Married by Contract (3 page)

She didn’t have time to
react, though, because everything else was feeling so good. They were moving
together really well, fast, urgent, primitive, shaking the bed, shaking their
bodies. Nick had started to grunt softly, and she loved the sound of it, like
he was feeling too much to keep it inside. She was making helpless little
sounds too as she clawed at his back and his ass.

It all felt good—really
good—but after a while it started feeling even better as another orgasm began
to tighten inside her. She’d never had trouble coming during sex, but she
usually didn’t come repeatedly this way. She had no idea what was happening to
her. It was like her body just couldn’t get enough of Nick.

“Oh God!” she gasped, arching
her neck and closing her eyes.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he
muttered, evidently seeing she was close. “Yeah. Come again. Come. Again.”

She did, making an
embarrassingly loud cry as she did. Then he was coming too. His body clenched
up hard. Then froze. Then released in tight shudders that ripped through his
body, causing him to choke on a helpless exclamation of his own.

They were both panting
desperately as he finally collapsed on top of her. She still felt the
occasional little clench of pleasure, and her body softened in deep satisfaction.

After a minute, Nick rolled
off her, holding the condom carefully as he pulled out. But he didn’t get up.
He just lay beside her, panting just as loudly as she was.

“Wow,” she managed to say at
last. “That was…”

“Wow.” He turned his head to
smile at her. “I knew we’d be good together.”

“I didn’t. It never even
crossed my mind.”

“That was your mistake.”

“It sure was.” Her hair was
sticking to her damp face, so she brushed it back impatiently. “I can’t believe
we did that.”

“We can do it again,” Nick
said, his eyes softening uncharacteristically as they rested on her face. “Any
time you want.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes,
trying to enjoy the feel of her body and not think too much about how things in
their marriage might change.

Things had been so good
between them. She didn’t want them to get messed up. It had felt like her life
was finally in order, and that was too precious to lose.

Of course, after sex like
that, she wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to stop herself from doing
it again.

After a few minutes, Nick
finally found the energy to get up and walk to the bathroom to take care of the
condom and clean up. As soon as he was no longer beside her, Jenn started to
feel anxious and unsettled. She’d made smart, thoughtful, and well-reasoned
decisions all her life. That was why she’d been so successful. Even the sex
she’d had in the past had been chosen because it wouldn’t get in the way of
what was most important to her.

This was different, though.
Nick was different.

She got up, limping slightly
because she was sorer than she’d expected, and went to grab an oversized
T-shirt and clean underwear from her dresser. Now that the sex was over, she
didn’t want to lie around naked.

She was sitting on the edge
of the bed when Nick came back into the room from the bathroom.

He paused when he saw her,
his expression growing strangely still. “You don’t want to have sex with me
again,” he said.

Her lips parted slightly.

“You’ve thought about it and
decided it was a mistake. You can’t let your life get messy this way, so you’re
going to tell me we have to forget it ever happened.” He arched his eyebrows at
her, his slight smile not reaching his eyes. “Right?”

“No. That’s not right.”

He was clearly surprised by
this news and walked over to sit down beside her. “You look like you’ve been
getting nervous.”

“I have been,” she admitted.
“I don’t want this thing to get weird or to make our lives messy.”

“Naturally. We wouldn’t want
that. No mess allowed.”

His tone was familiar.
Relaxed, almost lazy. Slightly mocking but not in a mean-spirited way. It
actually made her feel better, that Nick hadn’t changed, that he wasn’t taking
this any more seriously than he took anything else. He obviously enjoyed having
sex with her, and it seemed clear he wanted it to continue—but he had nothing
deeper than attraction invested in it.

If there was any chance at
all of hurting Nick in any way, Jenn would have called an end to this without a
moment’s hesitation. Hurting him was something she was never going to do.

“I know I’m kind of rigid and
uptight. You can make fun of me if you want.” She smiled slightly to make sure
he knew she wasn’t offended.

“I wasn’t making fun of you.”
He reached over to put a hand on her knee, which she’d bent up to fold her legs
on the bed. “Tell me what will make you less nervous about this.”

“I just don’t want it to get
out of control. I barely have enough time to eat and sleep in my life right now—”

“You know the solution to
that.”

She gave him a mild eye-roll,
not willing to get into an argument about her work schedule at the moment. “The
point is that this is going to get messy and then potentially damage our
relationship and arrangement unless we set up some parameters around it.”

“Ah,” he breathed, leaning
back as his eyes warmed in enlightenment. “Parameters. Of course. What were you
thinking? No more than once a day?”

She gave a little gasp. “Once
a day! That’s way too much. We’d be having sex all the time!”

“My mistake,” he said with a
soft laugh. “What would be more appropriate?”

