Dr. Chase Hudson (The Surrogate Book 2) Page 13

  She spread her legs.

  “I am going to fuck you,” I told her, sliding my cock to her pussy and holding there. My hand moved up her back toward her neck then into her hair, grabbing it and pulling until her body jerked up toward me. “Hard,” I added as I slammed inside her. Her breath hissed out of her and her ass arched higher. “Elbows on the bed,” I told her and she moved down, making me pull her hair even harder. But she didn't pull away. She liked it. Maybe even as much as I did. My other hand moved to right above her ass.

  Then I fucked her.

  Hard.

  Like I fucking promised.

  And she fucking loved it.

  Each time, I withdrew almost all the way before slamming fully back in, tilting up slightly. Wild. Primal.

  My hand twisted harder in her hair as my other hand moved to her hip and used it to pull her back against me with each forward thrust, getting as deep as possible.

  She was clutching the sheets, burying her face in them as she screamed. Not moaned. Not groaned. Not cried out. Screamed.

  “I want to hear you come,” I scolded, yanking her up by her hair.

  I slammed forward and she came.

  And the entire block could hear her.

  “Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” she cried as the pulsations kept ripping through her and I slammed the whole way through it. “Chase...”

  That was it.

  I was done.

  I thrust forward, burying deep, and came hard enough to see white.

  “Fucking perfect,” I groaned, letting go of her hair and she collapsed forward onto the bed.

  I waited until my legs felt less wobbly and made my way to the bathroom to deal with the condom before I went back to the bed, settling onto my back and staring at the ceiling. “Come here,” I said, patting my chest.

  But she didn't move.

  She just stayed on her belly, making some weird grumbling sound in her throat that made me chuckle. “A little come-drunk, huh?”

  “Shut up,” she grumbled, her words heavy, sleepy.

  I laughed, shaking my head at her, letting my hand land on her ass and squeeze it.

  “That was fucking amazing,” I told her. Meaning it.

  She made another noise that sounded like agreement.

  I smiled down at her as I shifted to start planting kisses from the base of her neck downward. Suddenly, her body wasn't numb and lifeless anymore. I felt her arch into the feel of my lips on her spine, over her ass, down her thigh to her ankle, and then up the other leg. I wanted to know every single inch of her. I wanted to commit the feel and taste of her skin to memory. I kissed back up her spine and across her shoulder before moving away to lie back down again.

  Then she was moving and I felt a swelling in my chest, knowing she was coming to me. She was going to rest her head on my chest and all would feel right in the world.

  But then she got up on all fours then landed her ass back onto her ankles, too far out of reach. Something was wrong. The swelling in my chest deflated, leaving me feeling hollow.

  “Wait... where are you going?” I asked as she inched away.

  “I promised Shay I would help her set up her room tonight,” she lied. Lied. To my face.

  What the fuck was going on?

  “Ava...”

  But then she was off the bed and dragging her dress over her head.

  She was going to leave me. And I had no way to make her stay.

  So I moved off the bed to grab my pants.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I'm walking you to your car,” I said, standing and reaching for my shirt as I slipped into my shoes. “You're not walking around at night with no fucking panties on,” I told her, my words taking an edge toward cold.

  She rolled her eyes. Rolled her fucking eyes as she reached for her keys and wallet and made her way out of the office.

  I fell into step beside her as we walked in stony silence.

  She got to her car, unlocked the door, and threw her shit on the passenger seat before turning to face me.

  I . Couldn't. Fucking. Take. It. Anymore.

  I grabbed her, pushing her back against her car.

  “Chase... what the hell...”

  “What is wrong with you?” I demanded, getting close.

  Her eyes went wide, guilty, before she pushed it away. “Nothing,” she said, scrunching up her face like I was the one being crazy.

  “Bullshit. You've been off since you woke up the other morning and kept giving me that fake ass smile. What is going on with you?”

  She took a deep breath. “Nothing is wrong with me. I've been... learning a lot.”

  “What the fuck...” I started to explode before reining it in, taking a deep breath. “You're not being you,” I said more calmly. Even to my own ears, my words sounded sad.

  “You've only seen me for a couple hours here and there, Chase. You have no idea who I really am.”

  “I know you,” I countered, feeling my jaw getting tight. “I fucking know you. This,” I said viciously, “is not you.” I paused, watching her blank face. “Fuck it,” I said and lowered my lips to hers.

  It should have been hard and rough and bruising with the blood boiling inside me. But the second our bodies touched, my lips gentled. It was soft. Teasing. Loving. Her lips fell open on a whimper and my tongue stroked inside to toy with hers. Easy. Lazy. And then I pulled away slowly, my hand stroking down her cheek.

  Her eyes fluttered open and I felt my face soften at the look I found there.

  “There. That's my Ava.”

  Her eyes went panicked for a second before she expertly slipped the mask back on.

  “And she's gone,” I said, not even fucking caring how disappointed my voice sounded.

  “So sorry to disappoint you,” she said, her tone icy. Icy. Ava wasn't cold. Ava was sweet and warm and as close to perfect as I had ever seen. Something was wrong. And she didn't want to share it with me.

