Valentine, Be Mine Ch. 01

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters herein described and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

***

"That's it," Joanna gasped. "Right there. Keep doing that. Yeahhhhh, oh yeah. Fuck me, Baby. Fuck me harder!"

I have never seen anything more beautiful in my life than the flushed face of my wife in the throes of sexual ecstasy. 'Glow' just doesn't do her aura justice. Her sparkling emerald eyes are glazed, out-of-focus, yet glimmer with the intensity of her excitation. Moans and shrieks of undisguised lust emit from her plush, parted lips. Her chest heaves, thrusting her firm, full, jiggling breasts up and down. Her pussy seems to inhale the huge cock, then expel it, only to suck it in once more. Bliss. That is the only word that comes close to describing her expression; pure bliss.

***

I have seen that look of bliss on Joanna's face as long as we have been together. My bride and I couldn't get enough of each other.

"Words cannot express what you mean to me, Bobby Valentine," she gushed on our wedding day. "I never needed anyone else to make my life complete. You changed that forever the day you came into it."

"You came into my life, remember?" I chided. "I still remember watching you work your way across that crowded club floor to ask me to dance."

"Don't pick nits," she teasingly scolded. "I know a good thing when I see one. You are a very good thing. I don't ever want to live without your love again. Damn you, you are so pretty! You make me feel… inadequate by comparison."

It wasn't the first time a woman had expressed that to me; usually when she left me. A couple of them – the more honest ones – had said they couldn't compete with me. Huh? What was that supposed to mean? Joanna hadn't left, had never felt threatened by my male-model good looks and slender runner's physique. When other women came on to me (and they did; sometimes right in front of her), she had certainly been territorial enough, and wasn't afraid to let her rival know. Still, she had handled it differently than any other woman I had ever dated. I sensed she was… proud others were attracted to me, as if I was her trophy. Look, but don't touch, Girls. He's all mine. Besides; if there was any single word to describe my Joanna, it would not be 'inadequate'.

We didn't just talk about our fantasies; we acted them out. You know the christen-every-room-and-horizontal-surface-in-the-house thing? Child's play; we knocked that off in the first two days. Dressing up and role-playing? Beneath that cool, educated, oh-so-professional exterior beats the heart of the most uninhibited woman I have ever met. Betcha never thought an accomplished, respected M.D. would enjoy portraying a slut in a crowded nightclub. The contrast was hysterical and endearing. After a couple of drinks, Joanna really got into it; flirting, teasing, dirty dancing with me and other guys. She wasn't okay with me checking out her 'competition'; she did it with me, comparing their attributes to her own tight, curvaceous body and luminous beauty. I swear, she was as bad as any of my male friends.

"Look at the rack on that bimbo!" she would boldly proclaim. "See how she flaunts those puppies? You just know she's trolling for more than compliments. That is so hot! Dance with her, Bobby. I wanna watch!"

That was the way it was with us. We each felt an electric thrill watching the other bump and grind on the dance floor. As good as it was together, it's different when watched from a distance. We could each get a better view of the other's nuances of body movement, the way she or I interacted with the other dancer. It was visual seduction at its most erotic – and in no way intended for the benefit of our partners-of-the-moment. When it was time to go, Joanna and I had eyes only for each other.

Sex in public places? You bet. Doing it up against a brick wall in an alley outside the aforementioned bar? Blowing me in the car – with the top down? Her driving, while I ate her to multiple orgasms? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. We have also had sex over each other's desk in our respective offices (she has a couch, but that would have been too… pedestrian).

My friends had been less than enthusiastic about my then-fiancé. First, they gave me grief because she was a few years older than me.

"So, what?" I had retorted. "If she's not jailbait, then she's past some arbitrary 'freshness date' and we have to take her off the shelves? Grow up, Guys. She is in her prime, just as I am in mine. I would be proud to be married to a woman that smart, that talented, that beautiful, that sexy, that good if she was a hundred – and Joanna isn't even a third of that!"

