The Pleasure Contract

by Caitlin Crews

  He estimated she was five-seven or so in her bare feet. The two-inch heels she was wearing put her chin on level with his chest, and looking down at her was no hardship. He still couldn’t get over that face of hers. As if she’d been built to be wicked but had decided to be studious instead. It stirred him up.

  She stirred him up.

  Even when she frowned at him as if she was trying to bring him into focus.

  Or maybe as if she was processing that same electrical charge.

  “Dr. March,” he murmured. “A pleasure to meet you in person.”

  He could feel it as she started to release her grip, so he held on. Just for a moment. A breath. Just to keep that electricity pumping, if only for a little longer.

  And he liked it when he saw her eyes dilate.

  It was a good start. Especially when she flushed slightly.

  “Once again, I don’t know why I’m here,” she announced, forthright and to the point. “I walked out of that interview, which is the kindest description I can think of for it, for a reason. The reason hasn’t changed.”

  “Is the reason that you find me disgusting? Actively repellent?”

  “You, personally? I couldn’t say. That bizarre spectacle, on the other hand...”

  Again, she surprised him. Lachlan wasn’t used to that. And he certainly wouldn’t have imagined that, having managed it once, she would do it again. Or...repeatedly.

  “You’re here for dinner,” he told her. “That’s all. It’s not a panel or any kind of audition. It’s just dinner.” He laughed when she only studied him, clearly unconvinced. “This is currently the most sought-after restaurant reservation in New York City. If nothing else, surely we can enjoy the experience of one of the world’s most avant-garde chefs. It’s widely held to be spectacular.”

  He released her hand, aware that he didn’t want to, and that, like everything else, was new. And all her. Then he nodded at the hovering hostess to seat them at last. Walking behind Bristol, they were led to the table he’d requested. It sat on the second-floor balcony far from any other patrons, looking out over the restaurant, yet private.

  So they might be seen by anyone in the restaurant, with its zero-tolerance policy for cell phone usage in a place that catered to so many celebrities, but would not be heard.

  Lachlan enjoyed the view as they walked. Unlike the other women he’d dated, Bristol wasn’t putting on a performance. She charged after the hostess in much the same way she’d entered the restaurant, as if she had a great many important things to do. And clearly, nowhere on that to-do list did it occur to her to vamp it up for the man who was trailing behind her.

  Notably unlike the hostess, who he had seen walk crisply all over the floor of this restaurant without treating anyone to the metronome-hip action he could see before him now as she climbed the steel stairs to the second floor. It was certainly impressive, but all Lachlan was interested in tonight was the good doctor.

  At the table, Bristol waved off the waiting server’s offer to pull out her chair and sat herself down as briskly and matter-of-factly as she’d done everything else so far. She folded her hands on the table and gazed at him when he sat opposite her, and there wasn’t a trace of anything even remotely seductive about the way she studied him.

  If he didn’t know better, he might have been tempted to imagine that she was the one who had invited him here. To study him. And not in a particularly flattering fashion, but as a part of her research.

  “Explain to me why you do this,” she said the moment the server walked away. Not waiting for him to lead their conversation. Not seeming particularly concerned with him at all, really. It was novel. “You’re Lachlan Drummond. You were famous before you were born. Surely you can get a date without convening a panel.”

  He laughed as if winded when really, he was amused. “You seem singularly unimpressed with me.”

  “I had no plans to come tonight,” she said, and it took him a moment to realize she was agreeing with him. “I talked myself out of it, repeatedly. But then my curiosity got the best of me, so here I am. After all, I’ve seen you on magazine covers and in all the papers for as long as I can remember, and that’s without ever seeking you out.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  She looked as if his dry tone surprised her, which shouldn’t have felt like both a rebuke and a caress. “Surely all you have to do is set foot in the street and thousands of women will flock to your side and clamor for your attention. It’s not a Broadway play, so why the audition process?”

  “It’s more like a Broadway play than you might imagine.” But maybe this wasn’t the time to go over his list of strict requirements. The public events that he had to attend and the private shows he preferred to enjoy without having to worry about tending to the demands people in regular relationships inevitably had. “I’ve found, over time, that any woman I might meet organically comes with an emotional tax.”

  It was her turn to sound dry. “This already sounds healthy.”

  Lachlan sat back in his seat, studying her. If this was an act she was putting on, he couldn’t see it and by this point in his life, he could read people all too well. Bristol March was demanding he account for himself, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she actually wanted to know the answer.

  She’d come for those answers, not for him.

  It was a measure of how fucked up he was, clearly, that even that turned him on.

  “It depends how you define healthy,” he said.

  “The usual way.” She smiled faintly. “That would probably not involve panels of underlings in a creepy town house.”

  “The creepy town house is actually an eighteenth-century brownstone that happens to be on the National Register of Historic Places. As an aside.”

  “That doesn’t make it less creepy. It makes it more likely to also be haunted.”

