Page 34 of The Pleasure Contract
Maybe she’d always been falling and only realized it now.
And the realization was like the hard thud of landing, and the impact reverberated through her, making it impossible to do anything but tell him the truth.
“I wanted to make sure they saw me,” she whispered.
Her hair was tied back in a knot tonight, but a tendril fell forward on her cheek. Slowly, intently, Lachlan drew it back and tucked it behind her ear.
It made her shudder.
“Who?” he asked, hardly making a sound.
But she heard him.
And somehow, Bristol smiled, an ache made real. Right there on her face. “Everyone.”
The next morning, she woke up naked and alone in the huge bed that took up the better part of yet another astonishingly vast bedroom. She was sure she would find Lachlan’s fingerprints all over her but was disappointed when she looked in the nearest mirror and saw nothing.
Nothing to mark how he had held her through the night, how he had made her cry and beg.
Over and over again, until the sky behind all that light and neon began to brighten.
The man needed no sleep, as far as she could tell. She’d always thought that she was tenacious and determined, but Lachlan was a breed apart.
Especially when he was clearly trying to show her why she should let him in.
By stripping her raw. By making her sob.
Until it felt as if she was incomplete when he wasn’t buried deep inside her.
As if she might never be whole again.
When her phone chimed she knew it was her sister, and ignored it. She didn’t think she had it in her to talk—because once she started, she wasn’t sure she would stop.
But when it beeped again, indicating a message, she swiped it up from the table where she’d left it.
Romantic, Indy had texted.
And the picture she’d sent along with her text made everything in Bristol go still.
Too still.
How had she not seen a photographer in that bar last night? But she knew the answer to that. She’d been completely swept up in Lachlan. Completely consumed.
The picture was of Lachlan tugging that dark lock of her hair back from her face and securing it at her ear. She almost couldn’t bear to look at the image, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away.
It was too tender. Too raw.
The look on Lachlan’s face was almost too intense. And the look on her face...
Bristol looked like a woman in love.
And if that wasn’t the kiss of death in this situation, she didn’t know what was.
She heard herself make a small, broken sound and she tossed the phone aside, but how could that help? If Indy had seen that picture, so had the world. So would he.
Her heart was beating again, too fast. Too jarring.
Lachlan wanted her to let him in, but she knew better than to let him. She wasn’t protecting herself because it was her job to maintain her distance. She was doing it because she was afraid.