Then they pointed out she had a successful professional career and was making tons more money than me. What did she need me for? She would probably keep me around for a year or two, then dump me with the trash when she got bored. With a future like that in store, why bother getting married at all? Sigh….

"Look, Fellas," I had explained patiently, as if addressing a class of kindergarteners, "if we had gone to med school, then did an internship, followed by a residency, followed by a specialty residency, instead of spending our formative years as professional eye candy, then we might be hauling in those big bucks, too. Life is a crap shoot. Marriages fail left and right, sometimes for the dumbest of reasons. Does that mean we should just give up? How can we achieve anything if we don't even try? Maybe you're right; maybe it won't work. Maybe I'll wake up some morning with my ass in the dumpster, next to cold coffee grounds wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. Then again, maybe I won't. Joanna is just too damn good not to take a chance on."

"Don't do it, Bobby," they had implored. "Don't marry a psychiatrist. Don't get hitched to a woman who gets inside people's heads for a living. She is a hypnotherapist, too? Uh-uh. She's gonna turn you upside-down, inside-out, then wash, rinse, spin, and hang your brain out to dry."

I was incensed. For every conceivable reason, this woman was a 'keeper'. She had made it crystal-clear she felt exactly the same way about me. I would defend her to the end of Time itself.

"It isn't like that," I had protested. "She loves me – and I love her. The woman just happens to be a real person, too. She would never abuse my trust that way."

They had simply rolled their eyes in disbelief. I never found out who had subsequently hung the shrunken head from my rear-view mirror. I passed it off as a good-natured gag – perhaps tinged with a bit of jealousy over my relationship with my gorgeous red-headed fiancé – and let it go at that.

It was a few months into our marriage when the headaches returned. They had been my on-again, off-again companion as long as I could remember. The periodic dull, throbbing pain had been the death of more than one relationship in my past. Do you think a girl really wants to hear her guy say: "Not tonight; I have a splitting headache"? My 'friend' hadn't surfaced at all while Joanna and I were dating. I really thought – had hoped – I had finally put that trauma behind me. Not so.

Joanna was horrified to discover I had a chronic condition I had never done anything about.

"Robert Everett Valentine," she lectured sternly, "you are so busted! First, you have been suffering in silence all these years with something that may be serious, even life-threatening. Don't you care about yourself, you lunk? I care about you! That brings up my second point. You have a loving wife – a medical professional - at your beck and call twenty-four/seven, and you kept this from me? Me, the one who loves you unconditionally, forsaking all others, the first one you should turn to for any problem? Honestly, I sometimes don't know why I put up with you!"

I don't think there is any test in the Internal Medicine playbook her colleagues didn't subject me to. Personally, I thought the MRI was the worst. Granted, it was the least physically invasive, but just try to hear yourself think with that staccato clanging ringing in your ears. It's like being inside a metal garbage can while a tag team of maniacs is banging away at the sides with baseball bats. All I can say is, I didn't have a headache going in….

Net result: zip, zero, goose, zilch, butkus, nada. I was completely, ridiculously, absurdly healthy. My blood pressure was steady as a rock at one-ten over seventy. My active pulse (after the stair-step warm-up) 'raced' at eighty beats per minute. Cholesterol? Hah! No migraines, tumors, arterial plaque, chemical or hormonal imbalances, aneurisms, infections, diseases, kidney, pancreatic or gall stones, not so much as a hang nail.

Rather than being relieved, my loving wife became more and more concerned with each new negative result.

"There has to be something," Joanna insisted, as we reviewed the findings while seated on our living room sofa. "I know the man I married is not a hypochondriac. Yet, all the tests indicate there is nothing physically wrong with you."

Call me a rocket scientist (I'm not, but my mama didn't raise no dummy, either). I could see the direction this conversation was taking. What are the five dreaded words no man wants to hear in the course of a relationship? No, I don't mean "let's just ask for directions." Joanna took my hands in hers and gazed into my eyes.

"Sweetheart," she intoned, "we need to talk."

Oh, no; no, no, no, no nyet. My friends' words came back to haunt me.

