The Pleasure Contract

by Caitlin Crews

  If she, a lowly academic instead of the actresses and socialites, even rated a footnote.

  Again, none of that should come as a surprise. It was precisely what she’d signed up for.

  But it was different now.

  Maybe you’re what’s different now, a voice inside her suggested.

  Later, he led her back to their room and she thought he would take her in a fury, the way he often did. Maybe she yearned for it.

  That obliteration. That immolation.

  But instead, when he stretched out over her, his gaze was intense and he kept it locked to hers.

  And she found herself moving beneath him slowly. Deliberately.

  Because that was what he gave her.

  A slow, deep rending.

  So there was no explosion, there was only this...deepening.

  Until they both broke apart, together, and Bristol felt as if he’d scraped her soul raw.

  Worse, that he’d meant to.

  After, he held her tight against him and pushed her hair back from her face to look at her much too intently. She was afraid she knew what he could see written all over her, all too plain and obvious.

  And unacceptable, given the papers she’d signed. The deal they’d made.

  That hollow place inside her that only seemed to grow. All the parts of her he’d scraped raw tonight and every night.

  All the things she couldn’t say to him.

  He’s going to fire you, something in her warned.

  And she couldn’t tell if she wanted that desperately or if the very idea made her want to cry.

  Both, she acknowledged.

  “Bristol,” Lachlan said. His voice was low and dark and so beautiful it hurt, and she promised herself she would remember that part. She would remember how beautiful he was and how he shined brighter than the Spanish summer outside, even at night. “I want to renegotiate terms.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BY THE TIME they made it to Hong Kong, everybody knew Bristol’s name, as predicted. They not only knew it, they used it. She had to get a new phone with a private number and monitor who she gave it out to, because the old number had found its way into the hands of the tabloids. She had to suffer the indignity of “friends” she hadn’t spoken to since they’d sat near each other in a high school class claim to be some kind of authority on who she was now.

  Bristol no longer belonged to herself alone.

  It was a remarkably strange and vulnerable feeling.

  She learned quickly not to read comments sections on internet posts. And to avoid the carrion crows of Twitter like the plague.

  But it was still disconcerting. Real friends and colleagues texted her, some in disbelief. Others in what seemed to her like not-so-concealed jealousy, or even condemnation.

  Interesting postdoc you’re doing there, one of her fellow PhDs texted. He had shared that office with her for years and yet Bristol knew, from that alone, that he was exactly the kind of man who would never take her seriously again. Because now when he looked at her or thought about her, he’d be thinking about her having sex with a man far more rich and powerful than he’d ever be.

  Once again, she felt lucky that she’d actually signed binding nondisclosure agreements. Because knowing she was legally barred from commenting on what was going on between her and Lachlan made it easy to avoid telling anyone anything, even by mistake. It was a useful weapon. It also made it easy to gauge people’s reactions to what little she said, and it was always illuminating.

  Luckily enough for Bristol, it wasn’t very surprising. Because the truth was, the years she’d spent as a doctoral student had already distanced her from old, so-called friends. To say nothing of the years she’d spent studying to get into that doctoral program in the first place. She’d always been single-minded and devoted—some might say anal—and her preference for studying too much and following research notions down rabbit holes even if it was a Saturday had naturally pared down her friend group.

  The only person she spoke to with any degree of honesty about her relationship with Lachlan was Indy, but Indy herself was less available as the summer wore on.

  And maybe that, too, was a gift.

  Because Lachlan wanted to renegotiate their terms and Bristol still didn’t quite know what to make of it. How could she have discussed something she couldn’t understand herself?

  Not what he’d asked. She understood that perfectly. But how she felt about the possibility of making that shift.

  “I want less job and more girlfriend,” Lachlan had told her that night in Spain.

  “Am I not doing it right?” Bristol had asked, possibly sounding more vulnerable than she’d wanted to, but what was she supposed to do? She still felt split wide open and entirely too raw. There were words she could have used to describe what happened between them in that bed that night, but she didn’t dare. That was one more thing to tuck away in that hollow space inside to look at later. Like maybe in November. She’d remembered herself and cleared her throat. “All you have to do is tell me what you want, Lachlan, and I’ll do it. That’s what we agreed.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about, Bristol.” His hands had still been bracketing her face. He had still been lodged so deep within her she’d been tempted to imagine that was where he belonged. “I don’t want that. I want a real person.”

  “I don’t think you do.” She’d felt a surge of something like panic but had tamped it down as best she could—then had offered him a smile. “Or you wouldn’t have convened a panel to find one.”

  “The panel was meant to find me some filler,” Lachlan said, his eyes so blue she’d been certain he could see every last hint of the panic she’d been trying to hide. “But you’re not filler, Bristol. I want more of you.”

  That hollow place beneath her breastbone had felt sharp and jagged then.

  “That’s not what I signed up for.”

