The Pact

by Max Monroe

  She meets my hips with her own, rearing back into me with fervor and zero inhibition, and I feel a twinge somewhere inside.

  No woman has ever given herself over to me like she does—has submitted to the faith that I’m going to take care of her every need like Daisy is willing to do.

  It turns me on and sets off all my alarms at the same time. Because the more I have of Daisy, the more I’m starting to wonder how I’m going to fill up all the empty space inside myself without her.

  Monday, May 6th, New York

  Daisy

  I finish fluffing my curls, give myself one last look in the mirror, and then shut off the bathroom light to head for the kitchen. Flynn is still in there rooting around, getting ready for work. I can hear him, and the thought of seeing him after the things we did last night is both exciting and terrifying.

  Ever since my seduction scene last Tuesday, Flynn’s been working my body in ways I never knew were possible. Backways, sideways, pretzelways—I’ve officially been in every position known to man. And every time, just when I think we’ve done everything there is to do, it just gets hotter.

  Last night, he ate me from behind with a vibrating plug in my ass. My ass! The door I always thought would swing only one way. The thing is, I don’t even know how he convinced me—because he didn’t have to. I just wanted it. Everything Flynn does feels good. Everything Flynn does takes me to a place of freedom from thought I didn’t know existed. And he does it in a way that I don’t even question it.

  But the more nights I spend not questioning the things he’s doing with my body, the more days I spend very much questioning just what in the hell it is we’re doing here.

  In a couple months, this whole charade is going to be over, and what? I’m just supposed to be ruined for all other men for the rest of my life?

  I don’t know. I don’t know what Flynn’s thinking or what his plans are when our time is up, and I don’t know what he even does when he goes to work every day, and the absolute fuckton of mysteries are starting to wear on me.

  Hell, I’m still wondering about that whole fortune-teller thing Winnie revealed at lunch a few weeks ago. Although I’m pretty sure the only reason I haven’t asked him has more to do with fear and that I’ll find out he’s supposed to marry some six-foot blond, Swedish supermodel named Greta than anything else.

  So far, I know he goes to the gym with his brother a few nights a week and that he gets private work calls well outside of his nine-to-five. And according to his sister Winnie, I’m not the only one in the dark. As far as I can tell, everyone in Flynn’s life is.

  You also know that he’s into kinky sex, which has taught you that you’re into kinky sex.

  It’s true that I might be an emotional freak in the streets, but Flynn is a freak between the sheets. I didn’t even know that sex could feel that good until him. And sure, some of that has to do with that well-endowed penis he’s packing, but a lot of it has to do with the way he knows how to take control, the way he knows how to work my body, and the intuitive way he always knows just how far to push my limits without making me feel unsafe.

  I grab an apple from the drawer in the fridge and some peanut butter from the cabinet and put it on a plate so I can cut it up, all the while Flynn scrolls through his phone and puts his coffee cup to his lips silently.

  I’m not sure what breaks inside me while I watch him, his perfectly chiseled jaw and his dark, damp hair curling around his forehead, but when it does, I can’t stop myself.

  “Where do you work?” I ask without preamble, dropping my knife on the counter and leaning into it while I wait for him to look up to me.

  Bright-blue eyes find mine and search, and then he sets his coffee cup on the counter. “At 1350 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan. On the twelfth floor.”

  Semishocked that he was so openly specific, I pick up my knife again and nod. “Well, okay then.”

  Flynn smirks at me; I can feel the weight of it even as I slice manically through my Golden Delicious, and when I’m done, I can’t help but meet his eyes again. He raises his eyebrows—just as he always does when there’s more to be said and I’m avoiding it.

  “I just… I don’t know… I thought maybe it’d be a good idea for me to know where you worked. You know, in case of an emergency.”

  “Right.”

  I narrow my eyes on his simple answer that lets him off the hook way too easily and up the ante. “Maybe we should have lunch one day. To keep up appearances. I could meet you at your office so I could see a little bit about what you do, and we can go from there.”

