Medicine Man

“What else did he call you?” His face is impassive, but his voice sounds roughed up, like a scratchy cloth that rubs along the length of my arms. The side of my neck. The top of my thighs.

And I have no choice but to resume my clenching. This time, I feel moisture ooze out of my core. It’s getting wet and swollen. Humid.

“Snow princess,” I whisper my lie, and Dr. Blackwood’s eyes change.

I see a glimmer in them. A glint.

God, his eyes are so beautiful. So gray. So… rainy and stormy.

They flick back and forth over my face as he asks, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’d he call you that?”

“Because of my hair.”

Silver hair, the only thing I’m proud of. The only thing I inherited from my family.

Dr. Blackwood looks at my hair, my overgrown bangs and my loose topknot, and my scalp tingles. The strands oddly feel alive.

“And your skin.”

“M-my skin?”

Said skin bursts out in goose bumps at his words. My lips part and I drag in a breath of his rainy smell that seems to have invaded every inch of this room.

He glances away from me, and I notice a random pulse on his jaw that comes and goes so fast I think I’ve imagined it.

“It’s pale. Your skin,” he says, straightening up in the chair and picking up his pen.

Even though he isn’t looking at me, I still feel like he is. Did he really just say that? Did he really notice my skin?

I mean, of course he would’ve, but still. To associate it with the name I’ve given myself in the dark of the night makes me think that he sees me. That he thinks about me too.

Jesus, I’m really losing it, aren’t I?

“He called me that the first time he kissed me,” I whisper, for no reason at all, except to bring his eyes back to me and away from the rainy window. For him to see me.

“When was that?” he asks.

“On our first date.”

“He kissed you on the first date.”

Again, that scoffing. Again, I tuck it inside my heart, thinking that he’s jealous. He doesn’t appreciate that my boyfriend kissed me on the first date. He doesn’t appreciate my boyfriend kissing me at all.

“Uh-huh.” I lick my lips. “We went to the movies.”

“And?”

“And well, he kissed me. We were walking back at night. It was raining. Drizzling, actually. My building was like, a block away but he grabbed me.”

“He grabbed you.”

His eyes are so intense, so heated that I look down at my lap. I didn’t want to.

I wanted to keep staring at him, taking in his reactions, however miniscule they might be. But now that I have his entire focus, I can’t do it.

It’s too much.

“Yeah. And then, he pulled me into this dark alley. He pushed me against the wall, heaved my legs up around his hips and…” I bite my lip, all the while knowing that he’s still watching me. “His hands felt so big. Like they could do anything. They were so warm when he put them on my waist and pressed up against me. I’ve never felt anything so hard and so… hot. He told me that he was dying to kiss me. He’d been dying to kiss me ever since he saw me.”

I can’t help it. I clench my thighs together and press my hand on my lower stomach. All hidden. All under the table. Away from his eyes.

“Then what?”

His voice causes a pulse to go through my stomach into my pussy. It’s wet and getting sloppy.

“And then he kissed me.” I press harder on my belly. “His lips were so soft. Softest thing I’d ever touched. And so different from his rough grip. Different from how hard he was. All over.”

I chance a glance at him and find him exactly as when my eyes left him. Stony, intense, watchful.

The ice king.

In fact, he looks colder than ever. Colder than the first time I met him. For a second, I think that maybe he knows the kisser in my head is not my boyfriend. It’s him.

Why do I always feel like he can see me, he can read the things inside me?

Then he asks, “How did you feel when he kissed someone else?”

My hand on my stomach stiffens and I drag in a breath.

God, not this again. I’m so totally over The Roof Incident.

Fuck.

“Lonely. Depressed. Heartbroken. Like I wanted to die,” I reply, sighing.

“Who was the girl again?”

“Zoe. She was in my history class.”

“Was she your friend?”

I scoff. “I never had friends. I was too weird for friends.”

His fingers around the pen tighten, but his voice is casual – the same – when he asks, “Weird. How so?”

I shrug. “I was the slowest kid in school. I got picked last for everything. I hated birthday parties. I hated parties, period. I hardly laughed. Most of the time I fell asleep in my classes, and then my teachers made someone lend me their notes and I had to stay home all evening to make up for whatever I had missed. So yeah, I wasn’t Miss Popular. I was Lazy Lolo. Weird Willow. Wacked Willow. Lunatic Lolo. I can go on if you like.”