Page 34 of The Pleasure Contract

This is so stupid.

I should just be able to say this, considering what it is I’m asking of him.

“Have you ever heard of a ‘friends with benefits’ type of situation? Or a ‘situationship’?”

His brows crease for a moment, and he shakes his head.

Of course he hasn’t. Why would they even have that kind of scenario here? They don’t even touch each other outside of a breeding contract.

“Ok,” I say, taking a breath. “So… what I’ve written here-” I gesture to the projection of the now very signed contract, “-Is kind of like a breeding contract, but without the actual breeding part.”

Az narrows his eyes at me. “So… you omitted the best part?”

I roll my eyes. “No. Not the activity, anyway. Just the goal.” Twisting in my seat, I try to face him more fully. “Look, I don’t want a baby, but what I do want is-”

“My massive Xaviann dong?” Az supplies, a shit-eating grin lighting up his face. He reaches across me to pluck a piece of pink fruit from a platter and pops it in his mouth. “Don’t worry, Lois, that’s been yours for quite a while now.”

I wet my lips and choose to ignore the little tummy flip that definitely did not just happen. “Alright… but if you’d just read the contract, you’d know I don’t want all of that proposal stuff like before. Our situation isn’t going to end like Niska and Kiahn’s, Az. We’re not going to go flying off, all loved up into the sunset on the back of your drak. It’s strictly… pleasure. Nothing else. No feelings or other complications.”

I watch as his brows slowly lower over his eyes, the smug, teasing grin replaced by a look of earnest understanding.

“If we’re going to do this, we’ll still just be friends, Az. Do you understand that? I want to keep you as a friend.”

He thumbs his lip pensively before his teeth sink into the tip of the digit. A shadow of a smile appears. “But friends that fuck, right?”

I can’t help the laugh that escapes me. “Yeah,” I say, shaking my head as I reach for my fruit juice. “Friends that fuck. If you’ll agree to that.”

Az’s whole face brightens. “I think I could possibly be persuaded.” He shifts closer, and I become all too aware that his big arm is using the armrest on my chair, as his frame just naturally demands to be part of my space. “If you ask me nicely.”

His voice is low and deep. It’s almost like I can feel it vibrate in my chest when he speaks like that.

Well… maybe not my chest.

Maybe someplace lower.

I shift in my chair again, turning to face the table in front of me instead of the stupidly hot alien prince. “Too late, you already agreed, remember?” I tell him, picking up a pastry to eat so I can pretend to ignore him and this whole conversation.

* * *

I spend the rest of the day on the rail ship avoiding Az.

Which is admittedly stupid. But hey, sue a girl for getting all shy after she’s put down in writing how she wants a guy to wring out a few orgasms from her tired and frustrated body, okay?

“You really do not need to bother yourself with this, Lady Lois,” Zek frets as he packs my clothes back into the cases they’d been in not so long ago. Honestly, I have no idea why he’d unpacked them on the rail ship, anyway. We’ve not even been traveling for two full days.

“I like to help,” I say, smiling at him as I fold a pastel blue piece of leisurewear.

Zek grimaces as he watches, his expression becoming more and more horrified with each piece of clothing I pick up to pack.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be in the dining carriage? I heard the chef say he managed to get the nutrition replicators to prepare something very special from your home planet called ‘pickles’,” Zek says, finishing with a dramatic flourish of his hands on the word ‘pickles’ like they were some kind of mystical exotic delicacy. DJ, floating beside me, makes an electronic chirping noise as if she’s excited to try some pickles, too.

I narrow my eyes at Zek and pick up one of my sleep shirts to fold. “Are you just trying to get rid of me so I’ll stop helping you?”

“Yes.” He swipes the shirt from my hands to fold it much more neatly than I could ever manage. “And ‘helping’ is a strange description for whatever it is you’ve been doing,” he says, gesturing to the pile of folded clothes in front of me. They look fine. Not lined-up-perfectly-with-crisp-folds-perfect, but fine. “Wouldn’t you rather be spending this time with Prince Az?”

That question catches me off guard.

My cheeks heat.