The Lovesick Cure Page 16

  She managed a little laugh at that.

  “The human body, while as unique as the DNA it represents, comes in two basic models, male and female. You do, after all, have the same body parts as my typical female patient,” he said. “Although even that one quick glance leads me to believe that your parts are younger and firmer than most I work with.”

  Jesse glanced over at him. “Uh…thank you, although giving me a compliment undermines your claim of objectivity.”

  Piney nodded. “Yeah, I suppose it does. But I’m not taking it back. You’re a very attractive woman, I noticed that even when you were fully clothed.”

  She was blushing again.

  “You’re actually very nice-looking yourself,” Jesse replied. “And, no, it won’t be necessary for you to strip down to prove it to me.”

  “I’d be willing,” Piney assured her. “But then, generally, men are not as shy about their bodies as women.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “So, are we done with this discussion? Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Okay, what subject would you like?” Piney asked her. “Medicine? Geology? Something other than our lovelorn breakups.”

  “I did have a realization today that is both geology and lovelorn breakup,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “It was sort of an epiphany,” she told him. “Greg—former fiancé Greg—was kind of on the back of my mind.”

  “Typical for breakup.”

  “Right,” she agreed. “But sort of overlaid on that, I was thinking about Ozark geology and karst formation.”

  “Yeah, that’s what keeps me up at night, too,” he teased.

  She waved away his joke. “Karst formations are the sinkholes you see everywhere,” she explained. “The mountains have a limestone base and limestone is an excellent water transporter. So the streams and springs and ground water run through the rock beneath the topsoil and wear it away. Eventually the rock is so pitted with holes and caves that it can’t hold the weight of the ground above it and collapses in on itself.”

  Piney nodded.

  “And I realized that was what happened with Greg and me,” she said.

  “Your relationship caved in like a sinkhole,” he said.

  “Pretty much,” she agreed. “On the surface, everything looked fine. But there were currents running underneath that undermined any chance of being a long-term foundation to build on. Greg was bound to leave me. Or maybe eventually, I would have left him. We didn’t have the underpinning that a lasting relationship needs.”

  “It’s good that you’ve determined that,” Piney said. “They say understanding is the first step to acceptance.”

  She nodded. “And I know that next time I’ll be looking for something different. I want a base layer of magnesium dolomite, impervious to underground flow and built slowly, carefully over time and experience together. I want layers and layers of sediment buildup that creates a truly solid rock to build on.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” he said.

  “Of course, that’s long term,” Jesse said. “For now, day to day, I’ve simply got to do what I have to do to get by.”

  Piney choked slightly and tried to hide his grin behind his hand.

  Jesse looked at him, quizzically. “What’s so funny?”

  He almost didn’t answer. They had smoothed things over. They would be able to converse as friends, to interact mostly as they had before. He’d achieved what he’d sought and he should let it go. But somehow he didn’t want to.

  “On the point of doing what we have to do to get by,” he said. “I have one more question.”

  “What?”

  Piney tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t quite control his grin, because he already knew the answer to the question he was asking.

  “When I walked in on you in the bathtub, were you masturbating?”

  Her eyes widened and her pinked cheeks paled. She covered her face with both hands and bent forward, her throaty, inarticulate scream muffled as she buried her head in her lap.

  Piney couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

  “I want to die!” Jesse declared dramatically. “I want the earth to open and swallow me up.”

  “We do have quakes in Arkansas,” he told her. “But I don’t think your chances for getting out of this so easily are very good.”

  He was still laughing. Jesse sent a halfhearted blow to his solar plexus.

  “How dare you joke! I’m dying of humiliation here.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t resist.” He was still chuckling through his apology. She was hiding her face in her lap again. He could see where the damp hair had dripped untidily down the back of her coat. He knew she must be cold. He wanted to warm her. He wanted to comfort her.

  Piney managed to get ahold of his humor.

  “Hey, it’s no big deal, really. Autoeroticism is definitely healthy.”

  “Don’t you dare give me that ‘medical professional’ line again,” Jesse told him. She was laughing, too, but was clearly mortified.

  “Okay, not speaking as a medical professional, but as a fellow traveler through the single life,” he said. “Sometimes a good right hand is a man’s best friend.”

  “No, no, no, no,” Jesse pleaded. “We cannot talk about this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because…because I say so. And it’s about me.”

  “It’s about me, too,” Piney told her.

  “It’s not about you.”

  “Yes, it is. I’ll never be able to relax in that bathtub again. I’ll always be thinking, ‘Remember what Jesse was doing in here?’”

  “Stop!”

  They were both giggling like little kids. Teasing her was fun. But he didn’t want to tip over into being mean.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m on my best behavior now.”

  “Good.”

  “It is perfectly natural for you to miss physical intimacy,” he said. “A regular partner builds appetite and that’s not easy to replace. In breakup world you can pour your heart into family, put passion into work and find camaraderie with friends, but there are not a lot of socially acceptable substitutes for sexual gratification.”

