Filthy Doctor(171)

“Mars?” she gasped. “What are you—”

“Alisha, Calvin,” he said, bowing. “Welcome to Paradise.”

***



Mars Tracy was a tall, imposing man, athletic and muscular, and he towered over Alisha and Calvin as they stepped inside, suddenly aware of how tacky and mean their worn clothes and scuffed shoes seemed next to Mars’ pressed linen suit and shined blue leather shoes. He’d lost the beard and gained a tan, which made him look leaner and hungrier than she’d last seen him. He wore his dark hair slicked back into a neat ponytail.

Inside the massive carved wooden doors was a massive foyer with a sweeping spiral staircase white with an intricate cast-iron railing. The rooms of the house were closed off by doors, but there was enough art on the walls and the rugs were fancy enough for them to get the general impression of a latter-day Downton Abbey. There was a slim black side table with a small silver tray on it, and Mars, smiling gestured at it. If you please. It took a moment for Calvin to realize that he was supposed to put his keys and wallet there. Alisha followed suit and set her purse down, a little uncertain about what was going to happen now.

“Follow me,” said Mars, opening a door and leading the way down a hallway.

“So, uh you know each other?” Calvin asked nervously.

“You could say that,” Mars said. “She used to date my brother.”

Calvin’s look of discomfort would have been hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that she was feeling the same way. “So what happened?” Calvin asked, as they were shown into a library.

“Well, she took him home to meet her father, and—”

“He invited us to a family barbecue, and then my dad met their mother,” Alisha finished.

“But your last names—”

“We were old enough to be emancipated, so we kept our last names after Mr. Reyes married our mother,” Mars said, smoothly gesturing to the chairs. Alisha and Calvin sat down obediently. She began to understand why Mars had been chosen for this task—if someone wanted to back out now they’d be subjected to his imposing figure in front of them.

“Hi Ally,” Altaire said, entering from the other door. He grinned sheepishly at her. “Never thought I’d see you here.” He was tall, like Mars, but slimmer. If Mars was a brick of solid muscle, then Altaire was reedy, sinewy, but strong. His hair was the same color and Mars’, but he kept it short and neat—he looked like any other banker and even now she was uncomfortably aware that if she hadn’t known that he was Mars’ brother she wouldn’t have known his name. He looked pale, as if it’d been years since he’d stepped into the sun.

Calvin was starting to look even more panicked than he had been. “So you’re the one she was dating?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“No,” Altaire said, smiling. “Though I wish she had—Sol was never good enough for you, you know?”

Two and two came together like a thunderclap in her head: so this was what Sol had been up to for the past three years. She knew he was a therapist, but she’d always assumed that meant he had a couch in an office, the same as any other shrink. But a sex therapist—

Oh God, he’s going to be watching me have sex with Calvin—and if that didn’t set her weird-o-meter off then the fact that Sol would be telling Calvin how to please her certainly added an element of twisted incest into it.

“It’s not as if we’re blood relations,” said Altaire, coming up behind Calvin and placing his hands on Calvin’s shoulders. He began to rub Calvin’s shoulders. “There,” he said. “Just relax. It’s not illegal—”

“But it is sure as fuck embarrassing,” said Calvin, as a little sigh of relief escaped him.

“That’s a matter of perspective,” said Altaire. “We all love Alisha, we want to see her happy. You make her happy, except in this one regard—so we make her happy. You see how this works?”

Much to Alisha’s surprise Calvin nodded. She vaguely remembered that Altaire had studied yoga and was a massage therapist as well. No wonder Calvin basically melted into a puddle.

“Yes,” said a new voice—Sol came in through the main door and closed it behind them. She gasped in shock when she first saw him—he’d bleached his hair to a luminous platinum blond, and it floated down to his shoulders like a curtain of white lightning. He was built somewhere between Altaire and Max, and he seemed to glide over the ground more than walk on it. Unlike Altaire and Mars, he was wearing a Nehru jacket, the high collar unbuttoned at the throat. He was dressed entirely in black, and now as he sat down across from Alisha and Calvin she suddenly recalled the suave patter that had charmed her into his arms. At that point, though, she had been just starting out with her career, and the relentless practice schedule and the exhaustion that she was left with took their tolls on their relationship almost before it’d begun.

Still, seeing his familiar features—the aquiline nose, the sharp, green eyes that the other two also shared—brought back a wave of good memories. She’d met his brothers at that barbecue where she’d introduced her father to their mother—they’d all had a good time talking with each other and they treated her like the little sister they’d always wanted to have. Mars had taught her a bit of street fighting, “just in case,” he said. She’d actually used it once—it’d worked, and the guy whose nose she’d broke had ended up with a hospital bill.

They’d just been starting out back then; when their parents married they’d just started their practice, but she’d been under the impression that it was just a regular shrink’s practice where Altaire could teach yoga and Mars could do physical therapy in conjunction with Sol’s therapy. Sex therapy wasn’t something she was even aware of until three days ago—that her step brothers had gone into.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Sol said, as Mars set down a tray of tea (when had he made the tea?) with little chocolates. “I’m going to ask you two some questions, and you need to answer them as honestly as you possibly can. There’s no point in being dishonest—I can tell if you’re lying and if you are going to lie Mars will kick you two out the way David Beckham kicks soccer balls.”

Alisha nodded. Calvin gulped, and then he nodded.

“Once we ascertain where we stand and what we need to do, we’ll take you upstairs to one of the therapy rooms—”

“Therapy rooms?” Calvin’s voice cracked when he asked the question.

“Rooms where we get to try out different things and practice what I’ve told you, in a safe space,” he said.

“How kinky do you think we’re going to get?” Alisha sputtered. “I’m a virgin—I’ve never had sex with a man.”

“You’d be surprised and how many clients discover fetishes they never knew they had,” Sol said, “or else they were too afraid to embrace them. Keep in mind, most people don’t like to talk about their needs—they’re told that such things are awful, and despite all the openness about gay sex and the recent uptick in interest about bondage, these aren’t the videos getting the views on porn sites.”

Alisha fell silent. Calvin stared at his feet. He was probably wishing that they were anywhere but here—but he’d picked the place, now he had to live with it.

“All right,” said Sol, smiling and looking back and forth at them. “Let’s begin, shall we? Alisha, what is it that you want most out of sex with Calvin?”

She gulped. “I want to feel like a woman,” she said, in a small voice. Next to her, she could feel Calvin turning red. “I mean, I want to feel—to feel like he knows me and wants to please me.”

“Why do you think he’s not pleasing you?” asked Sol.

Fuck, I can’t believe I’m talking to my stepbrother about this, she thought. “I—I don’t know—”

“I want something more,” Calvin said, suddenly. “I want to take her and feel her body change underneath me, to feel like she’s becoming something more than me—like—like she’s the goddess I want to worship.”

She gasped. She’d never known that Calvin had wanted that. “I love her,” he said, now, to Sol. “I love her and I want to please her—but I don’t know how to give her what she wants in a way that makes me feel worthy of her love.”

“Happily,” said Sol, “that’s what you’re here for.”



It was just as well that Sol was there to listen. By the end of the hour Alisha was beginning to understand what the point of therapy was—there were so many questions that she hadn’t even thought to ask Calvin that rolled off Neil’s tongue as easily as if he’d been discussing the Patriots’ last play. And she had learned so much about what made Calvin happy that she had a few ideas of what she was willing to try, so that she could make him happy and so that he could make her feel like that.

“Well,” Sol said, “I think there’s a lot we can do to make things better between you two. Please give me a moment to confer with Mars and Altaire.”