Dr. Chase Hudson (The Surrogate Book 2)

Dr.
Chase Hudson

Jessica
Gadziala

Copyright
© 2015 by Jessica Gadziala
All
rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may
not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without
the express written permission of the author
except
for brief quotations used in a book review.

"This
book is a work of fiction. the names, characters, places and
incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used
fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is
entirely coincidental.”

Image
credit: glebTV/shutterstock.com – used under license from
shutterstock.com

Dedication:

To
Heather(QueenOfBooks) who loved

Chase even
more than I did and convinced me

to tell the
world his whole story. She's the best.

I am grateful
for all her excitement and

(somewhat
constant) forceful “suggesting” (which

she has told
me can no way be confused with “nagging”)

that kept me
on track.

She's called
“dibs” on Chase by the way.

Don't try to
steal her man- she'll cut you.

:)

Before The Sessions

Her file was
handed to me in a sealed envelope. I moved to the waiting area,
breaking the seal and pulling out the paperwork.

Ava Davis.
Twenty seven.

Young. That
was really young for a typical surrogate client.

She had a long
history of panic attacks and generalized anxiety, selective mutism,
and slight OCD. All of which she had opted to treat with talk and
exposure therapy instead of medicine.

I skimmed over
her medical records. There was nothing of real importance save for a
broken ankle when she was twelve, so I skipped right to the sexual
questionnaire in the back.

Describe,
in detail, what you believe is the root of your dysfunction:

My first sexual encounter was awkward and painful.
So painful that I got sick. My boyfriend at the time freaked out,
started cursing, telling me I ruined it for him. And ever since then,
I just... can't let someone touch me because touching leads to sex,
sex leads to pain, and pain leads to men getting really angry with me
when I (inevitably) disappoint them.

Christ.

Point one for the dickhead first boyfriend. Screwed her
up for life while he got to go on and live a normal sex life, surely
disappointing every woman whose legs spread for him.

How
many sexual partners have you had:

Four.

Four.
One would assume her pattern just kept repeating, adding more and
more anxiety to a situation she was already uncomfortable with. All
of that finally got her to the point of desperation which forced her
to seek help. My kind of help.

It really said something about how determined she was
to get better. Because women didn't, almost as a rule, turn to sexual
surrogacy. It wasn't that women had much lower rates of sexual
dysfunction than men, it was that society made it impossible for them
to seek help.

Women
were stripped of their innate complicated sensuality to allow them to
become hollow sex symbols. Every magazine on the newsstand was
shouting about hour-long orgasms, multiple orgasms, and how to please
your man. They make it
infinitely
clear to
women that their place in life was to cater to the sexual needs of
male partners who generally prove inadequate in delivering the
promised multiple or hour-long orgasms, further devaluing the woman's
self worth.

Without them even realizing it, they are being
assaulted with an impossible standard daily.

And it screws with their heads.

It made women who would normally be able to achieve an
orgasm in the right situation believe she was physically incapable of
them.

Or it made them believe they owned their sexuality and
could have multiple sexual partners and no one would think the lesser
of them whilst simultaneously slut-shaming them in a society that
still, underneath all the “sex sells” mentality, held
virginity as the ideal.

The number of women truly dealing with sexual
dysfunction was at least three times what the statistics suggest.
They were just too embarrassed or too uninformed of the possibility
of getting better to seek out professional help.

My surrogacy practice was a testament to that fact.

I had been doing it alongside my normal psychology
practice for about a decade. I had a total of twelve clients. I
averaged about one per year.

Twelve women. In a city where hundreds were suffering.

My clients were generally referred to me by other
psychologists who had patients they realized were dealing with
dysfunction. I was the only game in town. Hell, I was the only male
surrogate in three states wide.

Ava Davis was referred by Dr. Bowler, someone she had
been seeing for years. She had tried more traditional approaches with
Ava- trying to bolster her confidence, get her more sexually
literate. Nothing had worked.

I closed her file and slipped it back into the
envelope. I went behind the reception desk, hitting a few buttons-
increasing the heat in the next room and putting on some soft music,
then I made my way to my office door and went in.

Introductory Session

I was prepared for her anxiety. I had been ready for
her to be sitting ramrod straight, for her hands to be spread out on
the cushions beside her, and for her head to snap up in my direction
like a scared deer when the door closed.

All of that, I had expected.

What I hadn't expected was for her to be the prettiest
fucking thing to ever set foot in my office.

She was slightly taller than average with long legs and
an average body type. Not skinny. Not especially curvy either. Her
face, though...

It was soft and feminine, dominated by big brown eyes
and framed by long blonde hair, a little beach-wavy. She had a lower
lip that plumped slightly out, just begging to be kissed.

