White Diamonds (22 page)

He whispered, “Yes, Malika.  The answer is yes.  I do want you, only you, always, forever.”

The young woman folded into her husband and kissed his neck.

“That was quite a surprise,” he whispered.

Malika kissed him teasingly and then passionately, feeling his body respond as his hardness grew inside of her again.  “Mmm,” she moaned as she began to fuck him again.

In the throes of passion, the knowing woman stopped long enough to add, “You had better get used to me being on top for a while.”  She leaned up, going all the way down on her husband’s hard thick cock, and smoothed her hands over her own body.  “We’re having another baby.”

Malika was pulled down by the man she loved and he wrapped his arms around her.  She ran her tongue along his lips in a teasing manner.  “This baby,” she started, and then opened her lover’s mouth with her tongue, “will be born here.”

The proud descendent of Crazy Horse rolled his lover, his wife, onto her back and made love to her slowly and passionately, feeding her womanly desires with his body.  Kevin Wild Horse had everything he had ever wanted.

The Novelist:

Called to her doctor’s office after hours, Leah finds him alone working on a novel.  Asking for Leah’s assistance with the romantic scenes, he seems timid and not at all the man she is accustomed to seeing.  When he confesses his darkest secret to her, she goes with him to his home and discovers the cold hard truth about the doctor.

***

Leah was a very perceptive woman, which she attributed to being the youngest child.  The eldest child was supposed to be the bossy sibling, the middle child was the negotiator, and the youngest had an uncanny ability to know what made people ‘tick.’  Lately, however, Leah had been slipping, and she swore the little hamster inside her head had fallen off of his wheel.  She had received a strange phone call from a man she trusted like no other man.  He had saved her life twelve years ago, though he probably wouldn’t admit it, nor would he acknowledge it.  He had simply been doing his job.  An esteemed physician, Dr. Holcomb called early one morning and asked if Leah wanted to be part of a research study.

“I will do anything I can to help you,” Leah replied sincerely.  Dr. Holcomb seemed hesitant to continue, so Leah spoke for him.  “Do you want me to come to your office?”  She heard the doctor clear his throat and he sounded a bit sheepish as he suggested a day and time.

Leah parked her car in one of the designated spots outside Dr. Holcomb’s office and entered the building.  It was early evening, long after the office had closed.  The door was locked, so she tapped lightly on the door.

“Leah, come in.”  The doctor smiled, which he rarely did as far as she knew, when he saw the beautiful big blue eyes of the blonde haired woman he had called early that day.  He seemed nervous, which was unusual, although at times he had seemed shy in her presence.  He wasn’t wearing his white lab coat, but instead was dressed casually in a pair of dark corduroys and a light sweater.  “Let’s get started,” he said with an uneasy smile.  He placed a hand on the small of Leah’s back and motioned for her to walk with him toward the end of the hallway and around the corner to his private office.

Leah looked around at the empty desks and open doors of examination rooms.  It was too quiet.  “Has everyone gone home?”

“Yes,” Dr. Holcomb responded as he closed the door to his office.  Leah took a seat in a chair facing Dr. Holcomb’s desk, but the doctor didn’t sit in his desk chair.  He sat down next to Leah and pulled his laptop computer from the corner of his desk.  Placing a hand on Leah’s arm, he began.  “Leah, I apologize.  There is no study.  Do you remember what we talked about at your last appointment?”

Leah felt her heart begin to race.  She was dying and he had called her here after hours to tell her.  No, that was stupid.  She would have been called to make an appointment if that were the case.  “I…no, I guess I don’t remember.”

Opening his laptop, the doctor pulled up the document he had been working on for the last two months.  “Romantic suspense, just as you suggested, although this is more of a medical thriller.  You said I’d be good at it.  I need help with the romantic aspects, however.  I’m not exactly the romantic type.  Does your offer to help still stand?”

Leah tried to remember.  “Yes, I remember…but you said you could never write something like that.”

“I didn’t think I could, but once I started, I couldn’t stop.  It’s just…the romance I have trouble with.”

Leah ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her face, and Dr. Holcomb watched as the blonde strands fell lazily at her shoulders.  She was beautiful, but a woman like her would never see a man like him as a romantic partner.  With her bubbly personality, she had obviously been a cheerleader, probably married a jock right out of college.  She looked at him, her blue eyes bright.

“That’s wonderful, Dr. Holcomb.  What kind of romance are you looking for?”

