Double Contract Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Club Soda

Sober and furious, Lillian tells the big arborist beside her everything; he refuses to be a favor but accepts a night, and the hotel room ends with him telling her to ask him in the morning.

He didn't laugh, and he didn't tell me I was crazy.

He looked at me for a long moment, and then he looked at the bartender.

"She'll have whatever she wants," he said.

"Club soda with lime," I said.

I had learned from my father never to decide anything important with a drink in me.

The bartender set it down and went away to polish something at the other end of the bar.

"Dal," the man said, and he held out a hand the size of a dinner plate.

"Lillian."

His palm was dry and rough as bark, and it stayed around mine one second longer than a handshake needed.

"I take down trees," he said.

"There's a split white oak in the courtyard behind this place. The hotel called us at four. We cut it at nine, and I stayed for the coffee."

"That's the tree that was scraping the window," I said.

"That's the one. It was going to come down in the next storm, on that ballroom."

"Good," I said. "I hope it had a ladder."

That got him.

He laughed once, low in his chest, and the sound went straight down my spine.

"Tell me about the husband," he said.

So I told him.

I told him about Preston and the three years and the green dress.

I told him about the sapphire in the study safe, and Gwen's smile, and the date that was mine becoming Tabitha's.

I told him about the bourbon.

He listened without saying anything, turning his coffee cup a quarter turn every time I said a name.

When I finished he said, "And you told four hundred people you'd show up married."

"I told four hundred people."

"Why?"

"Because if I walk into that church alone, Gwen wins the whole day and she wins me."

"Why me?" he said.

"You were the only person in the building who wasn't at the party."

"That's the whole reason?"

I looked at his hands, his jaw, the old white scar through his left eyebrow.

"No," I said.

"You're not the only man here who's big enough to be believable."

"Believable," he said.

"As someone I'd marry."

He smiled slowly, and it changed his whole face.

"I'm not a husband, Lillian," he said. "I'm a man who smells like chainsaw oil."

"I don't mind it."

"You haven't been close enough."

"I'm sitting right here," I said.

He looked at the inch between our knees.

Then he looked at my mouth.

"Ask me in the morning," he said quietly. "Noon is a long way off, and tonight you're hurt. I won't be your answer to that."

"Then don't be my answer," I said.

"Be my night."

He went still.

"I'm not asking for a favor," I said.

"The favor is tomorrow. Tonight I just want you."

It was the truest thing I had said all evening.

I had a key card in my clutch, because I had booked a room upstairs to get dressed in.

I took it out and set it on the bar between us.

Dal looked at it for a count of three.

Then he picked it up.

The elevator doors closed, and I did not wait for the car to start climbing.

I took two handfuls of his jacket and pulled him down to me.

He tasted like coffee and cold air.

His mouth was hot and slow and then not slow at all, and he had me against the mirrored wall before we passed the third floor.

His hand spread across my back, so wide it covered the whole zipper.

I made a sound into his mouth that I had never made for Preston.

"Lillian," he said against my jaw.

"Don't stop."

We stumbled down the hall, laughing, kissing, his boots loud on the carpet.

At the door I fumbled the key twice because he had his teeth on my neck.

Inside, the room was dark except for the city through the window.

He turned me around and found my zipper with one finger.

It ran down my spine in a long slow hiss, and the green silk fell off my shoulders and pooled at my feet.

I turned and started on his buttons.

His chest was hard and warm and dusted with sandy hair, and the scars on his forearms were small white lines.

I pushed his shirt off his shoulders and put my mouth on his throat.

He groaned, and his hands gripped my hips and lifted me.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he carried me to the bed.

He laid me down and stood over me for a second just looking.

"You're the best thing I've seen in a year," he said, and his voice was rough.

"Then come here."

He came down over me, and his weight pressed me into the mattress in a way that made me arch up into him.

He kissed down my throat, and between my breasts, and across my stomach.

He hooked his thumbs in my underwear and pulled them down my legs in one smooth drag.

Then he pushed my knees apart and put his mouth on me.

I cried out and grabbed the sheet.

His tongue was slow at first, deliberate, finding the place that made my hips jump, and then it wasn't slow at all.

He held me down with one big hand on my stomach and licked my clit in hard steady strokes.

I could feel the heat gathering low and tight, and I tangled my fingers in his hair and said his name over and over.

"That's it," he said against me. "Let me hear you."

I came with my back bowed off the bed, shaking, with my heels digging into his shoulders.

He didn't stop until I was done.

When I opened my eyes he was already up on his knees, taking off his belt.

His cock was thick and hard and flushed, and my mouth went dry looking at it.

"Come here," I said, and I pulled him down by the shoulders.

He pushed into me with one long slow stroke.

I felt every inch, and I gasped at how full I was.

He stopped when he was all the way in, breathing hard against my neck.

"You feel like you were made for it," he muttered.

I wrapped my legs around him and dragged him deeper.

"Fuck me, Dal."

He moved.

He fucked me hard and deep, with a rhythm that built until the headboard knocked the wall.

I raked my nails down his back.

I bit his shoulder.

I told him I wanted it harder, and he gave it to me, with his hand under my knee to open me wider and his mouth on mine.

His cock hit a spot inside me that made white light flash behind my eyes.

"Dal. Dal, I'm going to..."

"Cum for me."

I came again, clenching around him, and the sound I made was ragged and shameless.

He swore, low and ugly, and drove into me three more times.

Then he buried his face in my neck and came with a shudder that shook the whole bed.

We lay tangled for a long time, our hearts slamming against each other.

He rolled onto his back and pulled me against his chest, and I put my ear over his heartbeat.

It was the first time in two years I hadn't felt like I was holding up a wall.

I fell asleep with his hand in my hair.

When I woke, gray light was in the window, and he was awake, looking at the ceiling.

"Morning," I said.

He turned his head on the pillow.

"Ask me," he said.

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