Void (16 page)

“WHAT THE FUCK did you just do? How could you lose your shit like that? Your actions don’t only affect you, you know. Think with your fucking head and not your goddamned cock all the time.” I scorned Link. Exposing himself to Nicola was a bad fucking move. If she found out who he was, the shit could possibly hit the fan and it would drag me down with him too. I knew what we were doing was wrong, but dammit, it was the only way I found to be able to deal with the shit storm that was my life. The pressure that I was getting from my uncle as well as the added pressure of Cardinelli and his Barbie doll wife had my mind going in a million fucking directions. Now, add to that the fact that Link actually fucking spoke to Nicola, and my blood was boiling.

“She is different from the others.”

“That’s not a fucking excuse. She’s my patient. I could lose her as a client. Hell, I could lose the fucking clinic if she decided to sue the shit out of us.”

It was just after ten in the morning, yet Link walked over to the decanter on a table in the room where he fucked Nicola not once, but twice now, and poured two fingers worth of amber liquid and tossed it back like it was medication to his system. Then he looked me in the eyes through the mirror on the wall in front of him and laughed.

“If you think losing her as a client is the
only
reason you could lose your clinic and go to jail for life, then you have bigger issues than I thought.”

He didn’t have to say what he was talking about. I already knew. Writing fucking prescriptions to a fucking mob boss so he could obtain a controlled substance, then turn around and sell them illegally would end my fucking career and my life.

“You know I’m trying to stop that shit,” I growled, feeling my nails dig into the palms of my hands with my anger building. Link knew how to get to me. He knew just how to push my buttons. He also knew it was the way to keep me coming back to help him get what he wanted.

“Well. You take care of
that
, and I’ll take care of
her.
”

“Fuck you,” I sneered, my upper lip damn near pulling back to expose my teeth like a fucking caged dog.

I needed to get Nicola out of there before he or I did something that I would regret. I grabbed my keys off the wall and headed back down the hallway to the room where Nicola was, stopping to grab a pair of sweatpants and a clean t-shirt from the room that I stayed in sometimes when it was too late to go home.

I loved this apartment. It screamed luxury with red velour wallpaper framed with gold trim, decorating the walls. Plush red carpet was spread throughout all of the floors, except in the three bedrooms and kitchen. Decorated with clean lines and simplicity wrapped in luxury, it was comfortable.

I paused outside of Nicola’s room, taking a few moments to get my bearings. Everything that Link had said was true. She
was
different than the others. There was something mysterious, intriguing, and fucking sexy as hell about her. Her beauty went beyond her physical appearance. It was the more damaged parts of her that got to me. She made me hungry, and was the only one who could feed me. She was the same dream I had had over and over for the last few days that kept waking me up in the middle of the night. She was a kink in my armor of control, and I needed to get my shit together. Taking one more deep breath, I pushed the door open.

I turned on the dimmer light gently so that I didn’t harm her eyes with sharp light. I found her sitting on the bed, wrapped in a robe with her arms wrapped around her knees as she rested her head upon them. Her golden blonde hair draped over her legs like a curtain of sunshine. She looked up at me with a solemn look on her face before she saw it was me and smiled.

“Are you Andris or Sinclaire right now?” She asked as her blue eyes bore through me like she could see through to my soul. There was no way she could know what was going on, but still, I had that nagging feeling in the back of my mind she had an inkling.”

“I should probably still be Sinclaire, but for now I can be Andris.”

“Okay. Are you the Andris I danced with earlier, or are you Dr. Gunn?” I chuckled slightly as I approached her. She extended her long legs in front of her and brushed her hair off of her shoulders, a movement that exposed her tanned, smooth neck. I willed my dick to stay soft. To not give in to the physical beauty before me, but when she bit her lip and arched her brow at me, he betrayed me.

“I’m only Dr. Gunn at the clinic. Right now, I’m just Andris. Here. I brought you some clothes to change into so I can drive you home.”

She took the linens from me and our fingers brushed during the exchange. She pulled back sharply, a hitch in her breath slightly noticeable like I had shocked her.

She felt it too
. The spark and tension that was between us. Just like the spark she felt with Link. I needed to leave the room so she could change. There wouldn’t be any way I could witness her stripping down without wanting to grab her and throw her down on the bed and fuck her for the rest of the damn morning.

“I’ll be waiting outside the door when you finish. Just knock and I’ll come in to help you with the blindfold.”

“Link was in here. Earlier.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“You sound angry about that.”

“You are recognizing anger. That is a good sign.”

“Don’t analyze me,
Doctor
. Not here.”

I nodded.

“Why does it upset you that Link revealed himself to me? Are you afraid he won’t want you with us during the sessions anymore?”

“No, I’m not worried.”

She exhaled a long and slow breath. I watched her throat bob and she swallowed before she spoke.

