I shrugged.
She snickered and started to unbutton her pants.
I promptly closed my eyes and waited for her to fully undress.
I heard each article of clothing fall to the floor.
Pants. Undies. Shirt. Bra.
When she finally said, “You can open your eyes now,” I was practically panting.
That’d been the single most erotic thing I’d ever been exposed to, and the only thing that she’d done was strip.
Wonderful.
I had it bad for the girl that didn’t even like me.
Wasn’t that just my luck?
Then again, she would never know that I had it bad for her.
It would all stay locked up in a tight vault buried down deep in my chest, never to be found or examined.
At least, that was what I thought.
But the moment that the doctor all but fell into the room moments after she’d donned the gown—barely giving her time to get undressed and put it on—I felt a protective instinct start to surge inside of me.
One that demanded that I mark my territory so that other males knew what belonged to me.
“Belle, hi.” The doctor tried to act cool once he closed the door, but he didn’t accomplish it.
“Hey,” the nurse who’d followed him in squeaked. “Dr. Knight. Ow. You hit me in the face with the door. Watch it!”
During all of his flourishing entrance, not once did he turn to look at me leaning beside the door.
He walked right up to Belle and offered her his hand.
For some reason, that pissed me off.
I moved, walking to Belle’s opposite side, and drawing Benji’s attention.
“Uhh.” He paused, hand midway stretched out between himself and Belle. “Hello.”
“Belle isn’t comfortable with touches,” I said blankly. “Today, during this exam, you will announce everything you are about to do before you do it. Do you understand?”
Benji dropped his hand. “I’m very professional.”
I shrugged. “It’s not about being professional.”
“I have touch/sensory issues,” Belle said. “As well as a minor case of OCD. Which is why I’m going to ask you to wash your hands where I can see it. Otherwise I’ll obsess over it over and over again until you do. I’m sorry.”
That ‘I’m sorry’ was directed toward the nurse whose smile was soft.
“My daughter has autism,” she said as she walked over to the sink. “I’ll do whatever makes you most comfortable.”
My head tilted toward Belle, studying her.
Was that what she had?
If she did, it was a very minor case.
Or she was very adept at hiding it.
Whatever. She was good.
It was just another ‘I want her’ moment in my head that I tried to tuck away, but couldn’t.
Benji also went and washed his hands, and then did as asked, announcing every single move before he made it.
Five minutes into this exam, I finally moved away so that I was at the head of the table and couldn’t see what was beneath the sheet. But it really didn’t matter. I had one hell of an imagination, and what I imagined was almost worse than being shown.
I saw the way her smooth, tanned thighs parted, almost as if they were waiting for me.
The way her toes rested on the cloth-covered stirrups at the end of the bed.
Then I got to thinking about how fuckin’ perfect this table would be for what I wanted out of her, and how far out the stirrups could be pushed.
The doctor rolled his stool up between her legs, catching my attention, and I stared at him hard.
The nurse that was with him held out a plastic cup with a plastic wand with a pointy edge inside of it.
“This is just going to be a bit uncomfortable,” Dr. Benji Knight said. “This is going to be inserted into your vagina, and I’m going to scrape the end of your cervix with it.”
Sounded awful.
“It’s already uncomfortable because some man that I’d originally thought about letting into my vagina is about to stick his fingers up it for medical reasons,” Belle quipped. “Just do it. I don’t want to be here all day.”
My lips twitched.
From the vantage point I was at, I couldn’t see any of Belle’s goods, but I could see the doctor’s hands disappear underneath the sheet that was covering her waist.
The nurse who was standing there now only holding the plastic cup looked confused.
Then the girl I was quickly coming to like a whole lot started to hum the JAWS theme song.
My mouth all but fell open. Dun dun. Dun dun. Dun dun.
The doctor looked up and paused.
That’s when I couldn’t stop the laughter.
Using my hand, I all but covered my entire face as whatever happened, happened.
And when the doctor announced that he was done, Belle finally stopped humming.
“I need to check your breasts for lumps,” the doctor explained as he covered her up more thoroughly with the shittiest paper sheet I’d ever had the experience of seeing.
“Okay,” Belle said as she watched him come up to the side of the table.
“Arm up and relax,” he said. “I’m going to go in a circular motion…”
I wasn’t fast enough.
One second, I was wondering if he’d announce that he was moving the paper gown, and the next he was pulling it to the side.
I closed my eyes, but not in time.
I saw the tip of one dusky areola before I looked up at the ceiling.
And, as they say, that was the areola that broke the camel’s back. Or however the fuck that saying goes.
CHAPTER 7
Never blame someone else for the road you’re on. That’s your own asphalt.
-Text from Belle to Bruno
BELLE
“Oh my God,” I said as I walked into the kitchen later that night.
My mom, who was for some reason in my kitchen cooking dinner, looked up and said, “What?”
“I had the weirdest freakin’ day,” I told her.
Then I went about telling her everything that happened.
“You showed him your boob?”
That was Bourne’s wife, Delanie.
I looked over to find her and Booth’s wife, Dillan, sitting at the kitchen table.
I frowned. “You didn’t bring any kids with you, did you?”
“No,” they both answered as Dillan added on, “It’s mother’s day out. So we brought your momma over here to cook for us. We’re going to have margaritas and talk about how much we’re stressed.”
“Oh.” I paused. “I’m okay with you being here for an hour and a half, but no more. I got this new Whoop strap, and it tells me that to reach peak potential tomorrow, I have to go to bed at eight fifteen. And, since I stayed up late last night editing Hastings’ latest book, I really could use it.”
“What’s a Whoop strap?” my mother asked.
I showed her the monitor that I wore on my ankle.
“That looks like you’re under house arrest,” she teased. “Which I would understand more than you wearing a fitness tracker when you don’t do fitness anything. Unless you count fitting donuts into your mouth.”
She had a point but…
“I’m trying to get better about my sleep habits,” I admitted. “I started getting really bad headaches, and when I did research on them, I determined it was due to the blue light from the computers. So I got some blue light glasses, stopped playing on the computer after a certain time, and essentially stopped my headaches. But there are some times, when I get rush editing jobs, that I realize I can’t totally just stop the blue light. But last night was a special occasion. Hastings has been working on this particular book for like a year. And I wanted to see if it was as good as she kept hinting at. It was, by the way. You should both read it. It’s about the SWAT team and all that jazz.”