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Could this be love? No, this was lust. Pure, temporary lust.
And it was getting harder to fight.
He caged her in, pressing a palm on either side of her. “Just what?”
She brushed the bonbon across her lips. “Complete permission to do whatever we want. Total creative freedom.”
Oh yeah, from the balcony sex to the way they’d defiled his suite at the Luxe, they’d gotten quite creative on their wedding night.
He stared at her mouth as she continued to slide the bonbon across her bottom lip. He’d never been more jealous of a piece of candy. “What are you proposing, bonbon? I want to be crystal clear on the parameters.”
“Before we get into that, you know that I have a rule against dating musicians.”
This again.
He released a weary breath. “I am aware.”
“And while marriage isn’t dating, I am breaking my rule by being with you. But you and I aren’t a forever kind of thing, right?”
This was getting dicey.
What the hell did he want?
Not to look like a fool was a good start.
“Agreed. We’re on the same page. I’m not a fan of marriage.”
He wasn’t. He’d decided long ago it wasn’t for him. He’d be wise to remember that.
“We need our time as man and wife to end with cash in my pocket and new songs in your catalog,” she mused, then frowned.
“What is it? That sounds like exactly what we need. Are we forgetting something?”
“Aria.”
Aria.
What would their arrangement do to the kid? The child had no idea this was a temporary marriage. How the hell would he explain that to her?
But perhaps there was a workaround.
“My friends are your friends. You wouldn’t be out of her life when this ends,” he offered as a knot tightened in his belly.
“True,” she conceded. “We’ll still see each other, and I can help Aria with piano. When this is over, we could tell her we decided we were better as friends. And then nobody gets hurt,” Harper added. She didn’t sound one hundred percent sure of that, but she plastered on a smile.
He matched her plastic grin with one of his own.
This was how it had to be.
“Right, we can be friends,” he repeated.
“But in the meantime,” she continued, returning to torturing him by brushing the bonbon against her lips, “we should make a temporary exception to engage in a mutually beneficial arrangement that includes marital benefits.”
Now she was talking.
He leaned in. “And what kind of marital benefits are you alluding to?”
“For the next sixty days, we allow ourselves to indulge the same way we did on our wedding night.”
