Void (31 page)

THE CLINIC WAS RELATIVELY quiet when I arrived. I really wished it wasn’t. I wanted noise, distraction, anything that would take my fucking mind off the shit swimming around in it. The lobby smelled like him, as if his scent left a tiny breadcrumb trail to where he was. I felt how close he was as I approached Laura Lee at the reception desk. The hairs on my arms stood on their ends and the faintest of shivers ran down my spine. My body tingled as it remembered his expert hands on me. It came alive as it reminisced about how wonderful it felt, as his cock filled me so completely. My heart remembered just how much I cared for him.

All from his fucking scent.

“Hello, Miss Forbes. Dr. Chambers will be with you soon. Dr. Gunn, however, has requested that he see you prior to your appointment,” she said, winking at me before placing a stack of folders into a pile. She buzzed the door that led to the offices and on unsteady legs I made my way toward Andris’s office.

His door was cracked open and I saw him sitting at his desk, doing what looked like paperwork. One hand held up his head, while the other wrote furiously on a piece of paper. I took a moment to just look at him. Really look at him. I loved the way his dark hair fell over his eyes giving him a mysterious look. The strong structure of his jaw gave him a deeply masculine appearance. The broadness of his shoulders filled out his dress shirt, nearly exposing the deeply chiseled muscles he hid beneath the fabric. I smiled when I remembered how great they felt just as my hands explored his back, feeling not only his strength, but his deep need to be inside of me. Although he tried to go slow, to savor the moment between us, I felt the tension there and the lurking of his urgency beneath the surface.

As if sensing I was watching, he looked up to find me staring at him from the doorway. I did something I didn’t think I had ever done before.

I blushed.

I was caught ogling my man and he smiled knowing it.

Smug bastard.

Throwing the pen on the desk, he rose from his chair and made his way towards me. My heart pounded furiously, in sync with each step he made in my direction. Not saying a word, he reached for my hand and pulled me inside his office and closed the door behind us.

Standing there in the middle of his office, he let go of my hands and placed them on my hips pulling me closer to him to where our bodies touched. Heat began to simmer just below the surface, but we didn’t once take our eyes from each other.

“Hi,” his voice was deep, heavy with all the pleasure I knew he could supply to me.

“Hi,” I managed to reply. The heaviness of the way we left things this morning fell to the wayside as I saw the glimmer in his eyes, which no doubt matched my own.

“God, I’ve been wanting to do this all fucking day.”

And then his mouth was on me, seeking, devouring, and quenching his own thirst for me while relieving me of my own for him. He tasted sweet, like candy mixed with hints of coffee. My skin bathed him in as he took control of the kiss, dipping his tongue deeper into my mouth. My arms uncontrollably reached up and wrapped around his neck, tugging on the hair at his nape with my fists, on instinct. There was something damn near primal about our connection, and I didn’t know if it were something natural or the fact that my heart, mind, and body were all fully invested in him. When I was with him, I never wanted to close my eyes, fearful that if I did, if I blinked, he would disappear.

When he finally released my lips, I struggled to stand upright as my breathing labored to catch up in my lungs.

“I needed that,” he stated, smiling at me and dropping one more kiss on my lips. He led me by the hand over to the couch in the corner of the room and gestured for me to sit down as he sat next to me. He laced our fingers together, and I absorbed the warmth of him.

“Care to tell me what happened this morning between leaving Link’s place and you dropping me off at Lexie’s?”

I could see the hesitation in his face. He didn’t want to tell me, but it had been eating at me since then.

“I don’t want to share you anymore.”

I sighed. It was exactly what I had expected him to say. What do you do when your heart belongs to two people? What do you do when you are faced with the ultimatum of having your heart ripped in two? I knew Andris. I could see him, feel him, and even be with him out in the open. I existed in his world more than just a few moments of bliss in the privacy of the bedroom. But I also never felt more alive than I did when I was with Link.

“Andris…”

“Nicola, please, just…just listen for a second. I’ll never be able to spit this out if you don’t. What if I introduce you to him? What if you meet him and see that he is not what you need? Will you see then that you are exactly what I need?”

His hands trembled with nervousness as his brows furrowed together. This normally strong man looked pale in comparison to the one I was used to being with. There was a child-like hesitation about him, like a kid who had done something wrong, yet was trying to hide the truth.

“Just promise me something.”

“I promise, Andris. You can tell me anything. It isn’t going to change anything.”

“Nicola, I’m falling…fuck…no, I
have
fallen in love with you. I just need you to promise that you aren’t going to run in the other fucking direction once you meet him.”

“Seriously? He couldn’t be that horrible. Are you afraid that I’ll run away from him based on his appearance? Or his attitude? I’ve seen and heard some pretty bad shit in my life, Andris. I don’t scare easily,” I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. He looked up and his eyes were filled with torment. I wanted to grab him and pull him close to me. The vulnerability radiating off of him truly had me concerned.

“No. I’m scared you’ll run away from me.”

“Andris…”

I was interrupted by the sound of Andris’s intercom buzzing and he excused himself to go and answer it.

Run away from him? Why would I run away from him? Wouldn’t it be Link that I should be concerned with?

“Dr. Gunn, could you come out to reception? There is a concern about a patient and Dr. Lewis needs your assistance,” Laura Lee’s voice said, sounding a little shaken up.

“I’m on my way.”

He came back over to the couch and reached for my hand, leading me towards the door with him. When we got there and before he opened it, he turned around and kissed me once again. Not long enough to satisfy me, but long enough to put his heart behind the action, telling me with his lips what his voice was hesitant to say.

