Ethan glances at me but does not reply.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he repeats.
*
When the session is over, Ethan excuses himself to go to the bathroom. Dr. Baggins motions me to stay.
“I suppose you need a catch-up with Ethan’s disorder. It’s the only way you will understand what plagues him. If you are willing to be part of his treatment, of course.”
I glance at the open door where Ethan has just vanished.
I say determinedly, “I will be part of it.”
“Good. With Ethan’s permission, I would like to schedule a session with you, his partner, so that I can brief you on what to expect, among other things.” The look in her eyes is grim.
My gut twists a little. I scarcely know Ethan. All I have is a cherished memory of him in my fandom, as well as those days and nights we spent together. Do I really want to be involved any further? I’m aware that I’m no longer thinking as a reporter. I’m not doing this to ferret facts about him for my article.
I think.
I say, “Yes, I’d like that very much.”
“Good. Then I’ll schedule it with you. Leave your number with my receptionist. I’ll call you.”
“Dr. Baggins, I’m not really Ethan’s partner. We have just met.”
“So I understand. But both of you seem to have an instant connection. Ethan hardly talks about any women. He doesn’t have relationships for the obvious reasons. And whatever affairs he had in the recent past have ended in disaster, as you might have intuited. Ethan is a very damaged man.”
I think of the horror stories I have accumulated on my way here. And those are just the tip of the iceberg. “Yes.”
But I would still like to be a part of it. No way I’m going to throw Ethan to the wolves, especially since he has entrusted me with his secret.
Am I doing the right thing?
Somewhere in the shadow of my mind, doubt creeps like a draping shroud.
3
In the car back to Kelowna, I ask Ethan, “Why are you so afraid of hypnosis?”
His green eyes are troubled.
“I’m not afraid of the actual procedure.” He makes it sound medical, like a colonoscopy. “I just don’t want to go through my past again.”
“But why? What is it about your past that you don’t want to revisit?” All I remember reading about Ethan’s past is that he was discovered as a teenager by a man who subsequently became his manager.
All he does is shake his head and look out of his tinted windows.
*
That night, I receive a call from Sharon Contralto, my Editor. She sounds pissed.
“You should have been reporting back two days ago,” she hisses over the phone.
“I know,” I say contritely. “I’ve been caught up . . . but it’s all got to do with the assignment. I’m not spending any more money than I should, Sharon. Honest. I’m actually . . . staying over at Ethan Greene’s place.”
Sharon immediately turns suspicious. “Are you sleeping with him?”
“Uh . . . ” I can’t really lie to Sharon. “Sort of.”
Her tone is icy. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you about professional ethics. There are some things you don’t need to do to get the story.”
“I’m not doing it to get the story. It’s personal,” I say truthfully.
“You’re walking on a thin line.”
“I know.”
“You decide what to do, but I’m not paying for this shindig past the eleventh. That’s when I expect you back at the news desk.”
The eleventh is four days away.
“You can’t give me fours day to complete this,” I say in dismay.
“Virginia, this isn’t exactly Watergate. Presidents are not going to fall. So I want you back on your ass, pronto. You’ve wasted enough time on this piece already . . . on a has-been who has been largely forgotten by the general public.”
I haven’t forgotten him, I think obstinately.
Aloud, I say, rolling my eyes, “Yes, Sharon.”
She clicks off.
Shit.
Now what am I going to do?
*
Disturbed by Sharon’s phone call, a dozen permutations of choices I can make run through my mind.
I like Ethan. I really, really like Ethan.
In fact, I think I more than like Ethan. I may be falling in love with him. My pulse thunders as I think that, because I honestly don’t believe I have ever been in love with anyone before.
But Ethan is so easy to love. He’s so handsome and gentle and broken – a damaged man that practically screams ‘help me’ while he remains so stoic and impenetrable. Only I believe I have managed to penetrate the exterior he has mounted around himself. And I will continue to chip away at it until it completely crumbles.
