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I had a feeling about my four o'clock.

Not the usual professional intuition that helped me navigate complex patient needs. This was something else entirely. A persistent buzz at the base of my skull that started the moment I read the intake form.

Julian Keller. Thirty-two. Insurance investigator. Presenting issues: Difficulty connecting with others. Anger management. Possible attachment disorder.

Standard stuff on paper. But something about the handwriting caught my attention.

It was too controlled. Each letter was perfectly formed.

The pressure was so intense it left ghost impressions on the pages beneath.

People with nothing to hide rarely wrote carefully enough to carve through three sheets.

"You're projecting again," I muttered, straightening the already perfect stack of journals on my bookshelf. My supervisor would crucify me for this. Dr. Vincent Matthews, PhD in psychology, reduced to analyzing handwriting like a carnival psychic with too many student loans.

But still. That feeling lingered.

I glanced at my watch. Three forty-five. Fifteen minutes until I met the man behind that fascinating handwriting. Fifteen minutes to center myself and remember my professional boundaries. Boundaries that had become increasingly important since The Todd Situation, as my friend Natalie called it.

The Todd Situation being my pathetic pattern of answering my narcissistic ex's two AM booty calls like the textbook anxiously attached disaster I was. A humiliating irony given that I literally wrote my dissertation on attachment disorders.

"Physician, heal thyself. Or at least stop fucking your ex." I sighed, absently stroking the leaves of Ferris Bueller, my favorite ivy. Unlike my patients, my plants required nothing but water, sunlight, and the occasional one-sided conversation about my poor life choices.

Ferris offered no judgment. Plants were wonderfully neutral that way.

My office was my sanctuary. Soft lighting, comfortable seating arranged for psychological safety without forced intimacy, plants strategically placed to add life without overwhelming the space. The room was designed to whisper, "you can tell me anything" without a word being spoken.

I sank into my chair and reviewed Julian Keller's paperwork again.

He was an insurance investigator. That tracked with the precise handwriting and attention to detail.

This was a profession requiring emotional distance but also interpersonal skills.

He would be someone who witnessed trauma but wasn't supposed to absorb it.

An interesting choice for a man self-reporting attachment issues .

The buzzer sliced through my office silence at exactly four o'clock. My stomach tightened. Punctuality. Another check in the "control issues" column of my mental assessment.

"Send him in, Amanda," I said into the intercom, standing to greet my new patient.

The door opened and oh.

Oh no.

He was gorgeous. My throat dried instantly.

He was devastatingly, catastrophically beautiful in a way that made my professional objectivity evaporate on contact.

His dark hair looked deliberately mussed, like he had been running his hands through it on the way over.

His piercing blue eyes caught the light like a predator's.

His jawline could cut glass. My pulse hammered against my ribs as if trying to escape.

But worse than the attraction was the wrongness that crawled up my spine. Some primal part of my brain screamed danger, even as the rest of me noticed how his henley clung to his chest. His body somehow broadcast threat and sex in equal measure, even in simple clothes.

Shit. This was not good. This was the opposite of good.

I extended my hand, with a professional smile firmly in place despite the alarm bells ringing in my head. "Mr. Keller? I'm Dr. Matthews. Please, have a seat."

He took my hand, and I instantly registered the calluses. Not office workers' hands. His grip was careful, calibrated. Like someone who knew exactly how much pressure would hurt and was deliberately staying just below that threshold.

My instincts sharpened. Insurance investigators didn't have hands like that. Those were hands that knew violence intimately .

"Julian, please," he said, and god, his voice. Low and slightly rough, with the ghost of an accent I couldn't quite place. Eastern European maybe? "Mr. Keller makes me sound like my father."

Father issues. That was something to note.

He settled into the couch across from me, immediately spreading his arms wide across the back cushions, crossing one leg over the other like he owned the place.

He took up more space than his frame required, a casual confidence bordering on territorial.

Julian acted like he wasn't just claiming my office, but everyone in it.