  I closed my eyes and took a breath, trying to slip back into professional mode. It was the only way to save myself. “Tomorrow. Seven.”

  “Fine,” she snapped, wrenching away from me and dropping into her seat. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

  Then the door slammed.

  And fake Ava was gone.

  And she took my fucking Ava with her.

  After the Sessions

  I sat in my office the next day, my afternoon cleared of patients, trying to keep my mind off of Ava. I tried to keep my mind off of the fact that we just had three more sessions. I tried to keep my mind off the idea that I might never even peek at my Ava again before I would stop seeing the fake one again. For good.

  “Chase,” Mary, my receptionist's voice called, making me start. She sent me a guilty smile. “I knocked first,” she explained, standing in the doorway.

  I waved a hand. “Sorry. I was somewhere else,” I admitted, sitting back.

  “You have a call,” she explained, gesturing toward the phone on my desk.

  “Who is it?” I asked, sounding every bit as tired as I felt.

  “Mae,” she said with a fondness in her tone. Mae called every week like clockwork. When I was with a patient, she would chat with Mary.

  “Oh, right,” I said, feeling a heaviness in my chest. I loved Mae, but talking to Mae would only mean more disappointment. Because despite knowing her for the better part of a decade, despite being the only one she talked to about what happened to her and her worries and fears and anxieties, I had never been able to help.

  Mae was in her early thirties and the only time she had sex was when she was a freshmen in college. Non-consenting sex. She never let another man come within a foot of her again.

  She was doing well. She had a gorgeous house and a thriving career in an energy company. She had friends (female). She had a slew of hobbies that kept her busy.

  “I'm satisfied,” she told me one afternoon a few months before.
>
  “Satisfied isn't happy, Mae. It isn't fulfilled.”

  “Says the man who has a different woman every other day,” she teased. “How fulfilling can that be?”

  And, well, she had a point.

  Casual sex was good. At times, it was great. Fulfilling in a very physical, very hollow kind of way. But she was right. It wasn't emotionally or even mentally fulfilling. It didn't bring with it real happiness.

  At the time, though, I had no idea what a bitter kind of misery came along with real happiness.

  A part of me wondered if I was better off never knowing it in the first place.

  “You're never going to stop trying to fix me, huh?” she laughed.

  “You're not broken,” I insisted. “But, no, I'm never going to stop trying to help you.”

  I hung up an hour later, feeling both pleased and forlorn. She was doing well. But there was no end in sight to her resistance. Maybe it was time to stop trying to help her. She said she was content. Who the hell was I to question that? Especially given that I didn't know what the fuck was going on in my own life. I was in no place to judge her.

  I fell in love with a fucking patient for chrissakes.

  I got into my car and started driving toward the Italian place I took Ava, a creature of habit always. But I stopped halfway there, remembering Ava insisting the small place by her apartment was the best she had ever had. And, before even making the decision logically, I turned around and headed in that direction.

  Maybe a part of me was angry with her. But a bigger, more prominent part just wanted to know her better. Know the things she liked. The places she frequented.

  “For fuck's sake,” I said to myself, shaking my head. I was starting to sound like a fucking stalker. But I parked and went into the beat up Italian place around the corner from her place.

  The black and white checkered floors were worn but the bright red paint on the walls was fresh. The counter and tables were made of an old, beat-up wood that was soft with age. The bell chimed as I walked in and a man came out of the back, his belly spilling over his waistband, a thick mustache over a severe mouth. “Eat,” he said, pushing a menu toward me.

  I nodded was I went over to a table to sit and look over my options.

  I had just ordered when the bell over the door chimed and my head snapped up automatically.

  It was like a kick to the gut. Or a fall from a swing. It was like the wind was knocked out of me.

  Because there she was- looking fresh and relaxed, smiling at the owner who barked the same word he barked at me, at her. “Yes,” she said and held up her hand, showing him three fingers and he shuffled off.

  I don't know what came over me then, but it was something dark and bitter that made my words come out almost cruel, “Hey there, stranger...”

  She jumped, spinning to face me. Her eyes went huge as she stared. “What are you doing here?”

  “A girl I know told me this is the best Italian. I came to see for myself.”

  It happened fast. Fast enough that she went from a one to a ten in a blink. Her eyes got huge, her hand moved to her throat like she was suffocating.

  The dark and bitter was washed away among a wave of bone-deep concern. “Ava... hey,” I started, my voice calm and soothing. “Take a breath.”

  But a few seconds passed and she didn't, her eyes getting bigger and bigger, her body starting to shake slightly.

  Then she turned and ran.

  By the time I got up and to the door to follow her, she was lost in the crowd.

  “Fuck!” I yelled loud enough for the owner to come out of the back, brows drawn down. Seeing me, he just shrugged and disappeared again.

  When he came back out with a huge bag and looked around, saying, “Trè?”, I just raised my hand and pulled out my wallet. If she went anywhere, she went home. So I paid, took the bag, and I walked toward her apartment building.

  “Hey, Dr. Sexy,” Shay greeted with a smile, but a brow was lifted.

