Marie Ferrarella

by A Doctor's Secret

  It was all about her and because he succeeded in arousing her, because he heard her moan with pleasure, he experienced triumph upon triumph.

  No part of her was left untouched, uncaressed, unkissed, until he felt her movements accelerate, not as if she were in some sort of race to finish quickly, but because she was in the midst of a fever pitch.

  Drawing the length of his body over hers, Jesse joined his hands with Tania’s, threading his fingers through hers and making them one before the actual physical act reinforced that.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered in her ear.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she moved her legs apart and let him enter. Rather than stiffen the way she had last time, the way she had every time since she’d been attacked, Tania arched her hips, a silent invitation. The heat and desire traveling through her body moved everything else into the background.

  This time she actually felt the rhythm overtake her rather than her struggling to mimic the movement of his hips.

  And then, for the first time in her life, she let this incredible sensation vibrate through her, making her scramble toward the feeling, wanting more even as she savored its essence. It seemed to her like an explosion that kept on going.

  Enthralled, Tania grasped hold of his shoulders, arching higher, seeking to prolong the moment. And then, when it was over, she sank into this soft, welcoming cloud. Her pulse slowly decelerated.

  What had just happened here? She felt like such a novice.

  Tania opened her eyes and saw him, still pivoted on his elbows, looking down at her face. There was concern in his eyes.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  It took her a minute to find her tongue. Longer to locate her wits. Try as she might, she couldn’t even begin to define what she was feeling, other than overwhelmed.

  And powerful.

  And free.

  “So all right that they haven’t even invented the word to cover how all right I am,” she finally answered, her voice barely audible. She drew in two more deep breaths and then released them. Her odd euphoria was wondrous. “I think I might have just had an out-of-body experience.”

  Jesse did his best not to laugh. But he did smile. Broadly. Smiled and pressed a kiss to her temple. Getting off her, he moved to the side and tucked his arm around her again, once more drawing her to him. “Then I guess that my work here is done.”

  She turned her face into his. They were barely inches apart. So close that she could taste his breath. And found herself aroused again. “Is that what you call it? Work?”

  “I call it ecstasy, personally,” he confessed. And then Jesse kissed her again, softly, tenderly, not like a man who wanted to make love again, but like a man who loved.

  She nodded at his response, curling into him. Thrilled beyond words that she wanted to, that she didn’t want to bolt and run or hurl herself into an hour-long shower.

  “Sounds like a good call to me,” she murmured.

  She splayed her hand along his chest, sinking further into a web of contentment. Resting her head against his shoulder, Tania was soon asleep.

  Jesse lay there beside her, listening to her breathe, so moved by the simple act that he hardly recognized himself. It was a little scary, he mused, feeling all these different sensations.

  He felt protective toward this woman. Protective and completely and unnervingly at her mercy.

  There was an interpretation for all this and he knew it, but right now, he didn’t want to explore what it meant. Tonight, he would bask in the triumph generated by all the walls that had been breached.

  Jesse remained with her for a while longer. Her breathing remained steady. No nightmares assaulted her, no sudden fits and starts overtook her. Only sleep.

  And then, very slowly, so as not to wake Tania up, Jesse retreated from her. When his arm was clear of her body, he sat up and then got off the bed.

  It was late.

  He was acutely aware that one or both of her sisters might come home anytime now despite the notes they’d left on the refrigerator. He had a feeling that Tania might not want to explain his presence to them.

  To spare Tania the awkwardness, he decided to leave. Moreover, if she awoke to regret having trusted him with her secret, or her body, he didn’t want to see all that reflected in her eyes. She had such expressive eyes.

  Taking his clothes into her bathroom, Jesse got dressed quickly. And then, very quietly, carrying his shoes in his hand, Jesse left the apartment. He pulled the door closed behind him.

  He heard the tumbler click as the lock fell into place.

  After pausing at the door to put on his shoes, Jesse walked quickly to the elevator. He passed no one in the corridor, but he had the distinct, uneasy feeling that someone was there.

  This was a bad time to be paranoid, he thought. It was all just in his head, he assured himself. Residue from when Ellen had stalked him, nothing more. Even so, he paused by the elevator, listening before he pressed the down button.

  There was nothing to hear.

  Jesse had walked all the way to the parking structure and was actually sitting in his car, his key in the ignition, about to turn the engine on, when he had a change of heart. Concern about Tania got the better of him.

  He’d been thinking of himself when he left.

  His unwillingness to see regret on Tania’s face had prompted him to go. He hadn’t really thought about it in terms of how she would feel if she woke up to find him gone. What if she didn’t feel relief when she reached out only to find that space beside her empty?

