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“Look,” said Shen, slurping the dregs of his coffee, “don’t worry too much about it. He’ll probably just make you read more case reports and then help him garden or something. That’s what he did with Parker.”
Samira can’t stop herself from frowning skeptically. “Is that what he did with you?”
Shen slurps some more, shrugs. “Oh, he did do that. But then he fucked the daylights out of me. Couldn’t walk straight for days after. But that’s ‘cause I asked him to.”
Samira feels her ears burn, and is grateful that her skin’s dark enough to hide it. Jesus. Shen smiles at her like he knows, anyway, but then a GSW’s rolling in and she’s distracted.
———
Heather’s not much help, either, although she’s more forthcoming than Shen. She’s in San Diego on a fellowship, and is probably busy, but she calls Samira later that evening anyway.
“Robby did me and Frank separately,” she’s saying as Samira settles on her shitty Wayfair couch. “With Frank, I think they just did, like, yard work or something, and then Frank gave him a blowjob while they watched a Pirates game.”
“Oh,” says Samira, and fails completely to keep an image of Frank, disheveled and pink, kneeling at Robby’s feet while he —
“And then with me,” Heather says, breaking Samira’s daydream, “I think he felt … you know? Since we’d been together and then broken up. So he just booked me a hotel room and told me to nap and max out room service for the day. It was great, but honestly, I was kind of hoping he’d do something a little more …. you know. Because he’s a dick, yeah, but god his actual dick —“
“Ok!” says Samira, cutting her off, “Thank you!”
Heather laughs, delighted and carefree and wonderful, and Samira can’t begrudge her. Still. Not that helpful..
———
Everyone else she asks has some version of the same story, though one mortifying conversation with Garcia later makes her incredibly glad she’d never gone into surgery. Shamsi is apparently into human furniture. She mentions it obliquely to Victoria, who gets such a haunted look on her face that Samira vows never to discuss it with her again.
She doesn’t know why she feels especially anxious. Everyone knows this is part of the Senior Resident job: twelve hours in the service of your supervising attending. If anything, she should be more relaxed, since Robby’s about to go on sabbatical, so he’d said no. She’s not sure how she would have handled that. Instead, she gets Dr. Abbot, someone whom she knows, with whom she has a relationship best categorized as friendly, and on whom she has a truly raging crush.
She’s fairly certain she’s managed to keep it under wraps, or at least off his radar. She has no illusions about getting anything past the nurses. But Dr. Abbot doesn’t seem to notice, at least, just treats her with the same kind attention he always has. He always pays when they go out to their journal club breakfasts, always listens to her thoughts on the paper they ostensibly mean to discuss, before turning to shameless gossip. She’s never been to his house, but he’s invited her, probably just to be polite. They’re friends, and she genuinely enjoys being his friend.
So she shouldn’t be so worried, really. It’s just that she’s torn between excitement that this, at last, might finally get him to put his hands on her, and fear that this will ruin what they have irreparably.
She agonizes over it, and worries, and frets, and doesn’t do anything about it until it’s a week before and she and Abbot are sitting down to their usual post-shift breakfast and he fixes her with one of those piercing, inescapable looks, and says, “So. Should we talk about it?”
He asks this just as she’s taking a sip of ice tea, and she only barely manages to keep herself from spraying tea all over the table, and him. He just watches her as she coughs, a faint smile on his face, cheeks a little redder than usual. When she’s not actively dying, she answers.
“What’s there to talk about?”
He gives her another look, one of his patented why-are-you-trying-to-bullshit-me looks, and she squirms a little. “I’m serious. Isn’t the whole thing sort of … your decision?”
He smiles one of those crinkly not-smiles. “Well yeah. But I’d like to know what you’re expecting.”
So they’re talking about this. This is fine. She can do this. “Parker said you just made her mow your lawn.”
She’s proud of herself for how cool and normal she sounds. Just a regular conversation with her handsome attending-slash-friend. Happens every day. No one’s ever had a more normal conversation, actually.
“That’s true,” he says, voice even, “I did.”
There’s a pause, like he’s waiting for her to say more, but when she can’t seem to think of what to say, he speaks again. “Did you ask John what he did?”
“Yeah,” she says, and her voice is hoarse, “yeah, I did.”
“And?” He leans forward, arms braced on the table. His eyes are dark, intense.
“And what?” she says. She doesn’t want to commit to anything, to betray anything, before he does.
