Chapter 1: Aroused and Out of Control
The lavender in the little porcelain dish on his desk wasn’t doing its job. Sheena focused on the scent, trying to anchor herself to something, anything, other than the feel of his hands. It wasn’t working. All she could process was the warm, steady pressure of Dr. Edward Perry’s fingertips just below her collarbone.
“Just breathe normally for me, Sheena,” he said, his voice a low, calm rumble.
Breathe normally. Right. As if her lungs remembered how. The exam room was quiet, save for the soft rustle of the paper sheet beneath her. His office was always like this—a study in gentle competence. Diplomas on the wall, a plush blue couch for consultations, the discreet hum of the building’s air conditioning. A safe space. Usually.
Today, it felt like a crucible.
The twins were having a party, a rolling, kicking celebration that made her belly shift visibly under the thin fabric of the clinic gown. The hormonal carnival happening inside her had turned her skin into a live wire. Everything was too much: the texture of the paper, the faint overhead light, the way his wedding band finger was bare—a detail she hadn’t allowed herself to linger on before.
“Heart sounds strong,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. The disc of the stethoscope moved, a cool circle on her overheated skin. It glided downward, over the swell of her left breast.
A jolt, white-hot and shocking, shot through her. It wasn’t pain. It was pure, unadulterated sensation, a lightning strike of nerves she didn’t know she possessed. A low, throaty moan escaped her lips before she could clamp her jaw shut.
The sound hung in the air, obscene and unmistakable.
Edward’s hand froze. The stethoscope stilled. The professional mask he wore—the kind smile, the steady gaze—flickered. For a fraction of a second, she saw something else in his blue eyes: a widening surprise, a heat that mirrored the flush now burning its way from her chest to the roots of her fiery hair.
He recovered swiftly, clearing his throat as he pulled the stethoscope away. “Sorry,” he said, his voice slightly tighter. “The, ah, sensitivity can be… pronounced in the third trimester.”
“Pronounced,” Sheena croaked, grasping the clinical word like a lifeline. “Yeah. That’s one word for it.” She attempted a laugh; it came out as a shaky exhale. “Think of it as a faulty burglar alarm. Goes off if a breeze hits it.”
He didn’t smile back. He was looking at her face, really looking, and the eye contact was somehow more intimate than his hands had been. The air between them thickened, charged with the ghost of that sound.
“It’s a common physiological response,” he stated, but the words sounded rote, like he was reminding himself. He turned to set the stethoscope on the counter, his shoulders tense under his crisp white coat. “The increase in blood flow and hormonal changes prepare the body for lactation. It can make the breast tissue exceptionally responsive.”
“Responsive.” Sheena echoed again, drowning in jargon. She pulled the gown tighter, a futile gesture. “So you’re telling me my body is just… efficiently preparing for milk production. That’s all that was.”
Edward turned back. He leaned a hip against the counter, crossing his arms. The motion was casual, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Sheena.”
Just her name. Not ‘Ms. Roberts.’ It unspooled something in her belly that had nothing to do with the twins.
“Was that all it was?” he asked quietly.
The question was a grenade, pin pulled. The professional boundary, always so clear, now seemed like a line drawn in sand at high tide. She could lie. She should lie. She opened her mouth to do just that.
Another fierce kick from within made her gasp, a hand flying to the side of her taut stomach. “Someone disapproves of this line of questioning,” she managed, deflecting.
A real smile, small and genuine, touched his lips then. It changed his whole face, softening the careful doctor and revealing the man underneath. “They’re active today.”
“They’re preparing for their own third-trimester careers as soccer players,” she said, relief flooding her at the shift in topic. “Or maybe mixed martial artists.”
He pushed off the counter and came closer, his previous intensity replaced by a warm, familiar concern. “May I?”
She nodded, words failing again. He knelt on the little round stool, bringing himself eye-level with her bump. Gently, he placed his bare hands on either side. His touch was deliberate, clinical in purpose, but the warmth seeped through the paper gown. Sheena held her breath.
“There,” he whispered, his gaze fixed on where a tiny heel or elbow was tracing a path. A look of pure, unguarded wonder passed over his features. It was the look of a man who never tired of this miracle, a look that made something deep inside her ache.
“Hello in there,” he said, his voice soft. “Give your mom a break, okay?”
As if on command, the movement subsided. Edward’s hands remained for a second longer than necessary before he slowly stood up, his knees cracking faintly. The moment stretched, delicate and fragile.
“They’re perfect, Sheena,” he said, his voice back to its professional calm, though his eyes hadn’t quite recovered. “Everything is progressing exactly as it should.”
“Good.” The word was a whisper. She was adrift, torn between embarrassment, a desperate attraction, and the profound vulnerability of being so known in this way, by this man.
