Pursued by the Playboy (12 page)

She felt boneless, awash with pleasure.  It was too much of an effort to keep her eyes open, and she felt her lids sag, her head drop back.  Her hands drifted down, settling behind her, finding purchase on the desk. 

His breath whispered over her quivering stomach as he knelt between her legs.  With shaking hands he dragged her capris off, and with them the scrap of lace that was the last barrier between his mouth and her molten core.  The first flick of his tongue had her moaning, and then his fingers delved into her curls and parted the delicate folds.  His thumb slicked moisture over the tiny nubbin of sensation before settling into a steady circular motion that had her gasping, while his tongue delved deep inside her and retreated, over and over.  It was too much to bear.  Her hips lifted involuntarily, straining to meet his mouth, and he responded by quickening the movement of his fingers and tongue, rubbing and lapping at her until she shattered.  She barely managed to stifle her cry of release at the last minute by biting her lip hard.  His mouth gentled, then after one last lick, withdrew.  She felt his arms sliding up her body, wrapping around her, bringing her up against his chest.   For several moments, she rested against him, the silence broken only by the sound of his harsh breathing and hammering heart. 

Eventually she stirred and he loose
ne
d his embrace.  “You okay?” he said.

“Yeah.”  She found it hard to meet his gaze.  “You didn’t…”

His laugh was a low rumble.  “It’ll keep until tonight.”  He cupped her face and drew her mouth into a long leisurely kiss.  Finally he pulled back.  “We need to get you on the pill.”

She slipped off the desk and started gathering her clothes.  Her senses were still fogged, and she felt disconnected from her body, as if her limbs belonged to someone else.  The simple effort of pulling on her clothing required all her concentration. 

“I can get you in with a colleague,” he said after watching her quietly for a few minutes. 

She looked up to find that he had already restored his own appearance to normal:  shirt tucked in, scrub pants retied, expression smoothed into its usual unflappable and slightly arrogant lines.  It all seemed so surreal—standing here in her office, in the middle of the day, having this conversation—after what had just happened.  

“Kate?”

She shook her head, trying to focus.  “Thank you,” she said.  “But I have my own gyno.”

“Fine, but get it done.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t get too cheeky.”  He pulled her in for a quick kiss, then released her with a light tap on her butt.  A glance at his watch had him heading for the door.  “I need to get back to my patients.  I’ll come by for you tonight.  Meet you here?  We can transfer whatever you need over the weekend, and in the meantime you still have a change of clothes at my place.”  He paused with his hand on the doorknob.  “I almost forgot—I’m on call this weekend.  We can swing by Jake’s house on Saturday after I finish rounding.”

“I don’t have much to pick up, I can do it myself.”

“We’ll go together.  I look forward to meeting Jake, since he’s such a big part of your life.”

The door closed before she could decide how to interpret that remark.

Chapter 1
2

Kate was still mulling over the words later that night, as she lay wrapped in Marc’s embrace after a particularly vigorous round of lovemaking.

It unsettled her that Marc was slowly but inexorably pushing his way further and further into her life.  Why else would he insist on meeting Jake, or on installing Kate in his own home, especially on such an open-ended basis?  It went against all her assumptions about him and his playboy image. 

Then again, maybe she was once more drawing conclusions without much
evidence to base them on
.  Sure, Marc had cleared up the confusion over that picture in the paper of him with the woman who turned out to be his sister.  But he’d never actually said or offered any promises that going forward there wouldn’t be other photos cropping up with less innocent explanations.  Nothing had been said regarding the exclusivity of their relationship.  Not a word about whether they would be seeing other people. 

Although he had gone all cave
-
man on her in saying he didn’t share.  She still wasn’t sure how to interpret that.  Was that a one-sided demand, in which he expected that she would restrict herself to seeing only him,
leaving Marc himself
free to do whatever he pleased with whomever he wanted?  Or did he actually intend that the restrictions be reciprocal?   Perhaps that statement was his way of declaring exclusivity.  Or maybe it was simply something said in the heat of the moment, and didn’t really
signify
anything at all.  Should she ask him what exactly he’d meant?  Did people even discuss things like that?   Or was it better to let sleeping dogs lie?

She hated this feeling of indecisiveness.  It wasn’t like her, to agonize over what-ifs.  She was used to being matter-of-fact in her approach to life.  That was one of the things that drew her to science.  It was precise, black-and-white, cut-and-dried.  Something was either true or false.  There were no ambiguities, no maybes.  Any question could be answered by running an experiment.  None of this murky middle-of-the-night struggling with emotion and uncertainty.

Too bad people weren’t like lab experiments.  It would make things so much simpler.  Unfortunately, when it came to interacting with others, Kate felt at a huge disadvantage.  Growing up, she had never really seen “normal” interactions in her own family.  The way her parents sniped at each other at every available opportunity surely wasn’t something to emulate.  Nor was the way her father had escaped the hostile environment at home—by absenting himself as often and for as long as possible on the pretext of work, and indulging in extra-marital affairs that had resulted in at least two offspring that she knew of:  Kate herself, and the as-yet-unborn half-sibling that had finally pushed Kate’s mother into pursuing a divorce.  As for Kate’s mother and her life-long bitterness over opportunities lost—well, that certainly was no sterling example of how to live.  So much acrimony, so much energy wasted in passive-aggressive behavior—and what did that net her?  Nothing but a soon-to-be ex-husband and a daughter who, like her father, couldn’t wait to get away. 

