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“You scare the hell out of me,” he told her, voice scratchy. “Why don’t you ever listen.”
Sometimes, she would look away, and he’d bend his knees to get back into her eye line, forcing her to look at him. Sometimes, she’d say okay to prompt the end of the conversation as fast as possible. It never worked, and still she tried.
“I listen,” she said, voice even, calm, measured. “I disagree. I disobey. But I listen.”
“You could be the best,” Robby told her, eyes going desperate. “You could be perfect.”
“Name someone better,” she said. He couldn’t do it, not honestly. She knew he couldn’t, and he knew he couldn’t.
Still, he said, only a brief hesitation, “King.”
Oh, fuck you, she thought, but even in her head, it lacked conviction. Lacked vitriol. She wished she were capable of real anger at Robby, or anything other than this hurt. Sometimes, his words cut; others, they were like a blunt force trauma, knocking air out of her lungs and leaving a dull ache behind; still others, they wore away at her bones, lingering long after he’d forgotten he’d said them.
It wasn’t true. They both knew it. It was a choice to throw that at her, to pit her against Mel, to back her into a corner where she had to choose between defending herself and being the doctor, the person, she wanted to be, had to be. A conscious one? She wished she knew. In some things, she understood Robby, could feel in her bones why he did what he did, said what he said. In this, he was a stranger to her, for all they’d worked together for years.
She could defend herself, defend her choices and her treatments and her results. But not like this.
She thought back to a few months ago, man vs biohazard bin, a needlestick from an exposed needle in the biohazard bin when Robby had been trying to dispose of a different needle, her rushing over to recite protocol at him, order him to wash out the site while she assessed the exposure. He’d tried to argue, said something, but Dana’s sharp Robby, shut up and let her handle it had worked well enough to silence him.
She thought back to a few weeks ago, the accidental elbow she’d caught in the cheekbone from a flailing patient, and his hand, gentler than she would have expected, on her face as he inspected the damage. She’d shaken her head when he’d asked her if she needed to take a break and basked in the glow of his short nod of respect for the rest of her shift and beyond.
She thought back to a few days ago, arguing over a patient that had already been taken up to the OR, her death grip on a ten blade. Their eyes had met, and for an instant, it had been electric, before he’d eased the scalpel out of her hand, expressive eyebrows arched, as if half afraid she’d cut him.
“Samira,” he said, slowly, rolling her name in his mouth like he were tasting it. She liked the sound of it, she always had – always preferred it when he used her first name to how he’d mispronounced her last every time he’d ever said it. “What am I going to do with you.”
She forced herself to look at him and threw it out like a challenge: “You could take me somewhere else and try to sort out our differences.”
Vague enough to give them both an out. But Robby didn’t take it. His gaze sharpened, no pretence of not knowing what she meant, what she wanted, what he did.
“Think that will cure us?” he asked, almost idly, eyes just a little too intense for her to take it as a throwaway musing. “You think I’ll go easier on you if we…get along elsewhere?”
That startled a laugh out of her, even as something twisted unpleasantly inside her at the words, the weight of his ever judgmental gaze. “Of course not. Not even a chance.”
Robby nodded and it was almost approving. “Good.”
They didn’t talk. If they did, Samira knew she would balk. The only question would be if Robby did first. But they didn’t talk.
He laid her out on the bed, flat on her stomach, fully dressed, and climbed over her. She started to push herself up to her knees, but he pushed her back down, prodded at her knee with his own until she got the memo and stretched her legs out straight and flat, popped the button on her jeans to give him room to work. Then he grabbed her right hand with his left, and shoved it into her pants, over her panties, between her vulva and the mattress. Shocked, she let him move her as he would.
Robby had never casually touched her in the way she’d seen him touch others in the department. No congratulatory slaps on the back, no grabbing her by the shoulder to haul her where he wanted her. She wondered if it had been intentional or not, the understanding of the implications of manhandling a woman being different and avoidance of contact for it.
He was touching her now.
It was an unbroken line of contact, all his weight on her, chest to back, leg to leg, his arms wrapped tight around her, one hand clamped tight over the back of hers, pinning it in place against her vulva, the other snaking up under her shirt to knead a breast over her bra, pinch at a nipple through the fabric. Even their faces touched, Robby’s nose pressed against her cheek, his mouth just under her ear. He ground against her ass, driving her hard against the heel of her hand, increasing the pressure of the contact even more.
It should have been too much, suffocating, claustrophobic – but no one ever touched her, not really, and the tight hold felt right, felt good, felt secure, like there was nothing she’d have to do but go with the flow, follow the firm nudges, do whatever his slight movements indicated he wanted of her.
