The Contract

by Avril Tremayne

  It sounded feasible. It sounded—or more correctly, he sounded—persuasive. His voice was husky, his dark eyes were practically smoldering, and the way he stood, the stillness of his body seeming almost anticipatory, was unbelievably erotic.

  One long, slow breath, then she dropped her hands from her hips. Nodded. “I’m not sure that a movie about enduring love is in keeping with your take on commitment, Adam, but all right, I’m willing to see what it does for your libido. I’ll get the corkscrew and glasses.”

  * * *

  Considering all he knew about The Notebook was that Sarah had cried herself into a state over it, Adam had no idea if it would do anything for his libido. But his libido was in very good form tonight regardless, thank you very much.

  Just seeing Lane in jeans and a sweatshirt had got him well on the way. And the thought of having her gooey and weepy and sniffling into his chest was making him feel very clever, and definitely up for a little base stealing.

  Maybe it was novelty value, because he didn’t normally go for the gangly, awkward, half shy, half bolshie, repressed, virginal Lane types. He was generally up for the confident, knowing, sexy, dolled up types.

  Well, it was what it was. So he slotted in the DVD, grabbed the remote, unlaced his boots and kicked them off and settled as best he could on the uncomfortable couch.

  She came in, completely poised. “Pass the bottle,” she said.

  “Here, I’ll open it,” he said.

  She was about to argue then smiled, offering the corkscrew. “Sure. Lesson Six. Men are proud bastards.”

  Adam squashed an urge to roll his eyes. Offering to open the wine was just an automatic reaction, because most women expected him to do that kind of stuff, not because he gave a damn who wielded the corkscrew. But there she was, showing how well she’d learned her lesson, expecting him to be pleased. She was cute. Dammit!

  He deftly uncorked the bottle, poured two glasses, and held one out to her.

  “Who picked the furniture? You or Erica?”

  “Me. Well, actually, my mother. She thought it would go well in her house, so I bought it for her. But she didn’t like it, once it was in place. So I got her something else.”

  “And you ended up with this.”

  “Yes.”

  Adam cast a jaundiced eye around her living room. Not a room that screamed “comfort” by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Anyway, Erica likes it,” she said. “She’s moving in with Jeremy in a few months, and she’s promised to take it off my hands so I can start again.”

  “So it’s not to your taste?”

  “No. It’s all a bit…well, cold.”

  “I thought that would be right up your alley.” The words were out before he could stop them.

  She looked startled, but only for a second, and then her face was wiped of all expression. Lane reached for the remote control. “Let’s get this done.”

  Adam stared at her fingers clutching the remote. He’d upset her and she was trying not to show it. He felt an insane urge to apologize. It was trembling on his lips, but he battled it back. She was cold. All right, she was cute, too. But cold. And controlled. And controlling. And…cute. And—

  “Adam? Ready?”

  He gave himself a mental shake. “Wait. I’ll call for pizza.”

  Pizza ordered and DVD on, Adam settled back again on the couch and tugged Lane close.

  She pulled away—a reflexive action, he guessed—but Adam drew her back more firmly and whispered, “Lesson Eight, remember, watching movies together,” into her ear.

  He knew that would make her submit, straight-A student that she was.

  Within five minutes, he was nuzzling her neck. Then he started running his fingers around her ear. He mixed up the assault a little, rubbing the sensitive skin on the underside of her wrist. Dropping an occasional kiss on her temple, kneading her shoulder.

  Her breathing was a little chaotic, but she wasn’t reciprocating by touching him back. Adam suspected she was hampered by having no idea what she should be doing.

  He gave her a brief respite when the pizza arrived and they stopped to eat.

  Lane, fingers drumming against her thigh, looked at him, narrow-eyed. “You don’t know the first thing about this movie,” she said.

  Adam grinned. “Well…no. To be perfectly honest.”

  “Aha! I knew it! You’ve barely watched a scene yet. I’m sure you’re much more au fait with Deep Throat.”

  “I have to confess—yes. Well, come on, it’s a cult classic, although actually quite tame by today’s standards. But the reason I’m not watching is because I’m having more fun playing with you.”