  “Great,” Flynn agrees, shocking the hell out of me as he sets his coffee mug in the sink and winks. Winks. Flynn Winslow, the most stalwart man on the planet, winking…at me. “How about tomorrow? I would today, but I’ve already got a business lunch with my accountant.”

  “T-tomorrow’s great,” I stutter, overwhelmed.

  “Good,” he praises me then, stepping forward and placing an unexpected kiss on the apple of my cheek that gives me a full-body chill. “I’ll see you tonight, then. Maybe we’ll get tacos.”

  “Tacos? On a Monday?”

  “Live dangerously with me, Daisy.” He laughs and reaches out to tuck a few of my curls behind my ear. My skin doesn’t miss the cool sensation of his gold wedding band.

  He’s wearing his wedding band? When did he start doing that?

  I discreetly tap the ring on my left finger with my thumb, even twirling it around a little. Welp, he probably started wearing it around the same time you started wearing yours…

  I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything, though. It’s just to keep up appearances.

  All I can do is nod as Flynn steps out the door because I’m left wondering just how fucked I’m going to be emotionally if this is the Flynn that lives behind the taciturn curtain. I already knew the quiet Mr. Mysterious was great. But an emotionally available witty wizard who now wears his wedding band out in public? Well, that’s a horse of an entirely different color.

  God, Daisy. Do not fall in love with your contractually bound, marriage-pact husband. Only a fool would do that.

  My phone buzzes on the counter beside me, startling me from my cold, hard stare at the door.

  Damien: How’s it going in New York, doll?

  I sigh. Not great. Not only has my war with Tara escalated to epic proportions—think walking into a shocked office of people because she told them she’d heard I died—but I’m also getting dangerously close to becoming attached to my fake husband. Oh yeah, I’m having a grand ole time. Still, Damien gave me this opportunity despite the burden it put on his office, and I don’t want to make him feel like I’m not grateful.

  Me: Well, it’s not exactly as fun as working directly with you every day, but the Greenwich Village penthouse looks incredible.

  Tara and me working together is a joke of a concept, and she puts down literally everything I suggest, but thankfully, Thomas Grey showed up while we were there the other day and agreed with my proposed changes, so she’s had to go along with it.

  Obviously, that did nothing for my working relationship with Tara other than sully it further, but at least Thomas isn’t walking around thinking I’m a complete moron.

  Damien: Tara’s just jealous that Thomas liked your suggestions more than hers. Also, she’s territorial as hell, and sometimes I wonder if she and Thomas are having an affair.

  My eyes damn near hit the screen of my phone. Not only did Damien suss out the reason for my ho-hum answer immediately, but the gossip around the villain in my story is juicy enough that Paris Hilton of the early 2000s would slap it across the ass of a pair of terry cloth pants if she could.

  Me: You think Tara and Thomas are hooking up??? I thought Thomas was married???

  Damien: Tara is too, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t spread her legs in a raunchy little dance at the Christmas party two years ago while eye-fucking my eastern counterpart to high heaven.

  Me: Oh, holy hell.

&nb
sp; Damien: Which brings me to your next work task. Keep an eye on those two and report anything suspicious to me immediately.

  I almost want to laugh.

  Me: Keeping you in the gossip loop is not a work task, Dame.

  The last thing I am going to do is blow the lid off a secret affair of some sort. Hell to the no. That shit is none of my business.

  Besides, nearly deported immigrants clinging to their last chance to work in the country shouldn’t throw stones from glass houses.

  Tuesday, May 7th

  Flynn

  The intercom buzzer on my desk phone trills as soon as I place the receiver on the hook from my phone call with the CEO of Tuff Co., the leading vinyl flooring producer in the country, and I scribble my note about equipment setup in their new Texas plant on my notepad quickly so I don’t lose my train of thought.

