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

was standing there, waiting for him to say something with that unreadable expression on her face. But she wasn’t like the others, so he hardly knew what his point was here. The truth was she was correct in her assessment of the delegation. He agreed completely with her take on the situation. Lachlan might not have any idea what went on in her head, but everything she did in her role as his girlfriend, in public anyway, was wholly supportive of him and his aims. Why wasn’t that enough? “Did you know that about yourself?”

“I suspected it,” Bristol replied drily. “Hence my choice of career.”

“I thought the academic life is filled with rules.”

“Every life is filled with rules.” She shrugged in that way she did that always made her seem more graceful, somehow. “But as knowledge is its own reward, thinking in new ways is always encouraged. The minutiae of a university faculty meeting aside, that part always feels...less obedient.”

“But this is not an academic exercise.”

He was hard again—always—when all he was doing was sitting in a chair, studying her. The dress she wore transmitted a certain hushed elegance, but as always, Bristol undercut it by deliberately falling short of the kind of polished veneer that was expected. It should have irritated him. He knew it made the perpetually sniffy Stephanie apoplectic.

Instead of following the usual script, Bristol’s manicure was clear polish only. It was such a subtle thing, but it lent her an air of capability. The understated earrings she wore, no matter how many far more riotous selections were presented for her consideration, suggested practicality. Tonight she’d pulled her hair back into a low, sleek tail instead of the dramatic sort of updo he might have expected for a dress like this, and that, too, made her look serious and even a bit determined. As if her beauty was an afterthought.

Lachlan was well aware that despite what Stephanie might have liked to believe, or liked to huff about, everything Bristol did was deliberate.

Well, of course, she’d replied when he’d said as much, one jet-lagged night in Melbourne. I do like to excel.

He wanted her in ways that made absolutely no sense.

“You’ll have to tell me what it is that you want, Lachlan,” she said quietly now. “But I should warn you, while I can try to smile and say little, that will be a stretch.”

“What I want you to do is think more about obedience.”

He expected to see a flash of temper then. Maybe that was what he wanted. But all she did was watch him, that enigmatic expression firmly in place.

“Have you ever asked yourself why it is you require obedience?” she asked.

Something in him seemed to kick, hard. Then that same fire that was only ever banked in her presence surged back to life.

“I know why I require obedience.” His mouth curved, hard. “This is the one area of my life that I prefer...frictionless.”

There was something about the way her eyes gleamed that drove him crazy. “And here I thought you were a fan of friction.”

They were late to their function that night, almost unpardonably so. But Lachlan, who normally prided himself on his punctuality, couldn’t bring himself to care.

He’d bent her over the bed, kicked her legs wide, and plunged deep.

Bristol had stopped wearing panties at his command, because he hated waiting even those few extra seconds to possess her. That meant only that he tortured himself throughout the evening with the knowledge that her pussy was bare. That if he reached over during one of the tedious speeches, drew up the hem of her gown, and reached beneath, he would find her wet and ready for him.

That was the thing about Bristol. She was always ready for him.

She was more challenging than he’d expected—something that was on him, clearly, since she’d given no indication that she wouldn’t be challenging. She didn’t seem to slot neatly into place, allowing him to happily forget about her when she wasn’t in front of him.

He didn’t like how often she was on his mind.

But he wasn’t sure he’d ever been with a woman who wanted him as much as Bristol did. Voraciously. Constantly. Wildly.

He had the distinct thought later that night, when he looked over and saw her frowning intelligently in the middle of another deep conversation a bit of arm candy would never have had, that he needed to be careful with this one.

But careful wasn’t something Lachlan knew how to do.

Because if he’d been thinking clearly, he would have known better than to take Bristol with him when he went to meet his sister and her family for a few days on the Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain their grandfather had bought a long time ago.

“You don’t normally bring your girlfriends here,” Catriona said within an hour of their arrival, when Lachlan had only just begun to realize the enormity of the mistake he’d made. She sat in a flowing white dress on an equally white sofa, her too-knowing blue gaze like one of the paintings on the whitewashed walls. “Did this one hit you over the head?”

And his sister wasn’t wrong. Normally he kept his women separate from his family, because there was no earthly reason for them to spend time together. He dropped his women in Majorca or Ibiza—or the beach resort of their choice—for a few days while he enjoyed his sister on his own.

But this time he hadn’t been able to imagine doing without the sex. The way he and Bristol came together was volcanic. He found he couldn’t go too long without touching her, or he started to lose his patience with...everything else.

“I think you’ll like Bristol, Cat,” he said, smiling broadly. “She’s not much for sunbathing. Or relaxing. You can buzz around the island anxiously the way you always do, but with company.”

Catriona treated him to that patented older-sister look of hers that never failed to make him feel like a child again. “Do you like her? Isn’t