Page 16 of Reckless

This wasn’t what I’d thought would happen when I knocked on his door. I hadn’t known what would, but this? Something as soft and quiet and good as this had never even entered my head.

I didn’t hate it.

I hated that I didn’t hate it.

I snorted again. I was way too relaxed to figure out what was going on, both here and in my head, and way too relaxed to care too much that I was messed up. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with the doc, and he’d won, except somehow nothing hurt. It was like he knew a shortcut, a way to skip a step, so here I was wrung out, exhausted, my brain too tired to tie itself in knots, and I wasn’t sure how I’d got here without a fight.

For now, it didn’t seem to matter.

For now, nothing seemed to matter at all except Alastair’s touch and the sound of the ocean breathing in and out against the harbour wall.

I must have dozed, because I woke to the mattress dipping beside me and opened my eyes to see Alastair with one knee pressing down onto it as he held out a mug of tea. I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn’t thirsty, but suddenly realised the depth of that lie. I was as dry as a desert. So I sat up, the blanket pooling around my hips, and took the mug with a mumbled thanks. The tea was warm but not hot, like he’d known I wouldn’t want to wait for it to cool down.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Pretty good.”

“You don’t sound too certain.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“No. There’s nothing to talk about, because nothing happened.” I curled my fingers tightly around the handle of the mug. “It was nothing.”

“You know that’s not true.”

I bet he wouldn’t sound so calm if I flung the tea in his face. “What was it then? What the fuck did you do to make me go all weird like that?”

“Essentially, I put you in an altered emotional state by causing your body to release hormones like endorphins and dopamine. I suspect you usually trigger a similar high when someone gets rough with you. There wasn’t any trick to it, Robbie. It’s brain chemistry.”

I couldn’t look at him. I stared at my clothes, still lying on his floor, and imagined myself pulling them on as I hurried down the stairs and out his front door. But I didn’t want to run, not when I didn’t understand what had happened here tonight, and Alastair had the answers. “It hasn’t happened before.”

“Probably because you’ve never tried it before,” he offered, and I darted a glance at him and saw his faint smile. “There are more ways to clear your mind than having the stuffing knocked out of you, that’s all.”

He didn’t say it like it was sick. He said it like he knew why I did it, and it wasn’t crazy. It felt crazy sometimes, this creeping need inside me that made my bones itch, made me want to tear my own skin off. It came on like a trickle at first, a faintly irritating sensation that teased the edges of my awareness, but before too long it was too much to ignore. It was a flood and I was drowning, and I needed someone to punch a hole in me to let it all drain out. Except Alastair hadn’t jabbed any holes in me, hadn’t made any cuts. He’d barely touched me at all. Barely done anything, like a diviner holding a couple of sticks and somehow feeling exactly where the water lay.

“Did you like it?” he asked.

I wanted to lie, but something told me there was no point. He’d see right through me. “Yeah.” I took another sip of tea. “Can you get in trouble? Since you’re my doctor and everything?”

“Possibly,” he said, but he didn’t sound too worried. I gave him some side eye, and he smiled slightly. “Remote medicine has always been a little bit of a grey area that nobody wants to poke at too much. If a single doctor takes a job in a small town where every resident is on their books, are they expected to have no personal relationships at all for the entire time they’re there?”

I shrugged.

He raised his eyebrows. “I suppose I could go and get laid on the mainland once a month like you do.”

“Fuck off.” I was too tired to inject any real anger into my tone.

His smile broadened, as though he was delighted to have riled me even a little bit, and then it faded into something softer. “If we decide to take this any further, into an intimate relationship, then obviously you’ll have to go to the mainland for your checkups.”

I gave him another look.

He let out a sigh. “Of course nobody here has checkups.”

I set my mug on the nightstand. “That’s not what that look was for.”

“No?” It took a moment for comprehension to dawn in his expression, and I was perversely pleased he wasn’t a bloody mind reader after all. “Ah. Perhaps I should have said explicitly sexual, rather than intimate. I wonder if the Medical Association will be generous with the distinction.”