Page 75 of Theirs to Desire (Club M: Boxed Set)

AVERY

I get to Georgetown University Hospital on Friday at eleven, an hour earlier than the workshop start time. I’m met by a smiling young woman. “Hello, Dr. Welch,” she greets me. “I’m Lois Anakotta, Ms. Wadsworth’s assistant.”

“Good to meet you,” I reply. “I know I’m early, but I thought I’d play it safe, just in case the room isn’t ready.”

She grins. “In case we dropped the ball, you mean. I set the room up the way Dr. Hakimi likes it, but if you need anything else, please do let me know.” She signs me in and sets me up with a visitor pass, and then gets to her feet. “I’ll show you the conference room.”

I follow her through a maze of corridors and detour signs. “Parts of the hospital are under construction,” she says over her shoulder. “It can get quite convoluted, but sadly, we’re used to it. The doctors like to grumble though.”

“I’ll probably hear about it then,” I quip.

She laughs. “They’re actually quite nice,” she says. “For doctors. I’ve worked in other hospitals where the admin staff were treated like crap. That doesn’t happen here. Okay, here we are. Let’s make sure your visitor pass works.”

I hold my keycard over the reader, and the lock clicks open. “Totally works.”

“Good.” She pushes the door and enters the room. “You have a laptop you need plugged into the projector?”

I look around. Everything’s set up. There are twelve notepads on the oval conference table. A side table holds bottles of water and soft drinks. There’s a whiteboard on the wall and an easel pad in the corner. “This is perfect. Thank you.”

“No problem. The doctors will be eating lunch during the workshop. Can I order you something?”

I plug in my laptop and connect the projector, fiddling with the display settings until my screensaver fills the screen. “No, I’m good. I won’t have time to eat once I start. I’ve got some time to kill now, so I’ll just grab a coffee and a bagel.”

She shows me the quickest way to get to the food court. “My extension is one-seven-one if you need to reach me.”

I eat my bagel downstairs in the food court but decide to take my coffee back upstairs. Cup in hand, I cross the glass-roofed, sunlit atrium to head back to the conference room, when my attention is caught by a photo of Maddox.

Curious, I draw near. There’s a small art gallery in the middle of the atrium, and it’s showing an exhibition of photographs. I read Maddox’s artist statement.

I’ve taken photos all my life, fascinated by cameras from the instant I held my first one, but my father, Stuart Wake, remained content taking the occasional vacation photo, until he learned that he had less than two years to live.

He started taking photos after the diagnosis.

I thought he’d use it as a way to document his life, which had become about chemotherapy and radiation, pain and weakness, a frightening loss of control.

Instead, my father took pictures of anything that caught his fancy.

My mother in her studio. A bird at the feeder. The first daffodils of spring.

I’ve chosen fifty photographs for this exhibit, roughly one for every two weeks that he lived after the diagnosis. They’re displayed alongside photos I took on the same day. When I look at the work as a whole, one thing is absolutely clear.

Faced with death, my father took photographs of life. His courage humbles me.

There’s a pang in my heart, an instinctive hurt at Maddox’s loss, which comes through in every sentence of his artist statement. And mixed in with that, a healthy dose of curiosity. I’ve never actually seen any of his work.

There’s time. I have thirty minutes before I have to head upstairs.

I start to walk down the aisles. The photos have been laid out chronologically.

I look at the first set. This must be shortly after Maddox’s father got diagnosed.

Stuart Wake’s photo shows a woman—Maddox’s mother?

—asleep on the couch, a blue woolen throw covering her, a golden retriever lying next to her, its head on her lap.

Maddox’s photo on the same day is taken at a music festival in Egypt, with the pyramids in the background.

Then Maddox must have returned home. His photos change. The tone of his photos is steeped with oncoming loss. His father’s, on the other hand, are filled with wonder, with the joy of life.

“What do you think?”

I jump, startled, and look up to find Maddox standing next to me, his expression unreadable. “What are you doing here?”

A ghost of a smile passes over his face. “I could ask you the same question.”

“One of these days, you’re going to shock me by giving me a straight answer,” I mutter. “I’m running a workshop here today on stress management.”

“Really?” He sounds like he’s trying not to laugh, and his eyes dance with amusement. “I didn’t know you were a therapist, Avery.”

“Guilty as charged. What’s so funny about it?”

He takes my elbow. “I’d tell you, but you’ll find out soon enough. Tell me what you think of the exhibit?”