Inside, he was screaming that he wanted a romance with her, a bodice-ripping, can’t get enough of you romance, but he shrugged his shoulders.  “I read one of your books.  It was pretty hot.”

Leah’s cheeks felt hot and her face turned crimson.  “You read one of mine?  Now, I’m embarrassed.”

He put his hand on hers.  “Don’t be.  That’s what I want, the kind of romance you wrote about.”

Leah wondered if there was a double meaning to his words, but she didn’t pursue it.  She knew the doctor’s history, though he didn’t know that she knew.  Women talk, and she knew one of the ladies in his office from a water aerobics class she had taken a year ago.  His first marriage had ended in divorce due to an affair he had ten years ago.  The woman had lied about being pregnant and threatened to tell his wife if he didn’t divorce her.  Once they were married, she faked a miscarriage, but medical records don’t lie.  A few years later he discovered the truth when there had been a discrepancy on her pharmacy records.  She had been on birth control pills the entire time.  Leah learned that the doctor’s ex-wife had taken their two children halfway around the world to her home country of India and denied him access to them.  His calls were blocked, mail was returned, and he now regretted what he had done.  The woman in Leah’s aerobics class blamed it on a midlife crisis, but Leah had little tolerance for men who cheated.  They were a dime a dozen.  Rumor had it that the current Mrs. Holcomb was cheating with another doctor, a surgeon, but no one felt bad for the doctor.  Like the saying goes, “If they’ll do it
with
you, they’ll do it
to
you.”  Leah realized she had been spacing out when Dr. Holcomb snapped his fingers.

“Where did you go?”

“Oh, sorry.  Let me see how to segue into a hot scene.”

The doctor watched as Leah’s fingers began to type.  Her petite features made him want to take her into his arms and keep her safe from the outside world.  Her skin was as white as snow and made her appear delicate and perhaps a little bit helpless.

“What do you think of that?”

The doctor’s attention turned to the screen and he read quickly, not wanting Leah to know that he had not been following along.  “I like it,” he said, with more enthusiasm than Leah had expected.

“Too much…too little?”

“It’s perfect,” he added.  Leah was perfect.  She wasn’t older than he, like his first wife, nor was she much younger, like his current wife.  She was the same age as he.  He knew that from her chart.

After an hour had gone by and many scenes of an erotic nature written, Dr. Holcomb turned to Leah and stated, “I married the first woman who went out with me.  We’re divorced now.”

Leah decided to play along.  Pointing to his wedding band, she said, “And you’re married again.”  It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” he admitted, looking away.  “But I’ll be divorced again soon.  She has found someone else, actually more than one someone else.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I gave my first wife citizenship, and I did it again with my second wife.  I believe that’s the definition of insanity – doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.”  He laughed as he stared at the computer screen.

“It’s not uncommon, though.  We like to do that which we are comfortable doing.  Repeating past behaviors isn’t uncommon, Dr. Holcomb.”

It was then that the doctor looked at Leah and touched her arm.  “Call me Craig – please.”

“Oh, I don’t think I could.”

“Please, Leah, I need to take off the white coat, so to speak.”

Leah nodded her consent.  Then she felt his arm around her and he seemed to move closer.  “Thank you,” he whispered, his lips close to hers.  She wanted to back away, but there was nowhere to go.  She felt his lips lightly graze her cheek and the corner of her mouth, but the ringing of his office phone prevented anything further.

Leah jumped, her nerves on edge, as Craig excused himself to take the call.  Leah could see the hurt in his eyes as she listened to the one-sided conversation.  His face turned red as the heat began to rise at his wife’s threatening words.  He turned his back to Leah as he put a hand to his face.  His voice began to crack and Leah slowly made her way to him.  She put her hand on his back as he placed the receiver in its cradle.  Staring at the wall, he pulled Leah around and wrapped his arms around her.  He was a big man and in his arms Leah felt as if she were wrapped in a warm soft blanket.  She had never felt comfortable with a man crying, but being held by this man felt natural somehow and she moved her hands upward along his back, comforting him from two many decades of pain.  He was an expert in his chosen field, but years spent in classrooms and studying medical texts had made him an infant when it came to interpersonal relations.  It was as if he had skipped an integral part in becoming an adult, stuck in one of the necessary stages of development.  He wasn’t the first doctor to have experienced what Leah termed ‘social retardation.’  She had known many physicians who simply weren’t comfortable outside of the hospital or other medical venue, and they were the first to admit it.

