Pouring a glass of water, he picked up one of the pills he’d extracted earlier and offered them both to me. I eyed the small, round pill, a bubble of panic creeping up my throat — was it a sleeping tablet? It looked innocent enough, but then—
“Don’t worry, Abi, it’s only to help you get settled,” he assured me. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
What choice did I have?
Cause a scene and make him force it down me or play along and hope it gets me what I need.
Obediently, I raised myself onto my elbow and took them both, knocking back the tablet and chasing it down with the water, accepting that on some level it may actually help with what was to come.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, passing the water back to him and lying down again.
“Now, tell me,” he said, returning the glass to the nightstand and taking up his seat, one leg crossing over the other. “What has you so troubled?”
I stared at the ceiling a good while, partly to do my role-play justice and partly to work out how I was going to approach this. I decided honesty was the best way to begin, after all, plenty had been going on in my head of late and all of it stemmed from sex.
“I’ve been having these new ... feelings.” I hesitated, trying to relay my confusion. “They’ve been really unsettling.”
“Feelings?” he probed. “What kind of feelings?”
“I don’t know if I should say.”
“Come, Abi, I’ve known you for over ten years, has there ever been anything you’ve not been able to tell me?”
“No,” I said, trying to ignore the pain that came with that truthful admission.
“Well then, there’s your answer.”
I nodded and gave him a small smile. “You’re right, I know you are.”
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes telling me to go on.
“They’re of a sexual kind.” Heat crept into my cheeks unbidden and I went with it, it would only add to my performance, after all.
“Well, you’re of an age now where that’s completely natural, Abi.”
“This is different,” I stressed, “they are so intense and revolve around a woman.”
“A woman, you say?”
“And not just any woman, Doctor,” I pinned him with my shameful gaze, “it’s my father’s fiancée.”
“I see,” he said, propping one arm up by its elbow as he rested his head into his hand, his fingers pressing across his lips in a thoughtful gesture. “Well, have you had such feelings like this before? Toward a woman I mean?”
“No.” I swallowed hard as I tried to portray my growing arousal at thoughts of Emma, I recalled her stepping from that car the first time I saw her, her stunning legs bare and outstretched, her body encased in that skimpy white number. “It’s just her! Ever since I met her, she’s all I think about, my body just burns with this crazy excited need and I can’t control it. I know it’s wrong, but I just don’t care.”
“Uh-huh.”
He was enthralled with what I was saying, I could hear it in his simple acknowledgement and I was more than happy to continue, feeling a sense of dizzying freedom at being able to voice these truths, to get them off my chest at last. “When she is with me, my mind and body go into overdrive, every bit of me aching to reach for her...”
“You say you want to reach for her?” he remarked with interest. “Could this simply be the girl in you wanting to reach out to a mother figure? Perhaps you are confusing maternal desires with those of a more basic need?”
I almost laughed. “There is nothing motherly about the way I see her, I assure you, Doctor. I truly want to strip her naked and do all sorts of things to her.”
He cleared his throat. “Really, Abi—”
“I know, it’s simply awful, isn’t it? But I just can’t help it!” I said, the tempo and ferocity of my words increasing with the thrill of my thoughts. “It’s made worse by the fact that I have seen her in action.”
“Action?” he queried, his eyebrows raised.