His hand is warm on mine. Firm. My pulse accelerates at his touch, and my throat goes dry.

I’ve been busy this week, and I haven’t had much time to dwell on the upcoming weekend, but now that Maddox is next to me, all I can think about is being tied up at Club M, helpless to resist them.

At their mercy, willing to take whatever they give me.

Letting them control my body, my reactions, my orgasms, my pleasure.

Becoming their perfect, willing, obedient submissive.

“Are these photos turning you on, Avery?” he teases.

My cheeks heat. “No, you are, and you know it.” Now is not the time to be uncomfortably aroused. In half an hour, I have to teach a dozen doctors how to manage their stress. “I think that you loved your father very much.”

“Is that a professional opinion?”

“You don’t have to be a therapist to see it.” A mixture of love, sorrow, and loss is etched into every picture Maddox has taken.

His expression softens. “You’re right. I loved him very much. I couldn’t have asked for a better father.” His gaze rests on a photo of his parents holding hands. “Every time I think I’m coping with the loss, something happens to jolt me, to make me realize I’m not even close to dealing with it.”

I lean my head against Maddox’s shoulder and squeeze his hand.

This is the most unguarded I’ve ever seen him, and I’m touched that he’s showing me this side of him.

That he’s letting himself be vulnerable in front of me.

“People think grief is linear,” I whisper.

“That there is a static timeline to recovery. It doesn’t work that way. ”

“Another professional opinion?”

“Does it freak you out that I’m a therapist?”

His lips twitch, and the mood lightens as he bottles up his loss once more, burying it deep inside. “It’s a little disconcerting,” he admits. “Do you think that my desire to dominate you is rooted in some deep and underlying psychological wound?”

I bite back my smile. “That depends,” I answer, keeping my voice level. “Are you thinking of your mother when you’re making me come?”

He looks horrified, and I laugh out loud. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” I grin. “Therapist humor. All our jokes are Freudian. Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t analyze everything people say to me, not unless they’re clients. It’s too exhausting otherwise.”

He’s still holding my hand. His thumb strokes my palm, whisper-soft strokes that send tingles of restless desire through me. “Why did you decide to be a therapist?” he asks.

Because I was a wreck after my marriage, and therapists helped me put the pieces back together.

“I like helping people. I like listening to their problems, and I like feeling like I can make a difference.” I smile up at him. “It’s like being a bartender, only your ass gets pinched a lot less.”

His eyes darken with heat. “You didn’t seem to mind when I pinched your ass.”

I know the night he’s referring to. I’d worn a short skirt in Dublin, and we’d gone to a pub. After a few pints, Maddox and Kai had confessed how long they’d wanted me, and I’d been deeply flattered and completely turned on. We’d role-played bartender and customer when we got back to our room.

All the signs had been there—I can’t believe I missed them. They’d been so masterful, really. So smoothly dominant. Of course, back then, BDSM hadn’t yet been as mainstream as it is today.

“You were cute,” I reply breathlessly. My heart is hammering in my chest, desire is pounding through my veins. “Most of the regulars at the King’s Arms were old enough to be my father.”

I’d married someone as old as him. Those unsaid words hang in the air, and I wait for Maddox to throw them in my face, but he doesn’t seem to want to go there. “I got you something to wear tomorrow,” he murmurs into my ear, his lips brushing against my earlobe.

“Is it skimpy and slutty?”

He chuckles, low and deep. “That’s not your style,” he replies. “The dress is sexy and understated. Just like you.”

A frisson of pleasure runs through me at the compliment. “You think I’m sexy?”

“I think you’re gorgeous. Always have. I couldn’t stop taking photos of you in Dublin, remember?”

There it is, the past again. “Do you still have them?” I ask and regret the question as soon as it leaves my mouth. “Never mind. You don’t have to answer my question. Tell me about my dress. What color is it?”

“I never developed the rolls.”

“Oh.” Stupid, stupid Avery. Why the hell did I go there? Why the hell did I have to bring up old wounds?

Maddox forces a smile on his face. “The dress is green. It matches your eyes.”

I swallow hard. “Why did you get me something?”

He flashes me a grin. “That’s simple,” he says. “I wanted to see you in it. And,” he bends his head toward me, his breath tickling my ear, “I didn’t want to feel guilty about destroying your clothing when I rip it off you.”

My insides clench and tighten. Damn it. I’m so bloody turned on right now. “I have to go,” I stammer. “I can’t be late for the workshop.”