Contract Bride

by Kat Cantrell

  Holy crap. How hot was the thought of her climbing anything while wearing skimpy lingerie? Very.

  “You bet.” He hummed a little in his throat as he let that last bit play out in his imagination as she climbed him and straddled him with her thighs wide—wait. She comes to his room, she takes off the robe, she climbs onto the bed, she’s on top.

  It was all so bafflingly simple. How the hell could he have missed that she needed to be in control?

  The only excuse he had was that all the blood in his body pooled in his lap anytime he was around Tilda lately.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he growled, so incredibly peeved with himself at having wasted all this time that he couldn’t find the wherewithal to be civil. “You go to your room, put on the most daring thing you own under your robe and come find me. I’ll be the one on the bed.”

  * * *

  Oh, God. She was really doing this.

  But not in this outfit. Tilda stripped off the black lace mesh bralette that left little to the imagination and the thong that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. It was too...dirty, or something.

  Sunshine yellow satin bra and panties. Total antithesis of black naughtiness. She posed in front of the full-length mirror that comprised half a wall in the walk-in closet. Nope. Too...yellow.

  Tilda changed her outfit five more times, only to end up back in the rose-colored baby doll with matching thong that she’d first selected and then discarded in favor of the black outfit. It was the only thing she owned that she’d ever imagined wearing for a man. It wasn’t the slightest bit utilitarian, like a bra and panties. Those she wore every day, could reasonably argue that she was wearing them for herself.

  But this outfit...the baby doll bisected her breasts, revealing a healthy slice that almost—but didn’t quite—let her nipples peek over the edge. The thong dipped so low that it looked like she was naked under the flirty, floaty fabric of the top. There was no way a man could see her in this and not know she’d worn it for him.

  Which was why she wasn’t doing this.

  What was she thinking? She worked with Warren. Getting this personal was a very bad idea.

  Stripping off the baby doll, she threw it in the drawer and leaned on it so she couldn’t open it again. She couldn’t follow through. It was too big a thing, with too many pitfalls.

  Except... Warren was also her husband. Not in the traditional sense, but they had a relationship beyond work. She liked him. Was attracted to him. There was nothing wrong with that. And she shouldn’t have to spend so much time justifying it to herself, either.

  Also, he wasn’t asking her to do something hard. Just giving her the opportunity to play out her fantasy. If she didn’t feel comfortable doing anything other than dropping her robe and letting him look at her, he’d be fine with that. If she asked him to have drinks on the terrace while she wore the robe and never took it off, that’s exactly what would happen.

  But none of that was what she wanted. What she wanted was to explore the things she felt when Warren looked at her like she was his next meal. All the things. She wanted sex in all its glory, with more orgasms than she could count, a man who could keep up and free rein to do whatever she wished without fear of being called names.

  Maybe that’s what would happen. She pulled the drawer open. Shut it.

  Maybe that’s not what would happen. Maybe Warren would be shocked by the positions she’d envisioned them in, horrified by the filth coming out of her mouth, or at best, dismayed that she wasn’t the straitlaced woman she’d presented herself as.

  Excuses. He already knew she was a big liar. Had called her on it. She pulled open the drawer so hard it came free from the runners and landed on the carpet. Lingerie spilled over the edge in an explosion of colorful silk and lace. As metaphors went, that one was a little too perfect. The drawer couldn’t contain her secrets any better than she could.

  Her phone vibrated. Warren had texted her a message: Just checking in.

  He knew she was waffling. Of course he did. The man missed no tricks.

  Warren: If you’re not ready for this, it’s okay. Remember, you’re in control of everything that happens.

  A sharp tug in her core filled her with something powerful. She could be in control. Warren was telling her so.

  How much control? Would he do things that she asked him to?

  Warren: You call the shots.

  Yes was apparently the answer. It was like the man had gained the ability to read her mind in the span of an hour. Intrigued against her will, she scooped up the puddle of rose silk and slipped it over her head before she could chicken out again. She had a written guarantee that she could let this evening play out precisely the way she directed. Warren would never go back on his word. She trusted him, and that alone was huge enough to warrant forgetting about everything else for a few hours.

  The robe skimmed over her bare skin as she slipped it on and belted it. The fabric was nothing special as she hadn’t bought it with the intent of using it in a seduction scene. Oh, God. Was that what she was walking into?

  It was if she wanted it to be. She was in charge. The tug in her core transformed into long liquid strings that yanked pieces of her free that she hadn’t realized were so deeply buried.

  She was really doing this.

  Instead of going to Warren’s room through the hallway, she ducked into the bathroom. The hallway was where she met him in the mornings to go to work. The bathroom connection between their rooms was more secret. She liked that they had secrets. Liked that they had an easy way to keep their personal and professional lives separate. It was almost poetic.

  When she opened the door to Warren’s bedroom, she had to pause a moment to fully appreciate the scene he’d set up for her. He was, indeed, lying on the bed, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs that hugged his hips. Wow. So he was just going to be lying there mostly naked, then. As visual gifts went, that one took the cake. He was a beautifully built man, not that she’d expected anything less, but reality brought her up short with a sense of wonder.