  What if the wrong message was sent by his absence from her bed? What if Tania felt abandoned? Or even used?

  A lot of one-night stands slipped out in the middle of the night, leaving their partners to face the dawn alone. That wasn’t what he wanted her to think. At the very least, he wanted her to know that this was not a one-night stand. Not to him.

  What the hell had he been thinking, leaving like that? Jesse upbraided himself.

  Exiting the vehicle, he paused only long enough to lock it again. And then he hurried back the long city block to her building.

  Getting in the building’s front door was no problem. He rang a series of doorbells until someone’s voice finally crackled over the intercom.

  “Jake, is that you?” a husky woman’s voice asked.

  “Yeah,” he rasped.

  The woman cursed on the other end and, for a second, Jesse thought he would have to go on pressing buttons. But then the harsh sound of the buzzer filled the air. He lost no time pushing the heavy door open.

  A great deal of pent-up energy coursed through his veins. It had been roughly about fifteen minutes or so since he’d left. Jesse crossed his fingers and hoped that Tania hadn’t woken up in the interval.

  Entering the lobby, he glanced at the dial above the closed elevator door. The car was on the fifth floor. Her floor. Too impatient to wait for the elevator car to make its way down to the first floor, Jesse decided to take the stairs instead.

  He raced up all five flights and was breathing heavily when he threw open the door that led out onto her floor. He didn’t pause to catch his breath. Instead he hurried over to her apartment. Knowing the outcome ahead of time, he tried the door anyway. It was locked, just the way he’d left it.

  It wasn’t a problem.

  He’d had a lot of friends in his youth, not all with savory backgrounds that followed straight and narrow paths. One of his former friends was currently serving five to seven upstate for burglary. The same former friend who had once taught him how to pick any lock “in case of an emergency.”

  Jesse was determined to let himself in without waking Tania if he could. If possible, he didn’t want her to even suspect that he had ever left.

  Because it had been a very long time since he’d attempted to pick any lock—sheerly for practice—it took him several attempts and as many minutes to finally conquer the lock. Trying the doorknob, he felt it give beneath his hand. As q
uietly as possible, he turned the doorknob all the way and opened the door.

  The second he walked into the apartment, he smelled it.

  Gas.

  Chapter 13

  Jesse didn’t even stop to think, he just reacted. Dashing into the apartment, he began throwing windows open as he made his way to Tania’s bedroom.

  He found her just the way he’d left her, in bed and sound asleep. The only difference was, when he shook her to wake her up, Tania remained unresponsive. The smell of gas began to get to him but he focused on what he had to do. Get Tania out of there as quickly as he could.

  Throwing off the comforter, he wrapped her nude body in a sheet and picked her up. His throat felt scratchy and his head began to spin. Trying to breathe as little as possible, Jesse carried her out of the apartment and into the hall.

  He leaned a still-unconscious Tania against the wall right next to the apartment door. As he squatted beside her, at a complete loss as to what to do, his mind raced. He started rubbing her wrists, hoping that if he got her circulation going, he could make her come around.

  He endured several very scary minutes, watching her face as he continued to rub. Just as he was about to call 9-1-1, her eyes fluttered open. She moaned and then began to cough as she put her hand to her head.

  He sat back on his heels for a second, looking at her, so relieved he could barely catch his own breath. “Oh, thank God.”

  Tania stared at him, unseeing and disoriented, her head pounding like the inside of a bowling alley when all the lanes were in play. Taking a deep breath and blinking, she slowly looked around, trying to get her bearings. Trying to focus. Where was she? And then it came to her.

  “Jesse, what are we doing out in the hallway?” As bits and pieces became clearer, she looked down at herself. And saw she had the top sheet from her bed wrapped around her like a blue flowing toga. What the hell was going on? “Am I still naked?” she asked him incredulously.

  “You’re still alive,” he corrected. Suddenly feeling light-headed himself, Jesse shifted so that his back was against the wall, too. Leaning, he sank beside her. At the moment, his knees didn’t quite feel as if they could support him.

  She didn’t understand what he was saying. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “And what are we doing out here?”

  Tania hoped he had some kind of plausible answer for this. Had she been wrong about him, after all? Had she let her barriers down just to allow some kind of weirdo closer to her?

  Her nerves began to shift even as something inside her head whispered for her to withhold final judgment.

  He wanted to take her into his arms, to hug her and hold her to him and just listen to her breathe. But right now, if he gauged the look in her eyes correctly, that would probably frighten her.

  So instead he told her, “There’s a gas leak in your apartment.”

  Holding the sheet to her, bracing one hand against the doorjamb, Tania rose shakily to her feet. He sprang to his, as if ready to catch her if she fell.

