He Paid a Million for One Night, and the Contract Was Signed by My Mother novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Wired

Morning shows two wires, the million and a second to the hospital. Margo wires back all but ten thousand dollars, hears that Soren has no Verlander blood, and her mother texts a question that shouldn't be there.

I woke at seven with the lamps still burning and a gray river light in the window.

Soren was already up.

I could hear him in the kitchen, a pan on a burner, a drawer, the small plain noises of a man making breakfast for a woman he had paid for.

I lay in his iron bed and looked at the ceiling and tried to feel like what I was.

I didn't.

I felt like I had slept ten hours after being taken apart and put back together by somebody careful.

I found my phone on the nightstand, its screen full of notices.

The first was from the bank in Baton Rouge: a deposit of one million dollars, posted at 11:59 p.m.

The second was from the Ascension General billing office.

It said my mother's account balance was zero.

I read it three times.

I got up, pulled his white shirt off the chair, and walked into the kitchen with the phone in my fist.

Soren stood at the stove in his undershirt and last night's trousers, turning eggs.

He looked at me in his shirt and went very still, and something moved in his face that he didn't hide.

"There's coffee," he said.

"There are two wires," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"One to me. One to the hospital."

"The hospital's is mine," he said. "It has nothing to do with the paper. It was her bill, and I paid it."

"You paid my mother's hospital bill," I said.

"All of it."

"Why?"

He set the spatula on the counter.

"Because you shouldn't have to sell a night to settle it," he said. "And you did anyway. I know that. I'm sorry for it."

I stood in the middle of his kitchen and understood that I was angry, and that it had nowhere to go.

"The million is mine," I said.

"Yes."

"Then I'm sending it back."

He said nothing.

I didn't wait for him.

"All but ten thousand," I said. "The boat's January interest is overdue, and I won't let the bank take the MARGUERITE for ten thousand dollars after I slept with you for a million."

"Margo," he said.

"I won't be bought, Soren."

"You weren't."

"The paper says I was," I said.

"The paper says one night." He turned off the burner. "The night's over. You signed it, you wrote the margin, and I kept every line. Whatever you do with the money is your business. Keep all of it or none."

"None," I said. "Except the ten."

"Then send it back."

He took my phone from my hand, gently, found the bank's app, and gave it back with the transfer screen open.

I stared at him.

"I won't be the man who made you do it," he said. "Press the button."

I typed in the amount.

Nine hundred and ninety thousand dollars.

I hit send.

What I felt was not triumph.

It was closer to being able to breathe.

"There's something you should hear from me," Soren said. "The whole parish will tell you I'm a Verlander. I'm not. My name is the captain's gift. I have none of his blood."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because the first thing anyone at that courthouse will say is that I bought a Landry girl with a Verlander fortune." His mouth went flat. "I'm a dockworker's boy from Baton Rouge with a rich man's name. If you want to know what you're standing in a kitchen with, that's it."

I looked at him.

I hadn't known that.

Nobody at the courthouse had said it, not once, in three years of saying his name.

"You were adopted," I said.

"At nine," he said. "Captain Josias Verlander and his wife took me off the docks. The captain's nephew has never forgiven the old man for it."

"Cormac," I said.

"Cormac."

I put down the phone.

I didn't know why I wanted to cross the kitchen.

I did it anyway, in his shirt and bare feet, and stood in front of him.

"I'm going to take a shower," I said.

"Down the hall."

"With the light on."

He swallowed.

"I'd like that very much," he said.

I led him down the hall by his belt.

The bathroom was white tile with a cast-iron tub and a glass shower stall, and I turned the water hot and let the steam come up.

I took off his shirt and dropped it on the floor.

He watched me with his hands at his sides, the way he had the first time, and it undid me again.

I stepped under the water and held out my hand.

He stepped in.

The spray ran down his chest and over the scar on his ribs, and I put my hands on him slowly, soap and palms, down his arms and across his shoulders.

He closed his eyes.

"Look at me," I said.

His eyes opened.

I pressed my back to the tile and drew his hands to my breasts.

He cupped them, thumbs over my nipples, and the heat went straight down through me.

"Yes," I said. "That."

He bent his head and took one in his mouth.

I tipped my head against the wall.

His tongue circled, then his teeth, lightly, and my whole body drew tight around the sensation.

I reached down and took him in my hand.

He was hard again already, hot and slick under the water.

I stroked him slowly, and he groaned against my skin.

"Turn around," he said.

I turned, my palms flat on the wet tile.

He pressed against me from behind, thick against the small of my back, his hand sliding down my stomach to between my legs.

"Is this the second night?" I said, breathless.

"It's whatever you say it is."

"It's the second night," I said. "On my paper. Put it in me."

He gripped my hip, and I felt him find me.

He pushed in with one slow stroke, and I cried out against the tile.

He held me there, buried to the root, one hand spread on my stomach and the other flat beside mine on the wall.

"Tell me when," he said.

"Now."

He moved.

He took me hard and slow at the same time, one long thrust after another, the water pouring over both of us.

His chest was at my back and his mouth at my ear, telling me what I felt like.

"You're so tight," he said. "God. You take all of me."

"Don't stop," I said.

"I won't."

His fingers found my clit and worked it, slow and wet.

I felt it rise in me, my knees going soft, and I came against the wall with his hand holding me up and his voice in my ear saying my name.

He followed a few strokes later, shuddering.

We stayed there until the water went cold.

Afterward he dried my hair himself with a towel, with a patience I'd have said he didn't have.

I dressed in yesterday's black gown, which looked absurd at eight in the morning, and he put his truck keys in my hand without a word.

At the screen door my phone buzzed.

It was my mother.

It was a text of four words, and it was strange that it was there at all.

It said: Did he keep his word?

I hadn't told her anything.

I hadn't told her about the margin, or the night, or any of the paper.

I had only said I was going home with a headache.

I stood on his porch in the gray light with the phone in my hand and read the four words again.

My mother had known the terms before I did.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend