True Affliction - Chapter 6

Two soft knocks. The latch whispered. And then he was there, filling the doorway as if the room had been built for his height and only just realised it.

Navy suit. White shirt open by one button, the suggestion of throat indecent under clinic light. Shoulders that made the doorframe look narrow. And those eyes, God help me, deep blue and very certain, the kind that find you in a crowd and decide the rest of the world can wait.

“Morning, Dr Thorne.” Low. Even. Possession disguised as politeness.

“Mr Ashcroft.” My voice held. My pulse didn’t.

He didn’t move at first. He looked. A slow pass from hair to collarbone to the violet strap on my shoulder, the line of the dress over my waist, down to the cross of my ankles in nude stilettos. Nothing crass. Nothing hurried. But I felt every millimetre like a hand.

His mouth tipped. Not a smile. A reckoning. “You were early.”

“So were you,” I answered, because I’d heard his footfall on the stairs at 09:58 and hated myself for knowing.

He stepped in; the door sighed shut behind him and the air shifted. Cedar and heat. The watch at his wrist flashed once, purpose, not ostentation. He shrugged out of his jacket without taking his eyes off me and set it across the chair back with precise care, as if he was undressing in front of me on a technicality.

“Please,” I said, indicating the sofa. “Sit.”

He didn’t. Not yet. He came closer, just enough to tilt the air, then dipped his head, mouth grazing the high curve of my cheek in a kiss so soft it could have been a secret. Warm. Deliberate. “Doctor,” he murmured, close enough to steal my breath, and only then did he obey, taking the end nearest me, not the safer distance, settling back like a man with no intention of leaving anything half done. Forearms loose on his thighs. Big. Quiet. Devastating.

“This will be a clinical hour,” I said, because I had to say something that sounded like a line.

“Of course.” His gaze didn’t flicker. “I like structure.”

“I’m told.” I kept my grip light on my pen. “Five mornings a week is… ambitious.”

“Efficient,” he corrected, gentle as sin. “I prefer momentum.”

I wrote nothing. My hand hovered over the page and betrayed me instead by thinking about the last place his thumb had been.

His eyes dipped to my wrist like he’d read the thought. “How’s that pulse of yours?”

“Working.” I tucked my hand into my lap. “Yours?”

His jaw ticked once. “Badly.”

The heat that uncoiled low in me was unhelpful. I capped it with a look that should have taken years to learn. “If you can’t manage a boundary, Mr Ashcroft, we’ll reschedule.”

“Alex,” he said, unbothered, like it cost him nothing to tell the truth and everything not to. “And I can manage anything you tell me to.”

I ignored the way that sentence landed. “Why five mornings?”

Blue sharpened. “Because I don’t like waiting for answers. And because if I leave this room after one hour, I spend the next twenty-three thinking about when I can get back in.”

My breath misbehaved. I put it back where it belonged. “We’ll start with goals.”

“Good.” He sat forward an inch, pulled by something he didn’t bother to fight. The movement brought him closer to my knees than was wise. His voice dropped, velvet over gravel. “Start with yours.”

“My-”

“Your goals for me,” he clarified smoothly. “Since you’ve already worked out mine.”

“I haven’t,” I lied.

“Liar,” he said softly, and the word did terrible, glorious things to my composure.

I made a neat note I didn’t need, to stop my hands from doing anything else. “All right. Goal one, honesty. We’ll practise it together.”

He watched my mouth while I spoke, as if the words might be edible. “Practice implies repetition.”

“It does.”

“I’m good at repetition.”

“I’m aware,” I said, thinking of five tidy mornings nailed into my diary.

A beat. The room hummed. He was still watching me like a man at a window in a storm, calm because the weather was his.

“That colour,” he said at last, eyes on the violet strap at my shoulder, “is a decision.”

“It’s a dress.”

“It’s a warning. Don’t underestimate me.”

“Good,” I said, letting the smile soften. “We’re aligned.”

He breathed a laugh that barely reached his mouth. He leaned in a fraction. His scent slipped between us like a promise I’d meant to forget.

“Easy, Caitríona,” he murmured, as if calm were his to lend.

“I am,” I said, and hated how it sounded like a confession.

“Better.” His gaze dipped once to the rise of my chest, then behaved itself. “Shall we begin?”

I set my pen to the page so my hands had something sensible to do. “We already have.”

His mouth tipped, slow, dangerous, as if he’d just won something only I could name. He didn’t need words. The clock ticked, steady as a pulse. The session had started, and every nerve I owned knew it.

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Silence did that trick of pretending to be harmless. It wasn’t. It rang in my ears like a secret about to confess itself. I adjusted the dress at my thigh as if fabric could negotiate with biology.

“Honesty,” I said, because if I didn’t start this properly, I wouldn’t start it at all. “Why five mornings, really?”

He reclined without relaxing, the kind of poised ease that told you he could move fast if he fancied. “Because I’m greedy.”

“For therapy,” I clarified, dry, aiming for arctic.

“For you,” he corrected, calm as you like.

I felt my pulse trip, irritatingly obvious thing. “That isn’t therapeutic.”

“It is if it makes me show up.” His gaze skimmed, bold and unapologetic, catching on the violet strap, the slope of collarbone, the crossed knee. “You do know you’re an incentive.”

“Flirtation won’t get you clinical results,” I said, capping my pen before I chewed it like a sixth former.

He smiled, maddeningly civil. “I wasn’t flirting. I was documenting.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Persistent,” he said.

