Page 54 of The Pleasure Contract
When she reached Lachlan, she dived for his arm. He wheeled around, and the look on his face was so ferocious she actually let out a surprised sort of sound at the sight of it.
And any half-formed notion she had that his expression was for whatever stranger he thought might have grabbed him melted away, because it only intensified the longer he looked at her.
“You better be sure,” he growled at her. “You’re running after me in the rain and it better not be bullshit.”
“How?” she demanded, and maybe she was closer to screaming than she thought. “You say you love me, but how? All we ever did was have sex.”
“We didn’t just have sex, Bristol,” he threw right back at her, his hands on her upper arms to hold her there before him. And there was rain all around them, the commotion of the city, and it was New York. No one paid them the slightest bit of attention. It was like being alone with thatlookhe was giving her. “We neverjusthad sex.”
“Just sexis what you ordered. What you paid for.”
“But it wasn’t us!” he shouted at her.
It was a real shout, and something in her gloried in it. This was Lachlan, uncontrolled. No more acting the part. No more putting on those suits he didn’t even like.
A man, not a monster.
All man.
He gripped her arms a little more tightly, dropping his face close to hers. “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you laugh on that video. And you know it. Just like you fell in love with me long before you signed that contract. You know that, too.”
“Fuck you and fuck your contract,” she threw right back at him, not caring if all of Brooklyn overheard her. “Let me tell you something, Lachlan. You might have rules, but I have a heart. And you will not break it. If you want to do this, it’s going to be messy. It’s going to be all-consuming. You’re not going to know where you end or I begin. No beginning, no end. You don’t get to run away to a fancy little island when it gets too much. I wantreal, Lachlan.”
“You think I can’t do it.” There was a kind of wondering note in the middle of all that ferocity. “You think I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Do you?”
He jerked her closer and she loved it.
Shefeltit.
She felt lit up andalive.
“I know you wreck me,” he said, there against her mouth. “You make me feel things I’ve never felt. You make me do things I’ve never done. You’re a temptation and a torment, and I’m in love with you, Bristol.I love you.”
He punctuated that with a tighter grip and she wanted to laugh, wild and long and free.
But Lachlan wasn’t done. “I don’tjustwant to have sex with you, though I want that, constantly and desperately. I want to marry you. I want the whole big, messy deal. Ridiculous fights and screaming babies and asshole teenagers to top it off. Then you and me, in our bed, fucking our way through. All of it.”
Lightning flashed. And what scared her—or thrilled her—was that she couldseethat. She could see it all too clearly.
“What about what I want?” she threw back at him, and she couldn’t tell at that point if it was only rain on her face or if she’d given in to the sobs she could feel building inside her. She didn’t care. “I want to be more than a dress on your arm. I want my daughters to grow up knowing they can do anything. I want them to do what they love, but not obsessively lose themselves in the only thing they’re good at because they don’t know what else to do.”
“You can do whatever you want. Do you really not know that?”
“How would I know that?” And there was no pretending she wasn’t crying then. “Don’t you understand, Lachlan? I’m terrified that if I tell you I love you, I’ll just lose myself in you all over again, and then what will become of me?”
He framed her face, smoothing her hair back, and her heart seemed to grow three sizes.
“I can have anything on this planet I want, except you,” Lachlan said. “I tried to buy you and I still didn’t get close. You only lost yourself when you weren’t yourself, baby.”
It was thatbaby. It was going to kill her.
She was gripping the front of his T-shirt like her life depended on it.
Lachlan didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t want that. I want you. I want your wild intellect and your carefree laughter. I want the way you come for me, so greedily, over and over. I want the way you scowl at me, the way you say my name when you don’t agree with me, the way you scream it when I’m inside you. I want the way you wow every person you come into contact with, and I want the way you look back at me, always checking in, whether we’re at a state dinner or a food truck.I’m in love with you, Bristol.”
“I’m trying so hard not to,” she whispered brokenly to him. “But I love you, too, Lachlan. I love you, too.”