Doctor's Orders

Victorian Doctor needs a willing patient to allow him to demonstrate a cis woman's pleasure centres to a lecture hall. It makes sense to ask the one he's falling in love with, right?

Please, please, for the love of cat, give me any feedback you have! Enjoy!

Chapter One -- An Appointment

"Miss Chase? Come in."

Her hands checking the hood of her capelet was covering her face, Dorothea Chase took one of the last steps to ruin and fruition. Her pale hands fidgeted as she stepped into the doctor's hallway and finally pushed back the hood.

Doctor Bridger's handsome assistant and fellow physician Mr Halloway bowed and held out his hands for her things like a footman, with his usual reassuring smile. She couldn't have done all this without that smile.

"The housekeeper is here if you wish for her presence at any time," he told her, putting her cape and coat into a cupboard built into the wall. Strangely, the fact it was almost identical to the one at home struck her as bizarre. Cupboard, tiles, stairs up to the furnished rooms.

So strange to think that her things hung where the Doctor's had in her own home when he first came to her.

"Please, Doctor," her mother's voice breaking through her shaking, agonising sobs, "fix her!"

"Miss Chase?" Halloway's voice was always quiet, gentle, even if sometimes his eyes laughed fondly at his associate and employer, or shared some joke with her. She had never seen him grin, only smile politely. Reassuringly.

But then she understood hiding one's emotions.

Too well.

That was what had broken her.

"Forgive me, Mr Halloway, I have been rude." She took and released a long breath as they had taught her, lifting and then lowering her hands before her to still the fidgets. "I confess, I am nervous."

Terrified. Anxious. Certain she was making a terrible mistake but also desperate for more of the truth the doctors had relayed to her. No.

More of the pleasure.

"You have every right to be nervous," Mr Halloway led her through the house. He had said those words before, in her home. "His study is here. We are concealed from the road even if the curtains should spontaneously combust."

"Haa-aa," she attempted. Her stomach was twisting and her heart was pounding. The want for more fought against the fear of what that more might be. As she had stepped down from the hansom into the gaslight she had been sure every eye on London had been on her, watching her, sneering as they did when she lost herself and cried in public.

Halloway stopped at the door, and she looked up at him. Handsome, with a dark, short beard rather than the fashionable military moustache and muttonchops that the doctor favoured, Halloway was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Living in London she saw men of all types, from the dandies and corinthians of the upper class to the merchants of all eye colours, skin tones, heights, weights, and dispositions. Never had she been so close to a man of his breadth and strength before he had followed the Doctor into her mother's parlour. He had apparently been a labourer out of necessity before Doctor Bridger employed him, but she knew no more than that. But it had given him a body that surpassed the slender, the lean, the sculpted in every way. Heavyset. Bulky. Strong.

Muscles for use, not just for filling out a jacket.

When she had first come out and started attending parties with her mother, after a lifetime of preparation to be wife to one of these men, she had looked about her with the same attitude she had eyed dresses or accessories. After learning harshly how dangerous they could be with their smiles and promises, realising how hard and nasty and corrupt the world was, seeing first hand what poverty could do... she had broken.

Nearly ten years had passed since a girl of eighteen had started sobbing in the middle of a production of the Tempest and barely stopped crying for three days.

Ten years of trying so very hard to be the daughter her parents wished.

Ten years of trying to socialise and hating it and fearing it and dreading it.

And then someone had mentioned the word hysteria to her mother, spoken idly about some doctor who was supposedly spreading the word of the condition in women being like madness but not actual insanity.

Hope was a strange, giddy thing.

But it was no longer hope that brought her coming back.

"Miss Chase, Doctor," Halloway declared her, and followed her into the study. Doctor Bridger had been visiting her home for two months now, with his assistant. He had suggested that they continue in the privacy of his home after they had learned--

--had learned-- Realised-- Discovered--

Dorothea Chase screamed when she climaxed.

"Come in, sit down, Miss Chase," the Doctor gestured to the divan, covered in a linen sheet, and she flushed. Behind her, she heard the jingle of a bell, and turned to see Halloway's ungloved hand fall from the mechanism.