“Once a week, maybe.” She
frowned as she thought, staring down at the rumpled covers on her bed. “That
would probably work—often enough to relieve tension but not enough to become a
major part of our lives. Does that sound all right to you? Or is it too weird
and restrictive, and you don’t think it’s worth the trouble?”

Nick reached out to brush her
hair back from her face in an uncharacteristically gentle gesture. “It is
definitely worth the trouble,” he murmured. “I’m fine with once a week, if
that’s what you’re comfortable with.”

She swallowed over a
tightness in her throat. “So no more than once a week, and we both have to
agree to the time and place.”

“Do we actually have to
schedule it in advance?” His voice was mild, completely uninflected, but there
was the slightest quiver of his lips.

She narrowed her eyes. “I
thought you said you weren’t making fun of me.”

“I wasn’t then. I might be a
little bit now.” He laughed and reached out to pull her into a soft hug. “You
know I adore you, sweetheart. If you want to schedule our weekly sex
appointments in advance, then I’m totally game.”

She hugged him back, her
chest filled with a fondness that wasn’t unfamiliar but that she usually didn’t
acknowledge. “We don’t have to schedule them in advance,” she mumbled into his
shirt. “We can be spontaneous. We just both have to be in the mood.”

“Sounds good to me.” He
released her and drew back, smiling with that same soft look that caused weird
little flutters in her stomach. “You’ll want to add this to our contract, I’m
sure.”

“Yes. We better. Just to keep
things tidy. Is that all right?”

“Of course.” He leaned
forward to give her a soft kiss on the cheek and then stood up. He’d pulled
back on his flannel pants, but his chest was still bare. “I’ll sign whatever
you want me to sign. I’m not going to say no to sex.”

She gazed up at him,
wondering how it would feel to stroll through life the way he did, just letting
things occur and not trying to arrange them himself. She wondered what had
happened to him in the Army. She tried to remember what he’d been like in high
school, but she only had a few vague recollections of a cute guy who’d been
several years older than her whom everyone in town had loved.

“What is it?” he asked, his
eyebrows drawing together.

“Nothing. You’re sure you’re okay
with this?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got
no ties or commitments elsewhere. Why wouldn’t I take sex when it’s offered?”

“Yeah, but it might be easier
for you to just keep seeing escorts or whatever you’ve been doing.”

He gave a little shrug. “I
haven’t been seeing much of anyone lately.”

This piece of information
shouldn’t have made her feel so happy, but it did. It really did. “Oh. Me
either.”

His face relaxed slightly.
“Okay. Good. It sounds like we’re both satisfied with the arrangement. No need
for either of us to worry about anyone’s feelings.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“I’ll talk to my lawyer about
the contract tomorrow.”

“Naturally.”

She tried to hide a smile at
his dry tone. “Now get out of here before you start making fun of me again.”

Nick was laughing as he left,
and Jenn wanted to hug herself with exhilaration. She had no idea how this had
happened, but her weeks felt a little brighter and more exciting now, since sex
with Nick would be a part of them.

Three
and a half weeks later, Jenn woke up earlier than usual.

It was still dark outside,
and she tried to roll over and go back to sleep for another half-hour, but her
mind drifted into dangerous thoughts, thoughts that wouldn’t allow her to
sleep.

She kept imagining having sex
with Nick again four days from now.

The four times they’d had sex
so far had been amazing. On Tuesday of this week, it had been exactly a week
since they’d had sex the previous week, so Jenn had come home from work,
excited about the possibility of having it again—assuming Nick was in the mood.

He’d been in the kitchen, and
they’d made stilted conversation for a few minutes. Then Nick had said out of
the blue, “I’m ready for sex any time you are.”

Jenn had almost groaned in
relief as she’d told him she was ready right then. They’d had sex on the couch
and then against the wall in the hallway and then again in her bed.

It had been a very good
night.

But it was only Friday today,
and she’d have to wait until next Tuesday before they had sex again. It was
written in their contract, and she had been the one to insist on it. She could
hardly decide to change her mind now.

The sex was supposed to be a
tension-reliever once a week. It wasn’t supposed to dominate her thoughts on
every other day of the week. She really needed to get herself together.

Despite her mental efforts,
she kept imagining what she’d do with Nick on Tuesday. She imagined it in so
much detail that she was starting to turn herself on. Finally, she got out of
bed, threw on her workout clothes, and went to run on the treadmill. She
obviously had some extra energy to channel this morning.

After a short warmup, she ran
herself hard, but it still didn’t get Nick off her mind. So she forced herself
to think about work. To distract herself, she even started to rehearse out loud
a tricky conversation she needed to have with her receptionist, who’d been
making personal calls and playing on her phone during work so often it was
getting to be a problem. Jenn always tried hard to correct behavior in a way
that didn’t hurt the other person’s feelings, so she tried out several
approaches aloud as she ran.