  Talk to Jim about thermodynamics repercussions for ventilation system

  Tuff Co. has, for the last twenty years, operated their vinyl plants out of northern China, but because of some changes in logistics and politics, they’ve decided to bring everything stateside to the tax-friendly state of Texas. I’ve been brought on as a consultant to help work through all the kinks involved in an intercontinental move, including climatological considerations on their state-of-the-art machinery.

  It’s almost painfully boring, if I’m honest, but it also allows me to keep a residence in Texas on their dime. Since that’s one of the next markets I’d like to expand into with my real estate investments, I took the job.

  “Mr. Winslow, your…wife is here to see you.”

  I nearly laugh as Valerie stumbles over the word “wife,” but I don’t think it’s in good taste to make fun of an elder, and my assistant was thirty when I was born. Lord only knows why she clings to working for a silent bastard like me when she could retire with her well-off husband and travel the globe, but for whatever reason—perhaps fifteen years of loyalty—she puts up with me every day.

  I don’t bother telling Valerie to send Daisy in; after this many years together, she knows what to expect.

  Several moments later, the door cracks timidly open, and Daisy peeks her head in, her curls leading the way into the room. “Hi! Am I interrupting?”

  I shake my head and wave her in with a hand, so she backs her head out, opens the door farther, and steps inside. “Am I too early? Or are you ready to head to lunch?”

  “No, I’m good,” I reply, standing to shut off the monitor on my computer and hitting the button to forward all my direct calls to Valerie’s desk for the time being.

  I round the desk and lean in to kiss her on the cheek, and she bounces on her toes awkwardly, accidentally knocking her chin into my teeth.

  “Ope! Whoops! Sorry.” She’s strangely nervous, and my dick reacts like he’s one of Pavlov’s dogs. It’s twisted as fuck, but Daisy’s anxiety has become a distinguishable precursor to a very satisfying orgasm.

  If Valerie didn’t have the hearing of a bald eagle mid-hunt, I’d toss Daisy up on my desk and work whatever’s bothering her right out with an orgasm. As it is, the best I can do until tonight is to distract her with food—the second-best calming agent in my Daisy arsenal.

  “Come on. Let’s go get some food.”

  She nods at that, her vibrant green eyes dancing in the sunlight of my office. “You have somewhere in mind?”

  I nod. “Head out and hit the button for the elevator. It takes forever sometimes. I’ll just grab my phone and keys and meet you out there.”

  “Okay,” she agrees amiably, turning for the door and taking a step.

  She’s almost out of reach when the urge to have just a tiny part of her overwhelms me. With a quick snap of my elbow, I grab her just above the waist and pull her back, her body twisting on the balls of her feet and falling soundly into the bulk of mine.

  Wide eyes and lips in a tiny circle of surprise, she looks up into the center of my gaze just as my mouth comes down on hers in a crush. Open and easy, she meets my tongue with her own in the sexiest fucking dance. She tastes like the black cherry gum I’ve seen her chew, and my dick jerks against the fabric of my dress pants. My hand sinks into the spiraled curls at the back of her head, and I tilt the angle of her mouth to go deeper.

  One second leads to two, and before I know it, two seconds lead to thirty. When I finally regain the sense to pull away, her whole face is glazed and relaxed in a way I know would only be better if she’d had my cock in her cunt.

  “Ready for lunch now?” I tease, and she giggles softly before nodding her forehead against my chest.

  “Uh, yeah. I think I’m ready now.”

  “Good,” I praise with a squeeze of one cheek of her ass. “I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

  She nods again, this time hustling out of the office without my interference. I round my desk back to the side by the windows and open my top right drawer to grab my keys and phone. Right next to those, I see the letter I pulled out of the mailbox at the apartment this morning—from USCIS.

  I grab all three and load them into my pockets, and then follow in Daisy’s wake to the elevator. She’s waiting dutifully, though I can tell that the stress of waiting for an elevator that might arrive before I do is already counteracting the hard work of our kiss.

  I pick up my walk to a jog just to make her feel better, and Valerie eyes me suspiciously the whole time. I roll my eyes at her, and she narrows hers.