He had gentle hands, but broad and firm. They were soft but for the callous that came from a lifetime of writing and a softening roughness from the labour that left him so attractive. And she knew those hands were strong, because the first time he had had to keep going with his tantalising motions while the doctor explained to her how to relax. She had been so embarrassed by how long he had delved for her pleasure.

By God, she loved his hands. Craved them.

How ridiculous, she had realised, that her parents had taught her how to please them, and others, but not herself. She had had to be taught how to recline in a chair, how to let her neck flop on a pillow, and how to let herself go into dreamy enjoyment at the hands of a medical professional with the most beautiful hands she had ever seen, a gentle smile she wanted to shatter, and the warmest of brown eyes.

Her anxiety was ebbing into a tide of wanting, heat building at her cheeks and between her legs.

The housekeeper entered with a tea tray while Doctor Bridger asked Halloway for his notes and twitted him for waiting for her in the hall. Dorothea was sensible, she knew a man like that could have any woman for a whistle. Halloway turned away to fetch a fresh bottle of ink, but when he came back he met her eyes in that amused, private way. His lips were straight, but that gaze was filled with conspiratorial long-suffering.

Had he waited for her arrival?

He could not possibly be as eager as she was to be in a room with him, even in a professional setting, but she appreciated that he had been on hand to let her in and spare her the added stress of waiting on the doorstep.

"If you should need anything else, Miss," the housekeeper gave her a matronly smile, "I shall be across the hall."

"I assure you, ma'am," she replied, instinctively checking to see if the tea was ready to be poured, "I am here of my own choosing. The good doctors' remedy is making my life so very much more manageble."

It made her feel human, vital, real. It fired her dreams and had her seeking out latin poetry and working her forgotten education to its limits to read saucy words she had of course not been taught. It had her saying no to her mother with gentle contentment, and hearing her father's lamentations and jibes without having to retire to her room for a week.

She did not feel normal, but she felt as though the world was not broken quite beyond repair. That maybe she was not broken either.

She shifted on the divan, her wide skirts rustling around her.

"Very good to hear, Miss," the housekeeper turned, hands folded, and was dismissed with a wave and a word of thanks.

Dorothea poured the tea.

"Now, while we do the niceties," Doctor Bridger turned to his Davenport. Halloway sat on the chair to her right, though she had noted the padded stool behind her on the other side of the divan.

He would be there soon. Every hair on her arms stood on end, tickled against her gloves.

"Have you had any adverse effects to the treatment so far?" the Doctor asked, looking at his papers.

"No, sir," Dorothea felt the heat between her legs start to fuzz her mind. She wanted Halloway's touch now. At once. For the first time in her life she had something to demand. She felt itchy in her clothes. She wanted his hands in her private core. She had used her embroidery scissors to trim the curling hairs and wanted to see if he liked it. Wanted him to react.

She sat quietly and waited.

"Do you feel more able to enjoy your daily activities and hobbies?"

The questions were easy to answer and quick, and she was glad to see both men looking pleased. She had once allowed herself to be tricked into believing she was loved, had been rutted with while she was making love, and it had been mortifying, horrifying, life altering... but it had also made everything with the doctors easier. After all, they ordinarily only treated married women. But her case was different enough that they were prepared to assume a twenty-eight year old spinster would not be too shocked by the things they had shown her, and done with her consent and then her relief and joy.

It was just that first parosysm, wonderful and mind-freeing as it had been after two months of learning pleasure, had been rather loud.

Halloway had been concerned that if she was focused on staying quiet, she would not be able to rid herself of her tensions.

"Excellent," the doctor set down his pen. "Do you require the housekeeper to help you remove your clothes? Halloway can help, I'm sure. We shall need you in your very underthings, Miss Chase. You will not be able to sit in quite the right way in your corset."

At her home she had been in chemise and housecoat, but to take a cab she had required being fully dressed. The whole ride had been spent imagining his eyes as she undressed. His dark brown eyes. Like iron rich water.

