Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (23 page)

“
Come for me,” he panted. “Oh fuck,
Rosie, come! Come for me! Come for you!”

And in the darkness she knew it was him. She
screamed his name as she came.

* * * *

It was the closest thing they’d ever come to
an argument during a session.

“But I thought Sam was the one,” Rose
protested. “He was my everything.”

“And he left you.” Matt leaned forward in
his chair, his eyes dark as he said those devastating words. Rose
tried not to show a response, but she couldn’t help her sarcastic
reply.

“Yeah. Thanks for the reminder.”

“I’m just wondering what kind of man would
do that?” Matt pressed on. “I’ll be honest with you, Rose, if you
had been my fiancé, I wouldn’t have left.”

“But I lied to him,” she said, feeling the
weight of that fact in her chest.

“There are lies…and then there are
lies
,” Matt said, dismissing her excuse. “I’m not saying
lying is good or right, but the fact is that everyone lies. You
have to decide how hurtful a lie is before you start making
judgments. The lie you told hurt his ego, nothing more.” He gave
her plenty to think about, but he always did. He was very good at
his job, and sometimes she hated that. His next words startled her
out of her thoughts. “But I can understand why he left.”

“You can?” She met his eyes in a slant of
sunlight coming across his desk from the open window. It was a
gorgeous day and she could even heard the waves crashing on the
beach.

Matt smiled grimly. “At worst, he had a very
small, easily bruised ego. At best, your confession forced him to
face up to the fact that, for two years, you weren’t able to fully
trust him.”

Rose gaped. “But it wasn’t his fault.”

“No, but Rose, we all pick partners for a
reason.” Matt sighed, leaning back in his chair. “We just usually
don’t understand what that reason really is until much later in the
relationship—if we ever discover it at all.”

She chewed on his words, using the window as
a distraction. She could see the water from here, a beautiful
expanse of blue. “My mother told me Sam reminded her of my
father.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know.” But she did know and Matt
gave her that look, the one that said he knew she wasn’t giving him
everything. Sighing, Rose went on. “I guess I can see it a little.
He was kind of larger than life, like my father. He wasn’t a bad
guy. All he ever wanted to do was take care of me. Sam liked to fix
things. I think that’s one of the reasons I never told him—because
every problem I ever had, he tried to fix. And I knew he couldn’t
fix this one.”

“And your father is like that?”

“In some ways.” Rose shrugged. “Like when he
found out about my…problem…he sent me to the best medical
specialists in the world.”

“Right. How did he find out again? Did you
tell him?”

“Let’s just say my aunt Poppy has a big
mouth.” She rolled her eyes. “I was only twenty-two. I honestly
didn’t even know what I was missing until I got drunk with a
girlfriend in college and we ended up playing around with her
vibrator…”

Matt’s eyebrows raised and he leaned forward
onto his elbows on the desk. “What happened?”

Rose gave him a long, steady look and then
laughed. “What is it with men and lesbian scenarios?”

“I didn’t ask for the purpose of arousal,”
Matt assured her.

“But the thought arouses you, doesn’t it?”
she countered.

He smiled. “I could tell you the answer to
that, but then I’d have to pay you instead of the other way
around.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Well my
father’s footing the bill for this place, so however that impacts
the metaphor, it’s probably just creepy…”

“So how did you figure out what you were
missing?” Matt pressed.

“I watched her have an orgasm,” Rose
admitted. Sometimes she felt like she could tell Matt anything,
especially given how many compromising positions he’d seen her in
and how much information he already had about every fabric of her
being. “I’d never seen anything like it before. I mean, I’d seen
porn orgasms, and I knew there were supposed to be lights and
fireworks and stuff at the end of sex. And it did feel good for me.
I just never got to that ‘oh my god’ point all the porn actresses
were screaming about. I thought it was fake, honestly.”

Matt nodded. “But when you saw your
friend…?”

