Chapter 20 #2
"I'm noticing elevated stress responses," he observed. "Dilated pupils. Rapid breathing. Flushing across the chest and neck." His gaze dropped briefly to where my sundress was doing nothing to hide the heat spreading across my skin. "We should investigate."
He set down the pen.
Stood.
The movement was slow, deliberate—a predator who knew his prey wasn't going anywhere. He retrieved the stethoscope from the desk, looped it around his neck with practiced ease, and moved around the desk toward me.
Each step felt like a countdown.
"Stand, please." His voice was still clinical. Still neutral. "And remove your dress. I need to listen to your heart."
My legs were shaking when I stood.
My fingers found the hem of the sundress, the thin fabric that was the only thing between my bare skin and his assessment. His evaluation. His examination of everything I was.
I pulled it over my head.
The fabric whispered against my skin as it went, catching briefly on my hips before sliding free. Cool air hit me everywhere—my breasts, my stomach, the space between my thighs that was already embarrassingly slick.
I stood naked in Kostya's office holding a sundress with tiny blue flowers, and Dr. Besharov looked at me like I was a medical chart he intended to study very, very thoroughly.
"Good," he said. "Now let's begin."
The stethoscope was cold.
Metal touched the skin just below my collarbone and I flinched, breath catching at the shock of it.
Kostya's hands—warm, calloused, familiar—positioned the instrument with deliberate slowness.
Moving it from one spot to another. Listening to things he probably couldn't interpret even if his life depended on it.
"Breathe normally," he instructed.
Right. Normally. While standing naked in his office with goosebumps rising across every inch of my skin despite the warmth. Totally normal.
I tried to regulate my breathing. Failed spectacularly.
He shifted the stethoscope lower, pressing it to the space between my breasts. His knuckles grazed skin that felt hypersensitive, every nerve ending screaming awareness.
"Tachycardia," he murmured.
My eyebrows rose before I could stop them. He actually knew the word. Used it correctly, even. I'd been expecting something ridiculous—"your heart is going fast" or "lots of beats"—but no. Proper medical terminology.
Impressive. And somehow even hotter than I'd anticipated.
"Significantly elevated," he continued, moving the stethoscope again. "We'll need to determine the cause."
His voice was still maddeningly neutral. Clinical. Like he was dictating notes for a chart instead of touching a woman who was rapidly losing her mind.
He stepped back, and for a moment I felt the loss of his warmth acutely. Then he started to circle.
Slow. Deliberate.
"Turn, please. I need to examine your posterior."
I turned. Faced the wall where he'd hung a map of New York, territory lines and shipping routes marked in colored pins. Bratva business, probably. Now backdrop for whatever this was.
His fingers found my spine.
Not a medical touch. Nothing I'd learned in anatomy class or practiced during residency. Just fingertips trailing down vertebrae, one by one, pressing points that had nothing to do with neurology and everything to do with making me shake.
"Sensitivity appears heightened," he noted. Still that clinical voice. "Particularly in the thoracic region."
My medical brain tried to protest. The thoracic region is your mid-back, not an erogenous zone, this is ridiculous—
His hands moved to my hips. Pressing. Testing. Thumbs digging into the muscle just above my pelvis in a way that made my knees want to buckle.
"Here as well." He released the pressure, and I sagged slightly. "Significant tension in the gluteal area. Common in patients presenting with anxiety symptoms."
God, he was going to kill me. Death by medical roleplay. What a way to go.
His hands traced higher. Skimming my sides, brushing the curves of my waist, moving with the kind of thoroughness that suggested he intended to examine every single inch of me before this was over.
The undersides of my breasts.
His palms cupped them from behind, lifting slightly, testing weight in a way that had absolutely no diagnostic purpose whatsoever.
My nipples were already hard—had been hard since I'd walked through the door—and when his thumb finally, deliberately, grazed across one, I couldn't stop the gasp that escaped.
He wrote something in the folder.
I didn't know when he'd retrieved it. Hadn't heard him pick it up. But there he was, scribbling notes with one hand while the other continued its "examination," and the absurdity of it all crashed into the arousal until I didn't know whether to laugh or moan.
"Nipples responsive to stimulation," he said, like he was noting it for medical records. "Consistent with elevated arousal state."