He looks at her for a beat, and then another, and then he leans back. She leans forward, helplessly following. “I know the point of the day is that I get to decide what it looks like. But the real purpose is to build trust between the senior resident and their attending. It has to be something you also benefit from.”
She abruptly thinks of Shamsi’s naked human coffee tables, and some of her skepticism must show on her face because he crooks a smile. “Not everyone feels that way. But I feel that way. Parker wanted to be helpful, but didn’t want to be touched, so that’s what we did. John wanted to feel useful, so we did that. You get to decide what the parameters are, and I’ll fill in the rest.”
It feels so reasonable when he lays it out, but there’s a thrumming energy under the surface, unspoken but impossible to ignore. The possibilities are overwhelming. She can’t …
“I guess I don’t totally know what my options are,” she says. Confesses, really.
“Well,” he says, taking a sip of coffee, “it’s a spectrum. On one end you have the Parker experience. And then somewhere in the middle you have John.”
He pauses, expectantly. He wants her to ask. She squirms a little in her seat and his eyes track the movement, like a hawk.
She caves. “And what’s on the other end of the spectrum?”
“Well,” he says, leaning forward. His eyes are very very dark as they dip down to her lips. “It’s more … full service.”
“Oh,” she says faintly, and he smiles that crooked half smile.
Just as it feels like something is about to spill over, he leans back, breaking the moment. “So, Dr. Mohan,” he says, cool as can be, “what’ll it be?”
———
She gets to his house at nine o’clock in the morning the following Saturday. It’s a lovely little craftsman in Shadyside, pale green with dark wood trim and stained glass in the front windows. It’s charming. It feels like him.
It feels even more like him when he lets her inside. Everything’s warm, comfortable without being cluttered. Overstuffed couches, bookshelves everywhere, warm sconces lighting up the entryway. She takes it all in before she lets herself look at him, because she knows she won’t be able to look at anything else once she does.
And she’s right. As soon as she turns to him, she knows it’s over for her. She never sees him outside of work, despite his invitations, and she’s glad now that she hadn’t before; her crush would have been visible from space. He’s in a tight black t-shirt that’s doing obscene things for his arms, and soft grey sweatpants, slung low on his hips. He looks unfairly good, relaxed and confident, and —
He coughs, a little theatrically, and her eyes fly back to his face. “Oh god.”
He just laughs, and ushers her further in to the house. He gets her seated at his tall kitchen island, slides a glass of water over to her, and then leans down on his elbows across from her. “So,” he says, like they’re discussing the weather, “any questions, before we get started?”
She has a dozen that she wants to ask — is he sure, was this the right choice, does he want this, has he done this with anyone else — but none that she can ask, so she shakes her head.
“Alright,” he says, a little amused, like he can hear everything she’s not saying, “then I’d like you to go to the bedroom, take off your clothes, fold them neatly, and come out to the living room when you’re ready.” He turns to go, then pauses. “And Samira? Call me Jack.”
———
When she’d told Abbot — Jack — that she wanted the “full service” option, he’d looked genuinely shocked for a moment. His eyes had gone wide and his ears had turned pink and his mouth had opened and closed a few times. It had been weirdly confidence-boosting actually, the idea that he might not feel as neutrally about her as she’d feared.
Then he’d recovered himself, and given her one of those cocky smiles that made her blood heat. “Alright,” he’d said, “that’s all I need from you. I’ll do the rest.”
He hadn’t told her anything else, had just texted her his address and told her when he’d like her to show up. She’d been quivering with anticipation all week, trying to imagine what he’d do, what she’d want him to do. Her usual bedtime masturbation sessions went from perfunctory and a bit time-consuming to lushly detailed and embarrassingly fast. She’d wanted, desperately, to ask Shen for more information, but also couldn’t bring herself to talk about it at all. Every time someone had asked her how she was feeling about it, she’d laughed it off and looked for someone having a medical emergency, which, in the emergency department, was easy to find.
But now here she is, in Jack Abbot’s bedroom, getting ready to spend twelve hours following his lead. It’s weirdly relaxing, now that she’s here. She doesn’t have to make any decisions. She trusts him to take care of her. All she has to do is take care of him in return. She mostly just hopes she doesn’t have to do yard work naked.
She strips off her clothes and folds them neatly in a pile on a chair he’s got near the bed. There’s a dark patch in the gusset of her panties, and she really hopes Jack has stain-resistant upholstery, because she’s already a bit of a mess.
