Attending Physician

by Vivienne Hartt Quinn

  “Mmm,” she said licking her lips, “yummy.”

  I shimmied in her arms, knowing it would ramp up the heat.

  “Are you teasing me, milady?”

  I opened my eyes into innocence. “I, milord?”

  She made a sound deep in her throat. It sounded suspiciously like, “Femmes.”

  “Femme,” I corrected. “One femme. Singular. This one. In your arms. This second.”

  “Yes, this one,” she agreed reaching down to brush my mouth with hers.

  A brush wasn’t going to do me.

  I leaned in and ran my tongue along her lips.

  “Baby,” she moaned.

  Then, there is no other way to say it, she took my mouth. Searching its depths. Questing, demanding, insisting, retreating, advancing, swirling my tongue into a tango of a dance with hers. I don’t think I’ve been kissed into oblivion but this was close. The feelings grew deeper and more intense, the more we kissed. Goddess Almighty, I’d missed this!

  Raven’s hands had stilled where she’d placed them originally—on my ass. I arched my hips to get their attention. She held on hard. It felt great. Then my rhythm inspired her to stroke from my waist down over my hips to cup my ass. My orgasm began to build.

  “Darling,” I breathed. “You have too many clothes on.”

  “I beg to differ, milady, you do.”

  “Let’s agree,” I cut to the chase. “We both do. What shall we do to repair this sad state of affairs?”

  “Come with me, beautiful,” she said, releasing me, but holding onto my hand.

  She led me down the hall and into the bedroom. Led is perhaps a misnomer, I itched to get out of my clothes and naked with her. She got me out of boots and socks, skirt and panties, and left my blouse and bra in place. Sometimes partially dressed is hotter than totally nude.

  Then she kissed her way from one foot up that leg and down to the other foot. Kisses, nips, love bites, tongue swipes. The sensations were fantastic. She did not use her tongue on my sex, for which I was grateful. A painful story was hooked to that particular act, and I didn’t want to tell it yet. I’d have had to stop her.

  Raven moved at once to remedy the empty state of my mouth. Her large warm hands on my face stroking me into her kiss were so intimate. Kissing me nonstop she moved one hand down, spread my legs, reached for my sweet spot and began to caress ever so lightly. I gasped through the sensation of it. My desire for her grew.

  Then she reached the other hand around over my ass and into the wet swamp of my sex, sliding her fingers up the crack in my ass reaching for that back door of forbidden, and extremely sensual, pleasure. She began to tease my opening with her wet, slippery fingers finding the tight ring of muscles. My back arched into her touch. I wanted her fingers in my ass. “Raven,” I panted. “Raven, please.”

  “Yes, baby. Be patient.”

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  Her fingers were inexplicably oily with some kind of lubricant. She continued to circle my sweet spot, and tease my bottom till I moaned with sensation and the need to come. Pressure built against my opening and then the muscles released their tension and her finger was inside me. It was hot, and I thought I’d pass out, it felt so intense. No one had done this to me, and the sensation was heavenly.

  She added a second finger, and inner muscles relaxed. My hips pushed my ass back onto her fingers as the pressure built from that deep place within me once again. My womb had begun to rumble. Aching with the pressure of the tension. She kept her eyes on mine watching my reactions to her actions, adjusting minutely to bring me more pleasure.

  Finally, she fucked my ass hard and thrust her tongue deep in my mouth. That, combined with the gentle insistence on my sweet spot brought me careening over the edge into an endless orgasm. Every time I thought it would wane, it began again from a place deeper within me. She rode every spasm with delight till, finally, I was limp in her hands.

  “Baby, you are so thrilling to watch.”

  “I’m glad, darling,” I could barely catch the breath to make a sound. “You ... you ....”

  “I ... what?” she laughed quietly.

  “Tuckered me out,” I said.

  “That was the intention, baby.”

  “Mission accomplished.” I saluted her.

  “You need to sleep.”

  “And you, sir?”

  “What? Being fair?”