"I should be fine," she got to her feet. This was it. She put her fingers to the buttons of her bodice and undid them efficiently and excitedly. Her breathing hitched, she closed her eyes, and opened the top half of her ensemble, revealing beneath her corset (still covered) and chemisette. The scent of her perfume reached her nostrils as she drew it off her shoulders. Perfume and her own excited sweat beneath it.

Halloway was watching her. Bridger was making notes.

Her eyes met those of the handsome man who was teaching her how her body could be used to make bliss. The laugh was gone from them, but there was a little more than precise, professional interest in them, wasn't there? Was she just imagining things?

"It is common, Miss Chase, for women to be so grateful to myself and to Mr Halloway, that they imagine themselves impassioned by us. It is not us, it is you and your body that will help you. Take care not to create an attachment."

Attachment? No. But she craved what he could give her the way she craved cook's best pastries. More. She sometimes felt like an overboard sailor, grasping at a slick rope amid crashing waves.

But one did not love a rope.

So it could not be her desperate imaginings that saw his eyes drop from her face, down her exposed body as she unfastened her skirts and let them drop from one hand, revealing her petticoats in all their lacy, floral glory. Dorothea stepped out of the skirt and draped both pieces of her walking gown over a chair, followed by her corset cover.

Antony Halloway watched every movement. With Doctor Bridger's back to them there was an intense, odd privacy coupled with a delicious sense of being caught out. Something naughty that tingled her as she thought of it.

Sitting, she made short work of her boots and petticoats, and slow work of her stockings. She saw his adam's apple bob and felt herself grow damper. By the time he touched her she would be sopping wet. She had learned what that meant, that it was not shameful, merely the body making things ready. Standing in her drawers, corset, and chemisette, she turned her back on him. She had planned this. She had imagined it over and over, but still she hesitated. Should she? Could she?

Would she regret it if she was too chicken hearted to even try?

Her cheeks pink and her breathing a little laboured, Dorothea revelled in this odd power that Mr Rousseau had disdainfully described. She cleared her throat to be sure he had not looked away and bent over to pick up her deliberately dropped stocking.

And heard his breathing hitch to match her own.

Pressing her lips together to stop any other sound escaping, she imagined him sweeping to her and thrusting her against a wall, throwing her to the floor, so many glorious, awful, wonderful gothic things that she had imagined, read about in hidden stories, seen implied in ballet.

Who knew disrobing could be a thing to perform? That she was a dancer and he her audience. Who would know!

Well, likely most ladies of her age! But still, it made her feel marvellous! A lifetime of modesty and for what? Misery and tears! This was what happiness meant! Security and certainty. Knowing that Halloway was a man of honour and restraint but that her body, described by the kind as Reubenesque and the cruel as merely fat, was making the handsomest man in London breathe faster made Dorothea feel like some ancient Roman lady over whom men would go to war.

"Would you help me with my corset lacing, Mr Halloway?" She turned back, and smiled, briefly bending to sip her tea. The bubbles of her breasts above the top of the corset threatened to spill free. She would never normally lace her waist this tightly or chest so loosely. Her corset was made to smooth lines not create them. Tonight she had held her breasts high so they just settled into the cups at the top and pulled the laces to make her waist smaller and her hips wider.

Bridger turned to collect his own cup and saucer, and chuckled.

"Miss Chase, you have made such great progess! I only wish--" He looked sideways, and gave a puffing laugh at Halloway's expense. "Oh come, man, quick sticks!"

Halloway cleared his throat and came towards her. She turned her back to him, sipping her tea. It was a delicious one, full-bodied and restorative.

"I cannot undo the knot I made."

A warm finger trailed from the nape of her neck to the collar of her undershirt, and the cup rattled on the saucer as she put them together. That hot finger trailed back up, and she let out a long, throaty sigh. Her eyelids drifted down, her lashes tickling her cheek as she tried to imagine what those wonderful hands looked like against her skin.