"That's not—" I started.
"Please remain quiet during the examination, Miss Cross. Unless you're reporting symptoms."
I shut my mouth. Pressed my lips together hard.
His hand trailed down my stomach. Slow. So fucking slow. Past my navel, along the soft skin below it, following the path that led inevitably to where I was desperate for him to touch.
"I'll need to check for inflammation," he said.
His fingers slid between my thighs.
I was wet. Had been wet since I'd stood outside the door, and the time since then had only made it worse. There was no hiding it—his fingers found slick heat immediately, parting me with clinical precision that felt like the opposite of clinical.
"Concerning," he murmured.
I could hear it now. The smile he was suppressing. The crack in his professional facade that said he wasn't nearly as unaffected as he was pretending to be.
"Significant fluid accumulation." His fingers moved, exploring, not quite giving me the pressure I needed. "This requires further investigation."
"Doctor—" The word came out strangled. Half plea, half protest.
"Yes?"
"What kind of—" I couldn't think. Couldn't form sentences. His fingers were stroking me with devastating precision, finding the spots that made my brain white out, and he wasn't even trying. Just ‘investigating.’ "What treatment are you recommending?"
He withdrew his hand.
The loss made me whimper. Actually whimper, like an animal denied food.
"Treatment protocols will be determined after a thorough assessment." He circled back around to face me, and his eyes—hungry, finally showing the cracks in his composure—met mine. "Please position yourself on the examination table."
The desk. He meant the desk.
His desk, which had held intelligence reports and weapons manifests and all the documentation of a criminal empire, was now serving as a medical examination table for a woman who was about to lose her entire mind.
I moved toward it on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.
The wood was cold against my back when I lay down. Hard. Unyielding. I stared at the ceiling—exposed beams, industrial lighting, nothing like any examination room I'd ever worked in—and tried to remember how to breathe.
Kostya appeared above me. Stethoscope still around his neck, reading glasses still perched on his nose, looking down at me with an expression that was mostly clinical and fractionally feral.
"The treatment for your condition," he explained, "requires direct intervention."
Then his mouth descended to my breast, and I stopped thinking entirely.
His tongue circled my nipple with devastating precision.
Not the sloppy enthusiasm of someone caught up in the moment. Precise. Methodical. Like he'd mapped out exactly which nerve endings he intended to target and was executing the plan with surgical accuracy.
The irony wasn't lost on me. The untrained man was somehow the most thorough practitioner I'd ever encountered.
"Standard treatment for elevated arousal involves direct stimulation," he murmured against my skin. His breath was warm. His mouth was warmer. "The goal is to redirect excess energy through controlled release."
His hand slid between my legs again.
This time there was no pretense of examination. His fingers found my clit with the kind of certainty that came from months of learning my body, and he stroked—slow, deliberate, exactly the rhythm that made me see stars.
I writhed.
Couldn't help it. The desk was hard and cold against my back but I barely noticed. Everything had narrowed to his mouth on my breast and his hand between my thighs and the coiling tension in my core that was building toward something inevitable.
"Patient is responding to treatment," he observed, lifting his head just enough to speak. His thumb pressed harder, circled faster. "Vocalizations indicate positive engagement."
Vocalizations. Right. Because the sounds escaping my throat—whimpers, moans, something that might have been his name or might have been a prayer—were definitely medical data.
"Doctor—" I gasped, trying to remember the game, trying to stay in the scenario even as my brain was melting. "I don't think this is—"
"Are you questioning my professional judgment, Miss Cross?"
His fingers slid inside me as he said it.
Two fingers, thick and sure, crooking upward to hit the spot that made language dissolve into pure sensation. The question died in my throat, replaced by a moan so desperate it should have embarrassed me.
It didn't. I was too far gone for embarrassment.
"That's what I thought," he said, and went back to work.
He fucked me with his fingers while his thumb maintained steady pressure on my clit.
Methodical. Clinical. Every stroke calculated to build the tension higher without pushing me over the edge.
He'd learned my tells—the way my thighs tightened, the pitch of my moans, the rhythm of my breathing—and he was using that knowledge against me.
Bringing me to the peak. Holding me there. Not letting me fall.