When she comes out of the bedroom and pads over to the living room, the air is chilly —it’s late June in Pittsburgh, muggy and hot, and the AC and the ceiling fans are on. It makes her shiver, just a little.
Jack’s waiting for her in the living room when she gets there, sitting on his leather sofa, head propped up on his hand as he leans against the side. He’s reading something, but looks immediately when she reaches the threshold, and then he just …. looks at her.
His eyes trace down her, lingering on her collarbones, her breasts, her peaked nipples. He traces the curve of her stomach and hips and she feels it like a physical caress. He spends a long time looking at the thatch of hair between her thighs; she’d trimmed it that morning in the shower, but she doesn’t shave, doesn’t mind keeping it full. From the look on his face, he doesn’t mind either.
Once he’s finished his perusal, he looks back at her face and his eyes are dark, heated. His ears are tinged pink. He jerks his head towards the armchair that faces the couch. “Have a seat.”
She sits gingerly on the edge of the leather armchair until Jack rolls his eyes. “Sit, Samira. Legs apart.”
She sits herself back, settling into the chair. It’s absurdly comfortable, of course. She tries not to feel self-conscious about the smear of wetness she’s leaving behind. His eyes are locked on her cunt.
Jack watches her for a moment, silent, and just as she’s about to say something, to ask what she should be doing, he says, in the same voice he uses when he’s instructing someone in the OR, calm and collected and unaffected, “Touch yourself.”
“I —sorry?” He’d said it so casually that she thinks that she maybe misheard.
He smiles, a little sharply. “I don’t usually have to repeat myself with you. Touch yourself, Samira.”
Her whole body heats up at the firmness of his tone. Her toes are tingling. He doesn’t look away, doesn’t say anything else. Just waits.
Well. Her nerves are going haywire, but she did actually ask for this. Had touched herself to the idea of this very scenario just last night. She’d come so fast, imagining his eyes on her, just watching. She’s never masturbated for an audience, but she thinks she can make an exception for him.
She trails a hand down her side, tries to make it showy, make it interesting, but he quirks an eyebrow at her and says, “I’m not asking you to put on a show. I just want you to touch yourself.”
She huffs, exasperated, and his eyes crinkle with a hint of fondness before his face goes stern again. “I’m serious. Just touch yourself the way you usually do. You do touch yourself, don’t you, Samira?”
“Obviously,” she says, feeling a little indignant. She’s not a child.
“Well,” he says, tone even, “then you should know what to do.”
He settles into the couch, eyes drifting back down to her cunt, and she feels herself go a little dizzy at the attention. She reaches right down, slipping two fingers between her folds, and god she’s wet. The sound is obscene. There’s almost no friction, just a slippery slide. She gets her fingers sopping wet, then trails them up to her clit, and then she just goes for it, does her usual efficient circles around her clit, never quite touching. The orgasm doesn’t take long to come to the surface; she’s so keyed up, so wet. Her legs spread wider, involuntarily, and she leans back, tucking her face into her shoulder. She’s making little sounds now, short puffs of breath and cut-off little grunts, and she’s so, so close, and then the peak is right there, and then —
“Ok,” says Jack, “you can stop now.”
She stops, even though her whole body is screaming at her to keep going. She’s panting like she’s run a marathon. “Jack —“
“Go to the kitchen and get yourself a drink of water, eat one of the yogurt cups in the fridge, and then come back,” he says, picking up the sheaf of papers he was reading before.
“Jack,” she says, annoyed, even as she gets to her feet.
“Go on,” he says, not even looking up.
She deliberately walks in front of him, edging between him and the coffee table, and it’s stupidly inconvenient, but it’s worth it for the way his eyes lock onto her glistening thatch of hair, right at his eye level.
She gets a glass of water, cool from the fridge door, and she hadn’t realized how parched she’d become, but she drinks it down, then refills it. The yogurt cups are neatly stacked at the front of the fridge, and she’s amused to discover that Jack buys the same brand and flavor that she always gets. She scarfs it down, drinks some more water, and heads back to the living room. She comes back in just as Jack is setting down the papers he’d been reading, and he gestures her over to the couch.
“Found an article I thought you might like,” he says, “reminded me of the pelvic fracture you stabilized last week.”
“Oh,” she says, “thanks?”