He walked back to his desk, putting physical distance between them. He picked up her chart, clicking his pen. “Any other concerns? Cramping? Swelling?”
“Just the standard issue feeling like a beached whale,” she said, grasping for her old, wry self. “With really, really sensitive blowholes.”
This time, he did laugh. It was a rich, warm sound that filled the too-quiet room. “I’ll make a note. ‘Patient reports cetacean morphology with hypersensory spiracles.’”
She grinned, finally feeling on steadier ground. “You do that.”
He finished scribbling, then looked at her, the pen tapping once, twice, against the file. “Sheena… about before.” He paused, choosing his words with care. “This isn’t… it can’t be…”
“I know,” she cut in, saving them both. “It was a physiological response. To the, uh, lactation preparedness protocol.” She waved a hand, as if swatting the entire awkward, charged incident away. “Don’t worry, Doc. My dignity will recover. In about nine years.”
He didn’t look relieved. He looked… conflicted. He finally just gave a slow, single nod. “Okay. I’ll see you next week. Call the office if anything changes.”
It was a dismissal, gentle but firm. The boundary was back, reinforced. Sheena slid off the table, the paper crinkling loudly in the silence. She gathered her clothes, feeling the weight of his gaze on her back until the door clicked shut behind her.
In the cool, sterile hallway, she leaned against the wall for a second. She could still feel the echo of his hands, the heat of his look. Her body hummed with a confusing mix of shame and thrilling awareness.
Back inside the office, Edward Perry stood motionless, staring at the closed door. He lifted the hand that had held the stethoscope. He flexed his fingers slowly, then curled them into a fist, pressing it against his forehead. A long, slow breath left his lungs. He turned to the computer screen, the familiar list of patient names and vitals blurring before him.
The next appointment on the schedule seemed to pulse on the monitor: Roberts, Sheena. 39 weeks. Twins.
He clicked the mouse, closing the file. The window vanished. But the sound—that soft, helpless moan—played on a perfect, torturous loop in the quiet of the room.
But the sound—that soft, helpless moan—played on a perfect, torturous loop in the quiet of the room.
Edward lasted five minutes. He shut down his computer, grabbed his coat, and left the office, nodding at the nurses but not really seeing them. The drive home was a blur of stoplights and taillights. His apartment was dark, silent, a textbook example of a divorced man’s life. Neat. Empty. He poured a scotch but didn’t drink it, just rolled the cool glass against his temple.
He was a doctor. He had protocols for everything, from pre-eclampsia to a breached placenta. There was no protocol for this. For the way his own pulse had hammered in his throat at that sound. For the way he’d wanted, desperately, to drag his thumb across the skin his stethoscope had just touched, to see if he could elicit that sound again.
It was unconscionable. It was all he could think about.
Sheena drove home gripping the steering wheel too tightly. Her belly brushed against it. The ghost of his hands was a brand on her skin. She felt flustered, overheated, and profoundly alone. The empty nursery rooms in her house seemed to yawn wider that evening.
She made tea. She didn’t drink it. She tried to watch a show. The faces on the screen were just moving shapes. The silence in her living room was a physical presence, broken only by the restless shifting of the twins.
It was the loneliness that did it. That, and a bold, hormonal courage that felt entirely new. The appointment had stripped away a layer. He had seen her, truly seen her, in that raw, unguarded moment. And he hadn’t looked away in disgust. He’d looked… awakened.
Before the sane, cautious part of her brain could marshal its arguments, she had her phone in hand. She’d called the after-hours line once before with a question about swelling. His personal cell number was on the recorded message. She’d memorized it without meaning to.
Her thumb hovered. The twins kicked, a simultaneous one-two punch that felt like solidarity. Or indigestion.
She pressed call.
It rang three times. She almost hung up.
“Hello?” His voice was cautious, professional. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Edward. It’s Sheena. Roberts.” She winced. He knew her last name.
A beat of silence stretched so thin she could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. “Sheena. Is everything alright? Are you in pain?” The doctor voice. Firm, concerned.
“No. No pain. Everything’s… the same.” She took a breath that shuddered. “I’m calling because I… I wanted to say thank you. For today. For being so… attentive.”
Another silence. This one was different. Thicker. She could practically hear him parsing the word, peeling back its layers. “It’s my job,” he said finally, but the tone had shifted. The professional veneer had a crack in it.
“I know it is.” She plowed ahead, the words tumbling out now. “And that’s what makes this so completely insane and probably a terrible idea. But I’m sitting here, huge and hormonal and… and I can’t stop thinking about it. About you. And I was wondering…”
She closed her eyes, summoning every shred of bravery she possessed.
“Would it be too forward… to invite you over for dinner?”