Leah turned her head to look up at Craig and he opened his eyes.  She felt his heart beat next to hers and watched as a tear slid down his face and onto his lips.  With a light brush of her finger she wiped it away and elicited a slight smile from the doctor.  As she looked into his eyes that were a deeper shade of the same color as her own she felt a connection with him, and as his lips moved ever closer to hers, she stood on tiptoe and let him kiss her.  It wasn’t a quick kiss, as would have been more appropriate, but a long lingering kiss that she knew was inappropriate.  Still, she didn’t back away.  She wanted him.  His hot hands caressed her shoulders, moving the material of her blouse down her arms.  When she forced her lips from his, she looked up at him with questioning eyes.

“This isn’t right.”

“It feels right, Leah.  Come home with me.”

Leah tried to back away, but he pulled her closer to him.  “You’re married,” she stated flatly.

“It’s over, Leah.  She moved out, and what she didn’t take with her will be sent to her tomorrow.”

Leah feared what he might do if she left him at this vulnerable time, but she didn’t know if she wanted to share his bed, if that was what he was asking her to do.

His eyes bore into hers as he pleaded, “Please, Leah.”

“Just stay with you?”  She hoped she was getting her point across without actually saying it.

“If that’s what you want, Leah,” he said.

Instead of playing twenty questions with the doctor, Leah followed him to his house.  The place was cold and lacked any sign of hominess.

Craig turned on nearly every light in the house and poured a couple of glasses of wine.  “I hate the darkness,” he stated as he handed a glass to Leah.  “The world has too much darkness.”

Leah said nothing, assuming the doctor needed to vent.  She could only imagine the number of death certificates the man had signed.  If he was depressed, she could certainly understand why.

“Sit with me, Leah.”

Leah took a seat beside him and realized that the doctor felt a little uncomfortable in his own home.  He had seemed much more self-assured in his office.  The place was scantily decorated, with very few pictures on the walls, and no photographs of his wife.  Leah had taken only one sip when her glass was taken from her.  She was once again wrapped in the bear-like embrace that had made her give in to the kiss of the doctor.  He was making love to her with his mouth, never getting enough, and he lifted her into his arms as he stood.

“Craig, it’s not right,” Leah protested.

His eyes were pleading.  “I’m tired of doing what’s right.  That’s all I’ve done since the day I was born.”

Leah understood the life of a doctor.  Where others saw money and prestige, she saw loneliness and unrealistic expectations placed upon them by too many.  She couldn’t go to bed with him out of pity, but she also couldn’t deny that she wanted him.  He reminded her of the ‘boys of fall’, the men who dazzled the crowds every Sunday in their football uniforms.  Craig was built like a linebacker and Leah liked the feeling of being carried to bed in his arms.  He laid her down on the bed in what she guessed was the guest bedroom, but she had to know.

“Is this your bedroom?”

“Yes,” he said.

When she looked at him with a questioning look, he added, “Hers was at the other end of the hallway.  We haven’t shared a bedroom for quite some time.”  His lips were on hers again before she had a chance to ask anything more, but she wanted to know if bedroom meant bed.  As the doctor kissed his way downward, he unbuttoned Leah’s blouse as quickly as he could, eager to taste the breasts of the woman he had fantasized about.  There was nothing subtle about his moves.  He pulled each breast into his mouth and held its nipple between his lips.  “Take these off,” he said in a commanding voice.  But he didn’t wait.  He forced the jeans from Leah’s body and heard a soft moan.  He looked up at her.  Her eyes were closed and her beautiful lips slightly parted.  He unveiled Leah as if she were a rare painting, and parted her legs.  She looked so fragile beneath him that for a moment he feared he was taking advantage of her vulnerability.  But he wanted her too much to stop.

When he had shed his clothes, he whispered her name, “Leah,” and she opened her eyes.  She pulled him to her, offering herself to him.  He entered her slowly, consuming her, and softly calling his name as he gave himself to her.  He gave her body what it had been craving, but what she gave him was much more than physical.  He felt a connection with her that he could not explain even to himself.  He felt his climax building and felt Leah’s hands upon him as she held him inside of her.

“Is it…?” he asked.

“You know it’s okay,” she whispered, followed by a wink.

He drove hard into her, releasing his seed inside his fantasy woman.  When she pulled him down to her afterward, he said, “I don’t want to hurt you,” and straddled her left leg to lessen the pressure of his large body on her petite frame.  As he lay with her, he played with the blonde curls that spiraled downward and rested upon her shoulders.  He wrapped his fingers in the twirling strands and looked up at her.  She was the kind of woman he wanted.  Beautiful and caring, she would be the ideal wife.  One day he would be the head of his department and he needed someone like Leah by his side.  He tried to turn his mind off, but thoughts were entering too quickly.  Leah was sleeping beneath him, and if this was a dream, he never wanted to wake up.