“Come on,” he says, patting the cushion next to him, “give it a read.”
She looks at him a bit skeptically but sits, accepting the article when he hands it to her. It’s already got notes in the margins in his familiar spiky handwriting. She starts to read when he stops her with a hand on her shoulder.
She gasps. It’s the first time he’s touched her all day and she feels it like an electric jolt running all the way through her. He gives her a crinkly smile like he knows what she’s feeling. Then, he gets a hand around the ball of her shoulder, huge and hot, and he’s pressing her sideways and back.
“Lie back, sweetheart,” he says, and his voice is gravely and fond, a departure from the cool calmness of earlier. It makes her head spin.
She gets herself reclined, head pillowed on the plush armrest, and he scoops her legs up into his lap. It’s so … cozy, so lovely and domestic, and it feels, somehow, more exposing than her masturbation session in the chair.
“Go on,” he says, and she obeys.
It is a fascinating read, and she’s halfway through the methods section when he pushes one of her legs onto the floor and lifts the other one onto the back of the couch, spreading her wide. She startles, lowering the papers, but he just smiles placidly at her and lifts her arms up, letting the article block her field of view. She gets the hint, and tries to concentrate, but soon there’s a big hand tracing up the inside of one of her thighs, and then there’s rustling, the sounds of someone shifting their weight, and then —
“Jack,” she says on a gasp as a hot tongue licks its way up her folds to her clit.
“Shh,” he says, “keep reading.”
She shifts, helplessly, and one of his arms comes down to pin her hips. “And hold still,” he says, and bites gently at her inner thigh, and then he just … goes to town.
If she’d had to put money on it, she would have bet that Jack Abbot would be an excellent eater. He has the sort of confidence that comes from knowing his way around a body, and he’s always doing things with his mouth — sucking on straws, biting his lip, bringing his fingers to his mouth when he’s thinking. So it shouldn’t be a surprise, really, but it’s still shocking, somehow, how good it is.
He’s eating her out for his own pleasure, chasing the taste of her. He sucks at her clit, but when that makes her especially keyed up he backs off, focusing on her lips, her entrance. He’s making contended little hums of enjoyment.
Samira’s trying so hard to be good, to read the article and not move around too much, but he’s so distracting. At one point she reaches down, unthinking, and grabs a handful of his curls and he grunts in surprise but lets her keep her hand there, groans when she tugs.
She loses time, for a while, hovering at the edge of something that she can’t quite get to, and that she’s not sure she wants to. It could be minutes, or hours; she’s just floating in a haze of arousal. It’s weirdly relaxing, until she feels a blunt finger at her entrance, slipping in, and suddenly everything feels urgent.
Jack rubs his nose on her clit once, twice: a deliberate provocation. “It’s ok,” he says, and his voice is hoarse, used and scratchy, “you can come when you’re ready, sweetheart.”
She’s not sure what it is — the finger, the stimulation at her clit, or maybe his words — but that is it, she’s done. She falls over the edge. She’s pretty sure the article goes flying but she’s senseless to anything but the pleasure of finally coming, of clenching down on Jack’s gloriously thick finger.
She comes back to herself a moment later and sees Jack, smugly disheveled, still lying between her legs, watching her cunt as it gives its last spasms around his finger. “Very nice,” he says with a smile, and then he’s slipping a second finger into her, stretching her just past the point of comfort, a lovely burn.
He hums thoughtfully, watching her face as she pants. “Yeah,” he says again, and looks back down. “Can’t wait to play more with this later. For now, though,” he says, and pulls her to her feet. She falls into him, legs wobbly, and he laughs. “Let’s have some lunch.”
———
At first Samira thinks he’s bringing her to the kitchen for a preposterously early lunch, but then boggles at the microwave clock. “It’s twelve-thirty?” she says, mystified. She just got here.
Jack laughs at her, then shoves her gently down into a seat at the kitchen table before busying himself by the fridge. “I don’t let my senior residents starve, Dr. Mohan. Grilled cheese?”
“I — yes?” She’s not really sure what’s happening. Her brain is still mostly liquid, and the chair is cold against her bare cunt, and —
Jack puts a new glass of water next to her, breaking her out of her haze. “You’re cute. But drink up. We’ve got plans later.”
“Do we?”
The look he gives her at that is heated and fond in equal measure. “We do,” he says, and then reaches down and pets her clit, sudden and shocking. She slumps in the chair with a gasp, and he grins, big and boyish.
