The Cure He Craves

Chapter 14

I don't touch the keycard. I look at my left hand, at the platinum band that feels like a shackle. The memory of Marcus’s “function” curdles in my stomach. When I speak, it’s not Dr. Voss, but a desperate woman. “He wants a child.”

The confession escapes, raw and unprofessional.

Adrian’s stillness deepens. He doesn’t move from where he stands across my desk. His black eyes hold mine, absorbing the fracture in my voice. The air in the room thickens, charged with everything I’ve just thrown between us.

“And what do you want?”

His question is quiet. It’s not a therapist’s query. It’s a man’s. It’s his.

The world narrows to that question and the key-card, that is its answer. My gaze flicks from his face to the small, matte-black rectangle on the polished wood. Penthouse 60A. A private kingdom. A place with no patient files, no wedding ring, no one to hear me scream.

“I want…” I start, but my voice fails. I do not want to be a function. I want to, not feel this cold dread at the thought of my own husband’s touch. I want the power I felt when you knelt on a bathroom floor and looked at me like I was your only god.

I don’t say any of it.

I reach out. My fingers don’t go to the keycard. They go to the prescription pad at the edge of my desk. The gesture is automatic, a retreat into the role. I pull it toward me, my movements stiff.

“This is the only thing I can give you,” I say, but the words are ash in my mouth. I pick up my pen. The click of it is too loud.

“Don’t.”

The single word stops me. It’s not a command from the king. It’s a plea from the man who knelt. I look up.

He takes a step forward. Then another. He comes around the side of my desk, not to loom, but to stand beside my chair. I have to tilt my head back to see his face. His expression is stripped bare. There’s no calculation there now. Just a hunger so profound it makes my chest ache.

“You asked me a question,” he says, his voice low. “In our session. You never let me answer.”

My breath catches. I remember the press of my heel. The sharp intake of his breath. The hard heat under my sole. *Is this what you wanted?*

“Answer me now,” I whisper.

He sinks to his knees.

It’s not the controlled descent from the gala. This is slower. Deliberate. His hands come to rest on his thighs. He’s at my side, his head level with my armrest. He looks up at me, and the submission in his gaze is a physical blow.

“Yes,” he says, the word rough. “It’s what I wanted. It’s all I’ve thought about.”

My heart is a frantic drum against my ribs. The professional part of my brain is screaming, listing ethical codes, boundaries, the irrevocable line I am watching dissolve. The rest of me is molten. I turn my chair slightly, facing him.

I lift my foot. I’m wearing black pumps, the heel a sharp, elegant spike. I extend my leg, slowly. The toe of my shoe brushes the front of his tailored trousers.

I see him shudder. His eyes close for a second, his jaw tight.

I press down.

Not hard. Not yet. Just the firm, undeniable pressure of my sole against him. Through the fine wool, I feel him. The thick, hardening length of his c**k. It twitches under my foot. Heat floods my own body, a slick, shocking rush between my legs.

His eyes open. They’re black and desperate. “Elara.”

I increase the pressure. I roll my foot, grinding my heel against the rigid outline. A low groan tears from his throat. His hands fist on his thighs, knuckles white. He doesn’t move to touch me. He just takes it. His breath comes in ragged pulls.

“Is this what you wanted?” My voice is a thread of sound, barely audible.

“Yes.”

“To be brought to your knees in a doctor’s office?”

“Yes.”

“To let a married woman do this to you?”

His whole body tenses. A muscle leaps in his jaw. “Yes.”

I press my heel down, right where the head of his c**k strains against the fabric. He arches into the pressure, a sharp, helpless movement. A dark spot of moisture blooms on the grey wool. Precum. The sight of it, the evidence of his surrender, sends a jolt of pure, predatory satisfaction through me.

I hold him there. Under my heel. I watch the struggle on his face—the shame, the need, the profound relief. I own this moment. I own him in it.

And then, like a bucket of ice water, the reality crashes back. The ring on my finger. The keycard on my desk. The child I am supposed to want.

I pull my foot away as if burned.

The loss of contact makes him gasp. His eyes fly open, confused, bereft.

I stand up, my legs unsteady. I put the desk between us again, a flimsy barrier. “This really cannot happen again.” The words are the same as before, but now they taste like a lie we both recognize.

He slowly gets to his feet. The front of his trousers is visibly tented, the dark spot a glaring testament. He makes no move to hide it. “You’re married,” he says, echoing my earlier taunt. It’s not an accusation. It’s a fact. The central, immovable obstacle.

“I am.” My hand goes to my ring, a nervous, betraying habit. “And he wants a child. A function. That is my life.”

Adrian just looks at me. The vulnerability is gone, sealed away behind a mask of cool intensity. But his eyes drop to the keycard, then back to my face.

He turns and walks to the door. He pauses with his hand on the knob. He doesn’t look back.

“The prescription won’t help,” he says, his voice flat. “You’re the only thing that helps.”

He opens the door and is gone.

Silence swallows the room. The ghost of my heel’s pressure lingers in the sole of my shoe. The ghost of his hardness lingers in the air.

I look at the keycard. I look at the prescription pad, my pen still poised above it.

I pick up the keycard. It’s cool and smooth. It weighs nothing. It weighs everything.

I slip it into the pocket of my blazer. It rests there, against my heart, a secret and a promise.

Then I sit. I pick up my pen. I write the prescription anyway. For him. For me. For the fiction we both have to maintain, for just a little while longer.