The Arrangement
Authors: Simon Smith-Wilson
The Arrangement
By Simon Smith-Wilson
Copyright © 2014
The Arrangement
Simon Smith-Wilson
Books by Simon Smith-Wilson
***
The
Curse of Meredith Holmes (Crime of the Mind 1)
Five
Days Notice (City of Sin 1)
Scarlett
and Lucas are soon to be married. Life is moving in the right
direction and everything is falling nicely into place. It is the
perfect life plucked straight from the script of a romance film, but
good things never last. Lucas is offered a deal by his interfering
boss, Scarlett’s father. It is a deal that will make him
financially sound for the rest of his life. It is an immature
arrangement that threatens to destroy everything that the happy
couple have built. Lucas is a serial womaniser and a pig. Poor
decisions send him down a path of deceit, corruption and betrayal,
but every action has a reaction. Scarlett is pushed to great lengths
to save their relationship, but how far will she go before enough is
enough? The arrangement is a story of love, hate, greed and lust. It
is a story about making the hard choices in life and living with the
consequences of your decisions.
The Arrangement
Chapter One: Neglect
The
infuriating sound of the alarm clock was not the nicest sound to wake
to. It buzzed annoyingly on the bedside table. With a groan and a
curse, Lucas hit the off button before his conscious mind had been
able to return from the land of dreams. Slowly, his eyes creaked open
like some kind of rusty old gate. He was met by a smile from the
world’s most beautiful woman. It was like looking into the face
of an angel.
‘Good
morning,’ she spoke in a soft gentle tone.
Lucas
couldn’t help but smile in return.
‘Good
morning, gorgeous.’
He
was still finding it hard to believe that he got to wake up beside
her, every single morning, for the rest of his life and then his
afterlife. He had never met a woman like her. Scarlett was the type
of woman that men only dreamed about. And most of those dreams held
scenes of a sexual nature. It wasn’t possible to tell lying
down in the bed together, but she was a good half a head shorter than
him. She had a slim sexy body. It was the type of body that deserved
to be on the front covers of magazines. Much to Lucas’s
pleasure, she was highly developed in the chest department. Her hair
was a long golden blonde colour and flowed down to the mid-way point
of her back. From the first day he had met her she always wore that
heart warming smile upon her face.
Scarlett
leaned forward and pressed her soft red lips against his.
It
was a sweet gentle loving kiss and carried her full weight of her
emotions.
She
pulled back and smiled.
‘I
have been dreaming about doing that all night.’
Lucas
reached out from beneath the quilt and brushed a strand of hair from
her face. It should have been impossible for anyone to actually look
this beautiful. Unconsciously, Scarlett closed her eyes and leaned
her cheek against the back of his fingers. He could see from this
tiny gesture how much she cared for him.
‘I
love you,’ he told her.
Scarlett’s
bright blue eyes sparkled with delight. Her smile increased to the
point it nearly consumed her entire face. It was strange how three
little words could make someone so happy, but when said with such
truth they were the most powerful words in the whole wide world.
‘I
love you, too.’
For
a second time she leaned forward and kissed him.
Only
this time, Scarlett didn’t pull back from the kiss.
Lucas
could feel his heart starting to beat faster, as she opened her mouth
and welcomed his tongue inside. The kiss quickly turned into
something more passionate. Scarlett stroked her fingers through his
hair and pulled him in closer towards her. Lucas didn’t put up
any resistance. The feel of his lover’s tongue rolling within
his mouth was intoxicating.
Certain
things were starting to happen to his body.
Scarlett
rolled onto her back.
Her
hands were placed upon his head and she guided him to where she
wanted him to be, leaning over her. They began to tilt their heads
left to right, as they kissed with greater force. Unconsciously,
Lucas nestled his knee between her thighs. He could feel her opening
her legs for him. Was there anything sexier than that? She was
practically offering herself to him. If he wanted too he could have
had her right here, right now, and boy did he want to, but he
couldn’t.
It
was against the rules.
It
was not part of the arrangement.
He
slipped his tongue from her mouth and pulled away.
‘What’s
wrong?’ asked a confused Scarlett.
‘Nothing
is wrong.’ Lucas rolled over to his side and sat upon the edge
of the bed.
‘Why
did you stop?’ Scarlett threw back the quilt cover and shuffled
over towards him on her knees. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
She hugged him gently from behind.
‘No.
Of course not,’ he replied, with a shake of the head. ‘I
have to get ready for work.’
A
sigh escaped his lips at the feel of her hands reaching around his
body. Her fingernails began to stroke down across his rock hard
pectoral muscles. Scarlett pressed her lips against the curve of his
neck and walked a gentle line of kisses along his shoulder. The feel
of her large breasts pressing up against his naked back was causing
alarm bells to go off within the darkest depths of his unconscious
mind. Her small delicate hands began the journey down across his
rippling abdominal muscles and continued going south.
‘Scarlett,’
he groaned softly at her touch.
Instantly,
he stood up and stepped out of her reach.
Her
brow furrowed into a deep frown. You didn’t have to be a genius
to sense that something was wrong here.
‘What
has gotten into you?’
‘Nothing
has gotten into me.’ He waved his hands in a defensive manner
in the air. ‘I just have a lot on at work today and I want to
get in early.’
Even
he didn’t believe that lie.
In
fact, he couldn’t even believe what he was saying. The woman of
his dreams was kneeling on the edge of their double bed in a low cut
night gown. And to make matters worse she wanted to make love to him.