“I knew it was real then,” she confessed,
remembering her college roommate and their experimentation. Lesley
had been an athletic girl who played soccer and field hockey and
was loud both on and off the field. She’d been very up front about
her sexuality and it both shocked and thrilled Rose. “The way she
moved, the sounds she made, that look on her face. It was really
that look of…of…pure pleasure. She clearly had one final, blissful
moment of release that convinced me.” Glancing over, she saw Matt
was hanging on her every word. “It was nothing like the movies. And
it was definitely real. That’s what made me want to know what it
felt like.”

Matt didn’t say anything. He did that
sometimes, waiting for her to go on, but this time it was
different. The air was thick with her words, heavy, as if a spark
might ignite them.

Rose felt her mouth curling into a
half-smile. “Would it turn you on to know that she tried, I can’t
count how many times, to give me an orgasm?”

He cleared his throat. “Perhaps.”

“She was very persistent,” Rose assured him,
wondering if he really was turned on by the thought of her with
another woman. The realization that his cock might be hard under
his desk, that the hand she couldn’t see might be pressing it to
ease the ache through his trousers, made her wild with lust. “She
was very athletic, and she had these long, tanned thighs that could
clamp around me like a vice…”

Matt sat up, interrupting her. “You didn’t
disclose in your entry interview that you’re bisexual.”

“I’m not.” Rose grinned. “It was college—we
were experimenting. And I was desperate.”

“So you finally went and told your aunt?” He
was clearly trying to change the subject.

“No—my nosy aunt read my journal while I was
staying at her house for the summer.” She remembered it with the
same burning humiliation and betrayal she’d first experienced when
she discovered the fact. “My father was away that year setting up
factories in China and my mother was gone to Brazil.”

“Then what happened?”

“We’ve been over this.” She shrugged.
“Besides, it’s all in that pack of paperwork you guys made me fill
out to get in here.”

“I’m just wondering how your father fit into
the picture.”

“I wasn’t abused, Matt.” She waved his
concern away, just as she always did. “No one ever touched me
inappropriately. I was a virgin until college, just like I said.
I’ve had a total of five sexual partners in my life. Six if you
count my college roommate.” She smiled at the way he shifted in his
chair when she said that. “My father never beat me or touched me in
any way that he shouldn’t have touched his daughter.”

Matt nodded, but he didn’t give up. “Most of
our psychological wounds don’t have physical causes.”

“He didn’t emotionally abuse me either,” she
assured him. “ In fact, it was more the opposite. He tried to
shelter me as much as possible from the bad things. I was his only
child, his only daughter—his little princess.”

“Is that what he called you?”

She smiled, remembering. “Yes.”

“What about your mother?”

“She didn’t abuse me either.” She rolled her
eyes. “I’m telling you, Matt, my life has been pretty void of
trauma.”

“Aside from your parent’s divorce,” he
reminded her.

She snorted. “Over half the people in this
country have parents who get divorced. I bet most of them can still
have orgasms.”

Matt just looked her. He always knew when
she was deflecting, being defensive. Of course, it was his job to
know—but sometimes it was disarming.

Then he changed tactics. “You were having a
dream the other night…”

She froze in her chair. “Do we have to talk
about this?” She had been worried about it and of course, it had
actually happened—she’d dreamed about him, had even called his
name.

But Matt was going in a different direction.
“You mentioned a woman’s name. Cathy. Who’s Cathy?”

She stiffened, her breath gone. “I have no
idea.”

“Are you sure?” That look again. Damn, he
was good.

“Did I say anything else?” she asked,
discovering she preferred talking about her salacious dream
starring Dr. Matt to telling him about Cathy.

He smiled. “Did you know you talk in your
sleep?”

“Yeah.” She knew, and she hated it. “Sam
mentioned it a couple of times. He thought it was funny. I’d wake
up and tell him he needed to remember his breathing apparatus for
work in the morning. Only I wasn’t awake at all. I don’t remember
any of it.”

“Can I show you something?” Matt opened the
laptop on his desk, signing in. Rose didn’t say anything, she just
watched as he turned the screen toward her and she saw a grainy
image of her in the bed where she spent the night a week ago,
hooked up to wires and machines. She was definitely sleeping, hand
curled up by her cheek, mouth hanging open.

“This is it?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Me, pillow-drooling?”