  “I see you dressed for the occasion,” she said wryly to cover the fact that her pulse had just tripled.

  “Why beat around the bush?” he asked with smile that did not help her pulse. At all. “Figured it was easier.”

  Oddly, it was perfect. She was more dressed than he was, and she suspected that the imbalance wasn’t an accident. Hot did not begin to describe it. And he’d single-handedly eliminated whatever nervous tension might have sprung up.

  But just the nervous tension. The rest of the tension was purely sexual as the atmosphere grew more charged the longer she drank in the nearly naked form reclining on the bed. It was nothing like the fantasy she’d had. In those, he’d always been a little shadowy because she didn’t really know what he looked like under his power suits.

  Now she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to think of him clothed. He was sublime—still powerful, but in a much different way than he was at the office. Mouthwatering, even, strong, muscular.

  He could do whatever he wanted to her and she could do nothing to stop him. Her pulse sped up and it had not been slow in the first place. Rationally, she knew she wasn’t in danger, but still...

  “I’m not moving from the bed unless you tell me to,” he advised her. “Think of me as a marionette, if you like. Pull my strings and I do as you command.”

  His voice rang with the same authority it always had, creating the strangest paradox. Only Warren could pull off maintaining his masculinity while simultaneously telling her she controlled him. The liquid threads of her desire elongated as she traversed the ocean of carpet toward the bed.

  “Then I want you to stay there. I’m going to take this robe off,” she told him. “And when I do, I want to see how much you like what’s underneath.”

  If it went the way she hoped, sh
e could gauge his reactions. He couldn’t surprise her.

  “I’m fairly certain that was going to happen anyway.” He jerked his chin at his lower half. “Goes with the territory of wearing something that has no shot of disguising how much you turn me on.”

  That was such a delicious point that she couldn’t resist testing it out. Slowly, she untied the robe but didn’t open it. Instead, she slipped off one shoulder, and then the other, holding the robe closed as she let the fabric ride her breasts.

  “That’s a gorgeous color on you,” he said huskily as he noted the straps of her outfit. “I can’t wait to see the rest of it.”

  She let the robe fall, unveiling the baby doll all at once. The noise he made in his throat warmed her, and he sat up but made no move to leave the bed, as promised. His gaze hungrily drifted over her, catching at all the right places as he drank in the details. His shorts gained a prominent bulge, the outline of which drew her gaze.

  “This is more difficult than I thought.” His voice had gone thin and hoarse. “I want to touch you so badly.”

  But he wasn’t going to. Unless she gave him permission. His expression burned with longing—a desire he was denying himself because he’d told her he would. The control was so heady that a smile bloomed, and it was wicked.

  “It so happens that I want you to touch me.”

  His gaze zeroed in on hers, hot, hungry, edgy. But he didn’t so much as flex a muscle in her direction, exercising extreme patience and mastery of himself. She couldn’t help but appreciate both.

  “Give me more parameters, Tilda. Here? There? Touch you how?”

  All of the above. She was still in control and he was proving it to her moment by moment. The last of her anxiety dissolved and she waltzed to the bed, pushing him back onto the mattress. She crawled up the length of his body and straddled him, settling against that bulge until it nested into her core exactly the way she wanted it.

  “Put your hands on my breasts,” she instructed, and when he reached up, her insides went slick with need. But not panic. There was a huge difference. Of course he could easily flip their positions, but she trusted he wasn’t going to do that.

  The first firm contact of his palms on the underside of her breasts felt better than anything she’d imagined. Then his thumbs flicked across her taut nipples, tugging her core so hard that she gasped. “More.”

  He stroked again and then reversed the position of his hands, sliding his thumbs under the fabric to touch her bare skin. “What else would you like, Tilda? My mouth?”

  She nodded because speaking didn’t seem to work too well as he leaned up to flick his tongue across her covered nipple, wetting the silk.

  “Pull down the fabric,” she murmured, and cool air kissed her aching breasts a moment later. “Suck on me.”

  His lips closed around one nipple and the swirl of his tongue lit her up inside. Fortunately, she had the perfect hard length to grind against, and he was right there, circling his hips to create greater friction at her core. She fell into the fire, eyes closed, sensation exploding through her body.

  This was nothing like she’d expected. Having a man do exactly as she directed was far more thrilling than she would have guessed.

  Warren switched to the other breast without being told, laving at her flesh so expertly that she couldn’t argue that she hadn’t wanted it. She did. She wanted it all. Gasping out his name, she tangled her fingers in his hair, arching her back to give him better access. His teeth scraped across her nipple so exquisitely that she felt it all the way to her toes.

  Wrapping her legs around him, she urged him closer with her heels, wishing she’d had the foresight to skip the underwear. But wasn’t that the benefit of having a man at her full command?

  “Strip me,” she told him and couldn’t find a shred of embarrassment at how easily she fell into this role.

