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It doesn’t.

He slips free with a sharp exhale.

Wicker must right himself, but I don’t see it. I just hear the shuffle of fabric, and then the sound of the door opening as he leaves.

By the timeLex’s night rolls around, I’m all but marching for the exam room in the basement. Every cell of my body feels both overstimulated and totally exhausted. How strange to think the sexual experience I’m most eager for doesn’t include any sex at all.

I know there was a time that stripping off my clothes in this cold, sterile room made me shrink self-consciously in my own skin. Now, I can’t get them off fast enough, slipping out of my skirt and panties, shucking off my sweater and unclipping my bra.

My eyes are trained on the exam table, though. Just the sight of it is enough to make my belly twist excitedly, like some disgusted Pavlovian response. That table means pain and humiliation, but it also means pleasure, Lex’s velvety voice and dexterous fingers.

I’m just working up the nerve to climb onto it when Lex enters the room.

He’s dressed more casually than I’m used to. A plain white shirt is stretched over his broad chest, and his khakis look a little wrinkled at the thighs. His hair, still pulled back into the knot at the top of his head, looks somehow more untidy than usual. Looser. Once again, he’s wearing his glasses, the light flashing a reflection off the lenses when he steps closer, glancing at the empty exam table.

His amber eyes snap to where I’m standing beside it, meeting my stare for only the briefest moment before they drop, emotionlessly sizing up my naked body. His gaze settles on my breasts, pupils darkening as he yanks a pair of latex gloves from the box nestled in a compartment beside the door.

So, yeah, maybe he is into women.

“How many times yesterday?” he asks, pulling on a glove. It snaps loudly in the stillness of the room. “With Wicker.”

I shift my weight, reaching over my middle to clutch my elbow in a half-hug. “Six.”

Lex nods, pulling on the other glove as he approaches me. It’s hard to reconcile the man I sat next to at the hockey game with the one who attacked me in my bedroom that night. But this one? I can get close to it, almost like he’s halfway between the two poles. His jaw is tight, but the edge of violence isn’t visible in his eyes.

“He did this?” Lex reaches out, grazing two latex-covered fingertips over my hip bone.

Looking down, I realize there are faint bruises from the dresser. The table. The counter. The shelves. Wicker has yet to find an uncomfortably hard surface he’s unwilling to fuck me into from behind. “Yes,” I say through a dry throat, the sensation of Lex’s fingers making electricity zing into my center. “Some might be from his last day.”

Lex makes a low, pensive sound as he prods the flesh, but he’s not even looking at the bruises.

He’s still staring at my tits.

“Turn.” The quiet command is punctuated by a tap on my hip.

I shiver as I spin, stammering, “I-It’s only the front.” Wicker would have to actually face me to fuck my back into a table.

Only the moment I come to a rest, Lex is conspicuously silent behind me. Still. I don’t feel his fingers anymore, and the longer the quiet stretches on, the more some of that petrifying shyness begins prodding at my awareness.

I gulp.

Fingers graze my backside, and then, “Get on the table.”

It doesn’t make much sense, but for some reason, I feel more comfortable once I’ve laid back and placed my thighs and feet in the wide stirrups. Perhaps it’s the ritual of it, knowing that Lex has already seen these parts of me.

Unlike the other times, he doesn’t bother with the stool. He steps between my spread legs, eyes sweeping down my body until his gaze comes to rest on my vagina. Reaching out, he uses two fingers to spread my folds.

“Sore?” he asks, assessing my entrance with prodding fingertips. When I shake my head, he pushes two inside, bracing his other hand on my inner thigh when I buck toward it. “I’ve decided,” he says, burying the fingers to the knuckle, “that I’m going to have to make my deposits feel a little more organic.” His tone is even and clinical. “The syringes aren’t conducive to adequate arousal.”

“Okay,” I rush out, wetting my lips in anticipation. Organic–that means physical, doesn’t it? It means his own cock. It means Lex is finally going to fuck me.

He reaches for his pants and I’m ashamed at how excited I feel, heart racing at the knowledge I’m about to finally feel him inside. Will it be gentle? Rough? Will it be fast like Wicker, or slow like Pace? Will he still want me to look at him when he–

But instead of reaching for his zipper, he pulls something from his pocket.

It’s a small, flesh-colored dildo with a plunger at the bottom of the shaft. The tip of it has a hole, and he watches me as he presses it to my entrance.

Struggling to keep the plummet of disappointment off my face, I train my eyes to the center of his chest, Wicker’s words ringing in my memory.