The Marriage Pact Read online

  I was about to reply when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I turned around so quickly I started to sway in my high heels.

  Brody reached forward and put a hand on my arm to steady me. “Twice in one night?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m fine,” I chirped brightly, suddenly wondering what I’d been so nervous about before.

  “Yeah, OK. Listen, I was just wondering… would you like to dance?”

  I frowned as I considered him. “I thought you were here with—”

  “She’d love to,” Becky interjected, shoving me toward him. “I’ll work on getting that pole, Shan,” she said with a grin before she walked away.

  I looked up at Brody, blinking. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

  “No idea.” He smiled down at me. “You’ve had a little too much to drink, huh?”

  I giggled. “Maybe.”

  “You never could handle alcohol,” he said fondly. “Come on, dance with me. You can hold on as tight as you want.”

  The small, sober part of my brain that remained told me that ordinarily, that would have made my belly tighten in lovely, hopeful knots. Fortunately, the rest of me was free of such inhibitions and I let him take my hand and lead me to the dance floor. He slipped his arms around my waist, holding me lightly and I wrapped my arms around his neck.

  I took a deep breath, inhaling his clean, masculine scent that sent a thrill throughout my body, making my sex clench. “God, you smell so good. I’d almost forgotten.”

  “You’re not too bad yourself,” he quipped.

  “Brody, you’re not mad anymore, are you?”

  He appraised me thoughtfully as we swayed back and forth. “You know what? I can’t say I am.”

  “Is that because you’re seeing someone?”

  He cleared his throat, looking abashed for the first time since this evening. “You heard about that, huh.”

  “Small town.”

  “Don’t I know it. Hell, there’s not a single one here who can keep their mouth shut.”

  I tilted my head quizzically. “Are you sure she won’t mind you dancing with me?”

  “Claire? No, she doesn’t mind much of anything.”

  The way he said it made me curious, but I decided that talking about girlfriends could get uncomfortable for both of us, so I let it slide.

  “And what about you?” he asked as he spun me around.

  I broke into laughter at the motion and when he pulled me back to him I clutched his chest and hung on for dear life, feeling a bit dizzy. “What about me?”

  “Are you seeing someone?”

  “No, not at the moment.”

  “I find that hard to believe. Beautiful girl like you…”

  I could feel a blush creeping along my cheeks, awed by the intimacy of the moment. When his lips parted, all I could think about was kissing him. I wanted to kiss him until my lips were swollen and tired, until I couldn’t see straight from lack of air. I looked down, hoping that if I stopped staring, the feeling would go away, but no such luck.

  “You know, every time I get an invitation in the mail… I keep thinking I’m going to be getting one for your wedding one of these days.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” I sighed, finally raising my head and meeting his eyes.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m too busy for romance,” I shrugged. “Besides, I’m doing clinicals now and most of the men who hit on me are patients, most of whom come in for drug overdose, actually. What does that say about me?”

  Brody chuckled. “It says nothing about you, beautiful. It says a lot about the company you keep. You mean to tell me not one hot, rich doctor has tried to snag you up?”

  I smiled at the easy way we’d slipped into our old banter, despite the subject matter. He used to call me ‘beautiful’ all the time, as though it was my name. “Maybe one or two. But I don’t want to marry a doctor.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m busy enough for the both of us.”

  “I see.” The words were said stoically, but I imagined I could hear him passing judgment.

  “You still think I should have stayed, don’t you?”

  Before he answered, his eyes moved over my face as gentle as a caress as he studied me. It was strange how normal this seemed—almost as though time had rewound. In that moment, feeling so safe and loved in his arms, I didn’t ever want to go back again. “What I think is that for someone who is getting everything they ever dreamed of, you don’t seem very happy.”

  I tried to laugh off his words, but it came out sounding hollow. “I’m not there yet. I still have another year before I’m a real doctor, remember.”

  “Sure.” He dipped me and pulled me back up in his strong hands. “You know, Shan, I was thinking…”

  “What?”

  “This is going to sound crazy, but promise you’ll hear me out.”

  “All right.” His firm, insistent stare almost made me laugh, but I swallowed it back. “I promise.”

  “I was thinking… we should get married.”

  The words struck me numb for one paralyzing moment. When I snapped out of it, I was torn between laughing and crying. How had we ended up here again?

  “Not now,” he rushed to assure me, as though he could read my mind. “But, say, if we’re both thirty-five and we haven’t found anyone… say you’ll marry me.”

  I sighed heavily. “Oh, Brody, I don’t know.”

  “Why not?” he challenged. “Come on, what are the odds that both of us won’t be married in a decade?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but closed it again. It was a pretty good argument.

  “Besides, would marrying me really be that terrible?” Those brown eyes pierced right through me and I knew I didn’t have a choice but to tell the truth.

  “Of course not, Brody.”

  “Then why not?” he persisted.

  “Why thirty-five?” I countered.

  “What?” he asked, blinking.

  “Don’t most people agree on forty?”

  “Oh, that. Well, that’s easy. Thirty-five gives me a few years to enjoy that rocking body of yours until things start to sag.”