She was feeling better—more
herself, more focused and ready for the day—when she finally got off the
treadmill and went to take a shower and get ready for work. Her mental flights
of fancy about Nick were obviously something she could control.

At five-forty-five, she
hurried to the kitchen, still holding her jewelry and buttoning her
bronze-colored satin blouse. She liked the color and feel of the top and the
way it looked vintage and just slightly sexy paired with her brown skirt and
buff heels.

“Hey,” she said when she saw
Nick standing in front of the coffee pot in his pajama pants and a T-shirt.

He just grunted an answer and
didn’t turn from where he was watching the coffee fill up his mug.

“You’re up early again.” She
randomly wondered how he could look so sexy in that old shirt and those ratty
pants. Then she remembered that she wasn’t letting her mind go down those
tempting paths.

He just gave another grunt.

She started pulling out the
milk, yogurt, and fruit for her smoothie. “Do you have another early stakeout?
You’ve been having a lot of those. Are they all for the same job?”

He mumbled something that
might have been a yes.

“What’s the matter?” she
demanded, frowning at him with the milk in her hand. He hadn’t even turned
around to face her.

“Nothing.” He turned around then
and gave her a bland look that appeared a little cool.

“Something’s wrong. Are you
not feeling good?”

“I feel fine.”

She made a face, since he was
obviously lying to her. He might not be sick, but something was definitely
bothering him. “Is your case not going well?”

“My case is fine.”

“Then what—”

“Do we have to have an
interrogation first thing in the morning? Maybe I’m just tired.”

She took a step back at his
tone. He hadn’t raised his voice, but there was a hoarse edge to it that was
impossible for her not to notice. “Are you mad at me?” She searched her mind
for something she might have done to piss him off, but she hadn’t done
anything. They’d had a friendly dinner in front of the television the night
before, and Nick had been smiling at her in that way she really liked—half
sweet and half amused. He definitely hadn’t been annoyed with her last night
when they’d gone to their separate bedrooms.

As she was thinking, Nick
turned his back on her again to pick up his filled coffee cup. There was a
tension in his neck and shoulders she could recognize. It wasn’t like him at
all.

She also couldn’t help but
notice that his hair—which needed trimming, as it always did—was curling up a
little at the nape of his neck. It made her want to reach over and smooth it
down.

She wanted to caress away the
tension in his body.

Her breath hitched as she
processed the wave of both lust and affection, and then she shook her head
firmly to shake it away. “Nick?” she asked, trying to keep the impatience out
of her voice.

He was sipping his coffee and
looking at his phone as he turned around. “What?”

She took the phone out of his
hand to make him look at her. “Talk to me.”

He sighed and rolled his
eyes. “It’s too early for this conversation, Jenn. I’m just tired. Don’t you
have to get to work? I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to waste time this
morning, since you started work so early.”

“I didn’t start work…” She
trailed off, trying to figure out what he was talking about. She’d kept her
resolution to only work between six and six almost every day for the last three
weeks—partly because Nick was serious about not giving her a massage if she
lingered in the office even a minute too late.

“I heard you on the phone in
there,” he said thickly, nodding toward the wall that divided the main room
from the workout room. “At four-fifty-five.”

She blinked. And then she
finally realized what was going on. She burst into laughter—more relief than
amusement. “Are you all pissy about my starting work too early? Is that what’s happening
here?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m
not pissy. But I don’t think it’s anything to laugh about. You’ve been doing a
lot better this past month, now that you’re not working yourself into a
heart-attack.”

She had been doing better.
She hadn’t been getting nearly so many headaches. She sometimes wondered if it
was the distraction that sex with Nick had provided as much as not staying at
work so long every day, but either way she’d been feeling a lot better. She
reached out to rub his shoulder. “I wasn’t working this morning.”

“Yes, you were. I’m not deaf,
you know. I heard you on the phone.”

“I wasn’t on the phone. I was
just talking through a conversation I need to have later today.” She gave him a
little smile. “I was talking out loud. I didn’t think anyone would hear me.”

“You were…” There was a
question in his eyes that was really very sweet.

“I wasn’t on the phone. I was
just thinking out loud. That’s allowed, isn’t it?”

His face relaxed as he
realized she hadn’t been cheating on their deal. His lips even turned up in a
tiny smile. “I don’t know. It seems pretty close to working.”

“I wasn’t working. I was
thinking.”

“Out loud. You were
practicing. That’s definitely in a gray area.”

She was washed in a warm wave
of feeling at the expression in his eyes. “So I don’t get a massage this
evening?”

“I’ll think about it.”

