Chapter Thirty-Two
Tuesday
The next morning, I couldn’t stop shaking, and it wasn’t from my nerves.
I hadn’t taken the pills in over a week, but only now were withdrawal symptoms setting in. My symptoms should have appeared days ago. Was the Treatment delaying the effects?
I clutched the prescription bottle in my fist. I don’t need them.
I don’t need them. I don’t need them.
Closing my eyes, I counted to three. Once, twice. A dozen times. When I opened my eyes, I raced to the bathroom and flushed the pills down the toilet before I could change my mind and stared at the swirling water in the porcelain bowl, my stomach churning with nausea.
The withdrawal symptoms tore through me like a fever.
If it were one of my patients, I’d order strict bed rest and prescribe a dose of Clonidine.
I glanced at my clock, and my heart leaped seeing that I was late to my early-morning session with Mal.
The orderlies would likely already have transported him to my office.
“Fuck!”
My fever-like symptoms, paired with the heat of Mal’s gaze as I burst into my office, had liquid fire tearing through my veins.
“Didn’t take you for the type to sleep in.”
Ignoring his comment, I made a beeline for my desk and collapsed into my chair. I picked up the rotary phone on my desk and dialed the nurses’ station.
A few moments later, a nurse popped in. I frantically scribbled an order for Clonidine, ripped it from the pad and handed it to the nurse. “Run this down to the pharmacy, have him fill it immediately and bring it straight back. With a cup of coffee, please.”
The nurse nodded and left.
Gathering myself, I took a deep breath and turned my attention to my patient.
The orderlies had opted to take him off the gurney this time and chained him to the metal chair bolted to the floor at the center of my office.
At first, I thought the chains, the mask and the straitjacket were overkill.
Now that I’d read his journal, I wasn’t so sure.
Could he turn into some demonic entity? With claws and fangs and glowing veins?
The split tongue he’d had in my dream had been long enough to wrap around that hefty scalpel and ooze copious amounts of saliva.
It should have been a turn-off.
Yet it wasn’t.
Teratophile was the psychological term. I didn’t know I was a bit of one myself, not until I read Mal’s detailed account of ripping a hole into his father’s face and throwing him around like a rag doll.
As I turned the explicit imagery over in my head, feverish heat rolled between my thighs and hooked inside, liquifying me from the inside out.
And if that wasn’t enough, I started to sweat and shake.
Great. Just what I needed. A double dose of adrenaline without the pills or cock to take off the edge.
“Let’s begin.” I fumbled for my notebook, unaware of how much I was shaking, until my hand brushed the small plant and sent it hurtling to the floor. “Oh no, Joanie…”
I sank to the rug, perched on my knees and scooped up the dirt and terracotta fragments in my palms. It wasn’t until my vision swam that I realized I was crying. Embarrassed, I glanced at Mal to find him staring at me with concern, an inquisitive brow slowly arching.
“Uh, should I be offering my condolences?”
“No. It’s just that Joan— It’s just that this cactus has been the only constant thing in my life for years. Not a family, not friends, a stupid houseplant. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
He pinned me with his heavy gaze, and for a moment, it felt like I might topple off the face of the world if it weren’t for those piercing eyes holding me steady. “You? Pathetic? No. And I’d know. I’m Pathetic the Third, son of Pathetic the Second.”
“Of all the words, that’s not one I’d use to describe you.”
“And what words would you use?”
“Um. Intense? Charming. Sly. And if your journal has anything to say about it…compassionate. You’re a good man. Or, you used to be.”
He flashed me his signature ear-to-ear grin beneath his mask, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, well, look where all that’s gotten me.”
I returned my attention to the task of scooping Joanie’s remains into my waste bin while I watched Mal watching me in my periphery.
“Your hands are trembling.”
“I’m fine.”
Pushing the bin back under my desk, I wiped my hands off on my pencil skirt and took a seat on the sofa with my legs crossed. I caught myself hoping that the glimpse of my thighs would distract him from my shaking hands.
“Bullshit. You’re shaking like a leaf. What’s happened?” he demanded, jerking against his restraints. “Was it Rook? Did that bastard touch you?”
My heart latched in my chest at the possessive bite to Mal’s words. “It’s not that. I’ve actually been successful avoiding him for the most part.”
There was a delicate knock at the door, and the nurse appeared with a small paper bag and a steaming cup of coffee.
"Oh, thank fuck." As soon as the nurse was gone, I tore into the bag with my teeth and sighed in sweet relief as a plethora of pill packs toppled into my lap. A fistful of Clonidine and several gulps of scalding coffee, and awareness of my surroundings came hurtling back.
I dared a glance at the masked man chained to the chair just a few feet away.
“Breakfast of champions, much?” he teased, hiking a brow.
“Oh, please. You’re a physician with an abusive father. This is our signature meal.”
He tossed up another brow to join the first. “Our signature meal?”
“My dad didn’t sink to cartoonish evil scientist-esque levels that yours borderlines, but he had a SUD.”
“SUD?” In a strangely lucid moment, Mal quirked his head with an inquisitive look on his face that didn’t match the crude leather and steel strapped over his handsome features. “I’m not familiar with that one.”
“Substance abuse disorder. It first appeared in the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5.”
His eyes lit with recognition. “Ah, yes. I own the second edition. It was published the year I graduated.”
I gaped at the man, bewildered silence claiming me in a momentary chokehold. “You graduated from Brown in 1968?”
A bemused smile bowed his lips. “I’m shocked you remember the year of that manual’s publication.”
I found myself mirroring his smile over my coffee cup. “I’m a bit of a medical book nut. I couldn’t afford the latest editions of anything from the school stores, so I did a lot of hunting, and it turned into a therapeutic hobby. I once had an 1858 edition of Grey’s Anatomy.”