  “No!” I said adamantly. That was one of Shelby’s things that had made me nutsy cuckoo batshit crazy. “I thought you might sleep better as well.”

  “I might,” she admitted.

  “Fuck me, milord,” I requested. She gazed at me in silence. I offered her a winsome, “Won’t you please fuck me, milord? I need you.”

  She grinned. “As you wish, milady.”

  Raven laid me back against the pillows and drove home hard. I gasped and arched under her. Her orgasm was close to the surface, but far enough away that she assured that I came again with her. So thoughtful.

  “Baby,” she tucked me close against her side, “sleep. You need it.”

  I think I was asleep before she finished her sentence.

  You know how when you wake in the morning and you have a full bladder, and if your bedmate decides to have her wicked way with you first thing, it can be contradictory and confusing? I ached to come for her, and desperately wanted not to pee at the same time.

  “Milady, relax,” she laughed. “You won’t wet the bed.”

  You know, she was right, and the orgasm because of my full bladder was particularly resonant. That was probably the only way I would get her to spend any time in the kitchen with me, but she didn’t know that till I told her later. Regardless, she fucked me sweet first thing, and that is definitely a way to set up a whole day for easy and happy, not to mention healthy.

  We were in a cold snap but a late burst of summer was indeed on the books for Sunday so we ate a leisurely, warming breakfast of oatmeal before we left for Raven’s house. It would be the first time I’d get to see her side of it.

  Before we went, Raven recollected the salt water and went to fetch the bowl. The water had evaporated and the salt had wicked up the sides of the bowl.

  “Amazing,” she said. I walked it out to the porch and scattered the salt to the Earth to remove the negative feelings.

  Lucy glommed onto Raven the instant we walked in and raced her upstairs to do some little girl/daddy thing, but not before I recognized the distinct desire etched on Raven’s face to avoid the kitchen at all costs. I guessed that she’d been exposed to Gretchen’s party planning crazy.

  She did not warn me in any way though so I was a lamb to the slaughter for Gretchen’s ill-concealed panic. I vowed I’d make Raven pay. Partners warn their partners at the very least. She would never in a squillion years have sent one of her guys in to deal with Gretchen’s party insanity without warning them, and she should not have sent her femme in unsuspecting.

  Gretchen stood in her kitchen slightly demented and mumbling to herself as she contemplated the groceries that were needed to supply this barbeque. I’d hunted for her first thing, thinking that she’d have had time to scare herself over the biopsy.

  She was so preoccupied with making homemade potato salad and macaroni salad—and all the steps those two contain—that she’d barely gotten organized to get dressed. She, in fact, stood in the kitchen in baggy sweats and a wrinkled shirt that looked easily like she could have slept in them.

  “Gretchen! Good morning,” I said cheerily.

  She jumped clear out of her skin. Then she focused her eyes on me. “Oh, Verity, thank God.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I ..., It’s ..., there’s a lot....”

  “Overwhelmed?” I asked.

  She couldn’t even answer.

  “No worries. We’ll figure it out.” I was a great planner. “What’s on the menu?”

  “Homemade potato salad, homemade macaroni salad, Boston baked beans, green salad, your Moose, chips, hamburg
ers, hot dogs, and veggie burgers. Along with various libations.”

  “Let’s get it organized, shall we? I’ll make the Moose in Raven’s kitchen.” I grabbed the three aluminum pans, the meat, cheeses, onions, egg noodles, and tomato sauce jars. That made a lot more space on the table and counters. “You’re making homemade beans?”

  “Is there another kind?!” from an indignant Gretchen.

  “Forgive me,” I murmured. “Did you soak the beans last night?”

  “Overnight.”

  “Good. Do you make them in a slow cooker?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good, get that going. I’ll put water on for the potatoes, and for the macaroni. We’ll cook those first and drain them with cold water, so nothing sticks. Then you can make sauces while I cut potatoes.”

  “Are you always this organized?”

  “Always,” I smiled ruefully at Gretchen. “I was the oldest of four and the only girl. I did it in self-defense, Gretchen.”

  She laughed. “How long will it take to make Moose?”

