Her Doctor's Orders (4 page)

Kendra took a deep breath. She realized that she didn’t have any choice. She also realized, with a tiny blush that she thanked heaven her tanned skin would cover, that a part of her felt a strange happiness at not having any choice. “Okay,” she said. As she acquiesced, she felt the gratitude that had seemed to fade return even more strongly. Yes, it was incredibly embarrassing to be examined that way, but Levi had demonstrated more care of her than anyone had in years.

Chapter Three

Levi washed his hands in the kitchen sink, considering whether he should maybe have just called the police anyway. If the boyfriend was the kind of guy who had a restraining order against him, to get Kendra away from him might not be enough. First things first, though. He did owe the debt to Kendra, and he intended to pay it. He got his physician’s kit from the office, and then he walked to the guestroom door.

Levi took a deep breath and knocked, dropping into his examining physician persona as he opened the door and stepped inside. Levi had been a doctor long enough now that the persona was one that he could slip on and off like a pair of old jeans. Kendra was in the T-shirt, which was long enough to cover her to just below her panties. As had always happened when he treated attractive female patients, a part of his mind registered how beautiful Kendra was, and even that her beauty produced a certain degree of arousal in him. The trick, such as it was, was to acknowledge the arousal—not to ignore it—and simply to do his job, not allowing his mind to wander from that job.

“Alright,” he said, “we’ll start with temperature and blood pressure.”

“Seriously?” Kendra asked. “You’re not just going to check me for bruises?”

“Kendra,” Levi replied. “I need to get the whole picture. That’s the only way to be sure you’re healthy.”

He gave her the old-fashioned mercury thermometer, and she put it dutifully under her tongue. Then he wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm and began to pump it up. In silence, he watched the gauge, going through the motions as he had so many times. Her blood pressure checked out fine—he hadn’t really expected otherwise, but he certainly hadn’t lied to Kendra when he said he thought he needed to get the whole picture.

“That’s fine,” he said, looking into Kendra’s eyes. He noted that she looked extremely cute with a thermometer in her mouth, but as with the basic arousal at the sight of her in his T-shirt, he simply sent it to the side.

He took the thermometer out of her mouth, and checked it. “That’s fine, too,” he said.

Kendra glared at him. “I could have told you that,” she said.

“Alright,” Levi said, as if Kendra hadn’t said anything, “please lie on your back on the bed.”

Kendra did as he asked, and Levi made a visual examination of her legs, which showed no bruising. “Okay, Kendra,” he said, “please pull the shirt up above your stomach.”

As Kendra’s light blue cotton panties came into view, Levi again had to file a note of arousal in the back of his mind.

“I’m going to palpate your stomach now,” Levi said. “That means I’ll push a bit, okay?”

“Okay,” Kendra said, sounding a little nervous.

“Just let me know if anything hurts, okay?”

Kendra nodded.

There were two bruises on her abdomen where the bastard had hit her, probably so that no one at her job would see and report him. As he palpated them gently to see how deep they went, he said, “No need to tell me that hurts.” Kendra nodded, her eyes watering.

Despite those bruises, to Levi’s relief, she seemed to be entirely healthy, but he had to confess that the sensation of her soft skin under his fingers distracted him greatly.

He got his stethoscope. “I’m going to put this up under the shirt, to listen to your heart, okay?”

“Okay.”

Her pulse and her rhythm checked out very well. It felt strangely intimate to be listening to her heart that way. As he tried to discern the different noises that would tell him about the functioning of her valves and chambers, he looked at her face. Kendra’s eyes were turned away, and so with a small pang of guilt that he was in a certain sense taking advantage of her momentary lack of attention, he studied her features. Her blue eyes were set in a brow that seem to him the perfect height to match her charming oval-shaped face, and her pursed lips seemed to be poised, as he thought they usually were, to say something intelligent.

Reluctantly he removed the stethoscope from her chest and said, “Sounds good.” Kendra nodded.

“Okay,” Levi said, “last thing. Lie on your front, please. I’m going to pull the shirt up all the way to your shoulders. Understand?”

