His Forbidden Bride: 50 Loving States, West Virginia

by Theodora Taylor

  “All right. I guess I’m about to find out if Chinese food is old or new.”

  So we eat Chinese food—it’s new, but John likes it. And then we end up back in the living room, most of the day suddenly gone.

  He doesn’t even blink when I explain I don’t have so much as an antenna on the early aughts-era TV in my living room, just a huge collection of DVDs that I feed into its built-in disc drive. Old musicals I’d been watching over and over again as opposed to the current fare of reality shows and nighttime dramas.

  “Though I am planning to finally give Grey’s Anatomy another go when I move to Seattle,” I tell him as I push the DVD into the TV’s disc drive. “It’s so unrealistic, but you know, when in Rome…”

  He responds with a quizzical look.

  “Grey’s Anatomy or Seattle or Rome?” I ask, feeling like I already know that look all too well.

  “Seattle,” he answers. “When?”

  I clamp my lips not wanting to divulge more about that part of my life than I need to. But in the end, I tell him the truth.

  “In about five weeks I’ll be leaving for a visit to California, you know long enough to get my car shipped out. Then I’ll be driving to Seattle to start my fellowship. But you don’t have to worry about that. I’m paid through the summer on this apartment; it’s a year-to-year lease. You can stay here until August, even after I’ve moved out.”

  But he continues to frown at me from his position on the couch. “That ain’t what I’m worried about, Doc.”

  A chill goes down my back, because even though we’ve done something intimate, what we’ve done was also very, very stupid. As are the feelings rolling around in my chest right now. Feelings that weren’t there before. Like regrets about leaving West Virginia. And sorrow about not having met him sooner.

  “Anyway,” I say, changing the subject with no grace whatsoever. “I think you’re going to like this film, Tommy. Lots of seventies rock. Plus Tina Turner and the Who, back before they were co-opted by every single show and thing.”

  Also, it’s a total sexual tension killer, I add to myself silently as I place myself as far from him as possible on the couch.

  I’m right about him liking the movie, and wrong about it killing the sexual tension. The credits roll and by the time I’ve turned off the TV, he’s standing above me. Cane in one hand, the other held out to me.

  No discussion. He leads me to the bedroom with his hand clasped firmly around mine.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he says when we get to my bedroom.

  “Hold on…”

  I go to the kitchen and come back with a plastic bag from last week’s delivery. He watches me tie it over his cast, his blues eyes twinkling with lazy amusement.

  But I pretend not to notice as I secure the knot and say, “There’s a little closet with towels in it, but it’s right behind the door, which means you have to actually close the door all the way to get to it.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” he says. Then he presses a kiss onto my forehead and disappears into the bathroom.

  It should feel like a reprieve. But it really, really doesn’t.

  In fact, it feels like I’ll never let go of the breath I’m holding as I rush over to the dresser and pull out the warmest, most body covering-est pajamas I own.

  The one thing I know is I don’t want to be standing around like an awkward fool when he returns. So I get into bed. Pull my good-enough-for-seven-years comforter over my legs, and the hardcover novel off my nightstand. I pretend I’m reading a Karin Slaughter thriller as opposed to thinking.

  Thinking about how crazy I am for sleeping with a patient. One who has amnesia. Thinking about what I’ll say when he comes out of the bathroom.

  And having no answers for any of it.

  But when the door opens, all pretenses of reading come to a dead stop. Before he’d gone into the bathroom to take his shower, I’d tied a plastic bag over his cast and told him where to find a towel, expecting him to use both. And he had. But while the plastic bag is still wrapped around his forearm, the towel is draped casually around his neck. More of an afterthought than anything else.

  And as hard as I try not to respond to the sight of him naked, I feel my entire body heat as he approaches my side of the bed.

  I’m a doctor, but I haven’t worked with adult patients in nearly a year. And John doesn’t look like any patient I’ve ever encountered, naked or otherwise. His body is hard and solid, packed with powerful muscles. Gym or hard labor, I have no idea.