When she realized she was
smiling like a dope, she cleared her throat and turned away to finish making
her smoothie. Nick turned back to his coffee.

After she’d finished whirling
the blender, she said casually, “Don’t forget we have dinner tonight with that
buyer and his wife.”

“I know. I’ve got it in my
schedule. What’s he like?”

“I’ve only talked to him on
the phone, but he sounds like he’s pretty conservative.”

“Okay. Then I’ll put on my
strong, upstanding husband hat for the dinner tonight.”

Jenn laughed at the way his
eyebrows twitched and reached over to touch his chest. Then she realized what
she was doing and dropped her hand immediately. Screwing on the top to her
insulated cup, she said, “Well, I better get going. I’ll see you tonight.”

Nick was drinking his coffee
so he just gave her another grunt.

***

That
evening, Jenn got home at a little after six to discover Nick wasn’t in the
apartment.

They had to leave at
six-forty-five to meet the other couple at the restaurant by seven, so she was
surprised and worried by his absence. She was about to call when a text came
in.

On way.

She smiled at his curt note
and hurried to take a quick shower. She managed to keep her hair dry, so she
just brushed it out and rolled it back into a bun at the nape of her neck. Then
she put on a simple navy blue sheath dress with cap sleeves and an ivory
silk-knit cardigan. With a pearl choker and earrings, the resulting look was
pretty and very traditional. She nodded at herself in satisfaction before she
left her bedroom.

Nick’s bedroom door was
closed, so he’d obviously arrived and was getting ready himself. She tapped on
the door. “We’ve got five minutes.”

“I’m ready.”

Relieved at this news, since
she hated to be late, she opened the door with the intention of hurrying him
along.

She jerked to a stop when she
saw him standing in the middle of the floor, wearing nothing but a pair of gray
boxer briefs.

He must have taken a quick
shower because his hair was slightly damp at the nape of his neck. But his hair
was not the thing that demanded Jenn’s attention. Her eyes raked over his big,
mostly naked body. His bare chest, his fine biceps, his strong thighs, the
outline of his package beneath the cotton of his underwear.

Her body was immediately at
full attention.

“When did we stop knocking?”
Nick grumbled, reaching for the pants of the dark gray suit he’d flung on the
bed.

“You said you were ready.”

“I’ll be ready in two minutes. I just have to put on my
clothes.”

She couldn’t pull her eyes away from parts of him she
shouldn’t be staring at. When he’d covered the most interesting parts with his
trousers, her eyes raised to his flat abs and the hair on his chest.

“Is something wrong with this suit?” he demanded, evidently
seeing and misinterpreting her distraction.

“No. It’s a good one,” she managed to say, her cheeks
flushing in a ridiculous way. “I’ll get you a shirt and tie.”

In his closet, she took a moment to breathe deeply and pull
herself together. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself, just because she was
finally having some really good sex. Nick was still her friend and her
husband-of-convenience.

There was no reason to get so flustered.

She grabbed a blue shirt she liked and a matching tie and
brought them out to him. He’d pulled on a white T-shirt and reached out to take
the shirt she’d picked out for him.

He slanted her a curious look, but if he noticed her flushed
cheeks, he didn’t mention them. “You look very prim and proper this evening,”
he drawled.

She glanced down at her outfit. “Is it that bad?”

“No. It’s not bad at all. I like you all prim and proper.”

For some reason, she blushed again. This was really getting
very inconvenient.

She tried to avoid staring as he buttoned his shirt and
wrapped the tie around his neck. “Can you do this for me?” he asked, gesturing
to the tie. “It always takes me forever to get the damned thing to look right.”

She wasn’t sure it was safe to be so close to him, but she
had no good excuse for refusing. She stepped over and knotted his tie, feeling
flutters in her chest and belly at the scent of him, the warmth of his body so
close to her. “There,” she mumbled when she’d smoothed it down. She avoided
looking up at his face.

“Thanks.” He pulled on the suit jacket and patted his hair.
“Okay. Do I look all right?”

He looked incredibly handsome in the expensive suit—one of
the suits he’d bought for the dinners he attended with her. But, as she looked
at him, the thing she noticed was that he also looked un-Nick-like. The suit
wasn’t really him.

He was only wearing it for her. If he had a choice, he’d
have been wearing his ugly pajama pants.

“What’s the matter?” he asked with a frown, looking down at
himself. “I thought you said this was a good suit.”

“It is. You look great. Now let’s go before we’re late.” She
smiled at him and then went to give him a little push when he just stood and
kept frowning at her.

She was relieved when they got to the restaurant and those
strange, fluttery feelings finally dissipated.

***

When they returned to their
apartment, almost three hours later, Jenn had a headache that felt like a
tourniquet, squeezing painfully around her skull.