When an unwelcoming ray of the morning’s sun hit Leah’s face, she opened her eyes.  Craig was sleeping soundly on top of her, his body spread across her like a blanket, and his penis still buried deep inside her.  As she lay listening to the sound of his slow steady breathing, she thought about what she had done.  She had gone to bed with her doctor, something she had faulted other women for doing in the past.  Now she realized how easily it could happen.  She thought about his soon-to-be ex.  Through the hospital grapevine she knew the woman had come from Southeast Asia, Vietnam she believed, and had a chip on her shoulder the size of her home country.  It was rumored that her father had escaped Ho Chi Minh’s brutal regime during the fall of Saigon, but she and her mother had been left behind.  She didn’t remember it, since she had been an infant at the time, but stories and rumors had painted Americans at that time as heartless vermin.  Her bedside manner was horrendous, and she had trouble getting a hospital to hire her.  Leah wondered why she had come to the U.S.  Perhaps she had been looking for her father, and perhaps she had thought of Dr. Holcomb as a ‘father figure.’  Maybe vengeance had been the driving force behind her move.  Whatever her reasons, Leah would never think it okay to use people.  Then she fought the urge to laugh.  She had used someone last night and he was lying on top of her.  In her mind she justified her actions.  Theirs had been a mutual using.  She shifted and Craig looked up at her.

There was fear in his eyes, but not because of what he had done.  “Am I hurting you?”

Leah shook her head as he positioned himself to straddle her leg.  “You didn’t hurt me, Craig.  I moved my leg underneath you for warmth.”

“I could have hurt you.  I could crush you if I’m not careful.  You’re fragile.”

“But you didn’t hurt me.”

He rested his head on Leah a few minutes until he knew he had to get up.  “I’m expected at the hospital.”

“I know.”

“Will you be here when I return?”

Leah could make no promises.  “I have a business to run,” she said.

“That’s right.  I guess that’s what got us here, wasn’t it?”  He was joking, but Leah was proud of what she had accomplished in only a few years and her on-line publishing business was thriving.

While Craig was in the shower, Leah checked her email via her cell phone and scrolled through the websites she did every morning.  With the number of manuscripts waiting for her to publish, she would be busy for at least the next six months.

Craig wasn’t prepared to see Leah dressed and ready to leave.  He pulled her to him and looked into her eyes.  “Please come back tonight.  I should be home around six.  Here, let yourself in.”  He handed her a key to his house.

“Craig, I can’t.  You still have a wife.”

“Please,” he pleaded.

Leah smiled and allowed the doctor to place the key in her hand.  Too busy to give much thought to the doctor during the day, she opened the door to his home a little before six.  It was dark and dreary, and she understood why the man spent so much time away.  She turned on the lights and went into the kitchen to find something to make for dinner.  After finding nothing but a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine, she gave up and decided to give herself a tour of the doctor’s home.  When the phone rang, she let the machine answer and listened to the voice of the doctor’s soon-to-be ex spew every nasty word in the English language, a few in her native tongue.  She trashed his kids, his first wife, and threatened to sue for half of his pension.  Leah wished she could erase the message before Craig heard it, but she was merely a guest in his house.

“Leah?”

Leah turned to see Craig coming through the back door.  She hadn’t heard the garage door.  He kissed her and asked if she would mind calling for takeout while he went upstairs to check his messages.  When he returned, he seemed distracted.

“Bad day?”

“No, just another ex-wife.  What the first one doesn’t take, the second one will.”

He poured a glass of wine and sat down at the table.

“They are only threats, Craig.  I don’t know about the first wife, but the one making the threats has her own job and a damned good one, and the two of you have no children together.  You may be ordered to sell the house and split the equity, but that doesn’t mean she gets everything.”  She sat down beside him and rubbed his back.  “You’ve had a long day, Craig.  You’re tired, and I think you’ve been tired for a long time.”  His eyes had dark circles beneath them and he looked much older than he had the night before.  “Unless you’re starving, let’s cancel our takeout order.  Come with me.”

Leah took him by the hand and led him up the stairs to the guest bedroom.  “Lie down, Craig.”  He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed.  Leah curled up next to him and wrapped her arms around him.  “Sleep, doctor, sleep.”

