21 – Found

Reed twirled her pen in tented fingers and tried to force herself to look at the file of her next patient. She couldn’t do it, so she looked up at her new office instead. It was a bigger office than she had any right to be in, fresh out of school as she was, and the furniture was perfect. Comfortable but functional, and coolly professional. The entire office screamed, up-and-coming-superstar-pathologist, with eyes on her own clinic, and maybe a doctorate and full-time research someday. Dr. Marion, is there a Doctor Marion here? Yes, that’s me. Reed laughed at the fantasy and checked her computer again, still not focused enough to read the patient’s name and condition.

Unable to wrestle her thoughts back on task, Reed looked around her office again, again thinking it was perfect and what she’d wanted for so long. Again.

So why did this day, her first day working as an actual Speech Language Pathologist, feel so hollow? Reed got up and paced around the desk, thinking. It wasn’t the staff, they’d been great, especially the receptionist. It wasn’t the office. It wasn’t the two actual patients she’d seen so far, on her own, with no supervision, and no one would be questioning her diagnosis and treatment plan later. It wasn’t the filing system, that had been the first thing she’d checked when she’d arrived early that morning and gotten her office and network password. It wasn’t the supply cabinet, that had been the second thing she’d checked.

So what was going on? Why did she feel so restless, so… off?

A handsome face flashed in her mind and she felt the same confusing rush of utter longing laced with righteous indignation that she had yesterday. He was on her mind and he wouldn’t get off and it was ruining her day.

Her intercom buzzed. “Your one o’clock is here. Let me say he is yum but don’t get excited because he is also dumb.”

Reed thought about that for a second, then leaned close to the intercom and whispered, “Did you say yum, or young?”

“You’ll see,” Aspen said. “Say come in.”

A knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” Reed said.

The door opened. “Oh. You said yum,” Reed clicked the intercom off and pulled the damn thing out of the wall. It was Troy. Troy was her one o’clock. Troy-she-didn’t-know-his-last-name-but-he’d-made-her-come-five-times-then-bitten-her-Troy. That Troy.

She stood, tipping her chair over, smoothing her skirt, then snatching her hands away from it and grabbing up a clipboard like a shield.

Troy was smiling, but he’d come in smiling, like he’d known she was going to be there. It wasn’t a scary smile, not at all, it made him look like an enthusiastic child, but also hot and sexy and nothing like a child.

Before she said a word, he closed the door behind him and moved quickly into the room, coming all up into her space in about three seconds.

“No,” she tried to say, shaking her head and backing away from her desk. Her ass hit the wall behind her. He stopped on the other side of her desk and listened to her intently. “You can’t be here. I can’t treat you. You can’t be my patient. You have to go away.” She was babbling. He needed to leave.

Troy held up his hands like he was no threat to her and sat down in the client chair. “Please,” he said. “I need you.”

She shook her head some more. “How did you even find me?”

He looked confused, then he gave her a smoldering look and spoke slowly, the most she’d ever heard him say at once. She liked it. She didn’t want to like it, but oh, she did. He sounded dangerous and sweet and careful and wild all at the same time.

“I didn’t find you,” he said. “My brother made the appointment because I have a hard time saying W.” He did. He couldn’t quite get his lips in the right shape. He took a deep breath and she thought for a moment he was going to stutter, but he didn’t. “I didn’t know you would be here, until I caught your scent in the hall.”

Reed’s mind stuttered. “You what?”

He stared hard at her, like he was trying to communicate something to her with his eyes. Irritation spiked inside her. “What? Just say it.”

“You smell like candy,” he said quickly, then looked down, his face saying he hadn’t meant to say that.

“I smell like─?”

Reed needed a moment to think about what exactly was going on here. She dropped the clipboard, sat at her desk and pulled her monitor in front of her a little, so she could hide behind it. She motioned to it. “I’m going to read your file, just be quiet for a second.” He nodded, watching her darkly, like he might eat her up at any moment.

She hid her head and stared at the words on the screen, not seeing them, running through her options. Get up and walk out, go tell Aspen that she has a conflict of interest with this patient and can’t see him. Reed blushed just thinking about it, especially since she had no idea what Troy would say or do.

Growling filled the room, proving her point. Reed looked up. “Knock that off,” she said. He didn’t. He kicked it up a notch and any chance Reed had at concentrating fled out the window. “Please,” she said, and the noise cut off at once.

Whoa. Reed turned to the patient file on her screen. There it was, Troy Burbank, male, devastatingly handsome. Ok, it didn’t say that last part, and there was no picture of him and she hadn’t known his last name before now, but there still was a great chance that if she would have managed to look at this file before he’d shown up, all of this could have been avoided.

Wait, what did that say? She read it over again, then pushed her monitor out of the way so she could look at Troy. “It says here you’ve only been speaking for a month? How is that possible?”

He nodded once, matter-of-factly. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “It might be hard to believe.” He stared at her like he was trying to figure out where to start.

