So we eat Chinese food—it’s new, but John likes it. And then we end up back in the living room, most of the day suddenly gone.

He doesn’t even blink when I explain I don’t have so much as an antenna on the early aughts-era TV in my living room, just a huge collection of DVDs that I feed into its built-in disc drive. Old musicals I’d been watching over and over again as opposed to the current fare of reality shows and nighttime dramas.

“Though I am planning to finally give
Grey’s Anatomy
another go when I move to Seattle,” I tell him as I push the DVD into the TV’s disc drive. “It’s so unrealistic, but you know, when in Rome…”

He responds with a quizzical look.

“
Grey’s Anatomy
or Seattle or Rome?” I ask, feeling like I already know that look all too well.

“Seattle,” he answers. “When?”

I clamp my lips not wanting to divulge more about that part of my life than I need to. But in the end, I tell him the truth.

“In about five weeks I’ll be leaving for a visit to California, you know long enough to get my car shipped out. Then I’ll be driving to Seattle to start my fellowship. But you don’t have to worry about that. I’m paid through the summer on this apartment; it’s a year-to-year lease. You can stay here until August, even after I’ve moved out.”

But he continues to frown at me from his position on the couch. “That ain’t what I’m worried about, Doc.”

A chill goes down my back, because even though we’ve done something intimate, what we’ve done was also very, very stupid. As are the feelings rolling around in my chest right now. Feelings that weren’t there before. Like regrets about leaving West Virginia. And sorrow about not having met him sooner.

“Anyway,” I say, changing the subject with no grace whatsoever. “I think you’re going to like this film,
Tommy
. Lots of seventies rock. Plus Tina Turner and the Who, back before they were co-opted by every single show and thing.”

Also, it’s a total sexual tension killer, I add to myself silently as I place myself as far from him as possible on the couch.

I’m right about him liking the movie, and wrong about it killing the sexual tension. The credits roll and by the time I’ve turned off the TV, he’s standing above me. Cane in one hand, the other held out to me.

No discussion. He leads me to the bedroom with his hand clasped firmly around mine.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he says when we get to my bedroom.

“Hold on…”

I go to the kitchen and come back with a plastic bag from last week’s delivery. He watches me tie it over his cast, his blues eyes twinkling with lazy amusement.

But I pretend not to notice as I secure the knot and say, “There’s a little closet with towels in it, but it’s right behind the door, which means you have to actually close the door all the way to get to it.”

“Thanks, Doc,” he says. Then he presses a kiss onto my forehead and disappears into the bathroom.

It should feel like a reprieve. But it really, really doesn’t.

In fact, it feels like I’ll never let go of the breath I’m holding as I rush over to the dresser and pull out the warmest, most body covering-est pajamas I own.

The one thing I know is I don’t want to be standing around like an awkward fool when he returns. So I get into bed. Pull my good-enough-for-seven-years comforter over my legs, and the hardcover novel off my nightstand. I pretend I’m reading a Karin Slaughter thriller as opposed to thinking.

Thinking about how crazy I am for sleeping with a patient. One who has amnesia. Thinking about what I’ll say when he comes out of the bathroom.

And having no answers for any of it.

But when the door opens, all pretenses of reading come to a dead stop. Before he’d gone into the bathroom to take his shower, I’d tied a plastic bag over his cast and told him where to find a towel, expecting him to use both. And he had. But while the plastic bag is still wrapped around his forearm, the towel is draped casually around his neck. More of an afterthought than anything else.

And as hard as I try not to respond to the sight of him naked, I feel my entire body heat as he approaches my side of the bed.

I’m a doctor, but I haven’t worked with adult patients in nearly a year. And John doesn’t look like any patient I’ve ever encountered, naked or otherwise. His body is hard and solid, packed with powerful muscles. Gym or hard labor, I have no idea.

Or maybe prison
, my rational brain points out. I think of all the rap videos I’d seen growing up. The ones with hard-bodied singers crowing about how much time they’d done in jail.

But he doesn’t have any tattoos, I notice. And I’ve never met an ex-con without at least a few tats. This guy doesn’t look like an ex-con. More like a muscular system model who just crawled out of one of my old anatomy text books.

His muscles move like cords beneath his skin as he walks over, his heavy cock swinging lewd and uncaring between his legs.

“Tried my damnedest to get this off by myself,” he says when he stops in front of the bed. “But I couldn’t do it.”

Only when he holds up the cast with the plastic bag wrapped around it do I get what he’s talking about. But by then it’s already too late. My mouth is watering in ways it definitely shouldn’t at just the thought of…

Thanking God for the ability most doctors develop to control shaking hands, I untie the plastic bag’s knot and toss it into the nearest waste basket, without a thought toward recycling.

“You okay?” he asks. Probably because I’ve yet to look at him.

“I’m…”
fine, fine, fine
my rational mind screams at me. But when I open my mouth, the truth falls out. “Thinking.”

He tenses, his lazy gaze becoming sharper and less amused. “Thinking about what?”

I squeeze my lips into my mouth, biting them a little before I confess, “About what we did this morning. About how I was crazy to do that with you. I was trying to help, but I’ve only made things worse. A lot worse.”

He considers my words, and I brace myself for an extremely awkward conversation about stepping back and reconsidering our actions.

But then he asks, “Where’re those condoms?”

“What?” I ask, not quite understanding.

“I made you a promise about using condoms the next time. So where are they? I assume you got some, being a medical professional and all.”

