Page 99 of Darling Venom
The second I saw Tate bring a woman to orgasm, I decided.
There was a rap on the door.
I sucked in a breath.
Tate’s low, gravelly voice rasped through the cracks. “Can I come in?”
No.
“Yes.”
He opened the door and closed it behind him. This time, he wore a doctor’s coat over his usual cigarette pants and tight cashmere sweater. He turned around to look at me, and his eyes widened a little.
“That’s an interesting take.” He suppressed a smile.
I wanted to die of embarrassment. I was pretty sure my head was about to explode from all the blood rushing to my face.
But I shrugged, as if it was no skin off my back. “I wasn’t sure what to do with the tissue.”
“Normally, you put it over your lap for modesty.”
“My way seems more modest.”
“Can’t argue with that logic.”
He took a step in, the damning clipboard in his hand. The form he’d probably already read. So, now he knew my weight, and that I took birth control, and that I’d never had sex before.
He still hadn’t taunted me about any of those things.
Maybe he never would.
Perhaps he really was a good doctor, who put our animosity aside during working hours.
Tate rested the clipboard on the counter and washed his hands, squirting soap into his palm. You could cut the tension in the room with a butter knife.
“I went through your file,” he started.
Here we go.
He sc
rubbed his hands, his fingernails cut close to the skin, his forearms corded with muscles and veins. “Since you’ve never been to an ob-gyn before, would you like a general checkup?”
“What does a general checkup consist of?”
I felt like an idiot.
Young, and naïve, and ignorant.
“Breast exam, abdominal exam, and pelvic exam.”
“Would you recommend that?” Clearly, I was fishing for some sort of confirmation he wanted to touch me.
Tate turned off the tap, plucked some paper towels, and dried his hands, slam-dunking the balled sheets into the trash. The snapping of gloves filled my ears. They were pale blue, like the ring around his gray irises.
He approached me. “I would.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