  “An hour or so,” I said. “No worries. I’ll make Raven help me.”

  “Good luck with that,” she said.

  I answered mysteriously. “I have my ways, ma’am.”

  Gretchen rolled her eyes. “No doubt you do.”

  Sometime after one, Raven and Lucy walked into a humming kitchen. Water on the boil. Gretchen making sauces. Me stirring in an apron. “Lunchtime!” announced Lucy.

  I didn’t miss a beat. “Raven, darling, would you make Lucy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? And one for yourself? And then would you two be scarce till we need your help please?”

  Raven could hardly speak for trying not to laugh. Finally, she choked out, “Yes, ma’am.”

  I blew her a kiss.

  “Whatcha makin’?” Lucy stood right next to me.

  “Hey, baby girl,” I said.

  “Papa says you had to be brave again.”

  “Yes, I did,” I said softly.

  “Again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you get tired of it?”

  “No, why?”

  “Brave is hard.”

  “Not brave is harder,” I said.

  Raven grimaced at me. “Right you are, baby.”

  “Raven, when Lucy goes down for her nap, I need you to help me move some things to your kitchen, and to help me for a while. Would you be willing to do that?”

  “Yes, sweetheart. Whatever you need.”

  I couldn’t see her but I bet that some form of outrage covered Gretchen’s face.

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  “Time to kiss!” announced Lucy at the top of her lungs.

  I bent down and kissed her.

  “Not me, Lady! Papa!”

  “Ohhh,” I said. “You didn’t say.” I lifted my face for Raven’s kiss. Her lips brushed mine.

  “More!” yelled Lucy.

  Raven kissed me again.

  “More!” I started to giggle. Gretchen did not look at us.

  Raven kissed me more deeply.

  “More!”

  “I am not a sippy cup that you can throw on the floor, Lucy, and be guaranteed that someone will retrieve it.”

  Gretchen cracked up.

  “She wouldn’t stop, you know,” she said out of the side of her mouth.

  “Nana!” complained Lucy.

  “What?” said her nana with innocent eyes.

  “I heard that!” from her granddaughter.

  “Oh, gee,” said Gretchen in mock chagrin.

  “That’s enough, team. Nana and Lady have to work, work, work if you want to eat, eat, eat tomorrow. Out. Out. Out!” I shooed them both with a slatted spoon.

  “You are bossy, Verity,” said Gretchen admiringly.

  “Like I said, Gretchen, self-defense. Besides, if I don’t establish lines of authority now, those guys in the Butch Brigade will walk all over me. And that won’t work for me. So, bossy now means authority later.”

  “You have a point,” conceded Gretchen, “and, take it from one who knows, you’re right, they surely will.”

  It fell three o’clock before Lucy came down enough from her sugar high—whose idea was it exactly to lace commercial peanut butter with sugar and then add jelly, I ask you—to take a nap, and it would only do for Lady to put her down so Lady did, with Papa gazing on fondly, but also with a splash of alarm. It felt awfully domestic. Me in the kitchen cooking with the woman who amounted to be Raven’s may-as-well-be mother. Me putting her daughter down for a nap.

  Lucy clinched it when she said sleepily, “Lady, are you my new mama?”

  It was a very good thing I was sitting on the bed at that moment because otherwise I would have been sitting on the bed.

  “No, Luce, you only have one mama, and yours is Angie the Angel,” I said.

  Raven exhaled hard.

  “Papa’s going to marry you,” she persisted.

  Instead of prevaricating or some other distraction technique on a par with Look, there’s Halley’s Comet!, I told her the truth. “Yes, she is, but not soon, baby. Some day.”

  “I know,” she sighed happily. “I’m glad.”

  “Me, too, Luce,” I said as I rubbed her back until, a tick later, she fell sound asleep.

  We met Gretchen on the stairs intent on her own nap.

  “I’m beat, girls,” she said. I’m guessing that Gretchen is probably the only person alive who could get away with calling Raven a girl, but she at the very least had precedent on her side. She’d known Raven since she was a girl. “Naptime for Nana, too.”