  Lachlan decided not to die on the hill of an old house some ancestor of his had built when that neighborhood, now in the middle of Manhattan’s grand sprawl, had been considered “uptown” and far away from the heart of the city.

  “Is it healthier to pretend that I have an emotional capacity that I lack?” he asked mildly instead. “Or to admit up front that I don’t so that everybody’s on the same page throughout? I happen to think that my approach is, if nothing else, kinder.”

  “Is that a word that you would use to describe yourself? Kind?” Bristol’s gaze was intent on his. Unwavering. She appeared to hide nothing, and he found that almost as electrifying as her hand in his. “Are you the world’s first example of a kind billionaire?”

  That landed a bit harder and did not make him feel like laughing. Lachlan signaled one of the waiters. “I think this conversation requires wine, don’t you?”

  He half expected this shockingly direct woman to lecture him on remaining clearheaded for the academic exploration they were apparently taking tonight, but she didn’t. Instead, she accepted the wine he ordered gratefully and took a fortifying gulp. Then another.

  Much as he did.

  Not as formidable as she wants to appear, he thought, and was pleased that at least he wasn’t the only one having a novel experience tonight.

  And as they set about ordering, which required a small food-based performance on the part of the staff—the better to inhabit the chef’s vision—Lachlan realized that he was happy to stall. To pause for a moment.

  To take a breather while he sorted through the complicated tangle of emotions and pure attraction that was making him feel perilously close to off-balance here. He liked the sensation, or he didn’t hate it, but it was new. He liked new. Craved it, even.

  But Lachlan hadn’t felt anything close to off-balance in as long as he could remember. He’d learned how to stand his ground when he was a kid and he’d viewed that as a virtue. Still did. Tonight he obviously needed to recalibrate himself. He was used to b
eing in complete control of every interaction he had. He told himself that taking a moment to get his bearings with this woman who not only didn’t follow the rules, but didn’t seem to know them, was only smart.

  While he did, it occurred to him that all the women who usually turned up to take part in his interview process were self-selecting in the first place. They had to want to audition for a place in his life to get invited to try. And there were precious few professional intellectuals in that set. Bristol was the first.

  The professor types he met in the course of his businesses and charities were usually part of think tanks, philanthropic entities, or governments, and were certainly not interacting with him in a social manner. They wanted funding of one sort or another. They were always trying to get him interested in their research, not themselves.

  And not to put too fine a point on it, but they were very rarely as pretty as Bristol.

  Of course he was a little thrown. That was why he liked her.

  “Why did your sister submit your application?” he asked when they were alone again. He smiled when she looked taken aback, and didn’t bother pretending that he wasn’t a little bit happy to see that particular shoe on the other foot. More than a little bit, even. “Or am I the only one who is expected to answer questions tonight?”

  “It’s very on-brand for my sister, actually, to submit applications on my behalf without asking me.” Bristol rolled her eyes, but with affection. “She considers herself a free spirit in all things and would like nothing more than if I suddenly became one myself, but she gets tired of waiting for me to wake up like that one morning. So, periodically, she does things.”

  “Was she under the impression I was looking for a free spirit of some kind? If so, she’s probably the first person in a long time to mistake me for some kind of hippie. Hippies don’t normally have hedge funds or Yale in their past.”

  “You’d be surprised how many hippies turn out to have trust funds. It takes money to afford all that not doing anything.”

  “Not a fan, I gather. But your sister thinks I am?”

  Bristol’s gaze was shrewd. “You’re looking for something that’s hard to define, aren’t you? The woman in question has to be free-spirited enough to take you up on your offer in the first place, which is hardly a mainstream sort of thing. She has to be able to meet your physical demands, which I’ve been repeatedly informed, mostly via texts from your underlings, are...”

  She was obviously searching for a word, so Lachlan supplied one.

  “Healthy?”

  Her eyes gleamed. “Indeed. Yet you also require a certain polish and educational background, which in many ways precludes the former. I’m surprised that you ever find a single candidate, if I’m honest.”

  “It might surprise you to learn that many consider me a catch, Bristol. And are willing to do all kinds of things to be the one to catch me for a while. Even a night.”

  She picked up her wineglass but didn’t raise it to her lips. “It seems to me that the only way a highly educated, appropriately polished woman would agree to serve as an escort for you would be if they needed money and were prepared to do whatever was necessary to get it. The usual reason a woman becomes an escort, I imagine. Either that or they think they’ll find a way to upgrade themselves to wife. And either way, that doesn’t quite sound to me like the emotion-and issue-free arrangement you’re supposedly looking for. One is transactional and the other is a deliberate game of pretense. Which do you prefer?”

  Lachlan felt adrenaline rush through him. He was familiar with the sensation. Notably he felt it in a business environment, right when he was about to close a major deal.

  And it only occurred to him then, as she essentially laid bare his entire dating history with such ease, that he hadn’t felt it in a romantic sense longer than he liked to admit.