  Lane looked skeptical.

  “And, yeah, while I’m in confession mode, you were on the money about the schmaltzy commitment theme not being to my taste. A hundred divorces in the family kind of leaches the romance out of your soul.”

  “Was it really awful?” Soft, tentative, sympathetic.

  Adam took his time before answering. Then, “Yes,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong—my parents love us, and they are great. But they’re great apart, not together. During the divorce, it was a scorched earth policy. They fought over money, the house, custody of me and Sarah. They even fought over the Tupperware. Tupperware! Not kidding.” He reached for another slice of pizza. “Then there was the Cinderella stepmother to contend with, who was overly fond of Dad’s belt until he saw the bruises on my back and sent her packing. And the drunken stepfather who was a little too fond of Sarah, and almost got himself castrated when I found out. And the—”

  Uh-oh.

  A sniffle. A definite sniffle.

  He looked closely at Lane. Saw the tears in her eyes.

  “Hey—don’t get all soppy,” he said, alarmed.

  “I can’t help it,” she said, and she sounded distinctly quavery. “I can’t believe Sarah never told me anything.”

  “Sarah and I don’t go wailing to the world about this stuff. And certainly not when so many others have put up with so much worse.”

  Nope, she was still teary.

  “What if I tell you some of the hysterically funny parts?” he asked. “That will cheer you up. Like how Mum’s third husband—a boy toy, to my everlasting shame—asked her to pay for his therapy because she’d given him an Oedipus complex, and she knocked out one of his teeth?”

  Lane laughed at that, but when they put the movie back on a minute later, she kissed him gently on the cheek then awkwardly patted his hand. Nothing sexual about it—just meant to comfort him, he supposed.

  It made his chest feel strange. Achy.

  He didn’t like that feeling.

  So he upped the ante, wedging her tightly against his body and doubling his assault on her senses.

  An “Oh” shivered out of Lane when his fingers dipped below the neck of her sweatshirt, stroking the sensitive flesh of her shoulder. “I can’t…I can’t…concentrate,” she said. “Are we supposed to watch this first, I mean all the way through? Lesson Eight? Or can we…can we…skip it and just get…get to the sex?”

  “Well, Lane, the movie is just a means to an end,” Adam said. “A way to build the sexual tension. We can watch it all the way through…or not. Can you feel it? The sexual tension? Building? Because I can. And I think that’s why you can’t concentrate.”

  He heard the breath she sucked in.

  “So forget the movie and tell me, Lane. Tell me you want me.”

  She turned to him. Her eyes were wide. She licked her bottom lip nervously. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do. So it’s all right? To say that?”

  “Very all right,” Adam said, and tugged her helter-skelter into his lap.

  He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks and then her trembling mouth as his hands worked to free her hair from the tight ponytail, and then she was kissing him back—and what she lacked in experience she made up for in enthusiasm. Her mouth was hot and hungry, and pushed too hard against his—hard enough to hurt as his top li
p was smashed back against his teeth…but he liked it. Liked that she was taking whatever the hell she wanted. She gripped his shirt between her hands and when her tongue pushed inside his mouth and licked almost frantically, he groaned, and pulled her so she was straddling his thighs.

  “Ah, Lane,” he breathed against her mouth, “I love it when you kiss me back.”

  Those simple words were like a match to a dry leaf. Lane kissed him harder. She slid her mouth off his, down to his chin and to his throat, around to his ear where her tongue darted out shyly. A dab more than a lick. But he liked that, too.

  He smoothed his hands under the hem of her sweatshirt, inched it up, up, up, off. He tried to slow down, but her sweet, hot breaths against his ear played havoc with all of his good intentions and he thought he’d go mad if he didn’t have her right now.

  He began working at the clasp of her bra. By the time it gave and her perfect, naked breasts were filling his hands, his heart was racing so madly he wondered if it were about to leap out of his chest. Man found dead in Sydney home, heart on couch beside him.

  He heard her suck in her breath as he touched her, and wanted, so badly it stunned him, to see her face.