“Yes,” Kendra said softly.

Levi pulled the shirt up to just under her arms, and, pushing gently to make sure she didn’t have any cracked ribs, he conducted a visual examination of her back and the backs of her legs. The arousal caused by her shapely, blue-pantied bottom was familiar, but at the same time—given the plans he had for that bottom as part of her new program of self-improvement—it also made his thoughts wander more than he liked. In turn, those wandering thoughts made him a little uncomfortable in his jeans. He took the T-shirt and pulled it all the way back down.

“Okay,” he said, “why don’t you put your shorts back on and come join me again in the kitchen?”

When they were once again sitting at the kitchen table, Levi said, “Well, you’re okay. You do have a bunch of bruises, some of them newer and some of them older, and even though I’ve decided not to make the son of a bitch who did this to you regret it for the rest of his life, one thing that isn’t going to happen is you going back home to him.”

Kendra said, with a mixture of despair and defiance, “Where am I supposed to go, then? My friend Chloe’s boyfriend is a total jerk, and I could never stay there. He wouldn’t let me.” Something in her voice had changed in the wake of Levi’s examination. What had been all anger and frustration now seemed to have a pleading note.

“You’ll stay here,” Levi said.

Levi could tell that Kendra had been hoping—or just barely daring to hope—that he might offer to let her stay. But she said, “Oh, no… I couldn’t let you… I mean, you’ve done so much already, Levi…”

Kendra’s unselfishness touched him deeply: to be offered something that would help her so much, that she needed so much, and to try to turn it down, demonstrated to him that despite the self-destructive streak that had emerged in the wake of the terrible fortune that had befallen her, her heart remained pure. It wasn’t politeness, he could see in her eyes; she genuinely didn’t want to make trouble. Or maybe you could call it true politeness—the true purity of heart that seeks to make others’ lives better and not more difficult.

“It’s not very much trouble at all, especially since you’re going to be helping out with things like laundry. And it will mean that I’ll be able to help you turn things around much more easily.”

Levi examined Kendra’s face closely, to see how she felt about being helped that way. He thought he saw the beginnings of another annoyed face—and he was sure he would see the full-blown version when he told her the full version of the plan he had outlined in his head after seeing the bruise.

“In order to do that, Kendra, I’m going to make some rules for you. Above all, no booze.”

Kendra nodded. That one probably seemed easy right now. “No communication with your soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.” A little more reluctance seemed to show on her face, but she nodded again. “Check in with me via cell phone twice a day, and you come right back here after work—I’ll pick you up.”

The annoyed expression came back in full force, but Kendra nodded a third time. Then she said, “And what happens if I break a rule?”

Kendra’s expression as she asked this question had lost the annoyed twist of her mouth, but had kept the cute wrinkling of her nose. Also, her eyes had widened very slightly; Levi was certain that he read accurately there a hope for some kind of guidance that would finally set a limit to all the behaviors that she knew she should end, but which she couldn’t find her own way to ending.

“I’ll spank you,” Levi said simply.

“What?” Kendra said. “You’re joking.” To his satisfaction, Levi saw that the annoyed wrinkle of the nose had gone completely, and that Kendra couldn’t keep a certain fascination at his choice of disciplinary measures out of her eyes.

“I’m not. In certain instances, in a relationship built on trust, I believe that spanking can be very effective as a way to set limits.”

“But you’re a doctor!”

“Yes, and I would never spank you so as to harm you.”

“I’m
not
going to get over your knee, Dr. Hunter,” Kendra said, trying to muster defiance, but notably falling a little short. “Ever.”

“Perhaps not, but if I tell you to, you’ll lie on your bed and be spanked there. If you break a rule, that is.”

