My Husband Never Touched Me, So the CEO Doctor Took Off His Gloves novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Gloves On

Quincy examines her in his clinic; she tells him her husband never touched her; he takes one glove off for her pulse.

I took off my jacket and held it in front of me like a shield.

Quincy Delamere watched that and didn't comment.

"The exam room is through there," he said. "Sanitizer is on the wall. Use it up to the elbow."

The room behind his office was white and smaller than I'd expected.

It had a padded table with fresh paper, a steel stool, and one locked cabinet.

It looked like a clinic. It also looked like a place nobody had been in for a very long time.

I sat on the edge of the table and the paper crackled.

He came in, pulled a new pair of gloves from a box, and put them on over the first pair.

"Two pairs?" I asked.

"Four years of habit."

He sat on the stool, and it put him lower than me.

"Tell me what happens. In order."

"A hand touches me and I burn." My mouth was dry. "Not pain."

I made myself go on. "It starts where they touch, and then it's everywhere. Then I can't stand up."

"Anyone's hand?"

"A client's. Lacey's. A man in the elevator who held the door."

"Your husband's?"

I looked at my knees.

"He doesn't touch me," I said.

His head came up. "Ever?"

"We've been married thirteen months. He kisses my forehead."

It sounded worse out loud than it had in my head.

"He says he's waiting until I'm ready. His back hurts. I stopped asking."

Quincy was silent long enough that I looked up.

His face hadn't changed, but his jaw had.

"When did the burning start?" he asked.

"A month ago, after a stomach flu. I couldn't keep anything down for ten days."

I stopped. "When I could, my body was different."

"Different how?"

I had never said the next part to a living person.

"Awake," I said. "Like it had been somewhere else for a year."

He wrote nothing down. He nodded once, slowly.

"I'm going to take your pulse," he said. "Your left wrist. Gloved."

He met my eyes. "If you want me to stop, say so and I stop. Your call, Ms. Ashcroft, not mine."

"Fine."

He held out his hand, palm up, and waited.

I laid my wrist across his fingers.

The blue glove was thin.

I felt the warmth of him through it, two fingertips pressing the inside of my wrist.

The burn came up my arm all at once.

I made a noise. I bit down on it too late.

"Breathe through your nose," he said, quiet and steady. "Don't pull away yet. Look at the wall."

I looked at the wall. Every nerve I had was in my wrist.

His fingers didn't move.

His thumb rested on the bone, and the heat poured up from it, past my elbow and into my chest.

My thighs pressed together on the paper before I could stop them.

"One hundred and twelve," he said.

His voice had dropped.

"Is that bad?"

"For a woman sitting still, yes." He still hadn't let go. "You're also holding your breath."

I let it out. It shook.

"It's the glove," I said, and heard how that sounded. "I can feel you through it. Your fingers are warm and it's still not..."

I stopped.

Quincy Delamere looked at his own hand around my wrist.

Then he peeled back the cuff of the outer glove, then the inner, and pulled his right hand free.

His bare fingers were pale and long, and the skin across the knuckles was red and chapped from scrubbing.

He held that hand in the air between us and looked at it.

"I haven't done this in four years," he said.

"You don't have to."

"I know that."

He laid two fingers against my wrist.

It wasn't the burn, this time.

It was a slower heat, deep and full, that spread from the center of me and tipped my head back.

His skin was dry and warm. His pulse beat against mine.

Neither of us moved.

I watched his throat move when he swallowed.

I watched his gray eyes drop to my mouth and come back up.

"Ms. Ashcroft," he said. "How is your pulse now?"

"You tell me."

"Slower." He didn't look away. "And mine isn't."

He took his hand back.

I felt the loss at once. I almost reached after his hand.

He stood and went toward the door.

I waited for him to cross to the sink and start the scrub.

Everyone said he washed his hands thirty times a day.

He stopped with his back to me.

He looked at the bare hand, turned it over, and closed his fingers.

He didn't go to the sink.

"Come back Thursday at four," he said, without turning around. "Don't tell anyone where you've been."

"Not even my husband?"

"Especially not him," said Quincy Delamere, and opened the door for me with the cloth.

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