  Jesse took a deep breath and shook her head. “Please,” she said. “Stop trying to sound like a doctor. If you were my doctor and we were having this discussion, I’d have to roll myself up in a ball and pretend to have died already.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “No need to become a possum. I wanted to help. I…well, it’s my job to try to help people when they hurt.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she asked, skeptically. “If you’ve got a traditional medical treatment, I hope it’s not as stinky as Aunt Will’s poultice. My next medication is going to be a nice, clean paper written prescription.”

  “Well,” he said. “Some doctors order Prozac or Zoloft,” he said. “Antidepressants.”

  “I’m not depressed,” Jesse said, raising a determined chin to face him, though her cheeks were still stained scarlet. “I believe the clinical term for my condition is…horny.”

  To hear such a coarse word come out of such a sweet, schoolteacher mouth, somehow made it seem far more risqué than it actually was.

  “I don’t think that’s a referenced medical diagnostic term.”

  “It ought to be,” she said. “There are sufferers worldwide.”

  Piney chuckled. “I think most of those are taking a more physical therapy approach.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “What’s that song say? Something about loving the one you’re with?”

  “Steven Stills.”

  “Right,” Piney said. “If you want to get over one lover, you start up an affair with another.”

  “Well, we are coming up on Saturday night,” she said, facetiously. “If you’ll kindly direct me to the nearest singles’ bar, I’ll pick up a sample.”

  Piney grinned, but
shook his head at the same time. “Don’t even joke about having casual sex with a stranger around here. Trust me, there’s enough STDs in these hills to keep all the antibiotic producers in business singlehandedly.”

  “That’s always the problem, isn’t it,” Jesse said. “Where do you find a person you can trust who is equally as horny and no more interested in long-term than you are yourself.”

  Piney nodded.

  Jesse was blushing, embarrassed as she gazed out at the sky, the valley, the peaks in the distance. He watched her nervously bite her lip before she turned to him.

  “Of course, there’s you,” she said.

  A jolt of pure electricity shot though him.

  “Doc Piney,” she said. “In the interest of both curing my current sexual drought and keeping me away from potentially crab-infected hillbillies, would you like to…to volunteer to have a simple, no-strings hookup with me?”

  Piney’s jaw dropped open. He stared at her, speechless.

  “Now I’ve shocked you,” she said and moved to rise.

  He grabbed her hand. “Wait,” he said.

  He could see in her eyes that she was already regretting her openness. “Look,” she said. “I am not attempting to force myself on you in any way. I’m simply making a suggestion.”

  “What a suggestion!”

  “Yeah, I guess that typically people don’t ‘hook up’ with this sort of logical discussion. But since I’m still pretty raw from my broken engagement and you have such a terrible track record, I thought that maybe…maybe trying to reason ourselves into a temporary romantic connection could be a good idea.”

  Piney kept his tone moderate, matter-of-fact. The blood, however, was pumping rapidly through his veins. He really wanted this. He really wanted her.

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said, hearing his own cold clinical voice as if someone else were speaking. “We’re both normal, healthy adults. Neither of us is ready to barge into some kind of long-term relationship. You and I could have a nice, quiet affair. We’d both enjoy it. No one would be the wiser. Some great sex. Some safe sex. Then when you head home, we go our separate ways.”

  “I believe it sounds like a very reasonable thing to do,” Jesse said, but couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

  A whoosh of breathless excitement escaped Piney’s lips. “Talk about your lovesick cures.”

  20

  It wasn’t cold in Piney’s bedroom, but still Jesse shivered as she unbuttoned her shirt. What was she doing here? How had she allowed herself to be talked into this? Talked into it was not exactly an apt description. It was her idea. They had discussed it openly, rationally, dispassionately. He couldn’t have casual affairs with local women who might be patients. She was only on the mountain for a short time. And, after all, she’d come here to get over a broken heart. What faster cure than a no-nonsense fling with a really great-looking, hot guy?

  Jesse had modestly turned her back to him to undress. She could hear him moving around in the room. Was he getting naked? The idea skittered across her skin like a drop of water on a hot griddle.

  Her sexual history had not been exactly awash with experience. She had never in her life asked a man to have sex with her. Nor had she had sex with a man she didn’t love. It was hard to imagine herself doing so. But even men and women who were slutty sleep-arounds undoubtedly went into it within the throes of passion. As it was, she’d never be able to lie to herself and say, “I didn’t know what I was doing” or “I got carried away in the moment.” She was cold sober, in the clear light of day and they hadn’t so much as kissed each other. People didn’t start up affairs like this. Or maybe they did. Maybe people did this, but Jesse had not.

  Piney came to stand behind her. She had finished her buttons, but she hesitated to do more. She felt his fingers on her collar. He did not touch her anywhere, but he pulled the fabric away from her neck, slowly easing the sleeves down her arms until the shirt was gone and she was standing there in her bra.

  “You’re trembling,” he said.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said.

  There was a long silence. “I don’t want to push you into anything,” Piney said. “This has got to be mutual.” She could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Truth is, I was completely wowed. Even before today I find you to be the most incredibly desirable woman. Then to have you come after what you want, take it on yourself. That is, without doubt, the sexiest, riskiest, most provocative move any woman has ever made on me.”

