Daring the Doctor

Quite ridiculously, I stare at the ceiling, wonder if she’s finding my notes as interesting as she hoped. Which is ludicrous. Of course she is. I’m being considered for an operation on the Pope, for crying out loud. There’s no one better than me.

She could be, though. Someday.

I don’t know how I’m so positive of that fact. But I am. The medical community needs her and if nothing else is accomplished tonight, I’m going to find out why she chooses to fetch coffee and clean houses instead of fulfilling her vast potential.

Throughout medical school and my career, I’ve found very few surgeons willing to help pull someone up to their level. My mentor was cutthroat—and he was also my father. A controlling, egomaniacal prick that still practices medicine in New York City. Sometimes I was even positive he tried to hold me back, so I wouldn’t surpass him. I’ve vowed not to be like that. Like my father and so many surgeons of the same ilk. Bitter toward anyone whose talent comes close to theirs. As far as I’m concerned, the more skilled hands on deck, the better.

My phone beeps, signaling the end of the hour, and I abandon my coffee immediately, taking the stairs two at a time. I throw open the door to my office, expecting to find her kneeling in front of the files. Instead, she’s sitting at my desk with her feet propped up. She glances up from the file in her hands and wrinkles her nose at my intrusion.

And that does it. That fucking does it.

I fall irrevocably in love with her.

Chains wrap around my pounding heard, shackling me permanently, turning me into her prisoner for life. A totally willing one.

“Read anything interesting?” I manage around the knot in my throat.

“Yes!” she exclaims. “All this research on xenotransplantation. How did I not read about it in any of the journals?” She flips several pages, wide eyed. “And the way you treated this allograft rejection.” She falls back in my chair, visibly flabbergasted. “It shouldn’t have been possible once the CD4 or CD8 T cells were activated.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I thought you were already aware that I’m brilliant.” My deadpan response makes her giggle in that girlish way—and just like that I’m thinking of her face down over my desk, her hips gripped in my hands. “There’s plenty where that came from. You can read more tomorrow when you come back to…” I survey the scattered files. “Clean.”

Charlotte purses her pretty lips at me. “You knew I wouldn’t be able to tidy these up without reading every single word.”

“Guilty as charged.” I circle around the back of my desk chair, watching awareness take hold of every inch of her body. Standing behind her seated form, I reach down and cup her chin, tilting her head back, exposing her throat and giving me a cock-hardening view down the front of her blouse. “Will I start the game now, Charlotte?” I rasp, starved for the taste of her nipples. Any part of her, really. “Nothing you tell me will leave this room. I just need to get inside this beautiful head.”

“Fine. But…please don’t use a scalpel.”

That surprises a laugh out of me. The sound, the feeling of laughter feels completely foreign, I haven’t done it in so long. What this girl inspires in me isn’t something to squander. It’s something to be coveted and protected at all costs. “Why are transplants a specific area of interest for you?” I ask. “That’s the first truth I want. Then you get to dare me.”

For long moments, she just breathes, her chest rising and falling quickly. “My father. His body rejected a liver transplant. I was twelve. I didn’t know how to save him, but I’m going to learn. So I can save someone else’s dad.”

It’s hard for me to speak, my throat is suddenly so crowded. I’m so unused to experiencing this depth of emotion, that I can’t meet her eyes for several seconds. “I’m sorry. I didn’t find that information anywhere.”

“You wouldn’t, since my father and I had different last names. My parents never married and I took my mother’s.” She closes her eyes. “But we were a family. And I loved him.”

My chest feels as though it’s being drilled. Everything inside of me is demanding I pick her up out of the chair, hold her, rock her. Be angry at the world with her. “I don’t want to tell you how to spend your dare, Charlotte, but I’d appreciate very much if you dared me to kiss you right now.”

Her throat works. A few beats pass. Then she whispers, “I dare you to kiss me, Doctor Fletcher.”

I’m already moving. Already spinning the leather desk chair around and kneeling in front of her. With our height difference, even standing on my knees puts my mouth several inches above hers, making it necessary to lean down, breath against those soft lips. And one look at the twin pools of moisture in her eyes and I’m diving into her. I’m spearing my fingers through those long, thick locks of hair and sealing our mouths together. Kissing her. Drawing her tongue to mine with a coaxing lick, then possessing that delicious cavern with a thorough, sweeping taste.