But do I want to write about this whole painful journey and dreg up all of Ethan Greene’s ugly secrets into the forefront? Has-been or not, this will be explosive. It will put his name in the limelight again. Agents will demand books to be written about his ‘condition’. Hollywood would want to make it a HBO original.
Do I really want to do that to Ethan?
My heart knocks painfully against my ribs as I pad to Ethan’s bedroom.
He’s awake. Naked and in bed. He’s covered by a thin sheet, and as far as I can see, there is no erection poking out of it. His green eyes look warily at me as I enter and shut the door behind me. I’m in a white terrycloth bathrobe, but underneath it, I am naked as well.
“Don’t,” he says.
“I’m not going to do anything.” I creep to the side of his bed and let myself in underneath the covers. He’s as warm as a stove. I wonder if he’s running a fever. After all, he was out in the pouring rain. As was I.
I lay my palm upon his brow to check his temperature.
“What are you doing?” he demands.
“Checking for a fever.”
He sighs. “I’m not having a fever.”
“You might be. I’ll get a thermometer from Jeffrey.” I make to get out of bed, but he catches hold of my arm.
“No, don’t go. Please.” He appears uncertain.
I swing back my feet onto the bed. “Ethan, are you OK?”
He shakes his head ruefully. “Not really. I’m pretty fucked up, huh? Every time I go into a trip, I get all messed up inside my head. It’s like I’m in a fugue, and I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. The worse is having no one to really understand what it is I’m going through.”
“That’s not true,” I say gently. “Jeffrey understands. Dr. Baggins understands. I understand.”
“Not really. You sympathize, all three of you, but you can’t empathize. No one can. No one I know has this . . . disorder. There’s not even a support group for it. I’m not only turned inside and out, but I feel like I’m going to pop.” He doesn’t meet my eyes. “I’m horny as hell, as I always am after . . . he takes over . . . but there’s nothing I can do about it. I feel like I’m going to burst out of my skin.”
That’s when I notice it. His erection tenting the bedclothes.
A pang seizes my chest. Oh Ethan.
I reach for his erection, but he stoppers my hand.
“No. You can’t. I can’t. He will appear.”
I know. That’s the frustration of it. He is too dangerous to let loose in the world. There is no knowing what he might do.
“Do you want to take a cold shower?” I suggest.
He laughs. “Maybe that’ll do the trick.”
“Come on,” I say, pulling him up. “You’ve got to get it down. Do you want a Xanax?”
“I’m trying to stay off that shit.”
But he follows me anyway, swinging his long legs out of the bed. His body gleams in the yellow lamplight. He resembles a golden Adonis, and his face is sufficiently tortured with the weight of the world on his hunched shoulders. Maybe not Adonis. Dionysius perhaps, a god with a slightly darker edge. And I can
almost see that dark edge around his aura, like a taint in the golden light he casts.
I keep my robe on as I get into the shower. Don’t want to augment the already tense situation. I turn on the mixer and rotate it so that what comes out of the rain shower nozzle is colder than room temperature. The water spatters part of my robe, but I don’t mind. There are plenty more of them where they came from.
Ethan enters the shower stall with me. There’s plenty of space. He’s completely naked, of course. His cock stands at a right angle to the plane of his pelvis, and his balls are smooth and firm underneath his scrotal sac. He lets the water cascade over him, closing his eyes and standing there like a fallen angel.
I don’t think this is the right time to rub his back.
After a minute or so, he turns to me. His large eyes are full of emotion. I steal a look at his cock. It has diminished somewhat, but not fully.
“I’m sorry,” he says ruefully. “I’m not much of a lover. I’m out of practice and I’ve never been much of a lover anyway.”
“That’s not true,” I lie. My heart beats furiously as I think of Lothar, who sets me on fire more than any man has ever done.
“I’ve never been much of anything. Martha says my issues have a lot to do in why I had to invent stuff . . . and other people . . . so I don’t have to face life.”
He begins to pull at the sash of my robe.
“What are you doing?” I say slowly as my robe becomes undone, revealing my breasts and the blond triangle of damp hair at my crotch.