Her heart pounded and the bad wolf in her dream filled her mind. She waited. He didn’t speak. He only stared. She got uncomfortable. She snapped her fingers in front of her trying to make him snap out of it.

He curled his lip. “Sorry. You’re so beautiful I lost my train of thought.”

Reed felt her heart want to respond to that. She didn’t let it. “Yeah, ok,” she said flatly. “How often does that line work?”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “I’ve never said it before.”

She nodded her head and motioned to her monitor. “Makes sense, seeing as how you’ve only been speaking for thirty days.” This was getting flat out bizarre, and her irritation was spiking.

His nostrils flared. His strange choice of words earlier rang through her mind. I caught your scent.

Bizarre was the right word.

He was crazy, but he was sexy. She could smell him. Excuse her, she could scent him, and damn, he scented good. Like put-a-baby-in-me, make-me-scream-your-name, good. Reed shook the thought right out of her head. Bye-bye, Troy, time for you to go. For good.

“You’re going to have to leave,” she said. She stood and left the safety of the desk, heading for the door so she could open it and people would be able to see them. It seemed the only smart thing to do, save jumping out the window. “I can’t treat you,” she said as she walked. “It’s a conflict of─” But he cut her off by shooting to his feet when she drew even with him.

Reed yelped and stopped walking, her senses on high alert, her body betraying her mind. Troy moved in close to her and she let him. Troy herded her like she was a sheep, a very horny sheep, and she let him. Troy backed her against the desk, and she let him.

“You’re so fucking sexy,” he said, in his careful way, his head down, his forehead almost touching hers, his cologne and his hot man smell all up in her face. “You look so professional,” he almost purred, touching her body, running both hands down her shoulders to her waist, then hips, sending a cascade of sensation down her body. She bit her lip to keep her reactions inside. He bit his own lip, then moved in close, ducking his head more to kiss her. “I have to have you.”

“Yes,” she moaned into his mouth. No, she moaned into her own mind, but even that ‘no’ sounded more like a ‘yes’.

Troy grabbed her ass and pulled her against him. The manhandling started, that manhandling she loved so much. NO! Get him the hell out, Reed Ann. But instead she let him turn her around and press her against her own desk like some sort of sordid porn. Did she wiggle her ass into him? Reed knew she did. She was. He was hard and right up against her and she wiggled to feel it better. She knew what he was working with, and remembering it made her mouth water and her brains go stupid.

Troy yanked her skirt up around her waist. She had on pantyhose so she was safe, he wouldn’t dare breach their defenses. He would just rub her a bit, maybe give her another one of those orgasms. Reed melted into him, keeping her noises quiet, fully aware of what she was doing, and fully unable to help herself.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiip.

Oh shit! Her pantyhose flew across the room, then her panties, too. They landed on the filing cabinet. Her bare ass caught a breeze and if she wasn’t so fucking turned on she would have been livid.

Troy’s hands were all over her, tugging, kneading, sliding through wetness and swollenness, right here in her brand new office. She didn’t protest, didn’t say a word. She may have moaned, and there was a good chance she was wiggling again… until something caught her eye. Her pink panties hanging from the filing cabinet.

Reed could very clearly see clean slice marks through the fabric.

She whirled around and checked his hands again. No knives. Fingernails short. What the hell? He let her grab his hands to examine them, his eyes on her legs and her skirt bunched around her waist … and all of her bare skin underneath.

“Whoa,” Reed said. The rules had failed her, but she had failed them first.

Troy leaned in close, kissing her hard, finding both of her hands, entwining his fingers with hers and pulling her close, conforming her to his body. The urgency in his movements and the too-sexy growls and snarls he made occasionally, told her he was as lost in the sensuality of the touch of skin on skin as she was. More so. She wanted oh so much more of his skin touching hers.

Troy must have read her mind. He spun her around, letting go of one of her hands, and using the other to direct her how he wanted her. “Holy…” she breathed, when both his hands spanned her hips again, then one of them kneaded up higher, going all the way to the nape of her neck, under her shirt, pressing her down. She arched into the sensation, until her bra popped open like it had been sliced.

That was it, she’d had enough of all the slicing. Reed flailed a little on her desk, getting her hands underneath her, remembering where she was and what she was supposed to be doing and more importantly, what she should never do, like have relations with a client. She was going to lose her license, all because she was a stupid horny bitch. Her hand hit her monitor and it upended, spilling on the floor with a crash.

A crash that echoed.

Reed froze. Troy didn’t, his big, stupid hands were still trying to mash her back against his front.

“Stop,” she hissed and he froze, too.

Reed pulled away from him, setting her clothes to rights, “Sit down, act natural,” she told him, leaping over her monitor to get to her pantyhose. She grabbed them up and reached for her pink panties on the filing cabinet.

The door opened. It was Aspen, with the big boss behind her, the doctor who had hired her.

Her hand was like an arrow to her panties.

The doctor followed the arrow to her panties, then her hair, her desk, the monitor on the floor, and finally, Troy fidgeting in his chair.

He whispered something to Aspen and her face went dark.

Reed knew exactly what that meant.

She was so fired.