Forbidden Desires

Doctor's Orders

The first time Imogen felt his hands, she cried.

Not from pain — though there was pain, blinding and white-hot when her knee bent the wrong way.

She cried because his hands were warm and sure and moved over her shattered leg with a kind of reverence she hadn't been touched with in months. Since the accident. Since her body had become a problem to be managed, a chart at the foot of a bed, a setback, a statistic.

Dr. Theo Akande was not her surgeon. He was not her physician. He was the physiotherapist her father had hired at exorbitant rates because the man had a reputation for walking patients back from the impossible. Imogen's right knee had been rebuilt with titanium and prayers. Six months of recovery had left her with a limp, a cane, and a body she no longer recognised — thinner in some places, softer in others, scarred in a way that made her want to cover herself even in the bath.

Theo didn't look at her like a chart.

He looked at her like a body. A living, breathing, whole body — and that was what broke her open in the first session, sitting on the padded bench in his private studio with her shorts rolled up and her ruined knee on display, when he pressed his thumbs into the tight tissue above the joint and said, calmly, "This is going to hurt. Breathe through me."

Breathe through me. As if they were one system. As if his lungs could carry hers.

She was twenty-four. He was thirty-one. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and she hated him for it.

Week one was assessment. Week two was torture — slow, grinding exercises that made her shake and sweat and swear at him in three languages. Week three, she walked four steps without the cane. Week four, she stopped needing it. Week five, she started arriving early.

She told herself it was because the morning sessions were quieter, the studio empty, the light through the tall windows soft and golden on the mats. She told herself it had nothing to do with the way Theo moved around her — loose-limbed, focused, his grey t-shirt darkening with sweat at the back, his low voice counting reps like a metronome she could feel in her chest.

He never touched her carelessly. That was the thing. Every contact was deliberate, professional, explained. "I'm going to manipulate the patella now. Tell me when it's too much." "I need to test the lateral ligament. This may feel strange." His hands were instruments. Precise, warm, strong. She could feel the calluses on his palms from years of work — not soft, not rough, somewhere in between, the hands of a man who used his body for a living.

And she started wanting them.

Not just on her knee. On the back of her calf. On the tight muscle of her thigh. On the curve of her hip where a tight IT band made him press deep into the flesh and hold, and she'd bite her lip and stare at the ceiling and think about those hands moving six inches north and what his face would look like above her, undone.

She was losing her mind.

"You're tensing," he said one morning, his thumb pressed into the hollow behind her knee.

"I'm not."

"You are. Here." He pressed again. She flinched — not from pain. "See? Tell me what's going on."

"Nothing's going on."

"Imogen." Her name in his mouth was low, Ghanaian-accented, the vowels round and warm. "I can't help you if you're guarding."

She almost laughed. Guarding. That was exactly the word. She was guarding herself from the one thing in this room that could hurt her worse than any broken bone.

"Can we take a break?" she said.

He pulled back. Sat on his heels. Looked at her with those dark, steady eyes, and she felt seen in a way that made her want to run and never stop.

"Five minutes," he said.

*

The breaking point came on a Saturday.

Her father had gone to Geneva for the week. The house was empty. Theo made house calls for the morning sessions — another extravagance her father had paid for — and when he arrived at eight a.m., Imogen opened the door in shorts and a thin vest, her hair still damp, no makeup, her bad knee wrapped in its brace, and saw something shift in his face.

It was small. A flicker. The kind of thing you'd miss if you hadn't spent five weeks studying a man's features the way she had — the straight bridge of his nose, the full mouth, the close-cropped hair, the jaw that tightened when he was concentrating. She'd catalogued him the way he'd catalogued her body, muscle by muscle, joint by joint. And she saw it: his eyes dropped to her collarbones, to the bare slope of her shoulders, and something hot and involuntary moved behind them before he blinked it away.

"Good morning," he said, professional as ever.

"Morning. Studio's set up."

She led him through. He closed the door. They were alone in a house with no one else in it, and the air between them felt like a held breath.

The session was harder than usual. New exercises. Resistance bands. Her knee was stronger, and he was pushing her, making her squat and lunge and hold positions that shook her thighs and made her core burn. He spotted her from behind, hands at her waist, steadying her, and when she wobbled in a deep lunge, his grip tightened and she felt his fingertips press the bare skin between her vest and her shorts and her brain simply stopped working.

