Page 33 of The Pleasure Contract

“What made you how you are?” he asked, idly, as if there were no contracts between them. As if there was only heat.

Inside her, it felt like an open flame.

She tried smiling it away. “My understanding is that it’s a mix of genetics and an aggressively bland childhood.”

“Does aggressively bland mean...happy?”

Bristol wanted to look away, but she didn’t. Why hide here when she was already wide open to him in so many other ways? Who was she kidding? “Sometimes I wonder if happy childhoods are myths we tell ourselves. It’s hard to be happy if you’re a child, isn’t it? Your body is always changing without your input. The world around you is always changing as you become more aware of it. And no, nothing terrible happened to me. But I wouldn’t say I washappy.”

“Then you’re lucky,” he said, his eyes darker than before. “Because if you were unhappy, you’d know.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. “I’ll give you that. I’m very lucky that what I had to complain about was mostly that I had nothing to complain about.”

“And yet you’re still so driven. Why?”

Bristol wished she’d gotten a stronger drink. She swirled the dregs of her soda and lime around and around, and didn’t look at the man who seemed to surround her so easily. As if he was holding her in the palm of his hand.

Maybe sex was easier after all. It could feel like all of these conversations without actually having to have them.

“Pot, meet kettle,” she murmured.

“My childhood had its advantages.” Lachlan laughed, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I would not call it lucky. Or happy.”

“I know your parents died. I’m sorry.”

“In some ways the accident was a relief,” he said quietly.

And Bristol was gripped by that stark look on his face. That faint hint of what might have been surprise. She knew, somehow, that this was not something he said very often.

Maybe he never had.

She whispered his name and his mouth curved, though it wasn’t a smile. “I try not to say that out loud. My sister hates it when I forget and say it anyway.”

“Because she feels the same...or because she disagrees?”

Lachlan shook his head as if he couldn’t answer that. “Some people bring out the worst in each other. My parents started off tragic and toxic and only got worse from there. They liked to pretend, but behind closed doors, it was an endless competition to see who could cause the most damage. Catriona and I were spared the worst of it because their focus was only and ever on each other. They fought like it was to the death every time, and one day, it was.”

“Lachlan. I’m so sorry.”

His gaze moved over her face. “You didn’t do it. They did.”

“Is that what drives you?” she asked. “Losing them?”

“Not losing them.” He ran a hand over his lean jaw. “Living with them. I guess you could say that after they died, that left me with a whole lot to prove. Mostly that no matter what, I wasn’t going to turn into the same kind of monster. You asked me once if I was akindbillionaire.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“My father certainly wasn’t. And I try, in every way I can, to be nothing like him. Starting with the fact that I’m not actually a billionaire any longer, because most years I give away too much money to maintain that status.”

Bristol’s heart was beating too fast. She could feel it thundering in her chest and pulsing through her. As if she was running up a long set of stairs. As if Lachlan was deep inside her.

As if she was afraid.

Or alive,something in her whispered.At last.

“Why are you so driven, then?” he asked again. “What did you have to prove if your life was so bland?”

And her heart didn’t slow, but she fell anyway. Not out the window to the busy streets so far below, but into his steady gaze.