  “I can’t say I like either,” he found himself saying, which was a truth he preferred to keep to himself. Since he couldn’t see how to do anything differently. Not with the life he led.

  “You’re too much of a catch, as you say, to like the sensation of being just a paycheck and too aware of the performance of the would-be wives to enjoy it.” Bristol nodded sagely. “That is a quandary.”

  Lachlan had never thought of it that succinctly before. This time, he didn’t have to pretend to feel winded. He felt it.

  But his cock wanted nothing more than to explore all the ways she could make him feel that, in all the best ways. Less psychological profiling, more sex.

  The food began to arrive then, and he found himself irritated that they were being interrupted. Even though he was well aware that this kind of self-referential dining experience was part of the package any woman who wanted to date him had to be fluent in.

  He understood that it would be devastating if Bristol March could capture his interest so many ways, yet fail this test. When he normally found these dinners entertaining because, for him, they provided a checklist of ways the women he was with—though they might be marvelous in any number of ways—couldn’t meet his needs to fill this role.

  Bristol was right. Though there were many candidates, there were very few who were capable of making him forget what they were really after—a payday or his name.

  Lachlan wasn’t sure when it had become, not just amusing, but critically important to him that this woman who wanted neither pass all of the carefully constructed tests his sister had long since told him were appalling.

  Try seeing if you like her, idiot, Catriona would say.

  But Lachlan couldn’t trust likeability. Too many people put on acts when they met him. He was too well-known. He wanted something genuine. Of course he did. Someday he would look for genuine when he was ready for a real relationship. When he wanted what Catriona and Ben had.

  Until then, he had his dating protocol and his tests.

  And though the food here was exquisite, he hardly tasted it, so busy was he watching Bristol acquit herself beautifully.

  Conversation flowed easily in and around the performance art piece that was the service, and the operatic flair of the food itself. So easily that he had to remind himself to look for all the markers he usually paid such close attention to at these meetings. Like the conversation itself. Talking effortlessly to a stranger was an art that few understood and even fewer could pull off no matter their emotional state. Lachlan was a master at it. He needed his girlfriend to manage it tolerably well, because the circles he moved in required it. There was no place for a trophy in a dinner that might easily turn into the seeds of the kind of regime changes that altered the world for the better.

  Bristol March, it turned out, could not only talk about any subject under the sun, but she also seemed genuinely interested in each and every one of them. She was widely read. She listened. She made fascinating connections and did not lapse into monologues or speak only of herself. She was not afraid of sharing her opinions, but had the increasingly rare quality, these days, of not seeming unduly attached to them.

  His grandmother, who he and Catriona not so affectionately referred to as the Dragon Lady, would have given one of her severe nods. The sincerest form of flattery she possessed.

  By the time the attentive waitstaff cleared the table, Lachlan was busier keeping his hands to himself than marking off items on a checklist. It was harder by the second to do much of anything but pay attention to that driving pulse that beat through him, that endless greedy fascination for Bristol and her frown and her clever face, making him wonder if he could keep his hands to himself.

  “Thank you,” Bristol said when their coffees had been carried off. She looked surprised. “I’ll admit, this was far more pleasant than I imagined it would be.”

  “I’ll admit that I’m used to significantly more deference and interest on the part of my dinner dates.”

  She tilted her head slightly to one side, which he now knew was a t
elltale sign she was about to be provocative. “I would have thought displays of interest and deference came after the audition. Once the starring role was secured.”

  “Some like to show that they’re capable of such things, Bristol.”

  “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well,” she said, lifting a brow. “I did. You’ll note I’m dressed like a person deciding between professorships and postdoctoral research positions at a number of highly regarded institutions. Not an actress. Or an escort.”

  “Is this a strategy? Do you think that if you insult me it will make me want you?” Lachlan was fascinated to find that his temper, so often dormant because he cared deeply about so very few personal things, had engaged. “I would strongly caution you against leaning too far into that.”

  He had his answer in the look of shock on her face. She was either the best actress he’d ever encountered...or it had literally never occurred to her to employ a strategy with him in the first place.

  Lachlan wasn’t sure which was more lowering.

  He reached across the table, taking her delicate hand in his and feeling the kick of it. Watching, perhaps a little too closely, as her pupils dilated once again.

  As her breath picked up.

  It reminded him that all this architecture—all the panels and the dinners and the conversation, too—was about the chemistry between them. These were structures he liked to put around sex, but it was still about the sex.

  And that need in him, white-hot and intense.

  He made rules so that he could have exactly what he wanted, precisely when he wanted it, from a woman he’d made certain, in advance, was also what and who he wanted.

  And he’d never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Bristol.

  “I don’t have a strategy,” she said quietly. Her pulse was drumming wildly in her neck. Her hand was hot in his. “I still don’t know why I’m here.”

  “I do.”

  Heat poured through him, shooting out from where their hands were joined and finding its way straight to his cock. What he really wanted was to take a bite out of her. But that would come.