  “That’s not possible,” she insisted. “Kady said we just had someone come through the other day, checking to make sure everything was up to code.” And then her eyes widened slightly as she remembered. “The building’s super even replaced the old gas stove with a new one.”

  Something just didn’t make sense. Had a faulty stove been put in on purpose? Why? By who? He needed to look around. “Stay here,” he ordered.

  “Naked in the hall?” she demanded. Granted it was the middle of the night and probably no one would pass by, but she wasn’t about to stay here to find out. “I don’t think so.”

  But as she started to follow him, Tania suddenly swayed, her light-headedness getting the better of her.

  Alert, Jesse moved back and caught her before she could sink to her knees. “Stay put,” he told her firmly. Both hands on her shoulders, he pressed her back against the outside wall and then went inside the apartment.

  The late evening air came in through all the windows he’d opened and began to cut into the overpowering smell of gas. But he could still smell it.

  Walking into the kitchen, Jesse immediately saw that all four burners had been turned on. They were on, but not a single blue flame was visible. He looked at the knobs that ran along the side of the stovetop. Someone had deliberately turned on the gas jets while making sure that the flames had been extinguished.

  Why?

  “What did you find?”

  Jesse swung around to see Tania in the kitchen doorway, looking pale but determined to be there. She held the sheet to her with one hand, while grasping the doorjamb with the other to keep herself steady.

  He banked down a surge of anger. What did it take to make the woman stay put? “That you don’t take instruction well.”

  Tania waved her hand at the comment, her attention on the stove. “We already knew that.” Her eyes narrowed as she came forward. “Is the stove on?”

  “Apparently.” Taking a kitchen towel, Jesse held it against his fingers and turned all four jets back to “off” before she could do it herself.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Whoever turned the gas jets on probably left their fingerprints.”

  Whoever. That meant someone had come in and done this on purpose. That wouldn’t have been the first thing she would have thought of. Tania’s mouth curved slightly.

  “You’ve been watching too much television.” She had a more logical explanation. “Kady or Natalya probably just forgot to turn off the stove.”

  “Like they forgot to lock the door?” he asked pointedly.

  Her head jerked up as her thought process leapfrogged. “Do you think something happened to one of them?”

  She was agitated, so he spoke calmly, putting his hand on her arm to steady her. “No. And I don’t think either one of them left unlit burners on, either. We would have smelled something earlier,” he pointed out.

  She nodded. That made sense. What didn’t make sense was why the burners had been turned on in the first place. And by who?

  Tania shook her head. The throbbing was getting worse. “This is just so strange. One weird thing after another,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.

  But she had his undivided attention. “What do you mean, one weird thing after another? What other weird thing are you talking about?”

  She looked at him, debating. He was probably going to think she was a little crazy. Or maybe a lot. “I can’t shake this feeling that someone is watching me. And the other day—” She paused, searching for a way to say this without sounding dramatic. “I was nearly hit by a bus.”

  He stared at her, stunned. Was she putting him on? “What?”

  Tania shrugged, as if it was really nothing and she was sorry she’d mentioned it. “I was standing on the corner, waiting for the light to change, and I guess it was too crowded because suddenly it felt like someone pushed me from behind. I started to fall forward and if that guy hadn’t grabbed my arm and pulled me back, I would have been road kill.”

  She was embarrassed by the revelation, he realized. She wasn’t putting him on, but she was trying to downplay it. “Why didn’t you say anything before?” he asked.

  An awkwardness descended over her. She struggled against feeling like a victim. The way she’d struggled off and on all these years.

  Again she shrugged, looking away. “Didn’t see the point. There are eight million people in the city and sometimes two or more try to occupy the same space, especially on a street corner. Accidents are bound to happen.”

  One was an accident, two or more made for an unnerving pattern. He knew all about denial. He’s used it as a tool when he was being stalked.

  Jesse glared at the stove. “Maybe too many accidents.” He didn’t want to ask, but he came to the only logical conclusion he could. “Does this Jeff know where you live these days?”

  Tania suddenly felt cold. Trying to bank down the feeling, she ran her hands over her arms. “You think this mig
ht be him?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not the police.” He came over to stand beside her and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “I think we should call them.”

  She shook her head so hard, she nearly became dizzy again. “No. I don’t want this getting back to my father. He has connections all over the force. He’ll worry.” She could see that Jesse wasn’t about to back away. She hit on a compromise. “I’ll call Sasha’s husband. He won’t say anything to my father.”

  She’d mentioned to him that Tony Santini was a homicide detective. Jesse nodded. “As long as you call someone,” he told her. “How do you feel?”