“No shit? Impressive.”
I chuckled awkwardly. “Not really. School is prohibitively expensive these days, so I had to hock it to help pay tuition. Actually, I had to get rid of the majority of my collection to help make ends meet these last couple of years.”
“I’m sorry.” The soft bend his voice took caught me off guard. Like it wasn’t just sympathy from one book lover to another. “Surviving an abusive father, putting yourself through med school, only for you to end up in this shithole.”
For one precious moment, I glimpsed past Mal’s mask to see the man from his journal. There was more of him left than he liked to let on. “Well, that makes two of us.”
At that, he grinned wildly, and for the first time, it reached his eyes. “Oh, yeah. Two regular peas in a pod.”
I liked to think that if we’d met under different circumstances, and came from the same time, we would have been colleagues, friends. Lovers.
But the sad fact was, we weren't from the same time, and we hadn’t met under different terms. He was my patient, and I was his psychiatrist, and if I indulged my urges with this man…
I shuddered to think what his father might do to me.
To both of us. And even if we were to sleep together and managed to avoid getting caught, there was still the fact that Mal was unpredictable.
If Rook’s Treatment had some strange side effect that turned him into the same demonic entity he’d written of in his journal, surely the chains and the straitjacket were for more than cruelty's sake.
“That’s enough small talk. We need to discuss last night.”
“Good, I was wondering when we’d address that shirt you were wearing. Who was the masked man on your bathrobe? Should I be jealous?”
“What? Oh, that’s Ghostface. A serial killer from a movie. One of the Barrymores was in it. He goes around stabbing people, and some people have the hots for him.”
“Some people? Like the kind who buys bathrobes with his face all over it?” With Mal’s pointed tone, it was obvious what he was insinuating, and I didn’t dare take the bait.
“Focus. We had a deal. You promised you’d tell me the rest of the story. Tell me what happened from the day you were told Bunny died in childbirth to when you were committed.”
“You won’t believe half of it.”
“Humor me anyway.” I leaned back in my chair with my pen and paper balanced on my knee.
Mal eyed me like I was a specimen squashed under a microscope. “Can you really take notes with your hands trembling like that?”
Fuck. I’d hoped the new prescription would kick in before he noticed. “It’s just the caffeine.”
“Liar. You were shaking like a fucking junkie. There was even a casualty.” His eyes flicked briefly to the waste bin. “Poor Joanie.”
I forgot the bastard could read me like a large print book.
A beat later, he let out an “ahhh” of understanding. “You are a junkie. Well fuck my corpse sideways. You get more interesting by the minute. And I was already hooked on you from the moment our dreams collided.”
I wasn’t sure what flustered me more, him being privy to my addiction, or yet another mention of the impossible. I wasn’t in the mood for yet another mindfuck. That was something to unpack for later.
“I had a bit of a hydrocodone dependency for the last few months. I’m finally shaking it, though. I haven’t taken the pills since I first came here.”
His gaze dropped to the pill packs I’d moved to my desk. “Then what are all those?”
“Clonidine.”
“And it’s helping?”
“Yes.” Even as we spoke, I felt the drug pump through my system, my heart rate already beginning to settle.
“Good. Because I think you’re forgetting one little condition of our deal. You promised to do something for me in return.”
“Yes. After you tell me your story.”
“Uh, uh, uh,” he chastised in a cadence that suggested he’d be wagging a finger at me if it weren’t for the straitjacket keeping his arms forcibly wrapped around his torso.
“That wasn’t the deal, Doc. I’ll tell you everything I know.
I’ll even sweeten the deal and answer every little question on your pretty lips. ”
Every muscle in my body tensed. This was a man with a wild imagination.
Whatever he wanted from me, I knew it would be something to humiliate or endanger me.
And because Mal Rook wasn’t the only deranged person in the room, my panties pooled with my arousal, and my sweat-slick thighs squeezed together to sate the pulse between them.
We’d already been down this road once. And if I were being brutally honest with myself, I’d hoped for it to happen again.
I’d hoped and even planned on it happening again.
“It’s a deal. What do you want?”
“You do everything I tell you to do for the next hour, with one rule to ensure your safety and peace of mind: I won’t make you leave this room.
If you scream, there’s no waking up from this.
The orderlies might hear you, but even if they come, you won’t be saved.
Rook will eventually do worse to you.” Mal paused.
“I can stop him. I can protect you. And that’s not even part of our deal.
I’m going to shield you from him no matter what.
The thickest chains won’t stop me keeping that son of a bitch’s hands off you. ”
Mal leaned forward in his chair until his chains pulled.
Hair spilled over his eyes, giving him a crazed look that had my core clenching.
“I bit off his nose for what he did to Bunny. For you? I’d remove his heart and serve it to you on a fucking platter.
He and every other man in here, for that matter. And you know why?”
I gulped, transfixed by his manic yet sincere display of possessiveness. “Why?”
He sat back with a dark smirk. “Because you're mine. And for the next hour, I’m going to enjoy the shit out of watching you prove just how right I am.”
My mouth fell open. There was no rebuttal I could make, no flippant, bratty response to feign that I wasn’t into this. It was like he said. I was a bad liar.
I wanted this, and I had no doubt it was written all over my face.
“Are you ready to start, Dr. Beckett?” He practically purred my name, like it was the tastiest thing he’d ever had in his mouth.
With my eager nod, he chuckled. “That’s my girl. Now, call the nurse. Ask her to bring another cup of coffee. I haven’t had it in forever.”
I blinked. Was that it?
With a dazed nod, I reached for my desk phone. Just as I began to dial the nurse’s station, he added, “Oh, and have her bring you a speculum, Doc. We’re going to need that.”