"Maybe we should get a second opinion," I suggested helpfully. "Is Greg House available? Besides, isn't there some professional ethics thing about you shrinking your husband's head?"

"Sweetie!" she exclaimed with false wounded pride. "Who better to find out what is bothering you than me? You know I have nothing but your best interests at heart. You do trust me, don't you?"

Don't you just hate it when they ask that? Whenever they use the "T" word, it involves something you just know you will regret later. It's a lose-lose situation. Say "yes" and you might as well bend over and spread your cheeks; you are fucked. Say "no" and it's the coming of the next Ice Age – and you are fucked. What would you reply? Anyway, my recurring headaches made up my mind for me. I was ready to try anything to stop the pain.

To avoid any semblance of impropriety, I met with my 'therapist' at her office on an appointment basis. Under any outsider's scrutiny, "Robert Valentine" would appear to be just another patient. Legally and socially, my wife was "Joanna Tompkins-Valentine", but professionally, she had retained "Joanna Mae Tompkins, M.D." I had not been so vain or insecure to demand otherwise. Joyce, her pretty, vivacious blonde secretary/receptionist, knew me, of course. Still, she was all business as she dutifully took my billing information, assuring me I would be invoiced monthly, like any other recurring patient (Recurring? I had made a long-term commitment to Joanna's person, not her practice). Yes, I would be expected to pay my bill – and not from a joint account - to establish a paper trail.

"If the A.P.A. ethics committee ever comes snooping," she explained with a twinkle in her eye, "they won't suspect a thing. Don't worry; I'm sure Joanna will make it up to you on the back end."

Our first few sessions went as I imagined they did between any therapist and patient. She asked questions and I answered as best I could. She probed my life, from early childhood recollections on. She tested me on word associations. She outlined hypothetical situations and I filled in the details as I saw myself in them. No, she never answered my questions directly. Instead, she answered a question with a question, leaving me confused, empty, frustrated, and more than a little pissed off with this one-way conversation. This is 'therapeutic'? No wonder the Scientologists are on a rant about the practice!

I revealed things about my past I hadn't thought worth mentioning before. For the most part, I had had a comfortable childhood. You know the drill; a loving, doting, stay-at-home former-beauty-queen mother (I got my delicate good looks from her) and my distant, vaguely-disapproving, workaholic corporate-executive father. Mama had been a 'trophy' and was damn proud to have hooked a winner like my dad; a former high school football hero (a wrecked knee, courtesy of a very large defensive tackle, had kept him out of college ball), Phi Beta Kappa and current corporate 'stud'.

These days, someone like Dad would be diagnosed "bipolar". Then again, such stigma is never attached to movers and shakers like my father. Despite his managerial standing, he was everybody's buddy – except when his moodiness and mercurial temper got the best of him. That was usually only at home or when he drank to escape the pressures of corporate life. At those times, it was best to avoid him. I could count on one hand the number of times my dad and I did guy things together, just the two of us. I was always trying to live up to his expectations of me, although I was never quite sure what those expectations were.

I had a very different relationship with my mother and sister. We were a close-knit family unit, occasionally augmented by the presence of my father. I was the youngest and labeled "adorable" by everyone who met me. The chicken or the egg; did my mania for being the center of attention derive from those early perceptions of my physical beauty, or did I just 'act cute' to garner favor? Whatever, I basked in the glow of attention I extracted – demanded - from whoever was nearby at the time.

When we were adolescents, my sister Janie began making friends with some of the girls at school. I was miffed. I craved my sister's undivided attention, just as I did everyone else's. I had to compete with her friends for it? Grrrrr. Janie had had one particular girlfriend whom she adored. They did everything together. Mom had gushed over Janie's girlfriend, too. Traitor! Well, the girl had been a cutie; at least, I remember thinking so at the time. To be honest, I was jealous of her – and attracted to her at the same time, in a naïve, little-boy way. I guess I spied on them a lot while they played with their dolls or staged their imaginary tea parties.