  “Good, Gretchen. Thanks for cooking with me,” I smiled tiredly. “We’ll go over to Raven’s to make Moose. How long are you likely to sleep?”

  “A couple hours, like Lucy.”

  “Good. Dinner ought to be ready by 6:30. We’ll come get you,” I said. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Thanks, Verity.”

  Raven and I tiptoed down the stairs. She leaped the one that creaked to wake the dead, and lifted me over it, stealing a hard, wet kiss on the way down.

  “Thief,” I said without rancor.

  “On the contrary, milady, I had to, I’m in withdrawal. It’s been three hours since I’ve kissed you.”

  “How do you function at the office, doctor?” I asked coyly.

  “I fall into your picture and relive the last one.” She was telling the truth.

  “So sweet,” I murmured against her lips. “You touch my heart, Raven.”

  “More than that, I hope, milady,” she teased.

  “Sir! Not in your mother’s house.”

  “She’s not my mother,” Raven pointed out logically.

  “She may as well be,” I stated uncategorically. “She treats me like I’m potential daughter-in-law material.”

  Raven paled. “Did Lucy freak you out earlier?”

  “What?” We made our way toward the kitchen, and tonight’s ingredients. “Oh, the marriage thing? Or the mama thing?”

  “Um, both.”

  “Neither,” I answered. “What’s to freak me out? She’s right. You are going to marry me. And that could, if we want, make me her mama. But you’ve been saying from the start that Angie is her mama. I merely stayed with your policy. Take it from someone who had a father and three stepfathers, darling, that parents remarrying thing and dealing with loyalty issues because of it is effing confusing. I wouldn’t wish that on Lucy.”

  “You are a wise one, milady.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed, “but more, I am committed to doing my work. That means I learn from my mistakes, and hopefully, those of others so I don’t have to make those same mistakes.”

  Changing the subject, I gathered the Moose ingredients and piled them together into the pans. “Darling, will you take me home?”

  “Wow, that feels serious,” responded Raven.

  “I didn’t mean it that way, sweetie. We’ve used every pot in Gretchen’s kitchen, and her whole fridge is full to brimming. I need an open spa
ce to make Moose.”

  “I gather I’ve been drafted to help you.”

  “Oh, Raven, would you?” I asked beaming, as if the idea had been hers.

  “You are a wicked woman, Verity Spencer,” she accused, grinning at me.

  “So you say, good sir.” No ingénue had it going on better than I.

  Raven’s half of the house was furnished simply and efficiently. No frills, no furbelows, nothing that would make a house a home. The whole space was in desperate need of a woman’s, no, a femme’s loving touch. Mostly navy and grey. Barely any artwork. No evidence that someone lived there.

  “Is there laundry in the hamper upstairs?” I asked, standing in the center of the up-to-date kitchen. Stainless appliances (my least favorite), granite countertops. Every pan a cook could want, but no feeling of home.

  “I think so,” said Raven sounding quizzical.

  I opened the principally empty fridge wherein I discovered beer, a bottle of expensive champagne, and Goddess only knew what in numerous take-out containers that were too old to contemplate, plus the requisite basic condiments.

  “Garbage please,” I said into the fridge.

  She produced a stainless steel garbage can with a foot pedal, and I began to empty the fridge of its detritus.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve spent any time here, baby,” she said by way of explanation.

  “Raven,” I pulled my head out of the fridge, “is this refrigerator ever full, darling?”

  “When Gretchen throws a party,” dutifully truthful.

  “But not with groceries for you.”

  “Not unless I’m cooking for someone special.”

  “Like you,” I said.

  “No, baby, like you,” she contradicted.

  “Otherwise, it’s take-out and eating on the fly unless you partake in whatever Gretchen has made for herself and Lucy,” I postulated.

  “Um, yeah.” She was so cute, and her reticence was adorable.

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  I set her to getting rid of the garbage because once outside the cold of the fridge, its age began to tell and tell quickly. Then I opened the four pounds of ground sirloin, got out a cast iron skillet, and began to brown the meat.