  Or maybe prison, my rational brain points out. I think of all the rap videos I’d seen growing up. The ones with hard-bodied singers crowing about how much time they’d done in jail.

  But he doesn’t have any tattoos, I notice. And I’ve never met an ex-con without at least a few tats. This guy doesn’t look like an ex-con. More like a muscular system model who just crawled out of one of my old anatomy text books.

  His muscles move like cords beneath his skin as he walks over, his heavy cock swinging lewd and uncaring between his legs.

  “Tried my damnedest to get this off by myself,” he says when he stops in front of the bed. “But I couldn’t do it.”

  Only when he holds up the cast with the plastic bag wrapped around it do I get what he’s talking about. But by then it’s already too late. My mouth is watering in ways it definitely shouldn’t at just the thought of…

  Thanking God for the ability most doctors develop to control shaking hands, I untie the plastic bag’s knot and toss it into the nearest waste basket, without a thought toward recycling.

  “You okay?” he asks. Probably because I’ve yet to look at him.

  “I’m…” fine, fine, fine my rational mind screams at me. But when I open my mouth, the truth falls out. “Thinking.”

  He tenses, his lazy gaze becoming sharper and less amused. “Thinking about what?”

  I squeeze my lips into my mouth, biting them a little before I confess, “About what we did this morning. About how I was crazy to do that with you. I was trying to help, but I’ve only made things worse. A lot worse.”

  He considers my words, and I brace myself for an extremely awkward conversation about stepping back and reconsidering our actions.

  But then he asks, “Where’re those condoms?”

  “What?” I ask, not quite understanding.

  “I made you a promise about using condoms the next time. So where are they? I assume you got some, being a medical professional and all.”

  He’s teasing me. I can see how amused he is by the way his eyes crinkle slightly at the corners, and I don’t quite know how to respond.

  I swallow. “Um, yes, I do have condoms in my nightstand drawer, but—”

  “This one right here?” He’s already bending over and pulling the drawer open.

  Before I can answer, he’s got a blue square package in his hand. He tears it open and then, to my wide-eyed horror, starts putting it on.

  I should look away, but I can’t find enough modesty to do so. I openly stare as he rolls the thin rubber sheath up his swollen shaft, using the fingers on his casted hand to pinch the tip. His eyes once again find mine when he’s done, and my body swells under his gaze, nipples hardening against the inside of my top; the space between my legs becoming heavy and damp.

  “I…” My voice comes out all squeak and I try again, “I thought we were having a conversation.”

  “You’re having a conversation, Doc. I’m ending it. Now turn over. Get on your hands and knees.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Before the question’s fully out of my mouth, his hands are on me. Cast bumping different parts of my body as he pulls my long-sleeved pajama top up and over my head.

  His eyes darken at the sight of my breasts, now fully exposed.

  “Wait—” I start to say, crossing my arms over them. Only to be interrupted again when he easily places me on my stomach.

  The doctor in me wants to warn him about putting too much strain on
his fractured arm. And the woman in me is screaming, shocked to find herself face forward on the bed less than a minute after having introduced a very awkward point of conversation.

  My conflicting responses all add up to one outraged, “What the hell are you doing?!” when he crawls over my back.

  “Teaching you a lesson about thinking too much,” he answers matter-of-factly before roughly pulling down my pajama pants. I gasp. Once, and then again when he lowers his body down on mine.

  It’s a strange position. A very strange position. I’m flat on my stomach and he covers me like a blanket. But when he shoves my legs further apart with his muscular thighs and settles his heavy cock into the back of my pussy, my body responds like it’s just been hit with a defibrillator. I buck, then buzz from every nerve ending as I helplessly squirm beneath him.

  “No, don’t…”

  “Is that a real no?” he asks, dark and low in my ear. “I want to make you feel good, Doc. But if you don’t want that from me, tell me right now and I’ll get off you.”

