I arrivedafter dark that evening. Dr. Underwood answered the door himself, and there was no one else in the office. I felt very small in the hall as he closed the door behind me. Dark paneled wood stretched up above my head, and a lamp glowed golden on a side table next to me. The door latched shut and the lock tumbled, the clank echoing in the open hall and drawing a shiver down my spine.
“Ms. Reed, if you are at all uncomfortable—” Dr. Underwood started, taking a step back to give me room.
“It’s not that,” I rushed to say, spinning and nearly bumping my nose into his. His eyes were a very pretty blue, I noticed, and I dismissed the distracted thought. “I just don’t usually…plan this sort of thing.”
He blinked at that, eyes growing wide, and I laughed and looked down to the floor, shaking my head. “Oh it’s happened, loads more than it ought to have. But I never talked it over with the gent before and had to think about how it might go all day and then all evening.”
Dr. Underwood smiled, freckled cheeks dimpling. “Ah, anticipation,” he said. “Yes, I’ve suffered from it today as well. Come.”
His hand landed on my back underneath my shawl, and while his fingers were gentle, I had to resist another shiver at their urging touch. He led me past a receptionist’s office, down the hall, and into a richly furnished room lined with bookshelves and an enormous fireplace with a roaring blaze already started. It was chilly outside, but Dr. Underwood’s office was burning hot and I pulled my shawl off my shoulders straightaway.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t think you’d want to be cold,” he said, glancing between the fire and me.
“Did you think about it often, sir?” I asked, the question coming unbidden, but I'd never made much of an effort in life to stop my mouth. His brow furrowed, so I added, “About me, sir. Bringing me here?”
He might have blamed the fire for the flush in his cheeks, but I wasn’t sure what caused that shift of color in his eyes again, from sky blue to a strangely vivid green.
“Many times,” he said, and his voice shifted too, the rough edge of a growl appearing. I would have said he hadn’t seemed the growling sort if it weren’t for the fact he was doing it so well at the moment.
My legs squirmed beneath my skirt, thighs pressing together as I tipped my head back to stare up at him. “And what did we do when you thought of us together?” I asked, biting at my lip to tame my grin.
His chest was rising faster and the green in his eyes was brightening. “Exactly what we will do tonight. Now if you wouldn’t mind, Ms. Reed, I’d like you to undress while I set up.”
My hands automatically rose up to the buttons of my blouse at the request. “Will you watch, sir?”
The green faded, and he blushed a little deeper, looking down to the floor as his own grin bloomed. “There’s a screen by the fire. Change and leave your clothes there. I’m afraid I might find you too distracting.”
That declaration put a bounce in my step. Especially when I realized that the screen in front of the fire would create a lovely play of shadows for the doctor while I undressed. I made sure to twist and bend as much as possible as I stripped off all my layers. I didn’t mind him being a little distracted. When I was bent at the waist, rolling down my stockings with an exaggerated kind of slowness, there was a sudden, noisy, buzzing from the other side of the screen. I thought I heard a little huff of laughter as I tipped awkwardly to the side, bumping against the screen.
When I came out from behind the screen, the heat of the fire still bright on my skin, Dr. Underwood had his back to me. The shape of his silhouette was enormous and distorted over the stretch of bookshelves around the room, taking his slim form and turning it into something monstrous. I watched my own shadow creeping up to his, but it never seemed to reach the same gigantic presence on the wall.
“Where would you like me, sir?” I liked calling him that, liked that he hadn’t offered his first name. Most gentlemen liked to have you say their names before they flipped your skirts up, as if it might trick you into thinking you were important enough to know it without getting diddled.
Dr. Underwood turned and looked at me for a long time, eyes skimming down over my breasts. I shifted my legs, parting them, and his gaze stopped there. He was holding a strange instrument, with a black handle and a round metal head that had an extension stretching out from it, a red rubber bulb pointed in my direction. That must have been what always had Mrs. Pickering squealing and sighing.
Maybe he would want me on his desk, although I was hoping for a nice soft surface to relax in. I waited until he’d had his fill and looked back up at my face, the green bright in his eyes again and the angles of his face sharper.
“Would you come to the chaise?” he asked, gesturing to the long armless couch that sat in the center of the room. I walked to it and started to sit down before he interrupted me. “On your knees, hands on the back of the headrest.”
