“The morning after I claimed his ass, I took him to a friend of mine and had those
stamps tattooed on him to remind him whom the various parts of his body belong to,”
Julian said with a compelling look. “He hasn’t fucked anyone with that cock, in any
orifice, since the last time he was with you.”
My mouth worked for a second before I said, “Not even oral?”
“Not even oral.”
“Good God, why not?”
Julian shrugged. “I’m a possessive man, and once I claimed him, he was never going
to be allowed to fuck anyone but you anyway. I don’t bottom. Ever,” he added darkly.
“I would have used my mouth on him, but I thought making him save his cock for you
was a punishment that fit his crime.”
God, that was…harsh. No wonder Colin had whined last night at the thought of not having
me.
“But…
why
? We were just sleeping together.”
“Rachel, you were mine for the taking from the moment we met—”
Flushing, I crossed my arms. “Excuse me, conceited much?”
“Please have the courtesy to let me finish.”
When I narrowed my eyes and held my tongue, he continued, “If you’re honest, you’ll
admit that the attraction between us was instantaneous and entirely mutual.”
“All right, yes,” I admitted grudgingly. “It was mutual.” Which made me feel only
slightly better about having been so transparent.
“Thank you for your candor. So while you were clearly meant to be mine, I was a fellow
and you were a resident so any sexual relationship between us was forbidden. I could
probably have gotten away with a very discreet D/s relationship like I had with Colin,
but at that point in time you were too…unformed for me to feel comfortable taking
advantage of our attraction.”
“
Unformed
!” This tale just got worse and worse.
“Rachel, your residency was just beginning to shape you into the surgeon you would
become, and you needed to complete it without my influence.”
“That’s a bunch of crap. You had nothing to do with my residency.”
“Not directly, no, but I was in a position of authority at the hospital and you were
very susceptible to my dominance. I couldn’t chance that you might one day view yourself
as some sort of Galatea to my Pygmalion.”
I was floored. “Wow, you didn’t think much of me, did you?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Rachel Anne,” he said calmly. “I actually thought quite
highly of you—it was you who lacked confidence in yourself.”
I stilled. “So?”
“So you also suffered from an overabundance of empathy with your patients and had
difficulty compartmentalizing. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes…” I said slowly. “At first.”
“Do you think it would have been any easier for you to leave your submission to me
at home than it was to leave your patients and their difficulties at the hospital?”
“I don’t know.” Then I thought about my gut reaction to the sight of him. “Probably
not.”
“I don’t believe I could have left my dominance at home either, Rachel. Self-confidence
and the ability to compartmentalize are vital assets for every surgeon. Without them,
you burn out much too quickly, and it would have gone against every dominant instinct
I had to stand back and watch that happen to you. Interference from me would only
have reinforced your self-doubt, but if I’d claimed you as my submissive, I don’t
think I could have helped myself. Then you might have forever wondered if I were responsible
for your success.”
“So you gave me up for my own good,” I said sourly.
“I didn’t give you up. I merely bided my time. My intent was to remain on the fringes
of your daily life and let Colin indulge in a little domination play with you until
you were ready to be claimed, but…life had other plans.”
I sighed. “You realize this whole thing is incredibly Machiavellian.”
He smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Permission to sit back down, Sir?” Colin said.
Julian shifted in his chair. “First show her what belongs to me.”
Sighing, Colin bent over and reached back to pulled his cheeks apart. His anus was
perfectly centered in the circle.
“It looks even better with my cock buried to the root in it,” Julian observed. “What
do you think, Rachel?”
Clearing my throat, I said, “Not long on subtlety, is it?”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
I squirmed in my seat, alarmed to find myself aroused again. What would it feel like
to be owned so completely, and to have that ownership so proudly and explicitly proclaimed
to anyone who got too close? Would I ever find out?
