He slid an arm around her and drew her to him, fitting her up against his length and allowing their sweaty skin to touch. It sent a new jolt of need trembling through him.
Tess reached out and pressed her palm against the center of his chest. “You aren’t so bad yourself.”
Her fingers made tiny circles around his nipple, curling his chest hairs with the tip of one finger and sending tiny flashes of warmth down the center of his stomach directly to his groin. He bit his bottom lip in an effort to keep from moaning aloud. The woman had him under her spell, totally at her mercy.
She leaned in and kissed him hard, a savage kiss filled with passion and open need. He could feel her melting against him, her skin burning with a heat so hot that she seemed about to burst into flame. Her hands touched and caressed, seeming to be everywhere at once.
But as Ryan lay there, soaking the sensations in, he felt the first nagging pull of guilt hit his gut. The weight of it was so heavy he thought he might surely crumble beneath it.
He closed his eyes, allowing it to roll over him, and he waited, knowing the voice of reason would speak, telling him he had used her. Taken advantage by satisfying his own selfish needs.
Sure, she’d asked him to make love to her. No, begged him to. But Ryan knew better. He’d allowed himself to step over the line, a line he had sworn he wouldn’t cross. He’d taken something from her that shouldn’t have been his to take, and at that moment, he hated himself.
He gently drew away. How could he have forgotten his promise to himself? Was he so depraved that he couldn’t control his own emotions? His own needs? Was he really that far gone?
Tess’s hands stilled and she tilted her head back. She studied him with questioning eyes. “I thought we agreed there wouldn’t be any guilt?”
He managed a small laugh but then quickly disengaged his legs from her smooth limbs. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “No guilt here.”
He drew a shaky hand through his hair. Great, now he was lying to her. But couldn’t he not lie? It wasn’t easy to explain away guilt that weighed so heavy it was hard to breathe.
This was something he needed to deal with all on his own. It wasn’t her problem. She had enough to deal with without him adding to it.
He heard her move, the sheets whispering as she slid across the bed. She pressed her body against his back and propped her chin on his shoulder. She reached around to hold him, embracing him with her warmth.
“Tell me what are you thinking,” she demanded.
“Nothing.”
“You owe me the truth.”
He sighed. He owed her something. “I’m thinking that I have a tendency to take unfair advantage of my patients.”
Tess pressed her lips to the taut tendons in his neck. She kissed them gently, as if the softness of her lips would release the pent-up tension.
“Haven’t I told you enough times that I’m not interested in you taking care of me? How many other ways can I say it?”
He slipped from her grasp and stood up. He reached out and yanked his pants off the chair, pulling them on.
He met her gaze as he zipped up, trying not to see the hurt in her eyes. “I should have never climbed into bed with you, Tess. You don’t need me adding to your confusion.”
She sat down and crossed her legs. Her hair fell over her shoulders and draped artfully across her high, firm breasts. She wasn’t in the least inhibited by her nakedness.
“Who said I was confused?”
He didn’t answer and she cocked her head, grinning playfully up at him. “Are you psychiatrists all this sexually repressed or are you just personally really good at it?”
“Look, you don’t understand. I stepped over the line when I made love to you.”
She shook her head. “In case you didn’t catch on-I’ve wanted you from the moment I met you. And I’m pretty sure you wanted me, too.” She spread her hands, her face questioning him. Challenging him. “So how exactly is it wrong for two people who want each other to act on that?”
“It’s a problem because you’re my patient. I took advantage of your trust by sleeping with you.”
Tess snorted, one hand reaching up to fling her hair back. “Ridiculous. I was
She stopped and searched his face, her expression intense. “Wait a minute, this isn’t about us making love, is it? It’s about something else. What’s wrong?”
He dropped into the chair across from her. How did he make her understand? How could he explain his failures to a woman who didn’t accept failure? A woman who kept pushing until she got what she wanted.
He lifted his head. “I used to be a pretty good clinician. Or at least I thought I was. But then I got a dose of reality. I failed a patient and ended up quitting clinical work in favor of research.”
“So tell me what happened.”
He stood up and paced the floor next to the bed. “I was treating a young woman for a pretty serious case of depression. She started making progress, getting better. I thought we were out of the woods, but then she started obsessing about me.” He glanced up, pausing a moment to meet Tess’s eyes. “Her obsession became unhealthy. Excessive. She stalked me. Called my personal line forty, fifty, a hundred times a day. She’d show up at my office and then at my apartment. She’d threaten suicide if I didn’t see her.”
“What did you do?”
He was back to pacing. “I talked with my clinical supervisor. We discussed a variety of strategies. None of them worked. Finally, I wanted out. I felt as though I wasn’t doing her any good. I thought it would be better if I transferred her case to another physician, a female psychiatrist on staff. I talked with the woman and she agreed to take the case, but my supervisor refused. He felt it was important that I deal with the transference issues. He said it would make me a stronger clinician.”
“But he was wrong, wasn’t he?”
Ryan nodded, swallowing against the guilt that rose up in his throat, threatening to choke him. “Things got worse. I tried several times to have her committed, but she fought it every time. She was smart. Articulate. And she knew the law. She knew how to present a rational face when she needed to.” He glanced up again. “Even my supervisor thought I was blowing things out of proportion. He met with her several times and
“What happened?” Tess asked softly.
“In late spring, she came to my office unannounced. She didn’t have an appointment, but she told my secretary that she was leaving town, that she wouldn’t be back and had come to say goodbye. My secretary buzzed me. I was in a session, but I went out to talk to her, concerned something was wrong. But before I went out, I called security and my supervisor, told them to get up to my office.”
He slumped in the chair and tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling tiles. This was harder to tell than he’d even thought. That’s why he hadn’t talked about it with anyone since it happened, not even his sister. Oh, he’d hashed it out with the police and the hospital ethics board when an investigation was done. But he hadn’t talked about it on a more personal level.
Instead, he’d bottled it up inside and kept it churning around inside him, creating self doubts. Doubts that threatened to cripple him as a therapist and as a man.
“What happened when you went out to meet her?”
“She was waiting for me. All dressed up, her hair done, makeup on. She had a suitcase and I thought maybe, just maybe, she really had decided to leave town, to start new.” He shook his head, the cushion behind his head rubbing the back of his neck. It was hard to speak, his words almost muffled by the emotion. “But she fooled me. She’d come for her final say in the whole matter. She didn’t even give me a chance to talk to her. She just stood up and pulled a gun out of her purse.”
Tess gasped.
He continued on in a monotone, trying desperately to keep the emotions at bay. “Before I could stop her, she stuck the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.”
He choked, anger flooding his throat and closing it off. He hunched forward, his elbows jammed against his