Once the doctor had fallen into a deep slumber, Leah slipped away quietly and tiptoed to the doctor’s master bedroom.  She was determined to learn more about his ex, but what she discovered was more about her doctor.  Tucked away in the back of a dresser drawer was a stack of letters from years ago when he was an undergraduate at a very prestigious university.  He had been accepted to every ivy league school in the country, but the program he had chosen was different.  “We excel in diversity” an empty envelope read.  That seemed like a strange phrase to Leah, so she looked on-line for the school.  For a hefty sum from foreign governments, the program promised acceptance to students from select countries.  She skimmed down the list and found India, Saudi Arabia, and Iran among those with the most students accepted.  The program all but promised citizenship upon graduation.  With only five percent U.S. citizens, Leah realized how citizenship was granted.  It was easy.  Simple demographics insured that most foreign students would eventually pair up with an American.  Leah read about some of the alumnae men from the U.S. and learned that they were extremely intelligent but felt they couldn’t relate to “average” women.  The tuition was expensive and it was certainly a top notch school, but the human toll it took was tragic.  Preying upon the vulnerabilities of men and women who were barely adults was appalling.  Leah shook her head.  She wasn’t surprised about the actions of the U.S. government, but she felt bad for Dr. Holcomb.  While his colleagues had strong ties to their alma maters and faithfully watched the sports teams year after year long after they had graduated, his alma mater was geared toward those of higher intellect or with foreign deep pockets.  Being smart did not equate to being happy, nor did it exempt someone from having self-esteem issues.

“Leah?”

Leah closed the drawer and hurried down the hallway to where Craig was sitting on the side of the bed.  “Feeling better?”

“Yes, but hungry.”

Leah ordered from the vegetarian restaurant that was her favorite and wrapped her arms around Craig when he entered the kitchen.

“What’s that for?”

“Nothing, and everything,” she said.

He gave her a strange look, but Leah just smiled.  She listened as he talked about his day and the ideas he had about his book.  “They come to me at the oddest times,” he said with a laugh.  Leah nodded.  If the doctor wanted to be a novelist, she was going to do whatever she could to help him.  He deserved everything he wanted, including her.

***

After the doctor’s ex had moved out, Leah moved in.  Unfortunately, the ex was determined not to walk away without causing problems for the doctor.  According to one of the medical assistants who had become friends with Leah, the doctor’s ex came to the office unannounced often.  He agreed to see her, but she never arrived without making a scene.  She would open the door marked ‘doctors only’ and as soon as she saw him between patients, she would say in a loud and childlike whiny voice, “Are you done yet?”  Dr. Holcomb had been told by the managing partner that his ex’s behavior would no longer be tolerated and if Craig didn’t do something about it, he would.  Craig felt like a fool, allowing someone else to tell him what was appropriate professionally.  He felt emasculated and out of touch in yet another way.

Craig’s divorce became final on a cold day in January, and Leah wasn’t prepared for the broken man who walked through the door of his own home that day.

“You okay?”

“I’m divorced, again.  I’m a man who has been divorced twice.  Who could possibly want me?”  He closed his eyes and laid his head back.  “I’m alone.”

Leah walked slowly over to where Craig was sitting.  She slipped her feet out of the sexy black heels and planted her bottom on the doctor’s lap, her knees on either side of his legs.  He was a tall man and Leah leaned forward and put her hands on his face.  She kissed him lightly on the lips, placed her cheek against his, and whispered into his ear.  “You are not alone.  You have me.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him so close that she could feel the beating of his heart against her breasts.  She let him hold her for as long as he needed to, and when he let her loose just enough to see her face, he saw her, truly saw her, for the first time that night.  She was beautiful with blonde hair that she had curled in long ringlets.  Her eyes were bluer than any blue eyes he had seen, with a dark ring of blue outlining a slightly lighter shade.  They were so big they were like windows.  He guessed her to have been a cheerleader when she was in high school, probably homecoming queen, prom queen, every boy’s dream, and the envy of every girl.  She had been the description of his dream back in the day, but women like her didn’t spend much time with men like him.  Women like Leah spent their nights in the arms of the football quarterback, not smart nerdy guys like him.  Leah watched his eyes as they moved back and forth, up and down, as if trying to solve a puzzle.  He slid his hands down her back and held the two halves of her butt that fit perfectly in his hands.  He realized that the little black dress had been worn for a reason, the table set with candles, and the house dark except for the glow.

“You did this for me?”