  It is a real no…at least it should be. But my body is buzzing so hard now. The ribbed duvet cover of the bed playing havoc against my exposed clit. I can’t stop myself from squirming, from lifting my hips off the bed, only to find his cock. Then settling back down, only to have the blanket rub against my engorged clit all over again.

  I have never in my life been put in such a position…or been so turned on by it.

  He takes my silence for acquiescence, or perhaps my squirming which, on the face of it, could easily be taken for what it actually is. Wanting. I’m now so helpless with desire, I’m going against everything I believe and know. So desperate to have him fill me, that neither my mind nor my body knows what to do.

  I gasp when he pushes into me, giving me all of him in one hard stroke. I’m so wet, it’s easy for him to get all the way in, even in this position. Above me, I hear a deep, approving growl tumble out of him.

  Right before his voice turns mean.

  “You wanted to have a conversation,” he practically snarls into my ear. “Let’s have a conversation. How about we talk about how lost I was feeling before I met you? So fucking confused and weak. Then I saw you. Beautiful as hell. Teaching dying kids to sing. How about we have a conversation about you showing up in my room with that sandwich and that music?”

  He thrusts into me again and again, his voice hard and nasty. “If you really want to talk so bad, let’s talk about you telling me you’re my family now. Let’s talk about you bringing me into your home so I could give you what you deserve. Everything you deserve for being such a beautiful angel to me.”

  I cry out, his words and his rolling thrusts devastating me, melting me, despite, or maybe even because of, his cruel tone.

  “You want to talk to me about protocols and professional standards and a bunch of other stuff I don’t give a shit about. Not when it comes to this, Doc. Not when it comes to us.”

  Us. “Yes!” I cry out to a question only my soul dares to ask.

  But he mistakes my “yes” as something else. His thrusts become stronger, more intense until he says, “Fuck talking. I already got all the answers I need.”

  With that, he forces his cock into me one more time. The orgasm that washes over me very nearly breaks my mind. I scream as pleasure rushes through me, obliterating every thought I have of who I am, what I should or shouldn’t be doing, and why I should never have allowed this to happen in the first place.

  Above me, I can feel John coming. He talked a lot while he was fucking me out of having a logical conversation. But now he’s gone quiet, his forehead pressed into the back of my neck as his body quakes with his final release. For what feels like eons on end, we come; squeezed together in a rictus of intense pleasure.

  “Okay, Doc, okay…” he says when we’re finally done.

  He rolls off and eases himself out of the bed.

  “I can…” I start to offer.

  “I got it,” he answers, removing the condom and tossing it into the small wastebasket next to the nightstand.

  His leg hasn’t escaped unscathed, I notice, as I watch him grab the cane he left hanging on the bathroom door. John’s limp is a little bit more pronounced as he walks back to the bed. But despite having been in a sexual relationship with him for less than twelve hours, I already know how he’ll respond if I express any remorse or sympathy whatsoever.

  So I decide to focus on getting back under the covers. I burrow beneath and turn on my side with my back to him so I don’t have to watch what he’s doing. Or feel guilty. And confused.

  The bed depresses when he gets in, and I reach over to the lamp on my nightstand to turn off the lights.

  Then I lie there in the dark, trying not to think too hard about what all this means. For my career. For my sanity.

  But when I’m not worrying, new thoughts pop up about what just happened. His hot, sweet words melting my heart even as his hard, unrelenting sex completely dominated my body. Seriously, who is this guy? And where the hell did he come from?

  “Doc, you still awake?” he asks on the other side of the bed.

  “Yes,” I admit quietly.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  I turn over on the pillow, not sure my thoroughly used body can tolerate another “conversation” and prepare to protest. But I find him lying there on his back, heavy cast slung over his eyes.

  “You think I’m too messed up in the head to be serious,” he says from beneath the cast. “But serious is exactly what I am.”