“Keep watching.”

Suddenly she was thrashing on the bed,
calling out. Oh god. She thought nothing could be worse than
hearing herself call Matt’s name.

“Daddy! No!”

Her eyes were silver in the darkness on the
video as she sat up, staring into space at nothing, yet seeing
something in her mind. And then a scream tore from her throat, so
loud even through the laptop speakers that Rose covered her ears as
she watched herself screaming hoarsely over and over, the words
finally making sense.

“It’s not Cathy’s fault! It’s not her
fault!”

Matt hit a button on the laptop and the
image disappeared. He closed the lid, looking at her, gauging her
reaction.

“So…who’s Cathy?” he asked again.

She shrugged, not meeting his gaze.
“Obviously someone in my dream.”

“Remember what I said to you about no
lies?”

Damn him. He knew just what to say. It felt
so manipulative—but she knew his motivations were pure. He really
did just want to help her.

“She was my nanny.” Rose sighed, giving in.
“From the time I was a baby until… oh, I guess I was twelve or
thirteen.”

Matt nodded thoughtfully. “Do you remember
this dream?”

“No.” That much was true, although she could
guess what it had been about.

“Was she a good nanny?”

Rose smiled thinly. “She was my best
friend.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh I don’t know. I guess she quit.” Why she
couldn’t tell him the whole truth, she didn’t know. What did it
have to do with anything? But she couldn’t, so she lied. “Went off
to college or got a boyfriend or something.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Oh don’t give me that therapist ‘mmm-hmm’
crap,” she snapped, hating the knowing look in his eyes. “I don’t
know what you’re getting at.”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure either. Let’s
call it a hunch.”

“So much for psychiatry being a science,”
she spat, crossing her arms and looking pointedly at the diplomas
on his wall.

“It’s a soft science.” He was trying to hide
a smile. “That means we fly by the seat of our pants a lot. So
let’s see where this goes. Humor me.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” She wrinkled her
nose at him. “To humor you.”

“So was this nanny like a second mother to
you?”

“More like a big sister,” she corrected.
“She was only twenty-something when my parents hired her.”

“And that was her job for ten years?” Matt
asked, surprised. “She was exclusively your nanny?”

“My father pays well,” she said, but that
wasn’t enough for him. He knew. He knew something. And what was the
harm in telling him anyway? It had been a long, long time ago.
“Plus there were… fringe benefits.”

“Oh?”

She sighed and gave in fully. “He was
fucking her, okay?”

“So…what wasn’t her fault?”

Rose looked out the window, feeling the
breeze, wishing she was on the beach, long sleeves and all. “It was
my fault my mother found out.” Glancing at Matt, she saw he was
listening. He had that leaned-in posture to encourage her to go on.
What the hell? He wanted a story—she’d tell him a story. “I had a
huge crush on Sting at the time and my new Teen Beat had arrived.
You know Teen Beat?”

“Vaguely familiar.” He smiled.

“It had this giant, sexy poster of him in it
and I was excited to show her. I ran through the kitchen calling
for Cathy, and ran into my mother, drinking a manhattan and reading
a book. She asked me what I was so excited about…but I didn’t stop.
I wanted to tell Cathy. My mother yelled after me that Cathy wasn’t
feeling well, that I shouldn’t bother her. But I ran up to her room
anyway.”

“And?”

“The door was locked.” Rose paused,
remembering. The memory alone made her palms sweat and her limbs
tingle. “I didn’t knock. I just tried the door. It was locked. Then
I tried it again…and it opened.”

Matt looked confused. “Someone unlocked
it?”

“No. I think someone had slammed that door
really hard at some point and the lock didn’t always close all the
way,” she explained. “Anyway, the door opened. And guess what I
found?”

“I can imagine.” Matt made a face. “He was
having sex with the nanny with your mother was right
downstairs?”

“It was a big house.” She shrugged, trying
to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t a big mystery
or anything. Matt wanted to hear her tale of woe? Fine. “And here
comes my mother, right behind me, scolding me for bothering
Cathy... and there’s Cathy on her knees with my father’s—”