  She’d gotten this far, she knew the least she could do was to turn and face him, but she felt paralyzed.

  “It seems so cold,” she told him. “No words of love. No being overcome by the passion. We’re both alone, so, hey, let’s hop into bed.”

  “It’s not cold,” he assured her. “It’s unemotional. It’s the emotion thing that gets people into trouble, causes hurt and anger and disappointment. You and I are going to avoid all that. It’s not cold. When I look at you, the last thing I feel is cold.”

  His voice was unnaturally deep, gravelly. Somehow it thawed all that had frozen her in place. She turned to him. He was only inches behind her, his chest bare, he looked different. He was different. He wasn’t the smart, friendly guy with the funny quips. This guy was someone else, some strange, unfamiliar man who looked a lot like the guy she knew but wasn’t him. He was someone else. Jesse realized he was more like the guy in her fantasy. And that she wanted him. She wanted him a lot.

  “Is kissing off-limits?” she asked.

  “I don’t think anything is off-limits,” he answered.

  “Then let’s start with a kiss.”

  She expected him to lean toward her, maybe put a hand on her waist to steady himself. Instead he stepped forward, wrapped both arms around her and pulled her up on her toes.

  Jesse put her hands on his shoulders, angling her elbows so that she could push his away if she felt threatened.

  If he noticed her defensive posture, it didn’t deter him. He turned his head slightly and brought his mouth down on her own.

  Jesse was tentative only to the moment when she felt his lips. Unexpectedly, she was completely drawn into his kiss. His mouth was not too hard or too soft. There was nothing dry about it, but it wasn’t all sloppy and wet. The suction was enough to fill her stomach with butterflies, but not so much it vacuumed them out. His tongue fluttered around as if he enjoyed the taste of her, not jamming down her throat to gag her. She would never remember when the hands she’d braced on his shoulders wound around his neck. Jesse was as high up on her toes as she could go and somehow she couldn’t get close enough to him. He seemed to realize that and smoothed his hands down the back of her jeans, clutched her butt and pulled her up into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his hips, improving her angle and allowing herself to totally revel in the feel and taste of him.

  When their mouths finally separated, they were both breathing heavily. They rested their foreheads against each other as they each assessed the change in temperature.

  “You are really good at that,” he told her.

  “Me? I’m good at that? Uh-uh. It’s you.”

  He grinned at her. “You like the way I kiss?”

  “There is kissing. There is good kissing. There is incredible, unbelievable kissing. And then like ten miles above that, there is kissing you.”

  “I’m even better at it when I’m lying down in bed.”

  Jesse laughed. “One kiss and you’re ready to lay me out on a mattress.”

  “You don’t know how long it’s been since I kissed somebody,” he replied. “I need to sit down at least, before I drop you.”

  She started to unwrap herself from him, but he didn’t allow it. He held her firmly in his grasp as he walked the three paces to the bed. He perched on the edge with her on his lap facing him, her legs on either side. Jesse could feel his erection and resisted the desire to squirm enticingly.

  “This is a pretty intimate seating arrangement,” she
pointed out.

  “I don’t know when I’ve ever enjoyed sitting around more,” he told her.

  He ran his hand over the lacy edges of her pale lavender bra.

  “This is very pretty,” he said.

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “I like the way that you are completely covered, so you’re feeling really safe,” he said. “But I can see those gorgeous nipples and they really look like they’re aching for me to touch them.” He ran his thumb over the left one, looking not at where he was touching but directly into the face of the woman he touched. Jesse hadn’t realized how much she wanted that until her heart caught in her throat.

  “Oh, yes!”

  She was surprised to hear her own voice, but she wasn’t about to contradict herself.

  They began kissing again, kissing and teasing and removing clothes. By the time she was naked and rolling around in his bed, there wasn’t a smidge of shyness. It all felt so good. It was what she needed so much.

  He stopped to put on a condom and she watched him, trembling all over.

  “Let’s start with your favorite,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Your favorite?” he asked. “What’s your favorite position?”

  In eight years of having sex with Greg, he had never asked her that question.

  “Having you inside me, however you’d like to get there, sounds like a favorite to me.”

  Piney made almost a growling sound and then grabbed her behind the knees and pulled her to him. He kissed her from her throat to her thighs and everyplace in-between. When he entered her, she felt so full and so grateful, tears escaped from the edges of her eyes. He was pounding her hard, but it wasn’t rough or out of control. Little startled sounds were escaping from her open mouth. It was good. It felt good. Nothing had ever been this good. It was going to happen. A red haze clouded her vision, it was going to happen. It was fast. It was too fast. She strained to keep up, not to lose it. But she did.

  He groaned and half laughed, held her close as all of it wound down for him. She was disappointed. Immediately, she willed herself to rethink it, as she always had. It had been exciting and she felt sexy and desirable. It was wonderful to have him inside her, stretching her, filling her. The closeness was the important thing. That was it, she reminded herself. The closeness was the important thing.