I shifted my ankle. The stiletto’s strap bit lightly into skin. His attention followed it like my foot had said his name. God, Caitríona, stop.

“All right,” I managed. “Add to the plan: impulse control.”

He leant in, a soft lean, air tilting warm. “Yours or mine?”

“Both,” I snapped, then hated myself for sounding breathless.

His eyes darkened as if he’d tasted that.

“We’re not doing this.”

“We’re already doing it.” He tapped once at his sternum, then my notebook, don’t ask me how he made that look indecent, “Here and here. You’re very professional while you drown, Doctor.”

“I’m not-” The denial died on a treacherous pulse. Heat curled low and damp, a shameful, gorgeous tide. I crossed my legs tighter. His gaze flickered, knowing, and my cheeks burned.

“What keeps you up?” I demanded, aiming a question like a bucket of cold water.

“You,” he said, without blinking. “And the memory of your mouth trying not to smile when I’m being outrageous.”

I did a blink that belonged in a slower conversation. “Outrageous is not a treatment modality.”

“It worked. You’re flushed.”

I set the pen down very neatly because my hands had gone unreliable. “Tell me about control.”

“I like it,” he said. “Most of the time, I have it. With you, I’ve got desire and patience fighting a war. I’m winning by inches.”

“You’re not winning anything.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth, lifted to my eyes. “You’re wet,” he said softly, as if it were a kindness to name it.

I choked on nothing. “We are not-”

“I know,” he murmured. “And yet.”

Silence again. Not harmless. The clock counted perfect seconds while my body staged mutiny. I could smell cedar and skin and that clean, male heat that didn’t belong in a clinic. My throat worked. He noticed it. Of course he did.

“Say the boundary,” he invited, quieter now, as if coaxing me to jump just to prove I could land.

“We remain seated,” I said, the words tidy, my insides not.

“We remain seated,” he echoed, obedient for the sheer pleasure of showing me he could be. “Look at us being good.”

“Barely,” I muttered.

He laughed under his breath, velvet and sin. “Ask your sensible questions, Doctor. Let me make a mess of the answers.”

So I did. Triggers. Sleeplessness. Appetite. He gave me clean lines, measured, specific, then ruined them with a glance, a pause, a Caitríona laid over the syllables like a hand at my waist. Every datum came dressed as seduction. Every boundary felt suddenly like foreplay.

When the minute hand kissed the hour, relief and loss hit at once.

“Time,” I said, too brisk for the state I was in.

“Never,” he said softly, and stayed perfectly still until I stood, because I had to stand or combust.

“Next session,” I said, aiming for normal. “Monday, ten.”

“Monday,” he repeated, tasting the word like he could keep it warm for later.

He didn’t go to the door. Of course he didn’t. He came to me, not hurried, not hesitant, just that assured glide that said he’d already decided how this would end and was taking his time because pleasure lives in the stretch.

“Don’t,” I warned, which came out like please and infuriated me.

“Don’t what?” he asked, closer now, close enough that my perfume and his cologne made something quietly obscene between us.

“Don’t make this harder,” I said, chin up, professional by posture alone.

He stopped a fraction shy of indecent. “We’ve been very good.”

“Debatable.”

“Reward me.” His voice dropped, rough at the edges. “A little.”

“You’re outrageous.”

“You like me outrageous.” He didn’t touch. He waited. The waiting did me in.

“Alex,” I breathed, surrender disguised as reprimand. “Boundary.”

“I heard you,” he said, and his voice went low enough to blur. “I’m ignoring it for fifteen seconds.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“Count them,” he murmured.

His hand lifted. I should have stepped back. I didn’t. He cupped my cheek, warm, sure, a palm that said mine without speaking. His thumb found my lower lip and pressed, slow as a secret, stroking the softness once, twice, until my knees went unreliable and my mouth parted in a betrayal my degree couldn’t fix.

I leaned into him before sense returned, that tiny, damning nestle into his hand.

“This is inappropriate,” I whispered, every nerve alight.

“I know,” he said, and I heard it, the confession and the apology sitting companionably in his voice. He let me go then, deliberate, the absence a small, exquisite cruelty that made me sway.

Before I could reclaim sanity, he lifted the same hand again and laid it along my throat. Not squeezing. Not forcing. Just holding. Fingers warm at the side of my neck, thumb resting at the hinge of my jaw, the heel of his palm a steady weight that told my pulse exactly where to beat for him.

I looked at him. He looked at me. The room fell away.

“Better,” he murmured, not a command, a verdict, and I made a sound that would disgrace me in any transcript.

He released me, slow, like unspooling silk. I missed the contact instantly; the humiliation of that was almost as hot as the contact had been.

Then he took my right hand. Turned it neatly, gentleman to lady at some imaginary ball. My breath stuttered, and he watched my mouth do it as if he’d choreographed the whole thing. He bowed his head just enough to be courtly, and put his lips to the back of my hand. Barest pressure. No audacity, only possession dressed as manners.

“Monday, ten,” he said against my skin, voice a quiet promise that curled low and wicked.

“Monday,” I echoed, and hated -hated- how relieved I sounded to be sentenced.

He straightened, the moment shuttered away, and reached for his jacket. The watch flashed practicality. The door opened with a whisper, closed the same.

I stared at the hand he’d kissed and felt the throbbing beat his palm had set in my throat echo there, then lower. I wrote two words I will deny under oath: God. Help. Then, after a long, obscene pause, I added, very professional: Next session: Monday, 10:00.