"Steady," he said.

"I'm steady."

"You're shaking."

"Because you're touching me."

The words were out before she could stop them. The room went silent. His hands went still on her waist. She couldn't see his face — he was behind her — but she felt the shift in his breathing, the slow inhale, the held beat.

"Imogen."

"Don't." She pulled out of his grip and turned. He was close. Too close. His hands were still half raised, fingers curled open, and his face — God, his face. He looked like a man in physical pain. "Don't say my name like that and then tell me it's professional. Don't lie to me. Everyone in my life has been lying to me since the accident and I can't take one more."

"I'm not lying to you."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I'm trying very hard," he said, his voice low and ragged, "not to touch you the way I want to."

Her breath left her. The floor tilted, the way it did in the moments before a fall, but this time she wasn't falling — she was choosing.

"Touch me," she whispered.

"Imogen — if I do this, I lose everything. My licence. My reputation. Your father would—"

"I know." She stepped closer. "I know all of it. I've known since week two. I've been lying too. Every time you put your hands on me I've been thinking about this. I can't do one more session pretending I don't want you."

His jaw worked. His chest rose and fell. And then his hand came up, slow, giving her every chance to stop him, and cupped the side of her face.

She turned into his palm and closed her eyes.

"You're going to be the ruin of me," he said.

"Good."

He kissed her.

It started gentle. Reverent, even — his mouth soft on hers, his thumb stroking her cheekbone, like he was handling something precious and breakable. Then she made a sound against him, a small desperate noise from the back of her throat, and the gentleness cracked. His other hand fisted the back of her vest and pulled her flush against him, and she felt it — how hard he was, how long he'd been holding this back — against her stomach, thick and urgent through the thin fabric of his shorts.

"Tell me to stop," he breathed against her mouth.

"No."

"Tell me to stop, Imogen. Because I can't—"

"No."

He walked her backward until her back hit the wall of the studio and pinned her there with his hips. His mouth moved to her neck — open, wet, his tongue tracing the tendon, his teeth grazing her pulse. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and felt the muscle bunch and roll under her hands. He was solid everywhere, built from years of manipulating bodies, and she wanted all of it on top of her, under her, everywhere.

He pulled her vest up and over. No bra. Her breasts were small and bare and her n*****s peaked in the cool air, and he looked at them, looked at her, and made a sound that was almost helpless. Then his mouth was on her, tongue laving one n****e while his hand found the other, rolling and tugging, and she arched off the wall with a gasp.

"You're so beautiful," he said, against her breast. "God, I've thought about this — every session — your body under my hands—" He groaned. "I should not be telling you this."

"Keep telling me." She threaded her fingers into his hair. "Everything you thought."

"I thought about this." His hand slid down, over her ribs, over the scar on her knee — he paused there, pressed a kiss to it, and she nearly wept — then continued up her thigh. "About spreading you out on the bench and putting my mouth on you until you screamed."

"Do it."

"Imogen—"

"Do it, Theo."

Her name in his mouth was different now. Not clinical. Raw. Hungry. He dropped to his knees in front of her, hooked his fingers into her shorts and pulled them down with her underwear in one movement, and she was bare against the wall in the studio where he'd spent five weeks rebuilding her knee, and the wrongness of it blazed through her like electricity.

He lifted her injured leg — carefully, always carefully, even now — and placed it over his shoulder, opening her. Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to her.

His tongue was hot and sure and unhesitating. He licked through her, a long slow stroke that made her knees buckle, then focused on her c**t with a precision that made her mind white out — the same precision he used in his work, the same steady focus, applied now to the most sensitive part of her. His lips sealed around her and sucked, and his tongue circled and flicked, and she heard herself making sounds she'd never made — high, broken, keening.

"Theo — oh God—"

He groaned against her, the vibration rippling through her c**t, and slid two fingers inside. The stretch was immediate and perfect. He curled them, found the spot deep inside, and worked it while his mouth stayed on her — a rhythm building, fingers and tongue in tandem, relentless, generous, devastating.

She came with her hands in his hair and his name in her mouth, clenching around his fingers so hard he swore against her, and her bad knee trembled on his shoulder and she didn't care, didn't care about anything but the way he was looking up at her from between her thighs, mouth wet, eyes dark and destroyed.

