Doctor-Patient Confidentiality: Chapter Two Hundred and Nine

Those five words hang in the air between us. Loaded with promise.

It’s not just an announcement but a declaration. A warning. The sweater is still extended to me, Frost’s eyes never leaving my face. He won’t repeat himself.

I swallow hard, not needing an encore of last Friday in any capacity. The memory of his punishment, of the humiliation and pleasure intertwined, caves my spine. I reach out, my hand trembling slightly as I take the sweater from him.

As I pull it over my head, I’m granted a few precious seconds of reprieve from his crushing stare. The soft fabric slides over my skin, and I inhale deeply, trying to steady my nerves. A faint scent of jasmine fills my nostrils, delicate and feminine. It’s not a scent I associate with Frost, and curiosity pricks at me even as dread pools in my stomach.

My fingers brush against something as I smooth down the sweater—a tag, still attached. The thought hits me like a punch to the gut. Is this his wife’s sweater? Oh god, that would be messed up on so many levels that I actively block it from my mind. The idea of wearing something belonging to the woman whose husband I’m… No. I can’t go there. Or did he buy it specifically for this twisted session? And just a sweater? Nothing else?

I look down at myself, acutely aware of how the sweater only reaches halfway down my belly button. Somehow, this partial coverage makes my nudity even more pronounced, more obscene. He won’t let me wear my own clothes, but he wants me in someone else’s? I try not to think about what this means, to ignore the possibility that he’s trying to dress me up like some sort of twisted doll fantasy. It seems so off-base for what I know of him, but then again, unpredictability is his M.O.