The grilled cheese is probably exceptional. She doesn’t taste it at all. She does eat it — or rather, it’s fed to her while she sits sideways on Jack’s lap. He’s bringing small bites to her mouth with one hand, and the other hand plays with her nipples, plucking them, rolling them between his fingers. He’s dropping kisses up and down her neck, biting and licking, testing her reactions. Her nakedness feels equal parts thrilling and mundane at this point; she loves the contrast with his own clothes, but she also feels totally comfortable. Plus the feeling of his hands on her…
“God,” he says at one point, almost to himself, “you’re so —“
He cuts himself off and feeds her another piece. She hums around the fingers in her mouth. She feels completely relaxed, somehow, even as he’s keeping her aroused. She thinks it’s because she’s ceded all control to him. He decides what they do next. She doesn’t have to worry.
If it were anyone else, she thinks, it wouldn’t work. Imagining doing this with Robby nearly makes her gag. But it’s Jack — lovely, clever Jack, who talks about case reports and brings her coffees and teaches her insane maneuvers from his combat hospital days — and so it’s easy. She trusts him.
———
Time floats for a bit. They finish lunch and he sends her back into the living room while he cleans up. She’s pretty sure the point of this whole process is for the resident to do the work; that’s why the AMA instituted it in the early twentieth century, anyway. But she’s not complaining. She feels boneless and relaxed, sinking into the couch cushions, lightly dozing as she listens to the sounds of Jack in the kitchen.
She’s jostled back to full wakefulness as Jack’s climbing onto the couch and hauling her around so that he’s on his back and she’s sprawled half on top of him. He yanks a blanket off the back of the couch, a soft knit cotton, and wraps it around them both, and then settles her against him. “Nap time,” he says, and the feel of his fingers combing through her hair and down her spine lulls her to sleep.
Samira doesn’t usually nap — never feels like she has the time on her limited days off. She can never quite relax enough to sleep in on-call rooms, either. But here, with Jack underneath her, steady and steadying, she drifts off.
She wakes up some time later on a groan, hips moving restlessly, seeking friction. She’s not sure what woke her up until she feels something prodding her entrance, and realizes that Jack’s already got one finger hooked into her from behind, is slipping another in.
“There we go,” he says, and his voice is low, a bit scratchy.
She hums, mouthing at his neck, and he pulls her more tightly against him.
“Did you sleep at all?” she says into his collarbone.
“Not really,” he says, and there’s a smugness to his voice, a satisfied purr. “I was playing with my new toy, mostly.”
The toy, of course, is her; he reminds her of this by wiggling the fingers inside her, making her gasp into his shoulder and rut up against his thigh.
“That’s it,” he says, and bends his knee a little, giving her more of an angle to grind against, “go on.”
The friction of her bare cunt against his pants is electric, just the right side of too scratchy, and she’s in that hazy half-awake space where her reflexes are dulled but her nerve endings are oversensitive. She clumsily starts to rock her hips against his thigh, driven by sensation more than any conscious thought. Everything feels easy and instinctive.
He’s stroking his free hand up and down her spine under the blanket, murmuring little encouragements into her hair, and the hand that’s still inside her is acting as an anchor, a fixed point for her to settle herself against.
Her orgasm, when it comes, is easy, a natural swoop of sensation. She shudders against him, mouthing at his neck, and he drops a gentle kiss to her hair. “Good girl,” he says, and it sounds nearly absent-minded, like he’s speaking to himself. “So good for me.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs, sounding punch-drunk, and right before the pull of exhaustion takes her again she has the wherewithal to say, slurred with sleepy pleasure, “wanna taste you next.”
She’s out before she hears his reply.
———
The next time she wakes, she’s alone on the couch, tucked under another blanket and head pillowed on one of the preposterous velvet throw pillows Jack seems to be fond of. The sun is low outside the curtains now, slanting in along the floorboards. She snuggles into the blankets before stretching indulgently, limbs everywhere.
She can’t remember the last time she tried to nap, let alone succeeded. Maybe it’s the nakedness, which by now has faded into background awareness. It’s nice, even, not being constricted by clothes as she lounges. Maybe it’s the warmth of the day, seeping into the house from the big bay windows. Or maybe it’s just Jack, steady and thrilling in equal measure. He’s both entirely like the version of him she’s come to know in the context of work, and also something new. The fact that he’s coached her through several glorious orgasms feels totally in keeping somehow, competent and confident and thoughtful.