“I’ll be back soon. If I’m not back by the time of your appointment with Bradley, his office is the fourth one down on the left. You can wait here in case I am able to come back.”

“Okay.”

He left the office and I closed the door behind him, leaning my head against the heavy wood. I concentrated on my breath for a few moments, trying to get up the courage for what I was about to do.

With determination, I pushed away from the door and made my way to his desk. I didn’t know exactly how much time I had left before he would return, so I needed to act quickly. I searched the top of the desk first in hopes that what I needed was in plain sight.

No such luck.

I began frantically pulling open the drawers of his desk, making sure to glance up every other second to be sure that no one was walking in. My hands trembled as a bead of sweat trickled down my spine.

Pens.

Notebooks.

Candy.

I started getting frustrated until the last drawer produced the pad of paper I was looking for. Several of them, in fact. Without any hesitation, I grabbed them and shoved them into the oversized purse I brought with me today before I had the chance to change my mind. I barely had enough time to place them there and practically sprint my way back to the couch in the corner before a knock sounded at the office door and in walked a middle-aged man.

“Andris?” He called as he stepped inside.

“Oh, my apologies, Miss. I was looking for Dr. Gunn.”

My chest heaved from my mad dash to the couch. He looked at me strangely and a hint of panic began to engulf me. Did he know? Could he have any awareness that I was only seconds ago doing something completely immoral and illegal?

“He had to go to reception to help one of the other doctors with a patient. He should return any moment.”

“Ah, I see. You wouldn’t be Nicola by chance, would you?” He asked as he walked closer to me. I hugged my bag to my side, being sure that he couldn’t peek through the top to see the contents inside. When I arched my brow at him slightly, his face softened and it instantly put me at ease.

“I’m Dr. Bradley Chambers. I will be taking over your care in place of Dr. Gunn.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” I replied as I stood up and extended my hand to him. He accepted my hand shake as a way of introduction. Except for the few brief moments when he first walked into the office, I felt a sense of ease around him. Comforted in a strange way. Normally, I never reacted to people upon introduction, just stood there stoically as they sized me up and down.

“If the patient in the lobby is who I think it is, you can rest assure that Dr. Gunn will be away for a while. We can go ahead and venture down to my office for your appointment if you wish.”

“Um, yes. Okay. Let me grab my things.”

I reached for my bag and my jacket, draping the coat over top of the opening to my bag, trying to hide my indiscretion as we left Andris’s office and walked down the hall to Dr. Chambers’ office. The atmosphere inside his office was different than Andris’s. Where his was clean and masculine, Dr. Chambers’ was warm and welcoming. There were pictures of his family on the walls as well as drawings from what looked like his child clients. ‘
I love you Dr. Chambers
’ was written in messy crayon on the majority of them.

“Have a seat wherever feels comfortable, Miss Forbes.”

“Thank you, Dr. Chambers.”

“Call me Bradley.”

“As long as you call me Nicola.”

“Deal.”

I took a seat in one of the plush chairs in front of his desk, needing the space of his desk between us. I could tell this man was morally strong and I felt the need to keep my sins from corrupting him. His smile made me feel relaxed, and the tone of his voice made me feel at ease.

“Please know, Nicola, that anything we discuss here in my office stays between you and me. That includes Dr. Gunn. He has informed me of your relationship and I have no intentions of discussing anything that you and I talk about, okay?”

“Okay.”

“This is the point of the appointment where any normal psychiatrist would ask you ‘how you feel’ or ‘what do you think about this or that’, but I’m not going to. I’ve read your file. I know you have been coming here for quite some time, so I won’t bore you with semantics. What I do want, though, is your honesty.”

I nodded my head even though it was a lie. How could I be honest with him? How could I tell him that a fucking mob boss was blackmailing me into doing something I never wanted to do, in order to protect the two men I loved? My once steady and uneventful life had become a soap opera overnight. I had more money in the bank than I have had in years. I had deep feelings for not only one man, but two. I had one who fed my bodily cravings, and the other who fed my soul as well as my body. I felt connected to both of them, like there was some unknown force linking us together.

“Obviously you have had a breakthrough in the last several weeks. I’m to understand that your relationship with Dr. Gunn is your first. Sometimes patients with your condition can feel overwhelmed once their trigger hits, or enters their life. Is this the case with you? Am I to assume that Dr. Gunn has been your trigger?”

“Yes,” I replied as my voice cracked from the acknowledgement. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed or scared to admit it, it was just so new to me to admit it to someone else.

“Before Andris, it was like nothing meant anything to me. My only true distinguishable emotions were extreme happiness or sadness, and that was only due to recognizing the same reactions in people over and over. Subtler emotions never even crossed my radar. I had no empathy, I couldn’t care less that I was hurting people.”

“Yes, with your profession, no?”

Wow. EVERYTHING must be in my file.

“Yes. I’ve had very high profile clients. Some with wives, children. Men of God. It doesn’t matter. When it comes to sex, I think people have elective alexithymia. The want to shut off the feelings, only, I never had that luxury. I was cursed with the inability to feel.”

“You weren’t cursed. Your light was never switched on. In order to feel or experience emotions, sometimes those emotions must be exposed to you. From your file, I read that your parents were never around. You were left in the care of nannies and even sent to boarding school at an extremely early age. You must have felt abandoned, alone, angry.”

“I felt nothing for those people. They left me with nothing. I lost the only home I knew. I had no friends. I was completely unsociable as a child. People thought I was weird. People thought I was crazy. I was turned on to pleasure when I was approached by a stranger in a dark alley. He paid me money to do things to him. I was hungry, so I did it. That is how I became an escort.”