“I can ask questions in the bedroom, but no other place?”
“No.”
“Really? I thought that was a good offer. Huh. Give me a second to think.”
She was already wavering. What was the harm in letting him ask a few personal questions? She wasn’t such a secretive person, after all. She’d told Carly her life story over a bottle of wine soon after they met.
“You can have one a day,” she offered.
“One per orgasm.”
“Yours or mine?”
“I was thinking yours.”
“You think I’m going to have more than one orgasm a day, on average?” What a heady notion. Three climax-free years followed by a veritable monsoon season.
“You’ve had three since I showed up with the pizza.”
Fair point. Three orgasms, three questions?
It would be worth it for the orgasms.
“One question per orgasm, but you can’t save them up.”
“The orgasms?”
“The questions. If you don’t ask your question within five minutes, your time expires.”
He stroked his chin, producing a delicious, piratey rasping noise. “I want longer than that. If you only give me five minutes, it’ll ruin the afterglow. I’ll have to lie there thinking about questions when all I want to think about is how you just blew my mind.”
She rolled her eyes. What sort of man talked about the afterglow and fought fiercely for sleepover rights? She’d question his masculinity, except … yeah. No. He could probably make her come from forty paces, just by saying her name the right way.
“You can have twenty minutes.”
“Two hours.”
“Half an hour.”
“Ninety minutes.”
“An hour.”
“Okay, an hour,” he said. “You want some pizza?”
“Yes.”
He left the room and returned with a box. They carried on, eating cold pizza while they argued. He’d said it would be easy, but he’d lied. It took them another forty minutes to hammer out the contract, and Caleb was absolutely ruthless. She never wanted to meet the man across a conference table. He pushed and pushed to get what he wanted, and when that didn’t work he tried to charm her into changing her mind, and if that failed he did his level best to outsmart her. She’d never come up against such a worthy opponent in her life. He put her University of Chicago classmates to shame.
It was kind of fun.
“So we have a deal?” he said at last.
“Let’s hear it.”
One more time, he ticked off each item on his fingers. “Lots of sex. Sleepovers allowed, but only when Henry’s not home. Dates to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, but not this weekend, and not if they interfere with your work.”
She interrupted him. “And both parties to agree they’re meaningless.”