  He didn’t hesitate. In one second, the baby doll top hit the floor and then he eased her back onto the mattress between his legs. He watched her as he hooked the waistband of her thong and pulled it free from one leg, then the other.

  “Please tell me the next thing you want me to do is spend a lot of time pleasuring you,” he said, and the look on his face...pure heat and carnal intent. “Because I can’t see you like this without wanting to taste you.”

  “Yes. That. I want that.”

  “I need to move you. Is that okay?”

  She nodded and he slid his hands under her buttocks to maneuver her to the edge of the bed. Then he dropped to the floor on his knees between her legs, kissing her quivering thighs. Why she couldn’t control the shakes, she didn’t know.

  “Shh. Relax,” he murmured. “I’m just going to touch you.”

  He did exactly and only that, running his hands up her legs to her stomach. But he never tried to hold her down, never made any quick movements. It was costing him, though. She could see the restraint in the lines around his eyes. He was holding back for her. The effort he’d undertaken, the patience, the sheer magnitude of what he’d done—continued to do—overwhelmed her.

  After an eternity of bliss that nearly made her weep, he spread her legs, opening her up. “Stop me if I do anything that bothers you.”

  He waited until she nodded again. And then his tongue circled her fevered center and she could do nothing but mewl. The harder he licked, the better it got, until her body was bucking against his mouth, silently begging for more. He gave it to her, somehow sensing that she didn’t have the words. It was too big, too amazing, too much, too little. His fingers stroked her in places she didn’t know were erogenous zones, and his tongue hit spots over and over that made her body sing.

  Frenzied and feeling like her skin was going to incinerate, she babbled something but had no clue what she’d told him to do. Whatever it was must have done the trick, though, because he lapped harder and twisted his fingers through her center, splitting her apart. The orgasm tensed her whole body and she came in a rush of a release, crying out his name.

  So that’s what all the fuss was about.

  He let her come down, backing off immediately to lie next to her on the bed, not touching her at all. She stared at him, her chest heaving, and wished she had something to give him. A medal. A plaque maybe.

  “I’ve never had an orgasm that way before,” she said, instead of the gush of things in her heart that sounded mushy and blubbery and not at all the kind of thing a woman said to a man she’d married for a green card.

  His brows raised. “Seems like you’re a natural at it, then.”

  She laughed. “That was all you.”

  “I had good instructions.”

  Yes. She had a knack for it. Who knew? “Am I still calling the shots?”

  “Of course. If you’re done, you say so and get up and leave. Or stay here and sleep in my bed, and I’ll go someplace else. This is your fantasy.”

  None of this added up and she was insanely curious about the million-dollar question that she should have asked a long time ago. “Why? Why on earth would you do all of this?”

  “What, let a gorgeous, sexy woman do a strip tease for me and then indulge myself in the extreme pleasure of watching her in the throes of an orgasm I gave her? Yeah, that is a mystery. I must be crazy to have signed up for that.”

  “Stop. You did it for me, not you.”

  “That’s the secret, Tilda. It was good for both of us.”

  More secrets, and that one was her favorite so far. The distance between them was too much, and she inched closer, linking their hands together, which was nice. “But you’re still...you know. Not done.”

  “Oh, no. Far from it. I can go for hours and hours still, but as discussed, this is your show to run. I’m just here for the party favors.”

  “Then I’m not done, either. But here’s the thing.” She hesitated, because how was she supposed to tell him that, while
she appreciated having ultimate control, she was nowhere near experienced enough to know how to please him? And she wanted to. So much. He deserved to be treated like a king. “Can we be cohosts of this party?”

  Eight

  Cohosts. The phrase shouldn’t make him smile, not when everything inside ached with so much unrequited need that Warren couldn’t stand to be in his own skin. Her thumb stroked over his knuckles and he’d never have said that would be a turn-on, but pretty much anything Tilda did got him hotter than July, so it shouldn’t have been such a shock.

  “You’re going to have to help me out with what that means,” he said when he thought he could speak. “Cohosts might have a totally different connotation in Australia than it does here.”

  “I’m doing okay,” she murmured. “With you. Here. Naked. It’s good. You don’t have to be so...careful with me. This should be about you, too, not just me.”

  Understanding filtered through the sexual haze that had saturated his brain. “You mean, you’re okay with it if I do some things that you didn’t verbalize. That I have permission to be creative.”

  She nodded and something bright filled his chest. He’d done what he’d set out to do—get her comfortable with him. How fantastic. And brave. There’d been no guarantee that they’d ever get to this point, no matter what he did, and even less of a guarantee that she’d tell him so.

  All at once, his throat closed as he internalized the magnitude of the gift Tilda had just handed him. Instead of telling her, it seemed appropriate to show her. It worked out well that he wanted to dive back into her, anyway, and talking wasn’t high on his list of bedroom activities.

  Warren took a moment to shed his briefs and Tilda watched him, her eyes bright, rewarding that decision with a sound low in her throat.

  “I don’t know why you ever get dressed,” she muttered. “It’s almost sinful to cover all that up.”

  The grin spreading across his face might have been a little sloppy. “I take it I meet with your approval.”