  “Brody!” I exclaimed in protest, reaching out to smack his chest.

  Brody deftly caught my hand and trapped it inside his own, pressing it against his chest. I could feel the faint flutter of his heart. “Is that a yes?”

  I nibbled at my lip, certain that I should say no but not really wanting to. “Just…”

  “Shan, look at me.”

  From the moment I raised my eyes to his face, I knew I’d already lost any argument I could have made. “OK. It’s a pact.”

  “We should seal it with a kiss.” Before I could respond, he bent his head and brushed his lips against mine in a way that made a jolt of electricity strike through my body. When he straightened, he gave me a smile and echoed, “It’s a pact.”

  I raised a hand to touch my lips where he’d kissed me. They felt scorched from even that brief contact. “You know, I better go. Becky’ll be looking for me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, she looks like she’s having a pretty good time to me.”

  I craned my head to follow his stare and saw Becky chatting up a tall, cute redhead. Damn.

  “But I need to go, too. Just one thing before I do, though.”

  I turned back to look at him, secretly hoping he’d kiss me again and feeling like an idiot for wishing for it. He was with someone, and besides, I didn’t believe in long-distance relationships.

  “I want you to promise me you’ll lay off the alcohol for the rest of the night.”

  When his words registered, I blinked at him in surprise. Suddenly, his voice was charged with an authoritativeness that I’d never heard before. He looked different, all of a sudden, and it wasn’t just the seriousness in his eyes or the no-nonsense look on his face. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was there. “What?”

  “You heard me,” h
e replied, his voice husky. “No. More. Alcohol. You’ve had enough and you know how you get. I don’t want to spend the whole night worrying about you.”

  He worried about me? “But… I’m always careful,” I protested, not even sure why I was going through the motions. I really hadn’t planned on drinking anything else.

  “Really? You’re always careful?”

  “You can not keep bringing up that one—”

  “The one? The one? Shan, there were a dirty dozen, at the very least. But that’s beside the point.”

  “Oh, really? And what is the point?”

  He arched a sandy brow. “Watch that tone.”

  I was even more confused than before. What was with this whole macho act? Where had it come from? Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I was still drunk. Had to be, because even though I was confused by the way my body responded to the dominant way he was talking to me, he was starting to look even hotter than before.

  “Shan?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “No more alcohol. Right?”

  “Um… right.”

  “I wanna hear you say it.”

  I furrowed my brow, squinting my eyes as I tried to figure out what was going on here. Since when did he tell me what to do? We weren’t even together. And to compound my confusion, my body was reacting in ways that made me think I secretly liked this new side of him. My panties were dampening so fast that I thought I might need to excuse myself soon to seek relief. “Fine. I won’t have any more drinks.”

  “Good.” He rewarded me with a brief, heart-stopping smile. “Just to be sure, I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  I nodded briefly before I spun on my heel and fled. I marched up to Becky and grabbed her arm, pulling her away from the guy she was chatting up.

  “Hey! What’s the big idea?” she exclaimed, shaking me off. “We were really—”

  “I need to leave.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Leave? Why?”

  “Because he’s here!” I hissed.

  “What? But you two looked like you were having a good time.”

  “We were,” I admitted begrudgingly, wondering how to tell her that that was just the thing I was worried about.

  “See!” she crowed triumphantly, smacking her hands together. “I told you so! I told you so.”

  “If you even think about doing that ridiculous little victory dance of yours in public again, I will disown you.”

  She cut her eyes at me and scoffed. “Well. Someone’s in a bad mood. C’mon! I want all the juicy details of your star-crossed, unrequited love!”

  I sighed heavily. “First of all—you know what? Never mind, I’m not gonna go there. It was nice. Let’s leave it at that, K?”

  “So not OK. I need your life to sustain me, Shan. You know this. I’m just a pathetic townie with no prospects, no hope of a future. I’ll be running that little flower shop until I die and then they’ll bury me in it. You know I depend on you so that I can live vicariously. So stop being selfish and dish already!”

  I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh.

  Taking this as her sign that she’d won—Becky, for whatever else she might say, always won—she slid her arm in mine companionably and led me over to the buffet table. “So? Was it magic? Was everything just the same?”

  “The same.” I allowed myself a sigh. “And different. He’s… he’s different, somehow. But you know, I think I like it.”

  “Let’s have some more champagne, to celebrate!”

  Remembering my promise, I looked back at the table, but Brody was gone. My eyes scanned the room, but I didn’t see him anywhere. “Sure, why not?”

  Becky squealed and handed me a glass. We clinked them together and I was in mid-sip when I saw a hand snake around the stem of my glass. I let go of it and turned to see Brody shaking his head in disapproval. Where had he even come from?

  He wagged his finger at me and tsked his tongue before saying, “You promised.” Then he let his hand fly against my bottom in a single, scorching swat that had me gasping and jumping up on my tiptoes. He didn’t give me a chance to say anything before he slipped away, taking my glass along with him.

  Becky’s mouth dropped open. “What the hell was that about?”

  “No idea,” I murmured, feeling waves of tingling sensation move up and down my ass as I watched him disappear into the crowd.