His eyes never left my face. My skin prickled under the attention.

The wrongness intensified. This wasn't how anxious patients sat. This was how predators sat. He was relaxed because they were the most dangerous thing in the room.

"So, Julian," I said, reaching for my notepad. "What brings you in today?"

His smile reminded me of wolves I'd seen at a wildlife sanctuary once. Beautiful, magnetic, and absolutely not to be trusted.

"Honestly? My boss thinks I need to work on my people skills."

Deflection. Humor as a defense mechanism. Shifting responsibility to an authority figure. All completely predictable.

So why was my heart racing?

"And what do you think? Do you agree with your boss's assessment?"

Julian's eyes narrowed slightly, and his head tilted in a way that reminded me of a predator recalculating. "I think people are generally disappointing, Dr. Matthews."

The way he said my name sent an unprofessional shiver down my spine. Heat and warning tangled together until I couldn't separate them.

Focus, Vincent. "You can call me Vincent if you'd like. ”

"Okay, Vince," he replied, investing that single syllable with intimacy that should be illegal in at least forty-seven states. "To answer your question, I don't think my people skills are the problem. I understand people perfectly. I just don't particularly like most of them."

I jotted down some notes. This appeared to be misanthropy as a defense mechanism with possible antisocial tendencies and definite narcissistic features.

"That's an interesting perspective," I said. "What about the people you do like? Friends, family, romantic partners?"

"Trying to determine if I'm a sociopath right out of the gate?

" He grinned, and it transformed his face completely.

Suddenly he looked younger, almost boyish.

The danger morphed from predatory to mischievous.

"I have friends. Not many, but they're ride-or-die types.

Family's complicated. And romance..." He shrugged one impressive shoulder. "I tend to want what I can't have."

His eyes locked with mine, and for a moment, I froze like a butterfly pinned to a collection board. Something hot and forbidden flared between us before I ruthlessly tamped it down.

"That's quite common, actually," I said, proud of how steady my voice remained. "Many people find themselves caught in cycles of pursuing unavailable partners. It often relates back to early attachment experiences."

"Oh, I'm sure it does," Julian replied with a smirk that suggested he knew exactly what I was doing.

"Would you mind sharing a bit about your family background?"

"Not much to tell." His tone suggested the topic was closed, yet somehow I knew pressing further would reveal just how impenetrable his walls truly were.

I made another note in my pad. This showed extreme resistance to personal disclosure and possible childhood trauma.

I studied him carefully, noting how his entire body language was engineered to appear open while revealing absolutely nothing of substance. "Whatever you're comfortable sharing is fine for now. Building trust takes time."

A momentary crack appeared in the carefully constructed facade. Then it was gone, replaced by that wolfish smile. "Life's difficult for everyone, isn't it? Some just handle it better than others."

I made another notation. He was displaying avoidance of emotional vulnerability and intellectualization of grief. This was classic alexithymia presenting as bravado.

"And how do you handle it, Julian?" I asked, my clinical curiosity warring with a decidedly unprofessional heat spreading through my chest.

He leaned back, regarding me with an intensity that made me feel exposed despite being fully clothed and supposedly the one in control of this conversation.

"I've got three options. Fight it, fuck it, or devour it.

" His gaze traveled deliberately down my body and back up while leaving a trail of imaginary fire on my skin.

"Sometimes a combination, depending on the situation. "

I’d let you eat me alive , I thought before I caught myself.

The blood rushed from my head so quickly I grew dizzy, pooling hot and insistent between my legs. I gripped my notepad tighter, knuckles whitening, to hide the visible tremor in my hands. "That's... quite a limited response repertoire."

His smile was pure sin. "I find most of life's problems fit into one of those categories. The trouble starts when I encounter something I can't deal with in those ways. That's when I don't know what to do with myself. "

I scribbled frantically in my notepad, using the moment to compose myself. These were aggressive coping mechanisms with hypersexuality as a deflection and possible violent tendencies.