“Good. Because I feel safer knowing you are there.”

My brows furrowed after her statement.

“Nicola, Link would never hurt you. He isn’t like that. I wouldn’t let him near you if that were the case.”

“It’s not that I am fearful of my safety. He unsteadies me. Makes me feel unbalanced. It isn’t something I’m used to. It feels weird. If feels strange and new, but having you there is kind of soothing. I think—I think Link is my trigger. He is the only person in my entire existence who has allowed me to feel the things I’ve only seen or read about. Knowing you are there to catch me if I were to break, brings me a bit of comfort.”

A tiny bit of pride filled my chest. I had watched her interactions with Link, seeing how much she needed and was going to need in order to get past her void emotions. I was jealous to know that he could be the one to do that to her and not me, but to hear that she did in fact need me too, just in a different way was fucking amazing.

“We can discuss that at your next appointment, if you wish. Right now, if you’ll get dressed, I’ll take you out for breakfast before I take you home.”

“That sounds amazing,” she said, her stomach growling right on cue. We both chuckled and she stood up, letting the robe fall off her shoulders, leaving her exposed in only the shirt that hit her just above mid-thigh. My eyes zeroed in on her toned thighs and I had to force myself to turn around and walk away.

ANDRIS TOOK ME to a hole-in-the-wall, mom and pop streetcar diner somewhere on the outskirts of Manhattan. I was only allowed to remove my blindfold when we were a safe distance from where we were and closer to where I lived. We were seated in a corner booth, him cleanly shaven and dressed in a suit and me still in the baggy t-shirt and sweats that he had given me to wear home. People in the restaurant were looking at us strangely, probably thinking we were an enigma. Him with his sophisticated class and me with my black smeared mascara eyes and comfortable clothes like some random person he may have picked up off the street.

Good thing I didn’t give a fuck. When people would stare, I waved at them and smiled. Andris would laugh and it went on like that throughout most of the meal. I was getting to see a different side of Andris as we ate and engaged in idle chit chat. He told me about how he was in prep schools when he was younger and I told him about my wonderful adventures in boarding school. I noticed that he didn’t talk much about his father, and didn’t ask me questions about my own family. I was glad. I had nothing graceful to say about the two people who brought me into this world. I was nothing on the inside to them, so they thought it fit to leave me with nothing when they died. Even in death they were assholes.

“What made you want to become a psychiatrist?” I asked him as I took another bite of my scrambled eggs, savoring the creamy cheddar that was incorporated into them. I noticed that Andris started to shift the food around on his plate after my question and wondered if maybe the subject was a sore spot with him. He was interesting and had me intrigued. I found myself wanting to get to know him better, learning about all the little things that made him who he was today. The good and the bad. It was almost as if we were two kindred souls, both burned by people who were supposed to mean something to us.

“It was expected of me. As you know, my grandfather started the clinic and my father joined him after he completed school. My uncle joined a few years later, so it was just kind of instilled upon me at birth.” I watched as he took a long draw from his coffee cup before setting it back down. His eyes, ones that had seemed more alive only moments earlier, were now back to a deep, brooding blue.

I changed the subject, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get Andris back to the place we were when we first attended the restaurant. When we finished eating, Andris paid for the food and escorted me back out to his car. We drove in an uncomfortable silence back to my apartment where he escorted me to the door, and placed a kiss on my cheek before turning around and walking away. I was confused by his sudden mercurial shift in mood and shook it off as I entered the apartment and headed straight to my bathroom. Turning on the taps, I made sure the water was a comfortable temperature before I removed the clothes Andris had given me and sat them on my sink counter. I looked at them briefly, wondering if they were Link’s or Andris’s.

The warm water of the bath was soothing to my skin as I lay down and emerged myself all the way up to my neck. My muscles were still tender from Link’s thorough fucking the night before, but they also held a lot of tension from the confusion I felt with Andris.

It would have to happen. For the first time in my life, I was feeling
feelings.
I was experiencing normal emotions that I had never felt before until this point, and it was all due to two different men. One, my doctor and person who was paid to help me try to get past all the vacant shit inside of me, and the other one who paid me to get past the bad shit
that seemed to be inside him.

When I finished my long, luxurious soak in the tub, I threw on some more comfortable clothes and climbed back into bed. Most of my clients were night time customers, so I wasn’t used to being up during the day, but seeing as how contractually I am not allowed to see any other clients, I might as well enjoy the benefits of leisure time. I grabbed the remote from my nightstand and turned on the TV, mindlessly flipping through the channels. I don’t remember when I fell asleep, but I did know that when I did, all of my thoughts and dreams were filled with two men. Two men, who both did things to me I couldn’t explain. One of the men fucked the hell out of me, while the other one gave me a climax of a very different kind.