  * * *

  I somehow managed to sit down at the table with my family for dinner that night and pretended to be mostly normal even though I was pretty sure Brody’s handprint was embedded into the tender skin of my ass. It kept pulsing with a strange kind of heat that had little to do with pain anymore. My skin felt charged with it and it made me almost unbearably horny.

  Still, my smile didn’t waver as I was asked to pass the peas and listened to Jonas talk about high school football—if it looked fake, no one seemed to notice. I gave monosyllabic answers to questions about the wedding and neatly dodged ones about who I’d seen. Surely they could see it on my face. My entire body was alert, waiting for even the slightest hint that any one of them sensed the arousal that was creeping over me.

  “Shana, are you OK, hon? You look a little tired.”

  I smiled at my mom and silently thanked her for the excuse. “You know, I am a little tired. Does anyone mind if I excuse myself? I think I’m going to go lie down.”

  “Shana’s hung-over,” Jonas stage-whispered, cackling when I glared at him.

  “For your information, twerp, you can’t be hung-over until—”

  “Sure am glad I’m paying for you to go to med school,” Dad chimed in, speaking over my indignant retort and Jonas’s mocking laughter. “We need someone around here who can hand out sage advice like that.”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed my chair back. I thanked Mom for the meal as I stood and was walking past when Dad put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “Feel better, kiddo.”

  I smiled gratefully and tried to walk normally to my bedroom. Once I’d shut the door behind me I did something I hadn’t done in the years since I’d been coming home—I locked it. Then I slid my dress off, unsnapped my bra and let it fall to the floor. I stepped out of the puddle of clothing and made my way to my bed. I sank down onto it gratefully, loving the feel of the cool sheets on my skin.

  I closed my eyes and Brody was waiting for me in the shadows of my mind, looking deliciously handsome in the suit he’d worn to the wedding. I’d loved how his green tie had brought out the flecks in his eyes. Suddenly, I wished I’d told him. But an ex-girlfriend didn’t say things like that, did she? Especially not when he was seeing someone else? I shook my head, as if I could forget that part—it wouldn’t do to fantasize about someone who was taken, and I planned to fantasize to my heart’s content.

  Inhaling deeply, I could swear I smelled the sandalwood scent of his skin, could hear him whispering ‘Shana’ in a way that made my fingers slide into my panties. I imagined him taking off that tie and ordering me to turn around. I would, without hesitation, because something inside me wanted nothing more than to yield on the occasions he got bossy. I could feel him crossing my arms behind my back before he looped the silk tie around my wrists and tied them together.

  “What are you doing?” I’d ask, my voice a whimper.

  “Keeping you where I want you,” he replied, his voice husky with power. “I just wish I had another to pull over your eyes.”

  The thought was terrifying, but somehow exciting, too. My fingers slid into my pussy and I was shocked to find it was pulsating with a scorching heat. It only spurred me on, my digits slippery with my own juice as they worked to sate my lust—at least for the time being. Picturing Brody—his captivating eyes and that quick, boyish grin—made me groan as I worked feverishly for release.

  I could picture him standing over me, baring my breasts and kissing each one in turn. I could practically feel the sensation of his lips on them and my nipples hardened at the thought. “If you
untie me, I could give you pleasure, too,” I could hear myself saying.

  “You can pleasure me with your hands bound,” he told me, pushing me to my knees. When he unzipped his fly and his cock sprang out long and hard, I could have no doubt as to his meaning.

  When I took him in my mouth, I could feel his body tighten with the sensation. In my daydream, I slid my lips up and down his shaft while my fingers were dancing to the fantasy I’d created. When I felt myself on the precipice, I managed to slap a hand over my mouth just in time before I came, calling his name.

  Chapter Four

  Nine years later

  I attended six more weddings in the years that followed and I never saw Brody at one of them again. I was more than a little disappointed, I’ll admit. Now that I felt like things were finally OK between us, I no longer dreaded bumping into him—and if there was just a bit of apprehension at the thought, it had nothing to do with dread. He was never in town when I came home for the holidays, either, and I began to wonder if it had something to do with the impromptu pact we’d made. Was he embarrassed he’d brought it up? Did he regret it?

  To my surprise, I found that I didn’t regret it and even thought of it from time to time. There had been a weeklong period, after a nasty breakup with a guy I’d been dating for over a year, where I thought of it incessantly. It wrapped around me like a warm, cozy blanket.

  The ex’s name was Sam and I’d been getting hopeful that he might be The One—whatever that meant. But, as it turned out, he couldn’t deal with my long, demanding hours and I walked in on him consoling himself in the arms of another woman. In her state of undress when I’d found them, I couldn’t help but notice her large, perfectly round tits that Sam had been suckling on when I’d opened the door. In a fit of self-consciousness, I began to wonder if maybe it had more to do with my lack of cup size than the hours I worked.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I’d moaned on the phone to Becky that night. “Get implants?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Shana. If you do anything to your perfect body, I will personally come to Minnesota to kick your ass.”

  “I have to do something! No man seems to w-want me. There must be something…” I paused, sniffling and trying to control the tears that threatened. “Wrong with me.”