  “I want to know what’s going on here,” he’d said, gruffly. He’d tapped his finger gently against her temple, still looking at her with that intensity that had made her think that she might burst into flame after all. Some part of her had wanted nothing more. “I don’t need you to agree with everything I say. I don’t need you to hide away your every feeling from me.”

  And the part of her that might have welcomed that noted that he hadn’t been promising to offer her the same in return.

  “I thought the entire purpose of this was to hide my feelings from you,” she’d said instead of pointing that out. “So you wouldn’t have to deal with them when what you really want is sex.”

  “Maybe it will get messy,” Lachlan had acknowledged. “But maybe that’s okay.”

  Bristol had rolled away from him then, because when he touched her she lost her train of thought. Possibly also her mind.

  “Not for me,” she’d said, and had left him there to head into the shower.

  They had spent a few more days on the island but Lachlan hadn’t brought up renegotiation again.

  Bristol hadn’t tried to fool herself into believing that he’d forgotten what he’d said. If she knew anything about Lachlan Drummond after all this time, it was that he truly was ruthless. He might not enact that ruthlessness the way his ancestors had, using Wall Street like a weapon, but that didn’t mean he lacked it.

  Lachlan preferred to wait. As long as it took, as long as was necessary.

  It was a family trait, apparently.

  “You know that you’re the first girlfriend Lachlan has ever introduced me to,” Catriona had said on their last night on the island. Lachlan had been called into a last-minute huddle with his staff, so she’d found Bristol tucked up in one of the lesser-used sitting rooms with the big, fat book she’d been trying to finish before they left open before her. “I don’t want to say that you’re the first girlfriend who also reads, but...”


  She’d smiled at Bristol, her face open and engaging.

  Bristol knew by then that those were Catriona’s sharpest and deadliest weapons.

  “That’s a bit harsh, surely,” Bristol had replied, smiling brightly in return, even as she’d looked around for an escape. Because it felt dishonest, somehow, to have private conversations with a woman she would never see again once the summer was over. The kind of conversations real girlfriends might have with their new boyfriend’s family.

  She’d thought again about what Lachlan had said about wanting more of her—then shook it off. Because as much as she might have enjoyed Catriona and her family and the high-spirited banter between all of them and Lachlan at their nightly dinners, none of that was hers. Or ever could be, no matter what fantasies of messy realness Lachlan might harbor.

  Bristol knew he didn’t really want any of that. If he did, they never would have met, because he would never have created an entire system to make sure his hired companions kept their distance—up to and including the tiresome Stephanie and her agendas.

  “It is harsh,” Catriona had been saying. She’d sighed. “I suppose, Bristol, that I’m just ready for my brother to have something real.”

  And for a long moment, the two of them had gazed at each other across that charming room stuffed full of novels and art, a thousand things unspoken between them.

  Bristol had been certain then of something she’d thought off and on throughout their stay—that Catriona knew exactly how her brother handled his intimate relationships. Just as she knew that it had been possible Catriona’s oblique reference was a test to see if Bristol would disclose the nature of that relationship now she’d mentioned it, even though it was forbidden by the contracts she’d signed.

  And Lachlan wasn’t in the room, so Bristol couldn’t look to his reaction as a guide or, better yet, allow him to handle his sister.

  She’d had to go with her gut and protect him.

  “Isn’t that what everybody’s looking for?” she’d asked softly. “If the world was better at real, there’d be a lot less lonely.”

  And though Catriona hadn’t said anything else that night, the interaction had stayed with Bristol.

  Haunting her all the way to Hong Kong.

  Even flying into a city so hectic was an adventure, especially in the downpour of a humid Chinese summer. Bristol stared out the plane’s windows at the bristling skyscrapers as they came in for their landing, as if Hong Kong wasn’t simply a single city but every city, packed into all those endless jutting buildings. As usual, Lachlan left her after they disembarked so he could go directly into his business meetings.

  Meaning Bristol was once again stranded in a car with the officious and passive-aggressive Stephanie, who had taken to reading out her lists of instructions because she knew Bristol had no intention of following them.

  Outside the windows, the Hong Kong weather seemed to highlight the press of so many people, the buildings piled high. Some part of Bristol found it exhilarating. Another part of her found the tumult of it all a bit hard to process after the serenity of the island.

  But it was harder and harder to tell how she felt about anything. Bristol tried her best to feel nothing at all.

  “Are you listening to me?” Stephanie demanded as the car inched through traffic.

  Bristol looked over at her and smiled. Serenely. “I think you know perfectly well that I’m not.”

  The other woman let out a huff of outrage. “This can’t continue, Bristol. Do you know how many women I’ve seen sit where you’re sitting? Here’s a newsflash. Each and every one of them thought they were special, too.”

  “Stephanie. Look at me.” Bristol waited until she did. Stephanie had to be twenty years older than she was, trim and capable and currently so tense it was surprising she didn’t snap in half. “Your itineraries are suggestions. We both know it. There’s only one person who gives me orders and he’s made it clear he doesn’t care if I follow your agendas or not. That’s just a fact, so what’s the point of arguing about it, day in and day out? And what does it even matter? I’m only here for the summer. I’m sure the next one who comes along will bow to your every whim.”

