The Pleasure Contract by Caitlin Crews (best books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

Baby.

Her heart kept going at her, harder and harder by the second. She couldn’t tell what sort of pulse it was that rattled through her, lighting her up in her temples to her pussy, only that it was driving her wild.

He’d called her baby.

“What do you think you’re waiting for?” she managed to ask. “I hate to break this to you, Lachlan, but I’ve already pretty much ruined you for other women.”

“I’m waiting, Bristol,” he said, his eyes brilliant and his tone dead serious, “for you to admit that you’re in love with me, too.”

That pulsing thing in her felt more like a shudder then. Her chest was so tight she was afraid she might break out in sobs, and never stop. “And if I’m not? What if what I want from you are dive-bar dates and a hot one-night stand every once in a while?”

“You can have all the dates you want.” Lachlan’s mouth looked particularly hard as it curved. “But the hot nights are off the table.”

“That sounds suspiciously like an ultimatum.”

“An ultimatum would be me insisting that you do something,” he countered, almost lazily, when she could see the white-hot heat in his gaze. “But you don’t have to do anything. I will be saving my virtue and my body for love, that’s all.”

Bristol laughed.

Because this was Lachlan Drummond, king of the sexual demands. She assumed, though she didn’t really like to think about it, that even though he hadn’t appeared anywhere with a new woman he must be doing something with that appetite of his. Because the last she’d counted, it was a solid month since he’d had sex with her.

No way had he actually gone that long.

Her stomach cramped and yeah, she really didn’t want to think about it.

“This is specific to me, right?” she asked. “Because I know you don’t think that I’m going to stand here and believe for one second that you’ve been abstinent for twenty-four hours. Much less, what is it? A month?”

“Thirty-three days,” he said gruffly. “Actually.”

And no matter how she stared at him, she couldn’t see the faintest hint of a lie.

“But...” Bristol cast around, not sure she could find the words for something like this. For the way she was shaking apart where she stood. “You have no idea if I’ll ever... I didn’t even kiss you until tonight!”

“Because it’s not about me.” Lachlan held her gaze, and it undid her. “Someone pointed out to me that I’m used to everything being about me, and that’s true. But not this. I’m not playing a game, Bristol. The only question is when you’re going to see that.”

And she was torn in two, just like that.

She wanted, so badly, to run to him. To let all the words she dared not speak out loud pour off her lips, because wasn’t this what she’d wanted all along?

But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, though her voice shook.

Though she could see it hurt him. It hurt her, too.

She didn’t believe him—not until all he did was smile at her, then turn to go.

She expected him to argue, mount a defense, something, but he didn’t. Lachlan opened the front door and then shut it quietly behind him.

And for a moment Bristol stood there, shaking, trying to make sense of what he’d told her. Trying to make sense of any of this.

Trying to keep her footing when the ground was buckling beneath her feet.

And then she was flinging open her door and racing down the stairs before she knew she meant to move. Her breath was coming too fast, laced with desperation. She heard the outside door slamming shut and made a sound a little too close to a sob as she flung herself down the last flight of stairs, then outside into the night.

The storm had settled in. There were lightning flashes overhead and the rain poured down. Bristol looked around wildly, the panic making her pant. Had he called his driver? Was he already gone? She couldn’t help thinking that if he left now, he wasn’t coming back—

But then she saw his unmistakable body cutting through the rain in the bright headlights of a passing truck.

She ran, seized with a kind of desperation so intense it made her want to scream.

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 that look he was giving her. “We never just had sex.”

“Just sex is 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,