“This is the life,” she moaned as I heard the water sloshing around her.
I shoved the voice in my head back down into the pit of my gut. “Would you like the jets, Miss Elizabeth?”
My voice came out wrong and I couldn’t do a thing about it.
“Where’s the button for them?” she asked.
I just reached my foot out and pressed a concealed button on the edge of the hot tub itself.
I heard the jets roar to life.
I heard her sigh heavily as the water continued sloshing around, bubbling and churning and kicking up a steam that hissed over my skin from behind. I kept my back to her. I didn’t trust my eyes not to be courteous.
I wondered if anyone was watching from the house.
I’d kill anyone watching from the house.
Mine.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a few deep breaths. There was no way in hell I could feel this way about a patient. It was wrong. It was uncouth. It simply wasn’t right. I took an oath. It didn’t matter that I didn’t work as a medic any longer. It didn’t matter that I didn’t work in a hospital. It didn’t matter that I was only at my clinic in town three days a week to help out with the clinics around us that were always overflowing with people.
What mattered was the promise I made when I became a doctor.
Do no wrong.
And it was wrong to take advantage of a patient and their vulnerability.
I wouldn’t do that to Miss Elizabeth.
Bet it’s not doctor’s orders, getting your brains fucked out.
I scrubbed my hands down my face. Jesus fucking Christ, my brain had never done this to me before. It was like it was actively sabotaging me. I always prided myself in having control over my mind. Over its capabilities. Over its ability to register things at a blinding speed while cobbling accuracies together about my surroundings on nothing but smells and sights. I’d always been able to do it. My brain was always hardwired this way.
Never once had it betrayed me like this.
“Hey, Doc?”
Her gorgeous voice pierced my thoughts. “Yes, Miss Elizabeth.”
I heard her shift a bit, the water sloshing behind me. “This hot tub feels a bit warmer than other ones I’ve been in. Do you do that intentionally? Or is that just me being sensitive?”
I cleared my throat. “I keep it a little warmer. I prefer it that way.”
“Me, too.”
Something creaked behind us, and she gasped. Before I could even catch myself, I whipped around, ready and willing to slaughter whoever came up on Miss Elizabeth while she was in such a vulnerable position. My eyes tuned into the back stretch of trees that lined the part of my backyard my parents had cleared out on the property. I searched for any sign of an intruder. Or someone who was snooping around who shouldn’t be.
However, the wind kicked up, rustling the trees, and the moonlight poured through its branches, separating the hunk of light into strands that illuminated the edge of my backyard.
Only to reveal nothing.
“Man, your backyard is huge,” she muttered.
I didn’t even think before looking down at her in the hot tub. I prepared myself to rebuttal, but when I saw her sitting there, her naked body submerged beneath the roiling waters, I swallowed hard. I clasped my hands tighter behind my back, as if to keep them from having a mind of their own. And as my gaze fell to her pile of clothing that wasn’t too far from my foot, I noticed that her bra and underwear were also in the pile.
My head spun.
I wanted to get in.