He’s teasing me. I can see how amused he is by the way his eyes crinkle slightly at the corners, and I don’t quite know how to respond.

I swallow. “Um, yes, I do have condoms in my nightstand drawer, but—”

“This one right here?” He’s already bending over and pulling the drawer open.

Before I can answer, he’s got a blue square package in his hand. He tears it open and then, to my wide-eyed horror, starts putting it on.

I should look away, but I can’t find enough modesty to do so. I openly stare as he rolls the thin rubber sheath up his swollen shaft, using the fingers on his casted hand to pinch the tip. His eyes once again find mine when he’s done, and my body swells under his gaze, nipples hardening against the inside of my top; the space between my legs becoming heavy and damp.

“I…” My voice comes out all squeak and I try again, “I thought we were having a conversation.”

“You’re having a conversation, Doc. I’m ending it. Now turn over. Get on your hands and knees.”

“Are you serious?”

Before the question’s fully out of my mouth, his hands are on me. Cast bumping different parts of my body as he pulls my long-sleeved pajama top up and over my head.

His eyes darken at the sight of my breasts, now fully exposed.

“Wait—” I start to say, crossing my arms over them. Only to be interrupted again when he easily places me on my stomach.

The doctor in me wants to warn him about putting too much strain on his fractured arm. And the woman in me is screaming, shocked to find herself face forward on the bed less than a minute after having introduced a very awkward point of conversation.

My conflicting responses all add up to one outraged, “What the hell are you doing?!” when he crawls over my back.

“Teaching you a lesson about thinking too much,” he answers matter-of-factly before roughly pulling down my pajama pants. I gasp. Once, and then again when he lowers his body down on mine.

It’s a strange position. A
very
strange position. I’m flat on my stomach and he covers me like a blanket. But when he shoves my legs further apart with his muscular thighs and settles his heavy cock into the back of my pussy, my body responds like it’s just been hit with a defibrillator. I buck, then buzz from every nerve ending as I helplessly squirm beneath him.

“No, don’t…”

“Is that a real no?” he asks, dark and low in my ear. “I want to make you feel good, Doc. But if you don’t want that from me, tell me right now and I’ll get off you.”

It is a real no…at least it should be. But my body is buzzing so hard now. The ribbed duvet cover of the bed playing havoc against my exposed clit. I can’t stop myself from squirming, from lifting my hips off the bed, only to find his cock. Then settling back down, only to have the blanket rub against my engorged clit all over again.

I have never in my life been put in such a position…or been so turned on by it.

He takes my silence for acquiescence, or perhaps my squirming which, on the face of it, could easily be taken for what it actually is. Wanting. I’m now so helpless with desire, I’m going against everything I believe and know. So desperate to have him fill me, that neither my mind nor my body knows what to do.

I gasp when he pushes into me, giving me all of him in one hard stroke. I’m so wet, it’s easy for him to get all the way in, even in this position. Above me, I hear a deep, approving growl tumble out of him.

Right before his voice turns mean.

“You wanted to have a conversation,” he practically snarls into my ear. “Let’s have a conversation. How about we talk about how lost I was feeling before I met you? So fucking confused and weak. Then I saw you. Beautiful as hell. Teaching dying kids to sing. How about we have a conversation about you showing up in my room with that sandwich and that music?”

He thrusts into me again and again, his voice hard and nasty. “If you really want to talk so bad, let’s talk about you telling me you’re my family now. Let’s talk about you bringing me into your home so I could give you what you deserve. Everything you deserve for being such a beautiful angel to me.”

I cry out, his words and his rolling thrusts devastating me, melting me, despite, or maybe even because of, his cruel tone.

“You want to talk to me about protocols and professional standards and a bunch of other stuff I don’t give a shit about. Not when it comes to this, Doc. Not when it comes to us.”

Us.
“Yes!” I cry out to a question only my soul dares to ask.

But he mistakes my “yes” as something else. His thrusts become stronger, more intense until he says, “Fuck talking. I already got all the answers I need.”

With that, he forces his cock into me one more time. The orgasm that washes over me very nearly breaks my mind. I scream as pleasure rushes through me, obliterating every thought I have of who I am, what I should or shouldn’t be doing, and why I should never have allowed this to happen in the first place.

Above me, I can feel John coming. He talked a lot while he was fucking me out of having a logical conversation. But now he’s gone quiet, his forehead pressed into the back of my neck as his body quakes with his final release. For what feels like eons on end, we come; squeezed together in a rictus of intense pleasure.

“Okay, Doc, okay…” he says when we’re finally done.

He rolls off and eases himself out of the bed.

“I can…” I start to offer.

“I got it,” he answers, removing the condom and tossing it into the small wastebasket next to the nightstand.

His leg hasn’t escaped unscathed, I notice, as I watch him grab the cane he left hanging on the bathroom door. John’s limp is a little bit more pronounced as he walks back to the bed. But despite having been in a sexual relationship with him for less than twelve hours, I already know how he’ll respond if I express any remorse or sympathy whatsoever.

So I decide to focus on getting back under the covers. I burrow beneath and turn on my side with my back to him so I don’t have to watch what he’s doing. Or feel guilty. And confused.

The bed depresses when he gets in, and I reach over to the lamp on my nightstand to turn off the lights.

Then I lie there in the dark, trying not to think too hard about what all this means. For my career. For my sanity.