  He drew away from her, forestalling her when she would have thrust herself against him again, and looked. Her eyes were enormous, dark pools, the pupils so dilated only a thin ring of pale blue showed at the edges of her irises, lips rosy from red wine and kisses, red hair wild around her milk-white shoulders. She was blue denim from the hips down…and from the hips up, all white skin and pink-tipped breasts and tangled strands of glorious hair. He leaned forward and dipped his head, taking one nipple into his mouth.

  “Oh,” she gasped, and her hands came up to hold his head there. “A-A-Adam.”

  Then he was pushing her deep into the couch, his mouth fastened hard to her breast. He felt the naked flesh of her hip, and only realized after the fact that he’d unfastened her jeans. And his. This wasn’t supposed to happen yet. She hadn’t suffered enough. She wasn’t desperate enough. But, God help him, he had to have her. He had to—

  “Laney?”

  The call came from the entrance hall as the front door closed.

  “Laney, I’ve got vodka!” Female voice. Clear as a bell. “I’m just dumping my stuff and I’ll be in.”

  Holding his breath, Adam looked down at Lane. She was holding her breath, too—and in the next instant she was galvanized, pushing him off her, scrambling into her sweatshirt, zipping up her jeans, burying her bra under a sofa cushion.

  Ten seconds later, she looked her usual calm self—except for a faint blush, the dilated pupils, and the messed-up hair. But she was bundling her hair back into its regular ponytail and Adam had no doubt it would look perfect within seconds.

  Yep, he marveled five seconds later: perfect. Even the blush had faded, so when Erica, brandishing the vodka bottle, came to a complete stop just inside the room, Lane was sitting like a prim librarian beside Adam, perfectly in control of herself.

  “Oh, no! I’ve interrupted,” Erica said.

  “No, of course you haven’t,” Lane said, and switched off the movie. “Come and sit down. And did you say vodka? I’d love a vodka.”

  Vodka—she’d love a vodka. More than she’d love Adam thrusting into her like an out-of-control, horny teenager, obviously.

  Adam chose that moment to zip up his own jeans, the sound as loud as a thunderclap in the poised silence.

  Erica made a strangled sound—like she was choking back a laugh. “I’m sorry, Adam. It is Adam, right? Not David?”

  “Adam,” he said, sounding cold but feeling hot with temper. David? Not that he cared, really he didn’t, but who the hell…?

  Erica shot Lane an admonitory look. “Lane, you should have told me you had Adam scheduled tonight. I could have gone to Jeremy’s.”

  Scheduled! Didn’t that put him in his place. Adam looked from Lane, to Erica, back to Lane.

  “Oh, Adam just…dropped in. You know, to watch a movie. We weren’t scheduled tonight. So it’s fine. I—I’ll get some glasses.”

  Lane bustled off, leaving Erica and Adam alone.

  Erica had removed her shoes and hat and untied her scarf, but she was still wearing the rest of her airline uniform. Despite the half-assembled appearance, she looked both beautiful and glamorous as she deposited her limbs into a lounge chair.

  “I’m Erica, by the way,” she said, and helped herself to a slice of cold pizza. “Sarah’s told me so much about you.” She eyed him, chewing slowly. Swallowed, still watching him. “How’s it going? With Lane?”

  “I’m not discussing Lane with you, Erica. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—there is a confidentiality clause in our contract, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Good answer,” she said, and smiled. “Lane doesn’t like being gossiped about.”

  She really was very beautiful. She reminded him of three exes he could name out of hand (Karen, Alexa and Corinne) and was wearing the exact perfume—Tresor—that Corinne had habitually worn.

  But she was having absolutely no visceral impact on his senses. Not even the tiniest twinge.