  My heart tightens and beats hard in that confused way it does whenever I’m around him.

  As if echoing my erratic heartbeat, he says, “I got a lot of confusion in my life right now. But you and me—that’s the one thing I’m 100% clear on. Stop questioning this, Doc. You gotta believe me when I say you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Because that’s what you are.”

  I don’t answer him. Of course, I don’t answer him. How could any sane person respond to that?

  What I need to do is go to sleep. I’ll feel more rational in the morning. That’s what I tell myself. But long after he falls asleep, breathing steadily beside me, my heart remains restless and awake in the dark. Beating with an emotion I’m afraid to name.

  Chapter Eight

  Eventually sleep does come. And the doubts stay away while I’m off in dreamland, but they come right back the next morning as soon as I wake up, wrapped in John’s arms, my muscles aching, and every soft part of my body—from my breasts to the skin between my thighs—tender.

  Easing out of his arms, I get up and stumble into the kitchen, attempting to go through my normal morning routine as if there isn’t one hell of a first act surprise waiting for me back in my bedroom.

  Switching my mind to the Left Coast, I check my current special phone which I keep in the catch-all drawer. There’s a missed called from Dad, followed by several pissed off texts from Sandy.

  “Sorry!” I text Dad. “Can’t talk this morning. Work emergency. Will talk with you same time in four weeks. Okay? Thanks! Sorry! But thanks!!!”

  I know Dad won’t find that answer remotely satisfying, and I pre-emptively turn the phone all the way off, lest he and Sandy start inundating me with calls I really don’t want to take with a certain amnesia victim in the house.

  So instead of talking with my dad, I make John and myself the most gourmet of breakfasts: Kashi Cinnamon Harvest cereal with almond milk.

  Okay, not exactly the breakfast of champions. But it’s what I grew up eating back in Compton, and also one of the few things I have left to eat in the house until the grocery delivery comes this afternoon.

  I don’t expect John to be all that impressed when I walk back into the room with the tray of hastily prepared food. But I also don’t expect to find him sitting on top of the bed in a pair of boxer briefs, strumming out a song on my guitar.

  After a few bars, I recognize the melody.

  “That’s ‘Ghosts,’ a
Colin Fairgood song,” I say, setting the tray down on the never before used nightstand on his side of the bed.

  “You know it?” he asks, looking up at me.

  “Yeah, pretty much everybody does. It was his first super huge crossover hit.” I bring out my iPhone and after a few swipes and touches, Colin Fairgood’s voice fills the room.

  John tilts his head to the side. “Yeah, that’s the song. It’s ‘old’ to me. I like it.”

  “Country isn’t my favorite,” I admit to John. “But I like it, too. And hey, look at you playing a guitar!”

  I take my guitar back and press the bowl of Kashi into his hands. “Maybe you’re some sort of musician,” I say as I set the guitar back on its stand in the far corner of the room. “I mean, if you’ve got country songs down like that.”

  But he shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I saw your guitar sitting over there and I got this feeling if I played it, I’d be more relaxed.”

  “You’re feeling anxious?” I ask, studying him sharply and remembering what happened when that neuro jerk accidentally triggered him.

  But then he throws me a lazy smile and says, “Not now that you’re back.”

  I look away. “You really shouldn’t say things like that.”

  “Why not?” he asks. “It’s the truth.”

  “Because…” I shake my head, unable to explain all of it to him. About boys and girls and the games we play, so no one will be accused of liking the other too much. “It’s just not what most guys do...”

  “So, I’m different,” he says after considering my words for a quiet moment. “Tell me, Doc. How am I different from the other guys you know?”

  “Well, you’re a lot more direct. I mean, you say whatever’s on your mind, and you don’t seem to care how it makes you look. Most guys hold their cards a lot closer to their chests than you do. Does that make sense?”

  “Hmm,” he says after a long while.

  It’s my turn to ask, “What?”