His
eyes betrayed him.
A
cheeky smile curled up the side of Scarlett’s face at the sight
of her fiancée looking at her cleavage. They both knew all too
well that Lucas was very much a breast man, which was why he had
labelled Scarlett’s chest weapons of mass destruction because
they could blow his world away.
‘Ten
minutes wouldn’t hurt you.’ She knocked away the thin
shoulder straps of her night gown.
Lucas’s
light brown eyes were drawn like magnets to her perfectly sculpted
breasts, as the fabric of her dress slipped down her slender naked
body. Something dangerous pulsed between his legs. His mind was
starting to head out of the building on a short vacation.
It
had left his penis in charge.
This
couldn’t happen.
‘I
have to get ready,’ he blurted, before rushing out of the
bedroom.
Scarlett
let out a long sad sigh and dropped back onto the bed.
‘Why
doesn’t he want to make love to me?’
***
The
sound of humming filled the kitchen. The radio was blaring out the
new Black Eye Peas track, which Scarlett was a massive fan of. She
danced around the kitchen, as she prepared breakfast and lunch for
Lucas. Technically, they were not married yet, but she did like
playing the role of the good little housewife. Lucas was the love of
her life and she enjoyed making him happy. Today she had made him
lovely prawn sandwiches on soft brown bread. She had even gone to the
trouble of making the sauce herself. It was a dish that her Mum had
taught her and it was his favourite. Carefully, she wrapped the
sandwiches in tinfoil and plucked an apple from the bowl on the
kitchen table.
‘That
will be such a nice lunch for him.’ She nodded approvingly at
her work.
Scarlett
would receive a gold medal at the Olympics if multitasking was
considered a sport. With one hand she poured the water from the
kettle into their cups, as the other hand picked the toast from
beneath the grill and placed it upon the plates. She darted back and
forth from the fridge, adding milk to their drinks, and buttering the
perfectly toasted toast. Like some kind of ballet dancer she
pirouetted around the kitchen and scooped bacon out of the frying pan
before neatly placing it upon the plate. She turned her attention to
the poached eggs, lifted them out of the pan, so that the water could
drip free, and then dished up.
‘Lucas!’
She bellowed out the kitchen door, as an assortment of sauces was
placed on the kitchen table.
No
reply came back.
‘Lucas,
your breakfast is ready.’
Her
eyes turned to the wooden clock on the kitchen wall. It was shaped
into a birds nest with a happy squirrel eating a nut. The squirrel’s
tail swung left and right like a pendulum. According to the time he
had been in the shower for about ten minutes.
Scarlett
headed out the kitchen and down the corridor towards the front door.
The stairs took her up to the landing. The bathroom was at the far
left of the landing. The sound of the shower vibrated out through the
closed door. Her hand was raised to gently knock upon the door when a
second sound reached her ears.
‘Oh,’
Lucas groaned.
Scarlett
gave the door a puzzled look.
Was
she hearing things?
Cocking
her head to one side she pressed her ear up against the door.
‘Oh,
Scarlett,’ he moaned her name in a rather erotic way.
Was
he doing what she thought he was doing?
Unconsciously,
she tried the bathroom door handle, but he had locked it from the
inside. Lucas never locked it. Scarlett’s heart sank down into
the depths of her stomach. She had thrown herself at him in the
bedroom and he had shot her down without a second thought, but now he
was in the shower doing naughty things.
‘Why
didn’t he want me?’ Scarlett muttered beneath her breath.
She
knocked loudly on the door.
‘Your
breakfast is ready,’ she told him.
‘O-oh,
yes, okay,’ he stuttered a reply. ‘I will be right down.’
***
Lucas
devoured his breakfast like a half starved man. He had been in the
shower slightly longer than he had expected. It wasn’t by much,
but it only took a handful of minutes to change a slow frustrating
drive to work into an even slower and soul destroying, bumper to
bumper, traffic jam journey.
His
eyes switched from the eggs upon his plate to the back of Scarlett’s
thighs. She was still wearing her very short silk night gown. The
fabric only reached about half-way down her sensual legs, but clung
so tightly to her body that he could easily see the curve of her cute
little ass cheeks.
Scarlett
placed the soapy pan on the draining board and turned to face him.
Lucas
had managed to divert his attention back to the plate.
‘Did
she really have to wear that down here?’ asked the voice within
his head.
‘What
does your day have in store for you?’ she joined him at the
table.
‘It
is the same old, same old, really.’ Lucas shrugged a reply. ‘I
have to clean up a couple of manuscripts and I have to sort out the
movie rights for one of the novels. I am supposed to have a meeting
about some kid’s book, but I haven’t even got the samples
for the artwork. Even if I did get them I wouldn’t be able to
find them amongst all the back log of paperwork.’
‘They
still haven’t found you a new secretary?’ Scarlett placed
her elbows upon the edge of the table and cupped her jaw within the
palms of her hands.
Lucas
swallowed down a mouthful of food harder than he had meant to.
He
had a direct bird’s eye view down his fiancées night
gown. The fabric, of the low cut V, was hanging loose and her firm
round breasts were there for the world to see.
Something
warm began to glow within the depths of his stomach.
Lucas
shuffled nervously in his seat. The demon of lust that lurked deep
down within his soul was starting to return. Scarlett was the most
beautiful woman in the whole of existence. He did wonder if she knew
that her nightgown was hanging open if she sat in that position, but
that wasn’t like her. She was just naturally sexy and so
comfortable around him, and why shouldn’t she?