Kendra’s brow furrowed, and her mouth set itself in a frustrated moue. It was unbearably lovely, as far as Levi was concerned. Levi would never have pressed this issue if he hadn’t already been reasonably sure that Kendra had the traits that he knew responded well to spanking: above all, the appealing selfless quality that had struck him even at the hospital, the night of the accident three years before. Thinking back to his decision to head out into the night and bail her out of jail, he realized that he probably had been responding to precisely that quality; he could sense that Kendra would submit to guidance, for her own greater good and perhaps one day for that of the people she would be able to help.

When it came to how to apply that guidance, Levi truly believed that for the right people (in his experience, the right women), spanking could play a very important part in developing the best self a person had within him or her. In the course of his psychiatric residency, he had encountered an older couple who had used it effectively for forty years; the idea had resonated so strongly with Levi’s dominant libido that he had immediately begun to research the practice, and had decided that should the opportunity ever arise to guide a woman that way, he wouldn’t hesitate.

The pout became a pensive chewing on her lower lip, which was no less charming. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I understand. And I’m not going to break any rules, so we don’t even need to think about it.”

Levi sighed inwardly. He had heard the note of defiance creep back into her tone, now that she had rules to kick against. Kendra would break the rules, and she knew it. Being both smart and cute—that dangerous combination—she just thought she would get away with it.

Chapter Four

“Don’t you have to get to the office or something?” Kendra asked.

“I had a light schedule today anyway, and I cancelled the appointments I had,” Levi replied. “I’ve tracked down your truck—it’s totaled, so you can give me your insurance info when you get a chance and I’ll get you started taking care of it. Let’s use the time I’ve got today to get you some clothes and necessities.”

Why did that make her angry, Kendra wondered. She seemed to bounce back and forth—either she had butterflies in her tummy and hoped Dr. Hunter would find an excuse to touch her again, the way he had when she had stripped to let him examine her and she had worried he would find a wet spot on her panties, or she wanted to tell him to stop acting so goddamn nice to her when she knew she was lucky not to be dead.

Yes, she had been hoping Levi would tell her that she could stay with him, but she didn’t intend for it to last more than a few days. Kendra had no intention of letting sense be talked into her, and she had no intention of going back to school. Frankly, she couldn’t understand why someone as smart as Levi clearly was would think helping Kendra Jackson had any chance of repaying the investment of his time. To have Levi now want to buy stuff for her just seemed like too much.

Kendra realized she had been staring down at the table with her annoyed face on. “You can pay me back as soon as you want,” Levi said. Kendra looked up at him, and saw that he might well have a pretty good idea of her intention not to let his idyllic vision of reforming Kendra come true.

She forced a smile onto her lips. “Okay,” she said. At least it would be something to pass the time.

* * *

When, four hours later, as she unpacked her new things from the plastic shopping bags into the dresser in Levi’s guestroom, Kendra realized that she had been happy for the preceding two hundred forty minutes, and she said “Fuck.” She stopped unpacking and sat down on the bed—the bed where Levi had given her the exam, that morning, where she’d had the sudden, unforgivable idea that he would pull down her panties.

Fine. She would try it his way.

Kendra remembered the way she had felt as he had watched her choosing clothes at the big box store in Tucumcari. Instantly all the things her mother had told her about the kinds of clothes a girl with a future wears came back to her, as she looked at the racks and racks of trashy clothes that all her friends at school would wear, that Lori Jackson wouldn’t let Kendra touch with a ten-foot pole. The memories had threatened for a moment to make her sad, but then, despite a part of her that just wanted to give into that grief, she had turned to look at Levi. She saw him looking back at her steadily, with a little smile on his face, and she thought,
he wants me to have a future.

She had gone to the section of the rack that had the few relatively modest articles of clothing you could find at a big box store in Tucumcari, picturing Levi Hunter in his medium-tight jeans and crisp Oxford-cloth shirt.

Now, in his guestroom, she started putting the clothes away again, thinking about choosing the lingerie, and how she had almost had the nerve to say to Levi, in a joking way—a totally joking way—“Well, next time you examine me, what would you like to see me in?”

Or maybe she had only thought she had almost had the nerve. She knew she needed panties, but she walked right by the rack because she didn’t want to choose them with Levi looking, but he had said, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”