The Pleasure Contract, Caitlin Crews [epub e ink reader txt] 📗

be doing, don’t you think? All you have to do is sign a few documents to protect us both. It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

“I bet every heroin dealer in the world tells their clients the same thing.”

“I promise you, I’m better than heroin.”

She believed him, and that should have served as a wake-up call. Bristol opened her mouth to tell him that of course she couldn’t do what he was suggesting. That she was an intellectual. That she didn’t have a job, she had a career and a body of work and was expected to make a substantive intellectual contribution to knowledge. To social policy.

She expected these things from herself.

But she’d spent years and years doing nothing but flexing her intellectual muscles. And make no mistake, she’d loved it. She loved what she did, she loved studying, she loved teaching, and she loved writing.

But somehow in the midst of all that, Bristol had forgotten how to feel the way she did right now. A little bit battered, a little bit dazed, and wonderful.

She could still feel him inside her, thick and hard, filling her up so that she couldn’t breathe without that, too, feeling like a sensual act.

And she’d gone to one extreme. Why not go to the other?

What would it hurt? a voice inside her asked.

Lachlan looked as if he could stand there, waiting for her answer, forever.

And even that stillness, that quiet ease, made him hotter.

God, but he was hot.

It was ridiculous that she was even considering this. What woman in her right mind would sign up to be a man’s sex object? Not a regular one, but an articulate one if he had to have a fancy dinner before letting off some steam? Not Bristol. Because Bristol was an overeducated, deeply feminist, bone-deep believer in equality in partnerships rather than traditional gender roles.

But between her legs, she still ached.

“I can give you the summer,” she told him, not even sure where the words came from. Still, she didn’t take them back. “But that’s all.”

She expected him to gloat.

But all Lachlan Drummond did was smile, as if he’d entertained the possibility of no other outcome but this.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS RAINING relentlessly in London. She should have expected that, Bristol thought, but somehow the sheets of rain and gloomy skies sat on her like a heavy stone.

Or maybe it was the new life she’d chosen for herself—but she didn’t really want to think about that.

They’d arrived in England early that morning, after a swift and outrageously luxurious flight across the Atlantic in one of Lachlan’s planes. One of his planes, she kept repeating to herself. Just one.

Lachlan had spent the flight locked in his office with his staff. When they’d landed, he had gone off with said staff in one set of cars, leaving Bristol on her own. In Lachlan’s world, that meant Bristol had been accompanied by her designated assistant, Stephanie.

Though Stephanie had made it very clear that she worked for Lachlan. Handling the girlfriend—a term she’d emphasized repeatedly, lest Bristol be tempted to imagine she wasn’t replaceable—was her job, but she had no intention of becoming friends.

“Did I suggest we braid each other’s hair?” Bristol had asked mildly. “I know I didn’t, since I’m no good at braiding.”

“I find it’s easier to start things off with very clear boundaries,” Stephanie had replied coolly. “My job is to maximize your effectiveness in your role. You might or might not thank me for that, and that’s okay. As I said, I don’t work for you.”

“You’ve said it repeatedly,” Bristol had agreed, in the tone she used on students who turned up with elaborate excuses for not turning in their work. “Rest assured, I am perfectly capable of maximizing my own effectiveness.”

“That will be up to Mr. Drummond,” Stephanie had retorted, looking stern and smug at once.

If Bristol had been asked, she would have happily taken a taxi to the hotel rather than ride with her handler. As if she was a show pony.

That’s what happens when you sell yourself, she told herself as the gray London neighborhoods clumped together in an endless stream of low skies and rain outside the car window. You get handled.

The past fifteen days had been a whirlwind. Bristol had signed his contracts the morning after the alleyway. Lachlan had only driven her home that night in that sleek wonder of a sports car, then left her there in a Brooklyn neighborhood she doubted he’d ever been to before, buzzing around her apartment as if she’d chugged down a coffee plantation.

The following morning, she’d spent hours in a large conference room with his legal team and the unfriendly Stephanie, hammering out clauses, wherebys, and wherefores.

It was the least romantic, least exciting start to a relationship—even one that was as cut-and-dried as this one—that she could have possibly imagined. In a way, that was better. It made her think less about the glorious sex and more about the fact she was agreeing to have that sex on demand.

After signing the pile of documents, most of them concerning money and nondisclosure agreements, she had been ushered into Lachlan’s private office.

“Are we good?” he asked her.

He looked even better than he had the night before, and she knew what he could do. She could still feel what he could do, and that had been outside. In public, basically. A spur-of-the-moment thing.

God help her if he actually took his time.

“I do have one question,” she said, seating herself in one of the chairs set around his enormous office. The one she chose was slightly higher than the others in the small grouping nearest the big window with its view over Manhattan, and she realized when he grinned that it was his. But he came and sat across from her anyway, and she’d remembered that she liked him more than she should—because he had nothing to prove. “What if I don’t feel like it?”

“That would be disappointing.”

“I don’t mean the whole thing.” He had looked even better