I don't remember much about her now – except that one afternoon. Dad came home from work unexpectedly early. I could smell the alcohol on his breath from six feet away. It was the first time he had met Janie's friend – and the last. He went ballistic for reasons I never understood, as was so often the case. He threw the poor girl out of our house, then forbid Janie from ever seeing her again. Then he berated my mother for allowing the two to play together. My sister cried for three days. Mama wouldn't speak to Dad for about as long. I was just numb; I couldn't process my father's sudden, vicious outbursts. By unspoken agreement, we never mentioned the incident, nor Janie's friend again, for fear of setting my father off. It had been so long, I couldn't remember her face, much less her name.

Mama goaded me into modeling while I was still in junior high school. She claimed I had "the look", whatever that is. Modeling lessons. Dance lessons to learn poise and grace in movement. Yeesh. At least she didn't make me go to charm school. So, I became a teenage male mannequin; hero of the four-color Sunday paper insert. Don't laugh; it paid my way through college, which was probably the only reason my father tolerated it. I continued to model part-time after earning my business degree, but found a corporate job and started a career as a hedge against the day when my face no longer sold rags. I mean, how many male supermodels, commanding ten-thousand-dollar-a-day fees, can you name? To be honest, I was growing weary of the shallow existence and superficial people. Still, it was exhilarating to do photo shoots or walk a runway and have all those people fawn over me. Girls flocked to me; I never had any problem getting dates.

Early in my career, my agent had forbidden me from participating in contact sports or dangerous hobbies like skateboarding. She was afraid I would damage my face, which was my – and her – meal ticket. Mama had agreed wholeheartedly, but my father seethed. He had wanted me to be a 'chip off the old block' and go out for football. Yeah, Dad; I would love to have some two-hundred-pound, steroid-crazed high school goon turn my knee inside-out, just like you. Throughout high school, the closest I got to a football was holding one for fall clothing ads. That was yet one more point of contention in my relationship with my father – for which he seemed to blame me. Despite my degree, I hadn't gone to work for him after graduation because I really couldn't see anything good coming from it.

I don't want to call those early sessions with Joanna a complete waste of time, but there were no major revelations; at least, none I could see. On occasion, the questions or scenarios were of a deeply personal or embarrassing nature. In more than one instance, I found myself responding… tactfully - in the way I wouldn't mind my wife hearing. Isn't that one reason why doctors aren't supposed to treat family members? She called me on it, too, in an equally tactful way.

"Bobby," she opened at the beginning of a subsequent session. "I'm a little concerned some of your answers are not as… forthright as they could be. Perhaps you are too inhibited by our personal relationship to be completely candid with me. As your doctor, I can't help you if you can't be completely open and honest with me."

"Are you referring me to one of your colleagues?" I inquired, feeling vaguely relieved.

"No, not at all," she replied in a rush. "I – I want to handle this case personally. What I meant to say is… Bobby, I want your consent to use hypnotherapy. I might be able to make more progress if I can bypass the roadblocks your conscious mind throws up. At the same time, your subconscious mind might contain a wealth of information your conscious mind is not even aware of – or is making an effort to repress."

My whole body tensed up. This was, in my mind, the ultimate act of surrender; laying bare one's soul in the most deeply personal, unguarded, uncontrollable way. It was even more chilling to think of laying bare my soul that way to my wife. Couples always claim "we have no secrets from each other" - which is a blatant lie. Everyone has something they would prefer their significant other didn't know about them. In addition, I was acutely aware of the whole 'repressed memories' issue. There was a raging controversy as to whether a 'memory' is truly repressed, or suggested by the therapist – not that my own wife would ever do such a thing. I am certain Joanna had encountered this reaction many times before and was able to read the signs like an open book. She took my hand in hers and smiled, momentarily breaking from her professional demeanor.

"Baby," she murmured, "I can only tell you what I have said before. I have nothing but your best interests in mind. You are my patient and the love of my life. I would never do anything to harm either. Trust me. Believe in me. I won't let you down."