  Erica cast a weather eye towards the kitchen. “Lane will be in there de-flustering, but she won’t be too long.” She refocused on him, all business. “So I’ll say this quickly. This sex thing is a dumb idea. You know it, and I know it. But Lane doesn’t know it, and at this point, it would do more harm than good for her to know it. In fact, she’d be mortified if she knew it wasn’t supposed to get to this. Sarah says you can be trusted to treat Lane properly, and I want to believe her. But I know your type, Adam Quinn.” Her eyes flickered to the DVD cover on the coffee table. “I’m not too keen on guys who mess with a girl’s head by sitting through The Notebook—especially guys who already have a whole harem at their disposal and don’t need another girl gagging for them. David is the main game for Lane, so you just get through the next three months as lightly as you can, then back the hell away so nobody gets hurt.”

  Adam’s temper surged again. He wasn’t messing with Lane’s head. He was messing with her body, because that’s what she was paying him for. He knew the score—sex, just sex. Three months, then out. No emotional connection. And all right, maybe watching a chick-flick was underhanded, but it didn’t appear to have changed a goddamned thing. And it didn’t mean he had to sit there and have another man’s name shoved down his throat. “I said I wasn’t discussing Lane with you.”

  “That wasn’t a discussion,” Erica said. “That was an instruction.”

  “I take my instructions in this house from Lane.”

  “I suspect you don’t take instructions from anyone.”

  “Well, certainly not you. Now, unless you’d care to explain just who the freaking hell David is, given you’ve deliberately mentioned his name twice, I suggest you take your vodka and your pizza and go, because you definitely were interrupting something when you came in.”

  Erica laughed. “Clever you!” She got to her feet. “Lane,” she called. “Jetlag is calling. I’m leaving you to Mr. Quinn’s tender mercies and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  When Lane hurried in, all that remained of Erica was a waft of Tresor.

  Lane appeared supremely unruffled…except that her fingers, clutching three stacked glasses, looked like they were turning into claws. She looked inquiringly at Adam. “She never suffers from jetlag,” she said.

  “I think that was her being discreet,” Adam said.

  And he couldn’t believe it, but when Lane sat slowly beside him, he felt his wayward loins stir dramatically. This was ridiculous. She wasn’t his type. She had no idea what she was doing when it came to anything remotely sexual. He apparently had no impact on her unless he actually had a body part on her somewhere. And he didn’t even like her.

  Nope. He wasn’t doing anything more until he processed exactly why it was that a stunner like Erica left him cold, but an uptight sex-free zone like Lane got his nether regions jumping to att
ention. And why it infuriated him to have Lane’s oldest friend toss the name “David” around like a ping-pong ball.

  Because “David,” whoever-the-hell-he-was, was none of Adam’s business.

  There was enough to stew over without adding “David” into the mix.

  Dammit!

  He located his boots and shoved his feet into them.

  “Is that all for tonight?” Lane asked, and for some reason, the fact that she sounded so calm irritated the hell out of him. Like he was a load of washing with an interrupted spin cycle rather than a horny-as-hell guy who’d just been interrupted by a woman flinging another man’s name around.

  He focused on his shoelaces, tightening them so sharply, one snapped. “I’m sure you don’t want me grunting and groaning all over you with Erica in the house. You might break out in a sweat, and how would you explain that to her?”

  There was a slight tinge of color in her face—no other reaction. “Do you still want to go shopping on Saturday?” she asked.

  “Ten o’clock,” he said. “I’ll pick you up.”

  “I could meet you—”

  “Ten o’clock. I’ll pick you up,” he repeated through gritted teeth.

  Chapter Eight

  When Lane clambered into the jeep on Saturday morning, one look at Adam’s dark and forbidding countenance told her he was still mad about Thursday night.

  Not that she could figure out exactly why Erica’s unexpected arrival had made him so angry. He’d wanted to meet Erica, hadn’t he, because of the I-am-not-a-prostitute thing?

  But she sensed it was her, Lane, acting like nothing had happened, that was the problem, not Erica per se. But what had he expected Lane to do? Stay sprawled half-naked on the couch?

  His reaction just didn’t make sense.

  But then, nothing was making sense.

  She tried a little innocuous conversation—queries about where they were going, how long he expected it to take—but got such unencouraging, one-word answers, she eventually lapsed into silence.

  By the time Adam parked, there was so much tension between them Lane’s head had started to ache.