She’s just raising herself up on one elbow, blankets falling to her waist as she pushes hair out of her face, when Jack appears from the kitchen holding a cup of tea and a plate of something. “Hello, sleepyhead,” he says with fondness as he gets closer, and she realizes that he’s assembled a plate of cookies that look distinctly …
“Did you make these?” she says, and winces when she hears how dubious she sounds.
But Jack just laughs and crouches down in front of her to hand her one. “They’re edible, I promise,” he says as she takes a bite.
They’re more than edible. “Oh god,” she says, reaching for a second.
He laughs at her as she chews, and sweeps a hand gently through her hair. “Sleep well?”
She lets her head fall into his hand a little, like a cat, and hums as she finishes her second cookie. “Yeah. How long was I out?”
He trails his big palm down the side of her neck and down her arm. “Does it matter?”
She startles for a moment before she realizes that it really doesn’t. She’s at his disposal. He’ll tell her if she needs to know. It’s bizarrely relaxing. She smiles. “No, I don’t think it does.”
“Good girl,” he says, and she can’t keep herself from shivering, just a little. His smile turns sharp and his gaze dips down to where her nipples are hardening under his attention.
“Didn’t get to taste these earlier,” he says, almost to himself, and bends over to take one into his mouth, humming with pleasure. A hand comes up to play with the other, rolling and pinching at one nipple while he suckles and bites at the other. Her body rushes headlong into full arousal, zero to sixty in half a second, and she’s flopping back down on the couch, one hand gripping his curls as she gasps and writhes.
“That’s it,” he says into her skin. She can feel his lips curled up in a smile.
She can’t keep back a moan at that, at how tender and pleased he sounds. It’s overwhelming, being at the center of all that focused attention. It’s intoxicating, how indulgent he’s being with her. He hasn’t even —
Her brain stutters as she realizes. He hasn’t come, not once. Hasn’t even seemed like he’d be interested. She thinks about the thought she’d had, right before falling asleep, about getting to taste him next time, and the thought is so deliciously enticing that she gasps out, “Wait, Jack, hold on.”
Everything stops. He pulls back abruptly, looking worried, and runs a hand through his hair. Her nipples ache with the loss. “Fuck, Samira, I’m sorry, I —“
“No,” she says, and it’s almost a whine, “no, don’t stop, please, I just —“
He tucks a curl behind her ear. “What’s wrong? What do you need? What —“
“Jack,” she says sharply, cutting him off, “everything’s fine. I just wanted —“
She’s not sure why she feels suddenly shy about this. She’s naked on his couch, completely at his disposal, because that’s what she asked for. It’s ok to ask for one more thing. She leans her head into his hand. “I wanted to taste you.”
Samira’s never encountered another person who manages to strike such an effective balance of heated and fond in their gaze, but Jack excels at it. His whole face softens even as his eyes heat up, and he slides his hand down to grip her neck, thrilling and gentle.
“Oh honey,” he says, delighted and syrup-slow, “do you really?”
His other hand starts to trail up her leg, tracing the whorl of her knee and slowly creeping up to her core. She lets her legs fall open in invitation, but tries to stay on task. “Yeah,” she says — gasps, really, as his hand cups her, big and hot — “yeah, I really do, I — oh.”
He’s got two big fingers in her now. She can hear how wet she is, how easy it is for him to fuck her on them, a slow pump in and out that lets the meat of his palm press deliciously on her clit. She can feel an orgasm building, just out of reach.
“Use your words, Samira,” he says, and it takes her a second to remember what they were talking about. “Ask for what you want.”
She groans as he slips a third finger in and bends down to take a nipple into his mouth. “Jack,” she gets out on a gasp, “Jack, I want to — oh — can I —“
The orgasm is closer now; she can feel herself starting to shake. Jack hums against her breast and the vibrations travel straight down to her core.
“Please,” she says, “let me — let me, I wanna —“
She reaches out blindly, groping for his waistband, but he grabs her hand, bringing it up to his mouth for a kiss. “Not yet, sweetheart.”
The endearment, the gentle kiss, the inexorable pressure of three fingers inside her — it’s all too much. She gets out half a token protest before she’s falling over the edge, gripping his hand like a vise as she comes.
He’s dropping kisses to her wrist as she comes down, murmuring little compliments into her skin. “Such a good job,” he’s saying, “thank you.”
