Page 20 of The Pleasure Contract

She would not like being ignored on the flight and abandoned all day. She would argue about his rules. She would refuse to have rules, maybe, and certainly she wouldn’t take his cock in the car as some kind of punishment for not catering to his demands for punctuality.

Bristol could see, clearly, all the many things she would feel if she were actually in a regular relationship with Lachlan right now.

But her feelings were exactly what he was paying not to deal with.

She stood in the water for a long time. She let the steam billow all around her, let her skin prune up, and she didn’t know how much time had passed when the shower door, steamy and glassed, finally opened to show Lachlan standing there.

Her heart kicked at her, hard. And she thought she could see a certain wariness in his expression. As if he was waiting to see what her move was going to be here. Because they didn’t know, did they, whether or not she could handle the job he’d hired her for.

It had all been theoretical until now.

Bristol pulled in a breath, as uncertain as he seemed to be. Was she going to yell at him? It seemed possible for a moment. She might find the way he ordered her around hot, like it or not, but she didn’t like the feeling afterward—

But even as she thought that, a sense of peace settled over her.

Because she didn’t have to decide what to feel. All the decisions were already made. He was the one who made them, because she’d agreed to let him. She’d literally signed papers to that effect.

Bristol felt something like liberated at that notion.

It didn’t matter what she felt. She’d decided that when she’d decided to do this. She didn’t have to attach her feelings to anything. She didn’t have to stand up for herself or assert herself or any of the other things she might feel she had to do here if this was something else.

She could smile at him instead. She could watch the heat flaring his gaze.

She could surrender to what she wanted without worrying what it might say about who she was, or what this was.

That was already decided. They’d already agreed.

Lachlan was on her then, lifting her up as the water pounded into them, the steamy water not nearly as hot as he was. His cock was big and hard and took the same few moments it always did to fit inside her. But once he had buried himself to the hilt, he dug his fingers into her hips, tilted her back against the wall, and set up an intense, bone-rattling rhythm as he pounded into her.

It was like magic.

It really was a liberation, she thought, with what little part of her was still capable of thinking when everything else was that ache in her clit, the glory of his possession, and one fierce punch of an orgasm after the next.

All of them his.

For once she didn’t have to make decisions. For once she didn’t have to feel—or more to the point, she didn’t have to act on her feelings.

All she had to do was this.

Again and again.

Because Lachlan was never satisfied. And all she had to do was indulge his every whim.

Finally, she thought—as he finally roared out his release and they hurtled together over the edge—something she was not only good at, but actually wanted to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

BRISTOLWASCOMPLETELYdifferent from his previous women.

And Lachlan wasn’t the only one to notice.

The staff member who handled the day-to-day concerns of his girlfriends complained about her constantly. Something he might have acted upon, buthedidn’t find Bristol’s refusal to slot herself into the usual role as arm candy upsetting.

“She refuses to listen, Mr. Drummond,” the woman said at almost every staff meeting. Officiously, Lachlan thought. “Sheinsistson doing as she pleases.”

“She listens to me, Stephanie,” he’d replied this morning. “Maybe it’s how I ask her.”

There had been other women who antagonized his staff, but all of them had also proved themselves unequal to the job. And soon enough, had antagonized Lachlan, too.