Her eyes were on me, taking me in, her features a mix
of relief and utter discomfort.

“Miss. Davis,” I said, my voice coming out
a little tighter than normal.

“Dr. Hudson,” she greeted in an even more
tense tone, pushing her hands off the cushions and moving to stand.

“Chase,” I said automatically, shaking my
head. “Don't get up,” I said, holding up a hand and
moving across the room to the alcove where she was seated. I put her
paperwork down on the side table and sat in the chair across from
her, my head tilting, watching her. Her anxiety was already spiking.
Her breathing was coming out shallow, her lips slightly parted, her
eyes a little wide. “Can I call you Ava?” I asked, but
she wasn't paying attention. I could practically hear her mind
racing. “Ava,” I broke in, my voice firmer than normal.

Her eyes snapped to mine. “Sorry,” she
rushed immediately, shaking her head. “I just...”

“You're nervous,” I said, shrugging a
shoulder.

“Yeah,” she admitted, her breath airy.

“We're just talking. Think of this as any normal
therapy session, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, sucking in a slow
breath and letting it out just as slowly, trying to calm herself
down. It didn't seem to be working.

“Your chart says you started therapy when you
were fifteen for anxiety issues,” I observed, trying to get her
mind off the very prominent elephant in the room for a moment.

“Yes.”

“And now you are...” I started, and she
quickly cut me off.

“Twenty-seven.”

“Any
success with the treatment?” I asked, already sensing that the
answer would
be
a resounding 'no' given how tense she was just talking to me.

She made a half-laugh, half-snort sound, running a hand
through her long hair, making it fall more to one side than the
other. “Yes and no. Every time I get over one thing that makes
me anxious...”

“A new anxiety develops,” I supplied,
knowing it was the answer. It was always the answer. Afraid of
crowded stores? We fix that and suddenly you can't stand to be out in
an open field. Anxiety was a bitch of a disorder to treat.

“Yup,” she agreed, nodding a little. Her
shoulders had dropped slightly. I was sure it was subconscious, but
she was losing a little bit of her tension.

“That must be incredibly frustrating.”

“You have no idea,” she said, an edge to
her tone.

“What are your current anxieties?”

“I have issues feeling trapped,” she
started immediately, the words rote, like she had said them a million
times. “So work can be a problem. Someone else driving me,
especially public transportation. Public speaking and...”

Her words trailed off, her cheeks getting a little
pink, her shoulders tensing right back up. Embarrassed. She was too
embarrassed to admit she was anxious about sex.

“And sex,” I supplied for her.

“Yeah,” she said, her blush getting darker.

“Okay,” I went on, casual, trying to put
her at ease. “I read in your chart that you don't ever remember
not having a phobia about sex.”

“Right.”

“But you have tried to get more comfortable with
it,” I observed, thinking of the number of sexual partners she
listed.

To this, she let out a tight little laugh, sounding
nervous and somehow self-deprecating at the same time. “Exposure
therapy,” she suggested.

Caught off guard, I laughed. It was a low rumbling
sound that made her eyes shoot to mine, her brows drawing together.
“With no success though,” I went on.

“No.”

“Yet you kept trying.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking down at her
hands. The air around her seemed to get heavy. Almost sad.

“So why are you here?” I asked, wanting to
catch her off guard.

It worked. Her head shot up, her gaze found mine, hers
looking confused for a moment before settling into what could only be
described as annoyed. Like she was angry at me for making her tell
me.

“I'm... frigid,” she answered after a long
silence.

“Are you?” I asked automatically, bending
forward toward her, resting my elbows on my knees. I was trying to
get into her space, trying to gauge her reaction to my proximity.
“Being frigid implies an absence of interest in sex and a lack
of sexual fantasies,” I explained.

“Oh,” she breathed out, looking somewhere
near a six on the discomfort scale.

“Seeing as you are here,” I went on,
fighting a smile at the way her eyes kept moving over my features, “I
wouldn't call you frigid.”

“Okay,” she agreed without even thinking
about it.

“Do you have sexual fantasies, Ava?” I
asked and watched her eyes go almost comically wide. If she wasn't so
utterly panicked and uncomfortable, it would have been cute.

Her eyes dropped automatically downward, resting on my
arm somewhere. There there was something else though. Her thighs
pressed more firmly together. It was a telltale sign of arousal. She
wanted me.

Fuck.

That was good. From a professional standpoint, that was
a good thing. It would make the process easier for both of us.

But on the personal standpoint... it made it
complicated. Because I fucking wanted her too. It was not in a
professional 'I need to get it up so I can help them get better' kind
of way. It was in a very cut and dry 'If I saw her in a bar, I'd have
been buried deep in her pussy five minutes from meeting her' kind of
way.