It was a shock to realize I was a bit jealous of Colin again. I’d always sworn I’d
never get a tattoo, especially after they became so trendy, but my mind immediately
went to work on how an artist could possibly center one around my vagina. There was
some incredibly sensitive flesh there—although there was plenty of fat, too, which
should make it marginally less painful. As an added bonus, my family would never have
to know I had it.
Colin sighed. “Am I done here, Sir?”
“You are, but come here.”
Colin tucked in his shirt and zipped up as he rounded the end of the table and then
dropped easily to his knees beside Julian’s chair, resting his hands on his thighs.
“Yes, Sir?”
Plunging his hand into Colin’s thick hair, Julian stroked his head repeatedly and
watched as Colin let his head fall back with a contented moan. “Were you embarrassed
to show Rachel your stamp, my darling fuckhole?”
“No, Sir. It amused me and turned me on. I mean, how often can you get away with mooning
a beautiful girl, up close and personal, at the breakfast table?”
“You amuse me,” Julian murmured with a smile. “Turn me on, too.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
With his free hand, Julian took off his glasses and tossed them on the table. Then
he pulled Colin forward by the neck and kissed him like he was the next breakfast
course and he just couldn’t get enough.
My eyes prickled and I wondered if there would ever come a time when I wouldn’t find
the spectacle of their kissing heartbreakingly lovely—or when I wouldn’t be even a
little bit jealous.
When he finally pulled away, Colin swayed before opening his eyes.
“And now,” Julian said, “I suppose you’d both better finish your breakfasts so that
Rachel can get her lines out of the way. We have much to accomplish today.”
* * * * *
At nine-fifteen, I walked down the hall between them, trying to shake the cramp out
of my right hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d hand-written much more than
notes on a chart.
“So tell me about this surgery we’re preparing for,” I said as we stepped into the
elevator. “Is it related to your Bain’s research?”
“It is. Let’s get your key to the labs and then I’ll give you the full tour and explain
everything as we go.” He let his eyes wander down over my body—which was clad in my
own conservative gray slacks and a black sweater set, thank you very much—and then
raised them to mine again. “You look very competent this morning, Dr. McBride.”
Uncertain what he was trying to say, I simply replied, “Thank you.”
We rode down to the next level and entered a corridor that was more reminiscent of
a hospital. Our first stop was a large, unlocked linen closet, where Colin picked
up a lab coat for me to put on. He and Julian were both already wearing lab coats
they’d pulled from his coat closet.
The next stop was a security-protected door, where Colin held up some kind of card
to the scanner. When the lock released, he held the door open for me.
“We’ll need to get your access set up first,” he said. He hit a button on what looked
like a laminating machine, and when a card similar to his popped out, he held up in
front of my face. “Lick this.”
I gasped and my hands flew up to my cheeks. It was a close-up of me from last night.
For God’s sake, I looked like some strung-out low-rent streetwalker—neck and shoulders
bare, dark brown hair a rat’s nest, blue eyes glazed and unfocused, mascara smudged,
lips wet, parted and swollen…
How in the
hell
had they managed this?
“That’s your employee ID,” Julian said behind me. “Lick it, please, before the biocoating
sets up.”
That was my
employee ID
? I spun around and gaped at him. “Absolutely not! There’s no—”
Without warning, my hair was seized and twisted hard enough to make me yelp. When
my hands flew up to claw at whatever had me, the ID card was shoved far enough into
my open mouth to make me gag and dragged right back out before my teeth could snap
down on the evil fingers guiding it.
“Thank you,” Colin said cheerfully as he released me.
Stumbling away, I put my back to the wall and stared at him while he leaned against
the counter, waving the card in the air and grinning at me like an eight-year-old
who’d just pulled the pony tail of a little girl he liked.
Why in God’s name had I thought I loved him?
“Gorgeous picture,” he said in an admiring tone. “You look like you just had your
face fucked and are begging for more.”
“What the hell was that?” I demanded. My scalp stung as thought it had been swarmed
by killer bees—and my clit was throbbing madly, dammit.
