Page 52 of The Pleasure Contract

This time, when they got back to her apartment, she brought him inside instead of leaving him outside where a storm threatened. They climbed the stairs together and she found herself almost giddy with the notion that she was bringing Lachlan home the way she might have any other date.

When he was anything but that.

Inside, she launched herself at him and he caught her, and then they exploded, together.

First he held her against him, high in the air, taking her mouth with his while their hands smoothed and tangled and made everything worse. Or better.

Then they moved to the small couch, only to end up on the floor, everything fierce and hot, because he was far too tall for the couch.

They rolled this way and that, a pageant of hands reaching and bodies yearning.

She sat astride him, pressing herself against the hard ridge of his cock, teasing them both like they were in high school.

It was ridiculous how hot it was to roll around fully clothed with a man she had been naked with too many times to count.

But then she’d had enough. She wanted everything.

And she was astonished when Lachlan held her away from him when Bristol reached for the zipper of his jeans.

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” he said, his eyes that brilliant blue she normally saw only when he was driving deep inside her, fucking her into oblivion.

Her clit ached, but he didn’t let her ease that ache against his.

“I really can’t believe I’m going to say this,” he muttered. “But we can’t have sex.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

IFHE’DANNOUNCEDhe was taking holy orders, Bristol could not have been more stunned.

“What? Why not?”

Lachlan rolled with her, depositing her on her back beneath him, and she thought for a moment that it was a joke. That he would laugh and give her what she wanted, but he didn’t.

Looking as if it caused him physical pain, he rolled to his feet, leaving her sprawled out on the floor with the taste of him in her mouth, her nipples so hard they hurt, and her pussy soft and ready.

Damn him.

“I’m not having sex with you again, Bristol,” he told her, looking something like feral. His eyes were blazing and she’d knocked that hat off, then had her hands all up in his blond hair. She’d been the one to make him look so disheveled, and that notion rocked through her like his mouth at her neck. “Not if it’s just sex.”

Bristol’s heart kicked at her, hard. She remembered what her mother had said about earthquakes, and that was what it felt like. As if every fault line related to this man that she’d gathered up inside her was ripped wide open.

“I beg your pardon?”

He moved all the way across the room, which wasn’t far at all. But it felt like an immeasurable distance. She forced herself to stand.

“I told you I want all of you, Bristol,” he gritted out. “I meant it. I want everything. And I know you don’t believe me.”

She had never been so tempted to lie and tell him whatever he needed to hear—but she didn’t.

Judging by the way his eyes narrowed, he probably knew how close she’d come.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” she hedged. “I believe that you believe it. I’m aware of your pattern, that’s all.”

She did not say,and so is the world, and felt virtuous.

“In other words, you don’t believe me.” He smiled then, broad and confident as if she couldn’t see with her own eyes how big and hard his cock was behind his fly. “No worries, baby. I can wait.”

Baby.