I Paid a Stranger Fifteen Hundred Dollars to Be My Boyfriend for My Father's Birthday Weekend, and He Obeyed Every Order I Gave novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Six Rules

At midnight in the guest room Jodi hands Ben her one-page rules sheet and his envelope, then orders him onto the edge of the bed and into the first touch; at 2 a.m. she says his name.

By midnight Ben had survived nine hours in my family and my mother had given us one bed.

"Fiancés don't need two rooms," she'd said, to a man she'd known for forty minutes, and carried our bags upstairs herself.

Now the guest room door was shut and the house was creaking around us.

It had a double bed with a wooden headboard, one armchair and long blue curtains tied back with cloth cords.

Through the bathroom door I could see a white tiled shower.

Ben stood by the dresser with his hands in his pockets, waiting.

My father had asked him over dessert what he did for a living.

"Cabinets," Ben had said.

"What?"

"Cabinets, sir. Kitchens."

"What?"

"I hang the doors on people's kitchens."

Dad had put down his fork and said, "I like him," to the whole table, and Janelle had stopped talking about centerpieces.

I took a single sheet of paper out of my bag and held it out.

"Read it out loud," I said.

He took it and read it in his calm, level voice.

"One. No kissing except on cue.

"Two. No touching below the neck.

"Three. All orders to be spoken aloud.

"Four. Ben sleeps on the floor.

"Five. Call me Jodi, never babe.

"Six. If I say check the oven, Ben gets a phone call and we leave the room."

He looked up.

"Check the oven," he said.

"It's a code."

"I figured." His mouth moved, barely. "I touched you below the neck at three-oh-nine. In front of nine witnesses. Should I have asked?"

"That was an order."

"Rule three. Spoken aloud."

"Exactly."

"Understood." He took the pen from my hand and signed the bottom, and then he wrote something small next to number four.

B. Baxter, under protest about the floor.

I took the envelope out of my back pocket and held it out.

He put it in his bag without counting it.

Then he stood there, easy, in the lamplight, with his sleeves pushed up over strong forearms.

I'd been wound tight since noon.

Since Janelle's ring, since Jodi's always fine, since my mother's smile at nobody.

And this man had said I'm hers in front of all of them.

His hand had been warm on my back, and I had not stopped feeling it for nine hours.

"We'll need to kiss at some point," I said. "Janelle will be watching for it."

"On cue."

"We should rehearse."

"That's practical."

"It is."

I heard how it sounded.

I didn't care.

"Sit on the edge of the bed," I said.

He sat.

He did it at once, no joke, his hands flat on his thighs, and looked up at me.

The bed dipped under him.

I stood between his knees.

My heart was going.

"Kiss me once," I said. "On cue."

"Waiting for the cue."

"Now."

He rose up a few inches and kissed me.

It was slow and warm and careful, a man kissing a woman he had been told to kiss exactly once.

It undid me completely.

I made a sound against his mouth.

I pulled back a half inch.

"Again."

He kissed me again.

His hands stayed on his thighs.

I could feel what it cost him.

I took his wrist and put his hand against my ribs.

"Rule two," he said, against my lips.

"Amend it."

"Spoken aloud."

"Put your hands under my sweater," I said. "Slowly."

His palms slid up my sides over bare skin, warm and rough, and goose bumps ran up my arms.

He pushed the sweater up and I pulled it off over my head and dropped it.

He looked at me in my bra the way he had looked at the pie.

Like he was going to take his time, and it was going to be worth it.

"Touch me," I said. "Here."

I guided his hands up to my breasts.

He cupped them through the lace and ran his thumbs over my nipples, and they went hard under his thumbs.

I gasped.

"Jodi," he said, rough.

"Don't talk," I said. "Do what I say."

"Yes, ma'am."

I laughed, short and shaky, because it was the first time he'd said it and he'd said it like a joke.

Then I stopped laughing, because he did it again, slower.

I reached back and unhooked my bra and let it fall.

His mouth closed over my left nipple and I put my fingers in his hair and held on.

"Harder," I said.

He gave me harder.

My knees were going.

I unbuttoned my jeans with shaking fingers and shoved them down, and my underwear with them.

I stood there naked in front of a man I had known for nine hours and paid for.

I should have felt ridiculous.

I felt like I'd been waiting all year.

"Put your hand between my legs," I said. "Two fingers. Slow."

He slid his hand between my thighs and found me wet.

He drew in a breath through his nose.

"Jodi."

"Slow, I said."

He ran two fingers through me, up and down, so lightly I wanted to scream.

He found my clit and circled it, once, round and wet and slow, exactly as slowly as I'd asked.

"More pressure," I said.

He pressed.

"Left. Little more left. There."

"There?"

"There. Oh, fuck. There. Don't move."

He didn't move.

He held his fingers in the exact place I'd told him to, and I rocked against his hand.

I heard myself saying there again and again.

His other arm had gone around my back to hold me up.

"Inside," I said. "Now. Two fingers."

He pushed them in and curled them up, and my head dropped back.

The pleasure built from low in my belly in long hot waves, and I took his shoulder in my fist.

"I'm going to come."

"Then come," he said, very low.

"Don't stop."

"I won't stop until you tell me to."

I came with my mouth open against his hair, silent, shaking, my thighs clamping around his wrist.

It went on and on.

When I could breathe I was holding on to him with both arms and his shirt was twisted in my fists.

I felt how hard he was against my knee through his jeans.

He didn't move.

He didn't say a word.

He just waited, still inside me, for the next thing I told him.

I stood there trembling, and I knew exactly what I wanted, and I was too proud and too scared to say it.

"Enough," I said.

He took his hand away at once, and put it on his own knee, and looked at the wall.

His jaw was clenched.

"Sleep on the floor," I said. "Rule four."

"Yes, ma'am."

He pulled the spare quilt off the armchair and made himself a bed on the rug without a single complaint.

I lay in the dark with my heart still thudding, wide awake.

I listened to him breathe.

At two in the morning I was still listening.

"Ben," I said.

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