Once she catches her breath, though, she remembers what she’d wanted. “Jack,” she tries again, “I want —“
“I know,” he says, withdrawing his fingers gently, and bringing them up to her mouth, cutting off her next words by thrusting them in, making her taste herself. She reflexively sucks on them, and he smiles.
“Thank you,” he says, like she’s done him a favor. She frowns at him and he laughs. “You’re cute,” he says, and she ignores the flutter in her stomach at that — it seems ridiculous to be flustered by that when he’s just fucked her with his hand — as he keeps talking. “But I get to decide how this day goes, don’t I?”
He waits for her to nod, and gives her an approving smile. “Exactly. And so when I say ‘not yet,’ I mean it. You’ll have to be patient.”
She huffs, and he laughs, indulgent and fond, and then he’s helping her up. “Come on,” he says, kissing the crown of her head, “I think it’s bath time.”
———
By the time her bath is over, Samira is oscillating between total boneless relaxation and an increasingly frantic sexual and emotional frustration. Jack had drawn her a gloriously sumptuous bath, oils and bubbles and candles, the whole nine yards, and had sat himself down on the toilet to watch her soak. And then he’d made her touch herself in the water, watching as she came again, making the water splash over the edge as she kicked her legs, soaking his feet, and then he’d once again refused to let her return the favor.
She can see that he’s hard, a promisingly thick line in his sweatpants, the hint of a fat tip against his thigh that’s making her mouth water, but he won’t let her do anything about it, just calmly smiles and reminds her that he’s in charge, and that he’ll decide when — “or if, Samira” — she’ll be allowed to.
It’s infuriating and also the hottest thing that’s ever happened to her. It’s not that she doesn’t date; she does, or at least she tries to. She’s not sexually repressed, even if she’s not particularly active. The last time she’d taken someone home had been maybe six months ago and they’d eaten her out very competently before sitting on her face so she could return the favor. She’d enjoyed it.
But this — she’s not sure how she’ll be able to go back to anything approaching normal after this. She doesn’t think she’d want this kind of full-service nakedness all the time, but the care that Jack’s giving her, the attention? It’s heady. She already feels herself getting addicted to it. She thinks she’d feel that way if she wasn’t already halfway in love with Jack, but once you factor in the crush, she’s a total goner.
She’s almost angry with him, as he bundles her in a towel and rubs her down with lotion before herding her towards the kitchen. He sits her down in a chair and produces a bottle of hair oil and a brush from somewhere, and then begins to brush her hair. Her brain is liquifying but the thread of anger, or frustration, or whatever it is, is still there. How dare he take such good care of her, when he knows she has to leave in — she checks the clock. She only has three hours left.
She tells herself, as he leaves her, boneless and relaxed, to go putter around by the counter, to grow up, and to take the day for what it is: a surprisingly relaxing session with her incredibly handsome sort-of-boss, which will serve as masturbatory fodder for, oh, the next sixty years or so. Give or take. If she doesn’t get anything more than this, this is already more than she’d ever thought she’d get. It’ll be fine.
She reminds herself of this again when he puts down a big plate of —
“Is that french toast?” she says — blurts out, really.
It’s gorgeous french toast — thick slices of challah cut into bite-sized pieces, perfectly custardy and golden. A little bowl of syrup and one of jam sits on the plate.
“Yeah,” he says, “now come here.”
Before she’s totally processed what’s happening, he’s lifted her bodily up, slid himself underneath her in the chair, and then arranged her gently on top of his lap, legs to the side. She can feel the bulge of his erection beneath her, not quite at full hardness but alert. She squirms a little and he clamps a hand down onto her waist. “Stay still,” he says, biting a kiss into her shoulder, “and open up.”
He feeds her little pieces of french toast off a fork, kissing up and down her neck. At one point, she realizes he hasn’t eaten anything, and there’s a slightly awkward scuffle of limbs before she gets the fork from him and spears a piece to bring to his mouth.
She means it to be a little teasing, kind of a joke, but when his lips close around the fork while he keeps his eyes on hers, heated and intent, it doesn’t feel like a joke at all. She licks her lips, reflexively and his eyes dip down to her lips. She realizes, suddenly, that they haven’t kissed at all. She realizes, suddenly, that she wants to kiss him, very badly.
As soon as he swallows, she swoops in, planting a hard kiss on his lips. He freezes beneath her.
“Shit,” she says, pulling back and starting to scramble to her feet, “I’m sorry, I thought —“
“Hey,” he says, and his hand clamps around her waist, keeping her in his lap, “hey, no, it’s ok.”
“It’s not,” she says, and she feels … stupid maybe. Or just embarrassed. Typical Samira, misreading the vibe.
“It is,” he says, insistent. “Just — hold on.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Samira,” he says, making sure she meets his eyes, “I promise it’s fine. I just — let me clean up dinner, ok? Wait for me in the bedroom.”
He lifts her gently, depositing her on her feet, and grabs the plate, walks jerkily to the sink. He doesn’t look at her. Samira feels, for the first time all day, acutely aware of her nakedness, her vulnerability. She thinks, absurdly, that she might cry.
She ducks out of the kitchen and is halfway down the hall to the bedroom when she hears a clatter and a muffled, frustrated “Fuck.”
She stands in the bedroom, at a loss. Part of her brain is screaming to get her clothes back on, to leave, and the other part is reminding her firmly that she’s contractually obligated to stay. She doesn’t know what to do, so she doesn’t do anything, just stands helplessly in the middle of the room until Jack comes in.
He looks relieved to see her. “Fuck,” he says, “I was worried you’d leave.”
She frowns. “I can’t leave.”
He frowns back. “We both know I wouldn’t enforce that.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t —“
“Samira,” he says, cutting her off, and then huffs, frustrated. He comes around her and sits on the bed. “Look,” he says, looking anxious, “I have to tell you something.”
She feels abruptly nervous. She’s failed this, she’ll never be senior resident, she’ll be forced out of the program, she’ll —
“I’m in love with you,” says Jack, all in a rush, and her brain stutters to a stop.
“What?” she says faintly.
He looks chagrined. “Fuck. I told myself I wouldn’t say anything. I just — I didn’t —“
“What?” she says, feeling hysterical, “What, you thought you’d just, I don’t know, fuck me and never tell me?”
He looks sheepish. “I, uh, wasn’t going to fuck you.”
“Why not?” She hates how whiny she sounds, but honestly.
“I just wanted you to — to have a relaxing day. To feel good.”
She feels, for the first time in a long time, actually speechless. It’s — it’s so Jack, somehow, that he’d engineer a whole day of relaxation for her, and in retrospect that’s what it had been. The naps, the bath, the endless orgasms, the homemade comfort food. He’d baked her cookies. It’s also the stupidest thing she’s ever heard.
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she says.
He frowns. “Hey —“
The anxious fear is ebbing away now, replaced by something ebullient and ridiculous. She feels like laughing, so she does, a bright bubbly thing. She feels like getting closer to him, so she does, straddling his lap before he can protest. She feels like kissing him, and so she finally, finally does.
She doesn’t let him pull away this time. She gets a hand in his hair and another around his jaw, and does her best to pour everything she’s feeling into the kiss. His hands grip her waist, helplessly, and he makes a soft noise underneath her. She bites his lip and he makes the noise again, a rumbling whine. She grins.
She pulls away, just a little, and takes in his dazed expression. “Jack,” she says, “you’re an idiot.”
He still looks a little befuddled, but he smiles at that, the cocky smirk that he gets when he’s teasing. “Well, I knew that,” he says, and tugs her back in.
She pulls away again some time later, catches sight of his alarm clock on the nightstand. “Jack,” she says, then tugs at his hair when he tries to dip back in. “Jack, focus.”
He bites kisses down her neck. “I’m focusing,” he says, into her collarbone.
“Jack,” she sighs, “Jack, wait.”
He pulls back abruptly at that, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong, what —“
“Stop fretting,” she says, “I just noticed something.”
“What’s that?” He runs his hands up and down her waist, pulling her into his erection.
“It’s nine o’clock,” she says, and he freezes.
“Oh?” He says it very casually.
“Twelve hours are up,” she says, keeping her tone even, “I don’t have to do what you say anymore.”
“That’s true,” he says. He hasn’t let go of her.
She dips down to plant a quick peck on his lips before pulling away again. “What if … what if you did what I said?”
He smiles a crinkly smile at her. “Well, fair’s fair.”
She nods. “Exactly.”
“Alright,” he says, “what do you want me to do?”
“Well,” she says, and pushes him back on the bed. “I’ve got a list.”