My heart pounded. My eyes fixed on the pulse leaping in her pale throat where I wanted to put my mouth. My entire body went taut. I raised my hand. I was going to touch her, drawn in to where I couldn’t resist. It was animal instinct, a primal attraction. I could taste her in my mouth already. She parted her lips to speak. Then she took a step back and broke the moment. She looked away, went over and started fussing with sugar packets and clearing her throat like a three pack a day smoker or someone who was very uncomfortable. I could still feel the waves between us, the electric spark there. We had chemistry. The kind that meant I could stand there with distance between us and still know exactly how it would feel to lick up the curve of her spine. I wanted her. My body that had been dormant since Afghanistan had sprung to inconvenient life, hard and insistent. It was unnerving as hell.
6
Layla
So much for professionalism. I’d had a three-minute conversation with a man who was undressing me with his eyes, and I’d wanted him to use his hands too. My heart was pounding, my mouth went dry, and I definitely had a hot and slick situation going on in my panties. When he’d lifted his hand to touch me, it was like having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The devil was cheering me on, and the angel clutched her pearls and shouted at me about professional integrity until I walked away. I bit my lip and made myself read some scholarly journal articles until I fell asleep, still with the restless edgy feeling of unfinished lust.
I woke up with my hand in my panties, my fingers wet from touching myself. I knew damn well who I had been dreaming about. This had to stop. I flung myself out of bed, took a shower, a cold one, and got dressed. The only person I knew would be up this early was Sarah Jo, so I stopped for coffees and went to her plant nursery.
She was working at her potting bench, forehead crinkled in concentration and still pretty beyond belief. Charlotte snoozed in a pack and play nearby. Sarah Jo looked up when she saw me. When she smiled, I was hit by gratitude that she was in my life, so warm and accepting and funny. I passed her the coffee and she drank gratefully.
“This one,” she indicated her daughter, “decided three in the morning is party time. You should hear what the baby monitor sounded like.” She laughed, and I knew from her tired laugh that she was loving every minute of it.
“Luke didn’t get up with her?” I asked.
“He’s on at the fire station last night. He’ll be home in about an hour and sleep for a while. We’ll go see him at lunch. What’s up? Besides you, way earlier than usual.”
“I needed to talk to you. Or I need you to smack me upside the head.”
“You have your mom for that,” she said wryly.
“Yeah, well, I wanted your opinion.”
“Can I ask how your first group session went? That was last night, right?”
“Yes, and we had six show up. It was pretty good for a first meeting. But that ties in to my problem.”
“Did you run out of cookies? Or did someone freak out in the middle of the group thing?”
“Nothing like that. The thing is, one of the patients is super-hot.” I said. I pressed my lips together, ashamed to admit it.
“First things first—I work with plants, not people. I’m not much help here on the professional ethics. And personally, I was sneaking around screwing my brother’s best friend. Do you think I’m the judge and jury of forbidden relationships? You brought coffee to the wrong girl,” she said.
“You are the kindest person. I knew you’d go easy on me,” I said, sinking onto an overturned bucket to sit down.
“If you want him, and he wants you, have him. You’re both adults.”
“It’s not that easy. He’s a patient, Sarah Jo.”
“Have you been counseling him for months? Is there a deep trust of counselor and patient you’re betraying or is this something that just happened and you’re angsting like it’s high school?” she teased.
“You know me well. I never met him till last week. But he walked in to that group, and my first reaction was not professional.”
“Refer him to another therapist and jump him. Quit arguing with yourself,” she laughed.
“I basically scuttled across the room to get away from him when we were talking after the meeting. He said he came to the group because of me. So I can’t just refer him to someone else. I don’t want to give up my trauma group to another practitioner when it’s my project and my specialty. And I can’t turn him away when he wants help, when he wants my help specifically.”