The Pleasure Contract

by Caitlin Crews

  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 that what matters?”

  Did he like Bristol?

  Lachlan didn’t like that word, that was for sure. It didn’t get anywhere near the complexities and layers that made up his Bristol March problem.

  But that wasn’t a conversation he planned to have with his older sister. “If I didn’t like her, I wouldn’t be with her.”

  Catriona rolled her eyes. “That’s a charming nonanswer that I’m sure plays well at all your very important business meetings, Lachlan.”

  There was the sound of a bloodcurdling scream, wafting in through one of the wide-open doors that led out toward the sea that felt like part of the decor here. The house was a sprawling, vaguely Mediterranean affair with upgrades that had been implemented when and if the current owners had felt up to it. Some parts of the house could have been lifted directly from an English manor. Others had the modern edges and crisp approach to art that reminded him more of city-based condos. Altogether, it was an eclectic monument to the passage of time and his family.

  He had no idea what he’d been thinking, bringing Bristol here. Of all the women he’d dated, she was the most likely to see each and every ghost that lurked in these halls and hung on to each and every exposed beam.

  Catriona was listening intently, her head tilted toward the rolling lawn outside, but waved a dismissive hand in the direction of her maniac children when the follow-up scream was less bloodcurdling and more aggrieved. “They’re fine.”

  “Yes, I like her,” Lachlan said when she fixed that gaze of hers on him again. He disliked the fact that it took effort to sound indifferent. “If you’re tempted to start getting ideas, don’t. I told you a long time ago, I’m not the marrying kind.”

  “No one’s the marrying kind until they marry,” Catriona replied serenely. “I think you’ll find that’s pretty universal.”

  This was his sister, his favorite human on the planet, so Lachlan couldn’t end the conversation the way he would have if it was anyone else. He stayed where he was, in her favorite room of this old, rambling villa, filled with pictures of their family. From their fierce grandmother right down to their father as a bright, happy-looking boy in the sunlight.

  A far cry from who he’d become.

  Catriona followed his gaze and sighed.

  “Your trouble is, you insist on imagining that he was a monster.” She shook her head. At Lachlan. “When the truth is that he was only a man. Like all men, he made choices. You can make choices, too, Lachlan. Different ones.”

  But Lachlan already had.

  As far as the world was concerned, Alister and Annalisa Drummond had been unfortunate victims of a freak accident. Alister had gotten his pilot’s license in his twenties and had flown from New York City to one of the family’s preferred hideaways by the sea in Maine without incident hundreds of times. But that day a sudden storm had cropped up off the coast of Boston, the plane had gone down, and their bodies had never been found.

  The public take on the accident was that the storm was to blame. It was a terrible tragedy, but what could have been done? Even a Drummond couldn’t beat the weather, they’d said.

  But Lachlan and Catriona knew better. They’d known the truth behind the placid exterior their parents liked to show to the world. He could remember, too clearly, the shouting and the drinking. Annalisa got sloppy. Alister got cruel.

  Together, there was nothing they wouldn’t destroy—especially each other.

  Lachlan couldn’t quite believe that his father had truly lost control of that plane. Not by accident, anyway.

  He and Catriona had always believed that the crash hadn’t been an accident, but their parents’ usual game of one-upmanship taken to its logical, horrible conclusion.

  It was one more reason the two of them were so close. They were the only ones left, sure—but they were also the only ones who k
new.

  “But what makes a man into a monster?” he asked his sister lightly, now. “I have a pretty good idea. They were toxic for each other and should have kept their distance. We wouldn’t exist, but I bet they would.”

  “You always say that,” Catriona replied with another sigh. “Yet I’ve managed to love Ben quite happily and without incident for the past ten years. There’s no curse. There’s no secret Drummond gene that turns on and makes me act like either one of them, no matter how much wine I’ve had. Those were choices they made, Lachlan.”

  “Ben isn’t a Drummond,” was all Lachlan said in reply. “Mom wasn’t flying that plane.”

  The way he always did.

  Catriona only looked at him as if he was breaking her heart. He thought she practiced it in the mirror before they saw each other. And he didn’t know what she might have said then, but he was saved from having to hear it when her children came roaring in, in either high-pitched glee or murder.

  While his sister sorted them out, Lachlan slipped away.

  He walked through the villa, feeling the press of his family and his history on all sides. Even in the desperately chic, off-puttingly modern parts of the house, because he knew whose fingerprints were all over each room.

  He’d spent so much of his childhood here. But his grandparents had both been alive then, meaning his parents had been forced to behave when they visited, at least some of the time. He had spent idyllic days in the sun, but come nightfall when the family was all together and his parents put on their act, all he’d ever seen were the lies beneath.

  Lachlan didn’t know if he loved this island or hated it.

  By the time he made it down the long hallway to the wing he thought of as his these days, sleek and modern and scrubbed free of ghosts, there was a kind of agitation inside him. It beat at him, bright and hard.

  It was nothing as simple as lust, but he called it lust all the same.

  He found Bristol outside, clinging to the edge of the eternity pool. Her hair was wet and slicked back, and her gaze was trained on the horizon.

  Lachlan didn’t speak. He didn’t know what he would say, or how.

  Not when that drum in him beat like that. Jarring. Impossible.

  Too much history and too much truth and he should never have let this woman come here.

  She must have heard him approach, though he thought he’d been silent. Still, she turned, and he thought the sight of her slick, wet skin and the bikini halter top tied around her neck might be the undoing of him.

  “Do you—” she began, but stopped.

  Her eyes went wide.

  And Lachlan felt it like her mouth, wet and hot while she sucked him in deep.