He stood. Pulled his shirt off. She'd seen his body before — he worked in fitted clothes, she'd imagined what was underneath — but the reality was staggering. Broad shoulders, defined chest, the lean ridges of his abdomen, dark skin gleaming with a light sheen of sweat. He shoved his shorts down and his c**k sprang free — thick, dark, rigid, curved slightly upward — and she reached for it without thinking.

He caught her hand. "Not yet. If you touch me now this is over in thirty seconds."

"I don't care."

"I do." He turned her, pressed her front against the wall, his chest against her back, his c**k heavy and hot against the curve of her arse. "I've waited six weeks for this. I'm not rushing."

His hand came around her waist, splayed low on her stomach, and slid down. His fingers found her c**t again, still swollen, oversensitive, and she whimpered.

"Theo—"

"I want you ready." His fingers moved in slow, slick circles. "I want you so ready you take all of me without any pain."

"I'm ready — I'm—"

"Not yet." He kept working her, his mouth on her shoulder, his c**k sliding through the slick heat between her thighs, not entering, just gliding, the head brushing her entrance and moving away, again and again, until she was shaking and begging and the wall was the only thing holding her up.

"Please."

He positioned himself and pushed in.

Slow. Inch by devastating inch. She felt herself open around him — the stretch, the fullness, the way her body yielded and clung. He was thick and she was tight from months of not touching anyone, and he went still halfway in, breathing hard against her neck.

"Okay?" His voice was wrecked.

"More. Give me all of it."

He pushed the rest of the way in and they both groaned. She felt him deep, deeper than anyone had ever been, the full length of him throbbing inside her. His hand tightened on her hip and his forehead pressed the back of her shoulder and he shook.

"I'm not going to last," he said.

"Then don't. We have time. We have—"

He pulled back and thrust in, hard, and the words left her. He set a rhythm — deep, grinding, deliberate — each thrust pressing her into the wall, each one pulling a sound from her she couldn't control. His hand came up to her breast, fingers rolling her n****e, and his other hand stayed on her hip, holding her steady, controlling the depth, the angle, everything. He f****d her like he worked — with total focus, total attention, as if she were the only patient in the world, the only body that mattered.

"You feel so good," he said against her ear. "I've been dying. Every time I touched your knee, I wanted to touch you here. Every time you bit your lip, I wanted to bite it for you."

"Then bite me."

He sank his teeth into the junction of her neck and shoulder and she came again — sudden, violent, clenching around him so tight that he broke. He thrust deep and held, his whole body rigid behind her, and she felt him pulse inside her, hot and thick, spilling in waves, his breath ragged and broken against her skin, his fingers digging bruises into her hip.

They stayed there. Forehead to shoulder. His hand splayed over her heart. Still joined. The studio silent except for their breathing.

Eventually he pulled out, slowly, and she felt the warmth of him slide down her thigh. He turned her around, gently, and looked at her the way he'd looked at her in the first session — like a whole body, a whole person, not a problem to be fixed.

"You're going to get in trouble," she said softly.

"I know."

"My father will destroy you."

"I know."

"Then why did you do it?"

He cupped her face, kissed her slowly, tasted herself on his own lips, and said: "Because you are the most stubborn, infuriating, beautiful woman I've ever put my hands on, and I have wanted you since the day you walked in and cried because I touched your knee."

"It wasn't the knee," she whispered.

"I know." He smiled. Tired, bright, devastating. "I knew even then."

He came back the next morning. And the morning after that. Same time. Same studio. They did the exercises first — her knee was stronger than ever, and he was relentless, professional, correct — and then he closed the door and took her against the wall, on the bench, on the mat, his mouth and hands and body stripping every professional boundary away until there was nothing left but the two of them and the sound they made together.

Her father came home from Geneva on Thursday. He shook Theo's hand in the hallway and thanked him for his excellent work and asked how the knee was progressing. Theo said all the right things. Imogen stood at the top of the stairs in a silk robe and watched the man who'd been inside her an hour ago shake her father's hand and lie with perfect professional grace, and she felt a heat bloom low in her stomach that she knew would never, ever go away.

"Theo's been wonderful," she told her father later, over dinner. "I don't know what I'd do without him."

She meant every word.