“There you go,” he said, once they found the rhythm, rocking together, pleasure building. “Good. Just like that.”
It wasn’t funny, but Samira had to bite back a hysteric giggle. Just like that.
She turned her head to press her cheek against the pillow so she could breathe easier, but felt a brief resistance, heard a curse muffled against her hair. Her fogged brain needed a second to process it as her clip catching Robby in the face.
“Ow,” he said. “Wait a second.”
She felt the clip dislodge, her hair sliding free, saw it fall to the floor, but both Robby’s hands were still on her – he must have grabbed it with his teeth. The thought made her resume the movement of her hips with renewed vigour.
She was quiet in bed, and it turned out, he was, too, breathing a little ragged in her ear, but no moans or grunts or dirty talk, just the occasional word of praise that sent her heart stuttering. She was glad of that. She was very, very glad.
She got herself off like this more often than not, the firm pressure more satisfying than any amount of penetration or rubbing with fingers or pressing a vibrator to her clit could ever be. This, though, it was fast, efficient, to the fucking point. Robby should love that. She didn’t need time or accessories or build up. She certainly didn’t need a partner.
But now it was Robby’s hard cock against her ass, his hips driving her over and over against her palm, his hand against the back of her right where her own left one would usually be, his other hand still roaming her body. His weight against her back, elbows against her ribs, felt almost like a hug. He tugged at the freed strands of her hair, harder than she would have expected, and she fell off the edge of the cliff fast as she’d climbed it.
Robby stilled, still hard against her, as she came down, but just for a second. He slapped her upper thigh, almost experimentally, and she jolted. They were so close together, she knew he felt it. So close together, she felt the tiny catch in his breath. He did it again, harder. Nipped at her earlobe. Curled his middle finger over her pinkie without letting go of her hand, slipping into her underwear, to feel her wetness. Stroked around her labia. Nudged at her cunt without dipping inside.
“See?” he said, lifting his hips away from hers for just a second, just long enough to pull her unbuttoned pants down a few inches to her mid thighs, before dropping back his weight once more. “You can be efficient, when it counts. You can do the job and keep going.”
He dropped a kiss to her temple, and it was almost tender, jarring in contrast to the harshness with which he tugged her hair again. The window in her line of vision had gone blurry. She blinked hard, once, twice, and it came into focus once more.
Robby had her pinned down still, unmoving. His motion had guided hers, his hand still covered hers. She was a marionette, his to direct, his to use. However he saw fit. And in the hospital, she would never, ever let him do it, no matter how much easier it would be. Always pushing back and then hurt when the worthwhile resistance went unacknowledged.
She’d tried to be what he expected, tried to be the doctor he wanted. Of course she did. How could she not? He was her department head, her supervisor, her attending. His approval had been everything to her.
Almost everything.
There would always be a higher calling than pleasing Robby. If it were safer to do what he wanted, even if she disagreed with the want, she would do it without blinking. If they worked in some other field, something where the wrong call wasn’t death, she’d obey, chase that high of his praise until it killed her. But not in theirs.
She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
But here, it didn’t matter; here, there were no patients in need of her help; here, she could be what he wanted and hear what she wanted. She started rocking again.
“Good girl,” he said, gasping for breath, following her movements, and the condescension she loathed paired with the praise she longed for had her shuddering. The hand not holding hers wandered away from her thigh and found her throat, spanning it loosely, three fingers over the carotid. She wondered if he was counting. She wondered what the count would be. He had long fingers. If he rotated his other hand a bit, he’d be able to reach the femoral and check that, too.
His mouth traced along the back of her neck, less a kiss and more just tasting her, keeping contact in as many places as he could, all while they continued to rock back and forth together. As she peaked again, she moved her free hand to his wrist, not pulling his hand away from her neck, but holding onto him, contact with the one part of her body that hadn’t been touching his.
She kept her nails short, of course, edges filed smooth, for safety and hygiene in the hospital, but there was still enough there that when she grabbed onto Robby’s wrist, they sank in, leaving half moon indentations. It couldn’t have hurt him, but for the first time, he let out a groan, almost as if it had.
When he came, it was on her, teeth sinking into her shoulder, and it should have been humiliating, should have made her shudder her revulsion and shove him off her and make a break for it, for all that this was her bed. But Robby was breathing hard in her ear, his weight still on her, and those other colleagues of theirs that got the nods and the casual touch and the nonchalant good job on his way out the door had certainly never had this.
So she stayed there, breathing coming back to normal. He got off her. Cleaned her up. No more words, of course not, not there, not after that.
Robby left, and Samira rolled onto her back at long last, eyes on the ceiling. This would be another thing they never spoke of, not ever. But they would know. They would know.