Page 48 of The Pleasure Contract

Lachlan didn’t want her less sure of herself. He wanted her to be every part of herself, whatever that was.

She’d said she wanted everything. Well, so did he.

“I accept your resignation,” he said.

Bristol blinked. Then cleared her throat. “Well. Okay. Good.”

“I’ll have my attorneys initiate the termination protocol.” Lachlan pulled his phone out of his pocket and sent a series of texts. He waited a moment for a response, then nodded. “Our contracted relationship is over.”

He could see the way she swallowed. Hard.

“All right. That’s done, then.” She flushed. “I’ll confess I don’t know the appropriate thing to say when ending something like this. Uh...thanks?”

Lachlan moved then. He crossed the room and stood before her. And waited.

Slowly, she looked up at him. Slower still, her eyes dilated, telling him that whatever her reasons were for wanting to end things with him, it wasn’t because the greedy longing between them was gone.

She swayed slightly toward him, because their bodies were that attuned to each other now, but caught herself.

“Is this...” Bristol straightened her shoulders. “Are you saying goodbye?”

Lachlan reached down and took her hands in his. She let him, and when he laced their fingers together, a small sound shuddered out of her.

He thought of his sister and Ben holding hands in all that summer light. He thought about intimacy and how he’d always assumed that any hint of it was a slippery slide to a plane plummeting from the sky.

But Bristol was holding on to him. Her pretty face was tipped up toward his and there was no trace of distance.

And he wanted to tell her all of this. He wanted to tell her what he’d learned and what she meant to him. He wanted her to know all the ways he needed her in his life. He wanted and wanted, but as she’d said already, all they’d talked about so far was him.

“Do you have a favorite restaurant in this neighborhood?” he asked.

She blinked, and he watched that brain of hers start working. “There’s a Vietnamese place on the next block that’s amazing. Why? Did making declarations and dissolving contracts work up an appetite?”

He decided not to tell her, then, that he was going to spend the rest of his life hungry and only she was ever going to make a dent in it.

If he was lucky.

And Lachlan was a lot of things, but luck had never played a part before.

He was back on that high wire, holding on to hope.

Try love,Catriona had advised him.

It was the one thing even Lachlan Drummond couldn’t command.

“Dr. Bristol March,” he said, very carefully and deliberately, his eyes on hers like his life depended on her answer. Because it did. “Will you go on a date with me? I hear there’s a great Vietnamese place nearby.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BRISTOLHADNOintention of going out to dinner with Lachlan that night. She didn’t want toplay gameswith him.

And yet after saying no, with a scowl on her face while her heart galloped too wildly in her chest, she found the look on his face unbearable.

“You can call me tomorrow,” she found herself saying, like a moth to the flame. “And you can ask me if I’m free next weekend. And maybe not assume that I can drop everything to please you at any instant.”

He was still holding her hands and he looked down at them, his mouth curving into a smile that might almost have been bashful, had he been anyone else.

But he was Lachlan Drummond, so that curve took on a different shade altogether when she saw the look in his too-hot blue gaze.