I lost my breath at that, thinking of him towering behind me while I was unable to see what he might be planning. I knelt on the couch, which was wide enough for me to spread my legs apart, and this time, it was Dr. Underwood’s breath that caught, stuttering behind me.
“Good, sir?” I asked, mostly to tease. I arched my back like a cat in heat, which wasn’t so far off from how I felt, really. There was an itchy, achy feeling running under my skin. I wanted to rub myself against the velvet of the couch, against Dr. Underwood’s tidy suit too.
“Very good, Ms. Reed,” he said, the growl still rolling in the back of his voice. His shadow covered the wall in front of me, blocking out my own, and when his hand landed at the base of my back, very gently, I twitched in surprise. “Are you comfortable?”
I thought I’d be more comfortable on my back with him between my legs, but I didn’t say so. “Yes, sir.”
His hand slid over the swell of my bottom down to my thigh, and I dug my fingers into the soft velvet of the chaise. “You’re a very beautiful young woman,” he said.
“I know, sir,” I said, grinning at the wall. It wasn’t just that men liked to say so. I had pretty, delicate features and nice glossy dark hair, and I was vain enough to fuss over how I looked. I’d always been scrawny growing up, but the Pickerings had been generous with their staff, and after a year there, I’d finally looked like a woman, which was good since I was past twenty already.
My eyes widened as his hand dipped between my legs, grazing over my opening before circling forward to swirl over my little button that I liked to play with so much. “Oh!”
My head fell forward, and I could see down the length of me, between my breasts to where his fingers were just peeking between my lower lips, rubbing and sliding. I wanted to tell him to stay there, the way men never seemed to do, not for long enough. I rolled my hips to grind against those fingers, determined to get as much from the touch as I could, but he drew away and I had to bite my lips to keep from complaining.
“Keep your back arched, Ms. Reed,” he said.
I sucked in a breath, having held it for the too-short time he’d touched me. I curled my back again and squeaked behind clenched teeth as something touched me, colder and smoother than his fingers. The instrument. He rubbed it against my clit and I stiffened, waiting for the buzz, wishing for it, wondering how it would feel.
I squawked as it started up, my eyes growing wide and round. “Oh, sir!”
The rattle was removed immediately, although I could hear it close by. “Unpleasant?” Dr. Underwood asked.
“I-I—put it back,” I said, wiggling my bottom at him. Was it unpleasant? I wasn’t even sure. I’d barely gotten to feel it. I only knew that it was startling and hard and unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
It appeared like a stinging tickle on my opening, and I almost pulled away. My lips parted and my breaths came too fast as he slid it forward, my body bracing. I squealed again, but this time, he didn’t pull away. My knuckles were white on the back of the chaise. It felt like lightning running through me, grinding through my bones, and white-hot on my so sensitive skin. Then a lick of that fire flickered up into my belly and through my chest, and my eyes fluttered shut at the heat.
“Ohhhh, sir,” I said, barely audible over the buzzing. I couldn’t decide whether or not to lean in, press harder into the rhythm, or shy away. I would let him make the choice for me, I could barely think.
“Yes,” Dr. Underwood said behind me, voice gentle, and he pressed harder with the instrument. “It takes a little getting used to.”
I moaned long and loud, my body rocking without instruction. I couldn’t control myself, not the way I wanted to grind down onto the red bulb buzzing into my button, nor the rapid anxious sounds falling out of my open mouth. It seemed a shame God had not thought to give this gift to women earlier, to make it possible for a man to do such a thing if we asked him. My whole body shuddered, and I tipped forward, my arms folding on the back of the chair and my forehead resting there.
Dr. Underwood carefully shifted my knees up the chaise, keeping me curved for his work and never once letting up with the instrument. I was turning senseless, head rolling back and forth on my arms, as I felt the rumble all throughout, a roiling warmth curling through my hips and belly. He pulled the bulb away from my skin, and I whimpered, certain I could feel it hovering just a bit away. When he relented again, he pushed it hard against my clit. My toes curled as light exploded behind my eyes and shivers ran through me. I came with a muffled scream, teeth clenching around the skin of my arm.
“That was very good, Ms. Reed,” Dr. Underwood told me, petting down my back, gentling the touch of the machine between my legs. “You were exactly as I expected.”
“Terribly wanton?” I asked, because I’d been told that before by the cook at the Pickerings, who’d caught me more than once.
“Exquisitely so,” he said. There was a brush of wool against the back of my thighs, and the machine pulled away, still buzzing.