The dysfunctional family dynamics had exerted an influence on Kate that extended far beyond her childhood.   It had fueled her motivation to escape, and underscored her desire for isolation.  At a time when most of her peers were stretching  their wings, dating and flirting and acquiring the language and skills to build social networks,  she’d been too busy studying so she could skip ahead and get out of the oppressive environment at home. 

The momentum of that initial separation escalated through the ensuing years.  She’d raced through college, graduate school, post-doctorate training, and straight into an early professorship.   Which had left precious little time or opportunity for exploring the possibilities of entanglement with anyone. 

What experience she
did have
was minimal, and certainly no help in her current situation with Marc.  Her only real point of reference was a casual relationship that had been self-limited from the start by the temporary nature of her post-doc at
Berkeley
.  She’d never planned to stay in
California
, and he’d never planned to leave the Bay Area.  There had been no expectations raised regarding the future, no great investment of time or emotion in the present, and the parting of ways had been both inevitable and welcome.   Perhaps because of that, there had never been the need for a hashing out of terms. 

Did men and women even have the kind of discussion in which parameters of the relationship were laid down?  Or were these sort of things assumed, somehow mutually understood, given a sufficient period of time?   And what was a sufficient period of time, anyway?  Was it measured in dates, or number of times two people slept together, or simply by the passage of weeks, months, years?  Then again, given her parents’ example, even years of marriage were no guarantee.

She felt like someone suddenly struck deaf, fumbling about in unfamiliar silence, without even the benefit of hand-signing or lip-reading to guide her through the nuances of interactions with the people around her.  All of the signals, cues, milestones that everyone else seemed to take
for granted
and recognize, like a secret language or code, were completely foreign to her.  And there was no one to ask for help. 

Certainly not Marc, she decided.  She didn’t want to expose her insecurities that much, or make herself that vulnerable.  Besides, what if she had misinterpreted the recent turn of events?  What did it actually mean that Marc, ladies’-man extraordinaire, had invited her into his home, giving her free and open-ended reign over his personal space?  Jake had done the same, and she hadn’t thought twice about it.  Of course, Jake was like a brother to her.   What she and Marc shared was as far from fraternal as you could get. 

So what did it really mean?   Marc hadn’t put any deadline on her moving out, had in fact accepted with casual indifference the idea that her stay depended on something beyond either Kate’s or Marc’s control.  How long Kate needed to stay away from her own apartment depended strictly on her mother’s whims.  Though technically, Kate supposed she could hurry the process along by finding her mother a rental elsewhere and getting her settled independently.  She should probably look into doing that soon, otherwise there was no telling how long this whole situation would drag on.

In the meantime, though, Marc seemed in no hurry to reclaim his own space.  Surely if he had any intention of pursuing other women, he wouldn’t be so blasé about Kate’s presence in his home?

She thought of her father, and how little regard he’d had for the presence of a wife and child in his life.  Was it simply the travel that enabled him to pursue other women?

Marc didn’t seem to travel much, at least not since he’d become an attending physician at the university hospital.   He’d even joked about becoming a homebody, eschewing conferences in other cities in favor of CME—continuing medical education—in
Philadelphia
.  One of the benefits of living in a city with so many teaching hospitals, he’d said, was that the information came to you, especially in a digital age when you could access almost everything on
the internet
.  

There were still opportunities nearby, of course. 
New York City
was a mere two hours’ drive, and DC was three hours.  Completely do-able for an evening out or trip overnight—witness all the online photos she’d seen of Marc with other women at various events predating their acquaintance.  And the hospital itself was a potential beehive of extracurricular activity.  She could only imagine the abundance of  females—nurses, support staff, fellow physicians, even patients—who would take one look at a highly-paid single male doctor, let alone one as attractive and sexually experienced as Marc DiStefano, and stop at nothing to pursue him. 

Not that he would necessary reciprocate their advances.  He had too much integrity to indulge in anything that might compromise his professional code of ethics, or potentially open him up to liability from a sexual harassment lawsuit if things went belly-up. 

None of which helped quiet Kate’s anxiety.   She shifted yet again, dislodging Marc’s hand from its position on her hip.  He murmured something and
moved
closer, his arm draping over her waist, his chest and pelvis pressing against her back.  With a large warm hand spread over her bare stomach, he pulled her into the cradle of his hips.  The flutter of his lips against her nape and the stirring of his arousal against her buttocks alerted her to the fact that he was no longer asleep.   His fingers plucked at her stiffening nipples, then traced a slow hypnotic path down her belly and toward the rapidly dampening curls below. 

That was all it took for Kate’s thoughts to scatter.  She turned her head to meet Marc’s lips and gave herself over to the seductive heat of his embrace.

Chapter
13

The move into Marc’s townhome was accomplished with minimal fuss, once Kate had managed to defuse Jake’s overprotective instincts.  She had to reassure Jake that yes, this was what she wanted—even as she continued to vacillate internally about the issue.  And no, she told him repeatedly, there hadn’t been any undue coercion involved in making her decision.  The newspaper photo issue was rehashed again and finally laid to rest.

Other than a few initial awkward moments in which the two men circled warily around each other, the encounter went smoothly, and resulted in an open invitation to Jake for home-cooked pasta. 

After that, it was a simple matter to transfer
the few items she had left at Jake’s house, and
to
pick up some additional
clothing, books, and
toiletries from her own apartment.  Thankfully her mother
was
out at the time, relieving Kate of the need
to come up with any uncomfortable explanations
.

Sleeping through Marc’s pager, which kept going off throughout the weekend both day and night, took some getting used to, but eventually Kate managed that as well.  Being totally exhausted and satiated from multiple rounds of lovemaking helped.