“I’m just going to soap you. I want to give you something . . . even if I can’t get off myself.”
“But won’t you get even more excited?”
“That’s why we are doing it in the cold shower.” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and opens them again. “Please . . . let me do this. I feel impotent enough as it is.”
He is anything but impotent, but I think I understand. Ethan is in a prison of his own mind. His sexual frustrations are brimming at his surface, and he has no way to temper them without all hell breaking loose.
I’m beginning to wonder if my presence is more of a distraction. The best thing I can do for him is to leave, really. Drop my story and go back to Sharon with my tail between my legs. Oh, and she would make me pay back every cent of what I owe the News Corp, I’ll bet.
Only – I don’t want to. I want to be here . . . with Ethan. I want to see where this story goes, with me in a starring role.
Ethan drops my robe on the bathroom tiles, where it rapidly soaks up the cold water running from the rain shower. Then he pushes me gently against the wall. The shower cubicle’s tiles are cold and unyielding against the tips of my scapulae. He kneels before me. Even at half mast, his long body is a size to be reckoned with, and his wet head comes up to my navel.
He prizes my thighs open.
“Ethan – ”
“It’s OK. I know what I’m doing.”
No, you don’t, I want to say. I don’t know what I’m doing either.
With my legs forming an inverted ‘V’, I slide down the walls, my bare feet struggling to keep my balance upon the water-slicked tiles of the shower stall floor. Ethan dips his head and starts to tongue my pussy. His licks and flickers are delicate. Like his fucking, his cunnilingus too lacks technique, as though he is a nervous schoolboy going down on a girl in the janitor’s closet for the first time.
But it’s OK, I tell myself. I can always get into cunnilingus. How many lovers have I had who didn’t exactly get me off? Too many to count. But I want – need – so much from Ethan Greene to reinforce my multilayered fantasy of him. I guess it’s not fair for him not to live up to my expectations, which he has no clue of anyway. But I can only wish . . . because he’s so perfect in every other way except for one.
The one intrudes forcefully into my mind, his cock thick and hard and large as it impales my quivering pussy. I daren’t even say his name in present company.
Lothar.
So I lean my head back against the tiles and allow myself to enjoy Ethan’s ministrations. His tongue is a little clumsy, but my clit responds anyway by stiffening and sorting its hood wrinkles out. What he lacks in technique, he makes up for in enthusiasm.
I open my thighs wider to allow him more access to my folds and grooves.
“That’s right,” I encourage him. “Mmmmmm. Lick it. Lick all of it. Lick my clit.”
Ethan responds with vigor.
My entire groin twitches. “Ohhh, that feels so good. Suck at my clit, Ethan. Nibble at it.”
He does all this with fetching readiness, as if he is a pet who is eager to please. His tongue spirals round my clit and plunges into the wet hole of my vulva. My fingers clutch at his hair.
“Fuck me with your tongue. That’s it . . . ohhhh, that’s it.”
His tongue plunges in and out. He is getting better. Maybe he just needs practice. Plenty of practice. But he’s getting better at pleasing me, and that seems to be just as important to him as it is to me, sexually.
I don’t quite climax, but I do a good job of pretending to so that he would be pleased with himself.
When I have sufficiently ‘come’, Ethan stands up and douses himself under the shower. I wrap my arms around his waist.
“No, don’t,” he murmurs, “you’ll make it worse.”
So I stand back against the wall once more and watch his erection wane under the cold deluge. He makes sure his penis is flaccid before turning off the taps and reaching for the towel. Instead of enveloping himself in the towel, he puts it around my shoulders instead. Slowly, sensuously, he dries me off, pausing at my breasts, my nipples, and the smooth expanse of my belly.
I think I can fall in love with this man.
“Come on,” he says, “sleep with me tonight. I could use the company. Nothing will happen, and that is a firm promise. It will just be togetherness.”
Damaged Beauties (Romanced by the Damaged Millionaire (Erotic Romance)) Page 8