  He prowled over to the side of the pool, bent, then hauled her up and out of the water. He didn’t care in the least that holding her against his chest soaked him, too. Maybe he liked it. He felt half-blind with lust and longing, and that deeper, greedier thing that pulsed deep inside and held him in a tighter, more vicious grip.

  His mouth was on hers, hard and wild, seeking and desperate.

  He carried her inside, somehow finding the bed and taking her down with him, letting loose the only monster he ever allowed to take him over.

  And never so out of control as with her.

  He skimmed his mouth over the line of her neck, pulling the wet bikini top away from her breasts and growling a little as they were exposed to his view. Maybe it was the ceiling fan above that made those goose bumps prickle all over her skin, or maybe it was simply the same beating thing in the both of them.

  Either way, Lachlan planned to devour her.

  He found her stiff, hard nipples with his mouth, teasing her until she moaned. It was a broken, greedy sound and she arched up against him, offering herself in that same slick rush of surrender that he couldn’t seem to get enough of.

  He couldn’t get enough.

  Lachlan wanted to take his time, but he couldn’t. He wanted her naked and took care of that, pulling the stretchy, soaked, irritating bathing suit bottoms off her. Only then did he find her just as he wanted her.

  Wet.

  Swollen with need already.

  And when he set his mouth to her hard little clit, all he had to do was suck once, hard, and she screamed as she shattered.

  He moved back, kneeling up to rid himself of his own clothing. Then he flipped her over in front of him, wrapping his forearm beneath her hips and hauling her into position.

  Lachlan knew her body so well by now. He knew how she would brace herself, her arms flung over her head and her forehead pressed into the mattress. He knew she would arch her back and flex her hips so that he had easier access.

  And when he slammed inside her, he knew the greedy, glorious little sounds she made. He reveled in how she angled herself to meet him so that each thrust was perfect.

  He’d had her so many times, but it was never enough. He’d taken her in the back seat of almost every car they’d traveled in. He kept her naked on one long flight, curled up beside him on one of his jet’s couches, open and longing and his for the duration. The hotels they’d stayed in blurred and the view of this or that famous city outside blended one into the next, but he remembered every sharp cry she made. The husky way she breathed his name.

  The way she whispered yes in his ear when he lost his rhythm entirely.

  Or the way she dug her nails into his back.

  He could feel the way she shook, the way she stiffened, the tension radiating out from her splayed thighs and moving all over her sleek, lush body. He knew exactly how to keep her on that edge, throwing her off as he pleased and then throwing her right back into it.

  Only when he couldn’t take it for another moment did Lachlan follow her over.

  And this time, after she’d screamed and he’d shouted, he rolled them over and pulled her to his side. Then he held her there while the ceiling fan rotated above them, washing them both with that faint breeze.

  Letting the ghosts in with every turn of the blades.

  He knew that as soon as he caught his breath, he could have her again. That she was always ready, always greedy.

  He knew her body, but he didn’t know Bristol at all.

  And the more time he spent with her, the less he seemed to know himself.

  It was that sharp truth that seemed to pierce him then. Straight and true while his heart kept up that drumming beat.

  Until Lachlan was forced to wonder if Bristol was the one in control of the monster in him, after all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “DID YOU KNOW that you’re on the front page of every single tabloid there is?” Indy asked one afternoon.

  Bristol had spent yet another morning in the Spanish island paradise that was entirely too easy to forget wasn’t hers...at all. It was Lachlan’s and she was simply aggrandized staff—but that proved difficult to remember in the most beautiful place she’d ever seen.

  The villa was a patchwork of different time periods and aesthetics, jumbled altogether in a way that was somehow charming. The island itself boasted a craggy coast with limestone cliffs on one end, and gleaming white sand coves on the other. There were palm trees and pines, what was once a citrus grove, almond and olive trees. The villa was surrounded by trellises awash in violet flowers, and the soft sunshine danced over everything, as if conducting the orchestra of birdsong on the sea breeze.

  Every day was the same, so achingly beautiful it should have hurt her. But didn’t.

  Lachlan’s version of a family vacation involved waking Bristol before dawn, no matter how much of the night they might have spent driving each other mad with desire. He drove into her with what she would have called desperation, had it been anyone else. It was always a silent cascade of overwhelming need, a blistering rush of sensation and passion.

  She would be half-asleep and then he would be in
side her, and her dreams seemed to focus only on him anyway, so the shift always felt like coming.

  And then she was.

  Bristol loved it.

  He went off to conduct his business while she slept more and recovered, something Lachlan never seemed to need to do. She usually met up with him later in the morning, after he’d had a few rounds of business in different time zones. And after she’d woken up, had fresh fruit out on the terrace with only the sea as company, and then sipped at coffee so strong and dark it made her feel like a superhero.

  Sometimes she imagined she was one. Especially given the amount of sex she was currently having.

  She often had more sex in a night than she’d had in the previous few years, combined.

  Night after night.

  Bristol loved that, too. She loved how her body felt. She loved what he did to it. She loved knowing that every need, every desire, would be explored—over and over. She loved how she felt settled into her bones and limbs in a new way, as if she was as ripe and as lush as she felt when his mouth was on her skin or his cock was deep inside her.

  It couldn’t be more different from her old life, which had been all about her brain and never about her body. It might as well have been night and day.

  Sometimes Lachlan talked to her, always about his work. Only rarely about his sister and her family, but then, they all gathered together in the evenings for communal dinners and the polite sort of conversation that Bristol would have found difficult, had this not been a job.

  Had this been a real relationship, the hollowness she sometimes felt inside might have consumed her whole.