  “She here?” I asked, pushing past her.

  “No man,” Jake said from the kitchen. “She ran to get Italian.”

  “Here's your Italian,” I said, shoving the bag toward his chest.

  “Chase, what's going on?” Shay asked, tone firm.

  “I was at the Italian place and Ava came in. She had a panic attack and flew out of there before I could calm her down.” Jake and Shay shared a look. A pointed one. It was a look that said a thousand words. They knew something. They knew something that I wasn't going to be let in on. “What's going on guys?”

  Shay opened her mouth to speak, but Jake cut her off. “Dunno man. She just has those things sometimes.”

  The door opened half an hour later and in walked Ava, looking calmer. She wasn't completely back to normal, but she was alright. She was at a five. Not great, but getting better.

  “Well, finally,” Jake greeted her, his mouth full since he ripped open the bags ten minutes before declaring 'it's not like it's going to help her anxiety for us to go hungry'. “Just leave us here to fucking starve. Luckily Chase here cared enough about our...”

  Ava's eyes fell to me and everything else became background noise.

  “Are you okay?”

  She took a deep breath and I braced for the mask to fall into place. But it didn't. “Better,” she said, placing her purse down on the table beside the door and moving across the apartment.

  “Yo, where did ya' go?” Shay asked, making both of us turn our heads in her direction.

  My gaze quickly turned back to Ava. “I had a phone session with Dr. Bowler.”

  My stomach twisted to the point of genuine pain. She had a session with Dr. Bowler. She had gone out of her way to contact her other shrink, probably calling her away from other patients, to talk to her. I had been right there. I had been right there and she didn't turn to me.

  “Ava... why didn't you talk to me?”

  She shook her head, unable to meet my gaze. “I don't know. I just... panicked. I needed to get out of that place. Once I got somewhere, I picked up my phone and...”

  “You could have called me,” I said quietly, closing the space between us.

  “I just... wasn't thinking,” she said, looking up at me from under my lashes. The vulnerability in her eyes made me want to wrap her up so nothing could ever make her feel that way again. But that wasn't my fucking place.

  “It's okay,” I said, allowing my hand to move out and stroke her cheek. “As long as you're alright.”

  “I am. That was just... a bad one.”

  “Okay,” I said, my hand trailing from her cheek to her neck, then resting on her shoulder. Ava's gaze slid past me to where Shay and Jake were, no doubt, watching us intensely. I made my hand drop on a slow exhale. “I'll see you in forty minutes, okay? Or I can wait here if you're still not feeling well.”

  “I'm okay,” she said, looking me in the eye. “I'm just going to shower and change and I'll be over.”

  I made my voice drop so that only she could hear me, leaning in slightly. “Okay, baby. I'll be waiting for you.”

  I let her open the door and close it behind me, sinking back against it for a moment, looking for the strength to keep going.

  It took longer than my pride would let me admit.

  But eventually, I left.

  I went to my office and I waited to see which version of her I would get that night.

  Eighth Session

  I had been prepared for a lot of things. Or, at least, that was what I was tried to tell myself. No matter what Ava I was faced with, I was going to handle it. Calmly. With at least a semblance of professionalism.

  But that was before I walked out of my office to find Ava already inside the front door.

  “Ava...”

  Then her hand went to the button of her coat, pushed it through the hole, and discarded the material. That dress. Red material in the shape of an hourglass in the front, the sides and straps made of
a see through black mesh-like material. It clung like a second skin and... that body in that dress...

  “Fuck me,” I growled. Then she lifted her chin and moved in a slow circle, showing me the back which was the same see through black mesh from the straps to very low on her hips. I held an arm out, wanting her to come toward me. She did. As soon as she was close enough, I slid my hands down her arms and took her hands. “You are so fucking beautiful.”

  She swallowed hard before speaking. “Thank you.”

  My hands squeezed hers and led them to my shoulders. One of my hands went to her lower back, pressing her body to mine as my other moved to her jaw, tilting her face toward mine. “There she is,” I said, half to myself. “I missed her.” And I fucking did.

  I lowered my face to hers, sinking in deep. I kissed her like it was the first time. Like it was the last. She kissed me back like her soul recognized the need in mine. Her body pressed into mine. Her hands went around my neck.

  “Okay,” I said, pulling away. “Bed. Now.”

  I grabbed her hand, holding it tight, as I led her through the office, past the sidebar and toward the bed. I sat, pulling her upright body between my open legs, and looked up at her. I felt my heart in my eyes and I didn't even fucking try to mask it.

  “Do you want to know about this session?” I asked, beginning to loathe the formality of it all.

  Her hand moved out, brushing a strand of my hair back off my forehead, her fingers trailing down the side of my face and my neck until her palm flattened on my shoulder. “Sure.”

  “This all depends on your limits, okay? Just because this is the way it is planned out, doesn't mean it is the way it has to be. If you're not into it, we move onto something else. Okay?”

  Her brows furrowed a little. “Okay.”

  Right to the chase, I asked, “How do you feel about anal sex?” I watched, looking for any sign of anxiety, especially given her panic attack earlier.