The line was so quiet she thought they’d been disconnected. Then she heard it: a slow, controlled exhale.
“Sheena.” Her name was a groan. A surrender. “You know why I can’t.”
“I know a hundred reasons why you can’t,” she whispered. “I’m asking if you want to.”
This time, the silence was alive. Electric. She could feel him warring with himself, could picture him standing in that dark apartment of his, running a hand through his hair. When he spoke, his voice was rough, stripped of all its clinical calm.
“Where do you live?”
The address tumbled from her lips before she could reconsider. She heard the soft scratch of a pen on paper.
“I’ll be there in forty minutes,” he said, and the line went dead.
The next half hour was a surreal whirlwind. She changed clothes three times, settling on a loose, low-cut black tank top that accommodated her full breasts and a stretchy maternity mini-skirt. It was daring, but it made her feel less like a patient and more like a woman. She slid her feet into simple leather sandals, her swollen ankles grateful. She wasn’t trying to seduce him. She was trying to exist as herself, outside that paper gown.
She rushed through the kitchen, pulling a pre-made lasagna from the freezer—her planned dinner for the week—and shoved it into the oven. The lie of homemade food was a necessary facade. She lit a candle to mask the faint cardboard-and-plastic scent of the packaging, her hands trembling.
Precisely thirty-eight minutes later, headlights washed across her front window.
Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest. This was madness. Professional suicide for him, emotional catastrophe for her. She walked to the door, each step a conscious decision.
She opened it.
He stood on her porch, out of his white coat. He wore dark jeans and a simple grey Henley that stretched across his shoulders. He looked younger, more real, and utterly terrified. His eyes raked over her, from her loose red hair to the sandals on her feet, pausing for a fractured second on the strip of belly skin between her tank top and the skirt's waistband. The clinical appraisal was gone, replaced by a raw, human hunger that stole the air from her lungs.
“You came,” she said, the words barely a whisper.
“I shouldn’t have.” His voice was rough.
“But you did.”
A slow, almost imperceptible nod. She stepped back, holding the door wider. “Come in. It’s… it’s not much.”
He crossed the threshold. As he passed her, she caught his scent—soap, clean cotton, and the faint, crisp aroma of the autumn night air clinging to his jacket. Underneath it, something uniquely him, warm and vital.
And then the richer, savory smell of baking cheese and tomatoes from the kitchen enveloped them both.
“Something smells amazing,” he said, following her into the living room, his gaze taking in the cozy space, the framed sonogram pictures on the mantel.
“It’s just lasagna,” she said, hovering nervously near the couch. “The frozen kind. I’m not actually capable of complex culinary tasks right now. My body has diverted all resources to the limb-construction department.”
He finally looked directly at her, and a real smile, weary and beautiful, broke through. “Honesty. That’s refreshing.”
“It’s all I’ve got left, Edward. The filters are offline.”
They stood there, five feet of carpet between them, the distance humming with everything unsaid. The domestic scent of food made the situation somehow more intimate, more dangerous. This wasn't an exam room. This was her life.
“Why did you call, Sheena?” he asked, not moving.
“Because when you looked at me today,” she said, her hand instinctively resting on her belly, “you didn’t see a complication. You saw me. And I haven’t felt seen in a very long time.”
He closed his eyes, pained. “Seeing you is all I do. It’s becoming a problem.”
“Look at me now.”
He did. He let his gaze travel over her again, slowly, without a stethoscope or a chart in sight. This time, he didn’t hide what it cost him. The struggle was plain on his face—the wanting, the dread, the irrevocable step this was.
He took one step forward. Then another. He didn’t stop until he was close enough that she could feel the heat from his body, could see the darker blue rings around his irises.
“This is a terrible idea,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to her lips.
“The worst,” she agreed, tilting her face up to his.
“I could lose my license.”
“Probably.”
He brought a hand up, hesitated, then gently brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. His fingertips grazed her skin, and a full-body shiver racked her. This touch held no clinical purpose. It was purely discovery.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, the words sounding wrenched from him. “It’s been… consuming me.”
The confession hung in the warm, food-scented air. The last thread of his professional restraint, snapped.
She didn’t answer. She simply reached for the hand at her face and guided it, pressing his palm firmly against the side of her taut stomach. A tiny foot kicked against his touch immediately, a strong, rolling thrust.
Edward’s breath hitched. His other hand came up to cradle her belly, his expression one of awe. He wasn't Dr. Perry anymore. He was just a man, feeling life, feeling her.
When his eyes found hers again, they were blazing with a fierce, undeniable certainty. The question was gone. The momentum had shifted, hurtling them past the point of return.
The oven timer buzzed shrilly from the kitchen, a mundane alarm for a world that had just utterly changed. Neither of them moved.