  “These are not my itineraries!” Stephanie looked stung. “They’re to help you do your job to the best of your abilities—and to Mr. Drummond’s satisfaction.”

  “I admire what you do,” Bristol said, soothingly. And was surprised to find she meant it. “It can’t possibly be easy to corral a variety of women into this particular box, over and over. But rest assured, Lachlan is perfectly aware which one of the two of us is responsible for the way I dress and behave. If there’s a price to be paid, I’ll be paying it. Not you.”

  And for a moment, it was quiet in the car. Only the cacophony of the sprawling city outside, pressing in against the windows.

  “He treats you differently,” Stephanie said, and for once, Bristol could detect no trace of snideness or passive aggression in her voice. It made her blink. “To be honest, Bristol, you’re the first one who makes me think I might be out of a job soon.”

  Despite herself, Bristol felt her pulse pick up. Something in her stomach twisted, but not in a bad way. If she didn’t know better—if she didn’t know how futile it all was—she might have thought it was hope.

  “There’s no chance of that,” she said quietly, forcing herself not to clear her throat. Because it would be much too telling. “I suspect you’ll have your job for a long time to come.”

  And she made herself sit there for the rest of the ride across the city, imagining all the future women who would be sitting right where she was. It wasn’t torture—on the contrary, she found it soothing. They would come and go like the tide. They would take up space beside her in the lower paragraphs of those tabloid articles while above, the new girlfriends would wear lovely dresses in Paris, one after the next. And she would look back on this one, long, impetuous and out-of-character summer from the safety of her ivy tower and smile.

  She hoped that no matter what happened, she would smile.

  Later, as the breathlessly humid day edged toward a thick, hot evening, she waited for Lachlan in the bar of the hotel where they were staying. It was a quiet place, dark and inviting, but she didn’t choose one of the booths. She went instead to the dizzying sweep of windows, all offering astonishing views of the city, and found a high table there.

  She almost felt as if she, too, was plump with neon and light and bursting at the seams with all the commotion far below.

  The outfit that Stephanie had chosen for her tonight—and that Bristol had decided to actually wear, only partly because she thought she ought to extend an olive branch to the woman who was, like her, just doing her job—was the kind of pantsuit she’d seen famous women wear with ease and flair, but had never attempted herself. Because she’d never understood how they made what she took to be a rather dowdy bit of work attire into elegance in the first place.

  Now she knew. Everything was different when it came from instantly recognizable fashion houses and was furthermore tailored to her precise measurements. And then paired with shoes that might as well have been works of art. Shoes so high they should have hurt her feet, but that, too, was apparently only a concern at her usual price points.

  She’d seen her reflection in the elevator when it had hurtled down from another opulent penthouse suite and had thought she might as well have been a stranger.

  This was what came of playing games with sex, she acknowledged now, smiling faintly when the waiter brought her the drink she’d ordered from the bar on her way in. This was what happened when it turned out she might have leaned too far into that separation between emotion and action that had given her comfort, at first.

  She’d thought she could hide there and unpack it all later.

  Bristol suspected she’d made a terrible mistake, but the only way to fix it was to leave.<
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  And it was already July. She had so little time left with Lachlan as it was.

  She thought of the tides again, the changing of the guard, her inevitable replacements. The ebb and flow of it all. The stack of contracts she’d signed, almost merrily, in what seemed like a different life.

  When she’d thought she could...just have a lot of sex with a beautiful man for a little while.

  Because wasn’t that what people did?

  Why had she thought she could be like other people when she never had been before?

  You’re fine, she told herself, while outside the window, the falling dark was cut through by neon light shows all around. You have a week off when you get back to the States and then it will be August. Why are you acting like this is a hardship?

  If it was so onerous, she’d told herself as she’d gotten ready tonight, she could always stop doing it. She and Lachlan had agreed on the summer, but she could walk away anytime she liked. As could he.

  She could walk away right now and find her own way back to New York.

  But she didn’t move. Bristol knew that no matter what she told herself—no matter the hollowness that expanded inside her, wrecking her more and more by the day—she wasn’t ready to go.

  Sometimes she worried that even when September came, she still wouldn’t be ready.

  She sensed movement at her shoulder and knew that it was Lachlan even before she lifted her gaze to find him standing there. He was looking down at her in the way he always did now. His mouth grave. His gaze intense.

  As if that hollow feeling wasn’t truly hollow after all, but overfull. And both of them were stuck right there in the middle of it.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, his voice that low rumble she thought she would dream about, later. When she slept alone again. When it was cold outside and she had nothing but memories to heat her up. “There’s no particular rush. We’re not expected for at least an hour.”

  He stood too close to her at that table, so it seemed as if there was a wall of him on one side and nothing but a freefall into Hong Kong’s epic commotion on the other.