Then he merely loosened the bow at her middle and let the loops hang, and went off with his own cup to the other side of the room. She came down off the balls of her feet, feeling the tell-tale moisture between her legs. But from the deep well of her self-loathing and anxiety came a bubbling furore. Once the corset was off she would not have the power of seduction she had learned tonight. She would merely be flesh and linen which she knew concealed little. She had been so sure he wanted her but this was proof, was it not? She had imagined attraction if not attachment. Had thought she was different... that they shared... something...

Sinking into herself a little, Dorothea loosened the strings and pulled her corset over her head. It only reduced her half an inch, but it had made her feel like a bountiful Demeter. Without it...

She set it over her other garments and sat, looking at the ground in her chemise and split drawers.

Halloway moved around to sit on the stool. She crossed her arms over herself, holding her wrists across her stomach.

"Now, Miss Chase," Bridger turned with a kind smile. He must have sensed her retreat because he had lost the boistrous tone he had used to tease his friend and colleague. "I would like us to begin by your demonstrating how you have been continuing with your exploration. It is extremely helpful to us to be sure that you are getting the most out of this treatment, and also so that we might in turn learn things you might have discovered that could help other ladies and women in your situation."

"Ah," Dorothea considered reaching for her tea again but her hands were shaking and she did not want to make them think she was afraid of them. They had been nothing but kind and generous as they had opened the world of pleasure to her. It was her who had imagined... more.

"Would you like us to close our eyes as we begin, Miss Chase?" Halloway's voice might be clipped in its rigid performance of the Queen's English, but there was a further shortness to his words that made her turn instinctively to see if she had done wrong.

Was he angry with her? Anxiety asked.

She had done something wrong, Stress told her.

She was disgusting and unwanted and--

"Miss Chase?" She raised her eyes to his face. He smiled.

His lips spread only slightly, but a dimple divoted his cheek beside the soft beard. It was not his usual smile. Not even the private comradely one. It was a smile that did not so much reassure as urge. Perhaps it even teased.

A shudder emanated from her suddenly taut belly.

And she remembered that it would make her feel so much better if she released the tension and the panic with her fingers. That was what they had taught her so very well in the past weeks.

She could do this. Even in front of the man who was responsible for everything she was feeling.

***

As Dorothea Chase wriggled her bottom on the divan, finding her balance in bending her legs and pressing her bare feet against the sides of the seat, Halloway saw the divine beauty in the way she moved her body and thanked the chemistry of science, and the twists of fate, and years of hard work in an area he had been thoroughly mocked for, that he was the man who got to put his hands on her.

Some man might have married her, made her content enough not to trigger the hysteria within her, and he would never have met her.

She gave a light squeak as one foot slipped and his muscles bunched with the urge to catch her.

Never before Dorothea -- Miss Chase as he could only call her aloud -- had Halloway ever seen a patient as anything but that. He had shown them, enlightened them, but never wanted them. He had considered it a matter of honour, that these women surrendered themselves to him on the understanding that he would be clinical.

But Anthony Halloway had tastes and proclivities. Deviancies he could not explore outside certain select clubs. They had cost him a medical license. Without Bridger he would not have a career and he could not repay that trust and generosity by letting his personal desire affect how he treated a patient. The thought of how he would never be able to touch Dorothea the way he wanted to warred with the satisfaction of being the one to bring her to her first climax, and that he would give her more tonight. More than that, he had brought such a smile to her face as she emerged from the appointment confident, head erect and anxiety washed away.

Thank God for medicine, the advances of society's appreciation of women, and Bridger's arthritis.

She had gone still, and the room was suddenly so quiet he could feel the silence sucking the air from his lungs and pressing at his ears. He had to say something, anything, to calm her and break this awful, awkward--

Dorothea brought her hands to her chest, to the heavy breasts that fell sideways from the way she was sitting. Without a corset to present them in those gorgeous handfuls they revealed their weight, and he wanted to suck her oh so pale nipples until she begged him to bite them.

His want began to pump blood to his groin. He had kept it at bay while he stood but being this close, the scent of her perfume and desire in the air, her knees splayed and her eyes closed, he could not stop the erection charging upward to his belly. Shifting as quietly and slowly as he could, he pointed one knee downward, giving himself room as he surged with need for a woman he should only see as a patient.