  She’s known me a long while and, quite frankly, knows things about me that no one else does—including the reason Daisy and I got married as she’s the one who put the damn USCIS packet in the mail for me. But right now, she needs to mind her own damn business.

  I put my hand to the small of Daisy’s back as the elevator dings its arrival and escort her inside. Valerie meets my eyes one more time as the doors close in front of us, but I ignore her, turning my focus to my wife instead as she starts to ramble.

  “This building is really nice, but it’s also kind of confusing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, when I came in downstairs, I was expecting the lobby to be a straight shot to the elevator, but it’s more like a matrix or something. Like, I kind of felt dumb, to be honest. All the hallways lead back to the beginning, but they’re like a hexagon and remind me of being in one of those fun house mirror maze things, you know?”

  I smile, but I don’t say anything because I know by now, I don’t need to. Daisy has absolutely no problem carrying on a conversation herself.

  “It actually reminds me of the building where they get into the huge firefight at the end of that movie…you know, the one with Gerard Butler…Angel Has Fallen!”

  Having seen the movie a couple times, I know immediately that she’s actually right. It is startlingly similar to that building. I chuckle.

  “I finally had to split my hope between finding your office and finding the office where they were hiding President Morgan Freeman, you know?”

  The elevator eases to a stop on the ground floor and opens its doors, and I put my hand to her back again to lead her out of the building. There are a few turns, but if you take the most direct route, it’s pretty easy. When we make it to the front doors quickly, she scoffs. “Sure. Work your voodoo magic or whatever, just as I’ve made it all sound dramatic.”

  I grin. “I’ve worked in this building for the last fifteen years, so I think I have a little bit of an advantage.”

  “Fifteen years? Really?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “That makes sense, I guess. I’ve just never been anywhere for fifteen years. It seems so…long.”

  I laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, I move my desk chair around a lot.”

  Daisy’s answering smile is so mesmerizing, I don’t even look before pushing the front door open onto the sidewalk and almost take out a guy with a giant inflatable lollipop. He stumbles to the side and swings the thing like a sword, and Daisy’s eyes sparkle. “New York is wild, man.”

  I grin. Tha
t it is.

  Thankfully, the little diner I like to frequent for lunch is only right across the street, and after a quick jaywalk, we’re inside again.

  I escort Daisy straight to the table in the back where the framed reservation sign with my name on it sits. She reads it aloud as we scoot into our respective sides of the booth. “Reserved for Flynn Winslow.” She snorts. “Come here often, do you?”

  I shrug. “Just about every day for fifteen years.”

  “Wow! Holy shit, you’re a creature of habit! I can’t believe it. The guy nobody knows anything about does the same dang thing every day.”

  “You make it sound like I’m some sort of phantom,” I say with a laugh. “No one has ever asked me where I have lunch, so I haven’t offered it up. That’s it.”

  “No one has ever asked you?”

  I shake my head, and Barbara, my favorite quiet waitress, sets a couple of plates with burgers in front of us along with two glasses of water, and then heads back for the kitchen. I glance to the food and then at Daisy. “Is this okay? She obviously just assumed you wanted what I get.”

  Daisy waves off the food faux pas and pops a fry into her mouth before leaning into her elbows on the table and whispering intently, diving right back into the conversation we were having before Barb brought the food. “Your sister talks like you’re ex-CIA, and you’re telling me it’s all because people don’t ask you?”

  I shrug. I mean, yeah. If they asked, I’d answer. But I’m not going to fucking gab for no reason. I pick up my burger and take a bite.

  “Holy shit. That’s…groundbreaking, really.”

  I roll my eyes with a shake of my head and a dry laugh, and Daisy reaches across the table and grabs my hand to stop me.

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Black.”

  “What’s your favorite holiday?”

  “All of them that bring the family together.”

  “What do you do with your free time?”

  “Work out. Scope out real estate investments. Volunteer at the homeless shelter Uptown.”

  She stops her continuous giggle then to get serious. “You volunteer at the homeless shelter?”