“That, Dr. McBride, was just a taste of what you will feel when you fail to follow
my instructions in a timely manner,” Julian said. “Normally I’ll keep our professional
and personal relationships completely separate, but since we’re alone and time was
of the essence, I felt it best to act decisively. I’ve been very lenient with you
so far, but you need to realize there’s a limit to what I’ll tolerate. Now, come with
me.”
When he turned and walked out, I glared at Colin. “You didn’t have to pull that hard,
you asshat!”
“No, but I’ll bet my next paycheck it made you wet,” he said with a grin. When I couldn’t
answer, he held out the ID card. “Keep this with you at all times.”
I eyed it with loathing. “I’m not using that.”
Colin looked like he was fighting a laugh. “Relax, Rachel—Julian and I are the only
ones with access to the identification systems. Nobody else will see it.” He tucked
the card into the pocket of my lab coat. “Now go, before you get yourself into more
trouble.”
When we caught up to Julian, he was holding open a door labeled Surgical Suite. I
followed him down yet another corridor and into the largest scrub room I’d ever seen.
There were enough sinks for a dozen doctors to scrub in at once.
I corralled my slack jaw long enough to say, “You really don’t do anything halfway,
do you?”
He shrugged. “What would be the point?”
From there, we went directly into an OR that made the scrub room look small by comparison.
In addition to the operating table, the room had seven remote monitoring stations,
all numbered and connected by a complex, multicolored system of arrowed lines taped
to the floor. Several of the lines ran into yet another OR that was just as large
and complex. It almost looked like they were choreographing two different operations.
I was totally lost. “What sort of procedure will we be performing here?”
“Reciprocal transplant surgeries,” Julian said. “There will be a total of 76 personnel
in and out the operating rooms during the procedures, so we needed a well-defined
system to manage them all. We’ve already been doing partial walk-throughs with the
various teams, but now that you’re here, we’ll begin full walk-throughs followed by
practice runs on cadavers.”
“
Reciprocal
transplant surgeries?” I gaped at him. “They’re going to trade organs?”
Julian shook his head. “We’re going to perform the first human head transplants.”
He said it so casually, I thought he was joking. But neither he nor Colin cracked
a smile.
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible. If it can be dreamed, it can be done.”
“But…
why
? Why would you even want to attempt something like that? Why would anyone agree to
be the subject of such an experiment?”
Julian began ticking off points on his fingers. “We have a patient in the final stages
of Bain’s Atrophy, we have a revolutionary new procedure that could give him a chance
at life, and we have a viable donor. Why wouldn’t we want to attempt it?”
My head was spinning. “You do realize this would require a
living
donor.”
He lifted his brows. “It wouldn’t make much sense to transplant the head to a dead
body, would it?”
“You said reciprocal—that means the donor would receive the patient’s dying body.
You can’t do that, Julian. Even if he survived the procedure, the donor would eventually
die of the disease currently killing the recipient.”
“The donor would be allowed to expire on the table.”
I gaped at him. “Do the words ‘First do no harm’ ring any bells for you,
Doctor
? What you’re suggesting is not only highly unethical, it’s illegal as hell! You can’t
sacrifice one person’s life to save another.
Life
being a relative term,” I added acidly. “Even if you could somehow keep the recipient’s
vital organs functioning, he’d be completely paralyzed
forever
. What kind of life would that be? How would it be any better than suffering from
Bain’s?”
“The experiment is fully sanctioned by the Montanevan government. And you can’t kill
a dead man. The donor will have been officially declared dead before the procedure
commences.”
Horror crept through me, and I put my hands on my head. “Oh my God, you’re serious.
I just gave up a prestigious fellowship at a highly respected medical practice and
flew halfway around the world for a fucking
Frankenstein
experiment
?”
Colin winced. “Rachel, don’t—”
I squeaked when Julian’s fingers clamped on my jaw.